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BOSTON LECTURES.

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BOSTON LECTURES,
1872.

Christianity and Scepticism:

EMBRACING A CONSIDERATION OP

IMPORTANT TRAITS

CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE AND EXPERIENCE,

LEADING TACTS IN TEE LIFE OF CUEIST.

BOSTON :
CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY,
No. 13 C0E2THILL.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by
The Cosgeesatiohal Publishing .Society,
In the Office of tho Librarian of Congress, at 'Washington.

3

boston:
Stereotyped and Feinted by Alfeed Mudge & Son.

CONTENTS.

LECTUEE I.
by rev. george f. magoun, d.d. Page.
The Adjustment between the Natural Law of Progress and
the Christian Law  1
LECTUEE II.
by rev. harvey d. kitchel, d.d. .
Christian Doctrine the Mold of Christian Character ... 49
LECTUEE III.
by rev. william f. warren, d.d.
The Christian Consciousness; its Apologetical Value ... 67
LECTUEE IV.
by rev. james h. fairchild, d.d.
Moral Law as Eevelation  95

LECTUEE V.
by rev. truman m. post, d.d.
The Incarnation  123

V5 CONTENTS.
LECTUEE VI.
by rev. timothy dwignt, d.d.
The Fourth Gospel, — the Eecord and Testimony of the Inner
Life of its Author  152
LECTUEE VII.
by rev. andrew p. peabody, d.d.
The Testimony of the Apostles  . . 200

LECTUEE VIH.
by rev. kinsley twining.
The Evidence of the Eesurrection of Jesus Christ .... 223
/ LECTUEE IX.
by rev. william e. merriman.
The Limitations of the Personal Work of Christ in the 'World, 254

CIIRISTIAMTY AND SCEPTICISM.

LECTURES.

NOTE.
Thb first course of " Boston Lectures " treated mainly of philo
sophical subjects; the second was chiefly taken up with themes of
Biblical criticism ; the present enters upon a consideration of certain
internal evidences of Christianity. The opening lecture draws an
argument from the general character of the Christian system, as a
system not merely suited to our wants, but necessary to the true
progress of the race. The second considers more particularly the
connection of Christian doctrino with the progress which is truest .
and deepest, — namely, toward perfection of character. The third
brings to view the traits and the significance of what is peculiar in
the Christian "consciousness"; andthe fourth, the divine excellency
and authority of the Moral Law. The five remaining lectures are
chiefly given up to a consideration of prominent facts in the life' of
Christ: beginning with the incarnation; then discussing the unique
testimony of the Apostle John, in his gospel; then presenting the
witness of the other Apostles, and especially of Judas; following
this with an array of facts and arguments proving the resurrection ;
and concluding with a comprehensive review of the whole life of
Christ on earth, its most distinctive traits, and its total significance.
June 13, 1872.

I.

THE ADJUSTMENT BETWEEN THE NATURAL LAW OF
PROGRESS AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW.
BY REV. GEORGE P. MAGOUN, D.D.
ALL parties in relation to Christianity now recog
nize and affirm a Law of Human Progress of
eome kind, — its champions and its assailants, and
those "who ignore-it, or profess indifference, as well.
It has come to be a test of the Christian religion itself,
how it is related to such a law, whether in fellowship or
in hostility, — independent, auxiliary, or inclusive of
it. If there be a Natural Law of Progress, it must
be other than that affirmed in the " Naturalistic " Doc
trine, controverted by Christian thinkers in these lec
tures and elsewhere, and, as it seems to me, success
fully. There must be a possible adjustment between
this Law and the Christian Law, since both are of
God. This adjustment will be rational and satisfac
tory, saving the just claims of each. I attempt here
to indicate it. But this Natural Law, if found, is not
to be found in civilization, or in some element of it,
like science or culture, which, in a loose sense of
terms, are said to necessitate Progress and dispense
with Christianity; for each of these is plainly an
effect of the Law, and a part of progress itself, not

2 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
the Law, nor the cause of it: — a multiform and
indeterminate effect, too ; while any- cause involved in
the Natural Law which we seek, is determinate and
one, as that involved in the Christian, or extra-natural,
Law is one. It has become the fashion with many,
to cover in Christianity under civilization as itself an
effect of the advance achieved by mankind twenty
centuries ago.* But I may assume here, that this has
been refuted ; and that the Christian Religion plainly,
and par eminence, contains a cause, or it is nothing.
Positions as inaccurate, and therefore harmful, have
been taken on the other side. Some venture or are
betrayed into the extreme and hazardous assertion,
that there is no Progress in the world save from
Christianity — no other law whatever; which can
never be accepted as part ofthe evidence in its favor
by those who do not accept Christianity, nor by the
best informed among those who do.
The multitudinous discussions and varied learning
the subject has called out, with the disclosures Pro
gress itself is ever making, ought to render the
adjustment proposed easy to patient and careful
thought. And it is a necessary part of the internal
evidence of our religion, in the wider sense which
* This is the drift of much that is now said on the Comparative
Study of Religions. Possibly, some may suppose that even if Christi
anity is treated as a mere result of civilization it may yet be held,
of supernatural origin, —civilization itself being so viewed, in the last
analysis,— but this would not justify the claim hitherto made for Chris
tianity ; and the argument for that claim must needs be so obscure and
subtle as to be worthless, with ninety-nine in a hundred of intelligent
men. It is, as supernatural in the immediate and obvious sense,
that its friends vindicate the Christian Religion as containing a Law of
Progress.

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 3
that phrase has acquired in our day, not only that it
brings into human society and history a Christian
Law of Progress, but also that this is adjustable with
any Natural Law that may be shown to exist.
"We must start with determining and limiting the
meaning ofthe well-worn phrase "Law of Progress."
It is not employed with any precision. Certain just and
necessary distinctions in the use of both of its terms
must be established. The very word, " Progress,"
and the word " Law " hardly less, is liable to let us
out into a chaos of notions, dogmas, and speculations,
swept by currents and counter-currents of thought, on
which the likeliest of all things is that we shall lose
our way. "We sail for port to-day, and not for the
open sea. We may not find this or that harbor, which
some or others look for expectant through wind and
mist, but we can find one, please God, with good
guidance, in which we may anchor and ride secure.
I. "We determine and limit, first, the term Pro
gress. (1.) In the sense of the improvement of
the whole state of things on earth, a sense often min
gled with the proper one, it offers a theme too large
and indefinable for any such handling as is possible
here. And the globe on which man dwells might,
supposably, be ever growing better ; order, beauty,
production, use, in all things increasing; the ele
ments it contains, living, organic, and inorganic,
while subject neither to multiplication nor to diminu
tion, coming into ever superior combinations, through
rational selection, or some conceived " natural selec
tion," its vegetable and vital growths assuming finer,
richer, and more valuable forms, constantly and uni-

4 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
versally;pn a word, everything pertaining to the
globe and its other occupants advancing ever from
more imperfect conditions to less imperfect in all
respects, and going onward toward perfection; but
all this would' not necessitate progress in man. It
may be both philosophic and Christian, to believe in
this as the work of God through natural laws. But
it does not fall within the present subject. If man
knew all this, it would imply his advance in the sin
gle point of knowledge, without question ; if he had
a hand in effecting it, in the two points of knowledge
and skill. But as the individual man is often sinking
while his conditions are rising, so very possibly it
might be with the race. Mr. Marsh, in his well-known
work on " Man and Nature," shows the immense
waste in the past by human agency* even to extirpa
tion of organic forms which man cannot consume. He
shows that man alone is an essentially destructive
being ; that " as he advances in civilization he gradu
ally eradicates or transforms every spontaneous pro
duct of the soil he occupies " ; that another such evil
era as can be traced backwards — making the world
largely " an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant," —
would threaten the deprivation, barbarism, and even
extinction of the species ; and that the counter-pro
cess of physical improvement in the later centuries
gives thus far " but faint hope that we shall yet make
•The injnriousness of man makes other agencies injurious that were
not such in themselves ; in the condition of barbarism, he begins an
indiscriminate warfare on vegetable and animal ; during the two thou
sand years before colonization commenced, conferring no benefit on
this continent, he reduced millions of square miles of the fairest and
most fertile portions of the other to barren deserts. [See Marsh.]

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 5
full atonement for our spendthrift waste of the boun
ties of nature."
Now, this might be only the sacrifice of the globe
to the dweller upon it, the lower contributing to the
improvement of the higher; and even ineffectual
efforts, through civilizing agencies to save the loss as
well as secure the gain, might exhibit Human Pro
gress. Moreover, a supernatural interposition, turn
ing " a fruitful land into barrenness for the wicked
ness of them that dwell therein," might be a means
of such Progress. And the industrial arts, agricul
tural and mechanical, necessary to the recovery of
the world — if only these existed, and if these could
exist alone — could not, save by such Progress, have
come into being. But the simple enlarging of the oc
cupancy and cultivation of the earth, every land and
island of the sea, even, would no more show human
/improvement than the emigration of farmers into the
newer west, and their constant migration there into
newer counties with the same implements and pro
cesses as their fathers, would show advance in scien
tific farming. We Americans ever confound mere
territorial expansion with progress. Comfort and
luxury also may increase, and the men who enjoy them
be under a doom of decline ; or the reverse of this as
easily be true. Such a doom, the late Dr. Nathan
Lord believed to be fixed of God, for both man and
the world, while he held that temporary improvement
in things is still possible, and is pleasing to God.
Mr. Marsh admits, that in the Old World no species
of native forest-tree or vegetable is yet known to
have been quite extirpated, and also that commerce

6 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
and agricultural industry now depend chiefly on
" vegetable and animal products, hardly known to
Greek, Roman, and Jewish civilization"; but he
indicates the probable fact " that man has intention
ally transferred fewer plants than he has accidentally*
introduced into countries foreign to them." What
ever shall yet be done to turn back the decay of even
new lands, as the reckless pioneer wastes and harries
them, and to restore immense desolated and depopu
lated tracts in Europe, Asia, and Africa, larger, taken
together, than all Europe is, and to utilize the yet
untouched resources of nature, must bear a certain
definite relation to the improvement of man himself,
but is not to be confounded with it, as is almost
universally done. Neither the Natural Law, nor the
Christian, covers any such supposed, and yet future,
improvement of the earth, or of the whole state of
things." (2.) Nor is what is known as " development " in
scientific and philosophical circles, the same with Pro
gress, under the Natural Law or the Christian, nor
will it help account for either. Three current words
are now largely and loosely treated as synonymous ;
Progress, Development, Evolution, — but synonymes
they cannot be. One of Herbert Spencer's books
confound all three under one title, "Illustrations of
Universal Progress," as his thinking there and every
where confounds them. Development is in idea
more than Progress, and Evolution is more than De
velopment. Progress is the advance of any being or
* " Man and Nature," p. 63. His illustration is from Thorwaldsen's
cases, and seeds conveyed in them.

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 7
order of beings from origmal imperfection towards
such perfection as it is capable of, — the advance
within itself, still remaining its very self, i. e., the
same being or order of beings. Development is the
supposed transition of a being or order of beings out
of itself into another. Evolution is the name for the
principle supposed to be behind each, on which both
alike are asserted to take place ; the end being to
reach and realize the complex through, or out from,
the simple, the heterogeneous from the homogeneous.
On this principle, the wing of a bird is alleged to
come from the fin of a fish, or a creature having a
nervous system from one having none, or a living
being from one without life. Development is trans
formation instead of improvement. It is that which
Progress is not ; it is not that which Progress is.
The heterogeneous, or the complex, is not in itself
the more perfect, — at least not in human history,
though it is fallaciously so taken here, — for we often
reject it as less perfect for our purpose. It may
always, not to say must, contain the less perfect : and
the simple, the homogeneous, may be perfect in its
kind, so far as its nature and function go, diversity not
bettering it therefore in the least by any possibility.
Even of a new and rude machine, we must know some
thing more than this, that it is more complex than an
old one, or we do not buy it. We judge " differentia
tion" in all cases by another standard than itself.
Development refers to an imagined change of nature
in things, — it is nothing to the purpose to say,
whether it would, or would not, be a proof of Divine
power, skill, or goodness. Progress refers simply to

8 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
improved activity, use of powers, or discharge of
functions. A bird is not' an improved fish, but a
bird in place of a fish ; a man is not an improved
ape,. but a man in place of an ape> This is true,
irrespective of the origin of either. There is no
bettering of the thing, as Progress implies, but a
displacement and a substitution, — another thing in
its stead.
It is supposable that all things might have been
originally heterogeneous, — some more complex than
others, some less, — and all subject to Progress by
adequate Natural Law, each proprio moiu in its. kind
and order, but none leaving its place in, creation and
passing over into that of another, advancing, all, yet
all remaining the same. The hypothesis of Develop
ment (with its principle of Evolution to account for
it) , only seems to be a doctrine of Progress by an
assumption involved, that higher species are more per
fect than lower ones for the purposes of lower ones,
or can only be obtained for higher purposes from
lower ones, — as if a bird were more perfect for the
ends of a fish than a fish itself, or a man for those
of an ape, or as if these could only be got from
those, — and by its fellow assumption, that the passing
of the lower into the higher is, or was, proprio motu.
I am aware that its advocates assume no foresight of
greater perfection, prompting the passage of lower
species into higher ; but set forth the complex and
heterogeneous as evolved simply for their own sake,
qua complex and heterogeneous, i. e., blkidly, no
reason supposed: for complexity cannot have its
reason in itself, or account for itself; and perfection

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 9
aimed at, is a reason, while complexity is a mere fact
to find a reason for. In this the hypothesis is wholly
mechanical and irrational.
Whether God created lower species in any realm
of nature for the sake of the further production of
higher ones out of them ; whether man, for instance,
comes altogether from one animal, as Darwin holds,
or possibly from another as to his body alone, but
as to his higher powers, from God, as Mivart sup
poses ; whether it is in the Divine plan at all that
orders of existence shall ever pass beyond the lines
of their class and mix up in kind, as men and anthro
poid apes mix in epochs of time, — is an inquiry
entirejy distinct from the question, whether He
provides for the improvement bf everything within
its class, and for that of the highest of earthly crea
tures most. This alone touches the doctrine of
Progress. The affirmative established, would fur
nish a Natural, but not the " Naturalistic " Law.
Substitute the idea of Development for this, and it
logically follows, that some diverse and superhuman
form of life and power shall sometime supervene
upon the human, as if an invertebrate animal or jelly
should transmute itself into a vertebrate, or one sort
of protoplasm into another, or cell into cell unlike,
and so, by something far beyond a "new departure."
Man, and the question of the Progress of Man, come
to an end together !
H. In thus distinguishing from Human Progress
some things that are constantly confounded with it, I
must not omit to note that each has a certain and a

10 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
different relation to it. (1.) The improvement of
the earth furnishes a presumption in its favor. That
the conditions of the planet should be permanently
elevated, and not the activities and functions of its
chief inhabitant, to whom these conditions are worth
most and mean everything, is incredible ; that this
should come to pass, indeed, save as an effect of
some sort of improvement in him, is well-nigh impos
sible. Inventions do not altogether, or all, account
for human elevation, as is imagined ; some of them
do not look that way, but must themselves be
accounted for by man's deterioration ; many, for in
stance, of those that subserve over-estimated lower
uses, all of those that subserve vice. But many others
render true progress eminently probable. That not
only more land constantly is cultivated, but more in
proportion to the population of the globe, and better
cultivated ; that the fruits of the earth in use have
come up, from useless, harsh or acrid originals, to
their present healthful and nutritive qualities ; that
one of the grasses has been improved into corn, and
the flowers, God's sweet gifts, made sweeter; that
the mean temperature of cities and towns is modified
from that of the open country; that whole lands
soften sensibly to culture, as North France, since
Strabo's day, and that even Iceland, where inhabited,
shows a gentler climate ; that civilised men live bet
ter, on the whole, every decade; that civilization
shows an increasing ascendency over rude nature, are
examples at hand. "We now build our barns," says
one, "better than mediaeval saints and heroes built
their houses."

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 11
(2.) The Development hypothesis, again, is
based upon a well-known truth that supports both
Laws of Progress — the Natural and the Christian —
by analogy. The whole idea, in the rough, is old
enough. Aristotle argued that, among animated
beings, at least, there is "a scale of gradation in
which they ascend from lower to higher forms," and
Democritus, two hundred years before,* that crea
tion is mere transmutation of the lower into the
higher, "Smiles of life through nature creeping,
Serial steps progressing ever."
Let it be that each order in creation joins on, without
a break in time or kind, upon that just before and
beneath it ; or let the statement Hugh Miller used
to make be correct, that the geologic progression is
not from individual to individual, but (in both human
and prehistoric ages) from class to class, by leaps, —
the earliest varieties of each species being the most
perfect in organism and form, though, looking through
the whole order, the earliest species are ever the least
perfect, or — as the Edinburgh Review once put it
— " in the great divisions of the procession, the pro
gramme requires that the magnates should walk
first," though there is a procession by divisions ac
cording to rank ; let it be that gaps in the ascending
series are never to be filled, to human knowledge, as

•So, traces ofthe fancy of spontaneous generation, are in Virgil, Lu
cretius and Aristotle, and Sir James Stephen tells us that a Japanese
theologian maintained it in dispute with Francis Xavier, as an article
of faith.

12 THE NATURAL LA W OF PROGRESS
Darwin confesses the chasm between man and ape
cannot now be, by any species extant or extinct, —
there being sometimes no succession or no advance, —
species disappearing, degeneracies occurring both in
single characteristics and in classes, decay making
way for growth, the chain lengthening and growing
finer, but dropping certain links ; and you have
just such a forward movement from the Paleozoic
ages, with occasional breaks and degradations, as
forms a fitting analogue — whether meant so or not
— to the actual progress of mankind. It must be
so till the succession in nature is filled up smoothly
to our knowledge, without gap or jar, — a solid con
tinuity, something more than that "higher and imma
terial connection in the Divine plan " which our great
Harvard naturalist rests upon ; or else until the suc
cession itself is disproved, as it now never can be.
It is against well-settled analogy, if man is a period,
a full stop every way in what the Creator has been
telling, if the doctrine of ascending order in creation
is true in a proper sense, and that of Natural Pro
gress in history, so correlated, is false. There is
perceived capacity of indefinite increase in physical
life-power along the lower line, removing life, it is
thought, from the same category with material force,
— why not such increase in higher powers ? Even
Natural Selection, so far as it goes, not always, con
fessedly, securing "the survival of the fittest" iu
lower realms, and leaving room for a higher design
and energy behind itself, furnishes an analogue for
rational selection' in human, especially iu Christian
history. It is a bundle of facts and instincts. Spen-

AND TBE CHRISTIAN LAW. 13
cer's phrase, just quoted, strips it of the color of
intelligence which the term "selection" implies,
leaving it in a low, phenomenal sense the analogue I
have indicated to that wliich is higher. And in
respect to this, Bishop Butler's familiar statement *
of the natural ascendency of reason and virtue in the
world under the government of God, anticipated long
ago what I am now saying. Moreover, the persist
ence and correlation of forces, shorn of the unproven
fancy of the identity of Ml forces, — mechani
cal, chemical, vital, muscular, physical, — finds a
counterpart in the grand and imperishable character
istics of the moral energies that create the march and
waymarks of human society in all agesj but pre-emi
nently since Christ.
HE. We are now to determine and limit the word
" Law," in the phrases " Natural Law " and " Christian
Law," and herein we shall chiefly find the basis of
adjustment between the two. Certain other great
confusions of thought meet us here at the threshold.
The Doctrine of Progress, — taking for a moment the
larger and looser term than even Law, — may mean
(1) a prevailing or constant course of fact; or (2)
it may mean the method, modus operandi, — not the
ruling facts, but the rule of the facts, — the rationale,

*" It may require to be more particularly considered, that power in
a society by being under the direction of virtue, naturally increases,
and has a necessary tendency to prevail over opposite power, not under
the direction of it ; in like manner as power, by being under the direc
tion of reason, increases, and has a tendency to prevail over brute
force." [But. Anal Parti., Chap. UL, V. —p. 95 seq. Compl. Works,
Carter's Ed. 1842.]

14 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
or principle of order, according to which they occur ;
or (3) it may mean the force that produces them,
the power that makes them facts.* The Doctrine as
a whole, be it Natural or Christian, means and affirms
all three. In proving it, all three must be proven.
And the word "Law" is used in these days for all
three. And either term also, Doctrine or Law, for
either of the three. Fact, rule or method, and force,
are every hour mistaken for each other by men who
ought to think more accurately.
When we say that it is the law of a certain thing
to show certain phenomena, we are thinking only of
constant or prevailing facts. When we speak of the
law of the thing operating to such results or phe
nomena, we mean far more than the facts, the force
in the thing that makes the facts apparent. But
when we affirm that the law is that these phenomena
shall occur, or the force act, thus or so, our language
points to something different from both, a method,
rationale or principle of order.
A few illustrations will set this distinction in clear

* The word "rule" is sometimes used, aside from its proper sense,
for prevailing fact, as opposed to exception. The analysis above differs
from that of the Duke of Argyle ("Reign of Law," pp. 64, 65, Fifth
Lond. Ed.), but a little examination will show that his second, third
and fourth "secondary senses" can be reduced to one, and coincide
with (3) above, and that the first in both analyses coincide ; while his fifth
sense, " abstract conceptions of the mind, deduced from the phenomena
as axioms of thought necessary to our understanding of them," — or,
"an order of thought,"— is at bottom the same with (2) here given.
I should not answer, however, " the three great questions which Sci
ence asks of Nature, — the What, the How, and the Why,"— as he
does. How? is a question of method, not of cause. Why? is the
question of producing force. The question of purpose or intention is,
Wherefore?

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 15
light. The word "gravitation," properly describes
constant terrestrial facts ; viz., that bodies of matter
disengaged in position move from rest towards the
earth's centre. To name attraction, is to name a
force to which every such fact is ascribed. To say
that bodies have such a tendency, is to say that such
a force permanently resides in them. A molecule, or
an atom gives you the same distinction between fact
and force as any body of matter. But a statement
of the manner, proportion, or intensity, in certain cir
cumstances with which this force acts, — involving
relations of space, time, quantity of matter, and
velocity, — is a rule, rationale, or principle of order.
For example, that attraction acts in direct proportion
to the quantity of matter and in inverse proportion to
the square of the distance. A rule is behind the facts,
and a force, like attraction, is behind the rule or rules.
A sentence from Newton* will show how he recog
nized this distinction. " Gravity must be caused
by an agent acting constantly according to certain

Apply the doctrme of gravitation to the universe-,
or to a molecule, and you carry the same distinction
of fact, rule, and force. Again, the simplest form
of motion implies an impulse imparted, a method of
proceeding: viz., in the same direction with the
impulse, and then the fact of change of position in
space. Molecular attraction, motion, force, must needs
have methods or rules, as weE as effects, else no fore-
• Third letter to Bentley.

16 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
seen constancy in the effects, and no calculable action
possible in respect to molecule, matter, or body.
Also, if heat is a mode of motion, then behind the
phenomena is the same force, and the laws of motion
as weE. We are taught in mechanics that the result
of compound or coefficient forces has also its rational
rules. We are never to confound these three with
each other. Take an elUptical orbit in the starry
heavens as a constant fact, and Astronomy will tell
not only of the component forces, centripetal and
centrifugal, but of the laws of sidereal motion, that
is, the rules of these forces. If inertia is due to the
equilibrium of forces, any explanation that comes
between the fact and the forces, — the How that can
be rationally placed between the What and the Why,
— is a law. When a new set of facts, like those of
electricity, give's us a new force, the understanding
of the laws of its action is of more moment to the
philosopher and to the practical man alike, than all
the facts, even if they could know them all. ' In
Chemistry, the strong, mutual affinity of certain sub
stances, the atomic proportions in which they combine,
and the compounds they consequently form, are re
spectively force,- law, and fact. "Life adds a new
and higher force to Chemistry," says Dr. Stirling,
and at once come in vital laws, and vital facts result
ing. If, as Comte imagined, we could reduce all
sorts of phenomena, — or facts apparent, — to the
single law of atomic action, we should have behind
ooth phenomena and law, atomic force. It is not
necessary to a law, however, in the sense of fact, rule
or force, that it should be measurable by mathe-

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 17
matics,* or capable of expression in the formulas of
any branch of that science. Even in Chemistry,
these formulae sometimes fail ; the higher analyses
foU or elude them.j And the intellectual and moral
energies in human history, or psychical powers in
action, must of necessity always evade expression.
In the proper sense of law, they are immeasurable
by such formulae.
Neither the word " law," however, nor the word
" rule," is used here in its proper or primary sense.
Both are moral in their origin, not physical. They
are used in physics, necessarily, in a transferred and
improper sense. Let me put together here three
definitions of three eminent men. " Law, in its most
general and comprehensive sense," says Blackstone,
" signifies a rule of action, prescribed by some supe
rior, and which the inferior is bound to obey."
" Law," says Dr. N. W. Taylor, " differs widely
from wholesome counsel or good advice ; and one of
its essential characteristics is, that it is a rule of
action, determining what ought to be done. With
out this conception of a rule of action, that of law
cannot be formed." " In its primary signification,"
says the Duke of Argyle, " a ' law ' is the authorita
tive expression of human Will enforced by Power."
* See Pres. F. P. Barnard's Address to the Amer. Assoc. Adv. Sci
ence, 1869 (Proceedings, pp. 93-101), where the alleged interchangea-
bility of thought-power and physical force is admirably refuted. For
convenience and brevity, I use the word " force " throughout this lec
ture for power in action.
t When the attempt is made to put a complex reaction into numer
ical symbols, the equations are apt to express either more than we
know or less." [Qual. Chem. Anal, by Pres. Eliot and Prof. Storer,
Int. p. 10.] 2

18 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
These definitions contemplate both the sources and
the subjects of Law ; their common elements are an
inteEigent mandate requiring compliance, and intelli
gently received ; an expression of mind, addressed
to mind, to be understood,* considered, and decided
upon. Action corresponding thereto, forms no part.
of the original and true idea of law ; the requirement
and the authority with which it is required are aE ;
force compeEing action is expressly excluded. But
in physics, on the contrary, action, underpressure of
force, is in the very idea of law, and the original moral
or governmental meaning, is altogether excluded.
The sense is entirely changed and new. The two
uses of the word have really nothing in common, or
if anything, only an implication that there lies behind
each some source, whether it be of action or of a rule
of action.
Contrast, now, with these well-settled definitions,
that of Herbert Spencer. Law is "uniformity of
relations among phenomena"! Now, phenomena
are mere facts, not rules ; and uniformity is a mere
fact, not a rule. Spencer attempts here to confine
law to the one meaning of constant facts. The uni
formity, however, may be accidental, so far as reason
can see, if that is aE; and it is all. But only
uniformity of relations between fact and force, through
* When Blackstone says that the " most general and comprehensive
sense " is " applied indiscriminately to all kinds of actions animate, or
inanimate, rational or irrational," he does not show discrimination as
on other points, or perhaps shows that his age had not learned some
very simple and clear distinctions. Can a "rule be prescribed for an
inanimate, irrational object, as for a rational, animate one? Is tha
former, in any proper, intelligible sense, bound to obey ?

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 19
some intelligible principle of order, i. e., only
rational relations, can make more than accident, or
give uniformity the meaning of law at aE. We can
know fact indeed, phenomenal or not, respecting a
thing or class of things without discovering the
rationale, method, or principle of order through which
it becomes fact ; but we cannot escape thinking an
adequate force exists. A single physical fact demands
force to account for it, though such a fact, sporadic,
would not suggest a method, or principle of necessity,
i. e. , a law in the sense nearest to its primitive mean
ing. For it involves no established rule, as its fre
quent recurrence would. Invariably recurring fact,
however, is not indispensable to the suggestion of
such a rule ; prevaiEng or general fact is sufficient.
So fact goes before law and force in thought ; but
force, before law and fact in things. Force can
not belong to phenomena, or to relations of pheno
mena ; to events, or to the method of events ; but
only to existence. Fact, is matter of observa
tion. Law, is matter of judgment. Force, is matter
of intuition. We state the first in a definition, the
second in a formula, the third in a description. We
reach the intuition ever and only, in the experience
of adequate force, i. e., cause properly so called, force
producing facts ; but the notion of power involved
in it once reached, has validity to the mind inde
pendently of facts or laws. Constant facts imply
constant forces and constant methods, else they are
constant accidents, which is a contradiction in terms
and in thought. Change of fact follows change of
force, and, if permanent, under some principle or

20 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
rule. Abolish forces, and facts and methods or
rules are abolished at .'the same stroke.
Now, of these three terms, thus distinguished and
Elustrated, the two extremes, fact and force, are sel
dom directly compounded, but the middle term,
which comes nearest to the true meaning of law, is
incessantly compounded, in speech and thought, with
the other two. The universal or even general fact
concerning a thing or class of things, is called its law,
and so is the force that causes it ; or, what is the
same thing, its law, rule, method is said to cause it.
And thus, through the departure from the meaning
ofthe middle term, the other two, so utterly distinct,
are blended, or the word "law" is used to cover all
three. IV. In recognizing, then, a Natural Law of Pro
gress, I recognize that the Doctrine 'of Natural
Progress includes more than is properly caEed, Law,
viz.: (1) a body of facts ; (2)rules, methods, princi
ples; and (3) a force, or power in action; and that
these are confused in what is called Natural Law.
It is needful to establish each distinctively.
(1.) Of the facts. Imay decline to enumerate these,
as is often attempted, since justly to represent them
would require a Ebrary of statements. Nor is it
necessary even to exemplify largely ; the facts are
patent ; they are ever on the tongue of the nineteenth
century. The accumulations of all secular science "according
to the law of compound interest," as Sir William
Thompson said the other day from the chair of the

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 21
British Association, the decline of a vice like intem
perance in such bodies as the English House of
Commons and the Congress of the United States,
according to the testimony of the Right Hon. John
Bright and the Hon. Henry Wilson, are instances of
improvement. The low social conditions of former
days, pictured by Mr. Hallam in the ninth chapter
of his " Middle Ages " and by Lord Macaulay in the
third chapter of his " History of England," contrasting
as they do, with those of our own day, — and, indeed,
the mere fact that such books as our histories of civ
ilization and philosophies of history are possible, are
illustrations on a stiU broader scale ''of the grand
progress of mankind. The arts of modern life, their
perfection and their multiplication, will occur to
every one as other examples ; . notwithstanding the
fact that some of them are evidences of temporary,
partial, or local decbne. In the more advanced
nations they lap over here and there upon uncivi-
.lized countries, and show, in this, a native and
divinely appointed tendency. That the material good
which society achieves and the rights once granted
only to individuals or classes, extend to the people at
large ere long ; that exchanges grow easier and wider,
and franchises more common; that inequalities of
privilege, facility, and achievement become less each
century ; that the under side of society steadily though
slowly rises ; that in property, Eberty, and social
privflege the equalization among men, is ever going
on, — these things are evidence in favor of the
beautiful belief, that —
"Ever through the ages one unceasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are induced by the process ofthe suns."

22 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
" Lost arts " do not disprove it ; they were less
for the general welfare than modern ones, as well as
less intellectual. And in most respects we have found
better ones than we have lost. Were it clear that
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon implied a force and
skill beyond those required by either of our Pacific
raEroads, the public utility, besides the genius
involved in the modern work, would place it im
measurably in advance of the ancient. The labor
engineered in building the Pyramids sinks beside that
of the great enterprises of our day.* And when a
recent art like that of making glass, turns up, to our
surprise, at Pompeii, it simply shows that the ancients
were even with us in one thing, but not on the whole
or in most. When a writer of our own day like.
Froude,-f declares that "the level of comfort in the
families of the laboring millions, has in this country
been rather declining than rising. The important
results have been so far, rather political and social " ;
he writes truly of his own country, but not of ours ;
he admits political and social progress, and he dis
closes the fact, that lower progress in a people often
waits long upon that which is higher. Often, on
the other hand, lower improvement liberates powers
that arrest decay, and removes conditions that pre
vent the higher improvement. A single convenience
created or universally distributed, comes in this way
to have immeasurably more meaning than it has in
itself. 2. Ofthe methods, rules, rationale, or law ofthe
* See Stephenson.
t Short Studies, 2d series, pp. 245-279, " On Progress."

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 23
facts. We want besides these facts, some principle
or principles of order according to which they occur.
Our knowledge of them must always be fragmentary ;
and we seek, in addition, some ground of conviction
that they belong to an estabEshed plan, some secu
rity for them in some order of thought and life with
which they taEy. Of course they prove, in them
selves the natural possibility of progress ; for noth
ing occurs which is not possible ; — and so prove it,
that historic examples of decEne, and ever so many
of them, can never disprove it. They show a real
capacity in man, against which the worst that can be
said is, that it is a capacity at times interfered with.
Nothing but universal degeneracy in all things could
show the opposite. That the balance may not,
however, yet turn against man fatally and forever-*
depends not on facts, but on laws and powers. Her
bert Spencer comes forward with a law, derived
from Yon Baer,* which, it is claimed, wiE explain
and assure Progress, as weE as what is called
Development. It is the law of evolution, or the
constant, universal transformation of the simple
into the complex, the homogeneous into the hetero
geneous. Is this, if it be true, a rationale or rule at
all? does it rise above the realm of fact? Plainly,
not. The question of its truth is a question of fact.
And it is not entirely unquestionable even as fact.
Mr. Spencer himseff shows that Science proceeds both
ways, sometimes moving from the complex to the
simple. f Henri Taine, the art critic of the school
* After Wolff and Harvey. [See Spencer's Recent Discussions, p.
134.] t Rec. Disc. pp. 181, 182.

24 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
to which Darwin, Huxley, Buckle", Draper, Bain,
Lewis, Maudsley, and Spencer belong, says that
the art of the Greeks perfected itself in its simpli
city, and that we of to-day must find our models
there, because "the simplicity of their culture
kept them within a circle beyond, which the com
plexity of our culture has impeEed us."* And Max
Muller shows that from the simple to the complex in
religion is just the process of corruption. -f I have
already pointed out how Spencer confounds evolution
as fact, with improvement, which is quite a distinct
thing. We ask, then, for the reason or rule of evolution,
since it is not itself either. If it contains none it is
no rationale or Law of Progress. How, then, does
Progress come? Thus, answers Mr. Spencer, —
" Every active force produces more than one change ;
every cause produces more than one effect." He
calls this the law of differentiation ; the law of the
law of evolution, confounding, however, law and
force (or cause) together, for behind law in the
proper sense here the next thing of course, is cause.
" I wiE tell you the cause," he says, " of the evolu
tion of the complex from the simple, the more perfect
from the less perfect ; it is that the cause (whatever
it be) produces a number of effects." There are two
senses here, perhaps, of the word " cause," but is all
this, either cause, or law-, or merely another constant
fact; a phenomena of cause, or force in action?
* Taine, Art in Greece, Amer. Ed. p. 40. Froude maintains that
English life was simpler of yore, and therefore nowdegeuerate.— Short
Studies. t Science of Language, 2d Series, pp. 443, 443.

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 25
Plainly, nothing more. According to Mr. Spencer,
and aE his school, moreover, we know nothing but
phenomena or facts apparent. If he is teEing us
anything he knows, then, he is describing a mere phe
nomenon ! But why, again, is the number of effects
differentiated ? They are not in themselves different
because plural. There might be more than one
from one cause, yet aE of the same kind. And
why does this differentiation, which is not itself
improvement, result in improvement? Among the
multiplex changes produced, if differentiated in some
way for which we have yet no rule or reason, may be
inferior ones as weE as superior, the worst as well as
the best, and these may be perpetuated as weE as
the others. They may be the strongest. So it often
happens ; the poorest of seeds are quickened as
well as the finest, and
" The evil that men do, lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones."
In consequence of this logical gap in his hypothe
sis of evolution, Mr. Spencer feels the need of sup
plementing it with that of Natural Selection; but
when he changes the name of this to " Survival of
the Fittest," — to exclude all color of inteEigence,
and reduce it to mere blind fact, without a rational
element, — he does not rid it of the patent confes
sion that the causes at work in history, both " natu
ral " and human, produce the unfittest as well as the
fittest. We ask again, how is it that among human
products the fittest are selected to survive? He
has no answer, though Bishop Butler had one

26 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
long ago. He knows no reason of things, no ra
tional method even, nothing but phenomena and
phenomenal method. In later publications,* he
confesses the insufficiency of mere differentiation,
and adds, — as a new law of the law, — "the
evolution of the definite from the indefinite," a
very indefinite evolution ! which is, at best, only
specific differentiation, and which yields no solution
whatever, but only compEcates the question, adding
to the mesh of elements, and giving us more to- solve
after a method that solves nothing. We still ask,
Why is the movement of man in history, as asserted,
from the indefinite to the definite ? — the former being
the imperfect, or an element of it, the latter of the
perfect. Why does man proceed: in that direc
tion ? Our philosopher has no answer. So much
for what is plainly no law, in a correct sense or
an incorrect. What is the law ? I can best answer
after showing what is the force. For method and
rationale are always the method and rationale of
force. 3. Of the cause of Progress, or the force in
action. If this famous doctrine, — which is the chief
support of current error, and gives us a Naturalistic
instead of a Natural Law or a Christian one, — dis
closes the true cause, or any cause at all, it is to be
found in what is already before us. Evolution or
differentiation, or some supplement to these must
contain it. But the whole idea of- development,
whatever its metaphysical supports, even as worked
* Appleton' s last editions.

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 27
out in respect to the origination of species, is obvi
ously, at the utmost, only an idea of -method, leaving
the question — the method of what? unanswered.
This is why there is cogency in the criticism of Mar
tineau, Mivart, and the Christian respondents in for
eign and American reviews, that the theory rationally
requires, and cannot exclude the agency of God. As
Dr. Stirling says of the vitality of protoplasm,
" explain it as we may, we shall never explain it by
molecules." So I affirm of Progress ; explain it as
we may, we shall never explain it by evolution. For
that cannot possibly be an explanation which yields
no first origin or cause for what it assumes to explain.
Mr. Spencer caEs evolution " an empirical generaliza
tion," and differentiation a " rational " one, — both
being evidently mere phenomenal methods and one
as empirical, or as truly known only as phenomenon,
as the other, — just as if one generaEzation produced
another, and that which has been generalized also.
It is much as if we should ask for the forces that
produce a very peculiar man's character, and should
be told, "it is the general man in him"; or, as if
one should ask for the cause of such institutions as
Harvard College "empirically generalized," and be
told "it is the American college rationally general
ized ! " Even suppose evolution to be the method
by which the complex, the definite, and the fittest
appear in" the history of God's world, in every depart
ment, and survive, it is manifestly no adequate force,
or cause, i. e., power in action. It yields simply a
supposition how some unnamed power in action
works when it does work. We have got no true

28 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
laws from the pretentious and empty generalizations
of Spencer, — so readily does this noted scheme
crumble at the touch of analysis, — we shall get no
cause from confounding supposed laws with force, as
if they were themselves dynamic and adequate. We
must look elsewhere to understand Human Progress
at all.
V. And now, using the term " Law " in the more
exact sense which has been extricated from the pre
vailing confusion of speech and thought, and treating
together on the positive side what cannot well be
kept entirely separate, I deem it idle to look, any
where but to the well-established laws of human
nature for any Law of Progress. These are its natu
ral laws. The producing force may be one, certainly.
is one ; but there is no one Law, there must be
¦many. No fact that can be cited is to be referred to
one alone. Many blend in every form and phase of
human advancement; no one can tell how many.
There are no laws of human nature but may be
employed in it, — each in improvement of each kind,
— those of the body in that which is physical, those
of the intellect in that which is intellectual, the social
laws in that which is social, the moral and spiritual
laws in that which is moral and spiritual. The
Divine mechanism of the soul is sufficient — under
guidance — for all. the secular improvements we see,
and possesses powers, even in the savage state, as
Mr. Wallace has shown,* which are unnecessary and
* Contra Darwin.

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 29
less there, and predict a better state. Even in
barbarism, man is capable of aversion to it. f Nor
could any kind of improvement possibly take place
without these natural laws of mind. The rationale or
method of each is pecuEar to each. Their name is
legion. Progress itself is not one, but many. Man's
wants, notions, motives, intelligent choices, have a part
in every species of it, at every step ; even imagination
and association have their place and play their part,
but much more the natural faculty of beEef ; and it
is idle to attempt to set them aside and put instead
an abstract and high-sounding generalization about
the way in which force acts as force. We can gen
eralize a Ettle. Progress, in the main, can be referred
to human knowing, human feeEng, and human doing.
It is a law of knowing, that one discovery opens the
path for another ; the discoverer is brought into a
position to make another, and has individual methods .
for each of his faculties — among which those of
logic are most important — by which proceeding he
legitimately and naturally makes further discovery,
or others foEowing him make it. This is the way in
which Sir William Thompson's affirmation respecting
the accumulations of science is true. It is a law
again of feeEng that it produces feeEng ; every type
of sensibility humane, aesthetic, ethical, builds devel
opment upon development, expression upon expres
sion, throb upon throb, impulse upon impulse. It is
(a law of doing, also, that what is once done can be
easier and better done and something besides, never
done before ; faciEty thus is acquired for completer as
t Pere Mailla in " New Englander " for Jan., p. 73.

30 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
well as more finished action. Such laws of discovery,
sensibility, habit, are simply modes of the working
of powers, belonging to something ; and force, cause,
is always power. Facts are never governed by mere
laws, as the Naturalistic school teach people to say, —
they are governed by powers alone. Laws are sim
ply stated methods, in which powers act and govern.
As the laws of language and the laws of science alike
are only the laws of mind, so of Progress. It is
natural to spirit, it is the original gift, of God, to
seek improvement. " This sacred hunger marks th' immortal mind."
God seeks it also, but not His own, which is
impossible. We find the cause of all Progress, then, in mind
alone, as we find its laws in the laws of mind alone.
So far as we know, Progress is natural to nothing
beside. Mr. Spencer's whole philosophy is an ambi
tious and stupendous attempt to explain the universe
without aught but the forces of matter, without re
course to mind or God. Spirit, which we all know best,
is to him, indeed, unknowable. It is by the law of
parsimony that the architectonic principle of Progress
must needs be thought as one, while the laws of it
must be thought as many. Therefore, there may be
Progress in one department and none in another, as
we see there is. Spirit embraces free choice, which
may, in fact, reverse Progress at times, as we see it
does. If differentiation in the abstract were the
cause, or an adequate force, it would give us invariable
results which we nowhere have. If matter were the

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 3l
cause, if aE improvements were traceable to a " physi
cal basis," then it would follow that it did not require
mind to originate what, when originated, it requires
mind to comprehend; which is to do much less. It
took more than the simia in Darwin to think out
"The Origin of Species." It required the simia
plus Darwin; and you must add Huxley to proto
plasm, to get protoplasm even conceived of; while
it must have taken infinitely more mind stEl, to pro
duce Huxley and Darwin, and Adam, out of noth
ing, or out of anything. Such and such differentia
tions arose somehow (this is the unsolved problem
of the solution) , in the nebulous primeval matter, —
so say these philosophers,* — in the molten planets, in
the substance ofthe earth, in the structure of plants,
of animals, of man, and the explanation which they can
not or will not give, we supply in one word, GOD.
Differentiations also arose somehow in governments,
manners, societies, natural religions, labor, language,
arts, sciences ; and the explanation so carefully sup
pressed here is MIND. It is Eke God, and therefore
cause. There is nothing dynamic in any of its laws or
methods ; the true &j\iwj,i$ is in mind itself. All secular
Progress is at once both its movement and its monu
ment. For natural or supernatural, aE improvement
must be ; that of secular human history is only super
natural, if you choose to caE mind supernatural.
* Since this lecture was delivered, a passage in Dr. Shedd's History
of Christian Doctrine has come to my notice, in which the distinction
between development and improvement is recognized. Vol. I., pp. 15--
18. In his own use of the word " development " (historical instead of
scientific), it is, however, "synonymous with corruption and decline,
as well as with improvement." Progress is not.

