oe ‘wena, = aces ty o>. - nia nines 2 t Ses j a acti SS Hh Che . Sine Se Oy SUR Peay) pert taS : “ mierey . : oh eh) i : Seely : 3 he SL hm £ me Ye 4 eye a 7 eet yey, x of the Theologicat g gw Mithayy ( PRINCETON, N. J. “ BY S170)". DS6Gy 2594 | Downes, Robert P. 1842-1924 Pillars of our faith / PILLARS OF OUR FAITH (4 Hen i ‘ iy 4 To | in 2022 with funding from ae Princeton Theological Seminary Library | wv wn https://archive.org/details/pillarsofou rfait0Odox / VV ve - al ; 7 : The? i Cw ‘ * _ aa Petes ANS OWE ONG ik eA ET Pees UD ie TN CARTS Pian VIDEN CES, BY ROBERT P. DOWNES, LL.D. If the old lamps are dim and pale, The stars are shining still ; If shadows gather in the vale, The sun is on the hill. Truth still abides, God is not dead, And though old views depart, A loftier temple domes our head, A larger hope our heart. THIRD THOUSAND, PHondon : Pei homies vec AS Iie le CLLVOR DoH. AND 66, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1894. ( F = 7 . * fad er , 41 Oy yee Ges é _ : | * - ’ ’ * G - . —s es a, — ‘ » ¢ A DEDICATION. To my sainted mother, from whose lips I first received those which triumph over death, and who, since God took her, ha more intimately with me than before. PREFACE. ce HE title of this volume was suggested by an incident in the closing hours of the Rev. Thomas Vasey. When that gifted and devoted minister of Christ was nearing the end, a friend of his enquired, ‘‘ How do the truths you have preached appear to you now?” The dying veteran replied, ‘‘ They stand around me like so many pillars.” With regard to the book itself, the writer has endeavoured to deal in a popular and sympathetic way with some of those great problems of faith and unbelief which are now agitating the minds of men. Although trained in the old school of Theology, he has passed through almost every stage of mental perplexity arising from the study of the new Knowledge, which, as expressed by Darwin, Spencer, Driver, and others, has practically revolutionized human thought. Having survived this ordeal, however, with so much that is precious and, as it seems to him, still valid and reliable saved from the fire, he is possessed by an earnest longing to lead 6 PREFACE, others to the heights which he has gained, above the eddying cloud-rack and beneath the eternal blue. To the merit of originality he makes little claim in this study, since it is, for the most part, the result of extensive reading on the topics discussed, reading which, consciously or unconsciously to him, has woven itself into the substance of his argument. He will, however, venture to assert that the book abounds with ideas, and if the extracts given from other thinkers are numerous, no sensible reader will complain because he has been emancipated from the limitations of one mind to share the thoughts of a hundred. It will be noticed that detailed references to the authorities quoted have been discarded. To this a few may object, but the ordinary student will be thankful for the absence of those multiplied foot-notes which so distract the attention of the reader. If this book should prove instrumental in sup- plying any Christian believer with a reason for the hope that is in him, or in saving one human spirit from those ‘ sunless gulfs of doubt’ into which so many are drifting in these perilous times, the writer will be amply rewarded for his toil. St aciare, Upper Norwood, CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE PRESENT UNBELIEF. Its CHIEF PHASES, eh pen: . Thoughtlessness and Superficial ely, ves . Honest and Anxious Inquiry ee, ae . Profligacy sea . Scientific Materialism . Worldiy Pre-occupation and Indifference WPwndnA CHART E Ke THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. THE WITNESS OF NATURE ... sae a Matter and Chance cannot ee say “ Universe 6 Evolution and Design a ¢ Gaps in the Evolutionary Sequence d The Presence of Beauty one é¢ The Evolutionist’s Last Word THE WITNESS OF HISTORY a A Power Making for Ricnteedsdes: 5 The Mission of Great Men c The Mission of Nations d The Ascending World THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE THE WITNESS OF THE RELIGIOUS HUneNT IN Mon THE FRUITFULNESS OF BELIEF IN GOD CHAPTER III. MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING, THE PRIMITIVE RELATION OF GOD TO MAN THE REVELATION BY THE DIVINE SPIRIT TO THE MChUAN ALL AGES ? a A Glimpse of Sone si iy Nobler reties 6 Heathen Recognition of Divine Help ¢ Divine Thought in Heathendom ... ose i Br OS eee =~ CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. THE WRITTEN WORD. Its PARAMOUNT NECESSITY... ~+y a vee aes Its NECESSARY LIMITATIONS THE HIGHER CRITICISM ee are ore THE AIM OF THE BIBLE AL ate THE GLORY OF THE WRITTEN WORD Its DIVINE CREDENTIALS THE BIBLE AND NATURE THE MIRACLE OF PROPHECY 2 THE ADAPTATION OF THE BIBLE TO HUMAN NEED Its EXHAUSTLESS VITALITY. ITs HEALING AND TENOR eRTNG Powe the ae lhe. CHAPTER’ V; THE INCARNATE WORD, THE HISTORIC CHRIST ey ve beat ae coe a His Matchless Personality... 6 His Pre-temporal Glory c His Advent in the Fulness of Time d The Possibility of the Incarnation e The Gulfs Spanned by the Incarnation ... J The Divine Representative - vee g The Divine Worker . THE DIVINE TEACHER... a New Things in Morals... Bes aes ee A aa 6 The Perfect Law ... is ie ae aes : c¢ The Gospel of Humanity .. d All Things New THE PRINCE OF LIFE... @ The Secret of Christ’s Victory... & The Abiding Miracle of the Gospel CHAPTER wy. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Its WITNESS TO CHRIST ee Its MIRACULOUS HISTORY ... uh ay. Ee hs oes Its BENEFICENT MINISTRY ... a ote was He oy: CHAPTER VII. THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIOUSNESS. Its REFUTATION OF AGNOSTICISM .. ~Yy Its CONTENTS ... aa me a Conviction of the Being and Dieeree AE Goan a 6 RES cae of Affiance in God and of Communion with im c The Realization of a 1 New ‘Life received ‘through Faith i in God and Union with Christ . d An Assurance of Entrance into a "Spiritual and Eternal Order Its EVIDENTIAL VALUE EE Pie PRESENT "UNBEELIE PB. BE strong! Strive on, tho’ darkness closes round thee ; Remember this when thou dost seem to fall, That even in that work, perfect, complete in power, There was a time when, for one fearful hour, The cross seemed to be all. Florence Macarthy. “The most special, the unparalleled, the deepest subject in the history of the world and of mankind, and that to which all others are subordinate, is the conflict between unbelief and faith. All epochs wherein belief prevails, under whatever form, are splendid, heart-elevating, fruitful, for contemporaries and posterity. All epochs, on the contrary, wherein unbelief, under whatever form, maintains its sorry victory, should they even for a moment glitter with a sham splendour, vanish from the eyes of posterity because no one chooses to burden himself with the study of the unfruitful.” —Goethe. ‘Religion is the one thing in which all men are interested, the one absorbing inquiry to which no man is indifferent. What am 1? What is the world? Why am I here? What will be the result? . . . These are questions which no man ceases to ask or will cease. To these questions, if any man give answer, the world listens with credulous and eager ear. But other interests are partial and limited, and transient. They ruffle the surface of life, but do not stir its depths. Men make them the objects of their devotion and try to be content, and fill out their emptiness with pomp of words and specious self-gratulation, because they fail in their attempts to deal with those deeper and dearer questions which rack: their souls in secret.”—Fames Hinton. ‘With regard to the unbelief of the age, we must put it on its trial; allow none of its assumptions; compel it to explain its formulz; refuse to let it move a step except with proof in its hand; bring it front to front with history ; even demand that it shall show the positive elements with which it proposes to displace the main- stays it seems bent on withdrawing from the fabric of modern society.”—W. E. Gladstone. l—THE' PRESENT UNBELIEP: (INTRODUCTORY.) HERE can be no question among thoughtful men that we have fallen upon an age of disturbing and wide- spread unbelief. We are indeed passing through a great religious revolution, in which much which is unreal in the interpretations and theologies of men is destined to go down; only, however, that the truth may shine forth with a finer lustre. Scepticism fills the air like a pestilence; the things which are settled in heaven are not permitted to be settled on earth; and there are some who would even bid us listen to the footsteps of departing Deity. It may be interesting, therefore, at the outset of our inquiry to glance at some of the more prominent phases of the unbelief of the age. And first we have to deal with the scepticism of thoughtless- ness and superficial vanity. Many deny the validity of the evidences for the truth of Christianity who have never fairly examined them, and flippantly compare it with other religions of the world, while they have never looked down into the gulf which separates them. They think that doubt is a sign of cleverness, and the beliefs which make us men and which keep our hearts 2* 12 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH ° from breaking in this world of change, and sorrow, and death, may all perish if only they may be considered intellectual athletes. But let us get rid of this cant. There is no clever- ness in denial, and the spirit which always says no is the spirit of the devil. There is a higher state than that of continual questioning, as a standing in the clear air of the mountain-top is more desirable than a place among the mists and clouds of its lower levels. When repelling the charge of atheism made against him, Professor Tyndall said: ‘‘ 1 have noticed that it is not in hours of clearness and vigour that the doctrine (of materialistic atheism) commends itself to my mind,—that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it dissolves and disappears.” Very helpful also are those words of Pascal where he says: ‘ Two classes of men only are to be accounted reasonable—those who love God with all their heart because they know Him, and those who seek Him with all their heart because as yet they know Him not.” A very different form of scepticism is that of honest and anxious inquiry, seeking for the reason and authority which exist for the things we have been taught to believe. In this age of transition and general intellectual unrest, there is unquestionably such a thing as honest doubt, and we are free to confess that our hearts are touched with bound- less pity for many who, stricken with its deathful arrows, have retired, like wounded deer into the darkness of the forest, to battle with their difficulties in silence and alone. How pathetic are the words of Lessing who, writing to a friend, when faith was trembling in the balance, said: ‘ My desire to be convinced is nothing less than a hunger that would take in almost anything having a semblance of food. If any man can help me here let him doit; I pray, nay, adjure him to do it; andif he can he will surely win thereby the ~ blessing of God.” These words express what many feel. Let us deal with such most tenderly and with a heart brimful of Christ-like sympathy. THE PRESENT UNBELIEF 13 We question if there is any condition in the world more wretched than that of a man who feels the faith in which his mother lived and died slipping from his grasp, and the sun- less gulf of atheism yawning beneath him. Let such a man by constant prayer keep open the avenue betwixt his soul and God. Related to the great Father of spirits in a way which admits of communion, let him cultivate that relation with solemn persistency, and ere long light shall for him rise up in darkness. One of the leading saints and theologians of Germany, plunged in mental gloom through the spectres of doubt, began the Christian life, after- wards so radiant, with the prayer, ““O God, if Thou art, reveal Thyself to me.” Beautiful are the words of George Macdonald where he says in counsel to the doubter: “If you have seen the Lord only from afar, if you have only the faintest idea that He is better than other men, one of your first duties must be to open your ears to His words, and see whether they commend themselves to you as true; then, if they do, to obey them with your whole strength and might, upheld by the hope of the vision promised to the obedient. This is the way of life which will lead men out of the miseries of the nineteenth century as it did Paul out of the miseries of the first.” Another form of unbelief with which we have to deal is that which has its root in profiigacy. It is important to remember that there is such a thing not only as a religious but also as an irreligious bias, and that while some are anxious to see God everywhere, others are equally anxious to exclude Him from His works, and take a delight in any theory which confronts a dogma in theology, or contradicts a statement of scripture. That is a bold utterance of Lord Bacon’s: ‘*None say there is no God but those for whom it were better if there were none.” Objection may be made toa statement so sweeping as this; but it is beyond question that in some cases men are 14 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: sceptical because they are first depraved, and question the truth of Christianity because they hate its restraints. Again, sin has in many instances obscured evidence by impairing the sentiments which make it visible. St. Paul speaks of things which are “spiritually discerned.” The things of God are not revealed to the brute or to the brutish man. The heart can truly see only that which it loves, that indeed with which it has some inward affinity. All noble and sweet beliefs strengthen and develop with increasing nobleness and purity of character. Where the life is impure the vision will be blurred and darkened. ‘‘ Faults in the life breed errors in the brain.” The exact sciences commend themselves to all. Science asks no friendship. But it is not so in morals, ‘In this sphere there are delicate truths which can only be discerned by pure hearts; sanctities the secret beauty of which none but the upright can look upon; influences which a mind inured to sensualism has lost its power to feel.” The greatest of all teachers has said, “If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself.” Here we have the great principle laid down that it is not the clear intellect which gives the right heart, but the right heart that clarifies the intellect; that men must love the truth before they will thoroughly believe it; and that the gospel receives the assent of the understanding only when it brings a passport from a rightly-disposed will; for it is the will which keeps the keys of the soul, shutting out or letting in whatever it pleases. ‘©The will; says Pascal, ‘‘is the organ of belief.” Rousseau has observed that ‘‘ the facts of the life of Socrates, which nobody doubts, are much less satisfactorily proved than are those of Jesus Christ, which are so widely disputed.” The reason of this is clear. ‘To admit the facts of the life of Socrates does not entail any obligation on the conscience, while those relating to Christ demand the control of the passions, the submission a THE PRESENT UNBELIEF. 15 of the will, and the spirit of sanctity and self-sacrifice. If we lived in the light of an unstained purity, it is more than probable that our judgments concerning spiritual truth would be as infallible as the flight of the migrating swallow, the instinct of the bee, or the law of gravitation. ‘My judgment is just,” said the Holy One, ‘‘ because I seek not mine own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” Another form of scepticism with which we have to battle in the present day is that which springs from a narrow scientific matevialism. One of the leading characteristics of the present century is undoubtedly its passion for physical science. But the votary of physical science is, after all, a specialist, and the tendency of every specialist is to isolate himself from fields of knowledge which lie outside his own peculiar sphere, and to imagine that he enjoys a monopoly of truth. The confession of Charles Darwin is very significant where he tells us, with his usual honesty, that, as a result of his ardent devotion to the study of physical phenomena, he abandoned religion, and even lost the capacity to appreciate poetry. Now it must be evident to all that, except in his own sphere of inquiry, such a man would be a most unreliable guide. We have no controversy with science in her own province. On the contrary, we rejoice in her triumphs, and fully recog- nise the service she has rendered in giving to man a larger control over the forces of Nature, together with a grander conception of the universe. Still, we need to guard against that limitation of vision which physical studies are so apt to engender, ‘* As science, forging day by day Her close-link’d chain, withdraws The once-felt touches of God’s hand For dumb organic laws.” We must ever remember that the power which subdues the earth and spans the heavens has no view and no surmise of the invisible and eternal. We must, therefore, guard against 16 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH ;: the conclusions of science when, stepping beyond her legitimate province, she attempts to dogmatise about those things which lie beyond her ken. Too often, in her exclusive attention to physical phenomena, she is tempted to deny spiritual realities because they are incapable of that logical demonstration which is possible with regard to physical facts. The soul, as a distinct spiritual entity, is pronounced a dream, because the scalpel of the anatomist cannot discover its action in the brain, and God is said to be a creation of the fancy because the telescope has not discerned in the far fields of space His glorious form. Now, this demand for scientific proof in the domain of faith is unreasonable and absurd. It is as foolish as ifa man were to apply a thermometer to his wife’s heart, to test the strength of her love for him. Absolute demonstra- tion is, of course, not possible in the spiritual realm. But there is such a thing as reasonable certainty, which is not scientific. Religion makes its appeal to facts of consciousness which are as real and as reliable as any of the facts of science. Rigid mathematical proof belongs only to inferior truths: those which relate to God, and heaven, and the vast spiritual universe, appeal to higher faculties—they are “spiritually discerned.” Spirit is more real than matter, for God is spirit. Supernatural laws and relations are as real as those of Nature, and will abide when “all which seems shall suffer shock.” We must not submit to that tyranny of science which denies spiritual realities because they will not submit to its analysis. We must give its just place to the spiritual part of our nature, with its rich dowry of faculties and aspirations. God is as great a reality to the spiritual consciousness of the man who trusts and worships as the outward universe is to the intellectual consciousness of the scientist. That we may grasp universal and sufficing truth, we need to cultivate not only the logical understanding but also that spiritual — ———— THE PRESENT UNBELIEF. 17 capacity within us which deals with spiritual things. We must avoid the plague of a dwarfed and withered soul. Our faith in the veracity of the reports given in by our higher faculties is as reasonable as that of the scientist in the reports given in through the faculties of vision and touch. They degrade and belie our nature who link us only with the dust. All things low do indeed touch us, but all things high meet in us also and thrill us with their celestial might. Matter and spirit, earth and heaven, self and God, time and eternity, all touch us, for we are related to them all. ‘‘ Two worlds are ours, ’tis only sin Forbids us to descry The mystic heaven and earth within Plain as the sea and sky.” But, beside these, there are other phases of scepticism which demand some brief notice before we enter on the great theme indicated by our title. One of the most prominent of these is the scepticism which arises from worldly pre-occupa- tion and indifference. The solemn and momentous truths of which religion is the minister are continually ignored in our time, through the overwhelming prevalence of worldly thought and worldly things. As Wordsworth wisely says: ‘‘ The world is too much with us. Late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” Because of the restlessness which consumes men in the present century, arising largely from the fierce competition of business life, they over-value the world of sense and under- value the world of spirit. The inner life is neglected and dwarfed, because the calls of the outward life are so loud and so unceasing. How many around us, ‘¢ With low-thoughted care, Confined, and pestered in this pinfold here, Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, Unmindful of the crown that Virtue gives, After this mortal change, to her true servants, Amongst the enthroned gods on sainted seats!" 18 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: This is one of the most formidable evils of our day. Religion amongst us is less endangered by the exercise of what is called free-thought than by the utter absence of thought. Men are so busy that they never pause to question themselves as to the real meaning of their life, and its far-reaching issues—‘‘ Who and what am [?” ‘“ Whence came 1?” ‘ Whither am I going?” ‘ Why was I placed here, and by whom?” “This soul—this mysterious life of mine—what are its faculties and responsi- bilities, and what is its goal?”” These are the questions which it would seem man must ask himself. But it is not so. On the contrary, he ignores them. The tyrant body sways the life and is the sepulchre of the immortal soul. ‘He makes a nothing of eternity, and an eternity of nothing.” Such is the sinful indifference of man to the very highest interests of his being. Every night the stars visit him with their message of worlds above and beyond this dim earth. The rivers roll to the sea—symbols of his human life hasting towards eternity. The fair earth, with its two-fold ministry of use and beauty, rebukes his selfishness and his ingratitude. The sweet voices of his earthly comforters remind him of the God who loved them into being. His ideals and aspirations haunt him with a sense of the divine. ‘The years sweep by, and rob him of his strength, as the autumn winds scatter the pride of the woodland. Cables fastened to some earthly good, slip one by one, reminding him that he must seek better anchorage. But all these sweet and solemn monitors’ are disregarded through the pressure of worldly interests—a pressure in the midst of which spiritual realities are either neglected as uncongenial, or despised as visionary. Here we have another source of the scepticism which is the hectic and the bane of the present age. How can we expect belief where we cannot get even attention? The grandest realities are powerless to move men, or to produce conviction, if they are persistently ignored. THE PRESENT UNBELIEF. Ig Such are some of the forms of unbelief which confront us in the present age, and in addition to these we have the scepticism of timid Christians, who, brought face to face with difficulties never before considered, and confronted by truths not yet reconciled to their standards of belief, fear that evil is coming in like a flood, that the foundations are being torn up, and that atheism and anarchy may ere long overflow the world. ‘Their difficulties arise for the most part from three things—first, the craving for an infallibility which shall obviate the necessity of inquiry; second, a repose in fixed dogmas which are but fallible and limited interpretations of truth ; and, third, an impression that an irreconcilable anta- gonism exists between religion and science. From the earliest Christian ages believers in Christ, apart altogether from their vital experience of the power and the blessedness of the Christian redemption, have desired to set up some external standard of infallibiity by means of which truth might be found mechanically, and all mental and moral struggle be avoided. Hence the way in which they have clung to the decisions of councils or the utterances of popes, or the literal infallibility of a book. They wish to walk by sight and not by faith. They crave fora visible authoritative guide which will make doubt and uncertainty impossible. But God does not thus make children of us, folding us in the sleep of a lazy quiescence which leaves our finest faculties to stagnate. We must inquire. We must press on. We must seek a fellow- ship so close and sointimate with the King himself as to be less dependent on the letter or the messenger. Our life isa pilgrimage, and it is also a discipline, and no other state than that of fallibility is attainable on earth. Then, again, in regard to those fixed dogmas which are supposed to be true for all times and ages, what are they but a vain attempt to chain the living torrent, and to parcel out the illimitable heavens? There is more in Christianity than any creed has yet formulated, ZO PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: or any Church embodied. To use the wise words of one of the Pilgrim. Fathers: “‘ The Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of His holy word.” This is our reply to those who say that religion is not a science because the notion of a fixed and definite revelation renders it incapable of progression. Within its own limits, however, much progress may yet be realised in religion, for God has not said His last word to men, and the Bible itself contains many truths as yet undiscovered, and many more which are yet unapplied to the needs of humanity. While therefore we reverence antiquity, and jealously guard its treasures that they be not lost, while also we oppose that destructive school of progress which would simply destroy the past to make room for itself, we must not be blind to progressive light. To systematize is a necessity of science in every realm. But this does not imply that our systems are perfect and complete. The Word of God is as profound and as exhaustless as His works, and to object to alter or interfere with the conceptions of theologians ofa past age were as absurd as to object to substitute the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy. The higher teaching of Christ is as yet very dimly understood. He has “‘ many things to say unto us, but we cannot bear them now.” As to the supposed antagonism between Religion and Science, we are bold enough to affirm that it does not and can not in the nature of things exist where either has reached definite truth. True science can destroy nothing which is of God, and in its ultimate issue it will only widen the foundation of intelligent spiritual beliefs. The problem of science is to ascertain the laws of Nature, the problem of religion is to ascertain the underlying reality. Science meets by its conclusions the necessities of the logical understanding, religion meets the thirst of the human soul and the human spirit. We are no nearer to God in our knowledge than in our ignorance, unless to the knowledge of Nature be added the knowledge of spiritual truth. Science can do much, but there are straits in life THE PRESENT UNBELIEF. 21 where she can afford neither counsel nor aid, and where religion must step in to save us from despair, or it may be from madness. The special weakness of scientists at the present time is the denial or neglect of the spiritual factor in human nature, and the special weakness of Christian believers is the craven fear that science will disprove and abolish the verities on which their faith reposes. They hear the music of a glorious future pealing through the sky, and, like the simple shepherds of Bethlehem when the advent hymn was sung, they are sore afraid. But ‘Glory to God in the highest” is still the burden of the song. They feel the ploughshare of swift and keen inquiry tearing up the clods beneath their feet, and, like the mouse of which the peasant poet sings, they fancy the foundations of the earth are being torn up. But the furrows are only being prepared in which new harvests may bloom and glow, feeding the hunger of the world. Loud and defiant, we admit, is the clamour of the advancing sea of scepticism in our time, and its waves are crested with some of the foremost names in science and in literature. Disturbed and tossed, the shingle shrieks and shifts, while some of the groynes raised by human hands to check the encroachment of the stern waters tremble and give way. But beneath all there is solid rock which the tempest cannot stir. The radiant universe yet blooms around us, witnessing of Him whose ‘‘ Dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.” A conscious divinity still stirs within our nature, spurning its clay, and smiling at what we call death. The Spirit of truth and power still lives and visits us for blessing and uplifting-— ‘¢ Tine anchor of our purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of our heart, and soul Of all our moral being.” 22 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. The Written Word still pours its music from the high places of eternity, through the dungeon bars of time. The Incarnate Word still moves before us in His perfect majesty, shaming us with what we are, and leading us to something purer and nobler than we are. Still He holds the keys to the riddle of man’s being and destiny, and souls returning from their hopeless quest after rest and assurance elsewhere, cry as they gather in His presence, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” Still the power He wielded in the days when He yet so- journed with us on earth is an unwasted power, bringing help to the despairing, victorious strength where before it seemed vain to struggle, and the energy of goodness and improvement where all seemed sold to evil. ‘The great cloud of witnesses” still en- circles us, including in its ranks the glorious company of the Apostles and the noble army of Martyrs, together with “the solemn troops and sweet societies” of our beloved and sainted dead. The Holy Church throughout all the world still acknow- ledges God, and testifies with consentaneous voice to the life it lives in Him. And thus the pillars of our faith are as firm as the pillars of heaven, for God has planted both in the deeps of His eternity, and the rage of man sweeps over them in vain. Pees hXISTENCE (OF. GOD: We must revert to the elementary, fundamental, and eternally unshaken points if we desire that a new generation should again be fed with the bread of life.—Vinet. O, Nature! thou whom I have thought to love, Seeing in thine the reflex of God’s face, A loathed abstraction would usurp thy place,— While Him they not dethrone, they but disprove. Weird Nature! can it be that joy is fled, And bald unmeaning lurks beneath thy smile? That beauty haunts the dust but to beguile, And that with Order, Love and Hope are dead ? Emily Pfeiffer. Tie laws cf nature cannot account for their own origin.— Fohn Stuart Mill, There is no contradiction between the principles of Theism and the most recent scientific conceptions. No fact, no law of nature warrants us to eliminate the final cause from the human mind. Science, so far as it is science, is mute on this problem.— Fanet. “Let us begin by asking whether all this which they call the universe is left to the guidance of unreason and chance medley, or, on the contrary, as our fathers have declared, is ordered and governed by a marvellous intelligence and wisdom.”—Plato. ie ISA AG Rew Iter, ONE TORE 12 is a fruitful thought that the idea of God is already in our minds. Before we enter on any inquiry con- cerning His existence, the great conception is already with us. Whether received through tradition, or suggested by the spectacle of Nature, or given, like the consciousness of our own existence, as an intuition of the mind, we find it already in the field. It is practically universal. Dim, distorted, and imperfect in many cases it may be; but it is everywhere traceable, directly in all the religions, and indirectly in all the languages of the world. It is one of those truths which ‘* lie about us in our infancy,” one of those ‘Truths which wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, Nor man, nor boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy.” Given, as it would appear, not by intellectual effort, but by heavenly condescension, this truth appeals to Gp with a force and show of reason such as belongs to no other. And while the mind delights in it, the soul leaps up to embrace it, and lies folded in its sweetness as ina mother’s arms. We cannot escape from it except at the cost of deformity and the paralysis of that in us which is most truly human. Once realised. 3 26 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: every road leads up to it, and every line of reasoning con- verges towards it. It is the ocean to the river of our thought. It enfolds and encompasses us as the sky the rolling world. The only difficulty we have about it arises from its sublimity. Now this fact is peculiarly favourable to Theism, since the mind is already prepared for any evidence which can be adduced in support of the great conception which already dominates it with a magnificent insistence that will not be denied. 4. THE WITNESS OF NATURE. The first evidence in favour of the great conception which already possesses us is the vision of the radiant universe above us and around us. In those wonderful lines which express what we believe to be the finest thought in English literature, the poet Wordsworth sees in the whole universe the revealer of God to man. ‘I have seen,” he says :— ‘* A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell, To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy ; for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea: Even such a shell the universe ttself Is to the ear of Faith.” Yes! just as the shell taken from the sea murmurs of the moving vastness from whence it came, so the universe in all its bewildering and inconceivable splendour is but as a shell which murmurs of the infinite God from whom it came. The gaze of the human soul on creation and life brings it into swift agreement with that first great article of the Christian Faith, ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” Christianity teaches that the universe has an author, it asserts that the being of God alone accounts THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 27 for the phenomena which we see around us, and this assertion is capable of reasonable demonstration. Our minds are so constituted that whenever we witness an event, or what philosophy would call a phenomenon, we infer that it has had a cause, and not only so, but a cause adequate to the result produced. Hence, standing on the green earth and beneath the blue heavens, we naturally ask, ‘‘ Whence is this great system of Nature, with its exquisite order, its perfect balance, its witching loveliness, its perennial freshness, its enduring strength, its base in the granite and the sandstone, its centre in the bird and the beast and the bee, its summit in the glory of man and the tenderness of woman?” Only two solutions can be suggested. It has made itself, or it has had, an intelligent Creator. ‘‘It is,” to quote a sentence from Professor Tyndall, ‘the offspring of the inorganic atoms of the primeval nebula; ”’ or, it is the work of Him who, in the beginning, “ created the heavens and the earth.” It is the work of chance, or it is the result of ‘toil co-operant to an end.” Now, which cf these solutions is the more probable when weighed in the balance of a healthy mind? (2) Matter and Chance cannot account for the Universe. Let us look fairly for a moment at the theory of matter and chance. Some seek a substitute for God in the theory of the eternity of matter. The positionthey assume with regard to the origin of things is, that matter is eternal, and that from it all things have been evolved in slow and gradual progres- sion. Thus we learn that Atheism, one of the professed aims of which is to deliver us from the insoluble problems of Theology, and to make all things plain, has to set out from the necessary yet transcendent truth that something must have existed from all eternity, and must have been uncaused, or, in other words, self-existent. ‘‘ Matter and its immanent 3° 28. PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. force,” writes Biichner, ‘is immortal and indestructible.” And again, “Matter is the origin of all that exists; all natural and mental forces are inherent in it.” But this statement is utterly incapable of verification. We search through the literature of materialism in vain for any adequate proof of this assumption. We are, however, able to prove the non-eternity of the present order of things. The records of Astronomy and Geology alike demonstrate that matter, in the forms in which it now appears, has been subject to perpetual transformation. The sun itself, on which our solar system depends, is known to be a kindled and self-consuming fire which has not been for ever burning, and which cannot burn on for ever unless recruited and sustained by energies utterly unknown to science. The solic-seeming planets, again, have been traced back to an infancy of nebulous mist or steam, and may be traced forward through future ages to barren decay and frigid death. As Shelley puts it :— ‘¢ Worlds on worlds are rolling ever, From creation to decay ; Like the bubbles on a river, Sparkling, bursting, borne away.” Now we cannot relegate eternity to forms which are thus changing and unstable. They are manifestly derived and dependent, not self-existing and uncaused. Indeed, it would really appear as if, in its last analysis, matter were resolvable into force. Old ideas concerning fixed primordial elements, such as earth, air, fire, and water, which built up the cosmology of Plato, or those ultimate particles of matter out of which Leibnitz and others have fashioned their atomic theories, are fast dissolving before a higher spiritual philosophy which reveals, through the’ ever - shifting phenomena of Nature, the abiding will of God continually exerted as fovce through the depth and breadth of the universe. What we have called matter is, as far as we know, composed of no fixed and final atoms. We cannot find in it any p2rmanent element or actual substance. The THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 29 solids are resolvable into fluids, the fluids into vapour, the vapour into gases, the gases into ethers, the ethers into something still more ethereal, until it seems absolutely to vanish from our perception. Thus the conception of the creation of matter is wonderfully simplified, and the objec- tion, so frequently urged, that it is more difficult to believe in the production of matter, even by God, than it is to imagine that matter itself is the great first cause, is robbed of its force. But even if we give to matter ‘a local habitation and a name,” if we think of it as possessing a concrete existence, and conceive of it as eternal, it could never do the kind ot work which Atheism demands from it. All its energies and potencies could not endow it with thought, and the power which produced this universe, however we may describe it, was a thinking power. To get out of matter that which Atheism demands, you must first endow it with all the attributes of mind. You must transfer to it, in fancy, not only eternity, infinitude, and self-existence, but also self-movement, will, intelligence, and benevolence. In short, you must make a living god of matter before you can get it to do the work of the living God. It is not conceivable, therefore, that in the beginning we have to deal with matter only. Matter, the universal blind mother, could not have brought from her dark womb the system which Strauss himself describes as a ‘‘law-governed cosmos, full of life and reason.’ ‘ Accord- ing to the atheistic hypothesis, non-life,” says Prebendary Row, ‘has generated life; unintelligence, intelligence; un- consciousness, self-consciousness ; impersonality, personality ; necessary law, freedom ; latent forces, moral agents.” Yet further, if we accept materialism as sound philosophy, we must believe that the universe could only have reached its present condition after countless millions of abortive efforts to arrive at order, and rest, and abidingness. This, indeed, consistent materialists admit, from Democritus to the 30 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: last of their school. They accept the idea that the elements of matter have, during the eternity through which they have existed, passed through infinite combinations resulting in nothing permanent or beautiful, until at last, after countiess collocations, and blind, futile efforts, the present order finally appeared. But here again we are arrested by the statement of Laplace, that the chances against the uniformity of our solar system being produced by lucky accident are four million millions to one. And if this be true concerning our solar system, what of the wondrous universe of which it forms so insignificant a part? When we consider all the calculations of supreme wisdom which must have combined to produce the harmony which we see around us, the materialistic theory utterly breaks down. Perhaps it might be possible to conceive that out of the tumultuous heavings of chaos for untold ages some general order might turn up at last; but a mechanism so intricate as that displayed by the stellar universe, perfected by ten thousand poisings and balancings, the failure of any one of which would destroy the harmony of the whole system, what healthy reason could imagine such order to be the result of chance ? Our own solar system, with its wonderfully complex arrangement of parts, all moving in perfect harmony, each influenced by each, and all controlled by the sun, constitutes in itself a rhythmic order which affects the mind like deep, divine music. But it must ever be remembered that our planetary system is but one of hundreds of millions of systems, many of them incalculably larger than it, which stretch and glitter at the feet of Him who “ made the stars also.” If, then, we bow in reverence before men like Copernicus, and Kepler, and Newton, who have simply observed and tabulated these movements, what must be thought of the man who refuses homage to the intelligence which conceived and fashioned this wondous universe, poising and balancing those THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 31 countless orbs with a precision so marvellous that there is no accident or collision, and the stupendous system maintains through the ages its perfection, its stability, and its beauty ? It is true that we have made great progress in science since Newton discovered the law of gravitation, but nothing has been revealed which touches the position he assumes in his ‘¢ Principia ’’ :—‘‘ The celestial bodies will continue in their circular movement by the laws of gravitation; but in their origin they could not receive from those laws the regular place of their orbits. This beautiful co-ordination of the sun, the planets, and the comets could not be formed except by a powerful and intelligent being; andif the fixed stars are the centres of similar systems, all those systems, constructed with similar wisdom, are necessarily subject to the action of one single master.” Very beautiful also are the words of Carlyle : —‘¢ Through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every living soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish.”’ Yet who, however foolish, can fail to discern in the universe around us, with all its delicate adjustments, the work of intelligence ? In the mechanism of the heavens three great ends are achieved,—stability and regularity in marking days, and years, and cycles,—beautiful orderly arrangement for order’s sake, and the subordination of one system with hundreds more to the rhythmic march of the whole universe of worlds. The actual curve of the planetary orbits, their appointed position in space, the rate of their velocity—irom ‘‘ nimble Mercury flitting moth-like in the beard of the sun, to dull Neptune sagging in his cold course twenty-six hundred million miles away’’—the laws of their motion, the direction of their lines with relation to the pathway of other worlds, their reciprocal influence, their relative masses, the disturbance of their movements in accordance with the law which keeps them all in leash,—all these things declare the existence, the 32 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: unity, and the power of Him ‘of whom, and to whom, and through whom are all things.” ‘© Our hearts are thrilled within us when we think Of the great miracle which still goes on In silence round us,—the perpetual work Of His creation, finished, yet renew’d For ever.” Of old the Psalmist sang,—‘‘ The heavens declare the glory of God,” and the increase of our knowledge has not made heaven’s awful gulf, whose waves break on a strand of stars, less wonderful, or plucked the heart out of the mystery which bowed with awe the world’s grey fathers. Theism abides, evolution notwithstanding. Hence the testimony of Fiske when, in his “‘ Idea of God,” he comes to the conclusion that ‘throughout all possible advance in human knowledge, the essential position of Theism must remain unshaken.” If a watch, by the arrangements of its parts, demands the idea of intelligence in its record of the hours in harmony with the revolution of the world on its axis, what shall we say of the mechanism of those orbs which register and measure the hours of eternity on the dial-plate of heaven ? Thus, as it appears to us, Atheism is not merely the death of faith, but also the suicide of reason. The theory of blind, plastic Nature, with the clash of its atoms and the play of its forces, might account for some imaginable universe, some formless chaos floating in the sea of space, but not for the universe which soars, and shines, and breathes around us. The rhythmic march of the seasons, the solemn music of the stars, the eye of the insect, the cell of the bee, the wing of the eagle, the form and countenance of man —these are not the work of unintelligent matter or of blind chance. Chance could no more have produced these things than it could have grouped the forms and tints of Turner’s “Italy,” or thrown into their sublime order the letters of Milton’s ‘‘ Paradise Lost.” Hence we are not surprised to hear Clerk Maxwell say that he had THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 33 examined every system of Atheism, and had found that each implied a God at the bottom to make it workable. If men take God the Father Almighty out at one door, they have to bring Him in at another, only under another name. Atoms, Cells, Forces, Organs, Laws, Evolution, an unknowable Presence working behind phenomena, a Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness, all are pressed into the service of the bewildered thinker, while all are alike inade- quate to account for the universe which we behold around us, and of which we ourselves form a part. Everywhere in Nature, whatever the process by which it has worked, we trace the presence and the action of intelligence. For instance, to go back beyond the wonders of breathing and conscious life, who invested the first atoms with their powers of attraction and repulsion, of cohesion and antagonism? ‘They bear, as Sir John Herschel and others have clearly shown, all the characteristics of manufactured articles. The original molecules of which the material universe is compounded are not fortuitous combina- tions of atoms, but definite masses, with an exact numerical relation the one to the other. In other words, the world has been put together in its first constituents arithmetically. Thus at the very beginning we have the marks of mind, and the wonder deepens as we trace onward the marvellous processes which have contributed to build up the cosmos as it now presents itself to thought. It is simply inconceivable that the order, the adaptations, and the correlations with which the universe abounds have owed their origin to chance, or, in other words, to the play of blind forces undirected by intelli- gence. Volumes have been written, from Ray and Durham to Paley and Janet, filled with the striking instances of purposive adaptations of the parts of created complex instruments to the effecting of definite ends. Nature has taught man most of what he knows. All the sciences are but the 34 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: records of observed facts and phenomena in the actual world. Newton, in his Principia ; Huxley, in _ his Physiography ; and Tyndall, in his treatises on Light, and Heat, and Sound, only charm us with echoes from the great harp of Nature. All these masterly results of scientific inquiry only show us how wise man becomes when he thinks God’s thoughts after Him. Did our space permit, a thousand examples might be given of the exquisite adaptation of means to ends in Nature, and of the fine relation which exists between unconscious Nature and the living creatures she is appointed to sustain and nourish. That is a beautiful touch of Goethe’s where he says: ‘‘ From the cold earth in earliest spring A flower peeped out,—dear fragrant thing ! Then sipped a bee, as half afraid ; Sure each was for the other made.” With those who ascribe all things to chance, the following anecdote may shorten argument. The leading French infidels of the last century were assembled in society, and were airing their Atheism, when Diderot exclaimed : ‘‘ Let us appoint a defender of God.” The Abbé Galiani was appointed to the office, and he said: ‘One day at Naples there was a man in our company who took up six dice, and bet that he would throw the number six. He did so, and this was within the limits of possibility. But six times running he threw the number six. Then everyone cried out: ‘ The dice have been dealt with. On examination this was found to be the case. Now, gentlemen philosophers, when I consider how the order of Nature perpetually returns, and how constant its move- ments are amidst such infinite diversities; when I also consider how this one chance preserves such a world as this which we see, notwithstanding a hundred millions of chances that might derange its order, or destroy it altogether, 1 am led to exclaim that ‘the world has been dealt with.” This unexpected sally reduced the adversaries of God’s Providence to silence. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 35 (6.) Evolution and Design. Neither is the argument from design and purpose in any degree invalidated by the principle of Evolution. This has merely disproved one particular kind of adaptation, namely, the adaptation of a mere mechanician, employing such means and appliances as would be used by a human workman. Before Darwin developed on scientific lines the great discovery which has restored to England the intellectual sceptre of Europe, men believed that every species, every organism, and every part of every organism, had been separately adapted and contrived by the Creator for the accomplishment of a definite end, just as each portion of a watch is the result of a particular act of contrivance on the part of the watchmaker. The evolutionist, however, steps in and says: ‘* Those curious and marvellous things that you have pointed out to us in Nature were not contrived and manufactured as you seem to think ; they were gradually developed, under the operation of alaw of Nature, whose working we can show you.” Now supposing we accept this as the mode of the Divine operation. Supposing we allow that God has been pleased to work on an ascending scale, evolving the things which exist from inferior forms, rather than creating them whole or complete by the direct energy of His will. Still this wonderful process demands an intelligent Creator, and cannot have proceeded from blind force. Indeed, creation by fabrication seems far less wonderful than creation by evolution; fora man may bring the parts of a watch together, but he cannot make a watch that develops itself. It must ever be remembered that nothing is evolved which was not at first involved. Music sleeps in the plain eggs of the nightingale before hatching ; the wonder is, Who put it there? We get out of atoms and primordial germs by evolution only that which was at first placed in them by the Divine intelligence ; and our wonder may fitly deepen into awe before that mighty though unseen Presence whose infinite wisdom included in a few primordial 36 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: germs those possibilities which have developed into the marvels which we see around us. Thus, in the words of John Fiske, ‘“ the process of evolu- tion is itself the working out of a mighty Teleology of which our finite understandings can fathom but the scantiest rudi- ments.” That the idea of development is not inconsistent with faith ‘1 God is seen from the declaration of many ether avowed evolutionists. Dana declares that the molecular law is the profoundest expression of the Divine will. “Natural evolution,’ says Prof. Owen, ‘‘ by means of slow physical and organic operations through long ages, is not the less clearly recognisable as the act of an adaptive mind because we have abandoned the old error of supposing it to be the result of a primary, direct, and sudden act of creational construction.” ‘I cannot,” says Prof. Stanley Jevons, ‘“‘for a moment admit that the theory of evolution will alter our theological ideas. I do not, any less than Paley, believe that the eye of man manifests design. I believe that the eye was gradually developed ; but the ultimate result must have been contained in the aggregate of causes; and these, so far as we can see, were subject to the arbitrary choice of the Creator.” The testimony of Pressensé is also very valuable, where he says: “The general idea of evolution, as formulated by Darwin, is not intelligible apart from design. Evolution is, in his view, inseparable from the idea of progress ; it is the realisation of progress from one stage of being to another ; it advances from the less to the greater ; it is always tending to a higher development. What can this signify, except the carrying out of a plan ?—for there is no possibility of distin- guishing the lower from the higher, or of knowing which is best, if intelligence in Natureis denied. Take this away, and you have no longer any criterion by which to estimate the value of things; all are confounded in a common equality. If THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 37 Nature tends to higher developments, it is because it is guided by intelligence.” Thus the acceptance of evolution in no wise abolishes the necessity for God. Make the ladder of secondary causes as long as you choose, God is still at the top. Because we have discovered more concerning force, we have not, therefore, done away with the necessity for an Omnipotent Being. Because we are steadily resolving all forces into modifications of one force, we have not, therefore, abolished, but rather heightened, the intellectual conception of the Divine Unity. Because we have enlarged indefinitely the domain of natural law, we have not, therefore, disproved the existence of a law- giver. Because we have changed our idea of the Divine method in creation, by discovering a plan reaching back into eternity, involving an infinite succession of phenomena moving upward from a fire-mist rolling through space to the brain of William Shakespeare and the heart of Florence Nightingale, we have not therefore dispensed with the Divine intelligence or the Divine compassion. SBeautiful are the words of James Martineau: ‘Science has enlarged our conceptions of the universe, but has it therefore severed us from God? Does the order of our solar system tell us that we are in the domain of intelligence, but the balance and harmony of ten thousand cancel the security, and hand us over to blind material force ? Such a fear is self-convicted, and cannot shape itself into consistent speech. Who, I say—not in the interest of science, but in the very hour of his midnight prayer—would wish to look into skies less deep, or to be near a God whose presence was the living chain of fewer ages? It cannot be denied that the architects of science have raised over us a noblertemple, and the hierophants of Nature introduced us toa sublimer worship.” (c) Gaps in the Evolutionary Sequence. Returning now from these conceptions to the considera- tion of Evolution as the Divine method in creation, we are of 38 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: opinion that there are gulfs in the evolutionary process which demand the special intervention of the Creator to bridge them. If Evolution with some men means Atheism, it is at least satisfactory to know that the atheistic cycle is not complete. Much has to be assumed to make evolution suffice as a very poor substitute for God, and we must ever bear in mind that assumptions are not science, and must not be accepted in its name. Among such assumptions we may instance that of Helmholtz, where he remarks, in regard to the planetary system, that there was “a motion of rotation originally slow, the existence of which must be asswmed;” and that of Heckel, where he says: ‘* We assume the hypothesis of spon- taneous generation for the origin of the first organisms.” First among the gulfs in the natural world which need to be bridged by the special intervention of the Creator, we will instance that between matter, naturally inert aud incapable of self- movement, and the first motion. It is in the nature of a ball to lie motionless on the earth until stirred by the action of a living will. Itake it up and throw it forward. It travels just as far as the force of my arm has carried it, and then falls down again, and is still. Now who gave the planets their first push ? They must have begun to move, and they continue to move, though incapable of self-movement. What, then, is the cause of their movement? It must reside in a will outside them and above them. And it is a significant fact that at the present time many of our scientists are affirming that force is not inherent in matter, but in a power outside it. Another gulf in the evolutionary process which invoives the necessity of special intervention by the Creator, is the gulf between that which is lifeless and that which lives. The philosophy which attempts to construct a universe without the interven- tion of God is bound to give us an account of how the first sentient being began to be. How did the first life originate? The keenest research of science has not yet led us to a point THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 35 where dead matter trembles into living forms. ‘Give me matter,” says Kant, ‘‘and I may explain the origin of the worlds; but not give me matter, and I will explain the origin of a caterpillar.” Here is a break in the evolutionary sequence where God must of necessity step in. It is ad- mitted by our scientists that there was a period when the temperature of the earth was so high that living organisms could not exist upon it. There was once no organic life on the earth: at a later period there was. It must consequently have had a beginning. The question is, how? It is useless for the anti-Theist to lay his hand on eternity and say, “I have this at command, and within this vast area there is time for all the necessary processes,” for astronomy tells us that the time which has elapsed since the world was capable of sustaining life is not sufficient for his astonishing demands. Furthermore, the theory of ‘spontaneous generation” created to meet this difficulty has broken down, and it is now admitted by our scientists that no instance can be produced of the production of life out of insensate matter. How then did living creatures originate in that period when ‘“‘the earth was without form and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep?” We turn in our perplexity to the record which says, ‘ the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Then it was that the first life trembled into being, until, rising in graduated order, it stood erect in that imperial creature whom God impregnated with His own breath, made in His own image, and set over the work of His hands. Lingering, still, however, among lower creatures, let us pause to consider among animals that wonderful endowment which we call instinct. Is the bee a master of the geometry of the hexagon? When did it make its study of the perfect mathematics of its wondrous cell, and how has it become at once an architect, a manufacturer, and a wise economist ? Did a remote ancestry whisper to the ant the secrets of its 40 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. wisdom? Who taught it how to store its food, to fortify its dwelling, to defeat its enemies, and, having taken them captive, to compel them to serve it in the menial tasks of life? Is it of their fight to sunnier climes the swallows are babbling when autumn lays in England its “ fiery finger on the leaf” ? Who guides them, when they do take flight, through the cold mists of our own land, across the sombre plains of France, through the gloomy gorges of the Spanish mountains, right over the blue Mediterranean, till they revel in the sunshine of Africa? Surely it is the wisdom of God which informs these creatures, and that which we call instinct is the direct voice of God to them. At another stage in the evolutionary sequence we need a Deity to bridge over the gulf between meve animal instinct and the veason and spivit of man. How do we account, without God, for the introduction into Nature of intelligence, free agency, a moral nature, a capacity for God, and those various powers which distinguish man from the animal races ? Whence arose the being who first thrilled creation with the melody of speech—the being who is related to God in terms which admit of correspondence and communion—the being who reared the first altar, built the first temple, sang the first litany of praise, and uttered the first adoring prayer? If he be merely a part of the evolutionary sequence, where are the links which attach him to the animal? Darwin admits that they are missing; and Wallace, Darwin’s coadjutor, declares that there are elements in man’s nature which form no part of the evolutionary sequence, and which can only be accounted for by the direct creative interposition of God. Concerning these he says: ** The special faculties we have been discussing clearly point to the existence in man of some- thing which he has not derived from his animal progenitors— something which we may best refer to as being of a spiritual essence or nature capable of progressive development under favourable conditions. On the hypothesis of this spiritual THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 41 nature superadded to the animal nature of man we are able to understand much that is otherwise unintelligible with regard to him.” The most cursory review of the faculties of the human mind is sufficient to convince us that they could not have been produced from blind, insensate matter. In this com- manding creature, set by the Creator, according to the inspired record, over His lower works, we find:— ** Understanding—the Student,” comparing, reflecting, divid- ing, generalising, abstracting; cleaving with delight to neces- sary eternal truth as expressed in mathematics, and rising through the processes of reason to the apprehension of those laws ‘‘whose seat is the bosom of God and whose voice is the harmony of the world.” ‘“* Imagination—the Poet,” combining the original and the actual into forms of ideal beauty, and rising on radiant wings into a region of loveliness to which ‘the heaven of heavens is but a veil.” ‘* Will—the Field-Marshal,” governing all the forces of the mind and all the impulses of the heart with a force at once imperial and God-like. “* Conscience —the Judge,” refusing to be bribed by the tempter though all the kingdoms of the world were laid at its feet, and quelling the tumult of the passions, however wild their dark rebellion. ‘“‘ Desive—the Merchant,” launching its argosies on every sea, bringing its treasures from afar, and refusing to cease from its quest after happiness until it enters into fellowship with Him beyond whom thought cannot pass, and beside whose boundless treasures no other riches can be desired. ‘* Venevation—the Worshipper,” kindling its altar fires, swinging its fragrant censer, and raising its song of glad thanksgiving to the “ giver of every good and perfect gift.” ‘‘ Memovy—the Angel of the Past,” recalling at will the scenes of the vanished years, the home of childhood, the 4 42 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: mother’s tenderness, the father’s blessing, the sister’s fond devotion, with all the deeds of shame or nobleness which have influenced life and moulded destiny. “‘ Hope—the Angel of the Future,” tracing on the canvas pictures, yet unrealized, of anticipated joy, flinging her bow upon the blackest cloud, lighting her lamp beneath the darkest sky, providing for the deadliest malady a medicine, and for the deepest wound a balm. ‘‘ The peak is high and flush’d At its highest with sunrise fire: The peak is high, and the stars are high, But the thought of man is higher.” In man we have a creature who is not only wonderful but who also wonders and inquires; a creature who is not sub- merged in Nature like the plants or the lower animals, but who stands off from Nature as a separate, conscious indivi- duality, at once the critic of Nature and its interpreter. Trace back his body if you will through a long series of transformations to the rudest forms of life, but his spirit is engendered from a higher source. It cannot be the product of mere Nature, because Nature is not a sufficient cause for spirit. ‘This excelling creature is the anthropos, the upward- looking. While the mere animal stoops and looks downward, man fronts with luminous gaze the heaven from whence he came. Man is also a microcosm, the summary and epitome of the whole creation. Goethe has termed him ‘the plan of creation ;”’ Novalis, ‘‘the systematic index to Nature;” and Oken, ‘‘the complex of all organizations.” Mineral, and vegetable, and animal, are allin him. He is the “roof and crown of things,” representing that culminating work of creation to which every atom and every organism from the remotest past points, and to which they all have some special reference. Nature has no beauty which is not mirrored in that marvellous form, no tone which that wondrous creature does not echo, no form of which he is not the type. In man, too, we have the intelligence which questions and admires. In THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 43 him Nature first begins to know itself. He is the being who first asks “‘ Whence am I?” “ What am 1?” “ Whither am I going?” He is the world’s self-surveying eye, the world’s self-hearing ear, the world’s self-enouncing voice. In this creature, also, we first discern the solemn 1nd momentous attribute of freedom. All other things—the stars in their courses, the eagle in its flight, the animals with their instincts, are subject to laws which they cannot transgress. But this creature can sin, can miss the mark appointed for his destiny, can transgress the laws ordained for his guidance, can defy the Power who brought him into being, How then can such a creature as this be the product of blind evolution? Can feeling be evolved out of materials which are utterly destitute of feeling? Can intelligence spring from non-intelligence ? Can free agency proceed from that which is incapable of exercising an act of choice? Can justice and compassion be the product of insensate forces which remorselessly crush everything that crosses their path? No! surely the existence of freedom and intelligence in man demonstrates that he has been brought into existence by an agent who possesses the same qualities. Powerful and most convincing are the words of Carlyle, where, writing concerning Frederick of Prussia, he says: ‘‘Atheism he never could abide; to him, as to all of us, it was flatly inconceivable that intellect, moral emotion, could have been put into him by an Entity which had none of its own.” And our nature not only attests, but also, in its own measure, interprets God. Truly is it said: “From our own consciousness of will we infer a supreme, originating Will; of intelligence, a supreme, constructing Mind; of morality, a supreme, righteous Lawgiver; of affection, a supreme Father.” As Dr. Martineau has shown, the religious interpretation of the world is natural to us because of that which we find in ourselves and in our fellow-men. Without our own living spirit, without the power in ourselves with which we are familiar, and which power is will, we could not 4° 44. PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: move. Without a living spirit, nothing which we see could move. Just as we read the thoughts of our fellows by their actions, and refer them home to their source within the view- less soul, so do we discern, behind the scenes and movements of Nature, a mind, that is the seat of power and the spring of every change. From ourselves also we derive the idea of a cause. ‘*I take the notion of a cause,” says Dr. Reid, ‘‘ to be derived from the power I feel in myself to produce certain effects. In this sense we say that the Deity is the cause of the universe.” As truths which before had no real existence roll full-orbed and beautiful from the creative mind of the philosopher or the poet, so the universe is but the expres- sion of Divine, creative force projected into existence—an embodied word of God. It may be called ‘the living epic of the great Cosmic Poet, whose words are deeds, and whose deeds are miracles.” ‘‘ His voice to light gave being, To time, and man, its earth-born chronicler; His voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing, And sweep away life’s visionary stir.” (4d) The Presence of Beauty. Another feature in creation which attests the working of Divine intelligence and beneficence is the presence of beauty. All the cups of God run over, and the cup of utility in Nature ripples over into beauty. As Emerson sings :— ‘Still on the seeds of all He made The rose of beauty burns; Through times that wear and forms that fade, Immortal youth returns.” God gives us a benediction with every gift, a blessing with our daily bread. The meadow full of grass for the dull oxen is dappled with fair colours of silver and purple, and our wheat bends to the sickle in graceful lances of gold. Water, - THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, 45 too, is not for use only, but also for beauty, breaking into silver spray and whispering untold music in its flow and fall. Well is it said that ‘“‘in the very act of labouring as a machine Nature also sleeps before us as a picture.” ‘ Nature is too thin a screen,” says Emerson; “the glory of the One breaks in everywhere.” The delicate tints of spring, the rich hues of summer, the gorgeous decays of autumn, the majestic sweep of undulating hills, the splendour of the open sky with its cloud palaces built round the horizon, the moun- tains visited all nights by troops of stars or flinging from their gleaming crests the dawn, the sea sleeping in delicious calm or chafed by tempest plunging in wild grandeur on the echoing shore: how does the work of blind Nature in evolution account for these things? Who has planted the poppy like a burst of laughter amid the hush of the corn ? Who has twined the convolvulus round the hedge-row, and placed the honeysuckle in its heart ? Who bids the bracken nestle at the foot of the oak, and shapes the acorn with its perfect cup, and flecks the chestnut cones with purple, and gives the forget-me-not its darling blue? Who anchored those water-lilies in the quiet lake, and placed in their midst that dream of spires and campaniles of other plants which rise among them like a floral Venice? If it be urged that the beauty of flowers and birds and animals is largely the result of natural selection, the question still remains—Why are the heavens blue and not brown, why do the waves break in sapphire on the yellow sands, why are the clouds of heaven a continual glory and not “a pestilent congregation of vapours” ? Note the wealth of beauty also in the simplest of Nature’s pictures. A passage from the works of William Smith illustrates this with peculiar force, where he asks :— “What is that apparition of dazzling brightness rising softly upon the blue sky from behind those tall and massive elms? If you saw it for the first time in your life you would 46 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: say it must be some celestial visitant. Is it light itself from heaven taking shape, and just softened and subdued to the endurance of a mortal vision? Itis nothing but a cloud,— mere vapour that the unseen wind moves and moulds, and that the sun shines on for a little time. And now it has risen above the massive and lofty tree, and throws its pleasant shadow down upon the earth,—pleasant shadow that paces along the meadows, leaving behind a greater brilliancy on tree, and grass, and hedge, and flower than what, for a moment, it had eclipsed. It is all common-place. Light, and shadow, and the river: the meadow, with its clover blossoms and childish buttercups. Very childish all. Match it !—match them !—match these trees in their meadows, ye restless prophets with your palaces of crystal, and walls of sapphire, and pavements of jasper! I think there is no better lesson to teach us the beauty of the real and familiar than to read, let us say, some great epic poet labouring to describe his imaginary bliss or his celestial city. He builds of jasper, and carbuncle, and emerald; and lo! he can produce nothing comparable to that thatched cottage standing in the corner of a field with the elm tree at its back. Allthe apocalyptic visions you have ever read cannot rival a meadow in spring-time. That simple field, with its buttercups and clover-blossoms, outshines the imagination of all the poet- prophets that have ever lived.” It is even so. The human imagination has never been able to approach, in its ideals of beauty, the simplest picture from the realm of Nature. This realm not only contains all geometries, symmetries, sculptures, and pictorial arts, but it also transcends them all. As Mozley says :—‘‘ When the naturalist has exhausted himself in efforts to explain utility in Nature, it would appear to be the peculiar office of beauty to rise up suddenly as a confounding and baffling extva, which was not even formally provided for in his scheme.” THF EXISTENCE OF GOD. 47 (¢) The Evolutionist’s Last Word. While we hold to the views already expressed with regard to gaps in the evolutionary sequence which science has not yet satisfactorily bridged, we are yet aware that there are great authorities who confidently affirm that no such gaps exist. They say that though there is not, at this period of time, any instance of life arising spontaneously from lower forces, physical or chemical, by natural process, there was yet a period in the remote past when such a change did occur. It will not be repeated, however, because evolution goes only onward. They also affirm that, however far man may have advanced beyond the brute, through the conscious operation of his free spirit in the work of its own evolution, he still entered creation by the same door as the lower animals. The link which connects him with them, it is true, is missing; but this only arises from the fact that Nature does not perpetuate her intermediary forms, but only her fixed types. This view is held to-day not only by Materialists and Agnostics, but also by Christian Scientists such as Dr. Dallinger and Joseph Le Conte. Their view is that the Divine will first involved mind with matter, and that after- wards the involved mind was duly evolved. They teach that wherever we find matter, motion, organisation, life, or mind, they are each and all present as the result of the operating will of God. They discard the thought of creation as a mere collection of disconnected manufactures, and hold that the Creator, at the beginning, by His “‘ primal volition” implanted in matter all the potentialities of being. Now, supposing that this is true ; supposing it has pleased God to constitute evolu- tion the method and the channel of his creative energy all along the line, from the condensation of the first ‘‘ fire mist ” to the appearance of man on the earth, are we then deprived of faith and hope? By no means. Only those are so deprived who foolishly accept a mere process for a cause, and 48 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: attribute to that which is only a method of creation the intelli- gence and energy of the Supreme Creator. It is true that at one time evolution meant Materialism, and Materialism meant Atheism. And it was for this reason that the devout and noble Agassiz, when he had practically anticipated the results arrived at by Darwin, drew back from them because they seemed to imperil his belief in God. But further inquiry has delivered us from that fatal circle, and we know to-day, as indeed the attitude of these Christian Scientists demonstrates, that evolution no more necessitates Atheism than gravitation did as propounded by Sir Isaac Newton. Evolution, when reduced to its last analysis, only means creatioi according to fixedlaw. In gravitation we have a mighty and mysterious power which operates in every particle of the universe, and of it men might have said that it rendered the action of Deity unnecessary. So it has been argued by some that the doctrine of development sets the Almighty on one side, and renders the belief in His existence no longer essential. But all that is really shown by these great concep: tions is that there is one law and one energy pervading all space and stretching through all time. Newton, by his discovery of gravitation, brought inorganic nature under the dominion of natural laws of cause and effect. But did the stars themselves create and ordain the laws which govern them? Newton did not think so. Darwin, on the other hand, has solved the yet more difficult problem of bringing the complicated phenomena of organic nature under the sway of the same natural laws. But did organic nature ordain these laws? We trow not. ‘* Now,” says a recent thinker, ‘if the sustentation of the universe by the law of gravitation does not disturb our belief in God as the sustainer of the universe, there is no reason why the origin of the universe, through the law of evolution, should disturb our faith in God as the creator of the universe. If the law of gravitation be regarded as the Divine mode of sustentation, THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 49 there is no reason why we should not regard the law of evolution as the Divine process of creation.” It is as clear as daylight that the results of the evolutionary sequence did not spring from blind Nature apart from the operation of the Divine intelligence and the Divine energy. Evolution, with its atoms and molecules having dynamic force and operating by fixed laws, is utterly unable to explain the cosmos without a God who combines within Himself power adequate to the work to be accomplished, method through which the work is to be done, and a foreseen Divine end to be achieved. We only learn, therefore, from this process, that God is more closely related to Nature than we previously imagined. In place of a Nature moving under fixed mechanical law, we rise to the conception of a Nature filled with the Spirit of God as the source of all life and the fount of all energy. We dismiss the master mechanic of the Deists of the last century, and realise instead the immanent and yet transcendent God of the Bible. Nor in so conceiving God do we rob Him of His independent personality, since our belief in His person- ality is derived not from without by the study of Nature, but from within by the study ot our consciousness. We our- selves are more or less parts of Nature, having received from it our physical organism, and being permeated by its forces, as heat, light, and electricity. Yet still we are aware of a self-conscious personality which lifts us above mere Nature, and which is indeed our truest self. So we can think of God as pervading all things with His life and energy, and yet as personal. Thus, if we accept the last word on evolution, and consent to include both life and man in that order of develop- ment which God has chosen as the pathway of His activity, we have only exchanged a more or less localised conception of God for an universal one; we only miss Him from some special act of creation to find him in every act, and we only exchange the idea of a languid and intermittent providence 50 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. over his creatures for one which knows no pause, or interval, orend. If it be objected that this conception puts God too far from us, we reply that Nature is not the only sphere of His manifestation, and that if only dimly apprehended there, He is revealed more fully in providence, in conscience, and in the Written Word. ‘The existence of a Supreme Father, as we shall show hereafter, is proved not so much by science as by spiritual intuition. God is found not at the end of a chain of logic, or a series of phenomena, but in the depths of the soul, and in the life and person of Jesus Christ, who came to lead us to the Father. a2 THE WITNESS OF HISTORY. In the preceding pages we have considered the revelation of God in Nature, sustaining the fact of the Divine existence by four modes of reasoning. First, the argument which is founded on the principle of causation, secondary causes in the universe demanding a first cause from whence they sprang. Second, the argument which rests on the order of the universe, orderly arrangements attesting the working of an intelligent being. Third, the argument which springs from the beauty of the world, beauty in creation asserting the presence and the work of the all-beautiful. Fourth, the argument derived from man as an intelligent personality, asserting the existence of an intelligent person from whom he emanated. Let us now, in further proof of our position, consider the presence and the providence of God in history. Nature reveals the existence of a Creator; history, the action of a controlling Providence. In Nature God deals with that which is not spirit, and which, lacking freedom and spontaneity, is governed by laws which it cannot transgress. In providence God deals with moral creatures who stand nearer to His own life, and who are therefore governed otherwise than as the stars. But though the THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 51 Divine energy is thus partially restricted, it is, nevertheless, continually active, setting bounds which human ambition cannot pass, and working through fixed laws against which the restlessness and rebellion of the creature fret and chafe in vain. Within a certain limited circle the creature is free, free, as it would appear, to thwart the Divine purpose, and to retard the Divine plans, but, that circle passed, all is in the grasp of inexorable law and irresistible power. In the sub- lime words of Holy Writ :—‘‘ The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord,” but ‘“‘ He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision.” We cannot reverently study history without arriving at the conviction that the hand of God has been guiding humanity toward the fulfilment of its destiny, that destiny being the perfection of the race through union with Himself and love toward each other. Truly is it said that ‘*human history, rightly con- sidered, is the very theodicy of God; a grander apology for the Christian faith than the wisdom of a Butler or the genius of a Pascal ever framed.” Throughout the ages it teaches that God has been the Educator of the race—leading, instructing, chastening, and blessing the nations. To the uninstructed eye, the movement of the planets is but a series of senseless wanderings in the sea of space; but to the astronomer, they demonstrate the Creator’s love of order. It is now understood that history has its laws as well as astronomy ; that the course of events is a necessity, not a fortuitous succession, and the march of humanity through the ages a series of progressive developments. All history is bound by gold chains about the feet of God, ‘* And this poor earth, our transitory dwelling, Swings in the bright deep of His changeless love.” It is true that to the most profound and reverent thinker there is much which perplexes in the mingled play of good and evil which appears in history, for we see only the lower 52 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: links of the chains of Divine providence, and not those upper links which are attached to the eternal throne. Nevertheless, two things are clear to all observers—first, the presence of righteousness and justice in history, and, second, the fact that the course of the world is an ascending and not a descending one. (2) A Power Making for Righteousness. First, it is clear to all thinkers that the power which works in history is a power which makes for righteousness. On the whole and in the long run it is not well with the wicked. Slowly but surely, both in the lives of individuals and nations, good triumphs over evil. ‘‘ What are all our histories," says Oliver Cromwell, ‘but God manifesting himself, that He hath shaken, and tumbled down, and trampled underfoot, whatsoever He hath. not planted”? And the words of our foremost modern historian are in chime with this utterance where he says :—‘ History is a voice for ever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last. . . . justice and truth alone endure and live. Injustice and falsehcod may be long-lived, but doomsday comes to them at last.” Now, why is this so, and by whom is it ordained that there is nothing stable but justice ? Why is it that in this world, and throughout the intelligent universe, virtue brings peace and vice results in misery? By whom are those laws imposed whose penalties are so severe against wrong-doing, and whose rewards for right action are so blessed and ennobling? Why is it that the mightiest of the sons of earth, its throned kings and conquering warriors, are as powerless to cajole the everlasting justice or to make iniquity THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 53 prosper as the poor thief.who languishes in prison for the violation of social law? The semi-Atheist may seek to account for all this by the admission of an impersonal “* power not ourselves that makes for righteousness.” But law without a lawgiver is as inconceivable as thought without a thinker. We are shut up, therefore, to the recognition of a personal God, who loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity, who hurleth the mighty from their seats and exalteth the humble and meek, and in the blaze of whose purity evil shall finally shrivel and perish like the moth in the flame. (b) The Mission of Great Men. Another notable feature in the progress of History is the rise of great men girded by God for the accomplishment of His purposes. Ever in the historic past we find that the hour which marks an epoch is fronted by the man girded to meet it, strong for all its toils, and true to all its sacredness. These are the cloud-compellers, the world-uplifters, the hammers of the Lord. Gifted with Divine insight, and dowered with transcendent powers, they have been man’s pioneers in all thesteps of progress. These history-makers may not have been aware of their providential calling. To many of them God might have said, as He did to Cyrus, “I have girded thee, though thou hast not known me.” Yet still they are ‘‘providential men”; they are those, in the language of Hegel, ‘‘ whose private purposes contain the substance of that which is willed by the spirit of the world.”’ Sometimes there has been committed to them what might be regarded as a superhuman task, but superhuman energies have been lent them for its accomplishment. Sometimes they have been carried further than they intended, but God knew beforehand what He willed, and how far they were to go. A clever writer has said that, ‘* Luther would probably have excommunicated himself at the outset could he have beheld himself as he was 54 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: when he reached the end of his career,” and to a large extent the same thing might be said of Wesley. They did more than they purposed at the outset of their career, but they did not do more than He purposed who inspired them for their task. Nothing happens but what is necessary, with the one exception of sin. ‘¢ Never may wit of man, Transcend the bounds of heaven’s harmonious plan.” Without God there is no great man, and all great gifts are but a trust from Him. It is not circumstances, or birth and heredity, which make the truly great man. He is born from above. Thus the man of highest genius is of all men the least self-conscious. He is not proud of his gifts, for he knows they have been given him and are not self-acquired. His finest thoughts come spontaneously, and are to none so wonderful as to himself. He trembles and quivers at their impact as the reed in the rush of the furious river. Coming, he knows not whence, he feels with respect to his ideas that he is a transmitter and not a maker. The revelation of truth, or duty, or inventive power flashes upon him swift as lightning, he passes it on to his fellows, and is again a humble suppliant at the gate of heaven,—again a child crying like Samuel amid the shadows of the temple, ‘‘ Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”’ How inspiring is the procession of the divinely-gifted men who by their teaching and their work have proved the uplifters of the world, the creators of its liberty, the apostles of its religion, the pioneers of its progress. There is Moses, refusing to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter that he may champion the cause of his oppressed people, bearing meekly their ingratitude in the wilderness, and when they have so sinned that the vengeance of God hangs above them like a thunder-cloud, uttering, with tears in his voice, the noble prayer :—‘‘O Lord, this people have committed a great sin, yet now I pray Thee to forgive their sin,—or else ee — THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 55 blot me, I pray Thee, out of Thy book.” There is St. Paul, stricken, persecuted, branded, yet singing in the dungeon the praises of Him who caused him to triumph, and toiling like a Titan to burn the message of Christ and Him crucified into the brain of Athens and the heart of Rome. There is Savonarola, orator, teacher, reformer, cleansing Florence from her corruptions, planting the seeds of truth in thousands of hearts, and for his prophet’s work receiving the prophet’s wages, the gibbet and the chariot of fire. There is Columbus, feeling after a missing hemisphere with which to complete the globe, and ‘ bating no jot of heart or hope” until its forests and savannahs gleam across the barren sea. There is Luther, wrestling in the arena with Kings, and Popes, and Princes, causing them one by one to bite the dust, and then looking round for the next adversary who shall dare the fierce onset. There is Newton, voyaging through strange seas of thought alone, and discovering the law which holds the worlds in ieash and makes the universe a rhythmic song. There is Washington, stainless in integrity, inflexible in justice, ‘ first in peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his country- men.” There is Wesley, facing the fury of the mob, the hatred of ecclesiastics, and the scorn of the fashionable, that he may blow in England the trumpet of a new moral resurrection. ‘In these are found the fires of thought, The splendours of endeavour ; And they shall sway the minds of men, For ever, and for ever.”’ Now whence came these men? From God! He informed their minds with wisdom. He filled their lips with thunder. He mitred their brows with pentecostal flame. ‘*Fven so doth Heaven protect us.” (c) The Mission of Nations. The action of Divine providence in history is yet further 56 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH? seen in the position and destiny of nations. Here also we learn how God has not forsaken us. At first it appears strange and unlikely that the families of the earth should be separated by mountains and oceans, and still more by diversity of speech. Why, since men have common interests and common aims, was not the earth laid out as one vast plain, and mankind gathered together in its centre? Thereply is that national separation is of Divine appointment, and has fulfilled Divine ends in the progress of humanity. A separate place has been given to each people for the free development of its own powers, and each has brought in its hand, or its head, or its heart, some necessary contribution to humanity as a whole. It would appear at the outset as if there had been a sharing out among the nations of intellectual powers. Hence Schlegel was led to regard the loss of the Divine image as consisting in the separation of the powers of the human mind, and in harmony with this idea he speaks of the Chinese as representing the pure reason; the people of India, the imagination; the Egyptians, the under- standing; and the Jews, the will; each in their distorted isolation. Now, however this may be, it is clear that the various branches of the race have contributed different elements toward the final prosperity and development of the whole. National separation seems to have been as necessary to the progress of humanity as division of labour is to the perfection of industry. Every race has had its peculiar gift and special vocation. Egypt, building as if for eternity, gave to the world the conception of material force. India bequeathed philosophy to men, teaching the power of the imagination, and reminding man of ‘‘that imperial palace whence he came.” Persia brought out in strong relief the mighty influence of good and evil. Chaldea, impressed by their loveliness as they globed themselves in the Eastern night, taught men the mystery and the glory of the stars. Phcenicia made the sea the highway of the nations, teaching the inhabitants of distant THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. ST countries to exchange their productions, and thus through commerce to enrich the globe. Palestine stood forth as the ‘sacred school for all the world of the knowledge of God and of the spiritual life.’ Greece taught men the beauty of the world and of the human form, and through the love of that beauty created the artist. Rome gave to the nations social and civil law, and exemplified the assimilating power of a strong, all-subduing civilization. Italy revived letters and taught the world the entrancing power of song. Spain led the van of discovery and conquest. Germany gave the Reforma- tion to the word and re-instated the long-suppressed rights of reason and conscience. As for us Englishmen, we are the heirs of all the ages, we are “‘those on whom the ends of the world are come,” and our mission seems to be to gather up into our national life all the forces which have shaped the past and project them into the future, with special reference to distant and heathen nations. It is ours, in conjunction with our brethren across the Atlantic, to teach mankind how to subdue the earth and to develop its resources for the comfort and happiness of all. Like those of the Phcenicians, our merchants are princes. We legislate for alien races. ‘* We hold the gorgeous East in fee.” Our colonies include a dominion vaster than that on which conquering Rome im- posed her laws; and wherever the Anglo-Saxon is found he is the guide, the employer, and the king of men. Thus we spread our manners, our language, our civilization, and, above all, our Christianity, over the wide world. We have received from the past a rich spiritual inheritance that we may be the apostles of that progress which restores in humanity the image of God. It is ours, ennobled and baptised by the Christian spirit, to enthrone Christ as the Divine King of the world, ours to reach the goal on which He fixed His radiant gaze when He uttered the sublime prayer, ‘“‘ That they all may be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us.” ct 58 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. (d) The Ascending World. If it be asked whether any signs of such a consummation as that for which the Redeemer prayed can be traced in society around us, we reply that another fact apparent from the study of history is that of the progress of the race to higher and yet higher levels of truth and righteousness. So apparent is this progress that even sceptics rejoice in it, and George Eliot has said that the belief in the upward tendency of humanity is one of the great consolations given amid the many sorrows of our time. This progress may be like the incoming of the tide, which at any given moment is almost as mucha retreat as an advance; but still the tide moves on. Humanity accomplishes its Divine destiny in harmony with human free- dom, so that error and crime find their place in its course, and there are days of darkness and years of wandering, yet still its course is upward. Polluted with sin and lust as they are, or burdened with vanity and folly, nations yet advance toa higher and yet higher level. They snap the chains of despotism, they advance socially, politically, and morally. Many marks of progress are visible to us which were hidden from our fathers, from the noble workers of the past, in whom the hope was strong, although the vision was dim. The sorrowful and the evil recede, the joyful and the good advance. The demon, though fighting sternly, draws back his foot. The ocean rolls darkly beneath a troubled sky; but year by year the sand- grains are being deposited which will one day build the fair continent right into the sunlight. ‘The human race,’ says Bunsen, the great historian, ‘‘ does not only continue to exist, like other races, by the succession of generations, but advances in and through them, by families, and tribes, and nations, in ever-enlarging orbits of development.” A vast plan, reaching through thousands of years, has been working itself out towards its consummation. Nations have risen and fallen, and their growth and decay have helped it on. Great THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 59 men have played their brief part upon the stage. On their ; . : ‘* quickest decrees The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time Has stolen, ere they could effect them; ”’ but this sublime purpose has been advancing through them. They have acted freely, and their very caprice and wilfulness have been worked by an over-mastering wisdom into that web whose woof no hand of man has held, and whose web and woof together have made up one grand, consecutive, advancing history. The scroll of time has been slowly unrolled ; each nation, each man, has written upon it, as he thought he would, his own brief record; then it was rolled up, and others came and wrote; and when it is all unrolled and read, we find thereon one epic, namely, God leading the human race up to higher levels and better things. The signs of this are surely visible around us. Religion is steadily becoming less formal and dogmatic, and more spiritual and merciful. Theology is broadening under the influence of the prevailing spirit of charity and humanity. Liberty and toleration are taking the place of bigotry and tyranny. Opinion and theory are becoming less regarded than conduct and character, and love as compassion and goodwill is slowly but steadily gaining upon cruelty and strife. Thus we ‘Rest in faith That man’s perfection is the crowning flower Towards which the urgent sap in life’s great tree Is pressing—seen in puny blossoms now, But on the world’s great morrows to expand, With broadest petal and with deepest glow.” Much is passing away which some would fain preserve, and many tremble as the iron hammer which demolishes old abuses and shatters old idolatries rings out on the palpitating air. But nothing is being cast down which God has set up, and all that is swept away will be replaced by something worthier and more beautiful. Sweetly sings the poet, as sitting beneath the shadow of the Almighty, he listens undismayed 5* 60 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: to the fall of walls of partition and privilege, and beholds the thrones of ancient tyranny bowing to the dust :— ‘‘T looked: aside the dust-cloud rolled ; The waster was the builder too ;— Upspringing from the ruined Old I saw the New. 'Twas but the ruin of the bad, The wasting of the wrong and ill; Whate’er of good the old time had Was living still. Take heart! the waster builds agaia, A charmed life old goodness hath ; The tares may perish,—but the grain Is not for death. God works in all things; all obey His first propulsion from the night; Wake up and watch! the world is gray With morning light!” 3, THE TESTIMONY OF CONSCIENCE. Yet still there whispers the small voice within, Heard through Gain’s silence, and o’er Glory’s din; Whatever creed he taught or land he trod, Man’s conscience is the oracle of God. —Byron. So sang one who sought in vain to silence that inward monitor which for ever haunts us with its ‘‘ everlasting yea” to Duty, and its “everlasting no” to Sin. In History we trace among the nations the movements of justice and moral law ; in Conscience we hear in our own souls the voice of the Law- giver. ‘A power not ourselves that makes for righteousness ” is discernible in the spirit of man even more clearly than in the progress of history. Through this power we discern the moral quality of actions. Through it we have the notion and idea of right. This power is neither found in the domain of the senses, nor evolved in the processes of the understanding, nor conferred by education and training—it is intuitive. As soon as we begin to think, we feel the power of Conscience as THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 61 alaw within us. It is 7 us yet not of us—in us, and yet above us. We did not make it, neither are we able to unmake it. Concerning this faculty, Cicero, the heathen, could say: ‘Right reason is itself a law congenial to the feelings of Nature, diffused among all men ;—uniform, eternal, call- ing us imperiously to duty, and peremptorily forbidding every violation of it. Nor does it speak one language in Rome, and another at Athens, varying from place to place and from time to time; but it addresses itself to all nations and to all ages, deriving its authority from the common Sovereign of the universe, and carrying home its sanctions to every breast by the inevitable punishment which it inflicts on transgressors.” Going further back in time, we find in the Greek drama the same irresistible conviction of a voice in the human soul demanding righteousness and condemning iniquity. A¢schylus, that great prophet among the heathen, makes the voice of conscience speak with awful authority and power. ‘‘Crime,” he says, ‘never dies without posterity. . . . . Blood that has been shed congeals on the ground, crying out for an avenger.” This old poet made himself the echo of what he calls ‘‘ the lyreless hymn of the Furies,” who, with him, represent severest justice striking the guilty when the hour comes, and giving warning of the stroke beforehand by the terrors which haunt them. And Sophocles, the Elisha to this Elijah, in gentler mood shows us another aspect of the same subject in his assertion of that immortal and inflexible moral law in which dwells a God that never grows old. ‘‘ Oh be the lot for ever mine Unsullied to maintain, In act and word, with awe divine, What potent laws ordain. Laws spring from purer realms above: Their Father is the Olympian Jove; Ne’er shall oblivion veil their front sublime, Tl’ indwelling God is great, nor fears the wastes of time." 62 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: And our own moral consciousness keeps chime with this ‘Orphic song to its own music chanted.” We know that we have that within us which approves the holy and spurns the vile. We may love the sin, but at the same time we loathe ourselves for loving it, while above us we feel the presence of the angel of retribution. We know that sooner or later our sin will find us out. We know that the bolt will one day fall, and we feel that it ought to fall. Conscience approves the penalty as it condemns the sin. Its lowest condition is that of a power ‘cast down, but not destroyed,” and within our inmost soul it dwells as an accuser which cannot be silenced, and an avenging spirit that is never quenched. Now whence is this wondrous power which we call Conscience ? Whence proceed those solemn monitions— ‘* Before which our mortal nature Doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised? ” Who is the judge in this court where we all stand as prisoners at the bar? Our only reply is—God. Conscience clearly implies a relation between the soul and some personality above it, and that personality superior to itself. It implies a relation to an excellence which the soul itself does not possess, and to a tribunal over which the soul has no power. Here we are impressed by something which is not merely a law, or a stream of tendency, but a moral personality perpetually working in us to support the right, and to shame and defeat the wrong. Vivid, magnificent, and convincing is that expression of it which the Psalmist affords where, addressing not an impersonal law, but a personal Lawgiver, he says: “© Lord, Thou hast searched me and known me. Thou knowest my down- sitting and mine up- rising; Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo! O Lord, Thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid Thine hand upon OE Es THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 62 ~ me.” And then, at the close of the Psalm, conscious of this Presence from whom we cannot escape, from whom the wings of the morning, could he use them, would not enable him to fly, he yields his soul to the Purifier, and his will to the Will which governs the universe, in the noble words—‘‘ Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Yes! Conscience is God within us—the home God. It is the delegate of the Holy One, the mouth- piece of His law, the minister of His justice. In our conviction of sin, however pleasing, as that which ought not tc be, and in our conviction of virtue, however difficult, as that which ought to be, we seem to look God in the face, to be thrilled by His very voice. God is in that word ought, and, therefore, it outweighs all but Him. Thus felt Socrates when, with the poison-cup before him, he exclaimed, in the midst of the judges in the Areopagus of Athens: “It is better to obey God than man.” Thus also felt Martin Luther, facing the embattled power of Europe at the Diet of Worms, and saying, when requested to recant: ‘‘ Here I stand. I can do no other. It is not safe for a man to sin against his conscience. God help me. Amen!” Such was the testimony of these great spirits to the authority of ‘* The conscience, that sole monarchy in man, Owing allegiance to no earthly prince, Made by the edict of creation free ; Made sacred, made above all human laws, Holding of Heaven alone.” The validity of our reasoning from Conscience as the voice of God to the Divine existence, is also sustained by the pro- foundest human philosophy. Coleridgesays: ‘‘ The one great and binding ground of the belief of God and a hereafter is the law of Conscience ;”’ and in our own time Mr. Lecky affirms, in his ‘*‘ History of European Morals,” that “our knowledge of the Supreme Excellence, our best evidence even of the 9 04 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: existence of the Creator, is derived, not from the materia] universe, but from our own moral nature.” Very remarkable, also, is the case of Kant, the great German thinker, who, having denied the validity of all other arguments for the existence of God, suddenly arrested himself, and, by the ‘categorical imperative” of duty, rescued his faith from shipwreck. He could not resist the conviction that the law of right within the soul must have a law-giver. Such is the conviction which is borne in upon the heart and reason of each one of us by the testimony of our conscience; and as in the innermost shrine of the temple of our nature God thus manifests His presence, our finer faculties rise like the seraphim of the prophet’s vision, and pour forth the adoring cry: “ Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory.” Wisely, in his ‘‘ Vision of Echard,” does Whittier represent the Divine Law-giver as asking,— ‘‘ What if the o’erturned altar Lays bare the ancient lie ? What if the dreams and legends Of the world’s childhood die ? Have ye not still My witness Within yourselves alway,— My hand that on the keys of life For bliss or bale I lay ? Still in perpetual judgment, I hold assize within, With sure reward of holiness, And dread rebuke of sin. A light, a guide, a warning, A presence ever near, Through the deep silence of the flesh I reach the inward ear. My Gerizim and Ebal Are in each human soul The still small voice of blessing, And Sinai’s thunder-roll. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD, 65 The stern behest of duty, The doom-book open thrown, The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear, Are with yourselves alone.” 4. THE WITNESS OF THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN MAN. Not only do Nature, and Reason, and History, and Con- Science attest the being of God, but we find Him in our own souls. Not only in virtue of our moral nature do we stand higher than the brute, but also in virtue of our religious nature. To be a moral being endowed with a sense of duty and a power of choice is a great thing, but the spiritual nature is as much higher than the moral as the moral is higher than the animal. Here we withdraw into the very “holy of holies,” for, as Novalis has said, *‘ the true Shekinah is man.” Just as cer- tainly as we have a reasoning faculty which finds its joy in Truth, an esthetic faculty which seeks its end in Beauty, and a moral faculty which finds repose in Virtue, so we possess a spiritual faculty which finds its end in God. We are tri- partite, consisting of body, soul, and spirit. Through the body we have the phenomenon of sense-consciousness, through the soul we have the phenomenon of se/f-consciousness, and through the spirit we have the phenomenon of God-con- sciousness. We are creatures capable of God,—creatures constitutionally related to God in terms which admit of com- munion. We are, as being spirit, permeable and inspirable by God, the Infinite Spirit. It is by this splendid endowment that we are really and for ever separated from the mere animal. The animal may be said to possess soul and mind being capable of both feeling and thought, but the brute is destitute of the capacity for God. This is a distinction reserved for man alone among the habitants of this lower world, and on which we need more fully to insist if we are to realize our 66 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: true greatness, and to cherish, in harmony with sound reason, the hope of immortality. For it is not in virtue of the thinking principle that we are constituted immortal, but in virtue of our capacity for God. Hence they speak foolishly who predicate an after life for the mere animal, since, without the capacity for enjoying God, an eternal existence could only be an intolerable burden. Man alone is immortal because of that impartation at his creation of a diviner life than the beast can know, the life which implies a capacity for God. Drag him down to the level of the brute, say that he differs from the ape only in degree and not in essence, and his destiny may be as his origin ;—formed from the dust, he may return to the dust. But remember his high lineage as possessing in addition to his animal nature a spirit God- breathed and God-inspirable, and you realize his true grandeur as a creature, ‘‘ who is made, not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life.’ This great truth, that there is a spirit in man, an inwrought capacity for God, and that, such being the case, God visits him, was the basis of St. Paul’s reasoning with the Athenians on Mars’ Hill. Deep down in the pagan heart he discovered a seeking after God ‘‘if haply they might feel after Him and find Him.” They had within them the deep-seated con- sciousness of God,—the germinal revelation of Him who ‘is not far from every one of us,” and they were striving to attain to a deeper consciousness and a fuller revelation of Him ‘in whom we live and move and have our being.” ‘Taking the utterance of a heathen poet for his text, St. Paul teaches that ‘‘we are the offspring of God.” These words imply that there is an affinity, a resemblance of nature, a relationship between God and man, of a very close and peculiar kind. We are not only His creatures, as, for example, are the lower animals, but we are so related to Him that we are His off- spring. Hence the universality of the religious sentiment in man. Everywhere we find in man a sense of the Divine, a i ——) THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 67 religious aptitude ; everywhere, however blindly, he “ seeks after God if haply he may find Him.” As young birds open their mouths for food,” says Homer, “so all men crave for the gods.” And an Indian thinker, living in the dim twilight of time, expresses the same sentiment in the words, *‘ As birds repair to a tree to dwell therein, so all the universe repairs to the Supreme Being.” Thus religion is natural to man. It does not need a miracle to create it—it is native to the soul. ‘That religious instincts,” says Lecky, in his ‘¢ History of European Morals,” “are as truly a part of our nature as are our appetites and our nerves, is a fact which all history establishes, and which forms one of the strongest proofs of the reality of that unseen world to which the soul of man continually tends.” And not less surely do they prove the reality of that unseen God after whom the soul of man continually aspires. The hart pants after the water-brooks only because the water-brooks exist where it may quench its thirst, and the soul pants after God only because He exists to meet its yearning and its desire. He who truly worships ‘is not painting himself upon vacancy, but is surrendering himself to a Presence real and everlasting. If he flings out his arms, it is not in blind paroxysm, but that he may embrace and be embraced. If he cries aloud, it is that he may be heard. If he makes melody of the silent heart, it is no soliloquy flung into emptiness, but the low-breathing love of spirit to Spirit.” God has written no lies on the constitution of our nature. He does not mock His creatures, and still less so when their desires are highest and purest. If there were no God to respond to the cry of the human soul, no grand reality answering to man’s religious aspirations, then we should have in the religious realm that which we find nowhere else in Nature—a faculty without an object, a longing without a meaning or anend. All our other faculties have relation to realities outside them by which they are met and satisfied. The opening eye finds the light, the organs of breathing find 68 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH; the air, the wailing child finds the mother. Are we then to suppose that, while all other faculties find their corresponding objects, such faculties as veneration, wonder, hope, trust, and religiousness are given only to be cruelly mocked? Is that which is divinest in ‘us the one thing which has no answering reality? ‘The thought is incredible. On the con- trary, our thirst after God is itself an assurance that He exists for whom our hearts thus yearn. ‘* Speak to Him, thou, for He hears, And spirit with spirit may meet; Closer is He than breathing, And nearer than hands or feet.’’ From this fact of the universality of religion Max Miller rises to the fact of the Divine existence. ‘To my mind,” he says, ‘‘the historical proof of the existence of God which is supplied. us by the history of the religions of the world has never been refuted, and cannot be refuted. It forms the foundation of all other proofs, call them cosmological, ontological, or teleological; or, rather, it absorbs them all, and makes them all superfluous. The history of religion teaches us that the one everlasting convic- tion on which the whole of Natural Religion has been built from the beginning of the world is trwe. That is, the con- viction that there is an Infinite behind the finite, that there is an Agent behind all acts, there is a Godin Nature. Convince the human understanding that there can be acts without agents, that there can be a limit without something beyond, that there can be a finite without a non-finite, and you have proved that there isno God. But let it be shown that the universality of that belief rests on that without which sense would not be sense, reason would not be reason, man would not be man, and we may say that for man as he is, for reason as it is, nay, even for the perception of the senses as they are, belief in something infinite, in an agent, in a god, is irresistible. All names that human language has invented may be imperfect, may be deceptive, and may have to be re- THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. Gg placed by newer and ever truer names. But the name ‘ I aM THAT I am’ will remain for those who think Semitic thought, while to those who speak Aryan languages it will be difficult to invent a better name than that of the Vedanta, Sat-Ki ananda—He who is, who knows, and who ts blessed.” The conclusions hitherto reached are still further confirmed by the fact that ouly in Ged can we find true and sufficing vest. Finely has St. Augustine said, ‘‘ Thou, O God, hast made us for Thyself, and our souls are restless till they find rest in Thee.” And Archbishop Leighton says, in words Which we do well to ponder: ‘God hath suited every creature He hath made with an appropriate good to which it tends, and in the obtainment of which it rests and is satisfied. Natural bodies have all their own natural place, whither, if not hindered, they move incessantly till they be in it; and they declare by resting in it that they are where they would be. Sensitive creatures are carried to seek a sensitive good, as agreeable to their rank in being, and, attaining that, aim no further. But in this is the excellency of man,—that he is made capable of communion with his Maker, and, because capable of it, unsatisfied without it. The soul, being cut out (so to speak) to that largeness, cannot be filled with less ; though we are fallen from our right to that good, yet not from a capacity of it, no, nor from a necessity of it for the answering and filling of this capacity. For the heart, even in its wandering, retains that natural relation to God as its centre that it hath no rest elsewhere, nor can by any means find it. It is made for Him, and is therefore still restless till it meet with Him. The soul, the immortal soul, descended from heaven, must either be more happy or remain miserable. The highest, the uncreated spirit, is the proper good ; the Father of Spirits is that pure and full good which raises the soul above itself, whereas all other things draw it down below itself. So, then, it is never well with the soul but when it is near to God, yea in union 7O PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: with Him, married to Him. Mismatching itself elsewhere, it hath never anything but shame and sorrow.” And the same thought is thus embalmed in poetry by Isaac Williams :— ‘*O beautiful and strange epitome Of this our life, while through the vale we trace Homeless Ulysses on the land and sea! From childhood to old age it is the face Of heaven-lost yearning man; from place to place Whether he wander forth abroad, or knows No change but of home-nature and of grace, Still is he as one seeking for repose, A man of many thoughts; a man of many woes!” Thus do we hunger and thirst after God, and refuse to be satisfied until we have found him. Weak and wandering, like storm-driven birds, we desire to nestle in the bosom of God and be at rest. Severed from him we exhaust every species of disappointment, and nowhere find contentment or repose. He is the centre of our rest, the well-spring of our joy, the end of our desire, ‘“‘the ocean to the river of our thought which terminates our all.” What conclusion, then, can we arrive at but this, that He truly exists whom we thus need, and after whom we thus continually yearn? As Eustace R. Conder puts it in that noble book “The Basis of Faith:” ‘ This aspiration—this upward pointing—must have some significance. It is a standing fact which science is not at liberty toignore. If, upon a comprehensive survey, the leading facts of men’s moral and spiritual nature accord with this tendency, proving it central and vital; if, like con- verging rays, they grow more luminous as they approach one focus; if, by virtue of its innate requirements and forces, Humanity refuses to revolve in its proper orbit, save under the attraction of an Infinite Object of love, reverence, obedience, and trust; if, ina word, God is the complement of man’s life, and being severed from which they are a mutilated abortion; then, unless human nature be a complicated lie, and human life a meaningless riddle, THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 71 the existence of God must be the central fact of the universe.” 5. THE FRUITFULNESS OF BELIEF IN GOD. Surely we have also powerful presumptive evidence in iavour of the truth of the Theistic conception of the universe in the help it affords as a guide and a solace amid the perplexities and the sorrows of life, as contrasted with the bewilderment and despair which dog the steps of the Atheist or the Agnostic. A lie is, in its very essence, unfruitful, impotent, and vain. If, then, the teachings of religion are but a tissue of lies, how comes it to pass that they have been more helpful and ennobling to the human race than all other truth in whatever sphere? Are truth and goodness, then, at variance with each other? Does the beautiful and the good in human life proceed from falsehood rather than from truth? Thesincere lover of truth resents the idea with scorn. He will never believe that the noblest issues in life and character could spring from anything but truth. Life in God is unquestion- ably the noblest life, the happiest, the fullest, the purest. How, then, can it rest upon a lie? And the highest well- being of the race, how can it proceed from falsehood and not from truth? Compare the fruitfulness of the thought of God and of His fatherly providence with the appalling desolation that con- nects itself with the idea of a godless world, and it is well. nigh impossible to conceive that a revelation so magnificent and so helpful can be merely a baseless dream. Unless we are the cruel sport of an evil genius, that view of human destiny cannot be true under which men dwindle, states decay, and life, robbed of its sublime meaning, becomes no longer worth living. There are many who dally with modern unbelief who would recoil from it with horror if they only fully fathomed its gulfs of dreary negation, and saw the 72 PILLARS UF OUR FAITH: rocks and the monsters which lie beneath. The present conflict between unbelief and faith involves on the one hand nothing less than the loss of everything which can hearten and elevate man, and, on the other, nothing less than the acceptance of everything which can sadden and degrade him. Those who trifle with unbelief should fully understand this ultimate issue, and those who ascribe to it all kinds of imaginary benefits should be undeceived. Atheism is not a thing which any thoughtful person can accept lightly, and its results are so appalling that, if its prophets feel they must speak, it should be in no flippant mood, but with quivering lip and breaking heart. If we lose our hold on God, then the suffering are without a Father, the sinning without a Saviour, the despairing without a Comforter. | Hope dies within the heart, for we have no future. Conscience becomes but a voice crying in the wilderness. Morality perishes like a stream cut off from its foun- tain. Struggling humanity ceases to inspire reverence and regard. Benevolence is deprived of its mightiest incentives, and the only consistent philosophy is summed up in the dreary utterance, “ Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” We indeed have no foes more terrible than those who would alienate us from the Divine Fatherhood, declaring the throne in heaven vacant and humanity left orphaned. What we deprecate in such men is their trifling coolness, their utter inhumanity, their failure to see that their dreary creed snatches from the hand of youth the light that guides, robs manhood of its strength for strenuous battle, makes age a weariness and a regret, and represents our troubled human life as the cruel sport of a lawless power with no reason in its origin, no meaning in its course, and no hope in its end. ‘The profoundest need of our nature is, after all, our need of God. We are feeble, and need to lean upon His strength,—ignorant, and need to confide in His wisdom,——lonely, and need to share the great com- panionship ; we die, and need to sink into the everlasting arms. If we only dare to look the question fairly in the face, without God the earth on which we tread is little better than a heart-breaking wilderness, and our life an insoluble and unprofitable problem. THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 73 That such is the case we learn from the sad confession of sceptics themselves. Take the mournful words of an able writer signing himself Physicus, who says :—“ I am not ashamed to confess that with the virtual denial of God the universe has lost to me its soul of loveliness. . . . I think of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of the Creed which once was mine and the lonely mystery of existence as I now find it.” Strauss writes, “I am appalled at the solitude into which Atheism has plunged me. The giving up of the faith in a Divine Providence is certainly one of the most sensitive losses that can befall a man. You see yourself placed in the awful machine of the world—helpless and alone, not a moment safe.” Pessimism again, the last and logical develop- ment of scientific Atheism, says by its apostle Hartmann: ‘‘ Human existence is nothing but a great evil, and it would be better not to be.” And Schopenhauer, another of the leading apostles of Pessimism, tells us in substance that personal suicide is unpleasant, but if the human race had but one neck it would be a mercy to sever it, and end at once the ghastly record of its miseries and fears. Such is the dreary hopelessness of Atheism. Blot out man’s belief in God and immortality, and his aspirations and hopes may be summed up in the weary line, * Would t’were the hour for sleep and all were o’er.” And the appalling burden which unbelief presses upon the whole human race rests with peculiar severity on the toiling and hopeless poor. This is taught with terrible power in Tennyson’s poem entitled ‘‘ Despair”; and Mrs. Gaskell, in her novel “ North and South,” enforces the lesson with deep pathos in that passage where the poor dying factory-girl says: ‘‘I think if this should be the end of all, and if all I have been born for is just to work my heart and life away, and to sicken in this dree place, with those mill-stones in my ears for ever, until I could scream out for them to stop, and let me have a little piece of quiet, and with the fluff filling my lungs until I thirst to death for one long deep breath of the clear air, and my mother gone, and I never able to tell her again how I loved her, and of all my troubles,—I think if this life is the end, 6 74 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: and that there is no God to wipe away all tears from all eyes, I could go mad!” Well may we ask, can that be true which thus tortures and appals the spirit, tempting it to curse the day on which it first beheld the light of Heaven ? Religion, on the other hand, has proved in all ages and in all circumstances an unfailing source of strength and joy. It has elevated man in thought, in feeling, in language, and in conduct. It has created new hopes when all earthly hopes have vanished. It has given to neglected and persecuted thousands “beauty for ashes, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” _ Poverty, through its gifts, has been enriched beyond the dreams of avarice: the low-born have been clothed with royalty ; and the lonely and forsaken have had God for company. . Through long years of wasting sickness it has inspired patience and submission. Where death has rent asunder the tenderest human ties it has kept the heart from breaking as it whispered of re-union within the veil. And in that last and solemn hour when heart and flesh have failed, and men have said farewell to wife, and babes, and home, it has sustained and soothed, by an unfaltering trust in God, the depart- ing spirit, and poured into the valley of death light from the land of glory on the other side. “Oh! there is never sorrow of heart That shall lack a timely end, If but to God we turn and ask Of Him to be our friend.” It may be urged by our opponents that all this proves nothing. To this we reply that there is such a thing as proof by reasonable inference as well as by logical demonstration. To say the least, it is surely wiser in us to doubt the glooms than to distrust the glories of the soul,—to listen to that which is divinest in us rather than to impute baseness to the Author of our being, and, with the spell of fatherhood and motherhood upon us to believe, that the Father of our spirits will not mock our noblest aspirations, but will “dc for us exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think.” Let those embrace the dreary creed of Atheism who can breathe THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. ros without horror under its hideous nightmare; we cleave to the faith of the poet when he says: “Hopes of good men are heavenly prophecies; They stand above the sentried heights of time, With faces filled with dawn-light and with forms Invincible, and there above all storms They chant their revelation, leading on The faithful to immortal destinies Of fadeless and illimitable glory.” 