32 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
'I mean mind here, of course, as dowered and pre
pared of God for Progress-, and especially as
possessed of certain intuitions and impulses. Those
of order and fitness have .their sphere, but that of
perfection is the comSnanding one. Every great form
of human action is presided over by one of these
royal and inspiring intuitions, as, of justice in the
realm of society and government, beauty in that of
taste and art, right ih that of morals and reEgion ; but
perfection reigns over them all. Each is more than
an idea* it is an intuition and an impulse ; it has its
realm in the thoughts and also in the active powers.
No generalization from experience, external or in
ternal, ever gave us the idea of perfection, for it
could not be generalized from the imperfect; no
observed or conscious achievement of the imperfect'
ever gave us the prompting to attempt the perfect
in anything. It is only as standards or models in
thought and expression, in act and character, touch
(they cannot do more) the Divinely provided and
primary notion of the perfect, in man's soul, that they
stimulate it to strenuous and successful imitation.
It is only "as they disclose that they fall below it,
that his own grand and ever unattained ideal moves
man to emulate them. He has a tendency to advance,,
because he has a tendency to realize his ideals.
Without that, all his achievements and even his
short-comings were in'expEcable and impossible as
such; not even the theory of their supernatural
origin would work.
And I mean mind, moreover, as placed, circum
stanced, and governed of God ; its intuitions, im-

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 33
pulses, and laws freely working, and yet within the
natural limits of His'restriction, correction, stimula
tion, and overruling. In its main direction, society
neither drifts nor is driven ; it is guided. Up to a
certain point the analogy between creation and human
history, a movement onward and upward in both, is
bright and clear. The differences between changing
flora and fauna become greater with each descending
stage of time ; and something like this is discernible
in the successive stages of civilization. Whether
barbarians can raise themselves out of barbarism at
aE or not, the analogy may hold. " The first step is
the difficulty," says Archbishop Whatley, arguing
that they cannot.* But however the difficulty was
surmounted, mind must have been in itself not less at
first than it is now, nor less brooded over by God. " It
seems probable," says the last volume of " Smithso
nian Contributions," " that the progress of mankind
was greater in degree, and in the extent of its range
in the ages of barbarism, than it has been since in
the ages of civilization, and that it was a harder,
more'doubtful, and more intense struggle to reach
the threshold of the latter, than it has been since to
reach its present status." The instinct of perfection,
then, the moral impulses, the help of God which
joins on to these, must have been as great and as
clear to man in the beginning, as to-day. The only
Natural Law of Progress which we affirm, is God's
Law, — fact, rule, and force, all emanate at last from
Him. Both this world and man have their pre-con-
*London Y. M. Chr. Assoc. Lect. 1855, " On the Origin of Civiliza
tion." ,
3

34 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
formation to improvement — the one active, the
other passive, — from His hand. Even savage tribes
attempt to perfect something, handiwork at least,
though not all the same. They show the inchoate
and partial working of a natural law. To be without
this would be more than to be without culture and
integrity ; viz., to be without a human nature imag
ing God's at all. I take this to be the meaning of
Dr. McCosh, when he says that " our advancement in
knowledge and refinement is evidently pre-deter-
mined by God, for it is probably the result of agen
cies which He has instituted." It is clearly the
thought of Bishop Butler, — " This much is mani
fest, that the whole natural world and government
of it is a scheme or system, not a fixed, but a pro
gressive one, — : a scheme, the operation of which
takes up a great length of time before the ends they
tend to can be attained." Even Archbishop Whate
ly, arguing that man never originated civilization,
affirms that " the tendency towards progressive im
provement " is " characteristic of our species."
"Human society," he says, "may be compared to
some combustible substances which will never take
fire spontaneously, but when once sent on fire, will
burn with continually increasing strength. A com
munity of men requires, as it were, to be kindled,
but requires no more." " There is no art that man
may not have invented, supposing him to have a cer
tain degree of mental cultivation to start from."
VI. It may now be assumed, that the Natural
Law of Progress, which is divine, is clearly estab-

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 35
Eshed, and it only needs that the Christian Law be
truly and accurately stated, in order to an easy
adjustment between them. There is little here to be
done, because ofthe convincing manner in which the
Christian Law has been maintained here in former
years, by, the first lecturer of 1870 and the last of
1871. Fact, rule, and force, have been estabEshed,
and I have only to point out what is peculiar to each
as Christian.
But one word, first, on the question. Why is there
a Christian Law of Progress at all? Simply for
this one reason, that the Natural Law does not work,
moraEy and spiritually. Nothing is plainer in the
natural history of mankind, than that the improvement
it shows elsewhere does not obtain in ethics and reE-
gion, aside from Christianity. Mr. Buckle's much-
contested axiom, that morals are stationary, is true
enough as natural fact alone, and hardly need have
been so disputed; but it is not true as Christian
fact. All races go far enough on this side, to prove
that they have a moral nature and have the same.
Exactly the reverse of what Whately maintains on the
secular side is here true ; they have something , to
start from, but no tendency, to use Lord Bacon's
phrase, "then to make progression." One word, one
phenomenon, explains the ethico-spiritual paralysis
of the great Law of Progress, — Sm. Without sin,
improvement on that side, mstead of being last and
least, would have been as obvious as any other.
" The one obstacle that comes between man and his
end," said Dr. Hopkins last year, " is Sin." Hence
a new Law, with new and unique results. We were

36 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
made originally under one Law, Divinely intended to
be both secular and religious ; and just as plainly as
we see that it still works on the one side, we see that
it does not, save as exceptionally replaced, on the
other. Christianity itself silently recognizes its
working in secular things, for it does not propose to
reinstate it there, else would it be science, art, and
all beside, as well as religion. It equally recognizes
that the Law has been overthrown in our spiritual
nature, by undertaking so to re-establish it there,
tbat it may be said truly : " the righteous shall hold on
his way, and he that hath clean hands, grow stronger
and stronger " ; " the path of the just is as the
shining light that shineth more and more unto the
perfect day."
(1.) And now as to the peculiar facts pf Christian
Progress. New and beautiful forms of virtue have
been created by the Gospel. " Toleration," says the
"Westminster Review," denying Buckle's axiom, " is
the result of something else than mere scepticism,
and is a modern idea." " Humanity," says Max Mul-
ler, " is a word you look for in vain in Plato or Aris
totle, an idea of Christian growth, and the science of
Mankind is a science which, without Christianity,
would never have sprung into life." Mr. Froude
mentions the disinterested disposition which devo
tion to science produces, valuing knowledge for its
own sake, and asking no reward, as " the only real
and undeniable progress " that we are making through
science ; but this is only the shadow of a whole new
character supremely consecrate to truth, love, and
goodness, which the work of Christ's religion dis-

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 37
closes. Or, descending to common facts, Christian
experience is an incontestable and patent fact, which
not even a Comte could deny, in a community Eke
that of Boston, without risking his reputation for
either honesty or sanity ; and Christian beEeving,
which must be either part of it or root of it, and
Christian Eving, which is fruit of both, are also facts,
and all three facts, no matter what becomes of Posi
tivism, to be accounted for by some law and some
power in action. It would require exemplary hardi
hood to deny that a statement Eke that of our learned
feEow-countryman, Dr. Henry B. Smith, to the Evan-
geEcal AEiance at BerEn, of the growth of Protestant
Christianity in the world, involves a signal increase
of common Christian moraEty, to say nothmg of the
higher and finer virtues. So of the statement, —
which I am not able to verify, — that our increase of
population in the first fifty years of this century was
four-and-a-half-fold, wliile that of Christian persons
was nine-fold. " The Christian church throughout the
world," said the " Westminster Review," last April,
" was never in so advanced and favorable a condition,
and never embraced so many elements of hope, as
at present."(2.) Of the rule involved in Christian Progress ;
the prmciples of order or method. If the laws of
human nature are employed, they clearly are not used
in the ordinary way. The new facts imply both new
processes and new ends. Christian experience is in
some sense a supernatural fact, and it is Elogical not
to recognize supernatural methods behind it. In it,
the laws of human nature, which had been under

38 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
paralysis, are made to work as they never would by
nature. We have still the ideal ofthe perfect, though
never spiritually employed ; we have all the intui
tions of natural reason, and the accelerating faciEty
of habit ; else no leverage, no basis of operations.
The capacity for improvement is no part of that
image of God that was lost in the Fall, for God is
not improvable. Mind and moral distinctions must
have been from the first, as now, in order to progress
on any supposition, by evolution, by primitive reve
lation or by natural law. The Remedial System is
itself proof that there is somewhat in us yet for
Progress to hold by, else why sermons in any pul
pit, "to the Natural Man?" It is part of the
evidence of a grand original intention, thwarted
now in spiritual things, whose failure therefore,
has to be remedied. "A true theology is nec
essary to all spiritual improvement at least; and
it implies natural faculties, for the discovery and
recognition of religious truth, but faculties, that
under sin, must be cleansed and quickened and illu
minated. " Holiness to the Lord," is no word of
mere ethics. "Perfect in the will of God," is never
the aim of natural civEizatiom There are new truths
required and disclosed here, in which is the starting
point of the new advance of mankind, for with them
is the beginning of goodness toward God, and there
cannot be a better, until there is first a good., The
old selfish, utilitarian uses of even first principles are,
under the Christian Law, superseded. Good acquires
another and a higher meaning ; even right is another
thing under revelation. And with this new furniture

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 39
of ideas and aims, aE the mental laws work in other
and higher channels than before.
(3.) Of the force involved. It is the Spirit of
God, as in the Natural Law of Progress it is the mind
of man. The principle of parsimony here again admits
but one force or power in action ; it must be mind,
and it cannot be human. Then, logically, it is God.
Or, if you say Christ, that is logically the same
thing. "Between man and his end, sin intervenes, —
that only," said Dr. Hopkins. The religion which
begins, proceeds, and concludes with the removal of
sin, and that sets up an ideal of perfection in goodness
wliich neither philosophy nor reEgion ever shadowed
or hinted before, must be Divine. To improve
one's mere condition may be selfish : to improve one's
character in disinterested righteousness, is itself dis
interested. It must be the law of the spirit of Iho
in Christ Jesus, which can make either the mdividual
or society free from the law of sin and death. Social
enthusiasms, in other civilizations, can be ascribed to
Natural Law, like that for " wisdom " among caste-
Egyptians, for art or philosophy among certain
Greeks, for civE-service qualifications among the
Chinese ; but not a social enthusiasm for holiness,
such as emerges alone in Christian civiEzation.
Such is the Christian Law of Progress,- — its facts
peculiar, its methods peculiar, its force peculiar.
Mere secular, i. e., partial progress, under the
Natural Law, necessitates it. That is supplemented,
not superseded by this. Progress is both qualitative,
— as to what sort of capabilities in us are improving,
and quantitative, — as to how many. Man may be

40 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
rising in some directions, and yet sinking in only
one that is more important; he may be sinking
on the whole, his apparent elevation being not really
such, any more than that of a body immersed in
water, turning upward as it goes down. The Natural
Law, however, does not require, as the Naturalistic
does, that Progress should be proven of every epoch,
of every nation, of every man. The race advances,,
as armies sometimes do, through an enemy's country,
by sections ; first one division or brigade or regi
ment, and then another. Nor is it necessary, under
Natural or Christian Law, to prove that every move
ment is in itself an advance, for many must have
for their immediate object only to gain position, as
armies do by flank on battle-fields, or ships by tack
at sea. But if most things progress, provided they
be the highest, all will, ere long. Yet, neither hind
of improvement, secular nor spiritual, can take the
place of the other, or fail to -languish alone. The
secular dies, dissevered from the spiritual; and
upward religious movements, separated from thought
and culture, lapse into barbarism, and illustrate the
y truth that there is dead weight enough in barbarism
to sink and destroy them. We need both Laws.
And as partial Progress must ' always be lower
Progress, the new and supplementary Law must be
a higher one for the higher nature. Omnipotent in
its own domain, improvement in the man or the
masses, can never be complete without it. For
he and they whose civiEzation. is not spiritual,
must have a spiritual nature uncivilized. As morals
cannot produce taste, or taste morals, or culture

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 41
unselfish love, so neither, nor' anything beside, can
produce religious virtue, which is necessary not only
to a perfect being, but to a truly exalted specimen
of an imperfect one. Giving aE other agencies their
due place, of our Religion we sing
" If thou take thy grace away,
Nothing pure in us shall stay."
But Christianity cannot be required to aboEsh aE
wrong at any one place or time, — for it takes effect
on human character, not on human nature, — or to
give us a perfect generation of men ; for each gener
ation has to begin with the rudiments in morals, as
with the alphabet in learning, and this under a heri
tage of sin ; while the outrages of Communists and
the " Ku Klux," private assassinations in our cities,
and the daEy record of violence and treachery,
prove man's nature stiE depraved. But Chris
tianity has already made some crimes and sins un
known ; and age by age — for this is slow work, —
is doing away with others. The signs, every day
multiplying, of its becoming the universal morality
and religion, are simply signs that Progress will
some day reach high-water mark on the shores of
time. VH. And here, to draw the Enes of adjustment
closer, observe, that the first fruit of Christianity in
society is not a civiEzation, but a righteousness,
growing out of a new principle of personal holiness.
I object strongly to the wide and inaccurate sense in
which the, phrase "Christian civiEzation" is used.

42 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
Nothing is correctly classified under it which is not the
fruit of Christian righteousness. Also observe that
this righteousness always and everywhere naturally
produces a civilization, though no civilization, not
even the Jewish, has ever yet naturally produced a
Christianity; and yet that was the purest civiliza
tion in history, and really religious ; though, as has
been said of morality, only the fruit on the lower
branches of the Christian tree.
Implant the new spiritual ideal in man, and it will
awaken all other ideals in him. It wiE revive the
Natural Law of Progress in whatsoever it has been
suspended. The fountain of " sweetness and light,"
of strength and beauty, it is both complement and
ally of all other good agencies, doing for men what
they cannot do, setting them all upon the doing of
what they can. Again observe, — and this is a rela
tion of Christianity to secular Progress ever over
looked, — it helps all other agencies, by restraining
as well as by stimulating them, by guiding them
away from over-action and excess, by fastening upon
the refinements and enjoyments of aE culture the
clog of wholesome sebf-denial, by severely repressing
whatever would overlay and crush its own high ends,
and spoil culture itself, by preventing, — to use a
Western, Home-Missionary patriarch's curt phrase, —
our being " civEized to death." It does more for the
commonwealth, to touch the name etymologicaEy, by
checking the passion for wealth, than unrestrained
avarice eVer could. It saves civflization itself from
growing thin, and strengthless ;. it keeps the
stamen good. There is no element of natural well-

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 43
being or character to which a restraining hand is
not indispensable, and there can be none Eke that
of a Divinely-communicated, remedial, mercEul
reEgion. If mere civiEzation is not to run out and
become effete oil its own Ene, it must have both spur
and check. How far Christianity may go in this
direction, of secular benefit, no man can teE ; but
neither any other reEgion nor atheism goes in this
direction at all ; and we may say, with reverence, that
a true religion would have the marks. of just such an
influence upon the course of secular things as are
shown by Christianity alone. It has already gone so
far that in Christendom it is impossible entirely to
extricate the workings of its own Law and those of
the Law of Nature from each other; and, while anal
ysis should give us two distinct classes of resulting
facts, there is a third in which the two blend inextri
cably, which is — beyond statement, — larger than
either. And once more observe, that though itself,
in its substance, not a subject of improvement, but
complete, — yet it is the most progressive reEgion in its
unfolding to, and application by man, of all the ages.
In this respect, as in prophecy, it has " a springing
and germinant fulfilment." In these things, also, is
the secret of the notable fact, that nothing beside can
so support, complete, perpetuate or resuscitate civiE
zation. It can arrest mortal decay, which nothing
else can ; it alone has the power of resurrection after
death. All unchristian improvement, being partial,
is therefore temporary. The lower faculties can be
kept up to their highest mark — even reason itself,
only provided the uppermost ones, which are the

44 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
spiritual, are quickened and set forward. Those
hang upon these. For, if perfection could exist alone
in anything, it could not long, without perfection of
character; and this must sustain lower progress while
it is reaching perfection, if it ever can. And so
necessary is Christianity to give direction and pro
portion to Progress, that unless it is subordinating
all else to those elements in man which are highest
and grandest, such Progress, whether begun by
accident, by genius, by selfishness, or by science, is
doomed first to stagnate, then to\ rot, and then to
disappear, and the race with it. In what has just
been said lies also the secret of the familiar fact
that missions preceding other civilizing agencies in
heathen lands 'are always more powerful and suc
cessful civilizers than they.
VIII. This adjustment between the two Laws has
been shapen expressly and equally to avoid, on the
one hand, the speculative theories which resolve
all Progress into material necessity — dissipating
all rationale and all cause into thin air, and leaving
mere physical fact; and, at the other extreme, those
dogmatic theories which deny any Natura] Law, and
that there is any Progress save through Christianity.
Dr. Lord held this last in its most obnoxious and un-*
tenable form ; viz. , that the earth itself has a broken
constitution ; all things upon it are disordered, sub
ject to decEne and dissolution — particularly man and
the animated creatures nearest in order to him 
" and there are no exceptions " ; and that God's deal
ings with all races and ages, our own included, have

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 45
been " strictly and universaEy in accordance with the
law of decline and fall." But as he also held that,
under Christianity, temporary improvements may
take place, it is difficult to see how any other sup
position of an exclusively supernatural law differs
from his, save in the connected interpretations of
prophecy. In any form, it lands its champions in a
ludicrous self-contradiction, in that they also contend
that literature and art, at least, reached a perfection
never to be equalled in Greece and Rome, i. e., with
out Christianity. If this would show that the mod
ern Christian nations have no law of Eterary and
artistic progress to speak of, it would also imply that
some of the ancients had one, and lost it for the race !
Sir WEEam Temple capped the climax bf this absurd
ity by maintaining, with great fervor and grace of
style, that human degeneracy is constant, and "the
oldest books in' every kind are the best," laying him-
seE out largely on the spurious and worthless letters
of Phalaris, as an exquisite and crowning example.
If anything could possibly surpass this, it was the
position of Dr. Lord, that emancipation was an
instance of aE sorts of social and moral deterioration,
and that slavery has a place somewhere in the moral
government of God. The dogmatic theory, in any
form, ignores the mamfest and noblest characteristics
of the human mind, some of the brightest prophecies
of its immortaEty, and one of the choicest proofs of
our holy reEgion. It denies that civEization before
or aside from Christianity is civilization, that partial
Progress is Progress ; which it is perEous for a
scholar, at least, to deny. The adjustment here in-

46 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
dicated, recognizing the Natural Law as of God,
accounts for separate and independent civilizations, as
in Greece, India, Egypt, and in China, at this moment
(a civilization that can no more be classed with oth
ers, than its language can be), for the state of these
now, and for the lack of civEization elsewhere. It
accounts equally for both the progressiveness and
the unprogressiveness of men ; and for the relapses
of Christian and heathen nations. It recognizes the
unquestionable fact that the stagnant heathen races
were once rising and moving forward, and shows
why, and how, they came to a dead stop. The Nat-
uraEstic Law cannot do this at all ; the Christian Law
alone, the Natural Law alone, cannot. The true
Doctrine of Progress must do justice to both Laws,
for both are necessary to human perfection, and both,
of God. It is as useless to substitute one for the
other, as a pen for a spade in farming, or a gun for an
axe in carpentry. It is as useless, to ascribe to the
one what is due to the other, as to refer the multi
phcation table and the Sermon on the Mount to a
common origin, or either to the other. The true
Doctrine is neither exclusively natural nor supernat
ural, but inclusively both. Suum cuique. To Csesar
the things thai are Csesar's, to* God, the things that
are God's. It gives Christianity its proper glory,
— neither too much nor too Ettle. Possibly as " the
ultimate fact of astronomical science," in the words
of the Duke of Argyle, "is not the law of gravita
tion, but the adjustment between this law and others
which are less known, so in the science of man, the
basis of harmony now sketched out, is one which all

AND THE CHRISTIAN LAW. 47
parties in relation to the Christian Religion may be
tardy in coming together upon. Perhaps all Chris
tian thinkers must come to it first, before Naturalis
tic ones can be expected to do so. The adjustment
is not needed, indeed, for the two great Divine Law
themselves, only for our understanding of them. They
adjust themselves, facts, methods, and forces, to each
other every hour. In Christendom, at least, each
leans upon the other. Every Christian person has
the direct benefit of the Natural Law; every un
christian person has much indirect and secondary
benefit, at least, of the Christian Law. It is impos
sible to select any examples of secular improvement,
in which forces that are Christian may not be
blended. But I must relieve your exemplary patience with
the tardy, but sincere confession of the temerity of
discussing a theme so broad and deep, in this centre
of Puritan civiEzation, on the part of one whose home
is far from great libraries in Western wilds. I have
written in sight of the ruins of a college conflagration,
not helpful to close or even hopeful thought, and my
manuscript seems to me to carry the smell of fire.
But the Doctrine here advanced is certainly the basis
of all hope for the good time coming, of " sweeter
manners, purer laws." It augurs the regeneration
of society, — not its degeneration. It holds,- with
"the noblest nations," as Bunsen expresses it, to " an
immutable, moral order of the world, constituted by
Divine wisdom, and regulating the destinies of man
kind," to "an eternal order," in which "truth, justice,
wisdom, and moderation are sure to triumph ; and

48 THE NATURAL LAW OF PROGRESS
that when the contrary appears to be the case, the
fault lies in our mistaking the middle for the end."
It is both rational and reverent. It traces aE real
advance, — ba the last analysis, — aE its laws and all
ift forces, to the Law-giver and the Force-giver. It
finds security for all virtue, learning, piety, and
well-being in His stately purpose. He garners the
fruits and sows the seeds of all. He keeps His own.
" Civilizations have foundered ; civiEzation itself,
never." Christian civEization, its truer and bet
ter seE7, never can. We say with emphasis in the
Christian ages,
" The drops run past us, but the river stays."
Let us look forward. Let even our errors be the
errors of Christian progressives, never those of
reactionists. They will be fewer, and they will be
safer. "A man may faE forward," wrote our famous
John Robinson, in one of a series of essays worthy
to take place beside those of Bacon, " and in so
doing, endanger his hands and face ; but in falEng
backward, the danger is far greater, as we see in old
Eli, of whom we read, that he feE backward, and his
neck brake, and he died." Let us carry onward the
light of virtue and truth as far as we may, for it is
like the torch in the hand of the Greek runner, who
bore it till he was spent, and then handed it to
another, who bore it farther on. It is my faith that
it will continue to be so, for it always has been ; and
ever " Glimpses on my sight,
Through present wrong the eternal right,
And step by step, since time began,
I see the steady gain of man. "

II.

' CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE MOLD OF CHRISTIAN
CHARACTER.
THAT which a man holds by the head, and by
heart, as the truth, vital to his soul's want, that
properly is his Creed. It is to him the supreme
truth, felt to be such, and grasped with a clear com
pleteness of conviction, and held with a trustful hold
ing worthy to be termed in such matter a Faith. It
is the truth he has found true to his spfritual needs ;
the truth, or scheme of truths, if it be such, that ver
ifies itself to his craving heart, as measuring and
answering his sense of trouble and wrong, his felt
sin and conscious guilt. He has found and embraced
it as the Adequate Truth that opens to his soul the
Way and the Life.
That is the man's Creed ; and less than this will ever
be found to lack somewhat that essentially belongs
to the full significance of that term. No man pro
perly has a creed, tEl in his deepest soul he beholds,
owns, welcomes, trusts the truth that meets his want,
and deEvers himself over, heartily obedient to that
truth. He may have had his Ettle experiments at a
Faith, his notional admissions of truth, endemic or
4

50 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE MOLD
inherited ; he has felt the sting of sin, the ache of
conscience, the power of lan endless life, and so may
have speculated quite religiously, and set in order
certain wisdoms that his soul has within reach in its
serious moods ; some theory of bread, when his hun
ger shall grow too sharp ; his scheme of the infinite
when his finite shaE fail him ; and he wraps these
thin persuasions about him as a reEgion. But with
all these, he has not attained to a Faith. Creed,
properly, he has none, and Ettle more than the ele
ments and preparations of one.
For what truth soever a man heartily entertains,
on terms that entitle it to be called his Faith or
Creed, is not held simply, but itself holds him as
with sovereign power of possession. It receives him,
and proceeds to fashion the character and life to its
own pattern. What is thus really in the creed passes
into the man, holding the heart, and working trans-
formingly from tbat centre. And the much we are
wont to say and hear of faiths and creeds, as far less
than this, should raise the doubt, whether things, as
well as words, are not losing their meaning with us.
This power of heartily believed truth to mold and
stamp the believer with its own image, is very im
pressively recognized* and declared in Romans 6 :17.
There was, upon this company of Roman disciples, a
certain image and superscription of grace, so peculiar
and so clearly enstamped, that the Apostle knows
them by that manifest token to be children of God.
He sees and recognizes upon them the authentic
stamp of the genuine believer. " Ye have obeyed
from the heart that form of doctrine which was deliv-

OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 51
ered you." What was this imprint of the Faith, this
seal and certnicate of grace, so visible and infallible ?
And how was it produced ?
The Apostle rests this confidence that these disci
ples are believers indeed, on a certain evident fact,
which he gives us in this passage, but which is very
imperfectly reported in our version. Indeed, the
failure to give us in this passage the exact utterance
of the Spirit is so great and obvious, and the Divine
thought is so richly sigmficant, when truly reported,
that we may well take it in these juster terms, which aE
criticism approves and to which interpreters consent :
YE HAVE HEARTILY OBEYED THAT MOLD OF DOCTEINE
INTO WHICH YE WERE DELIVERED. This, then, Was
the distinguishing fact : The Christian Truths, heart
ily beEeved, had made their own distinctive mark on
them. The Christian Doctrine had received tbefee
obedient souls, and charactered them with its
proper imprint. And, by that mark, he knew them to
be believers mdeed, and also knew what creed alone
could make that mark.
For, as men fashion a mold, tracing in it the type
of figure and feature which they seek to form, and
deEver into this the fused metal that it may obey this
model and take from it the very Eneaments designed,
so in this new creating of souls after Christ, the
Spirit has set in order the things of Christ, the Chris
tian Truths, to be a mold of the Christian character
and life — each peculiar Christian fact and doctrine set
in its fit place and proportion, each having its own
proper stamp to impart, each essential to the com
pleteness of that Efe and character which shall bear

52 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE MOLD
throughout the Christly impress and so be distinct
ively Christian — and altogether constituting the
exact archetype and mold of what the Christian shaE
be ; and this not as a mere furniture of opinion which
the man has caught or cogitated, but a veritable
Creed of his, a -scheme of felt and believed Truth,
taking possession of him, a receptacle of motives that
are quick throughout with the plastic Spirit of Christ,
into which the soul is delivered by faith, as the fused
metal into the mold, that the very seal and stamp of
Christ may be struck all around on the heart and Efe.
Such, in formal statement, is the divine thought of
this passage ; and it goes to the heart of this whole
question of the formation and evidence of the Chris
tian character. It defines very clearly the place and
function of the truth in spiritual changes, and the
nature and efficacy of genuine faith.
That this representation stands in no mere figure,
but reports the very method of God in the handling
of souls, will be plain from many scriptures. See
how in other passages, here and there, every point
in this picture is divinely attested. How largely we
are taught that the gracious work of the delivering
and transforming SpMt, in every stage and aspect of
the saving process, is instrumented evermore by the
truth — that by the truth, clasped home by faith, the
soul lying in sin is first startled, convinced, slain —
then begotten anew, quickened, renewed, edbied,
reconstructed, sanctified, saved. This shaping pres
sure is ever recognized. The passages in proof
scarcely need to be recited. Recall only these;
God's perfect law enlightening the eyes, making wise

OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 53
the simple, converting the soul. Ps. 19 : 7,8. Of
His own will begat He us by the word of truth.
James 1 : 18. We are begotten through the Gospel.
1 -Cor. 4 : 15. And so, being born again, not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word
of God, which Eveth and abideth forever, ye have
purified your souls in obeying the truth through the
Spirit. 1 Pet. 1 : 22, 23. Sanctify them through
thy truth. John 17 : 17. I am the Way, the Truth,
and the Life. John 14 : 6. We learn Christ, put
ting off the old man, which is corrupt according to
the deceitful lusts, being renewed in the spirit of our
mind, and being taught as the truth is in Jesus.
Eph. 4 : 21, 24. If ye continue in my word, then
.are ye my disciples indeed ; and ye shall know the
truth, and the truth shall make you free. John 8 :
31, 32. In aE this process the Spirit of truth takes
of the tilings of Christ and shews them to the beEev-
ing; John 16 : 13, 15 ; and the bearing of the obe
dient soul while so learning Christ and passing over
to be a new creature in His Ekeness, is described as
waEdng in the truth, and abiding in the doctrine of
Christ. 2 John: 4, 9.
We find, then, the representation of this passage
to be no mere touch of casual imagery. It Ees
broadly bedded in the whole body of kindred Scrip
tures. It covers this general result : That the Truth
which the soul finds true to its deepest needs, and
receives with such hearty beEef as deserves the name
of Faith, holds the believer henceforth in its em
brace, as the mold clasps the deEvered metal, and
characters, him with its own impress.

54 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE MOLD
But it is more than any such general doctrine of
the office and- power of truth that the Apostle de
clares. He discerns in these disciples a certain
unique and remarkable character, not the rehgious
merely, but a singular grace and exaltation of that ;
and the mold of doctrine, which alone could strike
this shape. and stamp, is -surely more than the old
forms of truth. It is the Christian Doctrine that has
wrought this Christian Character, and, at sight, he
recognizes in them the new stamp of the new mold.
The Law could not do this. Here is more than
Pharisaism ever conceived. This is not that abund
ant religiousness which blooms here and there on
rare natures, as the fruit of culture, and an exact
conscience. A new and higher cast of character is.
here ; and manEestly it is the Gospel of the Lord
Jesus, it is the Christ that has given Himseb? in
new grace and truth to men, that is working this new
phase of spirit and Efe. In that mold these souls
have taken this impress.
No man knew better than did Paul himsebf, the
power of this new and perfecting truth as it is in
Christ. He speaks in this whole passage out of his
own deep consciousness of the necessity of this
Christian molding, and of his own blessed experi
ence of it. All that he had been as the superlative
legalist, moral, conscientious, religiously straitened
on all sides, — aE this had been softened and tem
pered. The Spirit of Truth had been showing him
the things of Christ. In vain he had wrestled with
the new revelation ever since that day when he stood
by, and held the garments of them that stoned

OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 55
Stephen ; till at length aE had been utterly fused
by that epiphany of the risen Christ that flamed on
him on the way to Damascus. From that hour aE
that sebf-competent and most rehgious Saul that he
had been, was deEvered into the mold of these new
truths of Christ; and there had come forth this
Christian Paul as the result. He knew in himself
this new creation in Christ Jesus. And out of this
experience he speaks now, recognizing in these souls
the same spfritual reconstruction, the same Christly
stamp, struck only by these Christian Truths on
souls divinely tempered and submitted to that
shaping. The distinctive Christian Truths, then, are de
signed and employed by the Spirit of God as the
perfect mold of Christian character and Efe.
(1.) Looking now, first, at this Gospel Doctrine,
as properly the revelation of grace and truth, in the
person and work of Jesus Christ, we recognize it at
once as the wisdom and power of God for the deliv
erance and salvation of beEeving souls. It is fitted
and adequate to that effect. The soul that once
takes to heart these truths as true and vital to its felt
want, and so makes these its veritable creed, and
fairly delivers itself to their transforming power, wEl
infaEdbly be wrought over into just that new crea
ture in Christ which the saved sinner is represented
to be. He wiE surely be renewed after the image
of the Christ who thus clasps him all about in the
embrace of His truth, bemg changed into the same
image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of
the Lord. Given the cause, we know the effect.

56 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE MOLD
Inspecting the die, we know the impression it will
strike. Look now into this mold of Christian Doctrine.
Observe these deep lines, these bold reliefs. The
supreme facts are aE here. Our sin, God's pity and
remedy, divinely ordered and proportioned, besetting
us on every side of our need. God manifest in the
flesh, — the Incarnate Son of God, in travail of love
for us lost, Eving our human Efe, dying our death,
risen now and throned for us, — the atoning, teach
ing, sympathizing Christ Jesus, who, in this ministry
of the divine fulness to all our want, is made unto
us wisdom, and righteousness and sanctification and
redemption, and so a Savior to the uttermost ! Trace
out the design to the last touch that adds grace to
virtue. From this perusal of the mold alone, even
beforehand, if no Christian had ever been seen by us
in actual development, we could forecast with entire
assurance what manner of man he must needs be in
all holy conversation and Christ-likeness, who should
be wrought to this pattern. If these truths take
effect, the product will be the Christian character.
Each truth wEl leave its proper mark, its own
authentic character, on the believer. The material
will be human still, taking and holding the impress
with varying degrees of completeness and perfection ;
but so far- as he obeys this mold of doctrine, the
style of the man will be none other than a copy of
Christ. (2.) We may also reason from the effect to the
cause, and infer quite completely for substance the
whole Gospel from the character it produces. Given

OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 57
the Christian man, bearing this evangelical stamp
of grace in his spirit and conversation, and we know
what he has been heartily beEeving, what vital, rea
lized and obeyed truths have been fashioning him to
that beauty and strength. He is what obedience to
those truths through the Spirit has made him. He
is the product of his Faith. For the instrumental
ity and motive pressure in all Spiritual changes are
lodged in the truth.
As, therefore, from the figure enstamped, we know
what must have been the fashion of the die that
struck it ; as the casting betrays its mold, so that
point by point you refer each feature to the particular
configuration of the model that shaped it, — so the
Christian man is formed by his Christian creed. We
can trace each gracious peculiarity to the truth that
wrought it. And none other than this very doctrine
of Christ, as given in the Gospel, could form such a
character as this.
It would even be quite possible in this way to con
struct ideally the very mold of motive requisite for
the production of a" character so unique. At least in
its leading elements we could discover the Gospel
from the Christian man. This Believer, so stamped
with the evangelic vfrtues — what creed has been
his to save him so ? The naturalist derives from a
single plant or animal, or even from a single organic
part of such, the whole main world of plastic agencies
that conditioned and produced it. By the same pro
cess, take this assemblage of characteristic Christian
traits, or even any one of them that is vital — take
this temper and Efe of unselfishness, this consecration

58 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE MOLD
of love, this penitential humility, this joy of pardon
and conscious recovery to goodness, this assiduity of
loved service toward God and ruan, this felt personal
union to an infinite friend — such a character, or any
one trait that is of its substance, reveals again this
very Gospel. The marks of the Lord Jesus are on
it throughout. And seeing this saved sinner so
struck through and printed over with the Cross, we
thus judge that One has died for him ; that, once
dead, he lives henceforth a redeemed life, not unto
himself, but under constraint of His love Who died
for him and rose again. To be such as he is, he
must have been such a sinner so saved.
And with insight only a Ettle deeper we might go
very far to discover, from inspection of any marked
unchristian life and character, what has been believed
instead of the Christian truth — what shape of error,
what misbelief the man has been harboring and obey
ing, to make him what he is. For men show their
faith by their works, and the character betrays the
creed. (3.) This process is verified in the experience of
believers. The Christian is conscious of this doc
trinal pressure in conforming him to Christ. He
feels these influences of precept and principle touch
ing him all round about with gracious compulsions,
and sweetly constraining him out of the old into some
blessed newness, assimEating him to Jesus. These
Christian doctrines warn him, instruct him, correct
him in righteousness. By these he is enhghtened,
guided, strengthened, moved evermore to holy aspi
rations and amendments. He feels, and has aE along

OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 59
felt, this Word of God pressing him on every side,
quick, piercing soul and spfrit, and discerning the
thoughts and intents of his heart. He is conscious
that every spiritual change in him has been by obey
ing the truth through the Spirit. In a word, he finds
himseE deEvered by his faith into the mold of Chris
tian doctrine, and that he can have no rest in it but
by heartily obeying it. And so doing, the beEeving
soul takes shape and feature after the Ekeness of his
Lord. This view of Christian Doctrine, as holding such
place and power in God's scheme for renewing and
saving the lost, invests it with a dignity, and
demands for it an honor, which it too often lacks in
our regard.
Clearly, this Truth, then, is a quite definite and
positive matter, standing fast in the radical facts of
man's sin, and God's movement of grace for our
recovery. These are unchanging, true and the same
ever and to all-, vitally true to every sinning soul of
man. They must be believed, trusted, obeyed, in
order to salvation, as the multipEcation-table must be
believed and obeyed for just reckoning, or as that fire
burns, food nourishes, unsupported bodies faE, must
be held and heeded in order to safe Eving. Believe
otherwise than that our sin is so mischievous,
criminal and deadly, God so holy and just, and in
Christ so gracious, as this Gospel declares, and your
fiction though never so smcerely believed, will be a
creed of death. We are to be saved by the truth as
it is in Jesus, and not otherwise ; and Doctrinal
Christianity is the clear and authentic revelation

60 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE MOLD
of this saving Christ in His Life, Teachings, and
Death for us.
And as this mode of Christian doctrine is so defi
nite and substantive, the Christian character is equally
positive and peculiar. The apostohc test is deci
sive : it is a character conformed to the truth of
Christ, true to that, marked by it, grace for grace.
Genuine religion lies in hearty obedience to the
revealed will of God. It is a renovating and
transforming energy ever working the soul to this
Divine pattern. Does the character answer to the
mold, then? In spirit and life, is the man formed
anew in the image of the truth ? Do these specific
Gospel facts and principles reappear in him, each
enstamping its own figure of grace ? Only so is it
the Christian character, and only so is it to be surely
discerned. Of course this pecuEar character is substantially
one and the same in all believers. The same image,
struck with varying degrees of clearness and fulness,
is on them all. They are from one mold, and
answer to its configuration. They cannot fail to
wear certain unmistakable stamps of it. Amid all
varieties of temperament, culture, and condition, the
same image and superscription wiE distinguish them.
Defective the impression may be-j in the filling up,
in some of the finer lines, the materia] being more
or less fluent and facile. ' But certain positive char
acteristics, the authentic signatures of the Christly
model, will surely be there.
It deeply concerns us to hold fast this view of the
positive and distinctive character in the Christian

OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 61
behever. Drifting from this , and accepting any other
test than this visible conformity to the Christian
Truth, adopting any scheme that EberaEzes us away
from this Divine Redeeming Christ into natural mo
ralities and pious sentimentaEsm, we have changed
our star and are saiEng toward wreck. The broad,
clear separateness of the renewed from the unrenewed
wEl be confused and lost. Very widely this tendency
is working. It has provided this broad, debatable
ground of rehgious equivalents and christianistic
indEferences, thronged by a multitude claiming the
Christian name, of every variety of opinion and every
corresponding shade of nebulous piety. But the
twilight of this EberaEsm ever deepens toward the
darkness of scepticism and infideEty ; and he who is
once quit of the truth, will be found not far from as
Christless in his character as he is in his creed.
Surely God's grace in saved sinners is no such shad
owy and indefinite somewhat, one thing here, another
there, to be verified nowhere. The Christian is a
marked man. From a single unique feature in a
mold, you could declare among a thousand which
was the one casting that came of it ; and surely from
these deep-cut and distinctive Enes of Christian doc
trine, indubitable prints wEl appear on the soul that
has obeyed them.
And the deliverance of a soul into this embrace
and molding power of the truth — the softening of
the hard, stET nature into that plastic state of contri
tion and pEancy to holy motive, in which it yields
itself fluently in hearty obedience to the truth — this
is the gracious work of the Holy Spirit in that expe-

62 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE MOLD
rience wliich we term conviction of sin. This is the
significance of that season, which, however it vary in
its fashion, is ever the voice of One crying in the
wilderness of sin and preparing the way of God's
grace in the soul. In that furnace the stony heart
is melted and the will suppled to divine shaping.
Here we learn the knowledge of sin and the depth of
our entanglement, and come to cry, Oh, wretched —
who shall deliver?' and so pass to the no condemna
tion in Christ Jesus. It is an indispensable lesson.
For the completeness of this preparatory experience
determines not only the genuineness of the conver
sion, but the style of all later developments of gra
cious character. Not only the broad and plenary
conversion, but every subsequent stage of grace, will
bear witness in the sharp, clear stamp of the mold,
how fluent the soul was made under the strivings of
the convincing Spirit.
One great reason of the defective and unshapely
character, often seen in real Christians, is to be found
in their incomplete and partial views of truth. A
full and symmetrical piety requires, for its develop
ment, the intelligent and hearty holding of the Chris
tian truths in their completeness, each in place and
proportion. Drop out one, and its mark is missing.
One part of the mold is lacking, and its appropriate
stamp does not appear. Vague notions of truth can
yield only blurred impressions. Pet doctrines,
fondly exaggerated,' misshape > to then: own dispro
portion. Error deforms. Hence come distortion,
an erring conscience, instability; for there needs the
close, full, uniform clasp of the truth, with equable

OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 63
touch and pressure, all round about the soul, to give
it symmetry, and completeness in Christ. Only as
it is thus broadly bedded in the fulness of truth, can
a character attain to the perfect poise of steadfast
faith and virtue. And we may see how close we are
upon profane implications when we presume to clas-
sEy God's revelations of truth, these as essential,
those important, others more or less considerable.
There is not one of aE the doctrines of the Gospel
that can be ranked as unimportant, or non-essential.
Every one of them has its essential purpose and effi
ciency. God would give no unimportant truths.
Each enters as a divine touch into the perfect mold
of doctrme, and is essential to the unity of the faith,
and the integrity of the Christian man, in the meas
ure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. The
whole body of character can be fitly joined together
and compacted only by that which every joint sup-
pheth, according to the effectual working in the meas
ure of every part. All are profitable for doctrine,
reproof, correction, instruction in righteousness ;
that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly fur
nished unto aE good works.
How false and pernicious, then, is that sentiment
which resents all definitive doctrine-j and denounces
creeds as logically impertinent to character ! It finds
expression in a great variety of forms, and in all the
dialects of disbeEef and misbelief, uttering, all, this
ultimate maxim of EberaEsm and very creed of
infidelity : All faiths are indhTerent, aE creeds an
impertinence ; what signhy a man's beEefs or disbe
liefs, so he but Eves weE? "His can't be wrong,

64 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE THE MOLD
whose Efe is in the right." And deeper than they
mean or know, it is true after all ; for a little farther
down, at the bottom of that well, you reacb this cen
tral truth, that, " If any man will do God's will, he
shaE know of the doctrine." But t£e meaning is that
all this notion of an essential orthodoxy, a positive
truth, a faith inherently right or wrong, is simply the
dream of fanaticism ; that a creed is a speculation,
and faith a fancy, having little or nothing to do in de
termining the character 'and Efe ; that it matters Ettle
whether the truth* if such a thing there really be, or
something else than that, be held. And having thus
resolved to gather figs of thistles, one has it in order
next to doubt, seeing what thistle-fruit it is we "get
so, whether there be really any such thing as figs,
after aE. We must even our liberalism all through.
Is it not part of the same illusion, that there is any
essential good or evil in conduct and character?
And so men are adrift, to believe as they please, and
to live as they list. Whereas, that order of thought
is simply preposterous. It matters all in the world
what a man does really believe, and so hold as to
bring it vitaEy home to his soul. What he beEeves,
molds him in spirit and in Efe. The connection is
deeply logical and practical between a man's real
faith and his character. For what the Believer
believes, is not to him simply a formulated specula
tion, but a vital power and a formative principle. He
is the last man to be trusted with an error ; another
might play fast and loose with it, but he will be it and
do it, perfecting his faith by his works. The very
roots of the character and life run down thus into

OF CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 65
the subsoU of a man's faith. And it were no more
preposterous in logic or false to fact to say, No mat
ter about the mold, if the casting only come right,
than to say, No matter what a man beEeves, if only
he be right 1 The casting is what the mold makes it.
The Christian is what the Christian faith makes
him. How precious, then, is doctrinal knowledge ! The
Christian behever is deEvered into the mold of so
much truth as he inteEigently holds and truly be
Eeves. He obeys only so much as he knows, and as
he knows it. Only that much can touch the char
acter and order the Efe.. And to yield the true
character it must be the very truth, whole and only.
So much as he takes home by the inteEect and heart
as true and vital to his soul's need, wEl have him in
shaping. Truth unknown cannot influence him.
Partial truth will give partial results, and may even
have the mischievous force of error. Every believer,
therefore, should seek, as for priceless treasure, to
be well and broadly grounded in doctrine, ever veri
fying his creed by the studied Word, intent to know
accurately and obey heartily the whole Gospel of
truth. And all the apparatus of culture, provided
of God to our need, has its dignity of office and
honor and power in its relation to the truth. The
Church is the pillar and ground of the truth. The
Christian Ministry is a Teaching Ministry, and fills
the New Testament idea in heralding, manEesting,
rightly dividing the Gospel of Christ. What else
can it be, then, than Doctrinal preaching, in the fair
breadth of that term? What other than Doctrinal

66 CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
can be Practical preaching? Doctrine is the basis
of duty. Truth has its issues in the life. What
else can we hopefully preach, in its length and
breadth of apphcation, for shaping the inner and the
outer life of men to the mind of God ?
More than ever, then, let us prize and honor God's
Truth, and give it in our esteem the large place God
has given it in His method of salvation. Let us trust
it as God's own power and wisdom, mighty through
Him to the pulling down of all strongholds of sin,
and to the upbuilding of all Christian grace and good
ness, — the very mold in which Christly character is
to be cast. And count those worthy of double,
honor who labor in the word and doctrine.

IIL
THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS ; ITS APOLOGETICAL
VALUE.
BT KEV. 'W1I.LJAM V. WAKRES, D.D., DEAN OP TBE BOSTON UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY.
(ELEMENT of Alexandria, in the curious treatise
J which he fittingly styled his "Patch-work," among
a multitude of equally suggestive observations, has
given us this : " There is a difference between that
which one saith of the truth, and that which the truth
saith of itseE." His meaning, psychologically stated,
is, that there is a wide difference between a clear per
ception that a thing appears to be true, and a clear
perception that it is true. The distinction is as im
portant as it is just. The two mental acts or states
are separated by an interval broader than that
bounded by the Sakwala of the Buddhist universe.
The dhTerence is not merely that between a " perhaps "
and a " verily," it is all the difference between ad
mitted ignorance and conscious knowledge.
Now, just corresponding to this radical antithesis,
we find in the field of Christian Apology two drifts
of thought, two endeavors, two variant conceptions
of the work of the Christian Apologist. The one
party aims to produce belief, the other to produce
knowledge. The one deals in likelihoods, reasona-
67

68 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
blenesses, arguments, evidences ; the other in spirit
ual reaEties as objects of spiritual cognition. The
one appeals to the understanding and asks a judg
ment favorable to tbe claims of Christianity ; the
other appeals to the spiritual faculties and to their
normal use promises personal knowledge. The one
method can never carry a mind beyond a certain
favorable poise of the librating judgment, mathemati
cally represented at any given moment by the sum
of perceived probabilities in favor of the Christian
system, minus the sum of perceived probabilities
against it. In this position one new fact may suffice
to shEt the preponderance of probability and change
the favorable judgment. In the other case, there
being true knowledge, no further knowledge can
make the first untrue. All added facts but enlarge
and perfect the original knowledge. Paley is a
classical representation of the first of these tenden
cies, Pascal ofthe second.
Now, without denying the legitimacy of the purely
argumentative school of Apology, or disparaging any
real services which it may have rendered in the his
tory of the Church, we certainly may claim for that
perpetual vindication of Christianity which proceeds
upon the idea of bringing men to know thr*" truth, a
far higher aim and a far superior power. To, "iustify
this estimate it is only necessary to look im^; the
distinctive peculiarities of the Christian type of
religious consciousness, and to mentally connect them
with the principal functions of Christian Apology.
What, then, are the distinctive pecuEarities of the
Christian consciousness ?

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 69
To begin at the bottom, we need to observe, that
every man has some sort of a religious consciousness.
By virtue of his inteEectual constitution, each must
have a more or less distinct realization of personal
religious beliefs, impulses, acts. The beEefs may
be true or false, the impulses strong or weak, the
acts right or wrong; but whatever they, are, the
mind takes cognizance of them, as clearly and neces
sarily as of any other mental phenomena. What
ever a man beEeves, he knows he believes ; whatever
a man loves or fears, he knows he loves or fears ;
whatever a man worships, he knows he worships.
No man can be reEgious or irreligious without know
ing it. Whichever he is, he is it consciously.
Religious consciousness is, therefore, as universal as
religion and irreligion.
The broadest and most fundamental distinction in
the reEgious consciousness of men, is that resulting
from their differing conceptions of the universe
of being. A theistic conception of the universe
produces a theistic type of religious consciousness, a
pantheistic conception a pantheistic type, a polythe
istic conception a polytheistic type, an atheistic con
ception an atheistic type. These types of religious
consciousness dhTer as widely from each other as
would four universes answering to the four intellec
tual conceptions. Indeed, they are so incompatible
with each other, that it is almost impossible for a
man, in whom either type is fully developed, to
reaEze to himself, even in imagination, the world of
reEgious ideas, emotions, and voEtions in which a
mind possessed of one or the other types, Eves and

70 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
moves. Thus a genuine theist finds almost as great
difficulty in entering into the real religious thought
and feeEng and life-sphere of a genuine pantheist,
as he does ba entering into the real thought and feel
ing and Efe-sphere of an elephant.* In like manner
the fetish-worshipper has no more idea ofthe religious
consciousness of the theist, than he has of the scien
tific or cosmological consciousness of the modern
astronomer, to whom night-fall is the dawn of the
true day, and the circling earth itself but the flag
ship of a celestial Coast Survey.
Less broadly, yet not less clearly distinguished
are the sub-types of religious consciousness devel
oped under the influence of the great historic reli
gions ofthe world. Thus the Jewish, Christian, and
Mohammedan varieties, while strongly resembling
each other in all that distinguishes them as a mono
theistic type, are yet perfectly distinct when com
pared among themselves. Similarly we find that no
two polytheistic or pantheistic peoples, or sects, ever
developed identical forms of religious consciousness.
How dEferent the world of religious realizations in
which the ancient Hellenic mind moved, from that in
which our pagan ancestors of Northern Europe lived !
What awkwardness would even Spinoza experience
in adjusting his God-consciousness to that of the
worshipper of Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, and their three
hundred and thirty millions of associate divinitieso! f
* "Die altera kritiklosen Zoographen legten dem Elephanten,
unter andern lobliohen Eigenschaften, auoh die Tugend der Religiositat
bei ; allein die Religion der Elephanten gehortin das Reich der Fab-
eln." Feuerbach, Wesen des Christenthums, S. 24.

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 71
Each consciousness, however, is alike pantheistic.
So the atheistic religious consciousness of modern
naturalism, represented by such men as Comte,
Biichner, and Holyoake, dhTers as radically from the
atheistic consciousness of original Buddhism as
European science from Asiatic dreams.
In attempting to set forth the leading characteris
tics of that type of reEgious consciousness produced
under the influence of the Christian religion, it will
be manifestly proper to constantly inquire after its
ideal or normal mamfestation, rather than any defec
tive or perverted ones in this or that individual or
sect. For this ideal or normal consciousness, we
shall naturally go back to the experiences and teach
ings of the original founders of the reEgion-, as
these are reflected in their extant words. In doing
this we assume nothing further than that then: lan
guage as truthfully mirrors then: mind as that of
other men is taken to mirror theirs.
The first distinctive trait of the ideal Christian
consciousness, I understand to be, that it includes
an immediate knowledge, or feeling, or realization
of some kind, of personal communion with God. In
such a consciousness there is an immediate realiza
tion, not so much of beEef in God, as of the very
presence of God. The man is conscious of dwelling
in God, and of God dweEing in him, of loving
God, and of bemg loved and blessed of him in
turn. This mental realization of personal communion
with God, was exemplified in its highest perfection
in the rehgious consciousness of Jesus. He ever

72 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS!
seems to know himself the beloved Son, in whom
the Father is weU pleased. With the most unfalter
ing confidence, he affirms, " I do always those things
that please him." He claims that the divine Spirit
is given unto him without measure ; that he lives
and teaches and heals and suffers in vital, conscious
union with his Father. He speaks indeed of having
been sent forth by the Father, but to prevent mis
apprehension, he immediately adds, " He that sent
me, is with me. The Father hath not left me
alone." His consciousness of the Father's presence amounts
to a consciousness of mutual indwelEng. Rebuking
the dulness of PhiEp's spiritual perception, he asks,
" BeEevest thou not, that I am in the Father, and the
Father in me ? " His words and works are not his
alone, but products of a joint-agency. " The words
that I speak unto you, I speak not of myseE; but
the Father, which dweEeth in me, he doeth the
works." " Believe me," he concludes, " beEeve me
that I am in the Father, and the Father in me."
This consciousness finds equally expEcit expression
again and again.
Nor does it appear that this blessed reahzation of
divine fellowship was regarded by Christ as a prerog
ative pecuhar to himself. Indeed, he promises it to
his disciples. He tells them of some mysterious
change which is to come over them after he is gone.
He gives minute directions as to their place of so
journ until this promise shall be fuhilled. " Tarry
ye at Jerusalem, until ye shall be endued with power
from on high." He leads them to expect, along with

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 73
this- mysterious enduement, a better understanding
of much he had taught them, a revelation of things
they could not at the time of the promise yet " bear."
They are to sustain a new relation to him, to enjoy
more of his prerogatives, no more to be called ser
vants, but friends. His peace is henceforth to be
given unto them, his Father is to be their Father, his
God their God.
These wonderful promises certainly contemplated
a prospective indweEing of God in their souls, and a
distinct consciousness on their part of feEowship with
him. That they were not delusive, the whole post-
pentecostal experience of those disciples abundantly
proves. No sooner had they been endued with the
fulness of the Holy Ghost, than they betrayed the
possession of as Eveiy a sense of God's presence and
love as ever their Master had done. Then: confident
declaration was, "Hereby know we that we dwell in
him and- he in us, because he hath given us of his
Spirit." But just here we note a pecuharity which forever
differentiates the reEgious consciousness of the disci
ples from that of the Master. Jesus claimed that the
Father was ever with him, but to his sorrowing dis
ciples he promises not only the presence of the
Father, but also his own. Indeed, he says of all who
love him, that they shall enjoy this twofold indweE
ing. "If a man love me, he will keep my words ;
and my' Father wiE love him, and we will come unto
him, and make our abode with him." He promises
that this shaE be not only a fact, but also a fact of
consciousness. " In that day ye shall know that I

74 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." In
his high priestly intercession for aE that should ever
beheve on him, he prays, "That they all maybe one,
as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they
all may be one in us." Evidently, Christ's idea
was not that his disciples were simply to succeed to,
and exactly reproduce his perfect consciousness of
the Father's loving presence ; it was rather that they
should be taken up into this joint fellowship of Christ
and the Father, and hold communion with them both.
Exactly corresponding with this, we find the sub
sequent experience of the disciples. One of them
speaks for aE, when he says, " Truly, our fellowship
is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ."
Whilst, therefore, Jesus uniformly speaks of con
scious fellowship with the Father, his early disciples
speak at least with equal frequency of communion
with the Son also. They are as conscious of imma
nence in Him as of immanence in the Father. They
are as conscious of his, as of the Father's indwelhng
in them. This pecuEarity of their consciousness
reflects itself constantly in their speech. They habit
ually speak of being " in Christ Jesus'," as a charac
teristic of all believers. At the same time they are
equally wont to speak of Christ in them, the hope of
glory. So intimate is this conscious intercommunion
of life, that one of the most clear-headed and logical
of them all, seems in danger at times of almost con
founding his own personahty with Christ's : "I am
crucified with Ohrist; nevertheless, I live, yet not I,
but Christ Evetb in me." Saluting one another, these
earliest disciples were wont to recognize and asso-

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 75
ciate as sources of aE spiritual Efe and blessing both
invisible participants in their spiritual communion.
They did it in such language as this. "Grace be
unto you and peace from God our Father, and from
the Lord Jesus Christ," " Grace, mercy, and peace
from God the Father and Jesus Christ our Lord."
But have we yet exhausted the contents of the
apostolic Christian consciousness? Was it simply
and solely a consciousness of hving fellowship with
the Father and with Christ? It certainly seems not.
Reverting once more to Christ's promises to his dis
ciples, we certainly find that he pledged them another
presence more explicitly than he did the Father's or
his own. He calls this third party the Paraclete, the
Spirit of truth. He cannot mean himseE, in some
etheriahzed and glorified form, for he clearly distin
guishes this new party as " another comforter," given
in answer to his prayer, and to take his place. He
says of him, "He shall glorify me." "He shall
receive of mine, and shaE show it unto you." "He
shall testify of me." " He shall bring all things to
your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you."
Evidently Jesus cannot have been thinking and
speaking of himself in some posthumous shape.
Again, it is hard to see how he could have meant
in this promise any prospective form of the Father's
manifestation. He "distinguishes this . comforter as
clearly from the Father as from himself. He says :
' " The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the
Father wEl send in my name, he shall teach you aU
things, and bring all things to your remembrance,
whatsoever I have said unto you." Here all three

76 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
are mentioned in a way which naturally imphes the
distinct personahty of each. The Comforter is rep
resented as personal, both by correlation with the
other two personalities, and because performing the
personal office or work of teaching. Yet he is
distinguished from the Father, because sent by him,
and from Christ, because sent in his name. In
other statements, our Lord repeatedly discriminates
between the Comforter and the Father, affirming that
the former " proceedeth from " the latter, and that
the latter " gives " the former. Accordingly, he pre
scribes a formula of initiation into his Church for all
coming ages, in which Father, Son and Holy Spirit
find each coordinate place and separate mention.
" Go. ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Ghost."
Passing now from the Master's promise to the
actual religious consciousness mirrored in the apos
tolic word, we find mention of a " fellowship of the
Spirit," just as we before found mention of a fellow
ship with the Father- and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
We find the same idea of mutual immanence. The
apostles speak as if consciously in the Comforter, and
use such language as this : " If we live in the Spirit,
let us also walk in the Spirit." Anon they speak of
the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in them and in
their fellow-believers. Then they are temples of
the Holy Ghost. This reciprocal indwelling is the
real badge of discipleship : "Ye are not in the flesh,
but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell
in you." It is the condition and characteristic of

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 77
divine Sonship ; for only as many as are led by the
Spirit of God, are the sons of God. It is the source
of all filial joy and free utterance toward the Father.
If any soul cries out, " Abba Father," it is because
being a son, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his
Son into such soul, enabling it thus to cry. They
speak of the reception of this Spirit as essential to
the full and normal Christian experience ; " Have ye
received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? " They
proffer the precious gift to aE penitent and obedient
souls ; " Repent, and be baptized every one of you,
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the remis
sion of sins, and ye shaE receive the gift of the Holy
Ghost." Their intensely personal conception of this
Spirit betrays itseE in such constantly occurring
expressions as these : "the mind ofthe Spirit " ; " the
Spirit itseE maketh intercession for us with groan-
ings which cannot be uttered " ; " the Spirit searcheth
all things even the deep things of God " ; " all these
worketh that one and the seE-same Spirit, dividing
to every man severally as he will." Yet, in their
rehgious consciousness, this intelligent, sympathetic,
groaning, searching, and administering Spirit was not
identical with, but a gift of, the Father. So far,
indeed, is he from being the Father or the Son, that
we find access to the Father represented as possible
to men only by this Spirit, and through the Son.
" Through him [Christ] , we both ~[i. e. Jews and
Gentiles] have ' access, by one Spirit, unto the
Father." This, and similar expressions, are striking and
noteworthy. They furnish a clew to the right under-

78" THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
standing of the spiritual communion enjoyed in the
apostohc consciousness. It was not three feEowships
of the soul with three other beings called Father,
Son and Holy Ghost ; it was rather one fellowship,
triply mediated on the divine side. In the Apostohc
reaEzation of it, there was no possibility of com
munion with him, whom Jesus had taught them to
call the Father, save through the Son, and in or by
the Holy Ghost. Christ's declaration was to them
most true ; to wit, that no man knoweth the Father
save the Son, and he, to whomsoever the Son shall
reveal him. In Eke manner, to their minds, there
can be no right recognition of the Son without ,the
Spirit ; for on the one hand, " No man speaking by
the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed," and on the .
other, " No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but
by the Holy Ghost." To complete the circuit, the
Holy Spirit is not the natural possession of any man,
but is a gift of the Father, procured by the Son.
In the apostohc reEgious consciousness, therefore,
divine communion is not simple and immediate ; with
one sohtary objective personaUty, it is rather a com
plex and mediated one, a participation in the inter
communicated love, grace, and feEowship of the
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Hence the apostles
sum up their permanent intercessory aspiration for
the Christian brotherhood most completely in a tripar
tite formula, exactly paraUel to Christ's baptismal
one. " The grace of bur Lord Jesus Christ, the love
of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost be
with you all. Amen."
Such a religious consciousness as this was some-

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 79
thing wonderfully strange and new. It presented an
astonishing contrast to every earlier type of which
mankind had knowledge. It is not remarkable,
therefore, that we find the disciples giving great
prominence to the newness of their spiritual experi
ence. Especially do we find them contrasting it
with the two types of religious consciousness best
known to them : first, the earthward and seEward
directed, historicaUy expressed in surrounding Gen-
tilism ; and second, the Godward directed, histori
caUy expressed in genuine Judaism. By nature,
according to the apostohc representation, we all
inherit the first of these types. By nature, Jew and
Gentile are chEdren of wrath, psychical not spiritual,
ahenated from the hfe of God, spiritually dead. AE
sin, and come short of the glory of God. The office
of the Spirit of God is to show men this. The first
effect of his agency, so far as the consciousness is
concerned, is to fill the soul with fear and grief, and
a terrible sense of personal sinfulness and just divine
displeasure. Here, there is divine operation in the
soul, but no divine feEowship. This comes only
when the thus awakened soul repents of its sins
with a godly sorrow, and beheves on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Then, being justified by faith, it can cry out,
" God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love
wherewith he hath loved us, even when we were
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ,
and raised us up together and made us sit together
in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Here is instal
lation into a conscious, blessed life-communion with
Christ. The old state was death, the new is that of

80 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
perfect resurrection life. Here, with Dante, one can
turn a fresh leaf in Efe's book, and inscribe upon its
centre, in the reddest of letters,
Incipit nova vita.

This the apostles everywhere assume and teach to
be the normal and usual genesis of the Christian type
of religious consciousness in the case of all hitherto
heathen and positively God-aUenated forms of that
consciousness. But there was another type, weE known to the
early disciples of Christ, that generated under the
influence of Old Testament piety. This was char
acterized, not by personal hostility to God, but
by reverence for his holy name ; not by lawless grati
fications of natural lust, but by beautEul exemplifica
tions of all continent and self-controlling virtues ;
not by selfishness, but by self-sacrificing obedience
to God. Christ appreciated the beauty and lofty
excellence of the genuine Old Testament type of
religious consciousness ; he had its noblest exemplifi
cation before his very eyes in the person of his
forerunner; yet, contrasting the inner life of the
incoming dispensation with that of the old, he de
clares, "Verily, I say unto you, Among them that are
born of women there hath not risen a greater than
John the Baptist ; notwithstanding, he" that is least
in the kmgdom of God is. greater than he." This
new Efe is a new wine, requiring new bottles. As a
new life, it cannot be inaugurated, even in devout
souls, without affecting their religious consciousness.

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 81
Its obtainment will be Uke the obtainment of a pearl
of great price, yea, like finding life after considering
it lost. The grand dEference between the genesis
of the full Christian consciousness in such souls, and
its genesis in souls of the natural and heathenish
type is, that in the former case it comes later in the
religious development. The crisis which fairly and
fuEy inaugurates the new consciousness may be just
as marked and memorable, but it is not associated in
their minds with their first conscious act or effort to
turn from sin to God. It is rather the hour when,
by a special baptism of the Holy Ghost, the faithful
servant is made an adopted son, when the Israelite,
iu whom there is no guEe, becomes transformed into
a flaming apostle, speaking with tongues, and wield
ing superhuman powers. Thus was it in the experi
ence of the first disciples themselves. Very likely
it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for
any of them to fix the exact hour, when, according
to the theological phrase, they were converted ;
nevertheless, all knew the precise day, and hour of
the day, when " suddenly " the Pentecostal fire lit
up within them illuminations which were never more
to die. Equal definiteness marked the experience
of the three thousand who shared in the mighty
baptism. They, too, had enjoyed the preparatory
experience of Old Testament piety. They were the
faithful Simeons and Annas and EEzabeths of three
continents, " devout men," waiters for the consola
tion of Israel. Many of them were doubtless saints,
according to their light and privileges. With them,
and all similar converts, in the weeks and months

82 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
succeeding, the new religious consciousness had as
clearly marked a commencement as in the case of
Gentile converts, yet one very different in its ante
cedents and concomitants. In the one case it was a
sudden transit out of Pagan ignorance of God or
conscious enmity against God, into the blessedness
of loving communion with him ; in the other, it was
the inbreak of the Efe and light of God upon a soul
which had long devoutly sought him. The subse
quent religious consciousness in the .two cases was
substantially the same. It was a consciousness of
present Uving communion with the Father, Son and
Holy Ghost. So oft as they contrasted it with their
Christless past, it caused them to break forth with
Paul, " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ." Surveying
a hostile world, they declared, by its inspiration,
" Neither death nor Ufe, nor angels, nor principali-
ties, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God*
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Even at the
grave's mouth, in the edge of the shadows and dark
ness of the Hebrew sheol, this consciousness only
voiced itself in louder peans of exultation, " O
Death J where is thy sting? O grave ! where is thy
victory?" Now, had this type of religious consciousness for
ever disappeared with the decease of those earhest
Christians, what a beautiful thing it would still be
for men to contemplate ! How like a perfect ideal

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 83
would it stand out before each questioning, strug
gling soul ! How serious-minded philosophers would
point to it, and say, "Ah, were we only capable of
reproducing those experiences and that conscious
ness, how would all our doubts depart. It would
then be ours to know God, and in that knowledge,
to drown forever aU tormenting fears and dubi-
tations." Thank God ! the supposition is inadmissible !
Thank God ! the old apostolic type of religious con
sciousness is, in every essential feature, yet extant.
To-day, as eighteen hundred years ago, there are
men who know God; who hold conscious com
munion with him, who, through Christ, by his Spirit,
have access to the Father. The fact is attested by a
far greater number of competent witnesses than ever
attested a transit of Venus, or the existence of the
Gulf Stream. Thousands of the most intelhgentand
sober men and women in the world, of the most
diverse denominational attachments, bear witness,
every week, to the occurrence of just such a transition
in then: rehgious consciousness as that which ac
companied the apostle's preaching. They say that
they were once without God, and without hope in
the world, but that they now dweU in God, and God
dweEs in them. Whereas, they once were blind in
all spiritual things, now they see. Once they hated
God, but now they love him. Once they were out
of Christ, but now they are in him. They feel them
selves to be new creatures, and old things are passed
away. Behold !• aE things are become new.
The Christian consciousness of these men attests

84 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
its genuineness, not only by producing the samo
supernatural graces of character which adorned the
earhest Christians, but also by manifesting the same
seE-propagative power. To-morrow some such scene
as this wfll transpfre hi one of these Boston streets.
One of these men, possessed of the apostolic Chris
tian consciousness, will accost some consciously
wicked man with the question, " Friend, are you a
Christian? " "No," will be the reply, " I cannot say
that I am." Then will follow an affectionate invita
tion to the wicked man to repent of his sins, to seek
their remission through the blood of Christ, to ask a
new heart through the regenerating power of the
Holy Ghost. Two, three, four weeks hence, you will
find that man, whose heart and lip are to-day foul
with cursing, praising God, hastening from friend to
friend with the tidings that he is a changed man,
that the greatest transformation of his life has passed
upon and within him. He will testify that he is now
happy in God, a Christian, and, as such, request ad
mission to the Church of Christ. Such scenes are
constantly transpiring all around us. Here is simply
Apostolic preaching, with the old Apostohc result.
In this instance, the genesis of the new religious
consciousness will be after the Gentile Christian
type. Step into yonder " HoEness meeting," where the
one theme is the Higher Christian Life, so called,'
and you shall find living examples of a Christian
consciousness of the other apostolic variety, one
commencing, not in conversion, but in a Pentecost
at the close pf a long 014 Testament experience.

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 85
There you shall find men and women, saying, " For
ten, twenty, thirty years, I was a professing Chris
tian, but a worshipper in the outer court. All
those dreary years I tried to serve God, but could
never feel quite sure my service was acceptable. I
hoped in God, sometimes believed myseE Christ's,
but could never come to the blessed assurance, 'My
beloved is mine, and I am his.' The joyful confi
dence of some Christians about me, even of some
just started in the Christian hfe, staggered me, oh
so often ! I said within myseE, ' It cannot be that I
am a Christian.' I have never passed through this
crisis which others describe. I never have been able
to say with them, I know that I am passed from
death unto Ufe, or that the Spirit beareth witness
with my spfrit that I am a chEd of God."
Then the speaker will go on to narrate how, from
such a doubting, timorous Old Testament servant of
God, he suddenly became a son ; how, stimulated
by the contrast between his own cold and comfortless
condition, and the deep, strong, and blessed con
sciousness of divine communion enjoyed by some
happier beEever, he was led to study God's idea of
normal religious life, to review his promises, and
how, appropriating those promises with a fresh
understanding and a quickened faith, on such a day,
about such an hour, the baptism of the Holy Ghost
feE, the gEt of power came, a beatific vision tranced
the soul into a sweet sense of God's aE-conquering
and everlasting love. Perhaps he wEl say, as scores
of them do say, that the experience contradicted all
his previous conceptions, aE his Ufe-long beEefs,

86 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
respecting the law and nature of religious life. Pos
sibly he wUl say, " Twelve months ago I should have
received with utter incredulity the statement that
any one could utter, mentally or orally, a doxology
to Jesus three hundred and sixty-five days long,
with no intermission save that of sleep, and that
balmy sleep itself would often flee from the presence
of a sweeter deUght, the luxury of praise. I find
my mistake in supposing the witness of the Spirit in
its higher mamfestations intermittent corrected. The
reverse is true. It is intermittent in its lower mani
festations; in its highest it is constant." .These,
indeed, are the very words of one of these witnesses,
penned but a few days ago, upon the first anniver
sary of the beginning of his higher life. The waiter
is a Christian divine, at the head of an'American
college, who, during the twenty years of pubUc Ufe
preceding his pentecostal baptism, was distinguished
for nothing so much as for constitutional coolness of
temperament, accuracy of Greek scholarship, and
hatred of religious pretense. Just such reproduc
tions of primitive Christian experience of the
Jewish-Christian type of origination may be found
m many branches of the modern Church, in every
branch where Apostolic Christianity is preached in
aE its fulness of* privilege and promise.
Undoubtedly, a genuine Christian consciousness
may come into being, in modes less sudden and
revolutionary than either of the two just mentioned ;
but what I am here asserting is the grand fact, that
the old Apostolic type of rehgious consciousness' is
not extmct ; that we have numberless Uving examples

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 87
of each of its primitive varieties. In thousands, it
may be faint and intermittent, but in other thousands
it exists in all its primitive strength and vividness.
A revelation of God is stEl progressing in humanity.
Christ is working miracles every day m every part
of Christendom. ' The Holy Ghost is constantly
repeating Pentecost in many an upper chamber.
Within, in the very soul of the Christian, is found
the crowning evidence of Christianity. Here God
himseE is the demonstrator, and his demonstration
is the demonstration of the spirit and of power.
I spoke, at the (Sutset, of other forms of rehgious
consciousness, atheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic,
but all these are consciousnesses of belief, not of
knowledge. The atheist does not know that there
is* no God; he merely thinks so. From the very
nature of the case, he cannot know or prove what he
asserts. As John Foster has well shown, a man
needs to be God in order to know there is none.
"Unless he is at this moment in every place in the
universe, he cannot know but there may be in some
place manifestations of a Deity, by which even he
would be overpowered. If he does not know abso
lutely every agent in the universe, the one he does
not know may be God." Thus, unless he is omni
present and omniscient, that is, unless he precludes
all other divine existence by being God himseE, he
cannot know that the being whose existence he
denies, does not exist.
In hke manner, in the polytheistic consciousness,
there is no cUrect and immediate knowledge of the
gods beheved in. The ancient worshippers of Zeus

88 TBE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
and Athend and Apollo and Artemis and Poseidon
and Aphrodite never dreamed of conscious commun
ion with these divinities in their own souls. They
believed in the existence of such beings, and in their
traditional mythological powers and characteristics,
but they were not conscious of personal fellowship
with any one of them. They viewed them as objects
of worship, but not as objects of actual knowledge.
So everywhere and always. The polytheist believes,
but never knows. He cannot promise to men of
other faiths, not even to the sincerest proselyte,
certain knowledge that his gods really exist. Only
the degraded fetish-worshipper, whose god is a
black pebble or a crooked stick or a grotesque
lump of rags or hah-, can claim a personal knowledge
of the true object of worship.
In this respect, tbe predicament of the pantheist is
not less embarrassing than that of the atheist. He
denies the existence of any and every God save the
unconscious totality of all real being. But what
does he know about it? How can. he know, first,
that all real being is, in essence, one? Then, how
can he know that the One real being is unconscious,
impersonal ? He can know neither of these things
without an absolutely complete and perfect knowledge
of the entEe universe of being. If he knows all
beings save one, that one may be the God of Chris
tian Revelation. If he knows every attribute of
universal and absolute bemg, save one, that one may
be conscious personahty. Omniscience is essential
to a denial of omniscience. The simple fact, there
fore is, and remains, that the pantheist knows noth-

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 89
ing which other men do not know; he merely
imagines, believes, dogmatises.
Now, the signal advantage wliich the Christian has
ever had over all atheists, polytheists, pantheists, and
even speculative theists is, that while they aE merely
beUeve, he knows. He has not only sought God,
but found him. He has ascertained that there is
an objective reality, answering to his idea of God.
Indeed, his present idea of God is itseE a product
of that reahty, just as his idea of a given friend has
come from the objective existence and bearing of
that friend. By vbtue of the conscious, divine com
munion which he has won, he has a faith which stands
not in the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.
No fact of consciousness can ever be argued down ;
hence, to every possessor of normal Christian con
sciousness, all arguments against the possibEity or
fact of the existence of a personal God, are simply the
dogmatisings of ignorance over against the certainties
of personal knowledge. They are as forceless to
him as are the old mediaeval arguments against the
sphericity of the earth, to one who has himseE cE-
cumnavigated it. This is the value of the Christian
consciousness to its possessor in the field of theistic
and anti-theistic speculation.
In the narrower field of controversy, where theistic-
naturalism and supernaturalism grapple, the facts of
a normal Christian consciousness forever settle for its
possessor every speculative doubt and difficulty. Is
it suggested that the Scripture nnracles are hicredi-
ble, the Christian is not disturbed. He says, within
himself, " In my own consciousness, I have witnessed

90 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
a miracle greater than any of those, a nuracle in
cluding all of them, a miracle which was at once an
opening of blind eyes, an unstopping of deaf ears,
a casting out of devils, a creative production of bread
and wine, a healing, yea, a resurrection from the
dead. There can be no greater miracle than that
which God has wrought in me."
Is it alleged that an incarnation is inconceivable ;
the Christian heart says, It is no more inconceivable
that God should become a partaker of human nature,
than that man should become a partaker of the divine
nature. If I can become a son of God, God can
become a son of man. Ascent is harder than de
scent. If man can achieve a heavenly birth, God
surely can an earthly one. If I can become inspirate,
he surely can become incarnate. My partial thean-
thropic life legitimates, yea, necessitates, the supposi
tion of a perfect one. That perfect one is Christ's.
In just this way, the possessor of a normal Chris
tian consciousness meets and dissipates every specu
lative difficulty which deists, of all schools, urge
against the great facts of the Christian system, such
as Supernatural Revelation, Inspiration, human Sin
fulness, Incarnation, Atonement, Miracles, Super
natural Transformations of character. His own new
life has lifted him into a sphere where all these
things are as. normal and natural as lullabies and
patriotic celebrations and police courts and social
reforms and monument building are hi the sphere
of natural human society.
He sees the natural and the supernatural in their
true relation. In his own personal experience both

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 91
meet and blend. He sees these wise phEosophers
of the natural in their true light ; sees how aE their
difficulties come, not from knowledge, but from igno
rance ; not from breadth, but from narrowness ; not
from a point of vision above the Christian, but one
below it. He pities them, but cannot share their
inteEectual perplexities. He is as far beyond all
such perplexities as the grown man is beyond the
speculative difficulties of his embryonic period touch
ing possibihties of birth.
But the Christian consciousness has apologetic
value beyond its own subjects. It surpasses aE
reasonings in bringing pagans and unbelievers to
an acceptance of the Christian faith.
The man who knows God will always hnpress men
who know him not. If they are sincere seekers after
the truth, they wEl eagerly confess their own dark
ness and ignorance, and desire to share his light.
Even-E averse to truth and righteousness, they will
be affected, despite themselves, by the marked con
trast between his peace and calm and blessedness of
soul, and their own unrest and gloom and apprehen
sion. They wEl inevitably covet his manEest supe
riority tp the cEcumstances which make their Ufe a
bitterness and mockery. Witnessing his triumphal
departure out of this world, they wEl cry out, with
the ancient ethnic prophet of the East, "Let me
die the death of the righteous, and let my last end
be like his."
The proudest, keenest, most subtile and erudite
skepticism of the ages is not proof against this sEent
influence of Christian character. A former disciple

92 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS;
of Strauss and Feuerbach and Baur and Schwegler,
thus tells the story of his recovery to the Christian
faith : " What particularly aided me was the idea,
or rather the reahty, of regeneration. I saw before
me men whom I was compelled to recognize as
regenerate men. From childhood, I had seen such.
An inmost voice told me that I too must be born
agam. But if so, then there must be a superhuman
being of whom men can be born again, a living God.
And more:. what regeneration is tothe individual,
that is Christ to total humanity, the Uving principles
of the transformation of flesh into spirit. And thus,
starting from the inmost centre of my own lEe, I
was led back to the supermundane God and to the
historical Christ, the crucified and ascended."
The man thus recovered from the negations of
Tubingen has given a lEe-time to the defence and
propagation of Christian principles, and become, in
his generation, a most honored and successful de
fender of the faith.* His experience is but one of a
thousand similar ones, where radical and confirmed
infidelity has yielded before the silent, unobtrusive
hmuence of simple Christian Uving.
But these indEect and unintentional effects of the
Christian consciousness are only the least, The
Christian, of normal experience, is of necessity an
irrepressible propagandist. He cannot hold his
peace. He has found the panacea for all human
misery; the gate from death and darkness to im
mortal hfe ; the spell which transmutes chUdren of
* Carl August Auberlen, author of Die Gottliche Offenbarung, and
other'works.

ITS APOLOGETICAL VALUE. 93
the devil into children of the Highest. Of the
mere believer in the EvangeUcal system, Starr King
affirmed, "He must be either a maniac or a mission
ary." What statement, then, can be strong enough
to even hint the aggressive impulse of the man who
has passed from the standpoint of mere belief to that
of personal spiritual experience? His conscious
union with an almighty Saviour Ufts hhn above all
fear, all hesitancy, all calculation of consequences.
In dungeons and stocks, and racks and martyr-fires,
he shouts aloud for joy, and dies with songs of
victory. Such enthusiasm is infectious. The haE-faith of
false religions faE before it; the coldness of false
phUosophy is melted ; the hardness of sin-bound
hearts vanishes away. One chases a thousand, and
two put ten thousand to flight. Here is the philos
ophy of Christian aggression, the secret of all past
Christian conquests. If ever the yet remaining
heathen are to be reached, and Christianity become
the world's religion, it will not be by argument, or
by speculation, or any kind of guess-work, but by
the old gospel process of bringing men to God
through Christ, and so instating within them the
Christian consciousness.
The guarantee of Christianity's perpetuity, then,
is found in her own supernatural hfe. The great
Defender of the Faith is God. As long as he
answers prayer offered in the name of Jesus ; as
long as, through Christ, he inducts men into con
scious communion with himseE, so long will men
believe in Christianity. As long as men show the

94 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS.
possession of the normal Christian consciousness, so
long will other men yearn to possess it also. On
the other hand, were this perpetual divine vindica
tion ofthe system to cease, not aE the arguments of
all the Ebraries of Christian apology could keep the
faith alive a single generation.
AE history but repeats the scene enacted seven
and twenty centuries ago, upon a sea overlooking the
hiE-top of Northern Palestine. As there and then, so
through the age-long hfe of man, false altars and
false priests have stood confronting and opposing
God's. As there and then, however, so always and
everywhere, observant humanity has watched and
waited for the God "that answereth by fire." And
whensoever on inner or on outer altar, at the prayer
of any true prophet, the fire has fallen, even the
onlooking world have Efted multitudinous voices
with the awed yet glad confession: "The Lord
He is God, the Lord He is God."

IV.
MORAL LAW AS REVELATION.
MEN are naturally both reEgious and ethical.
They need truth m reference to God and in
reference to duty ; and under the impulse of their
own nature and the general movement of Divme
Providence, they will feel after God, and inquire for
duty and right. Such truth is seen or felt to be a
condition of satisfaction and happiness, as food and
clothing are essential to physical comfort and well-
being. This want might not be distinctly recognized
in the consciousness of every man, or there might be
no distmct apprehension of the occasion of the
uneasiness or the unrest-, which is the instinctive
outreaching of the soul for substantial truth and
good ; yet, here and there, in almost every com
munity and people, this want finds an utterance.
Some soul, moved by a deeper experience than that
of others, has felt and expressed the want, and the
rest have responded. The utterance is the interpre
tation of theE own experience which they had failed
to analyze. It is indeed conceivable, that a tribe or
people may be so depressed in theE Efe, so occupied
with the meaner wants of theE nature, as never to
have recognized this spEitual want, estabhshed forms
95

96 MORAL LAW
of rehgion, or settled any principles of morality.
But such a fact is exceptional, if it exists at all.
The general result in human experience is, that
there is a struggle after objects of reEgious faith,
and a standard of character, and some attainment in
both directions.
There is no room to doubt, that some knowledge,
both of reUgion and moraUty, is naturally attainable
by men. Paul spoke to the Athenians ofthe encour
agement to seek the Lord, to feel after him, and
find him ; and again, speaking of the Ught pertaining
to God, which is afforded to all men, he says : " For
the invisible things of him, from the creation of the
world, are clearly seen, being understood by the
things which are made, so that they are without
excuse " ; and the corrupt ideas of God, which men
.have cherished, he attributes to the dishonesty, of
their own hearts, — theE unwillingness to practise
the truth they know. This view is sustained by the
facts of human experience. In all ages and among
all people, some real knowledge of God has found
lodgment in the most earnest souls, and has been
imparted by them to others ; and since the human
soul is naturally adapted to the recognition and
acceptance of God, as the child is constituted to
know and accept the parent, the wonder is, that the
darkness of the world has been so dense, the light
so feeble and uncertain. When Socrates presented
a few clear and sEnple thoughts to the Athenians, in
reference to God's being and providence, instead of
embracing him as a teacher and prophet, bringing
the truth which theE souls thirsted for, they put

AS REVELATION. 97
him to death for introducing strange divinities into
the state. Paul's experience among the same people,
five hundred years later, was less tragic, but scarcely
more encouragmg. His judgment in reference to
the unbeUeving world was that " they did not hke
to retam God in theE knowledge."
The latest results of researches into the rehgious
history of man would seem to Eidicate that the move
ment, among the vast masses of mankind, has been
from Ught, more or less distinct, to darkness, hi ref
erence to the being and nature of God; that far
back in tbe history of the principal races, one God
was known and worshipped, — a personal behig, of
infinite exceEence, creator and ruler of men ; and
that this origmal monotheistic view gradually gave
place to polytheism, pantheism, or atheism.
The oldest records of the Chinese recognize a
personal God, — a supreme inteEigence to whom aU
things are known, who approves of righteousness
and hates Euquity. This pure conception lapsed
finally into a phEosophical abstraction, which repre
sents the primal principle as absolute emptiness. Con
fucianism, which has ruled the Chinese thought for
twenty-three hundred years, drops out all thought of
God, and proposes Ancestors as the proper object of the
natural insthict of reverence and worship. The result
is, that Confucius hEnseE, as the most distinguished
among these Ancestors, has many hundred temples
erected to his name, one of them covering ten acres of
ground ; and at the semi-annual festivals, seventy thou
sand animals are offered to his memory, and twenty-
seven thousand pieces of sEk are burned on his altars.
7

98 MORAL LAW
The course of religious thought among the Hindoos
has been much the same. Their oldest Vedas speak
of a supreme Spirit, " who, through his power, is the
only King of the breathing and awakening world,
who governs all, both man and beast." This-mono-
theistic view degenerates at length into Brahminism,
an empty and aimless pantheism; and this again,
by a reaction, into Buddhism, which knows no God
but the Buddha, a deified man; and the grossest
idplatry is the result of all.
In Persia, religious thought, under the hand of
Zoroaster, took the form of Dualism, involving the
existence and conflict of two powers, of Good and
Evil. Yet, there are traces of a Monotheism still back
of this, which finally yielded to the worship of the
host of heaven and to the firehworship of later times.
The Egyptians worshipped a multitude of gods as
far back as their distinctive rehgion can be traced ;
and yet there are indications that this gross and all-
pervading polytheism was a reaction from Asiatic
pantheism; and this, again, a derivation from an
older Monotheism which characterized the original
people of Central Asia.
The Greeks and Romans, springing from the same
Asiatic centre, left behind them the spiritual con
ception of the Deity, and multiplied theE gods,, to
correspond with the forces of nature and with the
objects of interest in personal, in social, and in civil
life, giving them characters answering to their
own, — stern and grave and virtuous, or trifling and
gay and wanton, according to their own inclinations ;
aE this, too, in connection with such attainments in

AS REVELATION. 99
philosophy, hi literature, and in art, as have made
them the admEation of all the later nations. Their
phEosophy, mdeed, carried along, side by side with
this polytheism, lofty ideas of God as a personal and
spiritual bemg. Socrates and Plato and Aristotle
brought back the true thought of God ; but it was
never accepted in the Ufe of the people, and the
phEosophy itseE at length degenerated Eito .the pan
theism of the Stoics and the practical atheism of the
Epicureans. These great facts Ei human experience
show what we may expect from the instincts of
human nature, however elevated they may be, and
correspond with the declarations of Paul in reference
to the course of men as to the knowledge of God :
" Because, that when they knew God, they glorified
him not as God, neither were thankful, but became
vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was
darkened ; " " Who changed the truth of God into a
Ue, and worshipped and served the creature more
than the Creator, who is blessed forever."
All this does not prove that the human soul has
not, in its nature, a reaching after God the Creator,
the infinite Father, in whom we Uve and move and
have our being, and that men do nPt recognize his
claims when he lays his commands upon them. All
these vam imaginings must fly, at God's personal
approach, as shadows of the night, when the morning
comes. They are only such stuff as -dreams are
made of. But these facts do indicate that God must
come down to men, and that men wEl not rise to
God. TheE religious nature does not guide them
to the truth.

100 MORAL LAW
The leading principles of morals would seem to be
more fuEy withhi the reach of men, in their natural
experience, than the great facts of God's being and
government. These principles are strictly rational,
apprehended by the human intelligence as truly as
the axioms of mathematics. God and our neighbor
being known, the obligation to respect their being
and regard their weEare cannot be unknown. Every
human being must know that he ought to love God
and his fellow-men. He may not be able to put his
thought into that exact form, but in a thousand ways
he shows othat he understands the duty. This knowl
edge of the great principle of right and wrong is
brought out in all human experience.
In particular cases and questions of duty, men
dETer, because judgments differ in reference to the
bearing and tendency of particular courses of action.
Not only do the enlightened and the thoughtful dis
sent from the unenhghtened, but the best-informed
and most conscientious, from each other. This va
riance, however, is not Ei reference to the great
principle of duty, — the obligation to regard God
and man, — but with respect to what that regard
requires in the particular case. The Mohammedan
and the Jew alike agree that God's commandments
must be obeyed. The Jew recognizes the duty to
observe as sacred the seventh day of the week.
The Mahommedan knows no such command, and
does not recognize the duty. Either following hon
estly his own light, would meet the divine will.
One Christian accepts the command, " Repent, and
be baptized," as requiring the observance of an out-

AS REVELATION. 101
ward ordmance. Another accepts the command as
referring only to an inward and spEitual cleansing ;
but both aUke maintain the duty of Enplicit obedience
to God, and each is accepted according to that he
hath. One phEanthropist holds that human Ufe is
too sacred a thmg to sacrifice, even for the main
tenance of law. Another holds that human lEe is so
sacred as to call for every safeguard, and to warrant
the infliction even of capital punishment for its pro
tection. Neither ever questions the great duty of
love to man. AU such differences are in entire har
mony with the acceptance of the same fundamental
rule of righteousness, — a practical knowledge of the
great prmciples of ethics.
A full and satisfactory expression of those prin
ciples is entEely a dETerent thmg. The knowledge
comes by intuition; the expression, by reflection
and discrimination. An elementary knowledge of
duty, and a knowledge of the phEosophy of duty,
are dETerent things, yet both are within the reach
of the human understanding. Everywhere upon
the face of the earth we find that men not only
know essential duty, and hold themselves and others
responsible for right conduct, but they have more
or less complete expressions of that law of right
eousness. Certainly it should not surprise us to
find such expressions coming from the philoso
phers, the thinkers among men in every land and
in every age. When Confucius gives us something
like the golden rule of our Saviourr it is only
what we might expect. That rule commends itseK
to the human understanding, and it is only natural

102 MORAL LAW
that the human mind, struggUng for an expression
of our intuitive knowledge of duty, should sometime
attain that beautiful utterance. AU men have some
sense of the beauty of goodness and some aspiration
for it ; and it is only human, that this aspiration
should now and then find expression in a prayer Eke
that of Zoroaster: "I desire, by my prayer, with
uphfted hands, this joy, — the pure works of the
Holy Spirit, a disposition to perform good actions,
and pure gEts for both worlds, the bodily and the
spiritual." The great want of men has never been a knowl
edge of what ought to be done, but a heart to do
what they know. There are none so dark in their
understanding of duty that they could not do nobly
if they would. This was Paul's infirmity. "I de
light in the law of God after the inward man, but
when I would do good, evil is present with me."
This is the weakness of human nature. If, then, God
should give to men a system of ethics, a revelation
of right and duty, we might anticipate special pro
vision for this human weakness, — such adaptations
in the form of the law and in the conditions of ita
presentation as should furnish the motives to obe
dience which all men need. The world is suffering
not so much for hght as. for love, — a disposition to
welcome the light and walk in it. In the darkest
portion of the world, the darkness is not so great
that he who comes to the work with an honest and
earnest heart, would not find the path of essential
duty open to him. Indeed, the maintenance of that
honest and earnest and truth-loving heart is the per-

AS REVELATION. 103
formance of essential duty. It is the faith, without
which it is impossible to please God ; it is the love
which fulfils the law. But here Ees the grand diffi
culty, — how to persuade these dark-souled men to
undertake this honest and truth-loving hfe. By this
test is revealed the weakness of the phEosophies, the
moral systems, and the rehgions of the world in
general. Our present mquiry is, whether the ethical
system of the Christian Scriptures meets those human
wants, hi such a manner and to such a degree as to
mdicate an origin other than human ? Have we in
the Bible the law of God as distmguished from the
results of mere human thought ?
In this inquEy we assume that the Old and the New
Testament present one and the same ethical system.
Such is theE claim and such is the fact. The Saviour,
in his clearest utterances of the law of duty, claims
to add nothing to the substance of that law as
given by Moses and the prophets. He distinctly
announces that his two commandments are only the
summary of the older law, and even the very words
of the first and great commandment, and of the
second, which is Uke unto it, are given in the books
of Moses, Deut. 6:5. " Thou shalt love the Lord
the God with aU thy heart, and with aU thy soul,
and with all thy might."— Lev. 19 :18. " Thou shalt
love thy neighbor as thyseEo." That there should be
in the later Scriptures new applications of the law,
is a necessity of progress in knowledge and experi
ence among men. Such" new appEcations we are
still making, and must contmue to make, as our range
of thought extends and new hnes of action open,

104 MORAL LAW
but the law is forever the same. Nothing can be
added or taken away.
Let us contemplate this law in two particulars, —
its matter or content, and the manner of its presenta
tion : and in the light of these, inquire what are the
indications as to its origin? Is it the product of
human thought in its natural movements, or was it
Divinely given? It may not be amiss to suggest,
that while this question is one of grave importance,
it is not fundamental in the sense that it involves the
validity or binding force of the law. If this law car
ries with it evidence that it is accordmg to truth,
then it must stand and be accepted, whatever the
source from which we obtain it. But if it comes
from God, then it is the law of God, and there are
new and stronger -motives to obedience.
In its matter, the law enjoins the respect which is
due to God and the respect which is due to man.
It contemplates God as having interests and rights
which his creatures are to regard. He occupies the
place of a ruler and a father, and all the interests ¦
and rights of a ruler and a father pertain to him.
His honor is valuable to himself, and important to
the world. Hence, his creatures must render him
the honor which is rightly his. To put another in
his place, is a wrong to him, a trespass upon his
interests and his rights, as well as an offence against
his government, — a weakening of his authority with
his creatures. On his own account, and for his own
sake, we are to render him our reverence and our
loyal obedience, because such a tribute is a good to
him, an element in his blessedness. As a father,

AS REVELATION. 105
he needs the love and confidence of his children.
Such filial regard is a good to him. He asks it on
his own account, as a human father seeks tbe love
and confidence of his chEdren. It is not shnply that
men may be blessed in rendering it, but that he
himself may have the mfinite satisfaction and bless
edness of receiving. The first and great command
ment is, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
might, because God's enjoyment of the -love of his
creatures is the highest conceivable good. The law
directs our thought first to God, and places him first
and foremost, because he is first and greatest and
best ; not because he is in the place of power, and
can requEe such regard, but because he is first by
the infinite excellence and greatness of his being.
Hence the demand is reasonable and just, — the only
proper expression of duty.
It is unquestionably true, that such honor and love
to God are the prime condition of the well-being
of the creatures of God, and it is conceivable that
the duty might be enjoined on this ground. But love
to God is the condition of good to men, because it is
m itseE so reasonable and just. If there were no
natural ground for the duty to God on his own
account, it never could be made the essential condi
tion of our weU-bemg. The law is not, place God
first and foremost in love and honor because thus
only canst thou be blest ; but love and honor him
because this is his right and his due.
In all these declarations and requEements of duty
to God, there is no carefulness to guard against the

106 MORAL LAW
idea that he needs our love and delights in it with
infinite delight, — no Eitimation that while it is our
duty to render this regard, he is so exalted in his
nature that our grateful love cannot reach him. On
the contrary, we are led on to the conviction that in
the depth of the riches of his being there is complete
appreciation of the tribute which his humblest crea
ture brings, and a want when that tribute is with
held. To fail in this duty is a wrong done first to
God, and next to our own souls. The first and great
commandment has an everlastmg basis in the nature
of God, and is sustained and enforced by the reason
of man.
But other beings have their interests, their rights
and claims. It would be human to stop with the
enunciation of this first and great commandment.
God is so great, and his rights and claims so clearly
paramount, that all other beings may be forgotten.
If God be honored, all is well ; nothing further can
be requEed. Thus human wisdom has often rea
soned. Not so, the law as given to Israel. Bythe
side of this great commandment, there stands the
second, Eke unto it, namely this : " Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself." Like unto il, because it
rests on the same foundation of natural interests and
rights. Our neighbor's well-being is a good which
has its claims upon our regard, — a good as valuable
as our own. Hence we are to give him his place by-
our side on the common platform of humanity. He
may be a stranger, or even an enemy ; the obligation
stands in all its force, and these extreme cases are
presented as a test of the genuineness of neighborly

AS REVELATION. 107
love. " Love ye the stranger, for ye were strangers
in the land of Egypt." Our neighbor is a brother
man ; not one who is agreeable to us by his char
acter, or dear to us by natural ties, but one who
shares our humanity, — this breathing, sentient na
ture, with its capacities and its wants. His Eiterests
-and rights are commended to our regard on account
of theE own value, and for his sake, — not because
we bless ourselves in the performance of this neigh
borly duty, or find our own happmess in giving to
others their place. ' Such a result wEl unquestionably
foEow; he that loseth his hfe, shaE keep it ever
more ; but it is not losing one's Efe to place it ever
foremost in the service rendered to others. The law
is not, love thyself by loving thy neighbor, but love
thy neighbor as thyseE. He has his rights, as we
have ours, and we are to give them place. On the
same ground upon which honor is due to God, rests
our duty to man, and God places himself side by
side with man ia the presentation of his claims.
Again, the second commandment is like the first,
because the same state of heart fulfils them both.
The just and honest heart render both to God and
to man theE dues, and one of these commandments
cannot be fulfiEed without fulfilEng the other. Love
to God is even tested by the fact of love to man ;
" He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen,
how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"
The love to God which passes by man, is a counter
feit and a delusion, and the love to man which for
gets God, is equally so. This is divine wisdom and
msight, — luminous to the human intelhgence, when

108 MORAL LAW
once presented ; but when did mere human wisdom
ever attain it? Brahminism has stumbled on' one
side, giving us a piety as empty and soulless as
space ; and Buddhism and Confucianism on the other,
presenting a powerless and lifeless moraEty. The
Divine Law solves the problem, making genuine
piety and moraEty one and the same thing. Each
involves the other.
Let us remember, too,, that obedience to this law
is a spiritual service. " Man looketh on the outward
appearance, but God looketh on the heart." " Love
is the fulfilEng of the law." What God requEes is
the service of the heart. No ritualistic forms, how
ever elaborate, can meet his wEl ; no wealth of sac
rifice, no ascetic observance or self-immolation. To
the anxious worshipper who inquires, Wherewith shall
I come before the Lord and bow myseE before the
high God ? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands
of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression ; the
fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" The
startling answer comes : " He hath showed thee, O
man, what is good ; and what doth the Lord require
of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to
walk humbly with thy God ? " Thus the meanest,
the most ignorant, and the poorest of his creatures
may perfectly meet his will. As luminous as the
sunlight is this divine law, with the truth, that genuine
character is what pleases God ; that " truth in the
inward parts" commends the soul to his approval,
and that every outward form or inward exercise,
apart from this essential righteousness, is vain and

AS REVELATION. 109
V
worthless. In this grand characteristic, the Sacred
Scriptures stand alone among the rehgious systems
of the world. Brahminism speaks approvingly of
righteousness of character, but places formal obser
vances and ascetic practices foremost in the work of
making merit, and bringing the soul to everlasting
rest. " Devotion is equal to the performance of all
duties." ' ' He who has killed a cow, must wait all day
on a herd of cows and stand inhahng the dust raised
by theE hoofs. At night, he must sit near and guard
them. He must stand while they stand, follow
when they move, and lie down near them when they
lie down. By thus waiting on a herd for three
months, he atones for his guilt." "He who can re
peat the whole of the Rig-Veda would be free from
guEt.even E he had killed the Eihabitants of the
tliree worlds."
Buddhism represents one of its saints as giving
his body for food to a starved tigress, and thus
attaEring at once the everlasting rest without the
necessity of countless transmigrations. The vEtue
of the act was not so much in the pity for the brute,
as Ei the seE-abnegation. Errors like these are
human, and Christianity itseE, m its actual exhi
bitions, has often been disfigured hy this human
blunder. But no such darkness dims the heavenly
light. The divine law utters no uncertam sound.
"Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man
to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head hke
a bufrush, and spread sackcloth and ashes under
him ? Will ye caE this a fast, and an acceptable day
to the Lord ? Is not this the fast that I have chosen,

110 MORAL LAW
to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy
burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that
ye break every yoke ? Is it not to deal thy bread to
the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are
cast out to thy house ? When thou seest the naked
that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself
from thine own flesh?" — Isa. 58:5-7. And then,
lest the mere outward performance be mistaken for
obedience, we read again : " Though I bestow aU
my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my
body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth
me nothing."— I Cor. 13 : 3.
Again, because this law is spEitual, reading the
thought and intent of the heart, it is universal, — aE
comprehensive, embracmg all rational beings, in.
whatever world, and extending to every thought and
word and deed. There is no attempt to lay out in
detail the duty of any being. The law brings its
force to bear upon the very fountain of action, and
makes it pure ; then pure streams must flow through
all the channels of Efe. The form of action wiU
vary with varying Ught and changing relations, but
the obedient spirit is always the same. The simplest
child that Usps : " Our Father which art in Heaven,"
and the loftiest" angel that bows withhi the very circle
of his glory, are one in spirit, chEdren of the Heav
enly Father, ahke approved of him. In the same
great law they find the rule of lEe and action. It
meets the want of the least and the greatest, and can
never be outgrown. Even God who proclaims the
law, commends himself to his creatures as embody
ing in his action the principle of the law. " Shall

AS REVELATION. Ill
not the Judge of aU the earth do right?" " A God
of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he."
The hohness of God is but the love which he requEes
of his creatures. Thus, under this law, the universe
becomes a kingdom of righteousness and love, — the
Sovereign himself leading the way in the works of
love which the law requEes, heaven and earth and
heU bearing witness to the beneficence of his sway.
This conception is too high for the unaided human
reason to reach, but it is not too high for the human
soul to accept and rejoice in. Such a law can never
grow old ; it is as fresh and vital now as when it feE
upon the awe-struck tribes at Sinai. It is the abso
lute righteousness, valid for time and for eternity.
. That there were temporary and specific precepts
associated from tune to tune with these great, un
changing principles, rather strengthens than weakens
the argument. Out of the great central principle,
spechic and local applications must always arise.
The excellence of the law is, that it is capable of
these specific adaptations, and provides for them.
Special observances and forms of worship are
arranged for those that need them ; but, from first to
last, there is care to distinguish between every formal
observance and the obedience of the heart. " Hath
the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sac
rifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold,
to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken, than
the fat of rams." No ambiguity pn this point is ever
admitted. From the beginning to the end, a Ene of
heavenly Eght runs between the essential and un-
changEig, and the formal and temporary.