6? III—MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.— Eph. iv., 6. All religions, Christianity not excepted, seem really to have suffered far more from their defenders than from their assailants, and I certainly know no greater danger to Christianity than that contempt of natural religion which has of late been expressed with so much violence.—Max Miiller. It is Christianity alone which, as the religion of humanity, as the religion of no caste, of no chosen people, has taught us to respect the history of humanity as a whole ; to discover the traces of a Divine wisdom and love in the government of all the races of mankind, and to recognise, if possible, in even the lowest and crudest forms of religious belief, not the work of demoniacal agencies, but something that indicates a Divine guidance.—Ibid. ‘‘ The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion.”’ —Coleridge. The Spirit of God lies all about the spirit of man like a mighty sea, ready to rush in at the smallest chink in the walls that shut Him out from His own.—George Macdonald. All that we inadequately call our ideals—the gleaming lights of good that visit us, the hopes that lift again our fallen wills, the beauty which art cannot represent, the holiness which life does not realise, the love which cannot die with death,—what are they ? Not our higher, but a higher than we—the living Guide himself, pleading with us, and asking for our trust.—Dyr. Martineau. O heavens, is it in very deed He then that ever speaks through thee; that lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves in me. . Like soft streamings of celestial music to my too exasperated heart, came that Evangel.—Carlyle, ITI—MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. alae o things have been advanced in the preceding argu- ment—first, that God exists; and second, that man is a creature capable of communion with God. He is related © to, God, and» \he Jongs: to know God. _ Everywhere, however blindly, he feels after God if haply he may find Him. Christianity does not take men up as atheists or as brutes, supplying them with the faculties as well as with the substance of faith. It appeals to a religious faculty in man without which its appeal would be as music to the deaf, or as light to the blind. ‘‘ Held our eyes no sunny sheen, How could sunshine e’er be seen ? Dwelt no power Divine within us, How could God’s divineness win us ?”’ But our eyes do hold sunny sheen answering to the universal sun, and there does dwell a power Divine within us by which we may know and love God. For this reason God has not left himself without a witness, but has at sundry times and in divers manners manifested Himself to the creature made in His image, and capable of Divine fellowship. The exist- ence of God,and man’s capacity for God, being granted, reve- lation follows as a natural consequence. It is flatly incon- ceivable that God should people dead space with His presence, 80 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: and leave His temple in the human soul unvisited and un- illumined; flatly inconceivable that He should robe the fading lily in more than kingly splendour, and abandon the star-like flower of the human spirit, whose leaves may for ever pulsate to His breath, and radiate the light ineffable which streams from His presence. Voltaire has said, ‘ If God be not within us, He has never existed,” and we fear- lessly accept this statement. But God is present, and active in all spirit as in all space; and as He finds His deepest joy in the outgoings of benevolence, it being more blessed to give than to receive, it is most natural that He should grant to men spiritual light and spiritual inspiration. The true idea of evolution, alike in the natural and the spiritual world, is not that of the lower, with its imperfection and its blind necessity, lifting itself up to the higher, but that of the higher descending to the lower to lift it up. Hence, every- thing short of that blank Atheism in which God is blotted out of His own creation, attests the abiding relation of the human soul to God. God having made us for himself, to find our bliss in closest union with Himself, our human nature bears witness to the continual agency of God within it. This explains the universality of the religious sentiment in man. History proves that the first elements of religion, namely, faith in an unseen Power, together with the feelings of awe, and reverence, and gratitude in relation to that Power, are interwoven with our inmost being. ‘‘ Shouldest thou wander through the earth,” said Plutarch, ‘‘ thou mayest find cities without walls, without a king, without houses, without coin, without a theatre; but never wilt thou behold a city without a God, without prayer, without an oracle, without sacrifice.’ Such was the testimony of one who wrote when the world was yet young, and three things have been demonstrated by modern research; jirst, that there has never been a people absolutely without religion ; second, that all religions contain some element of truth, that there is not MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 81 one which is entirely false ; and thivd, that the highest forms of religion invariably demand holiness of life, and seek to place the soul in the presence of God. What then have been the methods of the Divine approach? How has God revealed Himself to the creatures made in His image? He has done so first, by a primitive revelation given to man in the beginning of years; and second, through a visitation by His Spirit to the human spirit in all ages. 4. THE PRIMITIVE REVELATION. *«« All antique traditions,” says Victor Cousin, ‘“‘refer to an age in which man, at his departure from the hand of God, received from Him immediately all lights and all truths.” Herder, again, scouts the idea of every wretched wanderer having in some way discovered his system of worship as a kind of natural theology, and places at the head of all history an original and higher state of cultivation in man, proceeding from God. In the narrative of Genesis the origin of religion is identified with the origin of man, and the Creator is represented as entering into direct communication with the heir of the world. And this position is confirmed by all the earliest traditions of the race. So far as the religions of mankind have a history, the records of that history are entirely opposed to the chart of human progress as laid down by Comte in his ‘“‘ Positive Philosophy.” Of the three stages of Theology, he made Monotheism, or the belief in one Supreme Intelligence, the last. This he treatsas the offspring of Greek and Roman polytheism as that was the offspring of Fetishism. But Max Miiller shows that the farther we go back, and the more carefully we examine the earliest germs of religion, the purer we find the conception of the Deity. Hence it is clear that a conviction of the Being of one God is not an evolution of the religious consciousness in man, but a primitive faith. Back of all the old mythologies and supersti- tions, which convict humanity of the neglect or abuse of the 82 PIILARS OF OUR FAITH: light first given for its guidance, we have clear and rational views of the Divine Being, Providence and Worship, which point to the belief that man began his pilgrimage on earth under Divine guidance and in the knowledge of the one living God, Maker of Heaven and earth. Writing of the negroes of Africa, Waitz, to whom we are indebted for the best summary of their religious conceptions, says: ‘*‘ Among many peoples we find that in the old time the religious belief was far purer than it is now. According to the legends collected by the negroes, Heaven was then nearer to man, and the Supreme God made~ Himself known to them, while now He is silent.” From many other sources of information it is also made clear that the ancient religions of the world are not the result of the fetish gropings of primitive man, or that they were derived from dreams, as some would have us believe ; but that they are the relics of much higher truths, which have come down from a brighter age. Armed with this truth, we may look upon past pages of the religious history of man, some of them so sadly soiled and blotted, and decipher there the original writing of God. It is this which renders the study of the religions of the most ancient peoples of the world so deeply interesting. These religions indicate the road which man has taken in his retreat from that primitive faith in which he was cradled, ere the race had wandered from its early home in that distant East which is the nest of dawn. Going back, chiefly through the study of language, into that dim twilight of foetic history, which separates real history, with its fixed chronology, from the unmeasured and unrecorded eternity, we are now able to trace in other nations than that of Judza the lingering relics and memories of the primitive revelation of God to man. We detect evidences of the down-shining of God into the human soul which convince us that the creatures made capable of communion with Him were not unvisited or un- touched by the Power who loved them into being, and in whom MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 83 they were ordained to find the centre of their rest, and the well-spring of their joy. Iigypt. Only within the present century has the key been found to the interpretation of the inscriptions of this ancient people. The result confirms the statement of Herodotus, who, writing more than two thousand years ago, tells us that the Egyptians ‘are of all men most attentive to the worship of the Gods.” The famous papyrus, containing the Proverbs of Ptahhotep, given three thousand years before those of Solomon, has been justly called the oldest book in the world. The princely author of this work tells us that he wrote it in his old age, to instruct the young of his time in the sayings of the past. Strange to say, his position is at the opposite pole to that of the priests who wrote in after times the Negative Confession. They connect all moral responsibility with the religion of the country: he bases it on the belief in one God. Throughout the work but a single God is mentioned by any proper name. All moral duties are referred to God as the rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked. China. Turning from Egypt to China, we find from her earliest recorded history the remarkable phenomenon of barbarous nomads, possessing a higher and truer conception of the Supreme Being than remains to their polished and enlightened descendants. It would seem that the first immigrants brought with them from their original dwelling-place something like a pure Monotheism. T?, or Shang-ti, appears as a personal being, ruling in Heaven and on earth, the author of man’s moral nature, the governor among the nations, by whom kings reign and princes decree justice, the rewarder of the good, and the punisher of the bad. It is true that the modern Chinese have fallen away from this great conception into what 84 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: is little better than a dreary and uncertain Atheism, relieved only by that pathetic premonition of a future life involved in their ancestor worship. It is remarkable, however, that there is still in this strange empire one temple consecrated to the worship of a Supreme Deity, and one worshipper, the Emperor, who celebrates the solemn pageant once a year. Among the prayers offered at this celebration we find the following: ‘Thou hast vouchsafed, O Ti, to hear us, for Thou regardest us as our Father; the Sovereign Spirit vouchsafes to accept our offering, and His servant’s heart is within him like a particle of dust. Men and creatures are emparadised, O Ti, in Thy love. Thy Sovereign goodness is infinite. Asa potter hast Thou made all living things. Great and small are cur- tained round by Thee from harm. With great kindness Thou dost bear with us, and notwithstanding our demerits dost grant us life and prosperity. His poor servant, I bow my head, and lay itin the dust, bathed in His grace and glory.” Thus, according to the testimony of Dr. Legge, the original monotheism of the Chinese remains in the State worship of the Emperor to-day, like a tall, fair pillar in a place of ruins. India. According to Max Miller, the oldest existing religious books of the Hindoos date back about three thousand five hundred years, while the foremost of them, the Rig-Veda, recognises the unity of God, the sin of man, and the hope of pardon through Divine mercy. In one of the hymns of this ancient book we find the following prayer addressed to Varuna, the all-surrounder. «© Let me not, O King Varuna, go down to the house of the earth. Be gracious, O mighty God, be gracious. I go along, O thunderer, quivering under thy displeasure. But, O bright and mighty God, I have transgressed through want of power. Be gracious, O mighty God, be gracious. MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 85 Thirst hath overwhelmed thy worshipper when standing even in the midst of the waters. Be gracious, O mighty God, be gracious. Whatever offence this be, O Varuna, that we mortals commit against thee, in whatever we have broken thy laws through thoughtlessness. Be gracious, O mighty God, be gracious.’ We need not pause to note how this ancient conception of the Deity became corrupted in after times, until it degenerated into the most degrading idolatry and demon worship. It is self-evident, however, that the purer faith of India, like its nobler poetry, and its richer architecture, is not the creation of a present, but the relic of a departed greatness, Further examples might be given from the earlier religious conceptions of Persia and Greece, but the above will suffice to show that the religious ideas of the nations are purest at their source, and point to a divine revelation given to man in the beginning, but corrupted by him in its passage through the years. It would indeed appear from reliable evidence, that monotheism was really the primitive faith of mankind and that the conception of the Divine unity, which is stated to be the last result of religious evolution, was also its start- ing point. A deeper study of this subject shows that certain truths of the primitive faith seem to have been retained or lost by different peoples. Hindooism, for instance, retained, amid many absurdities, the idea of the Trinity and the Incarnation, while Persia and Egypt cherished the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. If it be asked why the understanding of men became in subsequent ages so darkened, and the early truths given to the race so perverted, the answer of St. Paul is that men ‘did not like to retain God in their knowledge.” Thus through sinful neglect or resistance of the truth, it slowly melted away, and they were left in self-chosen darkness. 86 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH; 2. THE REVELATION BY THE DIVINE SPIRIT TO THE HUMAN IN ALL AGES. In our last chapter we referred to the revelation given by God to man at the beginning of his career on earth. We also noticed the subsequent corruption of those early religious conceptions, through the unwillingness of man to retain God in his knowledge. We have now to show that, despite the unfaithfulness of our race to Divine light, the long-suffering patience of the Eternal was not outwearied, but that His gracious Spirit, free as the wind which bloweth where it listeth, has swept wherever souls were open to His breath, and has imparted to such souls His precious gifts of love, and hope, and life. The dispensations of God in past times were not restricted to the Hebrew course of history ; they were universal as the human conscience, and every man has had his trust of light and grace. Our present information con- cerning the religious literature of ancient nations, and our familiarity with the thoughts and feelings of people out- side the Christian pale, reveal to’ us a remarkable growth of spiritual knowledge, and an exhibition of the highest moral virtues and gifts of humanity quite separated from that region which was more directly illuminated with light from heaven. As still, when the summer sun is set, earth feels though faintly its presence, and the night hath never total dark, but round her head in starry silence ight invisible feels myste- riously its way ; so, where the clear light of an immediate revelation was withdrawn, divine pulsations yet quivered in the still, evening air, lesser lights of moon and stars shone forth, and a universal spiritual presence folded the world in its soft and tender arms. ‘ By tedious discipline, by slow providence, by inspirations addressed to the seeking intellect. ot the Philosopher, to the yearning imagination of the Poet, to the ardent piety of the Devotee, and to the common reason MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 87 and conscience of all men,’’ God still spake to the creatures formed in His image, and in proportion to their fidelity to the grace given raised them into the glory and the joy of com- munion with Himself. None, indeed, if they had but the moral fidelity to respond to them, were deprived of those merciful ‘* visitings, Of the Upholder of the tranquil soul, That tolerates the indignities of time, And, from the centre of Eternity All finite motions overruling, lives In glory everlasting.” This is clearly taught by St. John in his description of the pre-incarnate Word, which was the life and light of men shining in darkness, though the darkness comprehend it not,—‘‘ the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” (a) A Glance at Some of the Nobler Heathen. This Divine illumination is amply attested by the life and work of the nobler heathen. It was in recognition of the faith of a Roman Pagan soldier that Christ said: ‘“‘ Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of God.” Cornelius, a military captain, cradled in Paganism, yet at heart a Christian, whose prayers and whose alms went up for a memorial before God, won from the soul of the formerly exclusive Peter the grand confession, ‘‘Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.” Keeping these words in our memory, we now turn to other pages than those of the Bible, for memorials of men who shone in the world as lights in a dark place, and left it very much the better for their life and work. L£pzctetus, the cripple slave of Epaphroditus, was undoubtedly one of the purest men 88 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: the world ever saw. While of Seneca it has been said that he needed to be defended before he could be admired, every inquirer into the history of Epictetus admits that he mani- fested in his life the stern yet pure doctrines of the Stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius, the philosophic emperor, is another splendid example of elevated morality in the Pagan world. Neither empire nor wealth could turn him from the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. Of him Wesley writes in his journal: ‘I read to-day part of the meditations of Marcus Aurelius. What a strange emperor! and what a strange heathen! Giving thanks to God for all the good things he enjoyed. I make no doubt but this is one of the many who shall come from the east and the west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,’ while the children of the Kingdom, ‘nominal Christians,’ are shut out.” Tacitus, the historian, was also a man of lofty if of sombre soul. Turning with angry disgust from the theatres and stews of Rome, “his soul was like a star and dwelt apart,” drinking in light and beauty from the central orb. Socrates, the father of moral philosophy, was also a grand character. His devoted affection for his disciples, his disinterested love of truth, the perfect harmony of his life and doctrine, and the calm splendour of his death, compel from us an admiration which deepens into reverence. Plato also, the greatest intel- lectual genius of his time and in some respects of the world, had the same grand seriousness of spirit, the same earnest- ness of purpose, the same inward love of justice, purity, and goodness which dwelt in the ‘heart of Socrates. Paulus Emilius, Numa, Heraclitus, and Plotinus the pure and noble Stoic who, dying, said in his agony, ‘‘I am struggling to liberate the divinity within me,’ may also be mentioned in this connection. Passing now to other realms than those of Greece and Rome, we find in Gautama the founder of Buddhism, another proof that even in those nations which ‘‘ walked in their own ways,” God did not leave himself MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 89 without a witness in the highest types of humanity. Borna prince, heir to a magnificent kingdom, trained in a powerful and splendid court, he yet, convinced of the vanity of a mere worldly life, with transcendent strength of self-denial with- drew himself, in the spirit of a Divine consecration, into strict seclusion from the world. For six long solitary years, by austerity, deep study, and stern conflict with his baser nature, he prepared himself for his great work, and at thirty-five years of age, when called Buddha—the awakened, the illumined—he began to teach his system for the uplifting and enlightenment of the Hindoo people. The Chinese Con- fucius, according to Legge, his best English biographer, was a man of like order with Gautama Buddha. Grieved by the cruelty and injustice of the rulers of his land and by the irreverence and viciousness of the people, he laboured hard amid neglect, desertion, and persecution, to diffuse morality among the people, and open the dim eyes of the rulers to the majesty of righteousness. He died lonely and poor on the t1th day of March, 478 years before the birth of Christ, beyond a doubt treasuring in his heart the assurance of having served his fellow-men in the highest spirit he knew, and with the purest light he had. Did space permit we might adduce other examples of consecrated lives shining like stars amid the murk of heathendom; and how many thousands are there of whom we have no record, who did their work, and offered their worship, and passed away silently, as the planets pass at sunrise into heaven ? Let who will repudiate such men, we love to shake hands with them across the ages, men who lived long lives of self-denial and heroic daring for the love of God, and virtue, and humanity, ‘looking for nothing again,” asking no reward but in the consciousness that they were doing the right; and persevering still, even with the grave as the limit of their horizon, because they loved good and hated evil. We call the early Christian martyrs a 7 go PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: ‘‘noble army,” and they deserve the eulogy; but they held death to be the gate of paradise, and to the vision of their faith the martyr’s crown appeared. We may not then deny nobility to those martyrs of heathendom before whose vision no such glory gleamed, but who died for native land, or truth, or fellow-men, with no shadow of selfish reward touching their wills. (0) Heathen Recognition of Divine Help. The clearness of Heathen testimony concerning the presence and influence of a Divine Helper, granting moral assistance through the conscience, and spiritual light through the intellect, together with spiritual life and strength through a Divine indwelling, is also very remarkable. The idea of Inspiration pervades the primitive Muse of India. The Vedic hymns, dating back nearly four thousand years, were always supposed to be a revelation from on high. ‘When the voice entered me,” says one of their writers, ‘I gave it birth.” These writings possessed to the Indian mind a distinct and lonely pre-eminence—they were God-born. Nearly all, indeed, of the sacred writings of the Hindoos recognise in God the only source of supernatural teaching, and in the Persian Zendavesta we read,—‘‘ God appears in the best thought, the truth of speech, and the sincerity of action, giving through His pure Spirit health, prosperity, devotion and eternity to this universe. He is the Father of alltruth.” In China the great sages were regarded as sent from above, and Confucius is declared to have been used by heaven as ‘‘the alarum of the world,” while Lao-tse, the founder of the Taou sect, continually refers to the Divine Reason which dwelt within each man, and of its being the first object of every man to cultivate this, and to bring his entire nature under its control. Consider also the Damon or guardian angel of Socrates. There was, he believed, one near him who took cognisance of the most secret movements of his mind and will, MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. OI who reproved, restrained, warned and enlightened him. Epictetus ascribes all that is good in his teaching to the inspiration of the Deity. ‘When thou hast heard these words, O young man,” he says in one of his conversa- tions, “* go thy way and say to thyself, it is not Epictetus who has told me these things (for whence did he come by them), but some kind God speaking through him.” Seneca writes, ‘‘ Without God there is no great man. It is He who inspires us with pure ideas and exalted designs. | When you see a man superior to his passions, happy in adversity, calm amid surrounding storms, can you forbear to confess that these qualities are too exalted to have their origin in the little individual whom they adorn?” Plato held that the Divinity conversed with men through the intervention of deemons speaking with men either in their waking or sleeping state. ‘* Virtue,” he writes in his ‘‘ Republic,” ‘is not natural to man, neither is it to be learned, but it comes by a Divine influence. Virtue is the gift of God.” Such is the testimony of these heathen concerning their consciousness of the voice of God within them. Not by reason alone did they hope to reach the summits of pure truth; they looked for wings, they aspired after an influence supernatural and divine, for “a soul within their soul,” ‘a master-light of all their seeing,’ which could only come from heaven. Thus it will be seen that God has never left Himself without a witness in the human soul. Grandly true are the words of Fichte,: ‘* Not merely here and there, and now and then, does God lay hold of men; but He enters into them to dwell with them; He unites Himself permanently to them; and thereby He frees them from the entanglements of im- perfection and sin, and raises them to that completeness for which He has given them a Divine capacity.” (c) Divine Thought in Heathendom. In our last chapter we called the attention of our readers to q * g2 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. some of the finer spirits of heathendom, showing how God had visited them for Divine uplifting, and how many of them recognised this truth—as, for instance, Manu the Hindu, who wrote: ‘‘ The Supreme Spirit resides in thy bosom continually, and is an all-knowing inspector of thy goodness and thy wickedness ;” or Cicero, who, writing hundreds of years later, says: ‘He who knows himself must be conscious that he is inspired by a Divine principle.” We shall now quote, for the instruction of those who care to follow us, some of those noble thoughts which have been uttered by great men to whom the light of the Bible was not given, thoughts which are as— ‘* A silver stream Breaking in music from the Lake Divine Whence all things flow.” These thoughts yet further demonstrate that in no age has God left Himself without a witness in the hearts and con- sciences of men. Some Christian believers have been slow to recognise this precious truth, and others have seemed almost afraid to do so; but surely moral good is enhanced in value in the degree in which it is shared, and it is also a necessary consequence of that revelation by which God is proclaimed as ‘‘light,” as “love,” and as a ‘ Father,” that all His intelli- gent creatures should participate in His spiritual providence. We need to remember, as Dr. Farrar says, that ‘‘ the develop- ment of humanity involves larger and diviner duties than the virulent championship of the exclusive privileges of the Jew.” In his ‘¢ Paradise Regained,” John Milton says: ‘* All knowledge is not couch’d in Moses’ Law, The Pentateuch, or what the prophets wrote ; The Gentiles also know. and write, and teach, ‘lo admiration, taught by Nature’s light.” And these lines are amply justified by the words of sanctity and wisdom which have come down to us from heathen thinkers. Prominent among these are some of the maxims of Gautama MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 93 Buddha, the great religious reformer and teacher, to whom we have already referred, whose disciples number to-day over four hundred millions of men. According to Rhys Davids, one of his latest expositors, ‘‘ self-conquest and universal charity are the foundation thoughts, the web and the woof, of Buddhism, the melodies on the variations of which its enticing harmony is built up.” In an ancient Chinese Buddhist Liturgy, e¢.g., we find the following: ‘‘ Never will I seek or receive private or individual salvation; never enter into final peace alone; but for ever and everywhere will I live and strive for the redemption of every creature throughout the world.” Inthe Buddhist catechism we also find these counsels given six hundred years before the birth of Christ to the people of India: ‘¢ He who has subdued good and evil and thrown off all the chains of desire, who lives without vice and without suffering, is the true Brahman.” ‘‘He who is pure as the morn, he whose equable temper nothing disturbs, he who has extinguished the flame of desire, he alone is the true Brahman.” ‘‘ He who aspires to nothing, and doubts no longer when he has seen the truth, he who acknowledges his own immor- tality, is the true Brahman.” ‘‘ He who triumphs over a hundred thousand men in fight is doubtless a hero, but he is a hero far differently deserving renown who has subdued himself.” ‘¢ One day spent in searching after the way of immortality is better than a hundred days without the reflection.”’ ‘To do no evil, to neglect no good, to preserve your heart pure and spotless, such is the law of the Buddhists.” ‘¢ The Buddhist moral code,” says Max Miller, ‘‘ taken by itself, is one of the most perfect which the world has ever known. On this point all testimonies, from hostile and from friendly quarters, agree. Spence Hardy, a Wesleyan missionary, speaking of the ‘** Footsteps of the Law,” admits 94 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH; that a collection might be made from the precepts of this work, which in the purity of its ethics could hardly be equalled from any other heathen author. M. Laboulaye remarks: ‘It is difficult to comprehend how men, not assisted by revelation, could have soared so high and approached so near the truth.” Thoughts from Heathen Poets. The poets are great truth-tellers. To them it is given to penetrate by a subtle and inspired insight into the very core of things. Gifted with the vision, and the faculty divine, they, in their swift discernment of the beautiful, penetrate at the same time into the secret of the good and the true. Wisely do we turn to the poets for a nation’s deepest utter- ances of truth and beauty, for their souls are as reeds which God has shaped for the potency of divinest music, and through which He breathes, producing the melody which makes glad all His worlds. Turning then, for our first examples of Divine Thought in Heathendom, to the East, in which our race was cradled, we find many precious gems stored in Hindu, Persian and Arabian caskets. In his ‘‘ Tales and Poems from South India,” the Rev. E. J. Robinson, a Wesleyan Missionary, writing of the Tamil people, says: ‘It would be difficult to find more correct and forcible representations of the Eternal One than are contained in many passages of their standard poems.” From the ‘‘Ashtakam” he quotes the following: ‘I salute the great Teacher, the bestower of divine happiness and supreme bliss, the image of perfect wisdom, who is removed from all griefs, who is represented by the sky, who is denoted by the truth and other names; the One, eternal, stainless, stable and omniscient; the Incomprehensible who knoweth neither passion, partiality, nor folly; the God who is embodied goodness.” ee ee SS ee,.,rmrcrererh OC Se ee eee elle MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 95 From another ancient Tamil poem Mr. Robinson gives the following :— ‘‘O Almighty, it is Thee I ever desire! O Instructor, it is Thee I ever desire ! O Eternal, it is Thee I ever desire! O Immaculate, it is Thee I ever desire! O Most Holy, it is Thee I ever desire! By all means and at all times I desire To be filled with boundless love at the feet of God.” From the ‘‘ Sivavakyer,” again, he quotes as follows :— ‘¢ Some think to find their God upon the hills, And climb with weary feet. So some declare He is beyond the sea. They sail afar To find Him out. Oh, ignorant and fools! ’Tis pride that prompts your work. His sacred feet Are in your heart. If there you seek, your soul Will find the Being that alone is real.” Turning from Hindu to Persian and Arabian sources, the dying Safi, Mewlana Rumi, says to the friends who stand weeping around him: ‘‘While your dim eyes but see through the haze of earth’s sadness, My frame doomed to mix with the mouldering clod, I am treading the courts of the seventh heaven in gladness, And basking unveiled in the vision of God.” The forgiveness of injuries is finely inculcated in the following lines from the Persian Poet Hafiz, translated by Sir William Jones : ‘‘ Learn from yon Orient shell to love thy foe, And store with pearls the hand that brings thee woe; Free, like yon rock, from base vindictive pride, Imblaze with gems the wrist that tears thy side; Mark where yon tree rewards the stony shower With fruit nectareous, or balmy flower. All Nature calls aloud—‘‘ Shall man do less Than heal the smiter, and the railer bless?” g6 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: From the same source and the same translator, we have also the following exquisite fragment : ‘¢ On parent knees, a naked, new-born child, Weeping, thou sat’st, while all around thee smiled : So live that, sinking in thy last long sleep, Calm, thou mayest smile, while all around thee weep.” Beautiful is the lessson taught in the following anecdote of Rabia, the celebrated Mohammedan saint : The Three Stages of Piety. ‘‘ Rabia, sick upon her bed, By two saints was visited, Holy Malik, Hassan wise,— Men of mark in Moslem eyes. Hassan says, ‘‘ Whose prayer is pure. Will God’s chastisements endure.” Malik, from a deeper sense, Uttered his experience: ‘* He who loves his Master’s choice, Will in chastisement rejoice.” Rabia saw some selfish will In their maxims lingering still, And replied, ‘‘ O, men of grace! He who sees his Master’s face Will not in his prayer recall That he is chastised at all.” In another place we read how, when with great toils and sufferings Rabia had effected the pilgrimage to Mecca, and saw the people praying round the Caaba, she beat her breast and cried aloud : ‘¢O heart ! weak tollower of the weak That thou should’st traverse land and sea, In this far place that God to seek, Who long ago had come to thee!” Take also the following: Welcome to Death. “Tf thou, O Death! a being art, draw near, And let me clasp thee; for I hold thee dear, I shall extort eternal life from thee ; Thou canst but snatch this worn-out dress from me.” MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 97 Another Eastern poet thus sings of Speaking the Truth. ‘‘ Otaiye, from his earliest youth, Was consecrated unto truth ; And if the universe must die Unless Otaiye told a lie, He would defy the last fate’s crash, And let all sink in one pale ash, Or ere by any means was wrung A drop of falsehood from his tongue.” Did space permit we might give many other selections from the poetry of the Orient, in which the spirit of duty and devotion breathes quite as finely as in these. There are numbers of pieces inculcating the duty of love to all mankind as the most acceptable sacrifice to God, of which the ‘He prayeth best who loveth best,” of Coleridge, is but a modern echo. Neither should it be forgotten that the beautiful lines which have done more to immortalise Leigh Hunt than any- thing else from his pen, are really a translation from a Sufi poet writing of Abou Ben Adhem, of Khorassan, B.c. TOs. We may remark, in retiring from the garden of Eastern song, with its roses and violets breathing a mingled perfume of odours caught from earth and heaven, that the Safis were a sect of meditative devotees who, touched to finest issues by the grace of the Supreme Spirit, sought a union with God so intimate that it approached the idea of identity with Him, and in that union realised a peace and a joy not far removed from ecstasy. Standing as we do in the clear light of a Divine revelation, it is but little they are able to teach us, but their writings at least show how from the mud God may here and there call the lily, and how ‘‘ There’s never a spot in this wildered world Where His glory shines so dim, But souls are strong, and hearts are warm, And songs are sweet from Him.” 98 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: GOD IN GREEK THOUGHT. The Poets. Turning from the poetry of the passionate and luxuriant East to that of the subtle and discriminating Greeks, we have further evidence of the breath of God wandering over the sensitive and responsive spirit, as the breeze over the chords of an /Zolian lyre. Greek poetry was at first only the em- bodiment of the myths and legends of the ruder Greek theology. Hence Homer, Orpheus, and Hesiod have been called the theologians of Greece, though their theology, it must be admitted, was most unsatisfactory. The gods of Homer are manifold, and share all the vices and imperfections of men. Still we trace in the ‘‘ Iliad”’ and the ‘‘ Odyssey ” the dawn- ing conviction that human conduct is subject to superhuman influences, and liable to superhuman retributions; and we also discern, however dimly, the likeness of a God ‘*‘ who loveth righteousness and hateth iniquity.” Hesiod, writing a generation later than Homer, rises higher than he, charging kings and judges to be just because they are encircled by unseen intelligences who mark their conduct. He also teaches that the wrong-doer cannot escape penalty, since the wrong he inflicts recoils upon himself; and shows that though a brief prosperity may be granted to the transgressor, righteousness alone secures an enduring triumph. ‘‘ Wrong weights the rich man’s conscience to the dust When his foot stumbles on the way unjust ; Far different is the path, a path of light, That guides the feet to equitable right ; The end of righteousness enduring long, Exceeds the short prosperity of wrong.” In Zenophanes, born about 618 B.c., we trace a yet further advance on Homer with regard to the character and attri- butes of God. He condemns with keenest sarcasm the MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 99 polytheistic absurdities of the popular religion of the age, substituting for them the conception of one God, self-existent, eternal, and infinite, supreme in power, goodness, and intel- ligence. He writes: ‘There is one God, of all beings, divine and human, the greatest : Neither in body alike unto mortals, neither in mind. All sight, all ear, all intelligence: Wholly exempt from toil, he sways all things by thought and will,” To Pindar, the most gifted of the lyric poets of Greece, born 522 B.c., the nation owed a lasting debt of gratitude. Those “ glorious bursts of winged words ” which flashed from his lips over the multitudes gathered at the Olympic games, were fraught with noble teaching. He asserted that the ‘‘ bitterest end awaits the pleasure that is contrary to right ; ” that “*a man should always keep in view the bounds and limits of things ;” that ‘‘righteous law was the ruler of gods and men:”’ and that “ while mortal man is but the dream of a shadow, his soul lives after death, for it alone is from God.” Those are remarkable lines in which he sets forth the differing condition of the righteous and the wicked in the future life. He says: ** Far other lot befalls the good, A life from trouble free, Nor with laborious hands, To vex the stubborn lands, Nor beat the billowy sea For a scant livelihood ; But with the honoured of the gods Who love the faithful, their abode; By day and night the sun quits not their sphere Living a dateless age without a tear. The others urge meanwhile, Loathsome to sight, their endless toil.’ The following lines, breathing the fragrance of immortal I0O PILLARS OF OUR FAITH :; hope, from one of the unknown poets of ancient Greece, are also worthy of quotation : ‘‘ Proté, thou hast not died, but thou art fled Into some better land of joy and rest ; Thou dwellest in the islands of the blest, Where flowery plains elysian thou dost tread In the glad dance; where never tear is shed, Nor wintry chill doth strike, nor heat infest, Nor pain disturb the quiet of thy breast, Nor raging thirst, nor hunger dost thou dread. The life of men on earth thou enviest not; Thou art supremely happy, nor hast cause To blame the pure enjoyment of thy lot: Whose life its daily sweet contentment draws From the effulgence, uncreate and clear, Of heaven’s high firmament that shineth near.” Greek Tragedy. Turning from the epic and lyric forms of Greek poetry, our attention is arrested by the Greek dramatist, whose ‘* ZZonian music, measuring out The steps of Time—the shocks of Chance,” forms one of the wonders of the intellectual world. ‘‘ The moral elevation of Greek tragedy,” says Dr. Tulloch, ‘‘ and the contrasts of right and wrong which it sets forth, are the highest and grandest efforts of Gentile thought in a religious direction. They bring us to the very verge of Revelation, though they do not pass within it.” In their union of intellectual force with spiritual susceptibility, the Greek dramatists were among the Aryan race what the prophets were amongst the Jews. Among the three great masters of Greek tragedy, AE schylus, 525 B.c., stands pre-eminent as a_ theological poet. Nothing is more remarkable in his works than the way in which the conception of one supreme Deity comes out in association with every lofty idea and every deep emotion. Other deities are forgotten, and Zeus alone appears, ruling and controlling all. Hence in the play MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. IOI entitled ‘‘ The Suppliants,” we read of Zeus, the father of gods and men,— ** Which of the gods could I with right invoke As doing juster deeds ? He is our father, author of our life, The King whose right hand worketh all his will, Our lives’ great author, in his counsels deep Recording things of old, Directing all his plans, the great work-master Zeus. For not as subject sitting "neath the sway Of strength above his own, Reigns he subordinate to mightier powers ; Nor does he pay his homage from below While one sits throned in majesty above ; Act is for him as speech, To hasten what his teeming mind resolves.” Sophocles, who wrote 495 B.c., was the great master who carried Greek tragedy to its highest perfection. From his writings pages might be gleaned which read like fragments from the inspired Word of God. With him the Deity is a personal and omnipresent being, ‘‘ neither sleeping nor waxing faint with the lapse of years; but reigning for ever in the splendour of Olympus.” ‘‘ Nothing is impossible with him.” ‘¢ His works may perish, but He lives forall eternity.” ‘ To honour Him is the first and greatest of commandments.” In a brief biography of Sophocles, an anonymous Greek writer says: ‘* He was dear to the gods as no other man was;” and Professor Plumtre hails him as of those among the nobler heathens who were ‘“‘schoolmasters unto Christ.” In the ‘¢ Antigone’ of this poet we find these lines concerning the unsleeping, undecaying energy of Zeus: ‘6 Spurning the power of age, enthroned in might, Thou dwell’st ’mid heaven’s broad light ; This was in ages past thy firm decree, Is now, and shall for ever be: That none of mortal race on earth shall know A life of joy serene, a course unmarked by woe.” 102 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH . In the ‘‘ Electra,” by the same author, the justice of the Deity is thus asserted: ** Still in yon starry heaven supreme, Jove, all-beholding, all-directing dwells To him commit thy vengeance.” In another passage of the same tragedy, the stricken heart is thus urged to roll its care on Zeus: ‘‘ Courage, courage, my child! There is still in heaven the great Zeus; He watches over all things, and he rules. Commit thy exceeding bitter griefs to him, And be not angry against thine enemies !”’ Did our space permit, passages from authors writing nearer the date of the Advent might be quoted, but we will give only that from Aratus, B.c. 277, referred to by St. Paul on the Mars Hill of Athens: ‘ Jove’s presence fills all space, upholds this ball; All need his aid, his power sustains us all, For we his offspring are.” The Philosophers. The enduring monument of the glory of Greece is her philosophy. The Parthenon is in ruins, and the master- pieces of Phidias are stained and broken; but the words of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle are immortal. Greek philosophy represents the most sublime effort ever attempted by the reason of man to solve the problems of the universe. In its history we have a striking record, alike of the power and the weakness of the human mind, together with abundant evidence of the presence with men of the spirit of truth. It climbed to the topmost peaks of human attainment, and then waited for a clearer voice from heaven. It could not fill the place of Revelation, but it fulfilled an exalted vocation by convincing the world of the need of Revelation. It developed wants and aspirations, which it was in itself too poor to satisfy. No reverent thinker, however, can study the works of its great masters without feeling convinced that ‘ thoughts MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 103 beyond their thoughts” were to those sages given. In har- mony with this conviction, Justin Martyr, one of the greatest of the Fathers, affirmed that a ray of the Divine Logos shone on the mind of the heathen, and that the human soul instinctively turned towards God, as the plant turns towards the sun. ‘Every race of men,” he writes, « participated in the Word; and they who lived with the Word were Christians, even if they were held to be godless ; as, for example, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and those like them.” To discuss the claims of the various teachers of Greek philosophy, or the merits of their contending systems, does not lie within the scope of our present purpose. All we shall attempt is to present a few extracts from its master minds on the great theme of God, Duty, and Immortality, only premising that the attempts made to trace the elevated Theism and morality of Socrates and Aristotle to Jewish sources have signally failed. Divine Thought in Socrates. Socrates, in whom all ages must acknowledge one of the masters of those who know, was born 469 B.c. His father was a sculptor of Athens, and with him the son laboured until, stirred by an irresistible impulse, he abandoned the handling of dead marble to become a moulder of living men. His chief distinction lay in his calm preference of the inner life to the outer, the world of spirit to the world of sense. The foundation of his philosophy was the certitude of those moral truths to which conscience bears its universal witness. To the great doctrine of the immortality of the soul he gave for the first time a philosophical basis, and in his arguments in proof of a beneficent Providence, he anticipates all subse- quent teachers of natural theology. Though retaining to some extent the prevalent ideas of his time with regard to the ministry of subordinate deities, inferior agents answering 104 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. to the angels of Jewish theology, these were not permitted to interfere with his belief in one Supreme God, the infinite Ruler of all. In the Memorabilia of Zenophon, to which we are so largely indebted for his views on morals and theology, Socrates speaks of Him ‘ who raised this whole universe, and still upholds the mighty frame; who perfected every part of it in beauty and in goodness, suffering none of these parts to decay through age, but renewing them daily with unfading vigour, whereby they are able to execute whatever He ordains with that readiness and precision which surpass man’s imagination.” In the same book, addressing a pupil, he thus expresses his views on Divine Providence: ‘Consider, Aristodemus, that the soul which resides in thy body can govern it at pleasure ; why, then, may not the soul of the universe, which pervades and animates every part of it, govern it in like manner ? If thine eye hath the power to take in many objects, and these placed at no small distance from it, marvel not if the eye of the Diety can at one glance comprehend the whole. And as thou perceivest it not beyond thy ability to extend thy care, at the same time, to the concerns of Athens, Egypt, Sicily, why thinkest thou, my Aristodemus, that the Providence of God may not easily extend itself through the whole universe ? ” Further on we read, in language not unworthy of a Hebrew prophet: ‘“ There is a Being whose eye pierceth throughout all Nature, and whose ear is open to every sound; extended to all places, extending through all time, and whose bounty and care can know no other bound than those fixed by His own creation.” In another place he thus testifies to The Dignity of Man: “ But it is not with respect to the body alone that the gods have shown themselves thus bountiful to man. Their most MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 105 excellent gift is that soul they have infused into him, which so far surpasses what is elsewhere to be found; for by what animal, except man, is even the existence of those gods dis- covered, who have produced and still uphold, in such regular order, this beautiful and stupendous frame of the universe ? What other species of creature is to be found that can serve, that can adore them?” j Moral Conduct. With respect to moral conduct, Socrates affirmed that ‘the Gods take pleasure in good actions, and the practice of virtue,” that ‘virtue alone places both the body and the mind in the utmost degree of perfection,’ and that the con- sciousness of having done our duty “must yield perpetual complacency and satisfaction.”” The duty of prayer he en- forced both by precept and example, but to be acceptable, it must be the prayer of humility. ‘‘ When he prayed, his petition was only this—that the gods would give to him those things which were good. And this he did, forasmuch as he felt that they alone knew what was good for man. Gold and silver, so far from being the best things, might be the worst, and might be more wisely withheld than bestowed.” Socrates was not less earnest in his belief in The Immortality of the Soul. and a state of future retribution. He had reverently listened to the intuitions of his own soul—the instinctive longings and aspirations of his own heart, as a revelation from God. He felt that all the powers and susceptibilities of his inward nature were in conscious adaptation to the idea of immortality, and that its realisation was the appropriate destiny of man. He was convinced that a future life was needed to avenge the wrongs and reverse the unjust judgments of the present life; needed, that virtue may receive its meet reward, and the course of Providence may have its amplest vindication. 8 106 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: He saw this faith reflected in the universal convictions of mankind, and the ‘‘common traditions ”’ of all ages. With regard to the conditions of the future life, Socrates did not tell his disciples ‘*that his future life was to be separated from his life here, it was the continuation and unfolding of that life which he looked for. . . . He should still and always be a seeker of wisdom, but that wisdom would meet him and embrace him, and ever reveal to him new treasures, which would awaken in him ever fresh longings, and would continually satisfy them. The seeker for wisdom, who passed here for a pursuer of shadows, would grasp substance ; the seeker of wealth and power who passed here for a pursuer of substance would grasp a shadow.” The Last Words of Socrates. Very pathetic and in fine accord with all his teachings concerning the future life, were the closing words of Socrates at his trial, when with his face set toward the eternal sea on which he was so soon to be launched by his accusers, he said: ‘¢O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or in death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that to die and be released is better for me... . The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die and you to live. Which is better God only knows.” Thus strong in virtue and serene in hope does the Athenian Socrates move onward into the everlasting light. DIVINE THOUGHT IN PLATO. For further examples of thoughts handed down from Heathen thinkers—thoughts which wander through eternity, and mount to the very throne and dwelling-place of God, we turn from Socrates to his illustrious pupil Plato, who wrote four hundred years before the coming of Christ. The fame of this great writer “fills antiquity as rich wine a golden MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 107 urn,’ and his works must always possess a peculiar and transcendent interest, inasmuch as they afford examples of the highest point ever reached on Divine themes, by the intellect of man, outside the nation unto whom were com- mitted ‘* the oracles of God.” This is he of whom Clement, one of the foremost fathers of the Church, said that he touched the very gates of truth; whom Jerome carried under his hermit-mantle, and Augustine under his bishop’s robe, and whom Coleridge called “a plank from the wreck of Paradise cast upon the shores of idolatrous Greece.” Truly is it said that ‘none whom wise men would wish to follow have ever approached the name of Plato without reverence and gratitude.” As Socrates committed nothing to writing, to Plato was reserved the task of transmitting to future ages the thoughts of his great master, and in his immortal dialogues it is often dificult to determine when it is Plato and when it is Socrates who speaks. Plato, however, was not a mere exponent of the opinions of Socrates, since he sometimes flatly contra- dicts them; and in that search after truth, which was the main business of his life, flashes of insight and inspiration were given him by which he soared above his great prede- cessor, as the eagle above its nest on the crag. Plato wrote and spoke under the fixed conviction that it was his mission to draw the Athenian mind away from the fleeting, the transitory, and the uncertain, and lead them to the contemplation of an Eternal Truth, an Eternal Justice, an Eternal Beauty, all proceeding from, and united in, an Eternal Being—the ultimate, the Supremely Good. The know- ledge of this ‘Supreme Good” he regarded as the highest science, and this ‘*Supreme Good” was nothing less and nothing lower, in his conception, than The Supreme God. In evidence of this, we are told by Plato that this Supreme g* 108 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: Good toward which he would fain lead up the minds of his disciples, is ‘far beyond all existence in dignity and power, and is that from which all things else derive their being and essence.” It is towards this superlative perfection that the reason lifts itself; it is towards the infinite beauty that the heart aspires. ‘Marvellous beauty!” exclaims Plato ; eternal, uncreated, imperishable beauty, free from increase or diminution . . . beauty which has nothing sensible, nothing corporeal, as hands or face ; which does not reside in any being different from itself, in the earth, or the heavens, or in any other thing, but which exists eternally and abso- lutely in itself and by itself; beauty of which every other beauty partakes, without their birth or destruction bringing to it the least increase or diminution.” When we read with awe and wonder such a passage as this from a Heathen philosopher, we can understand that bold utterance of Augustine: ‘‘ Plato made me know the true God, Jesus Christ showed me the way to Him.” Moral Conduct. Turning from his ideas concerning God to those which deal with virtue and its opposite, we find maxims of practical morality in the writings of Plato which might well put to the blush many professed theorists in ethics who have enjoyed a light for which he could only wait and sigh. ‘He taught,” says Henry Rogers, “that might can never constitute right; that perfect virtue is the highest element of happiness; that the morally wrong can never be the truly expedient; that the good and the beautiful cannot be severed; that it is always, and under all circumstances, better to suffer an injury than to do one; that even the most successful crime is but a splendid misery, and involves by inevitable necessity in the remorse it awakens its own invisible and infallible avengers, and that only he is a virtuous man who acts as virtue bids him, even though he MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. 10g should be assured that neither detection nor punishment awaited his crimes.” ‘When anyone prefers beauty to virtue,” he says, ‘what is this but the real and utter dishonour of the soul?” And in another place he asks, “Will life be worth having if that higher part of man is destroyed which is improved by justice and deteriorated by injustice?” Hence the noble prayer with which he closes his Phedrus: ‘Grant, ye Gods, that I may become beautiful within, and that whatever of external good I possess may be friendly to my internal purity. Let me account the wise man rich ; and of wealth let me only have as much as a prudent man can bear or employ.” The Immortality of the Soul. Perhaps the teaching of Plato is in nothing more wonderful than in its statement and defence of the great doctrine of man’s immortality. According to his teaching, ‘‘ the soul is that which most partakes of the Divine.” The offspring of God, generated by or emanating from the Deity in eternity, it bears some traces of its Divine parentage. As Wordsworth puts it— ‘‘ Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home.” The favourite thought of Plato, to which he continually recurs, is, that this life is only the first stage of an endless existence; that death is the release of the soul from the body, which the wise man welcomes with joy, and that the truest philosophy consists in the resemblance, so far as is possible, of man to God. The arguments from reason, for the immor- tality of the soul, are presented with peculiar force and beauty in the Phedo, the Phedvus, and the tenth book of the Republic. They are thus presented in a condensed form by an able philosopher and theologian : IIo PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: 1. Lhe soul is immortal, because it ts incorpoveal. There are two kinds of existences: one compounded, the other simple ; the former subject to change, the latter unchangeable ; one perceptible to sense, the other comprehended by mind alone ; the one is visible, the other invisible. When the soul employs the bodily senses it wanders, and is confused; but when it abstracts itself from the body, it attains to knowledge which is stable, unchangeable, and immortal. The soul, therefore, being uncompounded, incorporeal, invisible, must be indissoluble—that is to say, immortal. 2. The soul is ammortal, because it has an independent power of self-motion—that is, it has self-activity and self-determination. No arrangement of matter, no configuration of body, can be conceived as the originator of free and voluntary movement. Now that which cannot move itself, but derives its motion from something else, may cease to move and perish. ‘ But that which is self-moved never ceases to be active, and is also the cause of motion to all other things that are moved.” And ‘ whatever is continually active is immortal.” 3. Lhe soul 1s wmmortal, because it possesses universal necessary, and absolute ideas, which transcend all material conditions, and bespeak an crigin immeasurably above the body. No modifi- cations of matter, however refined, however elaborated, can give the absolute, the necessary, the eternal. But the soul has the ideas of absolute beauty, goodness, perfection, identity, and duration, and it possesses these ideas in virtue of its having a nature which is one, simple, identical, and in some sense, eternal. If the soul can conceive an immor- tality, it cannot be less thanimmortal. If, by its very nature, ‘it has hopes that will not be bounded by the grave, and desires and longings that grasp eternity,” its nature and its destiny must correspond. An Incentive to Virtue. The moral effects of this stupendous truth are also clearly MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. yt stated by Plato. Every soul, he affirms, bears with it into eternity the impress of “ the deeds done in the body ” and will be judged with reference thereto. ‘Togo to the world below having one’s soul full of injustice is the last and worst of all evils.” He therefore urges the doctrine home with great earnestness as the grand motive of a virtuous life, for “the reward is noble and the hope is great.” “O, my friends,” he Says, in the Phedo, ‘if the soul is really immortal, what care should be taken of her, not only in respect of the portion of time which is called life, but of eternity! And the danger of neglecting her from this point of view does indeed appear to be awful. If death had only been the end of all, the wicked would have had a good bargain in dying, for they would have been happily quit not only of their body, but of their own evil together with their souls. But now, inasmuch as the soul is manifestly immortal, there is no release or salvation from evil except the attainment of the highest virtue and wisdom.” Such, when disengaged from the myth, and symbol and poetic drapery which here and there enfold it, is the teaching of Plato concerning man’s immortality. Its power over those who deeply pondered it is evidenced by the falling of Cato on his sword at Utica when, weary of the present life, he sought emancipation into a loftier sphere; and also by the instance of the youth Cleombrotus, who flung himself from a cliff in order to liberate the divinity within him. Callimachus thus tells the story of the latter :— ‘‘ Cleombrotus, the Ambracian, having said, ‘‘ Farewell, Osun!” leap’d from a lofty wall into the world Of ghosts. No deadly ill had chanced to him at all; But he had read in Plato’s book upon the soul.” Plato confessed the need of divine assistance to attain ‘the good,” and of divine interposition to deliver men from moral ruin, He also, like Socrates, longed for a divine light to guide him, and felt the need thereof continually. He died in I12 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: the year 347 B.c., and the Greeks placed on his tomb the following epitaph, translated by Shelley : ‘“‘ Eagle! why soarest thou above that tomb— To what sublime and starry-paven home Floatest thou ? I am the image of Great Plato’s spirit, Ascending heaven; Athens doth inherit His corpse below.” GOD IN ROMAN THOUGHT. Passing now from Greek to Roman thinkers and teachers we are at once arrested by- Stoicism, that pure though cold philosophy which hung like a star above the wreck of the empire of the Czsars. This school was founded by Zeno of Citium, 290 B.c., and it is a significant fact, in relation to our present argument, that in seeking for some principle or law of Nature which should enable men at once to pronounce upon the intrinsic rightness or wrongness of an action, Zeno believed it was found in the universal reason which fashioned, and permeates, and vivifies the universe, and is the light and life of the human soul. Thus witnessing of deeper things than he knew, conscience and the Holy Spirit were alike recognised by this Pagan teacher. It was in the decaying Roman Empire that the philosophy of Zeno, not, however, without a considerable admixture of Platonism, took deepest root. Here it numbered among its adherents Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. THOUGHTS FROM SENECA. Many passages of remarkable significance might be quoted from the writings of Cicero, but we will pass from him to Seneca, some of whose sentiments approximate so nearly to the truths of the Bible that they have given rise to the tradition that he was, at some period of his life, in corre- spondence with the Apostle Paul. From first to last, however, he was a Stoic and not a Christian, while his MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. I13 approval of suicide, and his insatiable greed of gold show how far he stood from the Christian standard. Still despite the deficiencies of his teaching and the imperfections of his life, many of his utterances are truly great and memorable. His ideas concerning the presence and providence of God may be judged from the following passages taken from his Epistles: ‘God is a great and incomprehensible power. It is to Him that we live, and to Him that we must approve ourselves. What avails it that consciences are hidden from men, when our souls lie open toGod? . . . . There is no need to lift up your hands to Heaven, or to pray the ZEdile to admit you to the ear of an image, that so your prayers may be heard the better. God is near thee; He is with thee. . . . A holy spirit resides within us, the observer of good and evil, and our constant guardian. As we treat Him, He treats us. At least no man is without God. Can any one ever rise above the power of fortune without His assistance? It is He that inspires us with thoughts, upright, just and pure.” ‘Treating in another place of the nature of God, he designates Him “ the supporter and ruler of all, the Soul and Spirit, the Lord and Creator of the world. Will you call Him fate? You will not err; for that He is, on which all depends, the cause of causes. Will you call Him Providence? With justice, for He it is whose wisdom cares for the world, so that it moves on without confusion and fulfils its tasks. Will you call Him Nature ? You will not err in this, for He it is from whom all has sprung, and by whose breath we live.” In another remarkable passage he thus pleads for virtue as the way to happiness and essential greatness. “It is not Money 4.6.7.) -a crowd: of servants) 9... beauty or strength that can make you happy; all these things are subject to decay. We must, therefore, look out for something which is not to be impaired by length of time; something which fears no let or hindrance; and than which nothing 114 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH ; better can be desired. And what is that? A soul that is truly just, and good and great. For what else can you call this but a Deity within. And thisa freed man or a slave may be master of, as well as a Roman Knight. . . . From any obscure corner of the world, you may rise to heaven.” THE TEACHING OF EPICTETUS. ‘‘ When we turn from the writings of Seneca to those of Epictetus,” says A. S. Wilkins, in his charming sketch of this wonderful Pagan thinker, ‘‘ we cannot but feel that we are breathing a purer and healthier atmosphere. Concerning Seneca we feel, as M. Martha well says, that we must defend him before we can admire him. But the cripple slave of Epaphroditus carried out in his life the doctrines that he taught. All that we know of his teaching is preserved to us by the pious care of his follower, Arrian, who drew up notes of his conversation, and a handbook of rules for conduct from his recollections of what had fallen from his teacher’s lips.” Recognition of God. There is an intimate connection between the ethics of Epictetus and his theology. Every page of his writings is impregnated with the deepest religious feeling. ‘The first thing to learn,” he says, “tis that there is a God, that His knowledge pervades the whole universe, and that it extends not only to our acts, but to our thoughts and feelings. .... He who seeks to please the gods must labour as far as lies in him to resemble them. He must be faithful as God is faithful, free as He is free, beneficent as He is beneficent, magnani- mous as He is magnanimous. To have God for our maker and father and guardian, should not that emancipate us from all sadness and from all fear? When you have shut your door and darkened your room, say not to yourself you are alone. God is in your room, and your attendant genius likewise. Think not that they need the light to see what you MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. Tas do. Whatcan I,an old man and a cripple, do but praise God? IfI were a nightingale, I would discharge the office of a nightingale; if a swan, that of a swan. But I am a reasonable being ; my mission is to praise God, and I fulfil it; nor shall I ever, as far as lies in me, shrink from my task, and I exhort you to join in the same song of praise.” The Moral Teaching of Epictetus. This noble theology was the legitimate parent of a singularly pure and exalted morality. What a marvellous comment we have in the following passages on the words, ‘A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth !”’ ‘‘ Examine yourself,” says Epictetus, ‘ whether you wish to be rich or to be happy; and if you wish to be rich, know that it neither is a blessing nor is it altogether in your own power; but if to be happy, know that it both is a blessing and is in your own power; since the former is but a temporary loan of fortune, but the gift of happiness depends upon the will.” ‘‘ Just as when you see a viper, or an asp, or a scorpion, in a casket of ivory or gold, you do not love or congratulate them on the splendour of their material, but because their nature is pernicious you turn from and loathe them; so like- wise when you see vice enshrined in wealth and the pomp of circumstance, do not be astounded at the glory of its sur- roundings, but despise the meanness of its character.” Take a selection from briefer passages from this great Pagan teacher, proving him to be one of the few “in the very dust of whose thoughts was gold.” Meanness and Nobleness. ‘Nothing is meaner than the love of pleasure, the love of gain, and insolence; nothing nobler than high-mindedness, and gentleness, and philanthropy, and doing good.” 116 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: Influence. “ Like the beacon-lights in harbours, which, kindling a great blaze by means of a few faggots, afford sufficient aid to vessels that wander over the sea, so also a man of bright character in a storm-tossed city, himself content with little, effects great blessings for his fellow-citizens.” How Men Should Live. “As the sun does not wait for prayers and incantations that he may rise, but shines at once, and is greeted by all; so ‘neither wait thou for applause, and shouts, and eulogies, that they mayest do well;—but be a spontaneous benefactor, and thou shalt be beloved like the sun.. When asked, ** Who among men is rich ?” he replied, ‘‘ He who suffices for him- self.’ When asked, ‘“* Who is free?” he said, ‘¢The man who masters his own self.’ When asked, ‘“‘ How a man could grieve his enemy ?” he answered, “ By preparing himself to act in the noblest way.” How Men Should Die. Unlike Seneca, Epictetus does not approve of suicide. He says, emphatically, ‘‘ Wait till God calls you, and stand faithful to your post.” And if you ask, “At what employ- ment would you have death find you?” he replies, “ For my part I would have it to be some humane, beneficent, public- spirited, noble action. .. . If death overtake me in such a situation, it is enough for me, if I can stretch out my hands to God and say, ‘ The opportunities which I have received from Thee of comprehending and obeying Thy administration, I have not neglected. As far as in me lay, I have not dis- honoured Thee.’”’ Thus taught Epictetus, over whose grave was written the noble and just epitaph—‘‘I was Epictetus, a slave, and maimed in body, and a beggar for poverty, and dear to the ammortals.”’ MAN VISITED BY GOD FOR DIVINE UPLIFTING. Li7 Pondering such teachings and such a life as that of this Phrygian slave, whose lot was cast in the corrupt Roman empire in about the fiftieth year of the Christian era, we have another striking evidence that even in a pagan land God did not leave himself without a witness in the earnest and responsive soul. We might, in further illustration of this truth, call the attention of our readers to some of the finer teachings of Marcus Aurelius, the philosophic emperor, in whom Stoicism found its last and most perfect representative. But from this we will refrain; first, because the fundamental doctrines of his moral system are identical with those of Epictetus; and second, because writing in the second century of the Christian era, he must have been considerably indebted to that Gospel message which was then permeating the Roman Empire. Rock Once More. Sufficient evidence has been given, however, in our brief survey of the thoughts and aspirations of Pagan poets and dhilosophers, to prove that in all ages and in all lands men have been visited by God for Divine uplifting; that ‘‘in seeking after the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him,’ numbers of the nobler heathen learned to recognise that deep and radiant truth uttered by some of their own poets, that men are “ His offspring,” and that * He is not far from every one of us, for in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” Every human soul has an illumination of God in the order of Nature, by the light of conscience, and through the working of the Spirit of God in the intellect and in the will. Religious consciousness is not the special endowment of any privileged race. It is natural to man, inseparable from his essence, and also from his development. And it is continually sustained by the down-shining of God. The fower-like aspirations of the human soul climb toward the light because I18 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. the light is on them, and calls them forth. This warmth, stirring the deadness beneath, makes barrenness uneasy; and as the sun in spring-time knocks at the tomb of every sleeping plant to give it resurrection, visiting the bramble as freely as the rose, so the Divine Spirit broods above the roots of power in human souls whether they be of coarser or of finer temper, offering to all its precious gifts of love, and hope, and life. Here is another of the indestructible pillars of the Christian Faith. Man is a creature capable of God, and God commr- nicates His life to man. God not only lives above us, but He loves and visits us. He is present and active in all spirit as in all space. There is a Divine influence omnipresent in human souls ; a word of God always very nigh to every man, even in his heart ; a power establishing and maintaining the growth and dominion of religious influence in the world. ‘“The clear sky bends over each man, little or great. Let him uncover his head, and there is nothing between him and infinite space. So the ocean of God encircles all men: un- cover the soul of its sensuality, selfishness, sin, and there is nothing between it and God, who flows into the man as light into the air. Certain as the open eye drinks in the light, do the pure in heart see God, and he that lives nobly feels Him as a presence not to be put by.” For this reason religion cannot perish. Dogmas may perish, and theories of infalli- bility may give way, but religion cannot die. The form may change, but the spirit will live. It can be abolished only by abolishing God and man. feeligion has its eternal foundations in the nature and constitution of man, and it is fanned and sustained by the breath and tmmanence of God. Fea IV—THE WRITTEN WORD. For he should persevere until he has ascertained one of two things, either he should discover or learn the truth about them, or, if this is impossible, I would have him take the best and most irrefragable of human notions, and let this be the raft on which he sails through life—not without risk, as I admit, if he cannot find some word of God, which will more surely and safely carry him.— Flato’s **‘ Phedo.” The night of Paganism had its stars to light it, but they called to the Morning-star which stood over Bethlehem.—Pressensé. I am acreature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I ama spirit, coming from God, and returning to God: just hovering over the great gulf; a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing—the way to heaven: how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way. He hath written it down in a book. O give methat book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be a man of one book. Here, then, I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone: only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his book; for this end—to find the way to heaven.—Fohn Wesley. The present controversy concerning the books of the Old Testa- ment need not disturb the religious faith of Christians, first, because so large a part of the Old Testament is untouched by criticism; secondly, because where criticism has been busy, it is rather the form and vehicle than the substance of Revelation that is affected ; thirdly, because where the substance is affected, the case of destructive criticism is at its very weakest, and depends largely upon rationalistic pre-suppositions and rooted disbelief in the supernatural.—Pvofessor W. T. Davison. IV.