112 MORAL LAW
A complete presentation of the case would seem
to require an examination of the specific provisions
of the law, and an exhibition of the divine wisdom
which characterizes them. Such a work lies beyond
the Emits prescribed by this occasion. Our present
view must be general, and therefore less satisfactory.
An allusion to a single specific precept must suffice,
that which prohibits the use of images, — a pre
cept appropriate to men in every age and condition,
forbidding the worship of God under any form of
nature, or any image of "gold or silver or stone,
graven by art or man's device." Yet the law given
to the people of Israel is distinguished from all
other ancient religions by this prohibition. The fire-
worship of the Persians was still idolatry, though
perhaps -less degrading than the grosser practices of
other nations, " who changed the glory of the uncor
ruptible God into an image made like to corruptible
man, and to birds and four-footed beasts and creeping
things. To meet the weakness of human nature in
its effort to embface the Infinite Spirit, and to save
men from the loathsome degradation of idolatry was
the problem solved by the system of worship and
of morals prescribed to the children of Abraham.
Was the wisdom which devised it simply human ?
In its matter, then, we find this ancient law satis
factory and complete, — as appropriate to-day as at
its first announcement, and never to fail, though
heaven and earth pass away. Let us now inquire,
what there is in the form and manner of its presenta
tion which distinguishes it from other systems of
morality and religion, and which indicates a divine

AS REVELATION. 113
origin ? In this dEection, there are two particulars
specially prominent.
In the first place, the law presents the great ob
jects upon which obligation terminates, in a definite
and vital form. The thought is dEected to God
and to our neighbor, — bemgs whom we know and
whose nature we can understand though we may
not comprehend it. All duty, aU obUgation, finds
its object within this circle of our vision. Duty
thus takes a definite and tangible form. We are
not set upon any vague and uncertam pursuit,
left to range the universe to find where the path
of duty Ues, or where are the objects to which our
obligation leads us. We know at once who has
claims upon us, and what the nature of that claim
must be. Our neighbor is our brother, and God is
our Father ; we bear the Enage of both. In the hght
of our own nature, we understand our duty to man
and to God. What the love is which fulfils the law,
— the attitude of soul which is right toward God
and toward man, we cannot doubt.
If human wisdom had framed the precept, it would
probably have taken the abstract form : " Thou art a
reasonable bemg ; obey the law of thy higher nature ;
act reasonably; do right for its own sake"; and
thus bewildered human creatures would have been
left, with introverted gaze, peering into the depths
of theE own consciousness for hght upon the question
of the reasonable and the right. AU such abstract
statements are provided for in the present concrete
form of the law. The law embraces every such prin
ciple, and covers every conceivable duty of all

114 MORAL LAW
beings for all time, and makes the way of duty
as luminous as the Ught of heaven. It takes the
thought, at once, away from seE, first to God and
then to man, providing for a true and wholesome
activity. But beyond this, in the objects presented to our
regard, we find the motives to obedience which >the
human soul requires. The nature of these objects
appeals to our hearts. Over us bends the Father
of Spirits, infinite in his excellence and all-embrac
ing in his love, — - the Lord our God, whom we are to
love with all the heart. How reasonable and just
the duty ! How strong the clahn, and what motives,
in the excellence and majesty of his being, for a
response to that claEn ! By our side stands our
neighbor, encompassed with all human infirmity and
want, — child of the same Father, with a vital, sen
tient nature like our own, calling for our neighborly
regard by the signEicance of his present experience
and the reach of his destiny; and again the law
comes : " Love him as thyseE." In the objects thus
presented, we have the highest motives to obedience.
There is divine wisdom Ei so shaping the law as to
bring these motives in fuE force upon the soul. How
feeble and cold, in comparison, is any abstract iter
ance of human philosophy, — be reasonable/, bevjust,
do right, respect every interest, regard all being-
Living, vital motives, we have seen, ar& "Ore great-
want in any moral system, and the divine law takes-
hold of the heart by this direct presentation of the
objects of duty.
The second feature Ei the manner of presentation

AS REVELATION. 115
is, that the principle of obhgation is made a divme
command, and comes to men not merely as an
attainment of human thought, an axiom which the
reason intuitively affirms in its own cold hght, but
as enacted by divme authority, and enforced by
the personal power of a present God. Moses and
the prophets of Judaism and Christianity do not
stand before the people as gEted with a clearer
insight, a genius for religion or an ethical inspi
ration, by which they discern the great principle of
obhgation. They bring to men the law of God's
kingdom, the express wiU of Jehovah, and it comes
with all the force which divine authority can give it.
It was not enough that God endowed men with an
ethical nature, — reason to understand the principle
of duty as they know all necessary truth, — then to
leave them to follow their own natural light. It is
undoubtedly true, as Paul has announced, ,that those
who have not the law are a law unto themselves,
showing the enactments of the law written upon
their hearts. But how feeble is this natural sense
of duty, compared with the impression which the
express wEl of God conveys, with all the force of
his majesty and authority, his fatherly prerogative
and his yearning love !
Back of this presentation of duty as divine law,
there stands the great fact of God's personality; a
fact which was essentially, lost to the other nations,
but which was the basis of all reUgious thought
among the Hebrews. They are taught to regard
God as the Creator, and themselves as the work of
his hand; not an emanation from some uncon-

116 MORAL LAW
scious, sleeping divinity, from whom they sprang
without his purpose, as dreams gather about one who
sleeps ; not the work of some intermediate power,
by which they were separated from the knowledge
or regard of the eternal, seE-existent God. Of
such ideas the world was full. India and Persia'
and Egypt could have furnished such conceptions of
God, and such only. But to the Hebrew thought,
God was presented full of active, intelligent, and sen
sitive Ufe. He had " made the heavens and earth and
sea and all that in them is," with a definite and settled
purpose ; he still ruled in the kingdom of heaven
and in the kingdom of men, and often revealed him-
seE hi mighty displays of his presence ; using the
powers of nature as his servants, going before the
people in the piUar of cloud by day, and of fire by
night ; leading them through the wilderness as the
shepherd his flock, — Eitensely interested in their
character and condition, claiming their love as a
good to himseE, and from his open hand scattering
blessings in return. From this Sovereign, Father
and Friend, comes the law to them and to mankind,
— the wUl of the high and lofty One who inhabits
eternity; and who dwells, too, with the humble
and contrite spirit. Such a law is no mere sys
tem of ethics, no human philosophy, but a divine
reEgion, taking hold of the hearts of men with
all the force with which God appeals to our
reUgious nature. Men are naturally reUgious.
The impulse of reverence and worship is stronger
and more lasting than any other, except the mere
animal instincts and passions. In the world, gen-

AS REVELATION. 117
erally, the reUgious tendency was wholly separated
from morahty. Men worshipped with costly sacri
fices and painful observances and penances, not with
a loving and contrite heart, dutiful to God and
benevolent toward man. Duty to God was utterly
divorced from the claims of men, so that these
claims were rather counteracted than sustained by
the claims of religion. It is probably true that re
ligion, even m this impulsive form, with the ethical
element wholly ehminated, counteracted, in some
degree, the gross anhnal impulses, and saved from
the loathsome degradation of mere anhnal hfe ; so
that it is reasonable to say that Paganism, with
all its idolatry, is better than no rehgion.
But it was no mere human thought that bound re
ligion and moraUty together by an indissoluble bond,
placing the clauns of God and the clanns of man on a
common foundation, making religion morality, and
morality religion, and enforcing the common duty
by all the motives which appeal to man's rehgious
nature. Religion, without morality, is a blind force,
working mightily, but not beneficently. Morality,
without religion, is feeble and mechanical and hope
less. Combined, they constitute the true human hfe
which pleases God and blesses man. Where, hi
the history of the race, have they been bound to
gether and made one, as in this perfect law of the
sacred Scriptures ; and by what mightier motive
could such a law be enforced? "I am Jehovah, thy
God, which brought' thee up out of the land of
Egypt. Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
" Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against

118 MORAL LAW
the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself : lam Jehovah." All the power
which the thought of God has over the hearts of
men, is brought to bear in the enforcement of this
common duty, of love to God and love to man. How
much stronger is the motive than that which comes
with the simple apprehension of the duty by one's
own understanding ! For the child to know by his
own judgment what is proper for him to do, is one
thing ; to have added to that perception all the force
which comes with the personal presence and benign
authority of the parent, is a very dETerent thing ;
and this only feebly illustrates the power of religious
motives over the consciences' and the hearts of men.
Coming from God, the law naturally and inevitably
takes this form. If it came from man, its form
remains without explanation, — it has no natural
origm. It has sometimes been a matter of surprise that
in connection with the law in the Old Testament, N
so Ettle reference is made, or, as some claim, none
at all, to the considerations of a future Ufe, — that no
motives to obedience are drawn from the world to
come. But let us consider that in God's personal
presence all interests are brought together. The seen
and the unseen world are the same to him, — all
" naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we
have to do." To one who realizes God's presence,
the oneness of his kingdom is a simple fact. The
people of Israel were taught, in obedience, to expect
God's favor; in disobedience, to dread his frown.
That favor meant Ufe, all that men hope for, and

AS REVELATION. 119
his frown meant death, all that men dread, wher
ever in the universe his power extends. Under
God's direct eye, as they seemed to be, it would not
be natural or important to discriminate between the
seen and the unseen world. The law was God's law,
and carried with it all the motives which gather about
the relations of men to God.
We have thus seen, that in its matter the ethical
system of the Scriptures involves the absolute
moraUty and the absolute rehgion ; that it was
complete in its first announcement, and has been
extended in the later Scriptures only by new appli
cations, — not by any addition to its principles.
Other systems indicate a struggle of the human soul
toward the apprehension of those ideas, and when
they make any approximation to this standard, we
are led to rejoice that men in the dark places of the
earth have had somewhat of the true light ; but this
law has stood, and must forever stand, as the model
by which all other systems are to be judged. When
human philosophy shaE have attained to the most
catholic expression of the law under which man is
placed by bis nature and relations, shall have collated
and generalized aU systems and all forms of thought
for the expression of absolute truth, the product
can be only that which we have in the Scriptures,
and which comes to us as the voice of God, — the
first and great commandment, and the second, which
is like unto it.
We have seen that m its manner and form of pre
sentation, this law meets the great human want of
motives to obedience, combining and concentrating

120 MORAL LAW
all the considerations of religion and humanity, and
Enpressing itself upon the deepest and most perma
nent elements of human nature, thus becoming the
law written on the heart. To the full estabhshment
of this law among men, the whole course of divine
providence seems to have been directed. The
Saviour's work Ei the world had this significance.
His words, such as man never spake, were a restate
ment of the precepts of the law ; his life was an
embodunent of its purity, and his death so reEEbrced
by its power the weakness of the law, that we are
permitted to see its righteousness fulfilled in those who
walk not after the flesh, but after the SpEit. Well
might he say, I came not to destroy the law but to fulfil !
Whence, then, is this law? from heaven or of
men? If we say, of men, the law wiU then not
be invahdated. It must stUl stand the complete
and perfect expression of duty, — the law for all
being and all time. But we propose, to ourselves
a problem difficult of solution, when we Umit our
selves to such conditions. How is it that this mar
vellous combination of reUgion and humanity sprung
up among the people of Israel, at the time of their
deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, and held its
place from that day on ; and that, to-day, all nations
are compeUed to accept it as the ultimate and abso
lute truth in morality and religion ? Can we name
any human source from which Moses obtained this
law, or can we account for any such quickening of
the rehgious and ethical sense of that people as to
yield us the marvellous ^product? This law was
not one of the treasures gathered, when the people

AS REVELATION. 121
" spoiled the Egyptians." Egypt had no such treas
ure to give them. What the Egyptians thought
and said of God and man for a thousand years
before, and a thousand years after, we read to-day
upon their temples and their tombs. Moses was
learned in all theE wisdom ; but the law of Moses is
not the wisdom of Egypt. The people set forth the
wisdom of Egypt, when they bowed to the Molten
CaE, and said : " These be thy gods, O Israel, which
brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. The
mummied buEs of Memphis show where the people
got that lesson. This was what Egypt gave them.
The Vedas and the Zend-avestas of the farther
East, giving the concentrated wisdom of India and
of Persia, afford no hght upon the subject. Those
ancient writings exhibit the uncertain feeling after
truth which naturally characterizes the human soul,
with now and then a flash of Ught out of the dark
ness ; but no steady luminary to which the nations
may look, rises in that eastern sky. The star seen
by the Wise Men of the East stood over the manger
where He was cradled who was born King of the
Jews. The law wliich the Sacred Scriptures embody is
beyond aU question the law of God. If he should
speak to men from heaven to show them their duty
and enforce the obhgation, he would give us no
other law. There is no pther law hi heaven to be
given. When, then, we accept it as God's law,
uttered by bis voice and written by his finger, we
are sustained, not only by the testimony of Moses
and the people, but by all the inherent probabilities
of the case.

V.
THE INCARNATION.
BT TRUMAN H. POST, D. D.
ALL things are of God. The moral forces ofthe
universe are in Him. To evolve and apply
these forces, is its great moral problem ; to bring the
creature into sympathy with the Creator, the great
measure for its moral restoration and perfection.
To effect this, God must reveal himseh? ; and to a
race embraced within a world of sense, He must
reveal himseE in the visible and sensible :
There are three ways in which God may disclose
himseE in the visible and sensible : First, In the
fixed order of nature, or by the system of immutable
laws : Second, By the interruption or transcending
of those laws, in attestation of a verbal revelation :
Third, By personal representation, attested in like
manner. Combining with all these, and supplementmg or
modEying them, is the disclosure of God in our
moral consciousness. This, combined with the first
above mentioned, or the disclosure of God by fixed
laws, makes the religion of nature; and this, per
verted and corrupted by human imagination, passion,
and pravity, constitutes that of the heathen world.
122

THE INCARNATION. 123
Its combination with the second gives us the He
brew system. Its blendmg with the third appears
in Christianity.
The mcarnation of the Son of God, or the revela
tion of the divine nature in a human person, is the
peculiar distinction of Christianity. The superior
efficiency of that revelation for the moral renovation
and perfection of man, as demonstrated by history
and the philosophy of mmd, goes far to prove the
divine . original of that religion of which it is the
distinctive and capital characteristic. This is the
scope ofmy present argument.
My theme is, The incarnation of the Son of God as
the great restorative and conservative moral force of
the world.
The Christian doctrme of the mcarnation has no
analogue amongst the religions of the world. In
moral aspect and significance entEely aloof from the
Avatars or Eicarnations of Brahminism or Buddhism
and the Uke, it stands hi Christianity unique and
alone. My argument clahns that this is one of those
doctrines that both vindicate themselves and the sys- ¦
tems to which they belong ; one which, not invented
or discovered by human reason, yet approves itself,
when announced, to our reason, as pecuUarly adapted
and requisite to accompUsh the moral salvation of our
race; and that its adaptation to effect this, the
highest aim of all religions, is of force to establish the
truth of that in which alone it is found.
My argument assumes the existence of a God, ra
tional and moral ; and infers, from a perceived fitness
of thhigs to produce rational and beneficent results,

. 124 THE INCARNATION.
theE origin from Him. It applies this reasoning to
the scheme of moral forces in Christianity, and
especially to the doctrine of the incarnation. And
thus, as the demonstrated adaptation of the law of
gravitation "to preserve the order of the natural
universe argues its reaUty, so indications of tho
adaptation of the incarnation to restore and conserve
the order ofthe moral world, may, to the extent they
are disclosed, be reasonably regarded as furnishing
a presumption of its truth.
We argue, accordingly, that as presenting the pro
foundest philosophy ofthe redemption of fallen man,
and as being clearly a " wisdom and power unto sal
vation," as unique as it is requisite, this doctrine
proves itseb? to be of God ; and the more so, as it
was first promulgated by those who were not phi
losophers, and who had no consciousness or ambition
of philosophic system.
As already intimated, my argument will regard
the incarnation as the veritable revelation of God in
a human person. In thus defining, it wEl essay no
sharp adjustment of controverted ontologieal or
hypostatical relations of Christ to the Father. Into
questions of correlation between them, or of the
duality or singleness of natures in Christ, it is not
requisite to my present aim to enter. But, avoiding
philological or hermeneutical controversies, my argu
ment will be predicated on that unity of Christ with
God that the lowest interpretation of common Scrip
ture statements seems to necessitate; a unity that
presents Jesus Christ as veritably in hhnseE a
revelation of God.

THE INCARNATION. 125
Such a unity and such a revelation as seem of
necessity implied in the declarations of the Evange
hsts, as in the first chapter of John : " No man hath
seen God at any tune ; the only begotten Son, which
is in the bosom of the Father. He hath declared
Him." And again : " In the beginning was the word,
and the word was with God, and the word was
God. The same was hi the beginnuig with God."
" And the world was made by HEn." " And the
word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and
we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten
of the Father fuU of grace and truth." And again
(Matt. 1 : 27) : " 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." I mean such a personal revelation
of God as seems • impEed in the declaration that
Jesus was " the brightness of his glory and the ex
press Enag'e of his person " ; that " God hath shined
in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of
the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ; " that
" in Hhn dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily " ;
such a revelation as could justEy Christ's own assev
eration that his words and his works were not his
own, but truly God's ; and that " he who had seen
Him, had seen the Father."
Now, language of this description, it seems to me,
can imply nothing less than that Christ was, in his
own person, m a sense which was true of no -other
,in human form, a veritable revealer of God ; not
of God m the infinitude of his nature, — for the
infinite cannot be revealed to or by the finite, — but

126 THE INCARNATION.
of God in the quality of his moral attributes, full of
grace and truth, of pity-, mercy, and love ; such a
revelation as would have power to transfigure our
moral nature, so that we, "beholding as in a glass
the glory of the Lord, should be changed into the
same Enage, from glory to glory." Apart from the
question of the truth or falsity of the Christian.
scheme, the in{ent of that scheme, it seems to me,
unmistakably is, to set forth Christ as, to this extent,
a personal revelation of God. To this intent, I shall
argue. My argument assumes also a moral fall of man; a
fact as patent in nature and history, as in Scripture ;
and which, apart from aU controverted dogmas of its
origin, its depth or extent, clearly needs restoration
and cure. The actual existence and prevalence of
moral evil in our world needs no. proof, and hardly
more docs the natural downward tendency of souls
which have once admitted evil within themselves,
and the consequent need of dehverance by a power
from without themselves. My aim will be to show
the natural efficiency of the revelation of God in a
human person to accompUsh such a deliverance, and
the evidence thus accruing to Christianity, which
presents this remedy for the moral malady of man.
This argument resolves itself into the following
propositions : —
1. In order to salvation, i. e. in order to his
highest excellency and bUss, man must be conformed
moraUy to God.
2. Such conformity can be wrought in the soul
only by sympathy with God, or the feeling of his

THE INCARNATION. 127
conscious personal presence applying itseE directly
to the soul.
3. Such sympathy can be created only by God's
revelation of HimseE.
„ 1st. By a person, and
2d. By a human person, — i. e. one which, while
representing truly the divine nature, is exhibited
also as Uving, acting, speakhig, feeEng, suffering,
under human Umitations and conditions.
These propositions can be proved, both analyticaUy
and historically. We wEl consider, —
First, the necessity of conformity to God, mor
aUy, Ei order to salvation.
That to this end the soul must be in moral accord
with God, — with that Being who is the fountam, the
very element of its existence, hi whom it must for
ever Eve, move, and have being ; with the ever-pres
ent, all-pervading, all-embracing, eternaEy regnant
spEit that must forever enfold it with its emotion, its
wiU, and its power, — seems a proposition requiring no
argument. Discrepancy with Him must Eievitably
be everlasting jangle and discord with the universe ;
a condition as hopeless of happiness as would be that
of a man with his present physical nature Enmersed
in the sun. God must, by the laws of bemg, be to
a soul not conformed to Him a " consuming fire."
He must be so by the natural effect of mind acting
on mind.
Mind acting on mind is the mightiest factor we
know of in this Ufe, of pleasure or pam; beyond aU
delights of sense, beyond all tortures of poison or
steel or scourge or flame. From human hate or

128 THE INCARNATION.
scorn, men gladly hide in the very grave. So they
exult to pluck the guerdon of love or fame, in the
very jaws of death. What then must be the action
of the mind of' God, forever raying its emotion of
love or abhorrence on the soul, but a Heaven or a
Hell? Moreover, in order to eternal Ufe, man must be
conformed to God as the perfect archetype of beauty
and right; else the eternal necessity of our moral
being, which unites virtue to happiness and vice to
misery, must be broken.
Heaven is no sapphire city, no robes of white, no
walls of amethyst and gold. It must be found in the
soul's harmony with the All-good, the Almighty and
the Everlasting. Else, nearer the blazing throne the
worse ; the soul would hurry to hide in the very
shadow of death from the blasting beauty of God.
The light is beautEul, and sweet is it to the eye to
behold the sun ; but to the eye diseased, its beauty
and sweetness become shafts of flame. Sweet is
music ; but to the ear diseased the most deUcious
strains ever berne on mortal airs grate torturing
discord. So it must be to the soul of man in this
universe not in accord with its Creator.
Lithe second place, the power to secure this confor
mity must be sought in the divine nature itself, re
vealed to man ; not only as thus disclosing the para
digm to which the soul must be conformed, but also
the forces to effect such conformity. God HimseE is
the mightiest of formative forces appUed to the human
soul. The God we worship ever forms us to his own
Enage, be he Jehovah or Juggernaut, a Christ or a

THE INCARNATION. 129
Belial. The mightiest, certainly, if not the only
power to restore the fallen soul, is in the evolution
of the moral God, — the power to new-create, in the
original creator. This evolution requires a personal
revelation. Accordingly, to unfold and apply to souls
his own idea through a revelation in a human person,
is the Christian scheme of salvation.
In accordance with thie aun it is noteworthy, the
forces of that scheme are all eminently and character-
isticaUy personal rather than dogmatic. The universe
is to be saved by a person, not a precept, a thesis, or
a phEosophy. Salvation is through faith in a person ;
is beEevhig in, being in, abiding in, hving or dying
in, a person. It is putting on, being baptized
into, confessing, serving-, loving a person. The term
Christianity is not found in the New Testament. It
is faith in Christ. AE is Christ. ImpersonaEties,
abstractions, quaEties separate from subjects, graces
from persons, figure little. Prominent ever, over all
its field of vision, is a Evhig form, a face, a person.
The whole system, its entire genius, looks person-
ward. Everything in ritual and doctrine is adjusted
and phrased to bring before the mind a person. This
is the objective aim and view. The creed is ever
the mere star-glass ; Christ Hhnself, ever the morn-
ing star. Not an intellectual or ethical system, not
a scheme of abstract graces and virtues, but a living
soul, that wears aU graces and virtues as his embodi
ment, and quickens through aU with a life, —who
is indeed self-styled as Himself " the way, the truth
and the life," — is the Redeemer of the world.
In this way alone, through a person who is in the

130 THE INCARNATION.
bosom of the Father, was redemption practicable.
For thus only could the saving forces which are in
God be brought to apply themselves adequately to
man's soul. God is a person. A person can be
properly expressed or revealed only by a person. No
abstractions could do it, no mere form of words, no
dogma, no system. A soul is so separated from a
mere attribute, is of such an entirely different order
of existence, that it cannot be represented by it.
Abstractions have no life in them, no warmth, no
plastic power ; mere unsubstantial phantasms or con
cepts of the mind. A religion consisting of them
would be the most shadowy and powerless of things.
To the million, the purely spiritual and infinite is
simply inconceivable ; and to the sage, equally an
impracticable mystery.
A God attempted to be disclosed simply through
these, could be no Saviour, certainly, of the mass ;
his gospel no gospel for the poor. They know and
feel simply things in the concrete. They require sen
suous imagery or embodiment. No mere philoso
phies or theologies are to them revelations of God,
any more than a treatise on optics is light, or an
analysis of colors is picture.
When I claim that God can be adequately revealed
only by a person, I mean as I have premised, the
living God, the moral God; something beyond a
force, a principle, a dynamic element.
Those that use the term " God " to denote simply
these, seem to me to violate the essential idea of the
word, to use language nonsensically, and by a misno
mer to convert an attribute into a substance, a predi
cate into a subject.

THE INCARNATION. 131
God, as a moral person, cannot be revealed by
general laws further thari as the mere operator of
those laws. Reasoning from the consciousness of
our own moral constitution to God as its author, we
may beUeve God is a moral person, and as such dweUs
behind these laws. But the laws themselves disclose
only a fixed order, that turns not aside for pity or
love or justice, -that never forgives, never relents ;
cruslung alike whatever comes in its path, the inno
cent and lovely equaUy with the foul and the guilty.
It is true, God as a moral person may be evidenced
by the visible arrest or interruption of those laws in
the interest of truth, justice, or mercy, especiaUy if, as
in case pf the Jews, such arrest and suspension are
associated with voice and vision, authenticating law
and verbal enunciation. But still it is God the infi
nite, the incomprehensible, the unapproachable, the
ever-veiled ; one tokening himseE in signs and
wonders, but. hiding in the thick darkness or access-
less Ught.
How dim and feeble such a disclosure ; how inad
equate to the wants and capacities, at least of the
mUhons ; how far beyond theE reach of vivid, assim
ilative, conscious sympathy ! They requEe to this
end a visible person exhibiting the divEie love and
sympathy hi Ufe, action, and suffering.
No mere verbal predication of attributes suffices ;
although, such a revelation through a person, havmg
once been made, words are competent to perpetuate it
historically and doctrinaUy. On the basis of recorded
and attested fact, the human mind can caU up and
continue to itseE such a revelation, with the power.

132 THE INCARNATION.
of present reaUty. The more especially may it do
this with the preternatural aid of the Holy Spirit
which the Christian scheme presents ; and it is legiti
mate, in arguing that scheme, to argue from the
standpoint of its own provisions. With the preter
natural aid ofthe Divine SpEit promised to assist the
conceptions of the human mind as a perpetual sug
gestion and continuation, so to speak, of the present
Christ, our mind is certainly adequate, a personal
revelation having been once made, to perpetuate that
revelation in its thought and sentunent. But this
revelation wEl tend in each mmd to clothe itself
with personal embodiment and feature, adapted to
the experience, the idiosyncrasies, and the moral
tastes and needs of the individual.
And here let us note the divine wisdom of the New
Testament Revelation, in that while in Christ the
moral God is clearly disclosed, the corporeal Christ
is no where delineated. Of the mightiest, most
glorious personage that has entered the circle of
time, no picture, no statue, no trace, not even a hint
historical, is left, whereby to frame a corporeal
likeness.* Each mmd is left to its own ideal,
fashioned as it will be by its own moral taste or pe
culiar spiritual want, so that each human soul sees its
own face of Christ ; and while the historical Christ
retires behmd the darkness of the crucifixion or the
ascension-cloud, the personal Christ still walks the
earth with forever-open face, and as miEion-visaged
as the ideals of the sons of men.
* I need not say, I regard the famous epistle of Publius Lentulus as
a foigery.

THE INCARNATION. 133
And here agam we note another of the pecuhar
moral forces of the Christian scheme. This personal
Christ is no mere idealization of a dead sage, saint, or
hero, no mere historic memory embodied, as of an
Epaminondas or a Plato. He is no past personage.
We go to no tomb to find Him. He Eves evermore,
and is conceived of as present, not only in thought,
but in reahty, to each and every soul, everywhere to
the end of time ; revealed to faith and love, though
hid the while to sense.
Thus the glory of God in .the face of a Christ,
unecUpsed by tune or death, is to shine forth on the
earth as long as the sun, that face Eving and present
to each and all of the sons of men, and beaming on
them with a sympathy asshnilating the human to the
divine. Thus we have what Plato desiderates in his Phsedo ;
that very form and face of virtue, which, according
to his thought, could it be seen by our bodily eyes,
would excite in us a wonderful love, and captivate us
with its beauty. But that which thus captivates is
no mere abstraction or intellectual conception. Such
breed in us no love, no enthusiasm, no assimilative
sympathy. But what we have before us is a purely
and perfectly virtuous being, in which all graces and
excellences are but phases of a Eving soul ; the lofti
est, purest, sweetest, holiest Ideal realized, — the
divine beauty incarnate, — the son of God. To draw
men, through gazing on that face, into assimilative
sympathy which shall transform the faUen soul into
the image of its Maker, is the great aim of Christi
anity.

134 THE INCARNATION.
The restorative forces for such a soul evidently
must be, as we have already indicated, from without
itself. Once admitting sin within itseK, it has come
within a fatal circle, from which, left to itself, it will
not escape. It must be deEvered by bemg drawn
into sympathy with a purer mind.
No theories or definitions of the good, the beauti
ful, the right or expedient, suffice. The great diffi
culty is not in intellect, but soul; not to define, but
.to induce pursuit ; to create a loving and a choosing.
" Video meliora proboque. Deteriora sequor"-r~
" I see the good, and I approve it too ;
I know the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue," —
is the self-recorded epitaph of the most brilliant and
illumined uitellects. " The good I would, I do not ;
the evil I would not, that I do," pictures the malady.
Nor is it mere choosing that makes morality. It is
the motive of the choice. The essence of vEtue is the
love of virtue itself.
This love is kindled in vision of a person, not a
thesis or a philosophy or a paradigm. Life comes*
from life ; from the action of soul on soul. We need
that mysterious power, — earlier born than logic,
swEter than induction, Eresolvable by analysis,
occult amidst the primal and ultunate elements of
our being, which we call sympathy, — that wondrous
power of Ufe with life, assimilating, through inter-
consciousness, souls that are brought into commun
ion ; that makes us grow Eke to the face we gaze on ;
that shapes the infant countenance to the mother's
smile, with almost its earhest look on the Ught.

THE INCARNATION. . 135
By this Eifluence, this extension of personahty,
the Creator transfigures created minds to his own
likeness, and binds the moral universe to HimseE.
It extends, we believe, through all orders of being,
a charm from the eternal mind through the lowest
rank of ascending souls, drawing up all to himself; a
chain, fastenmg aU to his throne which, being sun
dered, the bands of moral order would break, and
the moral universe shik to night and chaos.
This assimEative power of sympathy is mightier in
proportion to the greatness and glory of the being
into inter-consciousness with which the soul is drawn.
Evidently, then, it is mightiest Ei communion with
God. Now, whether or no we are authorized to
predicate that no less force could arrest the fall of a
soul and new-create it, it is clear that Christianity
introduces the mightiest power in the universe for
that purpose, in drawing man dEectly into sympathy
with the divine nature.
But to secure this sympathy, it were not enough
that Christianity revealed to us sunply a personal
God. It might sunply disclose almighty, omniscient,
and eternal justice watching over a world of sin.
The mind that is to draw me into sympathy, must
affect me, not only with a sense of its purity, beauty,
and grandeur, but also of its kindness, its pity, its
placableness, its readiness to forgive if I have
offended. Terror and despair freeze up all sympa
thy. In order to enter mto sympathy with God, I
must feel, beyond all questiomngs, God loves me,
pities me, is ready to forgive me on repentance.
Such sentiment must therefore be disclosed in the

136 THE INCARNATION.
person that reveals Him, else all the other attributes
that should attract a sinless being will repel me as a
sinner. I surely need not pause to show how Christianity
meets these requisitions ; how the advent of the Son
and Revealer of God was inaugurated with the angel-
anthem of " Peace on earth, good will to men " ; how
the gospel opens with the prelude, " God so loved the
world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that who
soever believeth in Him should not jperish, but have
everlasting Efe " ; * how " the*w^Tr"was made flesh,"
and dwelt among men " fuU of grace and truth " ; how
full of gentle, loving, and heahng. offices his earthly
Efe was, to all classes of earth's sufferers ; how on
the cross He poured out his soul, in " Father forgive
them, for they know not what they do " ; and how
" He who was the brightness of Jehovah's glory, and
the express Enage of his person, after He had him
seE purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of
the Majesty on High," " where He ever liveth to make
intercession for us." i
It is the divme love that draws forth human love.
" We love God because He first loved us."
Again, not only must the personage in which God
is revealed present Him placable, loving, and forgiv
ing, but also, in order to establish full and most
potent sympathy between man and God, he must be
truly a human person ; that is, he must, while on the
one hand presenting immanent in himseE " the ful
ness of the Godhead bodily," so tbat the words
spoken and the acts performed are not his, but those
*John3:16.

THE INCARNATION. 137
of Him who sent him, so that "He that hath seen
Him hath seen the Father," in order that in deahng
with Him men may feel they are deaEng verily with
God, — he must also, at the same time, be strictly
and truly human and hi human conditions.
God must come out of the infinite and reveal Him
seE in the finite. The representative personage must
be presented subject to liability to pain, trial, temp
tation, and death, hke others of human mold ; else I
cannot sympathize because I cannot understand ; else
the being is mcomprehensible to me, is entirely
beyond the range of my experience, and I can know
a person only by the interpretation of my own con
sciousness. A person angeEc, Enpassive, untempt-
able, is not the revelation I need. The mightiest
factors of sympathy certainly were wanting in such
an one ; the divinest beauty of love through suffering,
and of forgiveness through dying, were impossible.
Such a Christ could not have borne my sicknesses
or sorrows, or suffered on the cross for me. Such a
Christ I could not know, and therefore I could not
know God, whom I must know through HEn. I
must, therefore, fail of eternal life ; for the idea of
eternal lEe without assunilation to God, is the most
audacious and stupendous of absurdities. But con
formity to God can be wrought only by sympathy
with God, working us to affection and moral senti
ment kindred to His own. But sympathy must be
grounded on a conscious community or simEarity of
being. Only, by being like God, can I know God ;
only by having in myself a consciousness and experi
ence EiterpretEig the attributes predicated of God.

138 THE INCARNATION.
Such, mdeed, is the law of all the knowledge of
things. No words could ever explain to me tbe
import of beauty or love, but -through my previous
consciousness of these emotions. Language is a
reminder and a revival, not a creator, of ideas. So I
can know God only through a consciousness kindred
to his own, wrought in me by his embracing me in
his sympathy ; and this knowledge and sympathy can
come only through a revelation in a human person,
Uke my own.
Philosophy may postulate an impassive God. Into
the awful profound opened by that question, I do not
enter. I have no soundmg Ene for its depths. But
this is clearly written on my own nature ; the being
that is to draw me into sympathy must have emo
tion ; the mediator through whom I am to be drawn,
the person who is to represent and reveal God to
my trust and love, must be passible; especiaEy the
Christ that is to wEi me most mightily to God, that
is to enter most profoundly into my adoration, my
love, my sympathy, must approach me with the
divine sweetness of love shown in sacrifice. The
captain of my salvation must "be made perfect
through suffering."
It is clear that the idea of God such as philosophy
postulates, as cased in adamantine order, working
only by inflexible machinery of general laws, looking
down from the ever-silent infinite with the face of a
Fate, could not save a world like ours. A mind,
over whose "eternal deep no new emotion, whether
of pain or pleasure, of indignation or love orpity,
could ever ripple, from eternity to eternity; that

THE INCARNATION. 139
looks down with unchanged feature ahke on a Judas
x or a Christ, a Borgia or a Howard ; such a being is
beyond my sympathy, beyond my prayer, above or
beneath me by the breadth of a universe. For an
asshnilative and new-creative sympathy, humanity
needs a Heavenly Father, a brother in the skies, and
to feel the pulses of our human heart, of our human
pity and love, beating from the divine breast.
FmaEy, amid the provision for moral force in the
Christian system, I point to one which is coronal,
and which effectuates aU the rest ; which intensifies
and perpetuates the application of them to tbe soul.
I mean the condition Eisisted on as requisite to sal
vation, — faith. This is no arbitrary requEement,
as is sometimes charged. Its necessity Ues in the
very nature of things, the nature of mind and of sal
vation. It is the necessary means to the mtromission
into the soul of the transfiguring beauty of God that
has been revealed in the face of Christ. Faith is
the steadfast gaze of the soul on that beauty, a gaze
EitensEied by trust and love, an immanent sense of
mter-consciousness with the divine mind, mighty to
change the soul from glory to glory, in the lEceness
of that which it looks upon.
Faith is the most potent appUer of the truths of
Christianity to minds, the clasp that hinds the human
heart to that of the Creator.
Such is the scheme of moral forces for the re
covery of fallen minds which Christianity discloses,
bound up in the revelation of God in a human per
son. Such the fitness of that wonderful person for
the office reqiured, at once revealing to us God the

140 THE INCARNATION.
Father, and gathering around that revelation the pro
foundest sympathies of human souls. He comes,
who is hi the bosom of the Father, to " show us the
Father," " he in whom dwelt the fulness of the God
head bodily, even the fulness of his mercy and love,
to draw us, by that love, into a transforming sym
pathy with God.
He comes from out the infinite to meet the cry of
humanity feehng after God, — " O God, Thou hast
made us for Thee,- and our heart cannot be quiet till
it rests m Thee." He comes " who is the brightness
of God's glory, and the express image of his person,"
to show us m himseE the image and the glory.
Again : He comes as a human person, a brother ;
that he may show the divine beauty set in humanity ;
show the divine love through suffering; draw me
into sympathy, through an inter-consciousness of
temptation, grief, and pain, by bearing my sicknesses
and sorrows, going before me through the death-
shade, and by presenting that face in which shines
the ineffable glory shaded for my sake in mortal
agony, and stained with human tears : He, in whom
the infinite is revealed in the finite ; the impassible
in the passible ; the immortal in the mortal.
History demonstrates the superiority of this
scheme as a means of moral restoration and renova
tion. FEst, over that of a revelation of God in
nature, with its fixed order and immutable general
laws, as in case of the ancient heathen world ; and
secondly, over that of a revelation of God by signs
and wonders interrupting the fixed order of nature
and attesting a verbal characterization of God, asso-

THE INCARNATION. 141
ciated with positive law and uistitute, as hi case of
the Hebrews.
First, history shows the impotency of a disclosure
of God in nature, though supplemented and modified
by that in the consciousness of the human soul, to
create or conserve the moral purity of nations, or of
men. Under this system the most gEted and culti
vated races of the ancient world — though by the
force of our human nature which cries out for a per
sonal God, they impersonated general laws and
abstract qualities, and so peopled the fixed order
of nature with personal deities — found no perma
nent moral rehef. With genius, culture, and science,
phEosophy, eloquence, poesy, pohtical sagacity, and
empire ministrant to it, — all, on a trial of ages,
were found utterly inadequate to heal the moral
maladies of humanity, or stay the march of society
to the rnost foul and frightful corruption.
The brilliancy of their civilization shows speedily
as the phosphorescence of decay, the intellectual illu
mination only making the. darkness visible, of a
movement it could not arrest, toward moral putres
cence and social dissolution. The Greek in the
Macedonian era, and the Latin under the Cassars,
show the hopeless failure of natural reUgion associ
ated with the most rich and .brilliant culture, as a
corrective or conservative of private or social mo
rality. Secondly, In like manner, the Hebrew institute,
with God manifesting HEnseE by special interven
tions amid fixed natural laws, and by the Inspired
utterances of law-giver, psalmist, and seer, and

142 THE INCARNATION.
perpetuating his memorial in distinctive social insti-,
tutes and religious symboUsm, was found, after ages
of trial, incompetent to save even the chosen race
from moral and poUtical decay, much more to master
and renovate the world. Save as a preparative and
educational scheme, it was a failure.
But. when in Jesus Christ God had revealed Him
seE in a human person and a human Ufe, a new and
wondrous moral power is clearly recognized by his
tory, as entering the circle of human affairs. The
charm of a divine beauty touched the heart of the
world. A reformative and new-creative energy
pulsated throughout it, from the depths to the
heights. This pulse still beats down the centuries, ever
fresh and young. The outward aspects of the world
have changed ; political and social systems have come
and gone ; empires and civilizations have passed
away ; but the vitalizing, moral Enpulse then com
municated is still undecayed and unconfined. It has
been entangled and hindered by many alien forces ;
often nnxed up and disguised with foreign elements ;
often confounded with dogmas that have grown obso
lete ; with modes of thought, feeling, and action that
were adscititious, and have fallen away from the
substantive essence ; but tbe moral Ufe-power that
entered the world with the revelation of God in
Jesus Christ, still lives, and still energizes more
widely and more mightily in more human interests
and human souls than at any period since the resur
rection of Christ. On it is no mold of age, no taint
of decay.