—THE WRITTEN WORD. 1. ITS PARAMOUNT NECESSITY. ape transition from our previous chapters on man asa creature capable of God, and visited by Him for Divine uplifting, to man addressed and guided by a direct revelation of Divine truth, is natural and easy. We need not only inspiration, but guidance. Unspeakably noble are our religious faculties, and unspeakably tender and helpful are the touches of the quickening Spirit; but our finer energies awakened, they need to be directed to right objects. The Spirit lends us wings by which we soar, the Word directs our flight. The Spirit, from the high places of a soul created to be the temple of God, sounds the call to prayer; the Word reveals to us the Deity whom we are called to adore, to love, and to obey. Through the visita- tions of the Spirit, we feel the presence of the Eternal One, but as yet we know not who or what He is. There is neither voice nor vision—it is like a dumb mother folding to her bosom a blind child. The contact thrills us, and we feel that affection and moral loveliness are there, but the heart 9 I22 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: puts forth its tendrils to find only vacancy—the awe of a Sublime Presence and the mystic silence of God. Much may be gathered by the devout student from the ever open book of Nature; much also from the study of man in his intellectual, moral, and spiritual capacities illumed by that ‘lieht which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” But the most important ends of religion are not yet met. Nature has its dark patches of unintelligible ruin and pain. Reason is bounded by many limitations, and sees only “through a glass darkly.” Conscience has its recurring moods of hesitation and bewilderment. ‘The religious instinct may bow before a dumb idol, or shudder at an eclipse. A clearer, stronger, steadier light is therefore needed if man is to achieve his God-appointed destiny. In other words, the light of Nature, even though supplemented by the touch of the besetting God, is not sufficient to give that Knowledge of Deity, and of His will, which is necessary to salvation. The natural Knowledge of God to which men may attain by the exercise of their own faculties is not sufficient to make them feel that the Eternal bears to them fatherly love, or to break the power of sin within them and over them, or to sustain and develop their moral and spiritual life and give assurance of its continuance beyond the grave. Here the highest human genius, unassisted by a direct revelation from heaven, fails and falters. It may soar as the eagle, its keen vision covering half a province, and its cry thrilling to the floors of heaven. But “there is a path which no fowl knoweth, and the vulture’s eye hath not seen.” Genius is the seer and interpreter of Nature, but not the prophet of God. It may tell us much of what is below the sun; but it can tell us nothing of what is above it. It may reveal the wide expanse of earth and sea, but it cannot open heaven. When its highest results are reached it has not measured as yet the ‘outer court,” much less approached ‘the holiest of all.” A Divine Revelation was needed, since without it the THE WRITTEN WORD. 123 choicest spirits of antiquity were still in darkness, or at the best they moved in A Dim and Shadowy Twilight. This is evident from the painful uncertainty in which the foremost heathen thinkers grope, yearning for fuller know- ledge. The greatest admirer of those ancient ‘seekers after God” will be disposed to admit that they have received full justice in the previous chapters of this inquiry, that their highest has not been withheld, and that no undue prominence has been given to the ooze and slime from which many of the lilies of their thought have sprung into the light. Some, indeed, failing to realise the imperfections of the loftiest heathen conceptions in admiration for their nobleness, may be ready to ask, ‘‘ What further ideas of God and Deity could be required than those attained by some of these heathen thinkers?” We answer, the finest truths uttered by them were splendid guesses rather than assured certainties. Before the sun had risen, moon and stars could not create day, and the adage that ‘‘one swallow does not make a summer,” finds painful illustration in the contrast between the nobler thinkers of Greece and the condition of society around them. Neither Socrates, nor Plato, nor the Stoics received in any proper sense a revelation—that is, an authoritative declara- tion from God of His will respecting man. And they them- selves were fully conscious that their knowledge of Divine things was not adequate to their necessities. Hence Socrates advises his pupil Alcibiades to forego his usual sacrifices in the temple until a teacher from heaven should be sent. ‘‘ We must wait patiently,” said this master among the wise, ‘until someone, either a god or some inspired man, teach us our moral and religious duties; and, as Pallas, in ‘* Homer,” did to Diomede, remove the darkness from our eyes.” Plato, also speaking to the Athenians, says that “unless God, in pity, send them an instructor, they must remain in a state of ignorance for ever.” Very impressive, too, are the words of o* 124 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic sect, who closes his work on Nature with the sentence, ‘‘ No man has discovered any certainty, nor will discover it, concerning the Gods and what I say of the universe. For,if he uttered what is even most perfect, still he does not Anow it, but conjecture hangs over all.” Cicero again, in his treatise on the nature of the Gods, assures us, with reference to the Divine existence, that there is no subject about which men are so little agreed, some asserting the being of God, while others denied it, others accepting a multiplicity of gods, while numbers conceived of the Supreme Being as corporeal, and subject to an immutable fate. Andif it be said that, speaking thus, Cirero was un- faithful to his great masters—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle— we would remind the objector of Aristotle affirming an eternal first cause, yet teaching that the stars also are deities; of Plato declaring that ‘‘it is not easy to find the Father and Creator of all existence, and when He is found it is impossible to make Him known to the ignorant ;” and of Socrates, with the shadow of a nearing eternity upon him, ordering the sacrifice of a cock to Aesculapius. Meanwhile in Athens we find a rabble of some thirty thousand deities worshipped by the people; the ideas of the wise concerning the soul and its destiny are painfully confusing and uncertain, while with respect to the question as to the chief good of man, Varro tells us that at least three hundred conflicting opinions perplex the inquiring mind. And the testimony of the heathen concerning their hopeless condition without a definite Divine revelation is confirmed by the witness of the Scripture themselves. The heathen are depicted as sitting ‘under the shadow of death,” and ignorant of the ‘‘ judgments” of God. St. Paul describes them as ‘having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.” Everywhere, by this profound thinker, the wisdom or THE WRITTEN WORD. 125 philosophy of this world is rejected as inadequate, “for it is written, eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.” Evidently then God Must Speak. or men must remain in a state of ignorance for ever. And what can be conceived more probable than that God should speak to the creature made in His image and ordained to find happiness and perfection through union with Himself? He who doubts this probability might as well be without a God, inasmuch as by such a doubt the Deity he serves is robbed of every attribute which could render Him adorable to His creatures, aud worthy of their imitation and regard. Hence Dr. Pope has finely, if boldly, said, ‘‘ Either God finally has spoken or there is no God, and man is the incomprehensible creation of chance, and the sport of the chance that created him.” Such an utterance as this is amply justified when we remember that the religious sentiment in man is the most potent factor in the moulding of his character and the shaping of his destiny. The health and even the life of the soul is dependent upon some adequate knowledge of God: for what is religion but the receiving into ourselves and then reflecting the image of God? And if it be true that as is the image so is the reflection, it follows that a dimly conceived or distorted conception of the Divine Being, must find its shadow in a darkened and misshapen soul. And what is true of the individual is true also of humanity at large. Religion is the highest motive power of human society. Rightly directed, it is the beauty and the strength of nations; perverted and debased, it is their scandal and their curse. Touched by God and by eternity it can yield, for good or evil, a terrific strength. Thrones reel and crowns shrivel into dust before its fiery impact. It can seize a nation by its breath, and shape it to its mood, as the whirlwind the sand- pillar of the desert, hurling it where it will. Man’s religion 126 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: always precedes his civilization, and determines its form, so that one may say, ‘‘ Show me the God, and I will show you the worshipper.” Man orders his whole life according to his idea of God, and moulds in its light the character which will abide, when ‘* The moon is old, And the sun is cold, And the books of the Judgment Day unfold.” Such considerations as these plead ‘like angels, trumpet- tongued,”’ for some knowledge of God adequate to human necessity. -And since with God to be is to act and to love, we naturally look for a further and fuller revelation of the Divine character and will than is afforded by the spectacle of Nature, the study of our own faculties, or the guesses of the enquiring intellect. And such a revelation as that after which we yearn is not only probable, but grandly possible. That is a poor concep- tion of the Deity which imprisons Him in enforced and passionless silence; which conceives of Him as giving to the planets their laws, and to the beasts their instincts, yet as being unable to give law, impulse, and direction to the creatures who, in virtue of their spiritual constitution, stand so much nearer to His own ineffable personality. He who made the mind of man, and rendered it capable of communion with other and higher minds, so that the peasant may enter into ennobling fellowship with the sage, and the child may be informed by the wisdom of the father, He, “the Father of spirits,” ‘‘in whom we live and move and have our being,”’ and who “is not far from every one of us,” can commune with the creature made in His image, censtituting him the organ of an inspired revelation to be through him transmitted to his fellows. Neither are we astonished that the revelation given should take the form of a literature. Such a form arrests the swift torrent of departing time, and gives the otherwise fleeting word an abiding, unchangeable ———EEEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeE oo OC THE WRITTEN WORD. 127 presence. It is ‘‘graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock for ever.” 2. ITS NECESSARY LIMITATIONS. In the study of such a revelation, however, due regard must be given to the necessary limitations involved in such a method of communication lest too much should be expected from the record, and the eager heart should mingle with thankfulness for what is given, a regret that it was not more explicit and complete. In a revelation given by God to man in the form of a literature limitations must exist,—limitations caused alike by the inadequacy of language, the restricted capacity of the pupil, the necessities of human progress, and the claims of human freedom and responsibility. Look first at the questioii of language. He who speaks to men must speak in the language ofmen. He must incarnate His Spirit in the words of mortals as His Son became incarnate in a human body. But the language of man cannot adequately express the thought of God. We see this illustrated in men of genius. They can never tell us all their secret. The vehicle of expression is too gross for the mind’s subtle lightning. ‘The orator cannot utter to the crowd all he feels. The painter cannot fix upon the canvas all hisdream. The musician cannot utter through his instrument all the message which surges through his heart and brain. And even God cannot escape this condition. The inadequacy of human language as a vehicle of Divine thought presents a barrier on which the torrent of inspiration strikes and is broken. ‘The teacher is also fettered by the limited capacity of the pupil. A father may be willing to tell his child all he knows, but the thing is impossible, because of the child’s inability to receive the message. The father must stoop from his altitude and become a child again that the child may understand him. So in revelation, God, if we may so speak, babbles with His children. He tells them as much 128 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: as they can bear and withholds the rest. Hespeaks of Him- self in the language of our thoughts, feelings, and passions. He seems to move toward us with the utterance, “‘I am human and therefore nothing that is human can be foreign to me.” Thus the anthropomorphism in the Bible, at which some have sneered, is but the expression of that beautiful condescension in which God has ‘‘ come down in the likeness of men” that men may know Him. The necessities of human progress also place a limit on revela- tion. God must not say too much. ‘The finite creature must have room to grow. The truths which man can discover for himself must be left to him, that he may be greatened by the mastery of them. Hence the reticence of the Bible on mere questions of science and philosophy. The Old Testa- ment opens with an account of creation so wonderfully in harmony with the latest science that the pencil of the seer must have been God-guided. A sublime hint is dropped by the author of the Book of Job when he speaks of the ‘“‘sweet influences of the Pleiades” and of ‘the bands of Orion.” But the record does not go too far lest too much should be told. A silence is imposed upon it that the geologist may not be deprived of his ennobling quest, and that the astronomer may himself wrest from the stars their secret. Space is left for the keel of Columbus and the research of Darwin. God stands back that He may give the finite creature room. Human liberty and responsibility also impose restrictions on revelation. We cannot conceive of a moral being without freedom to choose. Necessitated worship would only be the homage of an automatom. Hence in revelation man is not brought too near to God lest freedom should be overpowered and God should miss the willing service of his creatures. As Pascal puts it—‘ There is light enough for those who wish to see and darkness enough for those who are of a contrary disposition.” We are not the slaves of God. We may resist Him if we will. Ifit were granted to us in our moments of THE WRITTEN WORD. I29 uncertainty to ‘see the heavens opened and the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God,” moral responsibility and progress would become impossible to us. Our freedom would be violated. Revelation is therefore tempered with strict regard to our moral nature and our moral probation. 8. THE HIGHER CRITICISM. ‘Keeping the preceding considerations in view we will still further pause from the study of the Written Word itself to note the results of recent criticism with respect to the order and contents of the sacred books. Criticism is a method of knowledge, a method by which we test the certainty of human conclusions. It has, therefore, an important mission, ofttimes reaching results which are thoroughly reliable and which demand attention and accep- tance. Many such results are said to have been arrived at with respect to the Old Testament by scholars like Stade and Kuenen and Wellhausen. Our scope and purpose preclude an adequate examination of these results. Such an exam- ination would need volumes, and may well be left to experts. These critics are said to have established the following positions—fist, that a part of the early history of Israel is mythical and not historical; second, that the books which do chronicle events which have a sound basis in history did not exist in their present form, but only in fragments handed down by tradition, till long after the events; and third, that these books being manipulated and arranged by later hands, exhibit a projection of later ideas into past times. All we can here say is that, if these positions are really established, we are presented, as Professor Davison and other orthodox critics have admitted, with ‘‘a more credible and verifiable account of the order and character of the revelations vouchsafed.” As the same time we must be careful in accepting even such results to avoid the assump- tions which are often mixed with them, and to keep free from 130 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH ; the naturalistic bias which is only too apparent in much of the biblical criticism of the day. Much of what is termed the Higher Criticism is but the latest exemplification of the doctrine of evolution without God. The history of Israel, and the revelation given through it to the world, are to be framed in accordance with what are regarded as established scientific principles. There is a Memnon statue in the desert uttering more than mortal music in the light of Heaven, and it must be levelled with the dust. Nothing can be permanently tolerated by this school of thinkers, either in Judaism or Christianity, which does not agree with the modern theory of development, according to which all religions began in debased forms of idolatry, and ascended by very slow gradations toward the belief in one Supreme Deity. Thus, acccording to them, the religion of Israel did not enter the world through Abraham or Moses in a complete and noble form, as a republication of a primitive faith given to man in the beginning of years, and as adumbrating redemption and a Redeemer ; but it is the result of slow development from lower to higher conceptions. Like the nations around them, the tribes who settled in Canaan had their national God, and Jehovah was to them very much what Chemosh was to Moab or Milcom to Ammon. Their religious faith and observances were very much like those of the nations around them. The only evidence on which these conclusions are founded is the sacred books themselves. The critic has no other Bible than that which is in our own hands, neither has he any additional documents inaccessible to us. And yet he presumes to form a concep- tion of Israel’s religious development totally different from that contained in the Old Testament itself. We, however, boldly repudiate these assumptions as unwarrantable. We turn to the great prophets who lived and wrote before the exile, and we find that they do not regard the religion of Israel as a thing of their day, or claim to have reached it THE WRITTEN WORD. 131 by their own study. They appeal to a series of prophetic men before them who had taught the same truths, and pre- suppose for their race a certain religious standing resting on an antecedent history, to which they repeatedly refer. Going still further back, we find that the writings which record the work of Moses as prophet, leader, and lawgiver of ancient Israel, abound with references to the covenant and the promise made to Abraham. With Abraham the history of Israel as a people begins, and the prophets were not the makers of its religion, but simply reformers and continuors, recalling the people to a Divine standard from which they had fallen, and to a holy law which they had profaned and broken. The fact is that Israel, at the dawn of its national existence, had an exalted conception of God and a high rule of duty, which it neither borrowed from its neighbours nor invented for itself. Thus the attempt to apply that law of progress which has been asserted with regard to other religions to the case of Israel utterly fails. When all the legitimate results of the Higher Criticism are admitted, the moral and spiritual quali- ties of the Written Word, together with its lofty and unique position as a literature culminating in that benign miracle of history, the truth and life which became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, still remain. The religion of Israel cannot be looked upon as a merely natural formation and development : itis a new moral creation. In virtue of it, Israel was to the sinful world what conscience is to the individual heart, while Jehovah towered above the gods of Egypt and Assyria like Sinai above the desert plain. On the whole we are of opinion that some of our Christian thinkers, in their desire to appear fair and open to conviction, have received, without sufficient caution, some of the conclu- sions of the Modern German School of Biblical critics. Take for instance the objection urged against the credibility of the Old Testament records, that they place a state of 132 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: national unity and a general acceptance of Mosaism and the high moral standard of the law before the dark, chaotic, and humbling times of the Judges, which is contrary to all analogy of ancient religions. But the fact is overlooked that Christian history presents precisely the same exception to the general rule. If the Pentateuch, at least in its essential contents, is said to have preceded the dark ages of Jewish national life, it is certain that the New Testament preceded the Christian Middle Ages; and if Moses is said to have preceded the Judges, it is certain that the Evangelists and the Apostles preceded the Fathers and the Schoolmen. In the present condition of Biblical criticism, it would undoubtedly be unwise to form inflexible opinions, or to assume unchangeable positions, either favourable or antago- nistic to the new learning ; but it is equally unwise to regard b this ‘‘ higher criticism ”’ as an infallible art, or to accept too hastily the conclusions of a school of thinkers whose purpose seems to be to eliminate from the ancient records of our faith all traces of the supernatural and the divine. Having thus referred to the Higher Criticism, we now turn to the sacred Scriptures themselves, only to conclude that in them God has verily spoken from the silence of eternity for the guidance of the children of earth and time. These Scriptures have been handed down to us from elected, devout, and responsive spirits, who, in the old time, ‘spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” They are given as a Divine addition to the light of nature and of reason. They take us up where human knowledge ends, shedding upon our path and destiny ‘a light which never was on sea or land,” and furthermore, a light such as never fell on the awakened and inquiring mind of the foremost heathen thinkers. These Scriptures are in our hands. The printing-press has lent them wings, and they are everywhere found—found alike in the chamber of the student, the palace of the king, and the cottage of the poor man, making his dim window open up THE WRITTEN WORD. 13.3 into the deep sublime of eternity. Like the voice of Nature, “their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words unto the end of the world.’’ No utterances ever given to humanity are so widely read, so fondly cherished, so devoutly pondered. They mingle with the hum of the busy city, and they join in the chime of the desert sea. On the Sabbath morn they pass like light from land to land, until their glory girdles the world. They are the breath of the wise, and the joy of the saintly. They build our temples, and they beautify our homes. At their bidding the clasping charm of earthliness is unlocked, and selfishness shrinks back ashamed. At their bidding care rocks herself to sleep, ad- versity lifts up her veil and shows her angel face, death itself speaks sweetly, and Heaven opens wide its pearly gates. They prove their inspiration by inspiring all who “ read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them,” and “they have created by their immortal breath a succession of men who are heroically bent on making them universal.” 4%. THE AIM OF THE BIBLE. If now we ask what is the great end and purpose of divinely revealed truth, we learn that it is the development of man as amoral being. The creation of holy character, the building up of men in the image of God, this is its great end. This is what the Bible claims for itself and only this. Hence we read in the Epistle to Timothy :—‘* Al] scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” And again we learn in the Epistle to the Romans that ‘‘ whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning; that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures, might have hope.” Thus the Bible is not intended to teach physical science, or to be a manual of history, but to instruct man in righteousness and true holiness. 134 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. It is given “to teach us how to go to heaven, and-not how the heavens go.” It may not offer us a clearly defined Cos- mogony, or propound a complete philosophic system, or pre- scribe a definite plan of Church order, or construct for us a clearly-cut theological creed. But it instructs men in righteousness, it points out those elements of character which are needed for the highest manhood, it restores to con- science its rightful supremacy, it reforms vicious habits, it holds in check evil passions, it quickens and nourishes bene- volent impulses, and by these things it is content to be judged. From its earliest records we trace in the Biblea wonderful revelation of the majesty and sanctity of the moral law. Modern criticism may have modified our view of the Pentateuch as a whole, but we at least know that the Ten Commandments, the corner-stone of the early commonwealth of Israel, were promulgated by Moses. No later age had the power to invent them, and it is questionable whether any nobler age would have risen without them. ‘* We open this code,” says one, ‘‘ graven on the young life of the nation as on the rude tables of stone, and we find a pure fabric of moral and religious truth. In this short summary we have the outline of all treatises on morality, and of all codes of Justice untainted by the faintest breath of vicious or barbarous legislation. If we compare it with the code of Menu, the sacred books of China, the fragments of the Persian religion, there is nothing like it. Nay,if we compare it with the ideal laws of Plato in the noblest age of Greece, it passes beyond them, not only in its faith in one God, but in its whole character.” Again, writing of the books of the Bible, Ruskin says :—‘‘ This is demonstrably true of the entire volume of them, as we have it, and read,—each of us as it may be rendered in his native tongue; that, however mingled with mystery which we are not required to unravel, or difficulties which we should be insolent in desiring to solve, it contains plain teaching for men of every rank of soul and THE WRITTEN WORD. 135 state in life, which so far as they honestly and implicitly obey, they will be happy and innocent to the utmost powers of their nature, and capable of victory over all adversities, whether of temptation or pain.” ‘These Scriptures have trained for the service of God and man the noblest spirits earth has ever known, and whatever may be the future progress of the race, they can never be superseded or outworn. They are ever in advance of us. How can we outgrow them when in the first pages of the Old Testament they tell us we are made in the image of God, and in the first pages of the New, we read, ‘“‘be ye, therefore perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” ? Like hope, they cheer us to continual effort, they present to us a boundless prospect, they fly in front of our best success. Their mission will end only when men become like God, and earth becomes like heaven. The Holy Scriptures enlighten and guide the conscience. Conscience, as we have already shown, is that in us which distinguishes between the right and the wrong, the base and the noble, in characterand action. But without revelation this glorious faculty is, after all, but likea beam in darkness. There are inany obligations under which we rest, both to God and to our fellow-man, which conscience unassisted does not discover. It dwells in the savage, but it does not lead him to forgive his enemies. It dwells in the Hindoo mother, but it does not save her child from the Ganges in her eagerness to propitiate the god of her idolatry. Men “ often know not what they do” when they sin most deeply. Conscience does not shine with sufficient clearness to reveal the nature of evil. There is darkness in the lighthouse, where darkness ought not to be. Man often does evil conscientiously. Divine light and guidance are therefore needed by this splendid faculty. And in the Written Word a reliable guide is granted us in all those solemn relations on which depend our sanctification and immortal blessedness. Our chrono- meters get out of order, but we can correct them by the sun. In 136 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: the Holy Scriptures we possess a body of teaching in whose pure light, ‘like the stained web which whitens in the sun, we grow pure by being purely shone upon.” Again, the written Word addresses the element of freedom in man, presenting motives to virtue of transcendent power, and strengthening the will in the choice of good. Man is not the creature of necessity, but a free creature. He is not bound by an irresistible fate to any given course of action; he can do the things which he ought not to do, and leave undone the things which he ought to do. He is not a helpless barque on the sea of destiny, impelled by every wind that blows; he holds the helm in his own hands, and can steer where he desires and resolves to steer. Here it is that man most nearly resembles God. For the highest thing that can be said of God is that He is His own Master. So also, in a sense, is man, who is made in God’s image. It is this in which consists the essence of personality by which man is raised above the bounds of mere Nature, standing off from mere Nature, interrogating and controlling it. Like the mere animal, he is exposed to the lower motives and impulses ; but, unlike the mere animal, he is not controlled by them; on the contrary, they are under his control. He can ‘Move upward working out the beast, And let the ape and tiger die.” Appetite may solicit the will, but the will can control appetite; the things which appetite covets, the will can reject. Shameful solicitations may besiege the mind, but the mind can refuse them entrance, or if they have entered, can expel them. It is through the fact of his freedom that man is, in a subordinate sense, a creator. The grave and awful privilege of liberty places in his hands the most sacred trust in creation, namely, his own character, which he may build up in beauty or surrender to deformity as he himself resolves. But the will is influenced by motives, and in the battle of THE WRITTEN WORD. 137 life, where the temptations to baseness and animalism are often so fierce and so terrible, the motives to vivtue need to be equally strong. Such motives are presented to the reason and the will in the written word of God, motives which, if allowed to influence man in a degree at all propor- tioned to their inherent grandeur and supreme importance, should bear him with gentle violence in the direction of good. This is one of the loftiest perogatives of Divine Revelation. A witness for God and for eternity, it furnishes sanctions and warnings which, duly heeded, arrest the spirit and bid it pause before it enters the paths of pleasurable sin. Hence, from its first promulgation until now, it has proved the mightiest antagonist which sin has ever encountered. It has substituted for mere precepts of morality the ‘‘ Thou shalt,” and the ** Thou shalt not,” of an Almighty lawgiver. It has also linked the fleeting present with the eternal future, investing every duty of life with the most solemn sanctions. Our hand is on the gates of heaven. Hell is beneath our feet. Judgment is nearing, judgment on the immortal soul, which lives on when the body has returned to its native dust. How then can we cleave to the sin which smites us with a fatal leprosy, and shuts us out from the fellowships of the pure? Motives of gratitude are also appealed to, from which no nobler spirit should be able to break away. The wondrous revelation of Divine mercy and Divine hunger for our love, unfolded in Redemption, rolls a weight of obligation on our hearts which, unless faith be utterly dead in us, we cannot ignore. How fine were the words of the poor African to his teacher who said, i hheeCross orsGhrist. condemnsime to’ be holy!’» It is motives such as these which have constituted the religion of the Bible, the mightiest agent in morality the world has ever known. Hence the virtues, unknown to Paganism, which have sweetened the world through its influence, breaking like a celestial morning on its shadows and its shame, the Io 138 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH « humbleness, the self-sacrifice, the charity, the forgiveness, the chastity, which are the outcome of the new moral type created by “‘ the truth as it is in Jesus.” The Christian Spirit. We will close this chapter with the following portrayal of the Christian spirit from the pen of the devout Quaker, James Naylor: ‘‘ There is a spirit which I feel which delights to do no evil, nor to avenge any wrong ; but delights to endure all things in hope, to enjoy its own at the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to wear out all exalta- tion and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. Ifit be betrayed it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned. It takes its kingdom with entreaty, and not with contention ; and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings, for with the world’s joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.” This spirit, itisthe peculiar province of the Bible to create. Hence it can never be superseded by human philosophies or human civilisation, but will for ever lead on the generations of humanity toward the gates of heaven, and the sanctities of God. 5. The Glory of the Written Word. As we study with devout attention the subject-matter of the written Word, we are deeply impressed by its lonely pre-eminence over all other messages and voices which the THE WRITTEN WORD. 139 eager heart of man nas interpreted as oracles of God. True, the light dawns gradually, being adapted to the weak and diseased eyes on which it falls, but none can doubt that it is light from heaven. Our theories of inspiration may not always hold good, but from the fact of inspiration we cannot break away. The vehicle through which the revelation has come may be more or less imperfect ; the human organ may stammer or falter in its utterance, or shrink from the solemn charge, as Moses, when he pleaded his unfitness to become the mouth- piece of God; but the ‘Iam that I am,” which announces the awful Name to the Hebrew people, bears in itself the assurance of its divinity. This Word is like the sunlight, Carrying its evidence in itself. Like the heavens it discloses vast heights which we have not scaled, and suggests the infinite. Init man does not ascend to God, but God descends to man. Here human thought and human effort frequently pause, and we pass into a region in which our own powers are subordinate, in which recipiency, not self-activity, is the primary law, and in which the chief worker is not man, but God. As we ponder the sublimer utterances of this Word, we are startled to find how near to God we are. ‘‘Calling us onward acd upward through a silence that makes our very breathing a conscious trespass, and through a light from which our very purity shrinks with shame,” these oracles place us in the inmost sanctuary of the Eternal. They speak asnever man spake. Itis true that human elements underlie them, but they are penetrated and glorified by the Divine, as the branches and leaflets of the bush of Horeb flamed with Deity. The writers themselves are evidently but the organs of a Divine utterance, the instruments of a larger and loftier mind. They are sometimes caught up as in a whirlwind, and carried often where they do not wish to go. They quiver and bow before the rush of the inspiration which beats upon them like reeds before the eddying torrent. Borne forward by an irresistible impulse, they speak often 10* 140 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. against their natural inclination, and with results which oppress their own hearts. Who is it who says, ‘‘ Every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart is only evil con- tinually”? And is it one of the sinful nation, or the God who rules it, who utters the dread impeachment ?—‘“‘ I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against Me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider. Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evil-doers, children that. are corruptors: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.” Here evidently, and in a hundred passages of a like order, we have something higher than the voice or the authority of man. ‘The silence of eternity is broken by Him who inhabits it, as the only temple vast enough to contain Him, and we stand afar off not daring to approach the Being who makes “thick darkness His pavilion,” and reveals Himself in ‘‘earthquake, tempest, and fire.” The Witness of the Bible to God. The Bible is fitly characterised as the book of God, inasmuch as it is specially dedicated to God and to His claims. Gleam- ing on its massive front, like an inscription above the porch of a temple, we find the words, ‘‘ In the beginning, God;” and on entering the temple every symbol bears Him witness, and every voice declares that ‘‘His is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is His; and He reigneth over all.” Ifcreation is described in graphic out- line it is done that we may learn how God created the heavens and the earth. If the wanderings of Israel are depicted, it is that the providence of God may be manifested in their history. If souls are fired with poetic inspiration it is that they may sing of the ecstasy which thrills them under the THE WRITTEN WORD. I4I light of God’s countenance, or of the woe which overwhelms them when He hides His face. If Prophets are endowed with the vision which pierces the future, it is that they may tell of the Kingdom of God which is to be established in the viewless years. Page after page of the written word burns with God. His great name moves through it in solemn majesty, as the one source of all its elevation and power. Every promise is breathed by Him, every judgment pro- ceeds from Him, and alienation from Him is everywhere condemned as the damning sin of man. ‘The personal claims or wrongs of the patriot and the prophet are often utterly forgotten in view of the insult offered to the Divine majesty. ‘‘ Rivers of water run down mine eyes because they keep not Thy law,” cried Jeremiah, amid the ruins of the city of his love ; and the hunted and weary prophet, when twice interro- gated as to the reason of his presence and despair in the wilderness, twice answers with soul-stirring pathos and devo- tion, ‘‘I have been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts, for the people Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword ;” while from the tortured soul of David rises the cry, ** Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight.” Others had been wronged by the sin of David, but the insult done to the Divine majesty swallows up in his thought all lesser considerations, and constitutes the head and front of his offending. In Israel the Law and the Lawgiver are always so united that the transgression of the one implies defiance of the other. The deep and pervading thought of the people consists in the intellectual and emotional convic- tion that they are responsible to the Supreme. Hence those personal appeals to the Deity uttered by souls battling with difficulty or tortured by remorse. What heathen ever raised to his God a cry like that of David? Stern Jupiter or sovereign Jove could never have crushed from their worship- pers such a wail, first, because they failed to engage their 142 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: affections, and second, because they left their consciences unstirred and unrebuked. ‘Other nations,” says Josephus, “ have a morality without religion; among the Jews, religion is made the basis of virtue.” Ofthis book it may be accurately said that God is ‘its life, the ocean to the river of its thought which terminates its all.” All its events move beneath the shadow of the “great white throne,” as the Genevan lake beneath the shadow of Mont Blanc, only here the dazzling seat is not vacant, but occupied by the Sovereign of the Universe. The Bible Reveals God. Concerning the Eternal Infinite, the Bible itself agrees with the latest conclusions of philosophy, as formulated hy Herbert Spencer and his school, that man cannot by searching find Him out. An adequate knowledge of God is something which transcends human capacity, and evades all methods of human enquiry. To quote the language of St. Paul, “What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man that isin him?’ And who but the Spirit of God can know the things of God? Man may be conversant with his own mind, but he cannot be conversant with the mind of God. This the Spirit of God must reveal to him, it must be supernaturally communicated. The proof of this statement appears from the fact, that, apart from the revelation given in the Written Word, men have been utterly unable to arrive at any adequate conception of God. Here reason fails with all her powers. Hence in ancient Athens she called Him “ the Unutterable.” Over the portals of an Egyptian temple she wrote, “lam he which was, which is, and which shall be, and no mortal hath ever lifted my veil.” And in this latter time, after long ages of fruitless enquiry, those who reject the aid of revelation call him in England “the Unknowable,” and in Germany ‘the Unconscious.” We have paid a deserved tribute to the genius of Plato and Socrates, but THE WRITTEN WORD. 143 when we test by patient scrutiny their conceptions of God we find that in their teachings He is constantly lost in Nature, or in some general idea, such as Goodness, or Beauty, or Power. Pliny says, ‘‘ What God is, if in truth He be anything distinct from the world, it is beyond the com- pass of man’s understanding to know,” and a Greek poet writes : ‘Except the gods themselves to thee unveil, Search as thou wilt the world, thou seek’st in vain.” What a flood of light is poured upon the highest of all themes when we turn to the written Word as contained in the Bible! Here we gaze on the glory of God as in a mirror, and the revelation throws the gazer on his knees. “The Lord is King, and His sceptre ruleth overall. The heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. He putteth on light as a garment, and spreadeth out the heavens as a tent to dwell in. He sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers. The heavens grow old, and are changed as a garment, and laid aside as a worn-out vesture, but He is the same and His years fail not. At His call dawn breaks across the waiting world. At His bidding the showers descend, and the light- nings come and go. The eyes of all wait upon Him, and He giveth them their meat in due season. He openeth His hand, and all things are filled with good. The mountains see Him and tremble, the deep utters its voice and lifts its hands on high. The stars are His flock, and He guides them over the azure plains, calls them by their names, and gathers them into their fold beyond the veil of sunrise. He governs the sweet influences of the Pleiades, and girds Orion with its gleaming belt. He brings forth Mazzaroth with his seasons, and guides Arcturus with his suns. Yet ‘‘ Lo these are parts of His ways, But how little a portion is heard of Him; Lo these are whispers of His power, But the thunder of His power who can understand ?” 144 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH ¢ Such, in broad outline, is the biblical conception of the Deity, a conception which dwarfs into nothingness the proudest speculations and utterances of the greatest of heathen poets and ‘‘ seekers after God.” There are those in our midst who affect a haughty independence of Revelation, and who assume that all the religious truth we possess might have been created by man’s own consciousness apart from any special divine communication. But a fair com- parison of the position of the Hebrews as to their religious conceptions with that occupied by their neighbours tends to confirm the utterance of him who said,—*‘ Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him. But God hath revealed them to us by by his Spirit.” It would appear from the records which we know to be of very early date, as for instance the revelation of the Divine name given to Moses and recorded in Exodus xxxiv. 6-7, that there was a body of knowledge communicated to God’s ancient people, beyond the reach of the subtlest investigation of the human mind, or its purest and loftiest self-develop- ment. The progress of the religious life of Israel is far ahead of that found in other nations. Other primitive peoples, and even peoples of the same Semitic race, never approached the stage reached by the Hebrews. Occupying their small slip of earth, with a very limited mental training and surrounded by the same natural appearances as others, they yet look out on the Eternal One as from an elevation of their own, pouring forth the sublime hymn,—‘ Before the mountains were brought forth, or the earth and the world were formed, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” Going back some three thousand years we find all nations, save the Jews, in the lowest stages of Idolatry. The Chaldeans, the Persians, the Phoenicians, worshipped the heavenly bodies, besides a host of other gods and goddesses. The Egyptians, one of the most highly civilised nations of THE WRITTEN WORD. I45 antiquity, paid divine honours to every kind of animal—to the bull Apis, to the crocodile, and even to the cat. If we turn to the divinities of Greece in the earlier period of her history, we find that their Zeus is a royal adulterer, and their Aphrodite the queen of wanton love. But at this same period, in the wilderness of Horeb, there is given to a lonely exile a conception of God to which all succeeding ages have added no heightening touch of splendour. There, amid sur- rounding idolatries and cruel rites and bloody sacrifices, the heavens are opened and a God is revealed, not only of infinite power, but of infinite pity, one who loves His human children, and who carries them in his arms as a mother carries her child in her bosom. Now whence, amid surrounding darkness and _ idolatry, did this transcendent revelation of God proceed? Did Moses procure it from the priests or the oracles of Egypt? No! Their highest reach of thought was embodied in a doctrine of Pantheism, and their worship was paid to the bull and the crocodile. Was it the creation of the religious genius of the Hebrew people? No! The Hebrew people were slowly educated to receive it, and even after its reception exhibited a proneness to idolatry which was the great sorrow of their prophets and teachers. We are shut up therefore to the conviction, that the Jews received it from on high. It is a miracle in thought, which we accept with reverence and gratitude to the Merciful One who has broken the silence of eternity for the instruction and guidance of our bewildered race. We are surely justified in asserting that without a special and unique Revelation from God Himself the sublime, elevated, uncompromising Monothe- ism of ancient Israel would have been impossible. From these considerations we now pass on to certain ideas with respect to God expressed by the Hebrew writers, which establish their claim toa knowledge of the Supreme never attained by the peoples who surrounded them. 146 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. Prominent among these is the witness of the Bible to the Divine personality. Humanity requires for its God a personal God. An impersonal God is to humanity nothing, for the very reason that He is all. The Polytheism which degrades the idea of God by the adoption of thousands of divinities, and the Pantheism which merges his personality in the outward universe, are alike unsatisfactory to the human intellect and the human heart. Now, alone of all religions, the Hebrew faith shows God essentially and eternally distinct from the world He has created, and the creatures He sustains and governs. The God of Abraham, and David, and St. Paul was a living, personal reality. Coming unto God they “believed that He was, and that He was the rewarder of those who diligently sought Him.” They set the Lord alway before them, they walked before the Lord in the land of the living. He was the object of their supreme love, the source of their deepest joy. They rested in Him, they waited for Him, they submitted to His providence, they obeyed His will, they delighted in His fellowship ; and all this was possible only because they felt that the object of their trust was not a Necessity, not a Fate, not an impersonal Power, not the mere ‘fluent life” and ‘spirit ” of the universe which ‘“‘impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things,” but a living, loving personality. And this conception of a personal God is finely associated in the Scriptures with the idea of the Divine spirituality. The God of the Bible is not a ‘magnified, non-natural man,” but a Spirit demanding from His people a spiritual worship. The condition of the heathen is well described by St. Paul where he says: ‘“‘ They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the image of corruptible men, and birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” But the Jews, though an essentially sensuous people, surrounded by idolatrous nations, had still a spiritual worship. No THE WRITTEN WORD. 147 theory which makes all religions the mere development of the religious consciousness in man can account for this. It is a miracle of religious history. How sublime are the state- ments of the written Word with regard to the spirituality of God! ‘God isa spirit; and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” He is “the King eternal, invisible, who alone hath immortality.” No man hath seen God at any time. He is invisible, incorruptible, immortal: ‘‘ dwelling in light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see.” ‘The biblical conception of God is that of a spirit omnipresent in creation without being identified with it; a conception to the full sublimity of which the thoughts of no heathen people ever rose, but the truth of which forces itself at once upon the reason. The Israelites alone, of all the nations of antiquity, worshipped a God whom they believed to be personal and yet universal, universal and yet personal, and from this lowly and obscure stock that conception has been engrafted upon the world. We have received from them, through the Bible, the only adequate and satisfactory conception offered to human thought of the relation of God to the universe. The idea of God standing outside creation as a mere Architect and Artificer is unthinkable and untrue. While He transcends Nature, He is also immanent in Nature. The Pantheism which sinks the Divine personalty in His works may be false, but it is still true that the presence of God, and the life of God, and the thought of God pervade the universe as com- pletely as the human mind and soul pervade the human body. What the intellect demands is the idea of the Divine imma- nency in Nature together with the Divine tvanscendency beyond it. And this idea is the idea of the Bible, an idea which agrees with the ripest human conceptions, and explains the phenomena around us in a most remarkable manner. Nature is concrete reason. The universe is composed of rational 148 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: elements in rational relations. The stars have not marked out their owncourses. The migrating bird does not direct its own flight. The bee is not the author of the perfect mathematics of its cell. All things are interpenetrated with God; they are constantly dependent on an _ intelligent, personal, omnipresent power. Thought cannot escape from mind in the universe, because the universe is interpenetrated by the sleepless intelligence and activity of God. ‘Of Him, and through ‘Him, and to Him, are all things.” The universe is the living visible garment of God, and we who, made in His image, interrogate the universe and interpret it, ‘“‘live, and move, and have our being” in Him. To this sublime biblical conception human thought is slowly rising. As Dr. Fairbairn says :—‘* The Natur of Goéthe, ever building and ever destroying, eternal life and eternal change, never permanent yet fugitive, never without speech yet creating the tongues by which she speaks and the hearts by which she feels, ever perfeet yet never complete, is but Deity externalised and active. Darwin’s evolution, too, lives and wins its way by the conception of a nature which, subtly penetrated by personal attributes, can in whole and in all her parts contrive, struggle, preserve, develop, and do a million things possible only to perceiving intellect and active will.” Thus the last results of the science and the philosophy which have too often despised the Bible are yet destined to bring the thinkers of the world to the feet of those anointed seers who, in the old time, when science and philosophy were yet unborn, “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” Yet further, the Bible reveals to us the Divine sanctity. Here again the Written Word stands off in a sublime separateness from all the religious conceptions of surrounding nations. The heathen made their gods in their own likeness ; they shared the vices and infirmities of their worshippers. Hence Miss Cobbe has said with great force: ‘In the ages before morality the THE WRITTEN WORD. I49 gods were necessarily immoral ; for man could no more invent morality to give his god than he could invent for him a bodily sense which he did not himself possess.” But that which man could not invent, and which outward nature did not suggest, was revealed to the Hebrew people. Through their sacred records, as through the arches of Heaven, there rolls the grand refrain, ‘“‘ Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts.” Heathenism did not know the holy God; hence He is called in the Old Testament the “‘ Holy One of Israel,” for to Israel only was He thus known. “ He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.” ‘Holy and reverend is Hisname.” “ The heavens are not clean before Him, and the angels are charged with folly.” “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” Perfect moral excellence belongs to Him alone; hence we read, “for Thou only art holy.” Thus in the Bible only do we read of that sanctity which is the very Divinity of the Deity, the ineffable harmony of all the perfections of His glorious character. This conception is not the creation of Hebrew genius; on the contrary, its noblest representatives quail before it as before a splendour which they are unable to bear. Hence, when the vision of the throne of Jehovah, with the seraphim veiling their faces before it, bursts on Isaiah in the temple, he cries, ‘‘ Woe is me, for leameaeman of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips ;” and before the well-nigh insufferable glory of this moral reve- lation the patriarch of Uz exclaims, ‘‘I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eyes see Thee, wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” It was this unveiling of the Divine sanctity which gave birth to the Hebvew idea of sin. It had its rise in the revelation of a holy God, with whom they had to do. In heathen systems the origin of evil was found in matter, in the war of the flesh with the spirit; but in the Jewish system there is the recognition of that older and sadder war between the stain- less Deity and the polluted human soul. The heathen had 150 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. the consciousness of moral failure and moral defect, but it was in Israel, to use the bold words of Dr. Abbott, ‘‘ where the idea of siz was first invented.” It was not, however, invented at all, but was a natural result flowing from the transcendent revelation of the holy God given to the Hebrew people. Yet further, the written Word provides a supernatural revelation of the Divine love. Nature reveals a God of power and wisdom, Providence a God of righteousness, Revelation a God of grace. In all heathen religions the only unvarying attribute of God is power. In the Bible, God is revealed as pitying and forgiving love. The veil which shrouds the inner life of the Deity from human vision is lifted, and during thousands of years we behold the love of God seeking man with the rich fertility of Divine compassion, striving to gain access to his heart, adapting itself, so to speak, to his various conditions, and never abandoning, unless consciously and _perseveringly abandoned. Far back, in the earliest dawn of this marvel- lous revelation, we read concerning Moses that ‘‘the Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” ‘Thus are the law and the love of God linked together in the very earliest announce- ment of the Divine character vouchsafed to ancient Israel. Here in the very beginning a God is unveiled, Who pities the fallen, and Who yearns to pardon and to restore them. While Nature told her story of inexorable law, and repeated her grim lesson of ceaseless births of beauty ceaselessly falling into the jaws of death; while the Assyrian pictured a Deity uniting the rude strength of a bull with the head and crown of a king, and the winged swiftness of an eagle, here a God was revealed who was heart to heart with man, a God who loved him, and yearned to bless and to redeem him. And THE WRITTEN WORD. I51 with this first revelation of the Divine love, the whole of the subsequent record agrees. How tender are the relations of God with Abraham, whom He does not hesitate to call His friend! With what kindness does He listen to his pleading for the corrupt cities of the plain! In the story of Hagar in the wilderness with her dying child, how beautiful is the revelation of the mother-heart in the God who thundered from Sinai! How touching is the fatherly care displayed in the career of Joseph! With what patience did He who marshals the stars, lead His people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron! How continually does David sing of His loving kindness, while Isaiah often ceases from his soaring ‘in vortices of giory and blue air,” to nestle in the bosom of God like a child in the bosom of a mother! Nay, a mother may forget her sucking child, yet, says Jehovah concerning Zion, ‘I will not forget thee.” Where will you equal these tender delineations of ‘‘the Father of spirits’? Where in the Vedas, or the Koran, or the poetry or philosophy of ancient Greece or Rome, shall we search for revelations such as these? Here a God is revealed to us utterly different from what we could expect. Only He, from whom we have wandered, and whom we naturally fear, could be the author of such conceptions, veiling His inconceivable majesty in exquisite tenderness, and meeting our sin with the unwearied compassion of holy love. 6. ITS DIVINE CREDENTIALS. The credentials of the Bible are found not in any theory of its inspiration, but in the record itself. That record existed before any theories with regard to its inspiration were formed, and it will exist when they have been either confirmed or abandoned. ‘Too often the discomfiture of the theorist has been permitted to discredit the essential grandeur of the revelation. This should not be, because the two things are utterly distinct, and the failure of the one does not in the 152 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. slightest degree affect the validity of the other. The stars kept their courses when Hipparchus and Ptolemy were blundering about their motions, and they would still do so even if the Newtonian system were superseded. And as with the heavens which declare the glory of God, so with the records which reveal His heart. They abide, the mistakes of men notwithstanding. The Bible contains within itself the evidences of its Divine origin. As we have said before, in it man does not ascend to God, but God descends to man. In the case of those who have handed it down to us we have not human nature feeling after and moving towards the unknown God, with instinctive aspiration and dark questionings ; but we behold the Lord Himself moving toward men in revelation, and communicating truths that they could not have discovered for themselves. Recent criticism notwithstanding, this Book is not the slowly-evolved product of the religious conscious- ness in man, since many of its grandest utterances leaped into the light ages before they could have been justified by any theory of development. It is not, as we have already shown, the outcome of the peculiar genius of the Hebrew people, since again and again they lapsed into the sensualism and idolatry from which it was given to save them. It is not the creation of man at all, it is the gift of God. To repeat that which has been often affirmed, and never successfully refuted, the Bible could not have been the invention of bad men, for it transcends their virtue; it could not have been the produc- tion of good men, for it exceeds their noblest powers. Angels, to have produced it must, by the inevitable implication of falsehood, have become devils by the deed, and devils must have been fools beyond all human example by giving birth to a system which necessitated their own doom in hopeless preclusion from the Kingdom of God and virtue. To quote a terse and forceful utterance from the pen of Henry Kogers, the author of ‘The Eclipse of Faith”: ‘‘ The Bible is a book which man would not have written if he could; and which he THE WRITTEN WORD. 153 could not have written itif he would.” Man would not have written it if he could, for it includes all men under sin, con- demning their vices and crossing their corrupt inclinations. Still less would that people have written it who nevertheless preserved it at the expense of their life, for it impeaches them before the bar of the ages as a ‘‘ perverse and stiff-necked generation,” and predicts that they will continue so, refusing alike warning and reformation, until they become “a hissing and a bye-word among the nations.” But what is still more important, the Bible is a book which man could not have written of he would. It contains sublime utterances which only God could make, marvellous revelations which only God could unveil, deep mysteries which only God could know, and miraculous predictions which only God could supply. 7. THE BIBLE LIKE NATURE. Between the Bible and all other books we find all the difference which exists between Nature and Art. Nature is God’s language; Artis ours. Nature is a poem written by God; Art is man’s imperfect translation of that poem. God makes the rivers and the sea; man makes the canal and the reservoir. God makes the breathing man; man makes the marble statue. God lifts above us the starry cope of the immeasurable heavens: man in feeble imitation rears amid the dusk of the busy city his temple dome. The Bible speaks to us as the stars and the mountains speak, making us also great. It moves us as the first fires of dawn move us. It thrills us with a sense of boundless grandeur, as when we gaze on the dimness of the glimmering sea. It soothes and quiets us as when the wan moon hushes itself above us in silvery silence, or we stand awed, and softened amid the solemn splendours of the dying sun. We trace in these records all the matchless sublimity of Nature. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are many of these words higher than our words, and these thoughts than II 154 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: our thoughts. All other writing as compared with this, when we take it at its best and highest, is as the thin voice of the reed to the crash of the tempest, or the shrill cry of the cornet to the throb and thunder of the voiceful sea. From that first grand utterance of Genesis, ‘‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” to that sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping sympho- nies which sounds through the Apocalypse, the Bible is the home of the truly magnificent and sublime. ‘*‘ God comes from Teman, and the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covers the heavens, and the earth is full of His praise. His brightness is as the light, and there is the hiding of His power. He stands and measures the earth; He beholds and drives asunder the nations; and the everlasting moun- tains are scattered, the perpetual hills do bow.” Where, in any other literature, shall we find such images of beauty, such wealth of illustration, such grandeur of delineation, such majestic representations, such depths of passion, such heights of ecstacy, such lofty aspirations, such transcendent hopes? Eternity breaks its long silence, and the music of heaven bursts through the dungeon-bars of earth. It is only the writers of the Bible who are able to pour through the gates of human speech the large utterances of Deity. When our greatest poets attempt to make God speak, they signally fail. Their words bend and break under an effort they are unable to sustain. But it is not so with David, or Isaiah: or with Job when God questions him out of the whirl- wind, making the deeps of language hoary with the rush of the leviathans of thought, until from the o’er-fraught heart of the human listener there breaks the cry, ‘*I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.” Our space does not permit of multiplied quotations, but let him who desires to stand on the loftiest heights of literature, study the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, the thirty-eighth of Job, the one hundred and thirty- ninth Psalm, or St. Paul’s grand funeral elegy in the fifteenth THE WRITTEN WORD. 155 chapter of 1st Corinthians, rolling forth its thrilling diapason like the voice of an organ ‘toned in heaven and charged with the music of eternity. On one occasion a young sceptic, travelling by coach with an aged Christian minister, said, ‘« You say much about your wonderful Bible, but in my judgment it is not fit to be named on the same day with Homer.” ‘‘ Well,” replied the minister ; “ oblige me with a quotation from your favourite poet, that we may compare notes.” The young man quoted the line, “Jove frowned and darkened half the sky.” ‘ Think,” he said, “of the sublimity of that image, the frown of the god darkening half the sky!” ‘¢ You have chosen well,” replied the minister; “but how does that passage read compared with this >—‘I saw a great white throne, and him that sat upon it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.’ ” We trace in the Written Word also, all the lofty uncon- sciousness of Nature. Nature blows no trumpet before her as she unveils her glories. She does her grand things as though she did them not. The sun makes no clatter with his fiery hoofs as he ascends the sky, and the moon climbs the heavens with the silentness of a dream. The human blacksmith, smiting on his anvil, makes the village ring with the sound of his hammer, as the sparks fly through the dusky twilight ; but God made no noise when, from the anvil of the Divine decree, the stars sprang forth to take their places in the abyss of heaven. So in the Bible we note a sublime unconsciousness of effort. The inspired writers toil not, neither do they spin. They wear their art lightly, like a flower. They are kings who have the world at their feet! The sceptre is natural to their hands, and the purple is their proper wearing. Their grand things fall from them as though they said them not, fall as the cataract falls from its rocky ledge, or as the avalanche 11° 156 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: tumbles fromits alpine summit. No throb of poor ambition _ moves the soul of David as he sends forth those Psalms which have soothed the troubled spirit of the world as once they soothed the vexed soul of Saul; and no flutter of self- esteem stirs the wing of Isaiah as he brings us news from the empyrean. The biblical writers seem no more proud of their work than the rose of its loveliness, or the lark of its song. A Divine impulse is upon them which lifts them up as on angel wings, ‘“‘bearing them darkly, fearfully afar.” Sometimes the human heart that weeps and pities trembles at the impact, and the grand, deep thoughts struggle for an utterance in which grammar is shipwrecked on the rocks of inspired passion. The writers of the Bible seem conscious that they are but tremulous reeds through which God breathes, making a music which shall awe the world. When Haydn heard in his old age his ‘* Let there be Light!” magnificently rendered, he raised his hands to heaven, and cried : ‘* Not from me, but from God has it come.’ Thus, if interrogated, would the inspired writers have spoken. Once more, we find in the Bible all the wonderful variety of Natyre. The world in which we live is one of varied beauty suited to all tastes. We have “bare hills and fertile valleys, dashing lakes, Echoes and waterfalls, and pointed crags That into music touch the passing wind.” Equally varied are the contents of the Written Word. The Bible is indeed the most many-sided book the World has ever known. It is not so much a bookas itisa library. Truthis presented in its pages in every possible variety, and with every conceivable charm. History unfolds her story of chang- ing dynasties and vanished years. Philosophy lays down her precepts for the conduct of life, and urges her motives for the pursuit of virtue. Religion publishes the beauty of holiness, THE WRITTEN WORD. Ly) and Poetry proclaims the holiness of beauty. Jurisprudence promulgates its laws for the obedience of nations and the awe of kings. Biography paints its portraits holding the mirror up to nature. Eloquence rises to a majesty above all Greek, above all Roman fame. Reason takes captive the delighted mind. Tragedy moves before us with the universe for audience. Epic tells the thrilling story of the bewildered human race; while above all, and through all, is heard the voice of the universal Father, calling his wandering children home. The Bible is the Child’s Book, for it contains a wealth of anecdote unequalled in the literature of the world. It is the Man’s book, for it lends grandeur to the beatings of his heart, and sinews every noble motive with the strength of eternity. It is also the book of the sick and of the aged, for it opens a door in that Heaven where none say they are sick, and where ‘there is no more pain, nor sorrow, nor crying, for the former things have passed away.” Furthermore the very objections which men have urged against the Bible find, as Bishop Butler has shown, their counterpart in the realm of Nature, so that, if the one is admitted to be from God the other may also have proceeded from the same source. It is objected, for instance, that the Bible is unequal, con- taining not only lofty poetry and transcendent revelations of truth, but also pages of dry detail and chapters of uneventful history. ‘To this we reply that Nature also is unequal, con- taining not only soft slopes and fertile valleys, but deserts also where no flower blooms and forests where the lion roams in undisputed sovereignty and the panther laps the lonely stream. Again, it is said that the Bible lacks method, containing no clearly defined body of divinity, or confession of faith. Nature also lacks method. The natural sciences are not arranged to hand. Here as inthe Bible there is no catechism, but the objects by the study of which knowledge comes are 158 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: scattered in lovely variety around us, to be classified and arranged by human effort. It is objected again that the Bible aboundsin mystery. Soa also does Nature. Mystery indeed is the garment in which God robes Himself. And if a mystery impenetrable by us lurks in every dew-drop and pebble and flower, why should we marvel if it is found in the deep things of God? Every truth is robed in a mystery exactly proportioned to its grandeur as the loftiest peaks cast on the earth the longest shadows. If we could eliminate mystery from the Bible we should take away an important evidence of its Divinity, for that which man could thoroughly fathom and exhaust, man might have written. The Organic Unity of the Bible. In our last paragraphs we instituted a comparison between the Bible and Nature; between the word and the works of God, showing certain characteristics in which they agree. We now proceed to notice further, that in the written Word, asin Nature, we find an all-pervading unity which attests the presence of one Mind. Modern scientific enquiry has established the truth that Creation, despite the multiplicity of its elements and forces, is a cosmos and not a chaos—a great, grand unity. Not less certain is it that the Bible, despite the wonderful variety of its contents, is one book. Disputes about the Canon do not alter the fact that the collected Scriptures form one great harmony. Here, as in Nature, all grows out of a single root; all the parts are subordinated to a single aim; the end returns upon the beginning. This texture of Divine thought is no thing of shreds and patches, but is without seam, woven from the top throughout. The Bible is the work of about fifty different writers, and forms the whole literature of a nation whose life extended over twenty centuries; and yet the book is one. The writers are of the most varied order; we have THE WRITTEN WORD. 159 the herdsman and the priest; the rugged prophet and the anointed king; the instructed scribe and the unlettered fisherman; and yet the book is one. Various languages appear in the record, the Hebrew, the Aramaic, and the Greek ; and yet the book is one. Its earliest scenes are the simple histories of pastoral life, its latest those mighty and wave-like movements which rocked the cradle of European civilisation ; and yet the book is one. Parts of it were pro- bably written under the shadow of the pyramids in the age of the Pharaohs, parts at Jerusalemin the palmy days of Solomon, parts in Babylon in the time of the captivity, parts amid the marbles of Athens, and parts in the dungeons of Rome; and yet the book isone. History and prophecy, parable and proverb, dialogue and song, stately arguments and familiar epistles, declarations, promises, remonstrances, warnings, covenants, types, all melt and mingle in the record like clouds in an April sky. To some of the writers gladness is given, and to others tears; some live amid the loud alarums of war, and others in the piping times of peace; some write amid the shouts of rapture which proclaim a temple finished, and others amid the wailing which deploresa temple ruined; and yet the book is one,—ever speaking in the same elevated tone, breath- ing the same pure spirit, pulsing with the same grand hope of sin destroyed, death vanquished, and humanity redeemed and restored! Everywhere, as from one clear harp in divers tones, we have one consentaneous witness. Everywhere we find the same God, delighting in mercy, yet abhorring evil; the same angels doing His commandments and hearkening unto the voice of His word; the same Jaw, holy, just, good, and founded on the everlasting reason of things; the same heaven, radiant and beautiful, the abode of purity and bliss. There are many builders, but it is one great temple which raises its dome towards the encircling sky. There are many musicians, but it is one grand oratorio which breaks and thunders on the steps of the eternal throne. The Bible, 160 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: indeed, as Dr. Trench has shown, presents us with the unity of that most perfect of all forms, a circle. Vast is the course which it traces, but it comes back in the end to the point from whence it started. The second Adam heals the breach and restores the ruin made by the first. The Paradise which dis- appears in Genesis reappears in the Revelation of St. John; again, we have the tree of life by the river of life, and again there is no more curse. All through the record we find the continuous movement of a single Mind. There is growth and development, but no contradiction. The difference between the Old Testament and the New is but the difference between the one landscape while the morning mist yet veils it, and the same landscape when the noon-day sun bathes every spire, and stream, and tree. This marvellous unity finds no parallel in any other literature. With what satisfaction do we turn away from the patch-work of the Koran, written by one man, to the unity of the Bible, inspired by one Spirit ! And when we further compare’ this unique Revelation with the Vedas and Shasters of India, the classics of Confucius, the oracles of Buddha, and the various conflicting idolatries of Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome, the evidence of its divinity is as the sun when it shineth in its strength, and which the stars behold and falter, ‘‘ touched to death by diviner CyGoe The Stately Progressiveness of the Bible. Modern Science has demonstrated that it has pleased the great Creator to plan His work upon a system of slow and gradual progress from the lower to the higher, that indeed the Divine method in creation has been the method of evolution, and not of a cosmos leaping at a bound into fixed complete- ness. So the Bible is a book which has not been made in a moment, but which has grown. Here, as in Nature, we have, ‘first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear.’ The Bible is a progressive, cumulative book. ‘ At THE WRITTEN WORD. 161 sundry times and in diver manners ” were these revelations of the Divine will made, and we find in them a con- tinual development from the first germ in the prophetic poem of Genesis to the perfect flower in the Gospel and Epistles of St. John. The Bible is a living book. Ideas grow in it. Truths blossom out in it and gradually reach maturity. The purpose of love ripens and bears at last its perfect fruit in the manisfestation of the Son of God and Redeemer of the world. The nature of the case in the Divine education of the race demanded this. A revelation of new truths, presented in entirely new forms of thought and speech, would have defeated its own ends, would indeed have been no revelation at all. The eye must be trained for the light, or it will dazzle only and not bless. Hence it is that the revelation of God to man has been progressive, commencing, in the infancy of the race, with pictures, and images, and symbols, addressed to sense, and advancing with the development of the race to abstract conceptions and spiritualideas. ‘* The world,” says an acute modern thinker, ‘‘has been given from age to age just as much of truth as it has been able to bear; and it is only, let us remember, from receiving it tem- pered in this wise proportion, that it has been able to receive it at all.” This profound reflection is finely illustrated in the history and development of ancient Israel. The faults of the Old Testament are, as Herder said, the faults of the pupil, not of the teacher. They are the necessary incidents of a course of moral education beginning with man in his infancy and naturally affected by the capacity and the moral and spiritual limitations of the pupil. Solon, when asked whether he had given the Athenians the best possible laws, answered, ‘¢ Not the best possible, but the best they were able to bear.’ In like manner God did not utter through his instruments in the old time all the truth He knew, but only that which they were fitted to receive. Dr. Arnold said, with truth, ‘‘ That Mohammedanism, six 162 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: hundred years after Christ, justified the wisdom of God in Judaism; proving that the Eastern man could bear nothing perfect.”” And this gradual progress of revelation, while it witnesses to the slow growth of man, illustrates also the patience and loving-kindness of God. He is seen as the great Father bringing up the race from infancy to manhood by slow and patient methods of instruction and discipline, ‘ wel- coming,’ as one has said, ‘‘ the simplest thought of truth and beauty as the return for seed He has sown in the fallows of eternity ; and rejoicing in the response of a faltering moment to the age-long cry of His wisdom in the streets.” This slow unfolding of truth teaches us also that the Bible is from Him who liveth and abideth for ever. Man’s work must be done quickly, for his life is brief. Few of our greatest cathedrals have been beheld in their completed glory by the men who planned them. Man cannot count on the centuries, so his work must be done speedily. The aged human teacher must be swift in dealing with his pupils, or the angel death may snatch him from their side. But the Divine teacher fronts all the generations as they rise, and his work-day is eternity. It is not needful that He should put any blessing in peril by unseemly haste, and He can wait until this slow world appre- hends His message and rejoices in its light. Objections Met. The thoughtful consideration of the method of God in the Written Word, as in loving condescension He leads the race from childhood up to youth, and from youth up to manhood, also meets many objections which, until the idea of evolution was applied to the Bible, appeared very formidable. It has been urged that the Biblical ideas concerning science are crude and imperfect. To this we reply that the story of creation drawn by a few vivid touches of the Divine pencil in the Book of Genesis, was provided for a rude people and not for the scientists of the present century. At the same time, THE WRITTEN WORD. 163 as Mr. Gladstone has shown, the substantial agreement of the order presented in Genesis with the latest results of science, shows that the wisdom of God and not the folly of man was at work. The outline indicates a Divine revealer, and yet room and scope is left for the grandeur of human progress in the realm of science. And that which is true in the sphere of physics is equally true in the sphere of morals. The morality of the Old Testament is not, as some would show, perverted, but only imperfect, as adapted to the imperfect moral culture of those addressed. Reading between the lines, however, we see that the Great Revealer was in nowise implicated in these im- perfect forms. Turning to the Ten Commandments we find in them no traces of a vicious or barbarous legislation, but an outline of all treatises of morality and all codes of justice. Again, while there are anthropomorphic representations of the Deity in the Old Testament, God being conceived as wearing a human form and being subject to human feeling, mutability, and repentance, at other times, as in the “I Am” of Moses, the sacred writers indicate the spirituality and infinitude of the Divine nature with a truth and loftiness un approached by the finest speculations of ancient philosophy. Look again at the vexed question as to why there was not a clearer revealing in the old economy of the great truth of man’s immortality. The appeal to present rewards and punishments will no longer appear puerile if we remember that God was then dealing with the race in its childhood. Children are influenced only by present motives. They will accept the bauble of to-day rather than wait for the jewel promised in coming years. An immediate gift appears ever more valuable than a vemote reward. Temporal bless- ings and curses; a land flowing with milk and honey ; fruit- ful seasons; abundant cattle; tulness of bread; security of possessions; these appealed to the Israelites with a force 164 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: which induced them to bear the strict yoke of positive institu. tions and to render to God a direct and immediate moral obedience. Thus did it please the Great Revealer to stoop in loving condescension to the weakness and infirmity of a people yet in their infancy. He met them on their own ground as He was eventually to meet them in their own flesh and blood. And when, in the fulness of time, He came as “ the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” He fully endorsed the evolutionary idea of revelation, contrasting the imperfections of the ‘old time” with the luminous and perfect character of His own teaching. 8. THE MIRACLE OF PROPHECY. Along with the development of the Hebrew nation we find the living voice of God in Prophecy, and this voice is found here, and here only, amid all the religions of the world. Oracles and divination, augurs and fortune-tellers, do indeed appear among heathen peoples, but they utter dreams, and not certainties; they are powerless to pierce the future, or to declare the things to come. But the prophecies of the Old and New Testaments reveal the Divine prescience, and are miracles of knowledge as the resurrection of Christ was a miracle of power. We are well aware that efforts have been made under the leadership of Ewald and others to eliminate the miraculous element from the Bible altogether, and to show that the prophets were preachers of righteousness only, and not in any sense predictors of the future. We know also that much which in the last century was called prophecy was read into the record by men unduly eager to find the miraculous. Nevertheless, enough remains to attest in the written Word the work of the Eternal One who knew the end from the beginning, and who in due time vindicates the character of the prophecy by bringing it to pass. Our space does not per- mit of any exhaustive treatment of this subject, but few who THE WRITTEN WORD. 165 give it their patient attention will fail to discern the presence of a superhuman prescience in those Biblical prophecies which relate first, to the Jewish nation; secondly, to other nations or empires; thirdly, to the coming of Christ; and, fourthly, to the Kingdom or Church of Christ. The Prussian monarch who, with insulting impatience, asked his chaplain to furnish for him in a sentence evidence of the truth of Christianity, received as an answer, * The Jews, your Majesty.” That answer was pregnant with meaning. Inthat remarkable people, dwelling among us and around us, we behold an abiding miracle of history. Insulted, persecuted, scattered, peeled, yet still unabsorbed by other nations ; with the brand of the old unexpiated guilt upon their foreheads, and the grandeur of the old immovable ideas seated in their eyes, the Jewish race moves through the inhospitable desert of time a fire-pillar, preserving still the kindled radiance caught from the altar of a divine and superhuman past. What shall we say also of the scream of the Satyr in the desolate and empty halls of Babylon, of the song of the fisherman as he spreads his nets upon the rocks where Tyre once sat an ocean queen, or of the shout of the wild Arab, the son of Ishmael, as he still careers in freedom over his desert sands, tameless as the pennon which flutters on his lifted lance ¢ The Bible and the Messiah. This miracle of prophecy in the Written Word culminates, however, in its testimony concerning Him who said “Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life; and they are they which testify of Me.” (John v. 39.) The Old Testament does not pretend to be a complete and final revela- tion; on the contrary, its witness has a definite end for which it confesses itself to be simply a preparation. It is not the true light, but is given to bear witness to that light. Its prophets strain their ears to catch a sweeter music than their own. Its seers gaze earnestly through the dusk of centuries 166 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: for One who is to come. The witness concerning Him binds the Hebrew Scriptures into one great unity, while it also binds the centuries of human history into the volume of one divine purpose. This witness assumes one form in the days of the patriarchs, another in the Mosaic period, another in the age of David, another amid the oppressions of the exile, and another after those oppressions have ceased and the people have returned to their own land. In Abraham it tells of the future birth of One in whom all the families of the earth shall be blessed. In Moses it involves the conception of a prophet greater than all others, who shall reveal the perfect will of God and win the hearts of men by the attraction of His love. In David it proclaims a King of all nations, crowned with the glory of a kingdom which shall never pass away. In the period of the exile it announces One who, through the ‘anointing of the Most Holy,” shall bring in an ‘‘everlasting righteousness.” And after the exile, by the testimony of that later prophet whose predictions are included in the book of Isaiah, it draws a pathetic picture of One who voluntarily bears the load of human grief and carries the burden of human sorrow, and who pardons iniquity through the virtue of a mysterious and divinely appointed sacrifice. What definiteness and minuteness of portraiture are here. Centuries before His coming the prophet speaks of His human and divine nature, of His poverty and of His glory, of His agonising death, and of His triumphant reign. The purple and the rags, the splendour and the shame are strangely blended, so strangely blended, indeed, that the portrait seems utterly contradictory until the suffering and reigning Messiah himself appears. Now, in these prophecies, so inextricably interwoven with the Hebrew Scriptures, we have convincing evidence that the plan of the Old Testament existed in a single mind before it was expressed in the progressive publication of the sacred books. ‘We may believe,” says one, ‘that the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy, and that the THE WRITTEN WORD. 167 prophet was a blind worker in the development of a plan to which so many workers contributed ; but behind the prophet we must place the inspiration of the prophet, and superior to the prophet, the Spirit who shaped his visions, and whose word was on his tongue.” No other writings claiming a sacred character can be pro- duced which, written through successive ages, point ever to one definite end. The only analogy to be found exists in the works of God, where successive forms of vertebrate existence lead up to man, and find in Him their completion and their end. What has the “‘ Higher Criticism,” with its impatience of the supernatural, to say concerning this marvellous continuity of witness culminating in the manifestation of the Son of God ? While it does not deny that the sacred Scriptures were in existence long before the Christian Era, and were in the sole custody of the Jews, some of its leading representa- tives yet venture to assert that a large portion of these Scrip- tures were the free creation of a school of priests and theolo- gians after the exile. Even if we were to admit this assump- tion, we have not yet got rid of the supernatural; for the witness of the prophets who wrote four or five hundred years before Christ is, on the face of it, as truly supernaturally inspired as if it had been given hundreds of years earlier. Will it be maintained that these clever writers, who so cunningly conspired to cheat the world, have not only har- monised the past with their claims, but have also adroitly forecast the future? Such a conclusion is incredible, especi- ally to those who behold the completed purpose which the prophets miraculously predicted. We know, to-day, how Bethlehem is more truly the centre of the world than Rome, and how the doves of Christ outsoar the eagles of the empire of the Czesars. And still the stone fashioned without hands rolls through the world, and we hear the crash of idols and of temples under its rolling weight. Have we not in all 168 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: these things conclusive evidence that ‘‘ prophecy came not in the old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost?” 9, THE ADAPTATION OF THE BIBLE TO HUMAN NEED. The true test of great books is their relation to the universal mind. They must speak to our common human nature, and find their response in every heart, or they are not true literature. How finely the Bible meets this require- ment! It transcends the ‘bounds of race and nationality, and meets, as no other book can do, the needs and aspira- tions of man wherever he isfound. ‘The laws of light are not more perfectly adapted to human vision, nor the vital propcr- ties of the atmosphere to human respiration, than this Word of God to the human soul. Toit, as to no other book, we bring the profoundest questions of the intellect, and the deepest needs of the spirit within us. It unseals those springs of thought and affection which lie in the profoundest depths of our being. It addresses our noblest faculties; it touches those god-like susceptibilities which are in all men the same, taking hold of the soul’s eternity, and the soul’s deep need, to uplift and settle it in the everlasting rest of God. No man can say, ‘it belongeth not to me.” The flower might as well say this of the sunshine and the rain. It is the only book which will bear the whole weight of our human life, with its mystery, its trial, and its tears. ‘In this Book,” says Coleridge, ‘‘ there is more that finds me than I have experienced in all other books put together. Here I have met everywhere, more or less, copious sources of truth, and power, and purifying impulses. Here I have found words for my inmost thoughts, songs for my joy, utterances for my hidden griefs, and pleadings for my shame and for my feeble- ness.” So much for a philospher of the earlier part of the century; and one of the foremost thinkers of our own time THE WRITTEN WORD. 169 adds: ‘* The Bible addresses every aspect and every necessity of my nature; it is my own biography ; I seem to have read it in some other world; we are old friends; the breathing of eternity is in us both, and we have happened together to one mutual joy, on this rough shore of time. I never know how great a Book it is until I try to do without it ; then the heart aches ; then the eyes are put out with the great tears of grief ; then the house is no home of mine; then life sinks under an infinite load of weariness.” 