THE INCARNATION. 143
Spite of perversions and misdEections of adverse
philosophies and theosophies, and of oppositions of
science falsely so caUed, it has waited on humanity
in aE its progress, and become more thoroughly and
profoundly mcorporated with the Ufe of the world,
more and more inwrought into the organic and vital
izing forces of civilization.
The voice that inaugurated it eighteen centuries
ago on the hEls of Judea, as ushering hi an era of
peace and good wiU tb men, has since expanded on
earth, as it did then in the heavens, to the psalm of
an Emumerable host, an orchestral symphony of ages
and nations, richer as it rolls along, with new-born
truths and sciences and charities sweEUng its choral
volume. It is obvious that whatever else may
become merely thmgs of the letter and pass away,
the vision of the personal God in Christ, with its
transfiguring charm, cannot perish from humanity
without the perishing of the moral structure of the
modern world.
God's most glorious gEfcs lose appreciation through
wantage. TheE value comes in the thought of their
absence ; that of Efe in thought of death ; that of
the sun in the thought it is never more to rise. Sup
pose, then, the fact of the Eicarnation were blotted
out of the history of the world, how would it stand
with its moral forces ?
The manEestation of God in Christ vanishes hke
a strange dream. The ravishing sweetness of divine
love, uttered through suffering, is become a beautiful
delEium. Narazeth, Capernaum, OUvet disappear
from the scenery of history, with that of the. garden,

144 THE INCARNATION.
the cross, the city of light and the river of Ufe. The
face of ineffable love, tbe celestial effulgency softened
to human sympathy, fades from the sky. The day
grows dark and cold. The sun draws back his
beams. Curtains of solemn and mysterious shadow
fall. Humanity stands agam under a sky of eternal
fixed order — alone !
We are relegated to a God disclosed in the order
of nature only. This is all our lesson, not only of a
God of force, but of pity and love. AU things run
in the eternal groove of law ; no arrest, no turning
aside, no remission, no relenting, no forgiveness.
A cold, impassive, adamantine order, without a
flush or pulse or breath of Ufe from eternity. And
behind it, what? The Infinite, the absolute, the
unknowable, the alone ! This is all ! With such
names man looks after God. But who, and what,
and where is He ? A force ? a- principle ? a phan
tasm ? a conceit ? Or is there an eternally marble
face looking down on us through these skies of dreary
order ? A God, the mere operator of eternal neces
sity? Himself meshed in his own laws? The mere
factor of inexorable fate ?
What moral force ? What Efe of love or liberty
or hope or sympathy, what power unto repentance
and renewal m that vision ? A universe of soulless
force, working through a system of infinite mecha
nism in the lines of everlasting, changeless law,
where orbs glorious in brightness and grandeur, but
voiceless and dead, roll on in never-erring orbits
through abysses of eternal silence and death ! I
wander, endlessly, through the shiniHg waste; I

THE INCARNATION. 145
shudder, I freeze, in its glittering solitudes. Its
infinite order is my infinite despaE. For I look,
I long for Ufe ; for a token, a pulse of the living
God. In vain. No heart beats in its infinite mecha
nism ; no stir of Efe on its EEmitable frozen deeps ;
no flush of love in the desolate splendors of its arctic
skies. Or E upon this background of mfinite, Ufeless
order, my guilt or fancy or Eiference from self-
consciousness bodies forth a personal deity, as Ei
the case of the classic nations, what is He? A
power of justice, whose moral laws are as relentless
as those of nature, and thus shut out aU sympathy
as they do aU hope ? Or is He hke myseE', the vic
tim of inexorable law ? Is He Enpassive ? or with
passion too much like my own, who may by frail
example aUure me into conflict with that law, but
cannot dehver me from its grasp ?
I ask of history. She shows me the heart of
humanity ever stirred in its profoundest conscious
ness with the feehng of a God, — its instinct of
causaUty applied to nature and to itseE, compeUing
it to feel after a creator ; in. the mElion, at least, after
a God in the concrete, embodied and personal, and
reflecting its own seE-consciousness.
This seE-consciousness I see stronger than philoso
phy, with its God cased in fate, and prisoned in
law, and spite of that system peophng the universe
with reflections of itseE, with hnpersonations of sen
suous beauty and might of passion and lust.
I see it crowding the heavens with myths, chill
cloud-forms, beneath which humanity is congealed

146 THE INCARNATION.
mto art, not warmed into virtue ; or with tropic
vapors, baleful, pestilential, thunderous, under which
it grows palsied and gangrenous, or feverous and
delEious. Forms sensual and seductive aUure to
voluptuous sin, or those malign or vengeful brandish
theE bolts over the pale nations, while they crouch,
cower, and rush, swEter and more desperate to per
dition. But no quickening moral power, no river of
Ufe flows from its Olympus ; none to the supersti
tious mElions who believed, much less tothe sceptical
philosophers who sneered at all this personnel volup
tuous or mahgn as only mockeries called forth by
human creduhty on a background of eternal necessity.
Or again, in quest of a power of moral redemption,
fly we to a God who arrests or bends the fixed order
of nature at the behests of moral law, and by such
interventions, and by verbal declaration and ordi
nance attested by them, makes enunciation of Him
self? I am in the presence of the Hebrew insti
tute. I am before Sinai, but the cloud hides Him.
I am at the temple ; the Shekinah veils Him. God,
self-uttered through creation and law, here breaks
through the fixed order of nature to speak to me, but
his face is hid. I witness his tokens. I see "the
brightness of his skEts." I hear the voice of the
passing God. Through the cleft in nature, the
Infinite, the Incomprehensible, the Ineffable, is
glunpsed, passing before me with the proclamation of
his moral attributes, " the Lord, the Lord God; mer
ciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in
goodness and truth. I hear this proclamation borne
down the ages by psalmists and prophet. " But lo ! He

THE INCARNATION. 147
goeth by, and I see Him not. He passeth on also,
and I perceive Him not." To this extent, no more,
is the revelation of God. We have simply the Word
uttered, not " the word made flesh."
We have a verbal characterization, the seE-decla-
ration of God, just, merciful, and forgiving to the
penitent. But the mightiest forces to mduce repent
ance are wanting. There is a sense of the presence
of the Infinite, the Incomprehensible, the Just One.
But the Ufe-power of a revelation in a person, the
transforming sympathy of an inter-consciousness with
a human person, and that mightiest of aU moral forces
creative of spEitual renewal, the eloquence of divine
love shown through suffering — ¦ these, alas, I find not !
I find no sorrow-bearer, no sin-bearer, no Gethsem
ane, no cross, no ever-Eving presence of a divine
sympathizer, a suffering Redeemer.
With many beneficent moral issues, quickening the
moral sense of men, and presenting the norm of
perfect righteousness still to the multitudes cer
tamly little capable of dealmg with the abstract and
the purely spiritual, this revelation is no redemption.
It is a disclosure rather than cure of the moral malady
of man ; a creator of terror more than of sympathy.
It convicts only, not converts. It shows my guilt
and summons me before the AE-Just. No more.
Suppose it clearly offers salvation on repentance.
Remorse is not repentance. Nor is fear of penalty,
nor are right convictions of the good and true. It is
turning the heart earnestly and lovingly to HEn that
is the ever good and true. But the mightiest charm
to draw me thither, fails. The hght of the glory of

148 THE INCARNATION.
God m the facebf Jesus Christ, the radiance of divine
love shinmg out through suffering, is quenched for
ever I Salvation on repentance; on repentance!
"Ay, there's the rub," Repent! What can one do,
when one cannot repent ? Be drawn into sympathy
with God ! The attributes which should attract,
repel, affright me, conscious of guilt. Tell me not
of his hohness. It blasts me I Nor of his justice.
That is my despair ! His omnipotence, omniscience,
omnipresence, eternity, they make the universe my
dungeon. No flight or force avaEs me, nor the
course of eternal • ages. There is no hiding-place
even hi the shadow of death. Tell me not even of
his love. That must guard virtue and vindicate its
law, and " be it love or hate, to me ahke it brings
eternal pain."
Sympathise with such a God ! With a power that
destroys me ? with a throne founded on my grave ? a
Nemesis that hunts me down eternity ? with the glory
and beauty of a God that impends over me Uke the
face of the pitiless Dis ? As well sympathize with the
glory and beauty of Niagara as it bears me to the
fatal plunge ; with the cruel might of the abysmal
ocean ; with the earthquake that swallows me up ;
with the lightnuig that strikes me dead.
And this, the all of our revelation of God ! of our
iUumination from Heaven ! A revelation as when the
red right hand stretches down through the folding
darkness of the storm, and nature shudders beneath !
The illumination of a burnmg world lit up by its own
fires to the eternal judgment ! Terror and despair
freeze up all sympathy. A moral God is disclosed,

THE INCARNATION. 149
but for me, gEt round with consuming effulgency.
A Heaven is shown, but to me, its gates, like those
of our lost Eden,
" With dreadful faces thronged, and flery arms."
I find myseE under a system which of itself, unless
supplemented by some further revelation, leaves me
with no moral deliverance. My moral nature is still
cold and dead. God is glorious, and the universe is
beautiful. But I am helpless, hopeless, lost. I sink
beneath the glory and the beauty, as the desperate
swimmer sinks beneath the splendors of the nightly
skies in the depths of ocean.
But now, as I look around in the very crisis of
my despair, lo ! the heavens are open. A wondrous
person descends from the bosom of the Father, reveal
ing the beauty of his unspeakable love in a human
form, that wears for me mortality, and suffers and
dies for me.
As I behold, a new spEitual power enfolds me. I
find myseE in a new universe. New life beats through
my whole moral being. Divine love stooping to my
nature, and proving itseE through suffering, is
mightier than my guilt, my fear, my despaE. It
subdues me to repentance, to faith, to hope, to love.
It enravishes me, it transforms me. Cloud and dark
ness pass from before the throne. The emerald bow
of peace engEds it. The intolerable brightness is
shaded into the sweetness of human sympathy. Fiery
cherub and flaming sword disappear. Wide flung
are the gates of the City of God. Hands that were
pierced for me, hold open its portals. One that has

150 THE INCARNATION.
redeemed me, and washed me from my sins in his
own blood, that cried on the cross, "Father forgive,"
bids me come up thither — a saved soul.
I find, moreover, that the new moral life-power I
feel within me, is pulsating through millions and
through ages. I see, at the very crisis when history
has demonstrated the failure of both schemes, — those
of natural religion, or of mere verbal and legal reve
lation, in the most favorable cEcumstances of trial,
— in this very despair of the world, when faith,
virtue, and civilization seem in hopeless decay, when
was least to be expected the ingress of a new moral
power, such a power is manEested ; — a power which
works on through the echpse of ancient civilization,
and the wreck of the elder world, and, extending its
living impulse through centuries of barbaric ruin and
spiritual despotism, has become the vitalizing and
organic element of modern society ; a power which
was never more youthful and potent than now ; never
more rapidly extending its new-creating force through
barbarous races ; never more deepening and broaden
ing its domain in the inteUect and heart of the civil
ized world, than at this hour ; never more operative
of social and personal reform and renovation ; never
more effective for the removal of vice, wretchedness,
and violence within nations, or the establishment of
the reghnen of honor, truth, and benevolence be
tween them ; never more incorporate with the forces
of progress, the lEe of civilization, and the hopes of
humanity for its most illumined future.
To what can history or philosophy trace the origin
of this new and strange moral Ufe-power entering the

THE INCARNATION. 151
world at such a time ? To what else than " the word
made flesh " ? — the revelation of God in a human
person, touching the world with a sense of Divine
love, breaking up its sensuous stupor and the paral
ysis of fear and despair, and throwing over it the
plastic, assimilative charm of a Divine sympathy?
This seems to me to present the only philosophical
or liistorical solution of this phenomenon. Life comes
from the perpetual appulse of the hfe of God. From
out the desolate infinite, from out the unapproachable
glory or the " ever-durmg cloud and dark," a face of
Divine love Eieffable has looked out on a fallen race.
"God who commanded the Eght to shine out of
darkness, hath sbined in our hearts to give the light
of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of
Jesus Christ." This is my only explanation of this
wondrous phenomenon. Take this away, and the
oracles of history and philosophy in the presence
of the vastest fact of the past world are to me dumb.

YL

THE FOURTH GOSPEL, — THE RECORD AND TESTI
MONY OF THE INNER LIFE OF ITS AUTHOR.*

ET TIMOTHY DWIGHT, D. D.

AMONG the questions respecting the Fourth
Gospel, which may be regarded as having been
substantially determined, is that of its main design.
Whenever and by whomsoever it was written, it was
not mtended to be a mere narrative, nor a work
like the earlier or Synoptical Gospels. Its record
of the life of Jesus was made, not for its own sake
alone, — simply to tell the story of what he said
and did and suffered, — but for an end outside
of and beyond itseE. That end is set forth in the
* In this lecture the author purposely turns aside from what are
called the external evidences, of the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel,
and also from the evidences which are derived from the indications of
the Apostle's personal (as we may say, outward) presence and partici
pation in the scenes which he describes, and limits himself to a single
line of thought, having reference to the inner life of the writer of the
Gospel and the evidence which is drawn from that source. He, there
fore, in some comparatively unimportant points, assumes, as already
proved, certain things which, in a more general discussion, he would
have felt called upon to establish by argument. There is no case of
this kind, however, as he believes, where the assumption is at all essen
tial, either to the main conclusion of the whole discussion, or to the
particular argument in connection with which it is made. In the
closing pages,— towards which all the preceding ones are made to
point, — he calls attention to the argument for the truth of Christianity,
which is suggested by the record of this inner life.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 153
author's own language, Ei the closing verses of the
twentieth chapter, as being the production of faith in
Jesus as tiie 'Son of God, and, thus, the opening of
the way of spEitual and immortal Efe to every reader.
It is possible, indeed, that the writer may have
wished to add to the statements which he found in
the other histories ; or, in some cases, to arrange
the events in a more accurate order. Or, again, he
may have had in view the errors of certain heretics
and opposers, and may have desEed to contradict or
disprove them. Some have discovered, as they sup
posed, the evidences of these things. We do, not
care to deny the force of the arguments which they
bring forward. The writer, however, — whatever
may be said upon these points, — was not a contro
versialist contending against other opinions than his
own, as if engaged in a doctrinal warfare ; nor was
he one who merely supplemented the deficiencies of
others, or told a weU-known story in a somewhat
better form. His work has a tendency and aim
which is manEest from the beginning to the end, —
one which it never loses sight of, — one to which
everything else, that may in any measure characterize
it, is altogether subordinate, — the one which has just
been mentioned.
Another point, which I think may be regarded as
sufficiently settled, is, that, whoever the author was,
or at whatever time he lived, he had some reference,
in the phraseology of what is called his prologue, to
the philosophical speculations by which he was sur
rounded. That the origin of the term Logos or its
associated terms is to be found in the Old Testament

154 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
may be denied by some, — that they came from the
Greek Philosophy may be rejected by others, — while
there may be wide variations of views respecting the
progress which the discussions of men upon these
subjects may be supposed to have already made
before the writing of this Gospel. But — without
attempting, or considering it important for our pres
ent purpose, to determine the right one among these
many opinions — there was, we may be sure, a con
nection between this remarkable introductory passage
and the discussions of the time and place in which
the author lived. The people around him — the
educated people, at least — were talking, more or
less, upon these subjects. The philosophical lan
guage of the day had adopted, to some extent, these
forms of expression, and this writer knew them as
thus adopted and employed.
If, now, we take these, two points as already
estabUshed, the bearing ofthe latter upon the former
is such, as to show that the author, in carrying out
his main design, was endeavoring to prove, not
merely that Jesus was a revelation of God, or the
revelation of God, but that he was that revelation
of God which his contemporaries were blindly dis
coursing of, and seeking for. He was the Logos in
truth, — God manifesting himself in the world. If
they could be led to this belief, he was sure that all
their questionings would cease, because the truth
would then be beaming upon them, and the life of
the soul, which their searching had never found,
would follow in the line of faith.
But, even when we have gone thus far, as we^may,

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 155
under the guidance of past investigation, we have
not, as it appears to me, exhausted all that can be
justly said. There is a thEd point, beyond the two
already mentioned, to which I would dEect especial
thought, on the present occasion, and make it the
starting-point of aU that I have to urge. This
Gospel bears within itseE the evidence that its
author, who either was, or, in the work which he
was writing, personated the Apostle John, designed
to give his narrative the appearance of having a very
peculiar relation to that Apostle's own experience.
I say, a very peculiar relation, and by this I mean
something more than the fact that he was an eye
witness of the events described, or Uved among them.
There is an abundance of proofs that he Eitended
this to appear to be the case. But there is something
more than this. He meant to have his story appa
rently give the account of the way hi which the new
religious life of the apostle origuiated, and developed
itseE Eito strength and perfectness. His definite
ahn was, that his readers should suppose the Apostle
himseE to be telling them of the influences which had
wrought hi his own mind the behef that Jesus was,
Eideed, the Divme Logos.
The form and plan and method of his work were
determined carefully on every side, and separated
on every side from such simple narratives as the
other evangehsts had given. He wrote with the
great purpose of estabUshing a certaui truth. The
form of presentation of that truth — and, so far
forth, this was the occasion of his writing as he did
— was due, wholly or partially, to the questionings

156 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
and speculations of men around him. The mode of
proving to them the truth, which he adopted, was not
that of argumentation, as in a doctrinal controversy,
but that of relating the words and works of one who
fulfilled the truth in his own p'erson, and with whom
he had himself been associated. The reason for his
adopting this method was because his having been an
eye and ear-witness of these works and words had
convinced his own mind, and so he thought that the
record of what he had known, would convince others
also. And thus everything comes, in the last result,
from his own personal experience of the truth and
of faith in it. In other words, he approaches his
fellow-countrymen — who were asking about the
Logos, and discussing in this way and in that — with
the statement, — I have seen him, who is the Logos
indeed. Three years of intimate communion with
him have brought to my mind this sure conviction.
Come with me to the record of his lEe. Let me
guide your way through it, as I have hved my. way
through it, from its beginnuig to its enduig. Let
me tell you how my faith, from my very earhest
interview with him, grew gradually stronger with
every new manifestation of his wonderful character
and power, until it rose above all possibUity of
doubting. Let me open it before you till you have
seen it all, — and I am sure that, if, by any means,
you can be brought to appreciate the truth, or if you
have within you any real susceptibility to the truth,
you will have the same experience that I have had ;
you will believe as I have beheved.
This Gospel loses haE of its force without this

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 157
last-mentioned element ; and its author well knew
that it would. He meant that it should appear as the
Apostle's record of his own faith, and of the life of
Jesus as producing and continually increasing that
faith. Let us look at some of the evidences that this
is so.
I. In the first place, we notice in this Gospel, in
a very remarkable degree, as compared with the
other three, a bringing forward into prominence of
the personaUty of its professed author, the Apostle.
The earlier evangelists give sufficient indications
that they were famihar with the events which they
narrate. Matthew was an actor in them.* But
neither the others nor even he, notwithstanding the
fact that their histories were written long before this
one, present to our view any one of the disciples of
Jesus as the beloved disciple is here presented. He
is made a kind of centre, around which, at one stage
of the history, after another, the actions gather them
selves. The story begins and ends with the record
ing of impressions produced upon his mind. The
friendship which he had with the Master is pressed
upon the reader's attention again and again. In the
intimate association of the twelve with " Jesus and
with one another, he stands out conspicuous, as
comprehendhig the truth more deeply, and recogniz-
mg the Lord more fully. And, yet, there is no self-
glorification in all this. There is, as we may say, no
self-manEestation, in any offensive sense of the word.
The prominence which he gives to himseE is even
* See note on the first page of this lecture.

158 THE FOURTH GOSREL.
more pecuUar in its character, than in its degree.
He carefuUy hides his name, as if he would not be
discovered, except by those who should determine
his personality through gaining from the story the
knowledge of his character. He loses himself in
his testimony to his Divine teacher as truly as any
of the other writers, — as truly, even, as if he had
been the humblest and most unknown of that
Teacher's followers. Nay, he even seems to know
nothing but Christ, and cares for nothing beside, if
so be that Christ is only beUeved in.
Now, how can we account for this double or two-
sided phenomenon, as we may call it? It certainly
is not in accordance with the character of one who,
as the opponents of this Gospel claun with regard to
its author, was taking up the labored defence of some
doctrine which had developed itself after the time of
Christ. The defender of a theological dogma or of a
school could not have written in this way. Indeed,
on the theory that the book is a theological treatise,
this whole matter of the apostle's personality, in all
its striking features, is altogether inexplicable. And
just in proportion as we bring it, in our conceptions,
nearer to such a treatise, just in that proportion- do
we involve ourselves in difficulties from this source..
Nor, again, on the other hand, does it seem like the
course of a man who merely repeats, in his old age,
the stories of scenes which had a deep interest for
him when he was young, or gives his personal testi
mony to what he heard when in the midst of those
scenes, because he thinks what he then heard of
great importance to mankind. Had this been all, he

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 159
might have done either of the two things which we
have noticed. He might have made himself the all-
important person in the narrative, or he might have
withdrawn entirely behind the events. Under such
cEcumstances,. the impulse of men universally is to
take one or the other of these courses. But this
author combines them both, or, rather, pursues his
pathway between them, in a manner which scarcely
finds a parallel in all literature. The ordinary expla
nation given by the advocates of the genuineness of
the book, though containing a' part of the truth, wiU
not, then, as I am persuaded, meet the peculiar
demands of the case. It is reasonable, so far as it
reaches, and therefore is not to be whoUy rejected
Uke that proposed by its opponents. But it needs
supplementing, because it fails to give us complete
satisfaction. So soon, however, as we recognize the
other element to which we have aUuded, and find its
presence in the author's mind and purpose when he
writes, the difficulties are at once removed. The
most remarkable peculiarity of the book, which dis
tinguishes it from all the other writings even of the
apostohc authors, is seen to have a perfectly natural
basis ; and in the very fitness of this explanation to
make all things plain, is the first evidence of its
truth. Adopting it as the truth, we say, with confi
dence, that the additional force which the author,
speaking in the person of the apostle, desired to give
to his statements through the introduction of himself
"into the narrative, is not to be found alone in his
declaration, "He who saw it bare record," but in that
other declaration, " He saw and believed." The haE-

160 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
concealment of his personality, even where he puts
it forward with greatest clearness, was not simply
because he shrank from notoriety or modestly depre
ciated himself. But it was because, if he could only
show his readers how, through the experience of the
things which he was recording for their perusal, the
character of that disciple, into whose heart these
things had entered most thoroughly, had been trans
formed and elevated into the higher life, it concerned
him not. at all that they should know his name or who
he was, except, indeed, so far as he was the disciple
whom Jesus loved. The growth of his faith was
everything to his view, because, with the power of a
living illustration, it would impress the truth which
he had to proclaim upon the hearts of those for whom
he wrote. The continuaUce of the knowledge of
himself, on tbe other hand, was nothing, because his
every thought was upon the truth and the life ; and,
while these had come to him, they had not come
through him, but through the 'Divine Messenger of
whom he testified. Why, then, should he not have
written as he did ? How, indeed we may almost say,
could he have written otherwise ?
II. In the second place, all who have examined
this Gospel with care, have noticed a marked peculi
arity in the order of arrangement of the narrative,
and in the prmciples of selection which, apparently j
determined the author in his choice of what should
be inserted. The explanation of this peculiarity is,
doubtless, to be found, primarily and mainly, in the
fact that he was writing a life of Jesus, not for its

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 161
own sake, but for the purpose of proving thereby
that he was the Christ, the Son of God. This being
his aim, he shapes all things to the end which he has
in view. But the more closely we look into the mat
ter, the more must we observe that there are state
ments and records hi the book, the ground of whose
admission cannot be brought withm this general ex
planation. They are not limited to any one place or
any section of the Gospel, but are scattered through
out its whole course, appearing, now in some brief
passage, and again in a more formal story, but all
alike having reference to the apostle's own inward
experience. At the very outset of the whole history,
for example, what bearing or value, as related to the
author's main design, has that simple and impressive
record of the apostle's interview with Jesus, when
Andrew and himself first passed a few hours in his
company,* and, from what they saw of him in that
short season, first came to the conviction that he was
the Messiah, — what bearing or value as related to
the author's main design, we say, has this record,
except as it tells of the effect produced upon the
apostle's mind, and thus gives to his readers the
added force of his own awakened faith ? His faith
commenced at that hour and under those influences,
and therefore it was that, with that hour, he began
his history.
* John 1 : 35-42. That John is the person alluded to in connection
with Andrew in vs. 41, but not mentioned by name, I regard as suffi
ciently clear. But this is one of the cases referred to in the note at the
beginning of this lecture. The supposition that it was John is not
essential to the argument, but the evidence in favor of that supposition
is strong, and is satisfactory to the ablest writora.

162 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
Or, again, how are we to account for the narrative
of the miracle at the wedding-feast in Cana ?* The
placing of this story in so prominent a position in the
book, or even its introduction at all, can scarcely fail
to arrest the attention of the reader and excite his
surprise. Indeed, so peculiar is the scene here de
scribed, so different is the character of its miracle from
all the others of Jesus' history, so little does it seem
to contribute to the great end to which we have
alluded, as compared with a multitude of things which
might have been inserted in the space it occupies, that
here has been a marked point of contention in the con
troversy about this Gospel : the one party maintaining,
with earnestness, that such a passage cannot have
been written by an apostolic author ; the other plamly
recognizing the difficulties which it presents. We
do not begin to escape this controversy, as I beUeve,
we do not reach the true ground of the performance
of this miracle, until we get beyond any such purpose
as the mere withdrawal of those who had been under
John the Baptist's teaching from their ascetic views,
or the proclamation of the Divine blessing as attend
ing upon the more joyous scenes of hfe. These
things may be discoverable in the story, but they are
subordinate and secondary. The principal design
was another than these. Jesus had just received into
his society, for a few days, by accident as it were,
five or six of those persons who were afterwards to
be chosen as his apostles. They had been drawn
towards him, in their affections and confidence, by
what they had seen of his character in this brief
•John 2: 1-11.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 163
period. But, in order to the securing these results as
the foundation of a permanent life, it was necessary
that some miraculous proof of his divine commission
should be given them at this early time. Nothing,
however, was more remote from the custom of Jesus
than the seeking after, or going out of his way to
find, opportunities for the display of his power. He
always took advantage of the opportunity which
offered. His nuracles found their place naturally in
the order of his hfe. They manEested themselves
just when and where some human want or necessity
called for them. Such a need became known, hi this
case, Ei the midst of the feast to which they had
dEected theE course. It was a providential happen-
ing. It was the first one that presented itself. It
was the one, therefore, which he must avail hhnseE
of to accompEsh the object which, at this moment,
was of more importance to him than all others. He
availed himself of it, and the result followed. These
men — although they separated from him, probably,
after a few days more — had been so strengthened in
theE faith m hun by this exhibition of his superhu
man power, that they were ready, when the divinely
appointed hour arrived, to foEow his call to the
Apostolic office, though it mvolved the leaving their
occupations and their homes at a moment's notice.
"This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of
Gahlee, and manEested forth his glory; and his
disciples believed on him." This is the simple state
ment which the author, speaking in the name of
John, makes at the close of the story, and in this
simple statement is the reason of the miracle, — that

164 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
reason which underlies all others, and without which
it would never have been performed. But, E this is
the true account ofthe scene, its introduction at just
this point of the narrative, following so unmediately
upon the mterview of this Apostle with Jesus to
which we have already referred, can scarcely fail to
point us to the effect of this miracle upon his own faith
as the occasion of his recording the scene so care
fully. He was himself that one among the Ettle
company, the estabUshing of whose belief on a
stronger foundation, at this time and by this event,
he realized most fully; and, as the recollection of
the scene was vivid in his own mind for this reason,
so, for this reason also, he gives it to others, that that
which had affected him might affect them likewise.
Or, again, if we look at the end of the history,
where the account of the resurrection is presented,
what can we say of the life-like story of the visit of
this apostle and Peter to the sepulchre, on that first
Sunday morning ?* The narrative in all its minute
points — this is more clear the more we examine
them — bears almost irresistible evidence that the
scene which it portrays was not a creation of the
author's fancy, but that the Apostle was actually a
participator in it. But, even here, we do not find in
his personal testimony to the great event of Christ's
rising from the dead the full and satisfactory account
of the insertion of this story. That he had himseE
been led, by what he saw at that moment, to believe
that his Master had risen, — that he had, thus, taken
one more step in the progress of his faith, and by this
•John 20: 3-9.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 165
step was prepared to understand, soon afterward,
that, m the resurrection of his Master, the seal had
been put upon His divine mission, herein lay the
deepest interest of the scene as he recalled it. This
is the most natural explanation of the story, as we
first ask for the reason of its insertion ; and, as we
look Eito it more closely, we cannot doubt tbat it is
the true one, because the fact of the Apostle's belief
and the precise measure and limits of it are so care
fuUy set forth. The story is made, as it were, to
bear towards and terminate in the statement of these
things.* Or, again, let us examine the order and progress
of the whole history, and the same explanation will
suggest itself. We have here two facts to notice.
One of them is this frequent breaking out of the
apostle's own participation in the events, and the
effect of it upon himself. The other is the steady
progress, in the mam plot and plan of the work,
towards its doctrinal end. The latter must be har
monized with the former. The explanation which
we give must run its course through the two things,
as they are mingled and Eitertwined throughout the
history. If we account for one of them only, we
have done but haE of our work. But if we try to
explaui them both together, there is no other way
that opens to us so naturally as this which we have
suggested. May we not go further still, and say that
there is no other way at aU? If the apostle, or the
author personating him, proposed to himself to prove
to his readers that the person whom he had known
•John 20: 8-9.

166 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
was the Logos, — if he, also, proposed to prove this
by narrating the life and words of this person, — and
if he further proposed, in presenting the life for this
purpose, so to narrate it as,. by setting forth how it
had gradually wrought out the proof to his own
mind, to give it the most suitable form for impress
ing other minds, — then everything becomes clear.
The selection of the events and teachings in such a
way as to make the power and character and divinity
of Christ appear more fully as the story goes for
ward ; the bringing out of the discourses so much
more than the mEacles, — just the things which were
peculiarly calculated to impress a mind like his ; the
omission of so many things recorded in the other
Gospels, when similar things, occurring at other
times, exhibit the same power or attribute in the due
order of impressiveness, — as, for example, tbe inser
tion of the remarkable case of the raising of Lazarus
and its location in the narrative, while the other
miracles of calling the dead to life are not referred
to ; the very fundamental division of the book info
its two leading parts, carrying the reader, first
through the record of what Jesus made known of
himself to the unbelieving Jews, and afterwards,
through those more tender and richer unfoldings of
the truth in his discourses with his chosen friends, —
the more outward part of the history, as we may call
it, leading towards and preparing for the more in
ward part ; all these peculiarities of the book are
seen, at once, to have a more perfect fitness and a
fuller explanation, when we see the whole plan, as it
were, under the guidance of the apostle'* own in-

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. '167
creasing faith. The other evangelists simply told the
story of the things that happened, hi theE order, for
they were recording only what they had seen or been
familiar with. This apostle, on the other hand, was
giving the narrative of what he had felt, and, there
fore, he followed the course of his holy feeling and
inner Ufe even to the end. In the very progress of
the record, therefore, he presents the constant deep
ening of the Enpression and the due order of the
proofs. HI. In the thEd place, we are led to the same
explanation of the Gospel as we notice the repeated
emphatic and distinct statements respecting himself
and his companions, that they believed. We cannot
doubt that the apostles did actually beUeve, in a
higher degree, at the crucifixion and the resurrection,
than they had done three years before. If anything
would seem to be manEest with reference to them, it
is that there must have been a steady growth as the
time passed on. It was hke the chEd's faith at the
outset, as compared with the mature man's faith at
the end. Now, the author describes theE faith at
every point in the progress, by the same word, be
cause it was, in its essential character, the same thing
always. But the word must gain a deeper meanmg
at each new stage, and gather into itseE the added
force which the newly-witnessed evidences of divine
power and truth had given it. It must enlarge in
significance just as the history advances. With every
repetition it must be more than it was before. Tbe
student of this Gospel cannot faU to appreciate this

168 "" THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
fact as he follows its course from chapter to chapter.*
The disciples believed, when they first saw Jesus ;
they beUeved, as they witnessed his first mEacle;
they believed, on the day following the feeding of the
five thousand, when the remarkable words which set
forth the mysterious union of Christ with his friends
had just been heard ; they believed, as the last utter
ance of love, at the supper, faded into the prayer
of intercession : they believed, as theE Master rose
from the dead ; this disciple, who was the most open
to faith among them, believed, when he saw the
vacant sepulchre ; Thomas, who was the most ready
to doubt, believed, when he beheld the print of the
nails and was pointed by Jesus to his wounded side.
This doubting one of the company had risen now, at
the latest moment, above the highest reach of even
John's own confidence at the beginning. But the
very fulness of the declaration of his faith, at this
moment, is a testimony of the growth and greatness
which must now have characterized the faith of all
his companions. The measure of his beUef as com
pared with that of this beloved disciple,] indeed, may
be indicated by the verses wliich describe the two,
and set forth the proofs already mentioned, that were
needed to convince them.
In the same connection, our thought may be
directed to those passages, m which the author, in
the person of this Apostle, says of himself and his

•John 1 : 42-45. The language here, " We have found the Messias,"
is substantially, though not precisely, that ofthe other passages which
are referred to. John 2: 11; 6: 69; 16: 30; 20: 8; 20: 29.
t John 20: 8-9 eomp. with 20: 24-29.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 169
associates, that, with reference to certain things, they
believed only after Jesus had risen from the dead.
What is the intimation of these passages, when
interpreted in union with the others to which we
have referred; unless it be this, — that their faith
was a progressive thing, that it had reached out to
the attainment of much, and was stiU reachmg out
for more ? And how do we account for the intro
duction of this singular phrase again and again, after
we have discovered what it indicates, except as we
beUeve that the Apostle draws it forth from his own
experience ?
I cannot but remark, also, that, while this author
never uses the word faith, he employs the verb which
expresses the idea of believing,, and which, in so
many instances, records the fact that one and another
actually beUeved, almost three times as frequently as
aU the other evangehsts together,* and almost as
many times as the whole body of authors whose
writings follow his own, even to the end of the New
Testament. This very pecuharity in his language —
as striking as any other that can be discovered — in
itself suggests, that it was the activity of faith,
growbig experience, enlarging apprehension of the
things of Christ, which occupied his thoughts, — not
a mere dogma, not a mere testimony, but a life.
And, when we join this suggestion to the preceding
ones, we see how naturally his fondness for this active

•The verb occurs ninety-eight times in this Gospel; thirty-five
times in the other three Gospels ; and one hundred and three times in
the remaining books of the New Testament, exclusive of the first
Epistle of John.

170 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
and living word may have come from the depths of
his own life, and, thus, all the record of believing,
which is so constant in his narrative, may have been
due to the delightful recollections of his personal
progress which seemed to be pictured anew before
his mind» in the progress of every other beUever.
IV. There are also, in the fourth place, brief
narratives in this Gospel, and even sentences in the
discourses of Jesus as given by it, which, though
they have no direct connection with any record of
the Apostle's growing faith, yet lose a large portion
of theE significance apart from it. I can only allude
to one or two examples, which the reader of the
book can multiply for himself. The little story,
thrown into the midst of the crucifixion scene, where
Jesus commits his mother to the care of John, is one
of these.* This story, certainly, has no relation to
the main truth which the author was aiming .to pre
sent. It has only the slightest connection, E indeed
it has any at all, with his personal testimony to the
death or the divinity of Christ. It has, we may add,
no manifest and immediate bearing, to the view of
the ordinary reader, upon the development of John's
reUgious history. But, as we look more deeply into
it, and inquire how it came to be introduced into the
narrative ; as we notice its contrast with the record
of the soldiers' heartless conduct, that precedes it,
and its immediate union with the picture of the
dying moments of Jesus, which follows it in the
succeeding verses, — we may see that it has a point-
'» John 19: 25-27.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 171
ing toward that development. The ground of the
action, on the part of Jesus, at this time, has been
a subject of inquiry and discussion. He leaves his
mother, not in the care of her own children or near
relatives, but in the charge of this disciple. What
account are we to give of so unwonted a thing in
human experience ? The first reason which suggests
itseE, and the only one which can lie at tbe founda
tion of an explanation, is, that this disciple was a
behever, whUe the members of her family were not.
In the tune of his separation from them, Jesus wished
that the faithful ones should be associated together,
and should care for one another. The one among
them who needed the most of sympathy and help
should not be left to those who were strangers to the
faith, even though they might be in the most intimate
circle of earthly relationship. But while we admit
the full weight which can, by any possibility, be
given to this reason, we must remember that these
brethren of Jesus were to become believers in a few
days after his death. He was to appear to James
even within the week foUowing his resurrection,*
and this one of his family was to become so earnest
and prominent a disciple-, as, afterwards, to assume
a leadership in the Church. The others, also, were
to be the associates of the Apostles and the friendly
women, and of Mary herseE, at the meeting which
* That the appearance to James, the Lord's brother, was within the
first week, appears probable to me from I Cor. 15 : 7, as compared with
the accounts in the Gospels and the First Epistle"to the Corinthians,
of the appearances of our Lord after his resurrection. The precise
time, or even the fact, of a special appearance to James, is not impor
tant, however, to the main point urged in the text.

172 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
immediately followed the ascension. It would have
been but a brief season, had he left his mother with
these brethren, before she would have found them
bound to her in Christian affection as truly as in
famUy love. Why this singular provision for her,
then, unless it had, also, some deeper meaning? It
had such a meaning. The hour was a most peculiar
one. It was a time when Jesus seems to have risen
above all human relationships, and to have fixed his
thought only on the higher union with himself. Here
stood before him, on the one hand, the woman whom
he loved beyond all others, — the one who had seen
something of his glory first of all, — the one who
was now watching his approaching death with the
tenderest feeling, and the most sorrowful outlook for
herself upon the future. Here stood, upon the other
hand, that one among his disciples who, through the
growth of his faith and inner life during the years of
their association, had come to be most nearly like
himself. It was not strange, surely, in the circum
stances of the hour, that, with the sole thought of
the bond connecting him so closely to them both, he
gave the one of them to the other for their future
life. But the gift implied the growth of which we
have spoken, and the story of it tells us not only
of what was done in that moment, but also of the
progress of the montlis and years before it. Explain
it as thus pointing, though indirectly, to the Apostle's
past experience, and the insertion of the story seems
Uke a thankful expression of his faith, as he stands
beneath the cross. Endeavor to account for it without
this, and, though the record of a touching scene, it

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 173
does iiot so naturally and completely take its place
withiu the plan of the Gospel.
Or, as another iUustration of the point which we
have now in mind, let us look at one of the discourses
of Jesus. There is no more striking expression of
the Lord recorded by this author, as it seems to me,
than the one which we find in connection with his
promise to the disciples, on the last night of his life,
that they should meet him agam in heaven. " In my
Father's house are many mansions," he says ; " if it
were not so, I would have told you "* This last brief
sentence, standing as it does after the assurance
which precedes it, has been cited as forceless or
meaningless ; and it is so, when considered as a mere
declaration. It adds nothing to the positive state
ment. It is only a negative repetition. Had it been
uttered by an ordmary man, we should have placed
no greater reliance upon his assertion because of it.
Had it been uttered even by Jesus, when this disciple
and his five associates were journeying in his company
toward Cana, three years before, it would have
seemed almost like an idle word. But, when we
remember all that had passed since then, — when we
see that John, even more than the others, had
advanced in his faith toward the full comprehension
of. what Jesus was, — how dETerently it appears to
us ! So far from being meaningless now, it gathers
within itseE all the force which the apostle's confi
dence in hEn could give it, — a confidence which
had become stronger with the seeing of every mirac
ulous work and the hearing of every mEaculous
• John 14: 2.

174 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
word. It was, now, the testimony of the love of a
friend, whose affection and whose knowledge had
been thoroughly tried. It was, thus, far more than
any positive announcement of a truth. Such an
announcement might be doubted in a moment of
weakness or of darkness, but this testimony never.
Nay, even, it grew weightier and more full of conso
lation, the deeper the trial and uncertainty into which
the soul might be cast. It said to the soul, in such
an hour, you may believe the truth which I open to
you, — that there is to be a heavenly life and a
heavenly meeting — on the best of aU evidence, for,
if it were not so, I, whose friendship you now know
so well, would surely have told you. But, as the
words have no significance apart from the experience,
their presence where they are bears witness that the
experience had been a reality. And when the author
records them among these last words of Jesus to the
disciples, he assures us that the Apostle's inner his
tory, as well as the history of his Master, was a
matter of chief importance in the plan of his work.
These incidental statements and expressions, then, so
numerous E We could only cite them, point to the
same conclusion to which the other suggestions,
already presented, had combined to lead us.
V. I add only, in the fifth place, as bearing to the
same end, a brief reference to the inwardness, if I
may so call it, which characterizes the entire thought
and style of this Gospel. The history of the book,
as it has come down to us through the ages, has
strikingly exhibited its two peculiarities. No portion

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 175
of the New Testament has been a subject of more
earnest theological discussion. It has suggested defi
nitions, and awakened controversy, and divided
schools, to so great a degree, that one is almost led,
when observing this side of its history alone, to
believe it to have been Eitended only to set forth .the
formularies of doctrine. But when we enter into the
hiterior Ufe of the Church, and penetrate beneath the
warring opinions of hostile parties, we find- in all
aUke the deep conviction, that in this Gospel there is
more which enriches the soul, and more which appeals
to the believer's inward experience, than in all the
rest of the Apostolic writings. The most cultivated
Christian heart never exhausts the fulness of what it
offers to its lEe, any more than the most enhghtened
Christian mmd comprehends, to the utmost, the
mystery of its great doctrine.
This, surely, is no EisignEicant fact, which asks
not for an explanation It is the leading fact which
presses itseE upon our notice. It must have a
ground and a meaning. The reason that this Gospel
has awakened doctrinal inquEy and discussion is
because it was written to prove that Jesus was the
Logos. Just as truly and just as unquestionably may
we say, that it has affected the inner hfe of aU Chris
tians, because it was written as a setting forth ofthe
Apostle's own inner experience. The ti-uth was to be
established by the narrative of the Ufe of Jesus. The
form in which that narrative was to be made to
move forward to the estabhshment of the truth, was
to be determined by the way Ei which that Ufe had
affected bimseE. The whole record of events and

176 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
words, and everything both great and small, was to
be under the direction of this twofold ruling purpose.
This was the author's plan, and because it was so, and
only for this reason, the history of his Gospel has
been, from the beginning, such a twofold history.
The helpfulness of this Gospel to aU Christian
growth in the soul, which has been manifest in all
ages as derived from this peculiarity in its character,
is itself the strongest proof that it came from the
author's own inner Ufe as a gEb to the world.
This part of our discussion must be arrested at this
point. But enough has been said to establish the
assertion made at the beginning. The Fourth Gospel
was intended by its author to be a record, not only
ofthe Ufe of Christ and not only of John's personal
observation of Christ, but also of John's growth in
faith, of his Christian experience, which had come
out of that personal observation. He desired that his
readers should feel, as they perused his book, that
this Apostle was giving them his testimony, not alone
by itself, but with the emphasis and impressiveness
that would be imparted to it by the intimations of
what it had accomplished for his own soul.
We have, thus far, made no attempt to determine
whether the author was the Apostle himself, or some
other and later person. Our sole object has been to
set forth and prove a certain peculiar characteristic
of the book, which he wrote. This characteristic,
however, having been made clear, the question of
the authorship now demands our attention. But it

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 177
presents itself only in a shigle pomt of view, — ask
ing, Who, and who alone, could have been the writer
of a book so peculiarly characterized ? At the same
tune, it naturally suggests to us the mode of inquiry,
by means of which we may come to a decision, —
namely, by mquiring what are the characteristics of
the writer, as made manEest in his writings. Could
a man possessed of such characteristics have written
such a book, unless he were himseE the person who
had passed through the inner experience which the
book reminds us of, or rests upon ?
1. There was hi the author's mental character a
certain philosophical element. He was not, indeed,
a man who patiently mvestigated the reasons and
causes of things, or who deduced from a large collec
tion of facts a rule or principle. The speculations
of philosophers strictly so called, even when they
were within the sphere of religious inquEy, he per
haps had little sympathy with, though he, appa
rently, entered mto them far enough to comprehend
what these men were seeking after, and to know theE
errors. But, in the fact that his mind was occupied
with great truths, and. that he rose above the lower
objects *of thought to the highest and noblest, he pos
sessed this element in no ordinary degree. His in-
teEectual powers were of the intuitive or perceptive,
rather than of the reasoning order, yet he was both a
learner and a teacher Ei the school of truth. Now,
with such a character and position as this, E he had
lived Ei the second century, he would have been
either, as truly as any of the philosophers, a devotee

178 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
of some particular system who desired to bring others
to accept it, or, at least, an ardent lover of the ideas
which filled his mind and elevated his character.
Had he been the former, w.e may hold, with greatest
confidence, that he would not have written such a
book as he has, in any measure. The prologue,* as
has been so often said, would have extended itseE
over the whole Gospel. Its ideas would have
appeared continually in the discourses, of Jesus,
expressed in the phraseology which so peculiarly
belongs to it. The relation of all the following chap
ters to this introductory passage, and their develop
ment out of it, would have been set forth by the
author in the most distinct language. All the inci
dental allusions to little circumstances, which, having
no possible connection with the system taught, would
only draw away the reader's attention from it, would
have been omitted. Jesus would have been repre
sented far more in the light of the master of a school-,
commending to his disciples the study of his system
for its own sake. In his last interview with them,
even, we should probably have found him committing
to them this system more formally as a parting leg
acy, and pointing them to it, rather than so exclu
sively to the presence of the Spirit and a future
meeting in the other world, for their Consolation and
support. But if he were not, thus, the adherent or
defender of a particular school, and, therefore, we
are unable to say, with confidence, all that we could
say if he had been, the existence of this element in
his mind, in whatever degree we are compelled to
•John 1:1-18.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 179
admit it, is, in just that degree, inconsistent with the
pecuharity of the Gospel which has been noticed in
these pages. If he only loved the truths which had
revealed themselves to him, and wished above all
thmgs else to make them known to mankind, this
element and tendency hi his character would have
turned hun in another dEection. He might, indeed,
have undertaken to write the Ufe of Jesus, with some
of its incidents as well as of its teachings. But, E he
had done so, he would have given even of. the inci
dents of Jesus' outward history only enough to bind
the teachings together ; while, as he had not himseE
had any inner hfe Ei connection with those uicidents
and under the immediate influence of Jesus' presence
with him as a teacher, the undercurrent flowing under
all his plan and through aU his record would, surely,
not have been his own experience. Still less would
he have assumed a personaUty other than his own,
and then have fabricated a reUgious history for the
person whose name he adopted, wliich was as com
pletely unknown to that person as he was hunseE.
His Eiterest would have been centred upon the
truths and the teacher, and the more thoroughly he
had accustomed hhnself to dwell upon these, the less
would any such course have even occurred to his
mind. There would have been a far easier as weU
as nobler method for hun to choose for the "accom
plishment of his end, and his every impulse would
have been to adopt it. The Christ of John has been
clahned to be the counterpart of the Socrates of
Plato. Could Plato have traced through all the dis
courses and history of Socrates such a Une of false

180 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
experience represented as his own ? Would not the
tendencies and characteristics of his mind have pre
vented him? Would they not have made anything
else more natural to hhn and less repulsive ? .
2. The author had, also, a poetic element. But
the peculiarity of his presentation of this inner life
of the Apostle is as inconsistent with the idea of a
mere poetic fiction, as is the pecuharity of his record
of the outward history. Whatever the Gospel may
be, it is not a poem. There is no such peculiar
symmetry and completeness in its plot, or roundness
and fulness in its minor incidents, as would be the
first necessity to the poet's thought. And so it is
with these indications of what was personal and in
ward to hunself. All is too incidental, too irregular,
too Enperfect in the beauty of form, to be the work
of poetic imagination. Had the author, years after
the death of the Apostle, endeavored to picture to
himseE his character, and bow it developed into what
it was at the end by the gradual progress of a hfe
time, and, then, had he tried to write the history of
Jesus with the picture of this growing character con
tinually coloring that history, — and this is what he
must have done if we have a poetic fiction of a later day,
— then, he must have been more careful of the form,
and must have made the Apostle's growing character,
not indeed more really traceable throughout the
story, but more openly conspicuous. But the poetic
element in the author's mind, wliich we discover
through the examination of his Gospel, is simply
that which, coming into the narrative, elevates it

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 181
above a mere dry record of facts, and which imparts
to it something of the richness of the author's own
thought, and of the fulness of his sense of the truth.
It is that which belongs to men of the deepest and
noblest order of Emer Ufe, — the poetry of such a life,
which, because they possess it, they can impart, in
some measure, to the record of their own experi
ence, but never to the experience of another, for tbe
simple reason that it is not theE own. It is not
developed largely enough in them to make them
poets, or to give them the abEity to produce a hfe-
like fiction. It leaves them in an entirely dETerent
class of men, destitute of the power to assume the
personahty of some one of another age, in a truth
ful way, as the poet or novehst may do. If they
attempt to assume such a personality at aU, it must
be hi a manner so unperfect and unskiEul as at
once to betray its falseness, and, therefore, at once
to become abhorrent to theE own deepest feehngs,
as weE as to be easily detected by every one else. In
one word, the book must have been other than it is,
and more than it is hi this regard, — the author, also,
must have been other than he was, and more than
he was on this poetic side of his nature, — if either
of them belonged to a later age. The Apostle, and
the Apostle alone, could have traced, hi this peculiar
way, the story of his own faith ; for he only could
have had that richness of sentiment and emotion
connected with it, out of which springs aU the poetic
character that the book possesses.
3. The author, agam; was of the contemplative

182 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
and introvertive order. But, in this view of his
character, also, we say that the Gospel, as it has pre
sented itself to us, is inconsistent with the supposi
tion that the author lived hi the second century.
The results, which would be naturally expected either
from the contemplation or the introversion of such a
man, are not sufficiently manifest. Having nothing
but the traditions and accounts within the circle of
the Synoptical Gospels before him, he would have
mused upon them and received their impressions into
his mind. As he thought more and more deeply, he
would have felt himseE impelled to draw out of them
the truths which Jesus taught, and perhaps to give
these truths, as he understood them, to the world.
He might, indeed, have brought himseE, by medita
tion, into some ideas of Jesus beyond those which he
found in these early writings, beEeving that the hints
which they contained were suggestive of more than
the writers had supposed. The workings of these
ideas in his own mind, with theE effect upon his
character, might have given him greater confidence
in them, as weU as a deeper sense of their import
ance to mankind. But had all this been so, what
would have been the book which resulted from it ?
Would it not have contained, not only the formal
statements of these ideas, but something of the
method by which they had grown out of the Apos
tolic writmgs ? Would it not, also, have attempted
to show, in a formal way, the legitimate and natural
influence of these ideas upon the soul of man ? Or,
if this author's desire had been to set forth this
latter pomt by the presentation of an example in

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 183
human Ufe; would not the presentation have been a
less incidental one ? But the apostle, E he were of
this character, might most naturally bring out this
other side of Jesus' teachhigs, which the Synoptical
writers had left hi the main unnoticed, but which he
had meditated upon for so many years. And, while
his mam design was to give this picture of Jesus as
proving him to be tbe Logos, the very introvertive
tendencies of his nature would not only have made
it natural for him to do so, but would have almost
compeEed him to carry through the history the thread
of his own Christian experience, precisely as we
discover it Ei this Gospel. He is the person whom
aE the antecedent probabilities of the case point to
as the writer ; for the facts which we observe pre
cisely correspond with these elements in his character,
while, on the other hand, E we suppose a later writer,
there is no such correspondence.
4. If we turn, now, to the moral elements in the
author's nature, the love of truth is one of the most
conspicuous. Everywhere in the Gospel and in his
other writings we find the evidences of this character
istic. The essential and fundamental thing in the
right worship and service of God is made by him to
be truth, and the sphere hi which the great enemy
of God's kingdom and all his followers live is the
opposite of truth. The sense of its beauty is so
deeply implanted in his nature, that religion becomes
to his thought the truth, — the word entering into
his phraseology so thoroughly as even to mark his
style in distinction from that of the other New Testa-

184 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
ment writers. It is needless to dwell upon this point,
for it is manEest to every reader who gives even a
single thought to what he reads. He who says, Let
us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in
truth ; They that worship hEn must worship him m
truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him ;
Thy word is truth ; The only-begotten of the Father,
who came into the world, was fuE of truth ; He came
to bear' witness of the truth ; If we say we have fel
lowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and
do not the truth ; No lie is of the truth ; The devil is
a liar and the father of falsehood ; . Whosoever loveth
and maketh a lie is excluded from the heavenly king
dom, — must have regarded truth as the basis qf all
right character, and must have valued it as his chief
treasure.* How could such a man have placed a
falsehood at the very beginning of his work as an
author, giving to his readers the impression that he
was tbe disciple whom Jesus loved, when in reality
he had never seen Jesus at all ? But, if he was of a
later age, this is not all that we are compelled to ,
suppose. Not only must he have assumed the per
sonality of the apostle, but he must have assumed it
in such a way as would involve the most dehberate

* The last of the passages here cited is from the Book of Revela
tion. If the authorship of that book by the apostle John be not
admitted, this passage is, of course, out of place ; but its insertion
or omission is a matter of little consequence, when the others are so
numerous and clear. The other passages are taken from the first
Epistle of John as well as the Gospel, — it being generally admitted
that these two books were by the same author, whether he was the
Apostle John or not. The point which is urged here, however, is suf
ficiently plain, if we confine ourselves to citations from the Gospel
alone.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 185
and painstaking falsEication, for his representation
of the apostle's inner lEe and growing faith is pre
cisely that which must have been either the truth or
a labored Enitation of it. It underlies and pervades
the whole history, as we have seen, but does not
appear as the main end of the writer's effort, or pre
sent itself as a well-rounded and complete portrayal
of character. The more incidentally, however, it
manEests itseE, the more difficult must it have been
for the author to trace out its course, and the more
carefully designed must have been the attempt to
deceive his readers. We pass by aU the other falsi
fications which the book, under the supposition of a
later date, would contam, — though they cover a large
portion ofthe history of Jesus, as well as that of this
disciple, — and limit ourselves to the one only which
our line of thought brings to our notice. How could
such a man, more full of truth than almost any other,
have purposely made such a falsehood the very frame
work of aU that he was writing ? It has been well
said by one of the most eminent of the recent adver
saries of this Gospel, in view of other difficulties
which meet us on the theory that the author was not
the one he professes to be, that we have no example
of a forgery of this kind in the apostolic age. We
may well add, after observing this peculiar element
of inner experience, that we have no example, in any
age, of such a forgery from such a man. The truth
fulness of his character and the falsehood of his
Gospel in this regard are utterly EreconcEable. But
the truthfulness of his character shmes forth clearly
on every page. He must, therefore, have been the
apostle himself.

186 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
5. The author of this Gospel was characterized
by the strongest love to Jesus. This is so evident
as to be admitted by all the leading opponents of the
Johannean authorship, and cannot be doubted if we
are to beUeve anything of any author because of his
writings. But his affection was not only strong.
Its chief pecuharity consisted in the fact that it was
a deep and absorbing personal attachment. He loved,
according to the often-quoted remark of Grotius, not
so much the Christ, in his official and saving rela
tions to the world, — as Peter loved him, — but
Jesus, as an intimate friend of his own. The Gospel
professes that this love was developed in the author's
soul through his association with Jesus as the most
intimate and confidential one among the company of
the apostles. The fact of its development m this way
is made to appear throughout the narrative, and the
process of its development seems to be the underly-
Eig personal experience, out of which, at least in one
view of it, the whole history springs. Now, that all
this is in perfect consistency with the supposition that
the apostle John was himseE the author, is too plain
to be questioned. There is not a difficulty in this
regard,, wliich the Gospel presents, if we once accept
this view. On the other hand, not only does the
representation of the matter, as a whole, appear alto
gether natural, but the many little and apparently
unpremeditated allusions or suggestions, which seem
to mark this affection of the author for Jesus as that
of a man who had seen him, bad talked with him and
lived with him, had hstened to his teachings and
been present at his death, and which distinguish it,

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 187
thus, from the love of any one who, hving after
wards, could only have been able to commune with
him hi thought, faU into theE places just where we
should expect them, and add to the charm and beauty
of the book.
But if the author was not the apostle, but a man
of a later generation, the difficulties that we meet
are insuperable. Such an absorbing personal affec
tion for Jesus would either have made him a mystic
and filled his Gospel with the outbreakings of rapt
emotion, or it would have so deeply felt the want of
some more immediate sight of Jesus than had ever
been granted to it as to have betrayed this feeling
somewhere, in spite of its utmost efforts at conceal
ment. A writer of a depth of love like this, which
pervaded his whole being, could scarcely have trans
ferred himself beyond the boundaries and peculiari
ties of his own experience, and represented his love
as havmg grown under entirely different circum
stances, and into a form which, in this respect, was
completely other than his own. The more his pecu
liar emotion — that of love for a person whom he had
never seen, but the conception of whose character he
had gained from reading and from meditation only —
became the element of his Ufe, the more, even, would
he have found hunseE fettered and hmdered in any
attempt of this kind. Paul himself, near as -ixe was
to the time of Christ's hfe on earth, acquainted as he
was with those who had been m his society, blessed
as he was with a special manifestation of him on the
way to Damascus, attended as he was, again and
again, by visions and revelations, — Paul himself,

188 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
we all feel, could not have written a story of such a
development of love as we find in this Gospel, as if
it were his own. His conceptions could not have
overleaped his history so far and so fully, as to have
given him power to picture his affection - for Jesus
" with the distinctive character which belongs only to
those who live in the bodily presence of a friend.
He did not have this feeling towards Jesus ; and he
could not, had he tried to do so, have deceived the
world into the belief that he had. At some unguarded
point in the narrative the mask would have been
dropped, if only for a moment, and, in the single
sentence or paragraph written before it could be
assumed again, a thousand eyes would have discov
ered the falsehood. How much less even than Paul
could a writer of another century have done the same
thing ! The deeper his love for the unseen Christ,
the more impossible would have been the portrayal
of it as a love for the seen Christ. The persons on
whom a peculiar blessing was pronounced by Jesus,
after Thomas had acknowledged hun as his Lord and
God, because they believe without the evidence which
he demanded, know nothing of the pecuhar experi
ence that Thomas had. A fundamental element in
their believing is the absence of sight, while to his
faith sight was essential. What more difficult task,
and what one less likely to be undertaken by a Chris
tian of very deep and pervading faith, who Uved in
Ephesus after the death of John, than that of repre
senting the growth of his own belief as having been
due to bis sight of Jesus during his earthly Ufe, and to
his daily intercourse with him. He would have been

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 189
trying to describe the inmost springs and secrets of his
interior life as the very opposite of what they were.
But not only may we say, that an author possessed
of this pecuUar and strong affection for Jesus could
not have written this Gospel, E he had never seen
hun as John had seen hun, — much more may we say
that he would not. He must have known that his life
of Jesus would produce upon his readers the pecuUar
Enpression which it was naturally calculated to pro
duce. They would be led to believe that Jesus said
many things — many, even, which had a most im
portant bearing upon the character and the soul —
which he did not say. The friend whom he most
deeply loved would, thus, be presented in a. false
light. Not only so, but all his own relations to this
friend, and the hifluences of this friend upon his own
mmd and heart, would be described in a manner
utterly at variance with the facts. If, with this
knowledge, he wrote as he did, he purposely deceived.
He deliberately falsified the words of Jesus and his
own interior history in connection with him. Such
deception and falsuication, however, are as contrary
to noble friendship as they are to truth. Love to
Jesus, hke that which he evidently had, would have
made him shrink at the very thought of writing such
a baseless story of his life. The existence of such
love, pervadbig and eontroEhig his own soul, would
have made it, to his feehng, impossible for him to give
a false picture of its own pecuhar quality and growth.
View the characteristics of this author, then, as we
may, they seem to preclude the possibility of his

190 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
writing the life of Jesus, with the peculiar element of
personal inward growth which we find in this Gospel,
unless he was the Apostle whom he professes to be.
No conception of such a book would have entered his
mind had he lived in the second century. Much less
would the preparation of it have been tolerable to his
thought. • The same things, we add in a single word, may be
urged, and in some respects with even greater force,
against the supposition that the Gospel was written
at the end of the first century, and was ascribed to
the Apostle although he was not the author, or that
it was partly his work but was added to and shaped
into a harmonious whole by some of his friends or
followers. This underlying personal experience is
so intimately connected with every portion of the
entire history, that it disproves any joint author
ship or any workmg over of a partial or fragmen
tary narrative into completeness ; while, as for the
other supposition, in the year one hundred, the
character and history of the Apostle were too well
known in tbe region of his residence to have allowed
the possibility of ascribing to him, with success,
not only a. life of Jesus which was so largely unre
liable in its statements, but also a portrayal of
his own inner lEe which was not founded upon the
truth. But if the Gospel was, indeed, the work of the
Apostle John, we have in it an exhibition of the
power of Christianity as it presents itself tb men of
the most thoughtful and the purest minds. The author

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 191
of this Gospel, as the world is coming to acknowledge
more and more, belonged to this class of men, and
was even an exalted one among them. He was not
a man of weak and effeminate nature. He had,
mdeed, the devotion of love that belongs to a woman,
but the strength of intellect and the profound thought
which characterize the higher order of men.
How did the Christian truth commend itseE to his
acceptance? It did so, because it appealed to his
consciousness of the great fact of sin, and offered him
help in escaping from its power. It did so, thus, on
the ground, and the only ground, on which any
rehgious system can fitly commend itself. No one
among the New Testament authors had a more
thorough realization of sin as the sphere in which the
world was livhig. It was the darkness which shut
out the light. It was the bondage in which all were
hopelessly involved. It was the evil principle which
wrought out the death of the soul. Until this con
sciousness of the great fact of sin is awakened,
there can be Uttle power in Christianity to bring
a man to itself. He ~has the blindness .which de
clares that it sees, and, therefore, his sin remains
immovable, ^because he will not recognize its exist
ence. But the moment the awakening takes place,
the power become a mighty one, and the more
honest and thoughtful the soul is, the more firmly
does that power lay hold upon it. To a man like
this Apostle, who comes to the realization of sin,
it is the main reality of his life. The need of escape
from its defiling influence is the greatest of all needs.
The way by which escape can be secured is the one

192 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
thing to be searched after, and, E possible, to be
found. Christianity commended itseE to his acceptance,
because of the way which it opened. It was a way
in which the Divine Being Himself drew near to his
soul, with all the tender sympathies and deep
thoughts and elevating affections of a personal friend,
and offered hun His own guidance and help and
teaching. The personal power of soul upon soul,
this Apostle knew, as every man of deep and noble
nature like him knows, — if, by any means, it can
pass from God to man, — is the highest conceivable
force to transform and elevate the character; to
deliver it from all evil, and fill it with purity and
beauty. - Having been invited into the society of the
man to whom John the Baptist had pomted him, he
communed with Him and learned from Him during
the whole period of His public ministry ; and, at every
successive step of his course, he found himseE be
lieving in Him more thoroughly, until at last he felt
that he knew, as with the -most perfect knowledge,
that in Him this personal power was made a reality.
The Divine Logos had entered into humanity. God
was with his soul. Tbe reason of his confidence was
the truths which he had heard, the character which
he had seen, the love which had displayed itseE, the
experience in his own life of the power of this char
acter, and of this love, and of these truths. He
placed himseE in the light -and under the influence
of Jesus' life and words ; and, opening his soul to
receive what they might give him, he waited through
the years before the crucifixion ; and his opened soul,

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 193
he says at the end, had received all that it wanted.
The deliverance from sin had come, and the begin
ning of a growth in holiness and love which promised
to be endless. He waited on through the years after
the crucifixion, also, — his every thought upon the
same Efe and words of his Master, — and the highest
hope of his soul for the immortal future, was, that he
might become more perfectly Eke the Master because
he should see hun as he is.
Now, E the Apostle gives this record, we learn
from it that the richest hfe of the richest soul, per
chance, that the world has ever known, came to its
earthly perfection through its following of Jesus as
the incarnate Son of God, who led it out of the
domEiion of sin by the power of his own friendly
aid. If he was mistaken iu his view of Jesus, he,
at least, gained a great result from his hfe with him ;
and a similar union with Jesus, so far as it is stiU pos
sible, must, as it would seem, be a way of reaching
the same end. If, on the other hand, he was not
mistaken, it is the way, and the only way; and the
Christian system will manifest itseE to every soul,
deep and genuine and true as his was, to be the
truth, — resting upon the consciousness, in the soul,
of sm as a reality, and pointing to the incarnation as
the personal power of God working upon the soul
for its dehverance. But was he mistaken ?
This Gospel, in the view of it which we have
taken, suggests to us, at this pomt, another thought.
Here is the record of the impressions which the
Apostle declares to have been produced upon his
mind by what he had heard and seen of Jesus during

194 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
his life with him. If they were false or unfounded,
Jesus himself must have known them to be so. If,
then, they were suffered to remain uncontradicted,
the responsibility rests upon Jesus himself. But
would Jesus, who was so truthful in his character,
and so warm in his friendship for all his disciples,
and preeminently for this one of them, have allowed
them to continue deceived Ei regard to himseE and
his mission ? Would he have left this most intimate
friend exposed, for his whole lifetime, to such error,
when a word from himself would have corrected it ?
Think of the interview which Jesus had with the
disciples on the evening before his death, when all
the tenderest emotions of the soul were called forth,
— a scene without a counterpart in history, — and
if this inner Ufe of the Apostle had not been growing
up under the influence of true ideas, E his behef
and that of his companions was not the truth, we
are forced to hold that the friend who was speaking
to them so tenderly was, at the very moment of his
apparent friendship, leavmg them to a delusion,
which they were to extend as widely over the world
as they could. Even more than this, he was, at that
final hour, intentionally deceiving them in the posi
tive declaration of untruths. Let the man who can
persuade himseE of such an impossibihty, believe it.
The world has no virtue in it, and has never seen
truth in any soul, E Jesus was untruthful.
We are compelled, I say, to hold that Jesus was a
deceiver of his nearest friends, Ethe unpressions of
this author,, as he gives them, are unfounded; for
the only other suppositions possible in the case are

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 195
completely untenable. The one is, that Jesus was
himseE deceived. But the comprehension of the
truth and of the human soul which Jesus had, as well
as his calm possession of himseE, were such that he
coidd not have been carried away by the dreamy
vision of a greatness which was far above him. If
even in one unguarded moment he indulged such a
fancy, he must, as his clearer insight returned to
hun, have penetrated the seE-deception, and seen
himseE again precisely as he was. If he aUowed it
to come upon him again and again, or yielded him
seE up to its power as it came, he must have done so
wilUngly, and, therefore, must have been one who
was not deluded only, but who was something more
and worse than this. The most recent and most
learned of the adversaries of this Gospel who enter
tain this view respecting Jesus, even in a hmited
degree, is obUged to admit this, and to confess that
he must have, also, consciously assumed what he
knew did not belong to him, and thus must have been
partially a deceiver. The theory of his being de
ceived is, thus, inseparable from that of his being
also untruthful. The former involves, of necessity,
in his case some adnuxture of the latter, and it falls
if the latter falls.
The other supposition is, that, though the apostle
records these impressions as those which were made
upon him while he was in the society of his Master,
they were in fact — so far as they had reference to
Jesus' higher work and divine nature — only the
fruit of his subsequent musings after Jesus' death.
He attributed to his Master, thus, what he came him-

196 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
self to believe in only in his own later years. The
impossibility of this, we believe, has been already
made sufficiently clear by the line of thought which
we have followed throughout this discussion. But
there is a particular point which we may notice for a
moment, and in connection with which we may con
fidently reject this supposition. In three or four
instances in this Gospel, we find the statement, which
has already been referred to in another connection,
that the author, or the disciples, did not come to the
right understanding of certain things until after Jesus
rose from the dead. These statements are introduced
in the most incidental way, and are among the many
indications that the book is not a fraudulent one.
But, E the apostle is careful in these cases to declare
the fact that, with reference to this or that point, he
did not comprehend the truth during Jesus' lifetime,
does not this very painstaking in these cases show
that, in all other cases, he did gain his knowledge or
belief within that period? In no more emphatic
way, as it would seem, could he have proved that he
did not " muse himself" into the ideas which fill his
Gospel, or change his conception of his Master with
some subsequent change in his own thoughts or sen
timents. It is not too much to say, that these little
sentences, so singular as they are, and occurring in
the narrative, as they do, with so much simplicity
and naturalness, prove beyond any reasonable doubt
that John did not attribute to Jesus any ideas or
words, except those which were actually found in the
discourses that Jesus had himself uttered and John
had himself heard. We are reduced, then, to the

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 197
alternative that Jesus was a deceiver, which contra
dicts every characteristic of his nature exhibited in
the New Testament, and cannot be true, or that the
views which this apostle had of him and of the truth
which he taught were the right views, — and, there
fore, as we have already seen, that the way in which
the apostle's hfe grew toward perfection must be
the only way in which any man can obtain the same.
The argument which is, thus, derived from the record
of this author's inner Efe for the truth of Christianity
is a powerful one. It is one which rises, as it were,
from the deeper recesses of the gospel history, and is,
for this very reason, ofthe greater force.
The Gospel which this apostle has given us, then,
is not only his biography of his Master ; in the Ught
in which we have viewed it at this time, it is, also,
his defence of the truth. As men, in the region
where he hved, had aEeady begun to be involved in
the long discussion of the ages respecting God and
the way in which he reveals himself to the world,
theE reasonings had, doubtless, placed many of them
in sharp antagonism to the Christian ideas. Some
of them, we may beheve, had become cavilers and
sceptics who rested in theE philosophy, and con
ceived of nothing higher or better than theE own
thoughts. As' he looked out from the quiet sphere
of his labors, and saw the dangers which were thus
threatening the faith which he preached; as he
thought how rapidly these dangers might increase,
and realized how, through the charm of philosophical
uivestigation and disputation, they might in a pecu-

198 THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
liar degree affect men of cultivated minds ; and,
especially, as he felt that, with the near ending of
his own Efe, the last of the original witnesses would
have passed away from earth, and the church would
be left without the power of appealing to apostolic
authority still present with it, — we may suppose that
he felt impelled to leave behind him some presenta
tion ofthe Christian truth, which should, ifpossible,
avert these dangers. The most powerful presenta-
tion, however, for this end as well as every other, he
felt, would be the story of Jesus' life. With the
delightful recoUections of his early experience, there
fore, he wrote the wonderful book which has been
the subject of our thought at this time. How strange
a thing, those doubters and disbeUevers of his own
era may have said to one another, as they first
chanced to read its pages, — how strange a thing to
be thrown into the midst of our learned controver
sies, and to defend the Christian doctrine against our
weighty objections ! It may easily have seemed to
them Uke the fond and foolish meditations of an old
man who sees an unreal beauty in his childhood, or
remembers some teacher of his youthful days as the
fountain of truth. What was this against philosophy ?
But the simple story, which he told, outlived their
speculations and theE reasonings, and, when they
had long been forgotten, it still retained the freshness
and fulness of its power. It did so, because it found
its way behind and beneath all controversy, — not
arguing with the doubter, but drawing his thoughts
to the life which had revealed the truths, and leaving
hun in the contemplation of the effect of those truths
as they accomphshed their work in a human soul.

THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 199
The story stands, to-day, as it has always stood —
only that the doubters and sceptics now so realize its
divine power, if it is once accepted as coming from
an unmediate disciple of Jesus, that they try to throw
doubt upon its truthfulness, and to postpone its
authorship to a later generation. By the artlessness
of its record, which is beyond the skill of any forger's
art, and by the haE-concealed, yet ever-revealed,
tracuig of its author's Christian faith and feeling,
which could only be the work of that one within
whose heart these had found theE abiding place, it
answers theE questionhigs. And when the sceptics
of to-day, with all theE objections and their philoso
phy, shall have passed out of the world's reverence
as completely as those of the early ages have already
passed, it wUl still give to the thoughtful believer his
surest confidence for himseE, and his strongest de
fense against his adversaries, in the inner Ufe of
John springing out of his communion with the Ufe
of his Master.

VII.
THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.

BY ANDKEW P. PEABODT.

RENAN'S LEe of Jesus, which before the Franco-
Prussian war had reached in the original its
thEteenth edition, besides not a few in its English
dress, is now the gospel of the doubting and unbe
lieving on both sides of the Atlantic, and wiU remain
so till some one bolder or more subtle than he shall
displace him, as he displaced Strauss. His book is
a charming one in its delineations of everybody and
everythbng but Christ. In his chapter on the origi
nal disciples, he gives a very vivid sketch of their
respective individualities ; and both in his Life of Jesus
and in his work on the Apostles, he acknowledges
the authenticity of the accounts we have of them, the
miraculous narratives alone excepted. There is in
the Introduction to his LEe of Jesus, one very ex
traordinary testimony to the truth of the evangelic
history, which I cannot forbear quoting.
" I have traversed in every direction the district
where the scenes of the Gospel are laid. I have vis
ited Jerusalem, Hebron, and Samaria. Almost no
site named in the story of Jesus has escaped me.
All this narrative, which at a distance seems to float
200

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 201
in the clouds of an unreal world, thus assumed a
body, a substantial existence, which astonished me.
The striking coincidence of texts and places, the
wonderful harmony of the ideal of the Gospels with
the country which served as its frame, was- for me a
revelation. I had before my eyes a fifth Gospel, and
thenceforth, through the stories of Matthew and
Mark, instead of an abstract being who one might
say had never existed, I saw in Efe and movement a
human form that chaUenged admiration."
In fine, Renan treats the entire New-Testament
history as an unquestionable record of actual histori
cal personages and events, except where the super
natural element crops out m the narrative ; thus far,
at least, showing himself both a clear-sighted and an
honest critic. In point of fact, the historical books
of the New Testament have at once so many external
proofs and internal tokens of their authenticity, as to
leave no question concerning the substantial truth of
their narrative of ordinary events, however we may
dispose of the abnormal incidents they reoord.
Besting, then, on the admitted authenticity of this
narrative, I propose to draw from the apostles who
bear in it so prominent a part, such testimony as they
offer in behaE of theE Lord and Master.
In the first place, there is not the shghtest doubt
that of eleven of these apostles, most or all incurred
hardships, losses, perils, persecutions, and sufferings
of the severest character, in attestation of their belief
Ei the Divine mission and authority of Jesus ; that
several of them, as itinerant preachers, devoted them
selves for the residue of theE Uves to the promulga-

202 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
tion of this beUef , their zeal carrying them mto
distant lands, and enabling them to overcome natural,
social, and national barriers, insurmountable except
to the most ardent and seE-forgetting enthusiasm;
and that several of them, in the same cause, encoun
tered and bravely endured beheading, crucifixion,
and other agonizing and ignominious forms of death.
These things attest, at least, the sincerity and the
intensity of their belief. Sacrifice and martyrdom
always prove as much as this. But they do not prove
the truth of a belief, — if they did, there would be
no end to the shams, contradictions, and absurdities,
which, as sealed by the blood of their believers, we
should be compelled to recognize as true.
There is, however, this peculiarity which distin
guishes the apostles from all other martyrs, even
from other early Christian martyrs. The declara
tions which they maintained at the peril and cost of
their lives were not dogmatic articles of faith, but
statements of alleged facts, of which they professed
to have been eye and ear witnesses. Foremost
among these facts was the resurrection of Jesus from
the dead. That they believed themselves witnesses
of the reality of his death and of his reappearance
among the living, there cannot be the slightest doubt.
This Renan admits. He maintains that Jesus really
died; that the apostles caught eagerly at the first
rumor of his resurrection, which grew from the steal
ing of his body (it is hard to say by whom, but more
probably by Joseph of Arimathea than by any one
else) , and from Mary Magdalene's mistaking the gar
dener for him in the dim dawn and through the mist

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 203
of her tears ; that they so firmly believed this story
as to imagine that they saw him repeatedly, by day
as well as by night, at Jerusalem and in Gahlee, the
whole eleven of them at a time ; and that this hallu
cination lasted many days, and, on one occasion,
extended to the more than five hundred brethren
mentioned by St. Paul. He says emphatically that
had the apostles possessed less than the strongest
assurance of theE Master's resurrection, they could
not by any possibiUty have been the earnest propa
gandists and heroic sufferers that they undoubtedly
were. We thank him for this admission ; and indeed
no champion of the Christian faith can ask for a
firmer basis for his superstructure of argument and
evidence than the concessions made all along by this
pre-emmently fafr and frank, yet for all this only tbe
more captivating and dangerous, Coryphaeus of the
anti-Christian host.
But the undoubting behef of professed eye and
ear witnesses is not in itself sufficient to inspire con
fidence in theE story. If these men were fools #r
fanatics, their testimony, though blood-sealed, is of
no value. The question for us then is, whether they
were persons of sufficiently acute perceptions, clear
mind, and sound judgment, to be relied on.
To answer this question, let us look first at their
writings. Five of them, Matthew, John, James,
Peter, and Jude, are among the reputed authors of
the New Testament. As to these writers, we have
as good reason for beUevmg in the genuineness of
Matthew's and John's Gospels, of John's First
Epistle, and of Peter's First Epistle, as we have for

204 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
believing in the genuineness of Virgil's Georgics,
or of Cicero, de Officiis. We find them, from the ear
liest mention made of them, named and quoted as
written by their now reputed authors, without any
record or Eitimation of a doubt or question as to theE
authorship. I am aware,"indeed,that rationalistic criticism does
not admit that the Gospels came into being as other
books do. The development theory is apphed to
them, as to the whole realm of living nature. Their
genesis is Uke Topsy's, in Mrs. Stowe's tale, — "I
'spect I grow'd, don't think nobody never made me."
But Renan admits that memoranda of our Saviour's
discourses written out by Matthew were the nucleus
of the Gospel which bears his name. He thinks,
too, that the narrative portions of John's Gospel,
which he regards as singularly truthhke and accu
rate, were derived from that Apostle, and that the
whole book was written by his immediate disciples.
Here let me offer some considerations with special
reference to the authorship of the fourth Gospel.
As I have said, the testimony of antiquity that it
was written by John, is unanimous and full. As to
his having written the Apocalypse, that testimony is
less clear and conclusive. Yet the critics . of the
Tubingen school maintain that this last book was
undoubtedly written by the Apostle John. But it is
very certain that the same man wrote the Gospel of
John (so-called), the first Epistle bearing his name,
and the Apocalypse ; for there are several very strik
ing characteristic conceptions and figures, which are.
both peculiar and common to these three writings, or

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 205
to the Gospel and the Apocalypse. For instance, the
term Logos (the Word) is apphed to Jesus in all
three of them, and nowhere else; and again, Jesus
is introduced in the Gospel under the figure of a
lamb; the same figure reappears in the Apocalypse, in
almost every vision of the glorified Redeemer, and
he is caUed by this name nowhere else. *These are
but two instances, to which several others might be
added, of peculiarities common to the Gospel and
the Apocalypse, and rendering it very certain, that
E the Tubingen critics do not err Ei ascribing the
latter to John, he must have written the former.
Yet another consideration strikes me very forcibly
in favor of the authorship of the fourth Gospel by
John. True or false, this is the most remarkable
book ever written, and has had more power over the
human mind and heart than any other, both in
determining beEef, and in awakening tender, pro
found, and fervent devotion. The sublimest narrative
ever written is that of the raising of Lazarus. The
words put into the mouth of Jesus in that scene, " I
am the resurrection and the life; he that beheveth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and
whoso liveth, and beheveth in me, shaU never die,"
are the grandest utterance ever heard on earth, and
must and wiU be rehearsed in hope and triumph, by
the graveside, till the last of the dying shaU have
put on immortality. < The recorded communings and
intercessions of the night of the betrayal surpass in
every element of pathos all human Uterature beside,
and there at this and at every moment, all the world
over, thousands upon thousands of the weary and

206 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
grief-stricken, who, oft as they read these blessed
words, feel pillowed on the bosom of Infinite Love.
Now, there are but two hypotheses possible. One
is, that we have the faithful narrative of what was said
and done by the Truth and LEe incarnate, transmit
ted to us by the hand of one who saw and heard
what he wrote. If this be so, while it makes no
manner of difference which of the apostles wrote the
book, no one would venture to doubt its having been
written by John. The other supposition is, that the
author of this Gospel, by his own genius, without a
copy, shaped and filled out in those transcendently
glorious and beautiful proportions and tints the figure
of Jesus Christ, and from his own fertile brain spun
those discourses into whose depth none can enter
without seeming to listen to the very voice of God.
If this be true, then the author of that book deserves
the place in human gratitude, reverence, nay, adora
tion, which the Christian Church has assigned to
Jesus . He towers up above aU other writers , 'all other
men of his age ; nay more, as the greatest mind, the
greatest soul of his, race. The book is, Eideed, su
perhuman, if he whom it portrays was not so. How
then could the name of such a writer have been lost,
and his fame transferred to another ? It was a name
too great to perish, a fame too exalted not to have its
enduring record. We are then compelled to accept
as our only alternative, our first supposition, — the
belief resting on unbroken tradition from the earliest
times, that this book, great and glorious as it is, was
written by an illiterate GaUlean fisherman, and that it
owes its superiority to all other books, not to any

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 207
surpassing ability of the author, but to the Divine
hfe hi human form, as to which he only related what
had been uttered in his presence, or done under his
personal knowledge.
As for the Epistle bearing the name of James, we
have evidence that it was generally received as gen
uine, and was from a very early period read in the
churches. As of the two apostles bearing that name,
the brother of John died early, this letter must be
ascribed to James, the son of Alphseus. We have
about the same kind and nearly the same degree of
evidence, for the genuineness of the epistle called
that of Jude, or Judas, — evidence which would
be deemed amply sufficient for any book outside ofthe
sacred canon. The epistles of James and Jude have
also characteristics of style and sentiment which ally
them to the undoubtedly genuine epistles of John
and Peter, and show that they belong to the earliest
time and the apostohc school, and not to the next suc-
ceechng Christian age, whose few extant writmgs are
of quite a different type.
We have then, undoubtedly, in our hands the
writings of some of those men, who, at the risk of
everything earthly, professed to have been eye-wit
nesses of what Jesus said and did. How do they
write? Like intelligent, sober, credible men? Or
do they m their writings show themselves so stupid
and foolish, or so wUd and fanatical, that they could
easily have been the dupes of pretension or unpos-
ture ? This question would seem to be answered by
the regard which has been paid to their writings in
every subsequent age by the foremost men in point

208 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
of intelligence, good sense, and culture. These
writers have generally been supposed, in Christen
dom, to have been speciaUy enlightened and inspired
by God. Whether this be so or not, it is aside from
our present purpose to inquire ; but the fact that such
an opinion concerning them has been held by a large
proportion of the first minds of our race is a suffi
cient proof that their writings are at least free from
the tokens of weakness, folly, or infatuation.
This view of their character is certainly confirmed
on examination. The books present all the marks
of truth, when tried by the usual tests. The Gospels
of Matthew and John contain a great many names,
dates, local and historical references ; it was a period
of very frequent change in the political relations of
Palestine, — a period as to which later writers would
inevitably have committed gross anachronisms ; yet
we find in these books only the closest accordance,
in geography, chronology, and history, with all the
authorities of the time, especially with the minute
and cEcumstantial history of Josephus. Then, too,
we have between the Epistles and the Gospels, just
the kind of coincidences which we should expect to
trace in genuine works. Thus we find in the Epistles
not any formal statement of facts, or set rehearsal
of the words of Jesus ; but we detect in them unmis
takable tokens of firm belief in the contents of the
Gospels, and what is more, of precisely the condition
of mind and character which these contents were
adapted to produce. The coincidences between the
Gospels and the Epistles are closely analogous to
those which we should expect to find between the

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 209
domestic or friendly letters of statesmen or generals
concerned in either war of our Eidependence and
authentic histories of the same war.
Then, again, there are no books hi the world that
"show greater serenity and clearness of mind than
these manEest. Their style is sunple, artless, free
from exaggeration, hyperbole, apostrophe, decla
mation, ambitious rhetoric, outbursts of impetuous
feeling. Matthew and John, in describing the mar
vellous hfe and works of Jesus Christ, write as quietly
and dispassionately as if they were narrating ordinary
events. They show no fear that they shall not be
beheved. They use no forms of strong asseveration.
In fine, they write as if they had become so accus
tomed to experiences on a higher plane than that of
common humanity, as to be unconscious of their
position, — just as natives of Switzerland might talk
and write cahnly and unexcitedly about glaciers and
avalanches, and scenes of which the mere thought
thrills us with profound emotion.
The Epistle of James is a very remarkable com
position. Had it come down to us, with such slight
verbal changes as might have been necessary, as a
treatise of Plutarch, or Epictetus, or Marcus Anto
ninus, it would now be regarded as the finest ethical
monument of antiquity, and would hold an unrivalled
place as a school and college classic. For common
sense, shrewd observation of men and things, deep
insight, and practical wisdom of the highest order,
it may resign all vantage-ground on the score of any
sacred associations, and stiU retain its. prestige unim-
paEed ; whUe it is no less remarkable for the sharp

210 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
edge and keen point and brilliant sheen of many of
its single maxims and apophthegms.
I have said enough about these writings for my
present argument, — enough to show you that at
least those of the apostles whom we know as authors
were not feeble, silly, credulous men, who could have
been easily deceived by an Enpostor, or drawn by a
self-deluded pretender into the vortex of his fanati
cism ; but that they were clear-headed, sober-minded,
intelligent, and in every way competent witnesses of
the events which some of them record as from their
own personal knowledge, and the others recognize as
undoubted facts.
Let us now take note of the professions of the
apostles, so far as they are specuied in the New Tes
tament. Six of them, perhaps more, were fishermen
on the httle lake of Galilee, — not sailors in any
large sense of the word (for they were probably
never out of sight of land, or in their boats for more
than a day at a time) , so that there was nothing in
their simple, prosaic lEe to nurture the imaginative
element, or to cherish credulity and superstition, but
much that was adapted to educate their perceptive
faculties, their powers of observation, and theE
plain, practical common-sense. Hardy, straightfor
ward, honest men, jostled and jostling on the rough
paths of daily lEe, the weaker sinews of character
broken down, the hardier developed by mcessant
toil, they would have been firm adherents to one
who could give them unmistakable credentials of his
clauns, but not such- persons as could be enlisted in

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 211
the cause of a fanatic, or become the easy dupes of
a plausible deceiver. We have in the first chapter
of John's Gospel, in a series of conversations whose
hfe-likeness Renan (in an Appendix to his last edi
tion) adduces as a token of their authenticity, a very
vivid picture of what these men were before they
became the disciples of Jesus ; and the picture is that
of seE-respecting, Eitelligent, thoughtful men, —
such men as the Hebrew theology and the institutions
of Moses were adapted to produce among the labor
ing classes, but such as were developed under no
other type of ancient civilization, nor have yet been
formed, except in comparatively small numbers,
under the haE-Pagan auspices of what I fear we mis-
caU Christian civilization.
Of these fishermen, one indeed, Peter, appears to
have been ardent and impulsive in his nature. But
it is equaUy manifest that he was testy, petulant,
captious, easUy offended, and ready sometimes even
to find fault with his Master. Such a man as he
would have been disgusted with sham and preten
sion. Had there been aught in the works, words, or
daily lEe of Jesus that was not gemune, honest, pure,
noble, he was the very man to take umbrage at it,
and to transmute his aUegiance into implacable
enmity. But his attachment flickers only for a few
moments under the natural reaction from a foolhardy
courage ; a single look from his Master drowns his
denial in a passion of tears ; and thenceforward none
is more prompt and earnest than he to bear testi
mony, at whatever cost and risk, to the power and
love of God as incarnate in Jesus Christ.

212 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
Another of the twelve, Matthew, was a tax-gatherer
in the service of the Roman government, probably a
collector of the imposts on the brisk, though petty
inland traffic on the' Lake of Galilee, — gathering
tribute from a people that scorned to pay it, and
sought every possible subterfuge to evade it. His
office could have been borne only by one who was all
eye and ear. He was a detective by the necessity of
his profession, — the last man to be duped either by
fanaticism or imposture. He, too, had more to lose
than the fishermen. The hands of all the fiscal agents
bf Rome, great and smaU, had viscous palms ; and
we have intimation of his substantial worldly estate
in his making a great feast for the Saviour, — an
occasion important enough for the Pharisees to know
who the guests were, and to carp at them as below
the standard of Jewish gentility and purism. His
testimony, then, has a pecuUar value, both on the
ground of his profession, and on account of the heavy
sacrifice which his discipleship made inevitably
necessary. As for his Gospel, its entire character
accords closely with what we know of him. There is
somethmg journal-like in its narrative portions, as if
it were written by a man of business. It contains
more about the Saviour's sayings and doings at Caper
naum — Matthew's post of duty — than either of the
other Gospels. Moreover, .when he speaks of his
own house, he caUs it the house, as a man generally
does when he has a place of business separate from
his home. The muform tradition of the early church
represents his sacrifice for the cause of Christ as Ufe-
long, his service as a missionary of the cross having

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 213
been first, for fifteen years, in Judea, and afterward in
remote regions of the East, and perhaps of the South ;
for there is some reason to believe that his Christian
enterprise carried him as far as Ethiopia.
Another of the sacred college was Simon, the
Canaanite, as he is called by Matthew and Mark,
Zelotes (or the Zealot), as Luke styles him, — the
former being the Syro-Chaldaic, the latter the Greek
designation of a sect of Jewish fanatics, who pushed
their loyalty to the Mosaic ritual and economy to
absolute frenzy, regarded the Roman power with the
intensest hatred, deemed murder and even stealthy
assassination justifiable in defence of the national
integrity and faith, and were the foremost agents in
producing the condition of things which led to the
destruction of Jerusalem and the exEe of the Hebrew
people, — enormities opposed to the ordinary and else
invariable Roman policy, but forced upon Titus by
the unparalleled obstinacy of these very ultraists of
whom we so strangely find one among the followers
of Jesus Christ. The Zealots were hteral inter
preters of the prophecies that seemed to promise
extended temporal dominion to the Messiah, and
were in constant expectation of his advent. We
know nothing very definite about this man's subsd-
quent Ufe ; but the tradition is, that he was an inde
fatigable propagandist of the new faith,' and that he
finally suffered death on the cross.
That a man of this sort should have been among
the apostles indicates, as it seems to me, the reality
of the coincidence, clauned by the Evangelists, be-

214 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
tween the Messiah of the prophets and Jesus of
Nazareth. This man was one of those who were all
the time watching the Eastern sky for the dawn of
the Messianic day, and that a day, as they imagined,
of vengeance and of victory. There was not a pro
phetic sign with which he was not familiar ; but only
a convergence of these signs too patent and too full
to admit of doubt, could have made a Zealot acknowl
edge a Messiah in every feature so utterly unlike
the mailed and harnessed chieftain of his day
dreams. This is a point which seems to me deserving of
more than a passing notice. The evangehsts relate
numerous circumstances of birthplace, bEth, parent
age, condition, and experience, in which prophecy
concerning the Messiah was said" to be fubSlled in
Jesus. Rationalistic critics represent these coinci
dences as in part factitious, and in part fictitious.
They allege that Jesus did some things, in order to
simulate the Messiah of the prophets ; and that, as to
the greater number of those particulars in which he
could have had no agency, as about his birth in Beth
lehem and his descent from David, the evangelists
coined facts in accordance with predictions. It might
seem sufficient to say that, as the coiners of these
coincidences risked their Uves by coining them, they
must, before undertaking thus to deceive the world,
have accomplished the more difficult task of deceiv
ing themselves. But here we have a specially strong
case. A man pledged at once to the most literal
interpretation of prophecy and to a line of conduct
utterly opposed to the spirit and character of Jesus

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 215
is so impressed with the Messianic tokens that meet
in Jesus, as to throw aside his old sectarian convic
tions, to renounce his former seE, to become a new
man, and to adhere in lEe and death to a Teacher and
Leader with whom at the outset he could have had
nothmg hi common except reverence for the Word
of God in the Hebrew Scriptures.
We come next to the case of Thomas. He was
evidently sceptical by nature, — I would even say, by
the grace and gEt of God, whp evidently made use
of this trait Ei his mental character for the strength
ening of his own faith, and of that of multitudes who
should come after hEn. The other ten have seen the
risen Lord, and have no doubt of his identity. He
very naturaEy thinks it more probable that they have
been deceived by some family hkeness or casual
resemblance hi another person than that the CrucEied
is really aEve. He demands to examine the wound-
marks, to trace the prints of the nails, the incision
made by the spear. He was Ei the right. His was
an honest and reasonable doubt, and we are thankful
for it. His name should never be spoken with less
than the highest honor, and had he been the type of
a larger proportion of those ministers of religion who
have been successors of the apostles, there would be
much less of EifideEty than there now is. Creduhty
generates unbeUef; and infideUty has no weapons of
its own forging that have haE the efficacy of those
which it picks up among the crazy outworks, built by
a faith both blind and timid, around the impregnable
citadel of everlasting truth.

216 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
There are two kinds of scepticism, — that of the
heart and that of the intellect. The former is adapted
to make unbelievers ; the latter, to make Christians.
The former will not look at the hands and the side,
because it is determined not to be moved morally and
spiritually as they would move the honest soul ; the
latter insists on seeing the wound-marks, because it
wants to know the precise truth, and therefore avails
itseE of whatever evidence God has given. The
scepticism of the heart hates the light, and will not
come to the light, lest its deeds be reproved. The
scepticism of the mind is that which cannot beUeve
without sufficient evidence. It proves all things, and
holds fast that which will stand the test. It examines
both sides of a question, and adh^Bes tcfchat. which
imposes the least strain on. its belief. Suchanfbd
needs only to have the evidences of Christianity 'fturly
presented, to yield to it entire and cordial faith. Many
ofthe firmest believers, many of the able>t~d,efenders
of the truth as it is in Jesus, belon^Jki this ' class of
minds. In this sense, Lardner, Paley, and Butler,
whose contributions to the Christian evidences are
invaluable, and will be so for generations to come,
were pre-eminently sceptics. They would not believe,
without examining the bands and the side, tryEtg all
the witnesses, testing the objections against Chris
tianity with the opposing arguments, weighing coolly
and impartially the evidence, real or pretended, on
either side ; and the result was a faith in Christ,
which sight could hardly have rendered clearer or
stronger. God has made many such minds, and they are

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 217
among the noblest and best of his creation. I have
known, you probably have, some extreme specimens
of this kind among the most loyal and exemplary
Christians. Take a case like this, — I paint from
life, — an mdividual as the type of a class. He whom
I describe wants for every item of his behef a solid
basis of fact, and a superstructure of unanswerable
reasoning buEt upon it; and he wEl let his faith
reach no higher than he can lay this superstructure,
as it were, stone upon stone in insoluble cement.
He has no rehsh (and I thuik hun wrong there) for
those speculations about spEitual and heavenly
things, hi which from a mere hint of holy writ, fancy
takes her flight in those higher regions of thought,
which, I believe, God has purposely left undescribed,
that we may have our free range in them. In the
house buEt on Christ as the foundation, he prefers to
hve in the. lower story, where he can test the strength
of the floor and the waUs. But so firmly has he by
careful examination convinced himseE of the Saviour's
redeeming mission, sacrificial death, miracles, resur
rection and ascension, that he speaks of them as he
would of sunrise, or the phases of the moon, or any
of the well-known phenomena of the outward world,
as matters long since placed by him beyond question.
He conforms his Ufe to these great spiritual facts, as
he does to the laws of nature. And when he comes
to die, he passes away, not with any glow of ecstasy,
but with the quiet confidence of one who knows just
where he is going, and has just as firm a belief in
the many mansions in the Father's house as in the
several apartments in his own house. This is the
I

218 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
style of faith that grows from the honest scepticism
which insists on always having sufficient reasons for
its behef. It often has less unction than might seem
edEying ; but if you want valiant soldiers of the cross
for tunes when unbehef is rampant, boastful, and
aggressive, these are the men to bear the shock of
arms, and come off more than conquerors.
We care not, then, how many 'there are of the
same order of mind with Thomas. The condition of
the Christian evidences is specially adapted to their
natures. The infidel has much harder things to
beUeve than the Christian, severer difficulties to
encounter, contradictions, Eiconsistencies and absurd
ities which only a credulous mind could entertain,
— from which a natively sceptical intellect is inev
itably drawn into the Christian faith. For, E Chris
tianity be not true, we have to believe in numerous
well-known effects without any adequate, cause ; in
extensive conditions of mind and of conviction for
which there was no basis whatever ; in the growing
up of confessedly the most perfect system of morality
the world has ever seen, in the brain of an illiterate
Galilean peasant, in a degenerate nation and a corrupt
age, and not only so, but in the brain of one who
was either weak enough to imagine, or wicked enough
to feign, himself possessed of supernatural powers ;
in the simultaneous illusion of the senses of multi
tudes and bodies of men for many successive days,
when it was the interest and the wish of those very
men to find that false which they were constrained to
recognize as true ; in the Enposition of pretended, or
Enagined mEacles upon a hostile people, so success-

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 219
fully that they were compeUed to admit their actual
occurrence, and (as we have abundant Jewish evi
dence) imputed them to the aid of Beelzebub, the
unaguied prince of demons ; and in many other things
equaUy Eicredible and opposed to all recogiuzed laws
of beEef. The fact is, that not a few of the most
noted infidels of modern tunes have been equally
noted for theE credulity ; and that at the present
moment the superstitions hardly less gross than feti
chism, which are connected with pseudo-spEituahsm,
are most rife in the very quarters where the miracles
and the resurrection of Jesus are thrown aside as
unworthy of credence.
One word more about the eleven, before I pass to
the twelfth. These eleven, it must be remembered,
were not only witnesses of leading events in the Efe
of Jesus, but were for many months his constant
companions, on the road, in the house, on the lake.
They knew his whole manner of Ufe, — his modes of
intercourse with all sorts and conditions of men, —
the degree to wliich he embodied his precepts of
piety, purity, justice, forbearance, and kmdness in
his daily walk and conversation. They staked their
lives on a body of statements, prominent among
which was the aUeged fact of his faultless and abso
lutely godUke sanctity and exceUence. They must
have known whether this was true or not ; and that
they suffered and died to attest it, proves that they
knew it to be true.
I have spoken of eleven only. There remains

220 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
Judas, by far the most important of all, for whom the
Church has been slow to own her debt of everlasting
gratitude to the God who makes tiie wrath and guilt
of man to praise him. Judas had the same oppor
tunities with the other eleven for knowing everything
about his Master that could be known. He was
employed in a confidential relation, as custodian of
the scanty funds of the apostolic family. He was
probably from the first a selfish, greedy, deceitful
man ; our Saviour early and repeatedly intimates his
recognition of these traits ; and he probably chose
him on account of them, that E malice itself could
find aught against him, it might have free scope and
full swing.
Judas entered into negotiations with the chief
priests and their associates for the ruin of his Mas
ter, and, mercenary as he was, he would certainly
. have effected that ruin in the way most profitable to
himself. Now it was only as a last resort that the
leading Jews wanted to get possession of the body
of Jesus. They felt by no means certain that they
could persuade Pilate to kill hun, and they dared not
kill him themselves. They would have immeasurably
preferred to destroy his influence, to detect some im
posture in his alleged miracles, or to find some weak
point in his character, some damning incident in his
life. They were so doubtful how they could dispose
of their prisoner, that they offered a very low price
for him. But they had large means at their com
mand, and would have given a much greater reward
for a surer service. Could Judas have gone to those
men with evidence of jugglery, pretence, or exagger-

THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES. 221
ation in the wonderful works reported to have been
wrought by Jesus, or could he have proved a single
deed or utterance that would impair the reputation
of perfect sanctity which Jesus held among a large
portion of the people ; in fine, could he have borne
the slightest testimony against his Master's character,
he might as easily as not have made his thirty pieces
of silver three thousand, — he might have named his
own price, and E there had not been money enough
hi hand, they would have taken up contributions in all
the synagogues to pay it. But there was absolutely
nothuig secret which could injure Jesus and his cause
by being made known. There was nothing for this
bad man to betray except the place in the environs
of the crowded city where Jesus was going to pass
the night, — it bemg necessary to arrest him by
night, on account of the large number of friendly
Galileans who would have resisted any attempt to
apprehend hun by dayhght. For this mean and
paltry service he had a commensurately pitiful com
pensation. But even he repents of what he has done. The
power and beauty of that blessed spirit, the majesty,
meekness, and love of that holy countenance come
over him, but too late to recall his deed. He seeks,
as so many do in aU times, in our tune, to escape
the contamination of El-gotten gain by casting it into
the temple-treasury; and finduig no rehef, in an
agony of remorse and despair he goes and hangs hun-
seE, bearing as unequivocal and precious testimony
to the truth and purity of his Master in that horrible
suicide, as tbe other apostles bore in their cheerful

222 THE TESTIMONY OF THE APOSTLES.
sufferings and martyrdom for the love of theE
ascended Lord.
Judas has been strangely overlooked by the Church ;
no day is assigned to him in the calendar ; no account
is taken of his services ; — yet we could have better
spared a better man. We thank God for the life-
record of those of the sacred college who followed
closest in the footsteps of their Lord ; yet while we
have the Master, we might not have missed even
James, or Peter, or Nathaniel. But we do need
Judas, to learn what aspect the Saviour manEested
to a subtle, captious, and treacherous witness, and
thus to have the testimony of the vilest avarice,
meanness, and malice, alongside with that of God and
the holy angels, to the truth of his clauns-j the guile-
lessness of his spEit, the purity of his lEe.
I have thus presented the evidences of our
Saviour's Divine mission and character afforded us by
those of whom the Evangelist writes, "Hebrdamed
twelve, that they should be with him." In transmit
ting to us their testimony, he has ordained us also,
that we should be with him. This is the place to
which Jesus calls us and heaven invites us. Be it
our place ; and may it be our blessedness so to con
fess hun in our earthly lives and before men, that we
may be owned of hun hi heaven, before the angels
of God.

VIE.
THE EVIDENCE OF THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS
CHRIST.
BT BEV. EINSLET TWINIKC, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
THE subject on which I am to address you is the
evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We are, therefore, to occupy, for the time being, a
position against which the utmost violence of scepti
cal assault has been dEected.
It has not escaped the sharp eye of rationalism,
that while the great miracle of the resurrection
remains unshaken, it would be of small account to
throw doubt on the others. They cannot be dis
credited whUe the principle involved in them aU is
perfectly upheld by the unimpeachable fact which is
to pass under our review. Scepticism has therefore
omitted no pains to deprive Christianity of this capi
tal fact in its defence ; while behevers, with a still
deeper sense of its vital Enportance, have clung to it
as the critical fafct on which Christianity depends.
"If Christ be not risen," says Paul, " then is our
preaching vain, and your faith is also vain."
It was therefore to be expected, that here, on this
ground, the' battle of Christianity would be fought.
And here it has been fought : first, against the
Pharisees, who admitted that God might raise the
223

224 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
dead, but denied that he had so raised Jesus of
Nazareth ; and next against the Sadducee and the
Pagan, who, like the modern school of doubt, op
posed the evidence of such an event having occurred
with the a priori dogma of the incredibility of all
miracles, and, especially, of such a miracle as the
resurrection. And it is here, on this ground, that the battle of
Christianity against the current infidelity wiU have
to be fought. The resurrection is the great miracle
which settles the question for the lesser ones. If we
must surrender this fact, nothing remains in Chris
tianity to make it worth a better defence than Judaism
or Confucianism deserve. Pressens6 once said, " If
the resurrection does not continue an essential part
of Christianity, it is no longer worth while to speak
of the rest." But E it does, and cannot be shaken,
revelation and the Christian doctrine of miracles have
a complete defence ; and we may^ safely leave the flings
at the minor miracles of the Bible-, to those who find
delight in that kind of petty warfare.
In discussing this question, much depends on the
spirit in which it is approached. The moral axioms
with which the inquiry is begun, decide where it is
to end. The writers on the sceptical side are care
ful to prepare their readers with elaborate introduc
tions before they admit them to the facts. " To
write the history of a religion," says Renan, " it is
necessary, first, to have believed it (without this, we
could not understand by what it has charmed and
satisfied the human conscience) ; in the second place,
to believe it no longer implicitly ; for impEcit faith

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 225
is incompatible with sincere history." * Amazing com
bination of a faith which has ceased to be anything,
with a doubt which is everything !
We protest, in advance, against such pre-judgment
of the case. The question of miracles — and pre
eminently the question of the resurrection — is one
of evidence. Its elements lie within the scope of
observation and of knowledge. There exists what
purports to be a body of evidence. We simply insist
that this evidence should be heard. We do not
object to the appeal to a priori belief in studying
such a history as that of the resurrection. It is
only the most superficial examiner who finds in the
record nothing more than bare facts, and requires
nothing more to interpret them. We bring to such
investigations certain guiding ideas or presupposi
tions, which, whether they are those entertained by
Mr. Hume or by Augustus Neander, are equally
metaphysical and theological in theE character, and
equally important in their bearing on the question.
For example, the resurrection of Jesus is the strong
est possible assertion of the continuity and perma
nence of personal existence after death. It is the
noblest triumph of spiritual hfe and power over mere
nature, and, as such, comes into fatal coUision with
the pantheistic presumptions, which have been em
ployed by writers on that side of the question as
their chief rehance in the attack on the facts which
prove the resurrection to have occurred. But if it
can be shown that Jesus rose from the dead, this
evidence is not to be ruled out by such a priori
* Life of Jesus, introduc. p. 50.

226 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
considerations as these authors may have chosen
to adopt. The resurrection of Jesus, if proved to
be a fact, would be a standard by which to try the
pantheistic behef. The pantheistic belief is not to
test the fact.
Mr. Hume, in his wonderfully astute examination
of the theory of miracles, reaches the conclusion that
they are loaded with an original improbability too
great for testimony to remove ; and around this fatal
presumption the German criticism of the last fifty
years has revolved. But plausible as it appears in
itself, and decisive as it must always be to an athe
ist, what real force does the argument carry with it
to one who believes in a personal Deity? What
essential improbability is there that such a being
should act miraculously? His divine personality
qualifies him to do so. The essence of miraculous
power is contained in freedom and in personality ;
and when we have seen reason to believe that the
world is ruled by a Being who can act out his will,
what so great absurdity in the belief that he has done
it? If there be any absurdity in such a belief, it
attaches originally not to the miracle, but to the con
ception of a free personality and of God as possess
ing such a nature. The incredibility, E there were
any, would lie in theism and not in the miracles whicb
theists have always been so much inclined to beUeve
in. Mr. J. Stuart Mill, with a golden candor,
admits that while Hume's argument is conclusive to
an atheist, it fails to a theist, — the power to work
miracles E he will, being one of the attributes essen
tial to the conception of a personal God.

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 227
The criticism which denies the resurrection, enters
the field in general on what is virtuaUy atheistic
ground. The resurrection is incredible to it, not
only because it considers human nature incapable of
such an experience, but because it recognizes no
divine being who by any possibUity could be the
author of such an event as a mEaele. Surely the
facts in the case, if there are any, are entitled to be
examined with at least some Ettle chance left for them
to teE on the decision.
In discussuig this question, we put it on the broad
ground of theism as against atheism, and claim for
the resurrection just that amount of a priori proba-
bEity or possibUity which the existence of a personal
God offers in favor of there bemg such an event as a
miracle. This is the ground on which St. Paul
placed the question when he argued it before Festus
and Agrippa. " Why," he asked, " should it be
thought a thing incredible with you that God should
raise the dead? " (Acts 26 : 8.) To the atheist there
is an absolute incredibility in such a thing. But with
the belief in God the presumption changes, and the
probabihty that such an event transpired is measured
exactly by the strength or weakness of the evidence
for the existence of a personal deity.
It is but just to add that the fact itseE, could it.
be independently proved, would be such an assertion
of the doctrine of theism against atheism, of person
ality against impersonality, as could not be refuted
in any event, and would carry with it a demonstra
tion of our immortal hope and of the truth of God.
From this review of prehminary questions, we pass

228 THE EVIDENCE OF THE_
to the evidence on which faith in the resurrection
reposes. This evidence may be coUected into three groups.
To the first belongs the direct testimony of the Scrip
tures ; to the second, that which can be drawn indi
rectly from the institutions of the church and from
the facts of apostolic history ; and to the third, certain
corroborative evidence drawn from the history of
Christ's hfe. We turn first to the direct evidence
of Scripture.
Earliest of all is that furnished by prophecy. The
light thrown on the subject from this quarter may
not be of a kind to bring the surest conviction to the
sceptic, and yet it has a force which it is not for the
believer to overlook. Not all the evidences of Chris
tianity are required for use against rationalism.
Some at least are for ^he joy and confirmation of
beUevers. There is a value in the bibhcal types and
predictions ofthe resurrection, to which even a sceptic
might not be wholly insensible. But the believer can
not willingly forget that his Saviour, when the resur
rection was an accomphshed fact, expounded to his then
docile disciples the Scriptures concerning it. Both
Paul and Peter allude to them, and it is beyond a
doubt that this view became an important dogma of
the early church, that Jesus both died and rose again
" according to the Scriptures." It is not possible in
so brief an essay as the present, to examine these
prophetic passages. They are well known; and
with regard to some of them it may be said that
although their aUusion to the resurrection could not
have been determined before the event, at least not

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 229
by an uninspired mind, yet darkling as they were,
they had a considerable influence in preparing the way
for Christ, and when placed m the reflected rays of
the resurrection itself, add a new and increasing light
to that which already shone on the subject. The
risen Saviour appealed to these predictions, not to
establish the fact of his rising (for his own incontes
table presence had removed that point from the region
of uncertainties) , but to explain it, and to show that
his death and reappearance fell in with the historic
plan of redemption. He was thus able to satisfy the
disciples that his death and resurrection were not
an unforeseen catastrophe. This is the light which
prophecy continues to shed on the subject; not
enough to break through the Cimmerian darkness of
absolute unbelief, not enough to be visible to an
eye dazzled with the splendors of rationahsm, but
fully enough to startle and command tbe attention
of open minds, and to confirm those who believe.
We meet, next, the direct testimony of the four
evangelists. The efforts that have been made to break down the
original value of this evidence are well known. The
books themselves have been assailed as late and
nameless works, written we cannot say when, and
given out by what authors it is impossible to decide.
They have been studied hi all lights and with every
possible spirit, but with the general result, as we may
fairly claim, of throwing new light on a subject that
had grown too obscure, and thus of making believing
scholarship more aware of the strength of its case.
Whatever else may have been shaken, it is now be-

230 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
lieved that the apostolic origin of the gospels can be
maintained as long as the church will keep herself
acquainted with the facts which these exhaustive
discussions have elicited. The fourv accounts of the
resurrection contained in the Gospels, come, there
fore, before us with this high claim to respect,- — that
they not only represent and contain the tradition cur
rent among the apostles, but are themselves that tra
dition, and that one of these accounts was written
wholly by an eye-witness.
This external or prima facie argument for the res
urrection, on the ground that the four Gospels assert
it, is by no means in so ruinous a condition as some
of our liberal friends imagine. Neither Strauss nor
Renan will venture to deny that we have here the
.genuine apostohc belief on this subject ; and who has
yet ventured to show that the facts alluded to by St.
Paul in the fifteenth chapter of the 1st "Epistle to the
Corinthians, do not refer to several of the identical
reappearances of Jesus named by the evangelists?
A notable change has passed over rationalistic criti
cism. FEty years ago it saw nothing better than
worthless rubbish in the four Gospels. TheE origin
was placed far down in the post-apostolic times and
theE historical character derided. Criticism is now
more respectful, and though it remains denial, it is
forced to the reluctant admission that the apostles
did believe in the resurrection, and that at a very
early day. It is a highly instructive commentary on
the results of the controversy to compare Strauss'
first edition with his latest "New Life of Jesus."
The problem before the sceptical critics of the pres-

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 231
ent time, is to show how the " legend " of the resur
rection arose under the eyes and ears of the apostles
themselves and came to be honestly believed by
them. In other words, it is to reconcile the honest
belief of the apostles with its wholly fictitious char
acter. Accordingly Baur stops short at the admis
sion that the apostles believed in the resurrection,
and refuses to go further and show how they could
possibly believe in such an event had it not occurred.
He teUs us he is investigating the origin of Chris
tianity, and that for this purpose the fact of the
resurrection is not necessaiy, — the belief in it is all
that- is requEed. Baur deceives himseE by a name.
The Christianity that requEes to be explained is the
Christianity ofthe belief in the resurrection, and not
that which grew out of this belief. If he has ac
counted for the derived or secondary Christianity of
later times by tracing it to this belief, let him next
attack the real problem and explain the original Chris
tianity of all as it came forth in the belief that Jesus
rose from the dead. We still think that this belief
will prove to be too closely identified with the objec
tive fact to be detached from it. The external or
prima facie testimony of the Gospels to the resurrec
tion, such as it is, remains, then, an unimpeached
witness in the case.
But the evidence of the Gospels has an internal
truthfulness which is much in its favor.
The rationahstic critics of these accounts have not
hesitated to apply to them a severe harmonistic
method, the unreasonableness of which in the hands
of orthodox expositors they were themselves the
first to expose.

232 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
Some inexplicable difficulties of a minor kind have
indeed been found in the comparison of the accounts
with each other. It has proved a matter of great
uncertainty to arrange the details of the resurrection
in a chronological order. It is not easy to figure to
our minds the precise movements of the actors in the
scene, nor to ascertain how their various meetings
with the risen Saviour combine together. ' There is
some obscurity in the appearance and number of the
angels and in the words used on several occa
sions. Luke gives no intimation of the appearance
in Galilee ; Matthew and Mark are silent about those
which took place in Jerusalem. Only John brings
out the mediating fact of appearances at different
times, both in Galilee and at Jerusalem. The silence
and brevity of Mark might lead us into the error of
placing the ascension on the same day in which the
resurrection occurred. ' Thus these accounts in com
parison exhibit minor variations, but they all set forth
in agreement the really important facts. Why should
trivial variation disturb us? It is a corroboration
of the honesty of the testimony. It demonstrates
that it was brought together independently' and was
collected naturally. Why are there four to tell the
story, if one could introduce nothing omitted in the
others ?" What if Matthew and Mark omit the appear
ances hi Jerusalem. They do not deny them ; and
Luke balances the accounts by omitting those in
Galilee, while John again harmonizes them by men-
tionhig those in both locahties. What if Mark seems
to pass over the forty days of Jesus' continuance with
the disciples, and come at once to the ascension?

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 233"
There is nothing in this compendious sUence to con
tradict the detailed explanations of Luke and John ;
and moreover there is some reason to suspect that
the original endhig of Mark has been lost and that the
final chapter, as it stands, is only an abridged re
statement of its contents. There is variation in the
accounts, and some confusion of details and some
inexplicable trifles, but nothing to affect the absolute
agreement of testimony to the main events. Similar
variations occur elsewhere in the New Testament,
without unpairing its credit. The trihngual inscrip
tion over the cross was written hi Hebrew, Greek,
and Latin. Each of the four Gospels purports to
give the Greek in which it was written, but no two
of these transcriptions agree. Matthew says, " This is
Jesus the king of the Jews " ; Mark, " The king of
the Jews " ; Luke, " This is the king of the Jews " ;
and John, " Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews."
Four variations of the same note, but one absolute
and consentient testimony ! There is no more un-
portant disagreement in the accounts of the resurrec
tion. "Estimated at theE proper value they never
assume the Enportance of irreconcilable contradic
tions. They are perfectly naturaUy explained when
we remember that only one of the accounts .we pos
sess is entirely by the hands, of an eye-witness."* The
strange agitation and confusion of the disciples on
receiving the news from the vacant tomb, is perhaps
reflected in the partial disorder of the accounts. And
yet amid aU, with how grand a consent come forth
the great features of the scene ! AU agree that Jesus
•Pressense', Life of Christ, p. 496.

234 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
rose on the mornhig of the third day, and indicate
the time as the earliest dawn. The exact moment
may not have been known, and the slight oscillation
that appears between the account of John, who
describes it as having occurred " while it was yet
dark," and Mark, who placed it at " the rising of the
sun," may be due to the fact that no mortal eye beheld
the Saviour issue from the tomb, and the exact
moment was left to conjecture. The soldiers saw
the angel descend in awful brightness, and this has
been assumed for the moment of the resurrection.
But it may have occurred before. Unseen by mortal
eyes, the body which lay within the rock-hewn tomb,
watched over by the power of God, resumed its vital
force. He who had "power to lay down his hfe
and power to take it again," silently rose from the
embrace of Death, and with an unhurried ease, of
which the napkin that was bound about his head and
the cerements of the grave laid away in their place
remained a witness, without convulsive effort, with
out " noise " or " cry," and with " voice still unheard
in the streets," again issued into the world, not far
from that same Bethlehem and beneath the same
star-lit sky which three and thirty years before beheld
the equally silent and unnoticed beginning of his
incarnate hfe.
To listen only to Strauss, we might imagine every
detail of one gospel neutralized and lost in the con
tradiction of the others, and the whole account
reduced by successive disagreements to an impalpable
ruin. It is then with no little surprise that we find
the ancient picture on which the church has delighted

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 235
to gaze, so httle disturbed by unfriendly criticism,
and behold the old elements of it reforming in better
order from the facts which survive the pillage of such
pens. We stiU see the disciples utterly dejected in
the long hours that preceded the resurrection, — lin
gering on the old scene, assembled perhaps in the
same chamber, whose waUs still echoed with the
parting words of the Crucified,, — words which, had
they been understood, might have saved them all that
deep despaE. We still see the women preparing
funeral honors, and bringing the spices which,
as has been remarked,* "were at once the proof of
their affection and of their unbeUef." We see these
women first at the sepulchre, unable to comprehend
the testimony of the vacant tomb and of the angelic
messengers. We see them returning with their new
wonder to the disciples, who refused to beheve them.
We see Peter and John running to the sepulchre, and
wondering there over the unmistakable evidences that
there had been no haste nor violence in the removal
of the saered body. At last we hear the sacred voice
of Jesus himself breaking the oppressive sUence, and
breaking it in the spirit of his whole life, with the
simple and tender accent of a disciple's name. Again
we see him with his' people in their safe retreat, —
with them hi GaElee, — with them in Jerusalem, —
for forty days, expounding to them the wonderful
events that had transpired. For what they needed
was not proof that be was dead, and now alive again,
— for did they not see him? had they not "held
him by the feet and worshipped him"? What they
* Pressense, Life of Christ, p. 486.

236 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
needed was to comprehend these events, — to see
theE moral unport, — to learn how to connect them
with prophecy and promise, and with the ancient cov
enants and the redemption which from of old had
been growing up in the world. And then at last we
see hEn in his disciples' open company, and in his
own fully recognized person ascending before their
eyes into heaven.
This is the history which, in spite of all internal
and external criticism, the Gospels continue to relate.
We may still require other evidence to support it.
(But it is something that it comes forth from these
(books one consistent and consentient account. The
rationalistic critics would have us believe that the
evangelists, as compared together, have no one
story at all ; that what is told by one is untold by
another, and that every great feature of the scene
is lost as soon as the four are brought together.
False as these allegations are when appUed to the
Gospels, they are admirable as unconscious allusions
to the hermeneutics of rationalistic criticism. Badly
off as Baur conceives the four Gospels to be, he would
probably undertake the harmony of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John with more hope than that of the
rationahstic opinions concerning them. These mod
ern evangehsts are a fraternity who sit like Strauss
and Paulus back to back, and their opinions, ranging
over the whole field of possible variation, seem to have
exhausted the final capacities of that great attribute
of freedom which was once so much discussed in New
England, — "the power to the contrary." Meantime
the internal examination of the Gospels, conducted in

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 237
any faE spirit, leads to a consistent result. The tes
timony of the Gospel is not mutilated with destructive
seE-contradiction, nor impaired by Enportant disa
greements. The main facts are harmoniously related,
and as far as four such records can do so, they give
the color and the authority of actual history to the
miracle of the resurrection.
The Scriptures have another witness of great
weight to introduce into this testimony, in the
Apostle Paul. He comes before us with the advan
tage of an acknowledged and undoubted authority.
The apostohc origin and genuineness of the four
Gospels and of the Book of Acts have been vehe
mently assailed, but it is not too much to say that no
respectable author has ventured a doubt that St. Paul
wrote the Epistle to the Romans, the two to the Corin- -
thians, and that to the Galatians. Those epistles* leave
us in no doubt what the apostle's own belief was. " If
Christ be not risen," he writes in one of them, " then is
our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." But
Strauss is not content to know that Paul believed in
the resurrection. In his " New Life of Jesus," he
demands to see his evidence and to know why he
believed it. In common with the critics of the so-
called Tubingen school, he wiU not receive the Book
of Acts in evidence at this point, and makes his
appeal to the four acknowledged Epistles. Happily,
it is easy in this case to be generous. The four
Epistles are enough. They give us what light we
need as to the character of the evidence possessed by
Paul. In the great passage in the First Corinthians,
he says (15:3): "He was buried and rose again

238 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
according to the Scriptures, — was seen of Cephas, —
then of the twelve, — of above five hundred brethren
at once, of whom the greater part remain unto the
present, but some are fallen asleep, After that he
was seen of James, then of all the apostles, and last
of all he was seen of me also."
Strauss raises the somewhat ungracious inquEy
on what grounds of evidence did Paul make these
assertions,, and beEeves he can show that they are
only a cupful from the current traditions. In com
menting on the passage, he attacks first the state
ment with which it ends, and inquires when and
how the risen Jesus was seen of Paul. In reply he
resorts, with a remarkable facility of " remembering
to forget " what he has elsewhere said against the
Book of Acts, to the account there given of the con
version of the Apostle. He now finds it for his pur
pose to treat this account as genuine, and to ehcit from
it evidence that the appearance of Jesus on the way
to Damascus was not real but visionary. He is then
ready wfth the critical inquiry, If this appearance to
Paul, on which so much turns, was visionary, why
may not aU the other appearances have been bf the
same character?
But who does not see with what a shuffling of evi
dence this result is brought out ? If the Book of the
Acts is good for the use Strauss makes of it, it is good
for a better use. If the narrative of Paul's conversion
can be appealed to in support ofthe opmion, that Jesus'
appearance in the way was visionary, it can be ap
pealed to to show that it was not, and that he appeared
also to the other disciples in the flesh. If the Acts is

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CURIST. 239
received in testimony, the case is soon ended. If it
is thrown out, then are we aU, and Strauss with us,
thrown back on the unexplained and ununpeached
testimony of Paul to the Corinthians, "last of all he
was seen of me also."
Strauss does not impugn the honesty of Paul. He
apparently concurs in the maxim which may now be
regarded as fixed, that it is " easier to believe Chris
tianity born of. a mEacle than of a lie." He there
fore presses the reasons for suspecting that he mistook
visions for revelations. Without the aid of the Acts
he makes little progress in such a solution ; and with
that aid it is easy to refute him.
Paul introduces his testimony to the resurrection
as something he had " received." Strauss fastens on
this word " received," connects it at once with the
current traditions, and asks if there is any reason to
believe that he has transmitted to us anything more
credible than the unexamined traditions current
among the apostles.
Here arises a dilemma. Paul was once a persecu
tor. He says so himself in one'of the unquestioned
epistles. During this hostUe period the Christian
faith was constantly before him, and the facts on
which it was founded ; but he repudiated them. How
shall we account for his conversion without having
recourse to the Acts ? He refers to the change in
the unimpeached epistle to the Galatians, in the
striking words, " When it pleased God to reveal his
Son in me." At all events, some convincing and
overwhelming event occurred which overturned his
plans and views, and made it impossible to resist the

240 TBE EVIDENCE OF THE
new faith. What that event was, and what new evi
dence it brought into view, Strauss does not show. If
this new evidence was not furnished by a thorough and
critical revision of the facts possessed by the other
apostles, and to which he alludes in the passage
before us, — -then it must have been contamed in some
new revelation made to himseE, and which was of such
a convincing nature as to render further examination
of the current traditions unnecessary. The doubter
may choose which alternative he pleases. On either
hand a mass of solid evidence will confront him.
In introducing his remarks on this subject, Paul
says, "for I delivered unto you what I also received."
These words may or may not indicate that he trans
mitted, without examination, the current traditions ;
but they certainly do indicate that this belief was
then current among the apostles. Tbey amount to
an absolute proof that Peter and James and all the
apostles and above five hundred brethren, excepting
those who had died, were ready to offer themselves
as eye-witnesses to the reappearance of Jesus after
i death. This testimony carries us back nearer to the begin
ning than would appear at first sight. It is contained
in an epistle written about the year of our Lord 57,
but refers to matters with which the apostle had
been acquainted not less than twenty years. It goes
back to his earliest acquaintance with Peter and
James at the time of his conversion and, even earlier
than that, to the persecution he led against the church
on account of this very beUef in the resurrection.
At that time he beheld, with hostile eyes indeed, the

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 241
faith of the church. Nevertheless he beheld it.
His fury against it is a witness of the faith in
the risen Saviour which at that tune glorified Stephen
in death, and sustained so many others among whom
he "made havoc." At that early period, within a few
years of the resurrection and of the ascension, he first
emerges into view from the school of Rabbi Gamaliel,
and from that day on, and back to that day, he is
an original and unimpeached witness to the fact
that the apostles and all the church believed hi the
resurrection of Jesus. On this point Paul is as
good a witness as E he had stood by the vacant
tomb of Jesus, and in some respects he enjoys a
decided advantage over his brethren. For it must x
be remembered that he studied Christianity first/
as an enemy, before he preached it as an apostle/
At what age he entered the school of Gamaliel
we do not know, nor how long he was there be
fore he led the persecution against the church.
Evidently he was there for some time. He was for
eign born, and would not have been admitted to the
confidence and possible membership of the Sanhedrim
without a considerable residence and acquamtance at
Jerusalem. His zeal as a Pharisee could not have
been acquired in a Gentile residence. These con
siderations point to a somewhat prolonged domicile
in Jerusalem and a continued familiarity with the rise
of Christianity from the Jewish point of view.
When Renan says that " to write the history of a reli
gion it is necessary first to have believed it . . .
and in the second place to believe it jio longer im
plicitly,"* he writes the unconscious indorsement of
* Introduction, Life of Jesus.

242 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
the apostle Paul as a witness to Jesus. To give tes
timony in the great controversy of fact between the
Jew and the Christian, Paul was exactly this man.
When he states the facts, he does so with a full
knowledge of the countervaihng evidence possessed
by the Sanhedrim. On more than one occasion he
alluded to the notorious and uncontradicted character
of these facts, and spoke as one who had known the
court secrets of the temple and was aware that they
contained nothing to rebut what the Christian party
put in evidence. As the question between the church
and its enemies was one bf fact, and was placed in
that light by the apostle Paul himself, and made to
turn on the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead,
his previous acquaintance with the Jewish view of
the case gives a truly judicial importance to his
summation of the evidence contained in the Epistle
to tbe Corinthians.
I pass next to the indirect evidence of Scripture,
from which it is my intention only to select a few of
the more important portions. I appeal first to the
evidence of those Christian institutions which have
come down from primitive time, — the church, the
Lord's supper, and the Lord's day.
Examine first the standing evidence of the church.
There is no reason to doubt that the Christian church
was founded at the time indicated in the Book of
Acts. With all his unwillingness to admit the fact,
I understand Strauss to surrender the point, and leave
this chronological landmark essentially undisturbed.
We are able then to say, with no respectable contra
diction against us, that the Christian church was

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 243
founded on the day of Pentecost, — fifty days after
the crucifixion, and ten days after the tune set for
the resurrection.
This was not an unmeaning event. This founded
church means something. It is a monument covered
with the belief of its members Ei the great facts of
Christian history, and especially that of the resurrec
tion. If we are searching for original evidence of
this event, nothing more exphcit or more convinchig
could be desired than such a monument as this,
whose very stones are a testimony, and whose founda
tions were laid while the evening dew and the morn
ing glory of the resurrection were yet fresh on them.
The strain of this argument falls on the question,
When was the church founded ? and on a point of so
much importance somethnig more requires to be said.
In the first place, the Book of the Acts assigns
this date to the orighi of the church, and on a
point of this nature the doubts raised by the Tubin
gen school are of no account. Give this book any
date which a respectable scholarship would fix,
and it still remains the earliest record of apostoUc
history, and on such a question as the time when
the church was founded, could not by any possi
bihty be far astray. Tradition, which grows un-
trusty in details, can be relied on for landmarks;
and even E the doubts raised by the Tubingen school
against the book were well founded, its testimony to
the time when the church was founded would remain
an evidence of great weight.
But looking a little beyond the Book of Acts, it
is evident that the church was founded somewhere in

244 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
the first century ; but it was impossible that it should
be organized at any other time than in that brief
period which was so full of the wonder and glory
of the reappearance and ascension of Jesus. It is
admitted on aU sides that something took place after
the crucifixion, and that this something was the origin
jof the apostles' belief in the resurrection. What this
(event was, is in question. Strauss denies that it was
the reappearance of the Crucuied, and this denial
makes it necessary for him to explam the origin of
the church which was built on that belief. To do this
he resorts to the hypothesis of some second thoughts
or intermediate reflections, and supposes that the
unknown event, whatever it was, passing through this
secondary reflective medium, grew into the sincere
belief that Jesus was risen from the dead. But all
this machmery of second thoughts about the matter,
and of intermediate reflections, is against the philos
ophy of history. The creative force lies in the origi
nal event itseE, whatever it was, and not in subsequent
thoughts about it. The creative moment is when the
passion and the power of the event is yet young.
And when that moment has slipped away it cannot
be recaUed. If the event which Strauss is wiUing
to admit did occur, is not adequate to account for the
foundation of th© church in the heat of its aboriginal
moment, he must find some other which is adequate
so to account for it. For the date of the event, what
ever it was, and of the institution that grew from it,
must be essentially the same. Suppose our fathers
had fought the war of the revolution without founding
a government. Suppose they had concluded a peace

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 245
without framing a constitution, and thus allowed
those fiery and formative times to pass into the era
of peace ; is it within the possibilities that they could
have done the work then ? Great institutions arise in
great events. The institutions and the events are
young together, and there is absolutely no time in the
history of the church when it could have been founded
but the creative time of the resurrection and the
ascension. Turn to another episode in the human history of
the early church, — the first persecution; and here
we find evidence pointing in the same direction. We
are able to assign the date of this outbreak inde
pendently of the book of Acts, and to fix it not later
than the beginning of the year 37. At this time
the church has grown numerous. Its members are
widely dispersed, and Paul is riding through the land
as far north as Damascus, persecuting them with the
utmost violence. Here is a state of thmgs which
could not have come on in a day. In the first place
the very numbers of the church prove that some con
siderable time must have elapsed since its organiza
tion. Its members appear already at Damascus and
at Antioch. This extension must have been the
work of time, and proportionately to its breadth car
ries back the age of the church.
But there has also been a great change in the atti
tude of 'the Jewish party. When the crucifixion
occurred, there was no disposition to pursue the
'disciples. The Sanhedrim rated them at theE human
valuation. Jesus himseE' was the sole object of
theE procedures, and they were reassured by bis

246 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
death. The disciples were indeed for a time in
alarm, but it was soon found to be a groundless
fear, and they reappeared in Jerusalem with no
immediate danger of their Uves. The Book of Acts
shows this to have been true, and other known facts
j prove it. How otherwise could Peter and John and
/ James have remained at Jerusalem alive ? For a time
they enjoyed the popular favor. A great company
of priests and Pharisees were obedient to the faith ;
jand when the Sanhedrim, aroused by the progress of
t the church, proceeded to measures of a mild severity
against Peter and John, the people were found to be
| on their side.
But when Paul appeared a few years later, this
state of things was changed and the utmost fury of
persecution prevailed. The church was scattered
abroad, flying in all directions. Such a change
• required time and events to produce it, and time and
/ events which, when retraced, carry back the date at
which the church must have been founded. A close
examination of the Acts will show what these events
were. First the Sanhedrim aUowed matters to take their
course, and attempted nothing more than mild
repression. The persecution which arose at last was
chiefly the work of the Sadducaic party to whom the
resurrection was a pecuharly exasperating fact. The
Sadducees were never strong enough with the people
to carry them alone, and accordingly we find them
taking advantage of some commotion raised by the
Hellenistic Zealots, the history of which is obscure,
and in combination with the extreme wing of the

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 247
Pharisees, raising the storm of persecution. Such a
movement of events implies what hi modern society
would be called a political change, — the loss of
power by one party — the inauguration of new lines
of policy and the growth of new facts to alarm the
people. The church must have been some years on
its way before such a persecution could have arisen
against it.
Another fact bearing on the same point is the
institution of the diaconate. The persecution arose
at the death of Stephen, who had just been appointed
to the office of deacon. This was a new charge in
the church, and arose not from the command of
Christ, but from a want which gradually made itseE
felt in the daily administration. The church must
have been already some years on its way, and
involved in the exigencies of a growing work, before
such a need could be felt. First it had to become
numerous, and that to a burdensome degree ; then
the apostles, who at the outset had the care of every
thing, had to learn that the work was too great for
them, — and when we consider that not less thanj
thirteen persons, mcluding James, bore that name at \
the tune, we can conclude how vast the work must ,
have grown in Jerusalem itseE before the plan of the
diaconate was suggested. Such a measure, when pro
posed, would requEe deliberation, and all these
delays are so much age added to the church, when
Paul appears, leading against it the persecution which
arose early in the year 37.
Such considerations as these ingrained into the
history — and the more it is studied the more they

248 THE EVIDENCE OF THE.
multiply — point unmistakably to the foundation of
the church at the time indicated in the Acts,, and
the raising then of its since unbroken testimony to the
resurrection. Similar in character and Enportance is the testi
mony of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. To
avoid disputed ground, we still draw our evidence
from the acknowledged epistles of Paul. What he
says in regard to the origin of this sacrament is
familiar and significant. It carries its institution
back beyond the crucifixion, and yet shows that its
significance could not be complete until after the res
urrection. A prophecy when first instituted, it was
quickly adopted by the church as a testimony and a
memorial. Its continuity, as a chain of testimony,
cannot be broken. It is the Christian rite in which l
we behold united in one moment the crucEixion and
the resurrection. It is a positive Eistitution which
spans the gulf of time, and carries us back to the
upper chamber where Christ gave this memorial to
his disciples.
So also the Lord's day is another witness, bringing
to us as often as it occurs with unerring precision
and unwearied regularity, tidings from the vacant
tomb. Tubingen hears Paul. Let, then, Paul speak ; for
he tells of the " first day of the week," and shows that
was the Christian day, — and what but the resurrec
tion made it this ?
Strauss hears John, — not John in the Gospel, but
John in the Apocalypse, and John speaks there of
the " Lord's day," — that he was " in the spirit on

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 249
the Lord's day." But how could the Apostle John
call it the Lord's day unless in one such day Jesus
rose? Strauss would have us believe that at the death
of Jesus the disciples fled to Galilee, and there, amid
the familiar scenes, peopled with recollections of
Jesus, his old form came back, and aided by ecstatic
affection formed slowly into the conviction of him as
living, and that this belief grew up insensibly on the
heights of Nazareth, into the legend of the resurrec
tion; while Renan, caUmg to his aid rather more
of conscious fraud, describes how in that same re
treat love and hope, brooding over the past, rose into
visions, and wrought out at length by purely psy
chological processes the miracle of the resurrection.
" Divine power of love," he cries. " Sacred moments,
in which the passion of a haEucinated woman gives
to the world a resurrected God."*
A more truly gossamer web of fiction was never
spun. Apostolic history begins in Jerusalem, and
not in the sacred retreats of Galilee. Before there
had been tune for the aposties' minds to cool, we find
them at Jerusalem, embodying their faith in the solid
matter-of-fact but significant institutions of the church
and its sacraments. The date at which these posi
tive institutions, with their testimony to the resur
rection, were going on at Jerusalem, is the best of
evidence that there was no time for a retreat to
GalUee, for the growth of fantastic speculations and
unconscious deception, nor for the formation of a
visionary faith. » Life of Jesus, p. 337.

250 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
Had the apostohc church issued from Galilee,
there would be more color to such an hypothesis.
But it was planted at Jerusalem, and at a time when
the history of Jesus and the circumstances of his
death were fresh in the knowledge of all the city.
And Jerusalem with its Pharisees and Sadducees
and the dreaded Sanhedrim was a disenchantment
of dreamers that would not have been lost on the
apostles of a visionary faith. The reappearance of -
the disciples at this city, and their bold proclamation
of the faith there, are, -when duly considered in all of
their bearings, enough of themselves to overthrow
the theory of the mythical origin of the Gospels.
It remains for us to glance at a few significant facts
of Christian experience which, without the resurrec
tion to explain them, would be inexplicable and
incredible. One of these is the sudden and remarkable tran
sition of the disciples from deep despair after the
burial of Jesus to high and permanent exultation.
There is no reason to suppose that the picture
which the Gospels give of the disciples in those
dejected days was overdrawn. • They were like
men "crushed by the great stone rolled to the
door of the sepulchre." And yet the church was
not born of despair, but of hope. It was a grand
burst of enthusiasm that laid its foundations. But
what raised those bowed heads? What inspired
those dejected minds? A few days pass, and we find
this aimless, headless company, without one great
original mind among them, without one leader able

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 251
to originate a plan of action, or even to comprehend,
unaided, the signEicance of what had already trans-
pEed, reappearing in the temple with an unconquerable
courage, overflowhig with hope and joy, and fuU of
plans for work. Whence came this ? Not from the
disciples, — for such plans, such comprehension of
the significance of events, was not hi them. The only
origmal and constructive min'd the apostolic church
ever had was Paul, and Paul was at this time a per
secutor. It was not yet time for talents like his.
These first days of the church needed sunple and
childUke minds to utter only what was given them,
and to reflect the sacred impression of the Saviour.
Whence, then, this sudden hope and joy and com
prehension of redemption through the death of .
Christ? Whence this sudden starting up of the
divine plan of the Gospel, and of an appointed
work and order, to those who in losing Jesus had
lost the only plan and aim they had ever known ?
Strike out the resurrection, and who can reply ?j
Read the account as it stands, and who feels a sur-/
prise at these features of the case ?
Not less remarkable is the sudden fading out, at this
time, of the hope in the worldly Messiah. So mefface-
able was this hope that when Jesus was risen, the dis
ciples greeted him with the question, " Lord wEt thou
at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel ? " But
this view, which survived the crucifixion uid the resur
rection, then died away forever. In its place we find
Jesus preached ou the day of Pentecost in the char
acter which he has held through all the subsequent
history of the church, — of the Saviour of the world

252 THE EVIDENCE OF THE
from sin. Faith in his name was no longer a title to
nobUity in a messianic kingdom, but a way of holi
ness, and a promise of redemption from sin. This
sudden and amazing breaking forth of light from
minds so blank and dark before, supposes the appear
ance of some great luminous fact in theE" experience.
This change could not be spontaneous ; and, without
the resurrection, remains as inexplicable as it is
plain with it. Strike out the resurrection, and who
can show how Jesus, the Jewish Messiah and tem
poral prince, as the disciples beheld him previous
to the resurrection, came to be preached on Pente
cost, in the new and divme character of the world's
Redeemer ?
I have spoken of the church itself, as a witness to
the resurrection. In the continuity of its life and
hope and experience in Christ Jesus it furnishes a
fact in evidence which is wholly inexplicable and
incredible, when torn away from the resurrection and
from the ascension gifts of the glorified Redeemer.
The risen Saviour is the inner contents of aU Christian
life, and the essential power and victory of the church.
The fact that they exist is a testimony that He rose.
The church ascends toward heaven with the rising
Lord. The church is, because Christ lives.
We see this in the first appearance of the apostles
at Jerusalem, and we see it hi every other moment
of true Christian Efe since. The apostles' did not
come forward at Pentecost with a doctrine, but with
a Saviour. They did not act as discoverers of a new
and potent philosophy, but as disciples of an ever
Uving Christ.

RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 253
This origmal consciousness of lEe and power in
Christ has contmued to be the characteristic of the
church in all ages. It has bound together the divided
sections of its communion ; it has given the continuity
of its succession amid aU the variations of belief and
practice. At the end of our reasonings we return
to it, not so much as the rock on which to build, as
the pillow on which to rest Ei peace and hope.
"We have found the Messiah" was the first testi
mony which one man ever gave to another that the
Son of God was in the world. " We have found the
Saviour," is the testimony in which myriads of con
verted souls continue the testimony to Jesus the risen
and ever-EvEig Redeemer.

IX.
THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL WORK OF
CHRIST IN THE WORLD.
BT BEV. WILLIAM E. MERRIMAH, PRESIDENT OF BIPON COLLEGE, WIS.
THE doubts and difficulties of many persons about
Christianity may be included in the question,
Is it adequate — adequate to fulfil its own proposals
to the world ?
No such proposals are made elsewhere. Christ
was heralded as He that " taketh away the sin of the
world " ; no other proposes to bear that burden. He
declares the object of his mission, " That the world
through him might be saved " ; no other undertakes
that work. And as it appears in his hfe and teach
ings, it is a work for man, whose divine benevolence,
moral grandeur, and blest benefits human thought had
never before approached, and has not yet measured.
Christ offers to man complete recovery from evil —
from sin, which is spiritual and primitive evil, and
from aU the others, which are its miserable conse
quences. He offers to renovate men, to educate them
as chUdren of God, and to give them, thus prepared
for it, an everlasting and glorious inheritance in the
society of all the boly, called the Kingdom of Heaven.
These are not special privUeges for a few, but a com
mon benefaction for aU; not a beneficial provision,
254

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 255
set within the possible reach of men, but an actual
work of recovering them to righteousness and bless
edness, which Christ began in person, and which he
proposes to have finaUy accompUshed in the whole
world. Havmg now m our view, on the one hand, the
world as it is at present, and on the other, the im
measurable good thus proposed to it, all the more
reasonable of our doubts and difficulties about it will
take form in the soUcitous question, Is Christianity
adequate to realize its own benevolent designs ? And
when a work of such blest beneficence, which, apart
from Christianity, the world never thought of, and
which the world evidently could not do for itseE, is
proposed, reason requEes proportionate powers and
means to accomplish it. A most reasonable faith,
therefore, need not hesitate at what is supernatural in
those powers and means — neither at mystery in well
authenticated truth, nor at mEacles in well attested
facts ; neither at the incarnation of the Son of God,
nor at the regeneration of the soul of man. On the
contrary, in view of the ends proposed by Christian
ity, a reasonable faith requires supernatural power to
effect them, and some supernatural acts to warrant
the promise of their fulfilment. Had this work alone
been announced, without any knowledge of Christ,
scepticism itself would naturally demand a divine
being to do it, — divine exceEence in his character,
divine truth in his teachings, and miracles among his
acts. And now, when we consider what must be
done m the soul and the world, E our great Christian
hopes for' them shaU be realized, instead of objecting

256 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
to supernatural power in Christianity, we shall rather
inquire whether its supernatural power is sufficient ;
mstead of objecting to supernatural transactions in
it, we shall rather be concerned to know whether
these are adequate to ensure the completion of its
benevolent designs.
We are thus prompted to compare the personal
work of Christ in the world with his designs, — that
is, to compare what he actuaUy did, with what Chris
tianity must yet do in order to fulfil his proposals.
Admitting the records of his life as given by the
evangelists, — as the failure of the utmost attempts
of sceptical criticism compels us to do, — neither
reducing nor multiplying, as we study his work we
are almost surprised that we come, in some direc
tions, so soon to its limits. There is, apparently, a
great disproportion between the kind, and the extent,
of Christ's personal work, — between his apparently
unlimited power, and the very restricted limits of its
exercise. Indeed, one of the most wonderful things
in the work of Christ, especially considering his
designs, is its limitation — that, having entered the
world as he did, on such a mission, he left it so soon
— that, having said and. done what he did, he said
and did no more.
We notice the limiting facts : — Christ hved in the
world but about thirty-four years ; he was engaged
in his public work but about three and a half. He
confined himseE to his own little country ; he did
nothing in person for any other. He worked mira
cles to authenticate his divine person and mission ;
but these proofs were in various ways so Umited,

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 257
that in his own times many denied or doubted them,
and many well-disposed inquirers have been perplexed
or doubtful in regard to them. He gave to the world
a new revelation of God and the future life ; but his
teachings were so limited, that on important matters
of doctrme and practice his church has always been
grievously divided, sincere believers have often been
in error, and the most gifted and diligent students
have often failed to agree on his meaning. His
training of his apostles was so limited, compared
with their need of it, that they failed to understand
his personal teachings ; they aU forsook hun at his
arrest ; they were surprised and discouraged by his
death, and faithless about bis resurrection.
The extraordinary work which Christ did in reliev
ing suffering and promoting the physical welfare of
men, was singularly Umited. He walked on the sea ;
he stilled the tempest that unperilled his disciples'
boat. This is evidence of a power sufficient to per
manently molhfy the fury of the elements. Yet
storms have been as furious, and the seas as danger
ous, since as before. Even his great apostle to the
Gentiles was shipwrecked thrice on his missionary
journeys, and for a night and a day was floating on
the open sea. The infidel with plausibEity may say,
Human art has done much that is now available for
the bodily safety of men, but the omnipotence of
their professed Saviour has done nothing. Christ
healed many sick people, thousands in aU, but
in comparison with his healing power, how restricted
was its exercise 1 How many thousands of the sick
were not cured ! How many thousands did not even

258 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
hear of the marvellous Healer ! And those who were
healed were doubtless sick again. The power which,.
with a word, cured fever and paralysis, might have
banished these diseases forever from the earth, or made
permanent provision for their cure. But Christ abol
ished no disease, gave no panacea; nor can his
power now be successfully invoked for such miracu
lous healing. The infidel with plausibility may say,
Human art has done much that is always available
for the reUef of suffering and cure of disease ; but he
who . is said to have exercised miraculous healing
power as the omnipotent Saviour of the world, has
done nothing ; medicine has done more for health than
miracles. Christ raised the dead; in one case in
the chamber of death, in another from the bier, in
another from incipient corruption in the grave. Yet
those who were raised died again. He had power to
give life, yet death prevailed while he was in the
world, and has since his resurrection as before.
His work appears as limited, viewed in relation to
its immediate moral and spiritual effects. " The Son
of God was manifested that he might destroy the
works of the devil " ; but while thus manEested,
though he cast out devils he did not destroy any
great iniquity. He was the Prince of Peace, but
he did not destroy war. He came as the Ught of the
world,' but he left it apparently about as dark as
before. He came that the world through him might
be saved ; in a few years he went away, before the
greater part of the world knew he had been here at
all, and he left it about as bad as it was before, — as
wicked and as wretched.

work of Christ in the world. 259
Why should Christ thus limit his personal work in
the world ? The question is not too daring. The
faith that is most truly Christian, has no fear of rea
sonable inquiry. The reverence that is most truly
Christian, wiU never serve as a shelter for intellec
tual timidity. The thorough study of our religion is
one of our reUgious duties, and everything in Chris
tianity is peculiarly provocative of study. This
question confronts us early in our Eiquiries ; it is
legitimate and practical ; it vitally concerns our per
sonal faith, and our labors and hopes for the preva
lence of Christianity.
The limitations of Christ's personal work cannot
be explamed by the excellence of his person, or by
the value of his revelation. On the contrary, our
question sets out from all that can be reasonably
claimed on these pomts. Doubtless he was the one
divine and perfect man, — the Son of God and of
Man. He came to save men by drawing theE faith,
love, and hope to his person. Why, then, should
he so restrict his personal intercourse with them?
He has made a new revelation of God and the lEe to
come ; but, admitting that this is itself sufficient, it
requEes to be taught, and none can teach it as he
who gave it, — " never man spake Uke this man."
Why, then, should he so lEnit his personal teaching ?
Doubtless he has unmeasurable benefits for man, but
why should he so Emit his personal labors in dis
pensing them ? We shall not find the explanation in
the special gifts bestowed on the apostles, and the
special work assigned to them. For no apostle
could be what Christ himseE' was ; and besides,

260 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
the work of the apostles was subject to similar
limitations. Admitting the value of his religion, its sufficiency
for the soul, its diffusion and transforming power, it
may still appear to some that the personal presence
and work of Christ were greatly needed in the world
when he went away. Why did he not remain to lead
the conquests of his kingdom in person? Had he
remained haE a century longer, and visited all the
nations in person, we are apt to think he might have
left the world substantially Christianized. And at
how many times in the history of the church has her
great and urgent need appeared to be the personal
presence of her Head? And this appears, to some,
to be the great need of the church and the world now.
Some think the effect of his presence here, eigh
teen hundred years ago, has been greatly weakened
by the lapse of this long time. The world, also,
has greatly changed. Hence, there is need, they say,
that Christ should manEest hunself again, resume his
work, and connect his religion with the advanced con- '
ditions of modern times. They would not have him
come agam as he came before, but come as he left.
They would not have the earthly life of Christ re
peated, — they would not have him endure the cross
again, — but they would have him teach his gospel in
connection with modern thought ; bring his personal
lEe Eito connection with modern civilization ; and
do, hi the presence of modern science, some mighty
works for the revival of faith and' the advancement
of his religion. Some argue the necessity of such a
further personal work of Christ from the condition

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 261
of the world ; but, of course, the necessity, that he
should do something more for the prevalence of his
rehgion, arises from the limitations of what he has
done ; it implies that he did not do enough, or per
haps that he could not do enough at that time.
"But Christ evidently Umited his personal work
purposely. His supernatural power did not fail.
His mighty works did not weaken nor weary it, for
his resurrection and ascension are its most signal
manEestations. It was adequate to any amount of
similar work, but he confined its exercise to fixed
limits. His love did not faU. There is no indica
tion that his benevolent interest in man dechned in
the least. He was not weary of his work. The
glories of Heaven did not allure hun away. He
evinces no disgust with the world, no unpatience iu
toE or suffering, no haste in departure. On the con
trary, his sympathies evidently increased with all he
did and bore. " Having loved his own which was in
the world, he loved them unto the end." His interest
for his followers appears most tender, and his con
cern for the world most intense, at the very last. He
evidently confined his benevolent activities to the
fixed hmits given in the facts of his Ufe.
This hmitation of his life-work appears even more
remarkable, viewed from the person of Christ, than
from the wants of the world. How could such a
bemg, on such a mission, so restrain his love and
power ? A very acute and original writer* regards
it as one of the most remarkable points in the char
acter of Christ, that, possessing such power, he did
* The author of Ecce Homo.

262

THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL

not resort to force to estabUsh his kingdom. And
that he should never employ it, not even against his
most wicked opposers, is indeed wonderful. But
above the height of this wonder, we may see, a little
farther back in the range, another far higher, and
that is, that he restrained his power in works of
benevolence. It is difficult for good men to restrain
their benevolent activities, even when these cannot be
well employed, or have ceased to be useful. How,
then, could Christ, with his opportunities, forbid his
undiminished love and power to do more for men?
The philanthropist or missionary leaves his work
reluctantly, even when his strength has failed. How
then, could Christ terminate his work as he did, and
leave this sinful world so soon? Did he not weep
over Jerusalem as he viewed it from Olivet a few
days before he died ? Did he not foresee the abomi
nation of desolation standing in the holy place?
Could not the Prince of Peace keep the peace be
tween the nations, aud prevent the horrible carnage
which he then foresaw ?
But we observe that, as Christ terminated his work
without any disgust or impatience, so he did also
without any hesitation or regret. He makes the
reason evident : He declares that he had finished his
work. We have no intimation that his mission
included anything more. His charge to the apostles,
and through them to the church, assumes that his
personal work on earth was done. He promises to
return, but he gives no intimation that he would
come to resume, at a future time, a work which he
then left unfinished. His limitation of his work was

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 263
a clear purpose ; he defined it, and then fulfilled it ;
His wisdom set the limits to the exercise of his love
and power. A clear perception of this wisdom is
necessary to a worthy confidence in Christianity.
In any perfect organism or mechanism, the limits
of any part are determined exactly by its connections
with the others. This is true of all the work of
God; no part comes short, no part overlaps. This
is true of the personal work of Christ in the world,
and this explains its limitations — it is limited exactly
to its connections. We propose to consider now the
principal Unes of its connections.
I. The supernatural work of Christ was limited,
on one side, by its connections with nature.
His miraculous work was not antinatural nor
unnatural, but extranatural and supernatural. He
did not undertake to revolutionize nature, but rather
to dehver it, as he does men, " from the bondage of
corruption." He did not make any correction or
criticism of nature ; he denounced nothing in it,
destroyed none of its forces, amended none of its
operations. In doing the work of the Redeemer, he
does not, in the least, disturb any of the arrange
ments of the Creator. He honors nature as the per
fect work of God, referring to it freely and frequently
in all its departments, for illustration of the truths
and operations of his own spiritual kingdom.
To represent the miracles of Christ as violations
or suspensions of natural law is very incorrect. He
says, "I am not come to destroy but to fulfil;"
" Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle
shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be ful-

264 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
filled." And this, which is true of the law given by
Moses, is equally true of all law established by the
Creator in the material and spEitual world, in the
bodies and souls of men. Christ destroyed no law,
he violated none, he suspended none. Gravitation
remained the same, while he walked on the sea. The
forces and laws ofthe body remained the same, when
he instantly healed the sick and gave sight to the
blind. When I raise my hand, I overcome a mate
rial force, but I do not destroy, nor suspend, that
force or its law. When I set my clock forward or
backward, I introduce a power and perform an act
that do not belong to the instrument, but I have not
changed the law of its action ; to do that, I must
reconstruct it. In his mEacles of healing, Christ
overcame the forces of the body by a power, mani
festly divine, which wrought the effect ; but he did
not displace those forces, nor derange their law ; for,
when he withdrew his supernatural power, they
resumed their operations, just as before. He per
formed these cures in numerous instances, but, as
compared with the amount of disease in the world,
then and since, they were very few. Now if, by
his supernatural power, he had provided a remedy
which should be avaUable and efficacious in every
case of disease, he would have defeated the Creator's
arrangements. If he had prevented* disease alto
gether, by permanently changing the action of natu
ral forces, he would have so far reformed creation
itseE; then we should find the divine power of the
Redeemer correcting or improving the divme work
of the Creator. But the Creator's work neither

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 265
requires nor admits correction or improvement. The
most dreadful fact hi nature is death. But — so far
as the great change is dreadful — death entered the
world by sin, — death, with all its precursors and
concomitants. This is the natural order ; and this is
right. Indeed it is impossible to conceive any order
in which these should not be the consequences of sin ;
for they are its fruit, growmg out of its very nature.
To suppose that they did not follow, would be to
make sin as good as righteousness, or to identify
them. If there be sin, there must be weakness,
pain, death ; they are inevitable and right. We see,
therefore, that Christ could not- attempt to change
this natural order, nor aEow his supernatural power
to encroach on it. As well might he weaken tbe
moral law, for this natural order is one of the main
supports of that law.
It is evident that the prime and paramount object
of the supernatural work of Christ was not the physi
cal weEare of men. God has aEowed to men, in
nature, all the physical welfare consistent with the
facts of sin ; and whUe these facts remain, supernat
ural power could not rightly be employed to increase
it. The prune and paramount object of his mission
was to save from sin. Physical weEare is included
incidentally in the process, but completely only as
one of the results. And the supernatural work of
Christ was in strict accordance with his> paramount
object. So far as mEacles for the physical weEare
of men were required as means to this end, though
supernatural acts, they were not inconsistent with
nature; though extraordinary, they were not dis-

266 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
orderly; for everything in nature is ordered with
reference to the same general end. To this limit,
Christ must employ his supernatural power in
healing disease, or in other work for the physical
good of men, but not further. Beyond this, all such
employment of his supernatural power would have
been disorganizing and destructive.
We can show that the work of Christ did not faU
short of this hunting line. It was necessary to his
mission as the Savidur, that he should fully authenti
cate to men his divine power and love. He must
prove his authority to forgive sin, and his ability to
give eternal life. This could be done only by some
acts, alike supernatural, benevolent, and manifest to
the senses, — that is, by miracles for the body, for
no others would answer aU these conditions. And
it is evident that Christ's miracles for the body were
sufficient for this purpose. They fully manEested
his unlimited power, in the control of the forces of
nature, and his unlimited love, in his sympathy with
all the miseries of men. Divine power and love,
two great qualifications of the Saviour of men, were
abundantly evinced in his miracles for the body.
It is not difficult to show, also, that Christ did not
go beyond the limiting line. The" obligation to do
the greatest amount of good forbade him to go farther
than he did in the use of his supernatural power for
the physical benefit of men. He, whose word, with
ered the fruitless fig-tree, might "have destroyed aU
bad trees ; might have forbidden thorns and thistles
to grow any more on the earth. But thorns and
thistles were wisely ordered by the Creator to follow

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 267
sm, and while sin is in the world, they wiU always
grow in some form ; they wiU be needed, and Christ
would not forbid them. He, whose blessing on a
few loaves made them sufficient to feed thousands,
might have so blessed the earth, that its spontaneous
production should always be sure and abundant for
all. Thus he might have prevented hunger, the
hardships of labor, and the fear of want. But to do
this, while sm prevaUed in the world, would be to
undo the sentence pronounced against sin at first,
and that sentence was most wise and merciful, as
weE as just. The Redeemer must not revoke it nor
interfere with it. Possibly Christ might have driven
aE diseases from the world with his rebuke, as he did
the fever from Peter's wEe's mother. But had sin
been left, this would have been no benefit ; indeed,
sin, and other miserable consequences of sin, such as
violence, and suffering in other forms, would have
been all the worse for such relief. Christ might have
made the seas everywhere safe, the air salubrious,
the land fertile ; but, while men were morally
unchanged, this would be only rubious encourage
ment to sin. All the natural arrangements of the
world conform to the facts of sm, and this order is
perfectly wise. Nature is right ; thorns and thistles,
toil, peril, pain, disease, and death, are right. They
are all God's ministers of discipline and mercy in a
world of sin, and Christ would not interfere with
their ministry. They are aU necessary as monitors,
restraints, or correctives. Even death is indispensa
ble while sin prevails in the world". The early death
of wicked men is sometimes the only seasonable

268 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
relief of society from their iniquities. If Christ had
employed his supernatural power, without any limi
tation, for the removal of physical evils, the world
being still in sin, or had gone beyond the limit which
he fixed, even though his objects had apparently been
benevolent, and he had been led by his sympathies,
he would have misused his power — he would have
turned it all to evil, — he would not have been the
great Saviour, but a great destroyer.
Christ evinced his divine power and love, two great
qualifications of the Saviour of men, by his miracles
for their physical good. He evinced his divine wis
dom, the third qualification, less conspicuously per
haps, but not less certainly, by his limitation of this
miraculous work.
Let it not be objected that this argument, E valid,
would prohibit all the sciences and arts of physical
good, and forbid all efforts for human welfare, except
such as are directed to moral improvement. For
these are not, and never can be, violations of natural
law. Nature contains many aEeviations and partial
remedies for physical evils, and many latent resources
for physical good. The study and use of these is
every way salutary. But, in all his acts of physical
good, man must keep to nature.. Whatever his dis
coveries or contrivances, he cannot go beyond her
for it ; he must take her forces and laws, and no
others. Whatever, therefore, man may acquire in
science and art, it is certain he never will break,
disturb, or escape, the connections, which God has'
estabhshed in nature, between sin and physical evil.
Whatever art may do, there will always be perils for

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 269
which it canuot provide. Whatever alleviations or
delays' it may secure, it will always be finally impo
tent before, disease and death. However skilful it
may become, it will never exempt the glutton or
drunkard from tbe natural consequences of his vices.
Spience, Etrue, is a statement of the work and laws
of God ; art, if useful, is subordmate to both. We
conclude therefore', that the Umitation of the personal
work of Christ does not logicaUy forbid the studies
and,. arts of physical welfare, but that it logically
subprdinates/them aU to nian's higher interests.
But if may, be suggested, that, Without making the
physical, igppdvof men his i paramount object, and
without interfering with the wise order 6f nature,
Christ might =have done far more than he did for this
welfare, as means to the higher , good that he sought.
This is supposable. , For instance, his knowledge may
have been sufficient to have given to the world, at
oflce, all the useful discoveries and inventions made
since his time. But would such work, extraordi
nary though not mEaculous, have- been wise?
Would it have contributed to the paramount object
of bis mission, which is really inclusive of all human
gpod? Evidently not. First, Because the means
of physical good cannot wisely be given to men all
at once, and apart from the > conditions of the re
ceivers. , Thus given, they, would not be beneficial.
There is a divine providence in all man's material
progress. Every discovery and invention, every step
in it all, has its preparation, its time, place, and con
nections, in which alone it is fitting and useful. And
Christ would not infringe this wise order of provi

270 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
dence. Secondly, The increase of material means, or
of knowledge, does not increase, on the whole, the
physical good of men, unless there is also a propor
tionate increase of virtue. In the hands of iniquity
they are equally increased means of evil. Firearms
serve the invaders quite as well as the defenders of
a country ; the assassin quite as well as the police.
The mariner's compass serves pEacy quite as well
as commerce. Labor-saving machinery, when con
trolled by avarice, becomes machinery for oppressing
labor. The increase of a nation's wealth is no pre
ventive of pauperism, for its pauperism and wealth
are sometimes found to< increase in the same ratio.
Thirdly, The increase of material good alone is not
certain to be the means of moral improvement, but
is more likely to be the means of deterioration.
Some, who labor exclusively to increase it, are
indeed great benefactors ; but they are such, only as
others labor for the increase of virtue. He who
would make bad and miserable people better and
happier, by relieving their pains and providing for
theE wants, may do too much as well as too little
for his object, and find himseE ministering to selfish
ness, vice, and greater misery. Only as this material
service is connected with moral and spEitual work,
does it become beneficial. It must, therefore, be
limited by that connection. The wise man seeks to
observe that limit in his philanthropy ; we have every
reason to beheve Christ did observe it perfectly in
his. For we notice specially : That Christ connected
all his physical benefits with his teaching, so that

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 271
they illustrated it, verified its authority, and re
vealed its great object. He also connected all these
physical benefits closely with spiritual acts. Thus
he called out the blind men's faith, as he restored
their sight, saying before the act, " Believe ye that I
am able to do this ? " and in the act, " According to
your faith be it unto you." In healing the palsied
man, he said, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." Thus
all his miraculous works for the body, besides proving
his power, expressing his tender concern for our
present uiterests, and sustaining his doctrine of the
resurrection, were also signEicant of, and tributary
to, his paramount spEituak design.
H. The personal work of Christ in the world was
limited, purposely, so as best to engage and foster a
worthy faith.
Christianity is addressed peculiarly and pre-emi
nently to faith. It rouses the intellect, and suppUes
it abundantly with truth ; it sets before us the end
of our being, and the great law of hfe ; it is related
to all our interests. But Christianity is pecuharly
the religion of restoration ; it brings divine mercy
and gracious help for the sinful and lost ; to restore
them to spEitual integrity and communion with God,
to prepare them for the estate of his children ; and it
must, of course, be addressed to faith as its corre
sponding receptive exercise. Christ presented him
seE among men, as theE divine and aU-sufficient
Deliverer, and, actually entering on his work, he
called for their confidence. Thousands of beUevers
, answered with glad and trusting hearts. But he met

272 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
infideUty; and — always essentially the same — it
was as strong, as varied, and as arrogant, when he
personally confronted it, as it has ever been since.
His biographies record the facts of infidelity that
appeared in connection with his personal ministry, as
fully as those of discipleship.
Here we meet a limitation in his work, which is
very unexpected, and, at first, may be perplexing.
We are apt to suppose, that, when Christ personally
met infidelity, he would clear it all away — that, E
it could withstand his teaching and the manEestations
of his personal excellence, he would overcome and
subdue it .by special displays of miraculous power.
But he did not. He corrected the errors of inquirers,
he confuted objections, he argued with opposers, he
sEenced the questioners that came to entangle or
accuse hun ; but all this was in the ordinary course
of his work. He worked no miracles to overcome
and subdue the infidelity that resisted his teachings
and personal excellence. The villagers of Nazareth,
who were offended at him, notwithstanding his mani
fest wisdom, and whose unbelief was so unreasonable
that he marvelled at it, expected him to do such
miracles there, as he had done at Capernaum. "But
he did not many mighty works there because of theE
unbelief." This did not prevent the possibility, but,
in his view, it did prevent the propriety, of special
miraculous works there; he would not crush that
infidelity with additional miracles for the purpose.
When arraigned before the Sanhedrim, he did not
call a sign from heaven, to prove to those unbelievhig
priests and rulers that he was the Messiah. When

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 273
^presented before Herod, tbe king hoped 'he would
work a miracle in his presence ; but he did nothing
and said nothing. When he was on -the' cross, «the
unbelieving people, 'and even the chief priests,
scribes, and elders, who gratified their cruel hostility
by gazmg on his agonies, derided his weakness and
said, "He saved others ; himseE he cannot save. If
he be the King of Israel, let him now come down
from the cross, and we will believe him." His whole
pubhc lEe was fiUed with the most conclusive proofs
of his divine mission, which they could not deny, but
would not admit; some of which were miracles
greater than _the act which they then demanded.
But just as he was dying, the uifidelity of the nation
challenged Christ to this definite sign, and pledged
faith on its performance. He did not come down
from the cross ; he made no answer to the challenge.
Did the nails hold him there ? Nay ; rather he held
on to the nails.
Christ was frequently, and sometimes most se
verely, tempted to overcome infidelity by miracles
for that special purpose. He was conscious of ample
power; his refusal thus to use it exposed him to
misrepresentation ; he was anxious that truth should
prevail ; he weU knew the influence of the unbehef
of leading men ; he was taunted with weakness ; he
was challenged by his enemies ; but he never con
sented. In this restraint of his power, we find one
ofthe most remarkable facts of his life. And, juclg-
ing from his lEe, E he were now in the world again,
engaged in the same mission as before, all the infi
delity in the land, with all the modern advantages

274 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
which it claims, with all its boasts of science, with
all its taunts of the weakness of Christianity, aided
by all the doubt's and fears of half-hearted Christians,
would not be able to provoke from him any miracles
for its special confutation.
Why did he thus limit himself? Because, beyond
a reasonable amount, additional -evidence, even
though mEaculous, has no effect on unbelief except
to increase and confirm it. Where unbelief demands
more than is reasonable, it can resist all it demands.
The labors of Christ were public; all who wished
could attend his teachings and witness his mighty
works. These had been performed in aU parts of
the land, in the most public places, in Jerusalem, in
the temple itself, before multitudes of people. There
were witnesses of them at the crucifixion. The rulers
well knew the facts ; many of them were personal
witnesses. The empty sepulchre of Lazarus was not
very far frpm the cross. Lazarus himself, and many
who were present at his resurrection, were witnesses
of his power. But unbelief of Christ was as preva
lent, when he was personally present, engaged in his
work, even when he healed the sick and raised the
dead in the sight of multitudes, as it has ever been
since, as his faithful histories plainly show. He
might have silenced its cavilling voice and paralyzed
its persecuting hand, for the time, by some special
acts; but it would have been still. unchanged in the
hearts of unbelievers, and his special work against it
would have been no advantage, but rather a disad
vantage to his reUgion. Had he come down from
the cross, his enemies would have crucified him

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD' 275
again. He would have performed a conspicuous, but
useless, mEacle at the cowardly challenge of an
unbelief so perverse as to be nothing dETerent from
monstrous wickedness. His refusal to comply with
its demand, then, as always, however tempted, was
an act far greater than such a mEacle. This reveals
his transcendent excellence ; it is the unparaUeled
instance of patience; it proves that his seE-control,
wisdom, and fidelity to his mission, were as great as
his power ; it proves that his love could not fail in
any suffering. This Umitatiou of his work, toward
infideUty, is one of those less conspicuous, but really
pre-eminent facts, which prove Christ worthy of an
unlimited faith.
While Christ limited his work, on one side, toward
unbelievers, so as to deny their unreasonable
demands, he limited it also, on the other, toward
believers, so as to aUow freedom for faith, and to
require its vigorous exercise. Where there is faith,
there must be room for doubt ; and, till faith becomes
perfect, it is opposed by doubt, and grows by over
coming it. Now Christ did not attempt to prevent
the possibiUty of doubt ; he left it room enough.
He did not conceal the difficulties of his doctrines
and precepts ; he did not explam the mysteries that
he revealed ; some of his statements were obscure,
some paradoxical, many very difficult to be under
stood and believed. His conduct often disappointed
or perplexed his followers. But he did not hasten
to render them special relief; he made no attempt
to do something for every case of doubt. He was
exceedingly gentle and helpful ; but he did not treat

276 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
a sickly faith with effeminate indulgence, not even
though his disciples abandoned him. He could nur
ture faith, even though it were small as a grain of
mustard seed, but it must be seed, not chaff. He did
nothing to exempt behevers from the struggles with
doubt, which naturally occur in their recovery from
sin ; nothing to aUow in their faith either carelessness
or presumption ; nothing to lessen the necessary ex
posure and exercise by which faith becomes vigorous.
Christ engaged, and fostered, the faith of men,
by presenting himself to them in his proper work as
their Saviour. As soon as be presented his person
and began his work, he revealed, and at the same
time supplied their real need. This called for faith ;
and for more and more, as he continued to reveal
and supply their need. He brought to men divine
light, love, and help ; he made these manEest in his
person, and in his personal service for those who
would receive it. He made it evident that he re-v
vealed God, that he had authority to forgive sin, and
power to give eternal life ; and he claimed a confi
dence proportioned to his powers and benefits. He
presented himseE as tho sufficient object of every
man's unlimited trust and love; and the reasons,
evidences, motives, and even the spirit, of the faith
tbat he requEed, and that every man needs to exer
cise, all appeared in his person and personal work.
But, beyond his proper work as the Saviour of the
sinful and lost, he made no additional effort, either
to remove the difficulties' of believers, or to overcome
the opposition of unbelievers. Herein he commends
himself to every reasonable mind ; indeed, this limi-

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 277
tation of his work, fairly considered, makes one of
the strongest claims to faith.
If the work of Christ, thus hmited, was sufficient
for the faith of his contemporaries, then it is for ours.
It appeared only in parts to most of them ; it is a
complete whole to us. It appeared sudden and some
times bewildering to them ; it appears to us with all
the tests of time, study, opposition, practical benefits,
and varied connection with human experience, for
eighteen centuries. Nor does this historic distance
reduce the evidences. For, of all the clear and
strong lines of history running' from his times to
ours, by far the clearest and strongest spring out
of the life of Christ. And present facts show that
his life was never more potent with men than it is
to-day. We walk about and do our business in the light of
the sun ; we paint our pictures in his rays, with
hardly a thought of his distance. But when we do
think of it, the light is not less bright and useful,
whUe the distance reveals to us the magnitude and
power of that great luminary. So it is with the
present influence, and the historic distance, of the
hfe of Christ.
We conclude that Christ limited his work, pur
posely, and against all temptations to extend it, at
the line where it meets, in all times, a reasonable
and worthy faith ; and that this Umitation itseE forms
one of his singular and pre-eminent claims to our
faith. TTT. In the revelation and statement of truth,
Christ hmited himseE by its connection with the

278 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
study and culture of the mdividual Christian, and of
his church as a whole.
We do not refer to the boundaries of his revela
tion, beyond which curiosity may go, but beyond
which he has given no knowledge, — for, of course,
there must be such boundaries somewhere, and we
have no reason to complain of these, — but we refer
to those hmitations in his truth, which, at first, per
plex us.
The main truths of Christianity are made so plain,
that they may be conveyed by proclamation; the
directions are so plain, that any may take them and
find the way of lEe. Yet Christianity is an educat
ing revelation ; it is all in lessons, for study. Those
who hear the news and obey the call in the procla
mation, become disciples ; and they never leave the
school, never finish the study. The same is true of
the whole church. This is the nineteenth century
of her schooling in the same Christian lessons.
Now these lessons have been remarkably successful
hi securing study. What infinite exercise of the
human soul over Christ's sayings, ever since he
uttered them ! What harvests of thought and spEit-
ual exceEence from that seed I And his words are
still as engaging as ever; they are not hkely to
interest less in the future. The attainments, made
by the single disciple, or by the whole church, are
only steps to the further progress that these teach
ings requEe. • All must admit their unlimited intel
lectual and spiritual fruitfulness.
But we must also admit, that there have always
been among Christians vgreat perplexity and differ-

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 279
ences about these truths. The most studious and
devout persons have often been in error about them.
Sincere and learned teachers have misinterpreted
them. The church has always been divided, often
distracted, sometimes in bitter controversy about
them. And the natural consequences, weakness, infi
delity, fanaticism, and oppression, have been abun
dant. Now it is probably true, that a few additional
or explanatory words from Christ might relieve this
disciple's perplexity, or clear away that one's error,
or even settle some great question that has divided
the church. A few additional chapters in the New
Testament might have prevented many of the diffi
culties, mistakes, and disputes, which have arisen
from it as it stands. Why, then, did Christ so limit
his teachings ?
Here, we observe, that Christ anticipated all these
troublesome consequences ; indeed the same occurred
under his own personal teaching. He, indeed, re
lieved perplexity, corrected error, and settled dis
puted questions, as he taught ; but his teaching
occasioned other perplexities, errors, and disputes,
which he did not thus terminate. And now we
answer our question : Christ limited his teachings,
in the interest of education, so as to connect them
best with man's study and discipline.
It does not follow, because additional teachings
might prevent this or that perplexity or error, that
there might be additipnal teachings enough to prevent
all perplexity and error. For the Uability to these
lies in the conditions ofthe pupil, and it wiU remain,
whatever the text-book. The attempt, by the teacher,

280 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
to prevent the possibiUty of their occurrence, would
destroy the educational value' of his teaching. The
New Testament could not be nlade large enough' for
this purpose ; and; if it could, it would be' good for
nothing as the text-book for training the soul. Per
plexity, error, and differences of view, are common
incidents in the best educational processes ; and,
when sinful man becomes the disciple, to be trained
to the ends and with the truths that Christ sets before
him, they will all certainly appear in the process.
And Christ was too wise a teacher to weaken the
educating power of the truth he taught, by attempt
ing to prevent any results incidental to its best
effects. Let it be remembered, that his object is not
to prevent difficulties and mistakes in learning, but
to recover man to holiness. The pupil's factor is as
essential to this product as the teacher's ; and it con
sists of all his mental and spiritual activity. This
must not be limited, because its action is imperfect.
The teacher cannot do all the work, because the pupil
does imperfect work, because he is from time to time
perplexed or mistaken. On the contrary, the teacher
must limit his own work to the line of greatest effect
on the energies of his pupil.
We do not undertake to show, that the actual Umi-
tations of the teachings of Christ, exactly coincide
with this line. It may be impossible, and it is not
necessary, to prove this. The truth Christ taught,
in the limits and forms in which he left it, has im
mense power on the minds and hearts of men. If
they become subject to the truth, this is all most
efficient and salutary educating power. We show

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 281
the wisdom of Christ, in not impairing the educating
power of his truth, by any attempts to prevent its
incidental effects, however troublesome these may
seem to us to be. This is enough for our purpose.
But there are abundant special reasons for satis
faction with the limiting forms, in which Christ has
given us his truth. We suggest a few : Some disci
ples are perplexed on truths or duties, which others
see clearly ; the form of Christ's teaching turns them
back to the preliminary lessons, which they have "not
yet learned.- There is much dETerence. among Chris
tians on some points that are plain enough in the
New Testament ; the refusal of further explanation is
the requirement of closer study, or better spiritual
qualification to find the truth. To many of our
religious questions, the New Testament refuses to
give any positive answers : the refusal leads us to a
wholesome criticism of the question, or gives us
a lesson hi patience, or teaches us not to dogmatize
too far, — either of which is doubtless better for us
than the answer. We find we cannot formulate all
Christian truth satisfactorily ; it is too large for our
forms ; our Christian philosophy and theology are
always scanty and imperfect enough to make us hum
ble. But our admiration of the design and wis
dom of Christ is increased by the fact that, never
theless, he does not give us a ready-made science of
Christianity to repeat by rote, but requEes, us to
make our own, as a part of our culture.
iy. The personal work of Christ on earth is lim
ited exactly where it connects with his higher rela-

282 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
tions to his people, and his higher services for
them. All the transactions of his earthly history wero
necessary to his mission as the Saviour of the world
— the manEestation of his divine-human "person and
perfect character ; his revelation . of the Kingdom of
Heaven, his mighty works, sinless example, his
temptations, shame, pain, death, resurrection, and
all the minor acts and incidents of his life, revealing
his participation in all common human experiences,
and his varied and intense sympathies with men, —
all this was necessary, and this was all that was
necessary, except the final act, to fulfil his work
here. He confined himseE strictly to this ; he re
mained on. earth not a day after this was done.
The reason is clear and decisive. The final and
crowning act of this necessary work of the Saviour
was the resumption of his glory, in his ascension to
Heaven. What his resurrection was to his death,
his ascension was to his whole Ufe on earth. Both
prove his seE-sacrifice ; his ascension proves his self-
sacrifice in his incarnation — that his history was the
human life of the Son of God. He refers to it as
the consummation of all his acts and evidences.
" What if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up
where he was before?" Now this same act, that
completes his necessary work on earth, also termi
nates his stay. The ascension must follow, to com
plete the whole, as soon as all the other necessary
transactions of his life were finished. The comple
tion of these, therefore, decides the length of his
residence.

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 283
His ascension is, alike, the glorious consummation
of his earthly life-work, and his entrance on his
higher and permanent relations to all his people.
That work being done, his appropriate place, even
with reference to his people and cause here, is the
throne of his Kingdom in Heaven. Now all his rela
tions to them are complete : his earthly work all set
before them; the benefits of.it all available; his
Person, the object of their supreme love, exalted in
his supremacy and glory. It is suitable that the
Leader should go forward to the land where bis fol
lowers are gathering. His ascension draws their
affections upward after hun ; it lifts theE hopes over
the darkness of the grave ; it brightens the anticipa
tions of their own departure.- It may be easy for a
Christian to die, to go to the world where Christ is,
in his blessedness and glory ; it would be very hard
for him to die, if he must leave Christ here. The
apostles could not anticipate his heavenly glory,
while Christ was with them m his humiliation and
service. His discourses about it, and even the
bright special vision of it, which three of them wit
nessed in the Transfiguration, had but a slight effect
on them, tUl after the ascension. But his exaltation
kindles in the Christian intense aspiration to see and
share his glorious heavenly estate.
And as Christ is now in the place in which he ful
fils all the need of his people, so he is also in the
place of power and advantage for his cause. His
ascension and enthronement, where the advance of
the Redeemed are gathered, drawing the affections
and hopes of his people, in their struggles here, to

284 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
the glories of his kingdom on high, are more to his
cause than centuries filled with continued earthly
service ooiild have been without them. His ascension
to heaven is. one ofthe great transactions for the
advancement bf his kingdom on earth ; his enthrone
ment is one of the great securities of its success.
lit may, however, be supposed, that, Christianity ..
lost some advantages, though it gained greater ones,
by the termination of his. personal service here. Not
so, we reply : Those greater advantages were not
gained at' any such expense. For,
» s: •• '
Y<. The personal work of Christ on earth was
limited just where it connects with that of his fol
lowers. After he had accomplished what was essential to
his earthly mission as the' Saviour, he withdrew from
what he might" have done in person for the' propaga
tion and prevalence of his religion, knd left the
whole work to his people. At his departure he
committed the pubUcation and teaching of his reli
gion, the training of disciples and of the whole
church, first to his apostles, and through them to his
followers, in every age, till the end 'of the world.
And this, we claim, was an advantage to his cause.
The sEnple power of social diffusion in Christian
ity is very strong. But besides this, Christ calls
every beUever to be, like himself, a minister to
.others. - The believer is prepared for the service by
his personal religious experiences, by bis gratitude
and devotion to Christ, and his interest in his kmg
dom. The appointmeut to it is most honorable to

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 285
the Christian, for the same service is assigned to
him, so far as he can take it, that Christ himself per
formed. He shares with Christ in the toils and trials
of his kingdom here, and he is appointed to share
with him in its future glories. The great cause needs
every Christian, and every Christian needs the ser
vice ; it is his employ, discipline, culture, his prepa
ration for the higher services and the rewards of the
future kingdom. Besides all that Christ has done
for him, every Christian needs to serve and be served
by his brethren. So long as any people are not
Christians, they wiU need all the church can do to
Christianize them, and the church will equally need
to do it. The fellowship of Christian service among
believers, for edEication and comfort, and for the
conversion of unbeUevers, is indispensable to the
culture of every Christian, and to the unity, purity,
and vigorous growth of the whole church. It is not
only a wise arrangement, but it is a part of Christi
anity ; without it there would be no adequate fellow
ship with Christ, no church, no Kingdom of Heaven.
And the church is competent to all the work
requEed of it for its own development, and for the
propagation and prevalence of Christianity in the
world, without any further personal work of Christ,
and without any more truths, gifts, or powers, than
he has- provided. Facts clearly prove this : The
church — if it could then be called a church — was
never so small and weak as when, having -gathered
his faithless and disheartened disciples together after
his resurrection, he personally committed this whole
work to them, and then immediately left it whoUy to

286 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
them by his ascension. The apostles were among
the company, but, apart from theE faith in him, they
were very weak and imperfect men. The miraculous
powers and other special gEts, conferred on them for
their peculiar work, were very Umited. Yet, in
spite of all that Jewish and Pagan opposition could
do, in less than three centuries after the Ascension,
Christianity was the prevalent religion of the Roman
Empire. There has never been a time when the
church, if faithful, was not adequate to all that Christ
left it to do for itseE and the world.
But would the followers always be faithful to this
great trust? And E they might not be, was it wise
tojeave wholly to them a work so important ? We
answer : The fidelity of the church is itself a great
part of the end sought. Without this, of course,
Christianity cannot prevail, even though Christ
should labor here in person for it. And, to secure
fidelity, Christ must devolve on the church the whole
work which belongs, to it, and the domg of which is
essential also to its vigor and growth. If he should
relieve it of its work in case it should be unfaithful,
he would abet its unfaithfulness.
The church has been unfaithful, — at times, very
unfaithful. Christianity has been perverted and cor
rupted ; its light has gone out in some lands which
it once iUumined. But his cause had similar reverses
when he was in the world, and we have no reason to
think it would have been otherwise, had he remained.
Looking backward, the progress of Christianity
seems slow. There have been declensions, reverses,
apostasies; not haE the world is even nominally

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 287
Christian now ; the church is weak ; infidelity is
active. The faint-he'arted or remiss or impatient
Christian may wonder why Christ did not do more
for the success of his cause before he went away, or
wish he would come again and revive faith by his
personal presence, and help on his work with new
mEacles. All this Christ clearly foresaw; yet he
left to his foUowers all the service that belongs to
them. He gave them the greatest motive to faith
fulness, by committing this great interest to their
trust. He knew that hi their doing this work, lies
the actual success of his reEgion in the world ; and
that they might do it all, he, without any hesitation
or misgiving, left it aE to them to do. The historic
vicissitudes of Christianity, are revelations of the
strength of sin, which it contends against, and of its
own mnate power. But the appeal of Christ to the
fidelity of his foUowers, made by committing wholly
to them their part of his work, the obligation and
inspiration of the work itseE, the fellowship of aU
faithful Christians with Christ and each other in it
and in its results, are some of the most potent
motives of his religion — far more efficacious for its
prevalence than any additional work of Christ could
be without them. This limitation of his work, where
it connects with that of his people, is one of the posi
tive advantages of Christianity.
VI. The personal work of Christ on earth was
limited, so as to connect with the work of the Holy
Spirit. What Christ has personally done is all objective;

288 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
it was done for men, set before them, offered to them.
There is in Christianity a correspondhig subjective
work, — a divine work wrought in the soul, in and
with its own activities. This is the work of the
Holy Spirit. Now the work for man must be com
plete, that the work in him may be most effective ;
the sensible presence of Christ must be withdrawn,
that his spiritual presence might be fully realized.
He came to the world that he might get near to men ;
he went away that he might get nearer still ; the
paradox is an accurately stated truth. He came,
that he might mamf est himself to the senses ; he
withdrew this sensible manifestation, that he might
present himself spiritually and more dEectly to the
soul. Now that all parts of his work, — of his per
sonal work have been actually fulfilled, now that he
has actually* taken all the relation of Saviour to
them, — his whole work with all its various services,
is available, at once, to every man, always, every
where, and in all his various need. Christ is now
before every soul, with all he ever did and bore, in
all the relations he ever took.. The Gospel is not
the mere record of what he once said, but his living
word. His earthly experiences are not mere history,
but the forms which his perpetual grace to sinful
men has taken, — forms apt and sufficient for all
men, in all times.
While Christ was sensibly present among men, his
presence must be local ; his services for them must
be special and temporary ; so he could not serve the
need of all. But now that his bodily presence is
withdrawn, and all his earthly work is complete, the

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 289
Divme Spirit everywhere enters the souls of men,
and Christ becomes spiritually ubiquitous and all-
sufficient. All that he ever did and bore, all the
relations that he ever took, become living spiritual
reahties, answering always and everywhere the be
liever's want. Thus the work of Christ was limited,
so as to become iUimitable; his outward sensible.
work was hmited, so that his inward spiritual work
might be Uhmitable.
On this pomt we need not theorize ; we need not
undertake to state the exact relations of the personal
work of Christ to that of the Holy Spirit ; the sim
ple facts abundantly answer our purpose. He said
to his disciples, "It is expedient for you that I go
away, for E I go not away the Comforter will not
come unto you." The Spirit's work could not be
done, while the great outward transactions of Re
demption were going on ; these must be outwardly
complete, then inwardly realized to men. But as
soon as they were complete, it was expedient that
Christ should depart. The results prove this.
He left the world ; the SpEit came ; then what a
change in his disciples ! How timid the apostles
before ! how courageous then ! They had forsaken
him in his trial, they were disheartened by bis death ;
but when the Spirit came, they publicly charged the
rulers and people with his murder, and proclaimed
in the temple, that he, whom they with wicked
hands had crucified and slain, was risen from the
dead, and was their Lord and Messiah. Before, they
had been so spiritually obtuse, that they often failed
to apprehend his personal teaching. Then, they were

290 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE PERSONAL
so illumined, that all his teachings, and all the old
prophecies concerning him, became suddenly clear.
Then, their words about him were far more effective
than his had been, when he spoke of himseE. The
moral and spiritual transformation wrought by their
ministry, the first work after the Spirit came, was
probably greater than had been wrought by the whole
personal ministry of Christ. Probably more were
converted the first day, than had been during his
whole life. He had predicted all this ; he declared,
that, because he went away, they should do greater
works than his. This was fulfilled, not in their out
ward miracles, for these were not as great as his,
but in blessed changes wrought by the Spirit in the
souls of men.
When Christ withdrew from the world, a power
appeared in Christianity far greater than his personal
presence. When he closed his personal work, a
spiritual work began in men, closely connected with
his, but far greater than what he had effected among
them. The history of his life had far more moral
power after he had gone, than its acts and events
had when they were transpiring. His truth, taught
by very weak, imperfect men, had more spiritual
efficiency, than when he taught it originally himseE.
And this power was not temporary. Pentecost
has been repeated many times in the history of the
Church. Christianity has shown as great spiritual
vitality and aggressive vigor, in this nineteenth
century, as it did in the first. Its fruits are more
manifest, abundant, and blessed, in this than hi any
other. The Gospel, faithfully preached, has now

WORK OF CHRIST IN THE WORLD. 291
more moral and spiritual power, than when Christ
preached in person. There are disciples, now, who,
by the power of the Spirit, do, as he predicted they
would, even greater works than his.
We conclude that the personal work of Christ on
earth was sufficient. For the study of its limitations
reveals pre-eminent reasons for our faith, and proves
that the powers of Christianity are adequate to its
proposals.

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