40. ITS EXHAUSTLESS VITALITY. « Reality, in philosophy,” we are told, ‘“‘ means persistence irrespective of particular conditions.” If this be so the Bible is the most real thing in Christendom, for it persists despite all conditions of development or change. Like God Himself, itis ever ancient yet ever new. Untarnished as the ancient stars, unwrinkled asthe glorious sea, ‘‘ age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety.” Older in its earliest records than any other book which has been handed down the ages, it is yet able to infuse into its progressive antiquity a youthfulness which charms the heart of all generations. ‘¢ Other books,” says one, “are like bread, they satisfy the hunger of the moment and are gone. The Bible, on the con- trary, is like seed-corn, containing within it an endless power of semination and of growth. Repeated every Sabbath in our hearing, by the eloquence of a thousand pulpits, and the music of a thousand tongues, it has yet ‘ many things to say unto us, and we cannot bear them now.’” ‘ No crisis,” says one, ‘‘has ever yet appeared in history when the Bible was not ready to take the van of human movement. The truths in their particular application may have lain unmarked, or re- vealed themselves only to a few sentinels watching for the dawn-—-till some great turn in the life of humanity has come, and then the principles of freedom and righteousness and universal charity have shone out so clearly that men have 12 170 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: wendered at their past blindness.” As we have before said, there is more in the Bible than any creed has yet formu- lated or any Church embodied, yea, more than is formulated or embodied in all the creeds or in all the Churches. Central, immutable, unfathomable truth; truth widening as light ex- tends, and deepening as the nations grow more wise, we have in the revelation of God, to use the words of Bacon, ‘a hill not to be commanded,” but which rather shall itself command all others, though the proudest eminences of the spiritual and intellectual world. To adapt to our purpose a verse of Tennyson : ‘‘ Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, great Book, art more than they.” Here we have another attestation of the divinity of the Written Word. The sciences and the philosophies of men alter and pass away with the advancing knowledge of the race, but the words and thoughts of God are a light not for one age but for alltime. That which seemed written for the old genera- tion only, is for our admonition and guidancealso. Though, as Sir Thomas Browne has said, ‘¢ Time sadly overcometh all things,” this Book has conquered time. The panting years toil after it in vain. 44. ITS HEALING AND TRANSFORMING POWER, The Bible attests its divinity also by its beneficent influence on men and nations. It finds its fittest symbol in that river which Ezekiel saw issuing from the portals of the Temple, concerning which it was said: ‘‘ And it shall come to pass that everything shall live whither the river cometh.” It is the only book of which we can say that if it had never existed the whole civilised world would have been different. Society would be very much what it now is if Homer and Virgil had withheld their song, if the dreams of Dante and THE WRITTEN WORD, I7I the sorrows of Tasso had found no utterance, and if Shake- speare and Milton had passed away in inglorious silence. But conceive the Bible never to have been given, and you are confronted at once with a changed world. In proof of this, glance at the condition of the civilised world at the period when Christ entered it to make “all things new.” ‘The writings of the Greck poets, historians, and philoso- phers,” says Sir W. P. Wood, “were diffused and admired throughout the Greek and Roman empires, while the ancient writings of the Jews were all but unknown. The great Latin authors of the Augustan age had just established their now imperishable fame. But what effect upon the moral nature of man, or the development of his highest faculties, which alone can bring him into communion with his Maker, had the writings of the greatest Greek and Latin authors ? We know from these authors themselves that the most shameless lust, the most disgraceful intemperance, the most Savage cruelty towards captives, taken in wars which were in themselves utterly unjustifiable, prevailed. The educated classes of society had no settled faith in aught beyond this life, whilst the lower were sunk in abject superstitions, and gradually losing every trace of the once stern, patriotic, self- devotion of the Roman character. It is scarcely too much to Say that from the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the heathen world began rapidly to sink into utter darkness. But then also it was that a free course was opened for the Word of God. The river began to be poured forth from the sanctuary, whose vastness was not to be confined within the limits of the land of Israel, and the Book that had hitherto been known and read by the despised Jews alone, was to accomplish that work which no combination of the most perfect of the writings of man had been able to effect, As it is there written, ‘ Everything that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the river shall come, shall live,’ ” But the evidence of the healing power of this Word lies r2* 172 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: not only in the distant past, but at our very doors. Even now we find nowhere a steady advance of humanity where the Bible is absent. Truly is it said, ‘‘ Take any map of the world, put your finger on those lands where the freest nations dwell; where civilisation has touched its highest point; where culture and art have reached their noblest development; and without one solitary exception you will find them to be lands in which this Book is read and loved. You may reverse the process. Take those lands where darkness still reigns; whose peoples are ignorant and debased: where civilisation is at its lowest level; where liberty is hardly known: and you will find either no Bible there, or ‘if it be there it is unhonoured and unread. For eighteen centuries civilisation and the Bible have gone hand in hand together, and it is its voice which has given ‘light to them that sit in dark- ness,’ and ‘has proclaimed liberty to the captive’ and ‘ the opening of the prison to them that are bound.’” Thus the Bible leads forward in grand procession the foremost nations of the world, and the voice of liberty in its pages is full and clear as the wind among the mountain pines, while at its call pity wakes in the devout and meditative spirit, rejoicing to bear its share of “ the noble burden of the human faces, The Bible and Art. Everything which the Bible has touched has lived. It has touched Art, and Art has lived. Ruskin has told us that all true art is the expression of man’s delight in God’s work, and that delight is intensified by each fuller revelation of God. Where His presence is realised, beauty walks as it did not walk before. The meanest flower that blows awukens thoughts too deep for tears; each bud is an oracle, each leaf a revelation. The common bush is afire with Deity, while the sunset splendours are ‘‘ His burning seal upon the close of day.” Look at this influence as it appears in THE WRITTEN WORD. 1/3 Architecture. The architectural relics of antiquity shrink into comparative poverty when compared with the Gothic cathedrals of the middle ages. These stately piles were reared by men whose work was worship, men who aspired to express in stone their conceptions of the eternity and infinity of God, men who willed that in those distant nooks and corners where the organ note died away and the voices of the choir were hushed into silence, ‘the carved stones should shout out the Creator’s praise.” ‘In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with pious care ; Every hid and unseen part, For the gods see everywhere.” Turning again to Music, we find that it only reaches true sublimity when it catches a secret inspiration from those hopes, apirations, and desires which transcend time and find their home in eternity. Hence Handel, and Beethoven, and Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Bach, and Haydn, are all ours. ‘Take too, the Organ, the grandest of all instruments, and it is at home only in the temple. It lingers unwillingly at the festival; neither will it stoop to beat time to the foot of the dancer. “A holy Nazarite, it loves the courts of the Lord.” And as with Music, so with Painting. The embodied ecstacies of Fra Angelico streamed from the story of the Cross. The Cherubic faces of Raphael glow round the Virgin Mother, and the creations of Michael Angelo strike awe into the gazer, because he stands beneath the shadow of the throne of the Eternal. The Bible and Literature. Not less remarkable than its influence on Art has been the effect of the Bible on the world’s finest literature. Goethe, Schlegel, Guizot, and Neander alike admit that all modern © European literature, not exclusively scientific, finds its germ in the Bible. From this source Dante drew that mystic, unfathomable song which will live when Italy is nameless 174 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: among the nations. Here Milton found the theme of his immortal Epic. By this book Bunyan was made, since it alone first called forth and then nourished his genius. At this altar Herbert, and Cowper, and Wesley, and Keble kindled the torches which give light to thousands. Byron, and Burns, and Wordsworth, and Tennyson, have all drawn light and beauty from this central orb. Carlyle andBrowning, Longfellow and Emerson, Ruskin and Macaulay, have all drunk deep at this heavenly fountain ; and if all that many other notable writers owe to it were blotted out from their works, we should pass them by unheeded. The service rendered by the Bible to literature is finely illustrated in a remarkable chapter in “The Eclipse of Faith,” by Henry Rogers, entitled, ‘The Blank Bible.” The writer dreams a dream, and in his dream he imagines that, as a punishment for their neglect of the Bible, men were now to lose it for ever. Every Bible in the world suddenly became a blank book, nothing was left of either Old or New Testament but the white paper on which each had been printed. All the words of Moses, of David, of Isaiah, of Christ, of Paul, of John, all had vanished from the page. And not only so, but every quotation from the Bible, every allusion to it, every illustration drawn from its pages, every metaphor or simile derived from its teaching, every word which had become minted into the current coins of daily speech, and which had been dug from that mine, all had gone, blotted out in a moment by the awful visitation of God. And what was the result? Isay nothing of the irreparable loss to the faith and hope and life of myriads that an extin- guished Bible had inflicted, but what was the less to the higher literature of the world? ; f > ir’ @> 7 A WS - F 7 : a4 ¥ , ; j iF 4 i ae ; ‘ A ‘ ; a , ie ‘ es | ? R BY / i : ; , j 4 , * Ne . ~*~. : j % A ' 7 i 7S i ; « eg °. : t) ; ‘ 7 % ' ’ y : - - ‘ ‘ ! ‘ ra! ‘ i] ‘ 5 i 1 \ 4 : i] 7 ' s Ld é i \ 4% ' » ; y V.—THE INCARNATE WORD. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.—Hed. i, I-2. ** And so the Word had breath and wrought, With human hands, the creed of creeds ; In loveliness of perfect deeds, More strong than all poetic thought, Which he may read that binds the sheaf, Or builds the house, or digs the grave, Or those wild eyes that watch the wave, In roarings round the coral reef.” —Tennyson. The greatness of Christ transcends everything that is merely particular and individual. It is not the greatness of. the law-giver, or of the hero, the greatness of the thinker or of the artist, nor is it the greatness in which the spirit of one single nation is concentrated; not a broken fragment, however brilliant,—no, it is a perfect mirror of humanity. It is the greatness which transcends all peculiarities, all fragmentariness—the greatness of the true and universal human. —Dyr. Ullmann. And it happened that in the time of the fourth monarchy, before the destruction of the second temple, the pagans in multitudes adored the true God, and led an angelic life; women consecrated to religion their virginity, and their lives; men voluntarily renounced all the pleasures of sense. That which Plato was unable to per- suade a few of the wisest and best informed men of his time to do, a Secret Power, by means of a few words, now effected in thousands of uneducated men.—Pascal. V._THE INCARNATE WORD. ges progress of our enquiry now brings us to the summit and centre of Divine Revelation as enshrined in the Incarnate Word. And how impressive is the vision which now confronts us. As one who approaching Zermatt by the valley of St. Nicholas is surprised and awed by the unique and lonely grandeur of the Matterhorn cleaving the blue gulf of heaven, while all the adjacent peaks crouch humbly at its feet, so the student of history, and of the great personalities who have moulded it, is arrested and awed by the unique and unearthly glory of Jesus Christ. Without rival or equal among the sons of men, he stands before us in a lofty pre- eminence which is all the more impressive because it owes so little to earth, and receives so much from heaven. In our study of this great historic personality we pass from the written to the embodied Word, from the great record to the greater life, which is its central theme. At sundry times and in divers manners, God has vouchsafed to men revelations of His character and His will. He has spoken in Eden, revealing truths fragments of which, borne down the stream of time, are found embedded in the traditions of the nations. By a transient incarnation of Divinity, He has familiarised certain selected spirits with the idea of the Word made flesh. Angels have cleft the world’s grey twilight with their silver wings to warn and to instruct. The radiant 182 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: symbol of the Divine presence has shone above the portal of the lost Paradise, conducting the wanderings of Israel, and hovered between the cherubim within the veil of the temple. Visions fraught with heavenly meaning and dreams charged with celestial import have been granted to holy and reverent watchers, yearning after truth and God. Laws written by Him whose pavilion is thick darkness and of whose voice thunder is but the fainting whisper, have been communicated to the favoured nation. Prophets and seers, burdened with utterances from the Eternal Majesty, have borne their witness and passed away into silence. Noble and receptive spirits visited for Divine uplifting, amid the glooms of Heathendom, have had their “ day and ceased to be.” And now the ever- lasting doors are lifted up, and One steps forth upon the scene in whom dwells ‘all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Gazing on His face we find that its lineaments are distinctly human, but, even while we gaze, the finite soars into the in- finite, the human dilates into the Divine. In His crown of glorious light are blended together, in perfect harmony, all the scattered rays of truth which have hitherto guided us. In His voice of sweetest music all the tones which have so long sounded brokenly in our ears are gathered into one perfect melody. Moses and Isaiah, Buddha and Zoroaster, Socrates and Plato, stand round Him, in reverent silence, and from the opened heaven there peals forth upon us the word of the Eternal Father, “ This is my beloved Son, hear ye Him.” 1. THE HISTORIC CHRIST. That we have in Jesus Christ a presence as truly historic as that of Julius Cesar or Napoleon Bonaparte, is attested by three lines of evidence : first, by the testimony of heathen writers living in the earliest dawn of Christianity ; second, by the four gospels; and third, by the impossibility of supposing that such a life as that of Christ could have been invented by the fishermen of Galilee. THE INCARNATE WORD. 183 In regard to the first line of evidence, it has been fairly said by Sir George Cornewall Lewis that unless an historical account can be traced by probable proof to the testimony of contemporaries, the first condition of historical credibility fails. Now, can the life of Christ and the origin of Christianity be so traced? Much testimony concerning Christianity could not be expected from that haughty Roman empire which regarded it as but one more of the baneful superstitions of Judea, “that nest of mischief,” as one of their historians terms it, ‘‘ whence all atrocious and scandalous things flow.” Neither was there in the development of the early Church any of that pomp and circumstance which was likely to attract a people familiar with the tramp of armies and the parade of costly pageants. Developing in silence and obscurity like the tender approach of dawn, or the fermentation of hidden leaven, or the germination of buried seed. Founded as aking- dom of truth in meek and quiet spirits who met before sunrise for the offices of praise and prayer, and who gloried in those passive virtues which were the contempt of heathendom, it was not probable that the air of the Rome of the first century would ring with the name of the Nazarene carpenter or with the doings of the sect baptised in His name. Sufficient testimony is, however, granted us to constitute a firm historic basis. Indeed, no fact in the world’s history is more certain than that, eighteen hundred years ago, in the broad daylight of the Roman Empire, there came into existence, and rapidly increased in numbers, a society of men calling themselves Christians. In a.p. 64, only thirty-four years after the Cruci- fixion of our Lord, Tacitus, the Roman historian of the period, mentions them by name in his annals, and adds that “ their founder was one Christos, who suffered capital punishment under the procurator Pontius Pilate, in the reign of Tiberius; but that this mischievous superstition, repressed for a while, burst forth again, not only throughout Judea, where it first arose, but even in Rome.” He then goes on to describe how 184 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: Nero charged them with having set fire to Rome, and sub- jected a ‘“‘vast multitude ” of them to torture and death. Now it must be evident to every candid mind that it could have been no mythical personage whom this multitude followed with such intense devotion that, rather than deny Him, they were ready to pour forth their blood at his feet like festal wine. Marvellous indeed would have been the power of a delusion which in thirty-four years had transferred a myth into the King of multitudes, or elevated a Galilean carpenter by fraud and legend into a divinity for whom they were ready to suffer and to die. Witness of the Four Gospels. Leaving Tacitus and his important testimony, we now turn to the four gospels, which are the Saviour’s special record. As far as we know the Great Teacher committed nothing to writing. The memory of the men to whom He had imparted a new life, and whom He had fired with a new enthusiasm, was the only scroll on which His words and deeds were in- scribed. In the light of a four-fold presentation, and through the lens of a differing mental and moral nature, these men set Him forth, until in the study of the wondrous picture the writers themselves seem to melt away and we see “‘ Jesus only,” throned in a blended majesty and tenderness which has charmed the heart of all succeeding generations. With what grace and sweet reality does the Great Teacher move before us in these impressive records! It is indeed a wonderful fact that though He has been absent from the world well nigh two thousand years, no character who ever trod the stage of history is so grandly real to us as He. We see Him folded in the cradled sleep of infancy, a king among the oxen. His large eyes, with their far-off look, as though thought had wandered into dim eternity, enchain us as He speaks with the doctors in the Temple. We hear His mother’s soft reproach, and those first recorded words, so fraught with solemn and glorious im- port, “*Wist ye not that I must. be about my Father’s THE INCARNATE WORD. 185 business?” Still do we listen to His Sermon on the Mount, and to His parable of the Prodigal Son. We see His luminous face moving through the cornfields, or amid the tender shadows of the woods of Olivet, or in the market-place as He smiles upon the children at their play. The Eastern dawn as it breaks across the weary desert is less tender than His tremu- lous compassions, its noon-day glory less rich and free than His all-embracing loving kindness, and its midnight dome less deep than the profound of His eternal mind. We have the entvée of the charmed home at Bethany, and our eyes follow those of Lazarus as, issuing from his charnel cave, he looks upon the resurrection and the life. Fain would we intercept the wild sea-spray which smites His human cheek, as, wearied with His toil, He sleeps in the hinder part of the ship, and a trembling awe falls on us as He casts off the chains of slumber and flings them upon the winds and waves. ‘The odour of the ointment with which adoring penitence anointed His sacred feet still fills the chamber of the world. ‘* She knelt and wept and with untresséd hair Wiped the dear feet she was so blest to touch; And He then wiped the soiling of despair From off her soul, because she loved so much.” By the gate of Nain the funeral procession still pauses, and our hearts leap within us as we behold the form of the widowed mother clasping to her heart her only son, restored from death. The words spoken from the boat at the edge of the Sea of Tiberias are fresh as the gleam of its waters in to-day’s sunlight, and the lilies of thought still bloom unfading in the fields of time. The light of the Passover moon still casts His drooping shadow on the sward of the garden where He agonised; and the counsels breathed at the Last Supper, with their sweet unfoldings of unutterable peace, still say amid our doubts and fears, ‘“‘ Let not your hearts be troubled.” That pallid, gentle, grief-worn face still droops before us on the torturing cross, while the anguish in His eyes ‘‘doth overcome the sun, and make it sicken in the darkened skies as if to 13 186 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: death ;” and, Lord of the mighty law which moulds alike the planet and the tear, we behold Him soar through the yielding air from Mount Olivet, and the last accents of His majestic blessing distil as the dew upon our souls, as He disappears amid the whiteness of the silver clouds ! ‘** No fable old of mythic lore, No dream of bards and seers; No dead fact stranded on the shore Of the oblivious years. But warm, sweet, tender even yet, A present help is He; And faith hath still its Olivet, And love its Galilee.” (2) His Matchless Personality. The historic Christ is attested not only by the witness of con- temporary Paganism, and by the four Gospels which are His special record, but also by that unique and sublime personality which, defying the skill of the inventor, can be explained only by itself. If Jesus of Nazareth did not move before St. Matthew and St. John in actual incarnate life, from what pure heaven of invention did they steal a conception so matchless and so marvellous? Let men deny, as they may, the infallibility of the four Gospels, or complain of the lack of definite evidence of their authenticity, the great thing to be explained after all is the wonderful Person whose presence in the world was their creative cause. ‘* Who,” asks one, “is that amazing figure of purity, of wisdom, of divinity, of calm and balanced cour- age, that, amid the rank growths of contemporary unwisdom and superstition, stands up in such immeasurable superiority above His generation? Who is this that from the gibbet has ruled over eighteen centuries?” We are here presented with a breathing pattern of perfect excellence, to which all succeed- ing ages have been able to lend no heightening touch of splendour. During the hundreds of years this life has been THE INCARNATE WORD. 187 before the world, no human practice has ever reached it, and no human ideal has ever gone beyond it. ‘+ Never was such a life seen on earth before, never did the dream of poet or the instinct of hero-worship imagine such a Being, with such wisdom on His lips, with such love in His heart, with a char- acter so balanced and complete.” Beginning with the conception of a perfect childhood, the life of Christ glows from dawn to sunset with the sanctities of God. If we can conceive of the divine perfections being manifested in a human life, nowhere could they be more grandly manifested than here. Here is a life clothed with humility, yet in which remorse, and confession, and penitence have no place, a life which in every act of every hour is altogether lovely. Ever in closest communion with the Holy God in whose searching light all sin is made clear, He who moves before us in the Gospels yet confesses no sin, pleads for no pardon, asks for no reconciliation. His serene soul knows no struggle, no conflict of the flesh and spirit, such as that which raged in the person- ality of His greatest apostle, but is ever victorious and self- possessed. From the religious conventionalities of His time, the long prayers in public places, the broad phylacteries, the ostentatious charity, the regulated fastings, He stands entirely aloof. Even the human virtue of gratitude, the absence of which in others he is so swift to mark, in himself does not appear. His life towers amid the mist of centuries as the one holy ideal of a spotless and stainless humanity, the pattern of all obedience, the model of all self-sacrifice, the inspiration of all pity, the perfection of all loveliness, combining the sinless sympathies of man with the condescension and compassion of God. Now what have we in this life but A Breathing Miracle, incapable of being invented by the fishermen of Galilee ? Every creation must first reside in the creator. Only a Michael Angelo could produce the work of a Michael Angelo. Had we seen the great sculptor at his task—his noble head thrown TS 188 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: back, his nostrils dilated as with the breath of God, his eyes aflame with inspiration, and the marble flying like snow from his chisel—his productions would no longer appear a mystery, the man would explain them. But what, save the positive existence of Christ Himself, can account for His biography ? Well might Rousseau, speaking of the portrait of Christ in the Gospels, say that the inventor would be even more wonderful than the hero. And well may John Stuart Mill remark in his “Essays on Religion,” ‘‘Who among His disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels? Certainly not the fisher- men of Galilee; as certainly not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies were of a totally different sort; still less the early Christian writers, in whom nothing is more evident than that the good which was in them was all derived, as they always professed that it was derived—from the higher source.” Yes! it was indeed derived from a higher source. Hence we find St. John bowing in speechless adoration before “‘ the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth ;” and St. Paul “counting all things but dross that he may win Christ ;” and St. Peter, awed by his manifested glory, uttering the trembling prayer: ‘“‘ Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” ‘Truly has one said, “If the evangelists represent so well the inimitable features of Christ, it is because He was before their eyes. They saw Him with their senses, with their hearts, with the exactitude of a love which was to give its blood ; they are at the same time witnesses, painters, and martyrs. That sitting of God before man has been wit- nessed only once, and this is why there is but one Gospel, although there were four evangelists.” Let us pause for an instant to consider the evidential value of this marvellous picture. Who would sit down to depict for us the faultless and the perfect unless they had first beheld it? On this point human THE INCARNATE WORD. 189 endeavour reaches no further than Epictetus, who, asking himself the question, ‘‘Is it possible to be faultless?” answers, ** No, it is impossible; this only is possible, to endeavour to be faultless.” Higher than this no human feet have trod. But throned in a sanctity which knows no flaw, and is fettered by no limitations, Christ sits above us, and, as the generations pass beneath Him, we hear the question, ‘¢ Which of you convinceth Me of sin?” and they are silent, they find no fault in Him. Now the age in which we live is impatient of miracle, but it is confessedly patient of fact. Here then is the central unquestionable miracle, Jesus Himself—that is, one from the cradle to the grave, walking in spotless purity, through all temptation wearing a conscience without a stain, His personality free from every element which is either Jewish, or Greek, or Roman, embracing every type of manhood, and not only of manhood, but also of womanhood; equally at home with saints on the Mount of Transfiguration or with sinners bowed in misery at its base; manifesting every characteristic of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good; charged with unfaltering wisdom, yet full of the healing mercies which pass no sorrow by; elect to wipe away the tears of humanity, and to place it redeemed and enfranchised amid the sanctities of heaven. Exposed to infinite wrong, there is yet in Him an utter absence of retaliation or revenge. Over the city which has hated and rejected Him, He weepsas He marks above its towers the brooding wings of the angel of doom, and the cry of His murderers is ringing in His ears when He utters the majestic litany of mercy— Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Even those who deny the proper divinity of Christ cannot deny His perfection. Renan says, ‘* Whatever may be the unlooked-for phenomena of the future, Jesus will not be surpassed.” Strauss, in assailing the Gospels, yet bows reverently before Him “in whom the Divine wisdom first developed itself, as a power determining his whole life and Igo PILLARS OF OUR FAITH being.” Rathbone Greg confesses Jesus to have been “ the best and noblest of the sons of men whom God has raised up with special gifts and for special work.” Gédéethe says concerning Christ—*If I am asked whether it is in my nature to pay Him reverence, I say certainly! I bow before Him as a Divine manifestation of the highest principle of morality.” Theodore Parker says, ‘“‘In Him as in a mirror we may see the image of God, and go on from glory to glory, till we are changed into the same image.” Lecky, in his ablest book, refers to ‘that ideal character present to the world in Christianity, which, through all the changes of eighteen centuries, has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love.” Schiller declares holiness to be the supreme thing for man, and that it stands for all time incarnate in Christ. Carlyle speaks of Christ as ‘‘our highest Orpheus, whose sphere melody, flowing in wild, native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men, and still modulates and divinely leads them:” and Jean Paul Richter hails Him as “the mightiest among the holy, and the holiest among the mighty, who lifted with His pierced hands empires off their hinges, turned the stream of time into new channels, and still governs all the ages.” Thus do those who deny His proper divinity bear witness to the unequalled glory of the wondrous Nazarene. And how could this glory have been portrayed by the Evangelists except in witness to a great historic fact, a fact not only proving the actual appearance of Christ among men, but also attesting the historic character of the Gospels which are His record. Very forcible, in this connection, is the argument of that eminent apologist, Prebendary Row. ‘If the gospels,” says he, “are a mere collection of mythic and legendary stories, generated and put together in the manner affirmed by those who deny their historical character, how got this great character there? If the fables of which they are com- posed are the inventions of many minds, whence its unity ? THE INCARNATE WORD. IQ! If their inventors were credulous enthusiasts and fanatics, whence its perfection? If they were implicated in all the superstitions of the age, whence its moral elevation? Of what order of thought then existing is it the embodiment ? How could the credulity which was necessary for the accept- ance of such fictions, or how could the spirit which invented them, have conceived these moral elements? There the character is—let us be distinctly informed how it was put together: how much of it is fact and how much fiction; how the fictions were wedded together with the facts so as to compose the whole; and what class or order of minds in the early Church was equal to its elaboration. This delineation must have been made at an early period, and could not have been a late invention ; for it is substantially the same as that contained in those Epistles of St. Paul, which are acknowledged to have been written within thirty years of the date of the Crucifixion. A distinct answer is demanded of those who affirm that the gospels have no value as histories.” Whence came Jesus Christ ? In our last chapter we called the attention of our readers to that central pillar of our faith, Jesus Christ, that sublime person- ality, that perfect life, which mocking the skill of the inventor can be explained only by itself. Our enquiry now brings us to the question, ‘‘ Whence came He?” Do His birth, His surroundings, and the spirit of His age explain Him, or are we compelled to recognise in this unique personality some- thing supernatural and divine? This question is specially interesting in an age when we are assured that every man may be explained by his antecedents—that the laws of heredity forbid the possibility of a leap, even of spiritual genius, across centuries into unborn modes of thought.- And on reflection we are compelled to admit the validity of this reasoning. Human personages, however great, commonly receive as much from their age as they impart toit. They reflect its genius, Ig2 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: they express its thought, they embalm its spirit. For this reason their age approves them and delights in them, since through them it receives interpretation and utterance. It is an unquestionable fact that the character and work of even the very ablest men is largely accounted for by their antece- dents. Other men labour, and they enter into their labours. Sir Isaac Newton, alluding to Descartes, says: “If I have seen further than others it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” Socrates and Plato were largely the result of that which had gone before them ; the poems of Parmenides, the speculations of Pythagoras, and the dark sayings of Heraclitus are all woven into the tissue of their dream. Shakespeare was largely moulded by that wonderful Elizabe- than era of which he was “‘ the bright consummate flower,” neither did he rise in his colossal greatness like a mountain from the level plain, but from a coterie of other great dramatists who “stood around him sturdy though unclean.” Martin Luther was to a large extent the product of his time—morning stars heralded his approach, and, like gathered lightnings, the forces of the Reformation were in the air waiting only for the rod of a commanding personality to condense and bring them leaping to the earth. Dante was essentially the child of his own age. Oliver Cromwell and John Milton were largely the result of Puritanism amid which they rose—they rode on the crest of its magnificent enthusiasm, and they were baptized with the chrism of its prophetic power. But of what past was Jesus Christ, the child? Where are the conditions of birth or education, or environment, which can explain Him? Far from being the outcome of the conditions amid which He grew, He was their antithesis and contradiction. He changed them, and in their most distinctive features annihilated them. Far from being, as some affirm, the final blossom of dying Judaism, it recognised in Him a spirit so alien to itself that it hated Him and cast Him out. The truths He uttered were not given Him by the fathers of His race, or the schools of THE INCARNATE WORD. 193 His faith, for neither rabbi nor school could have said what He said, or would have omitted what He omitted, and Pharisee and Sadducee alike disowned Him. In the midst of a people who waited for a temporal king, He announced a kingdom which was to be set up, not in material empire, but in the hearts and consciences of men. En- circled by those who dreamed of a Messiah who should go forth conquering and to conquer until Jerusalem was made the centre of a world-wide empire, the throne He chose was a cross, and His diadem was one of thorns. Associated with a people who regarded the Jewish temple as the symbol of all that was magnificent and divine, and the priesthood as an order vested with special and eternal sacredness, he announced a religion without a temple, and with only a single and invisible priest. Trained in a school which maintained the awful and unshared sovereignty of God, He claimed equality with the Deity. Living among a people who claimed the Eternal One as the special God of the Hebrew people, He taught bewildered humanity to kneel and say, ‘‘ Our Father, which art in Heaven.” True monarch of the Orient, His cradle was a manger. ‘True conqueror of the world, His forerunner was a wild son of the desert. True restorer of our earthly and heavenly fortunes, the school of His education was a carpenter’s shop. True ideal of a spotless and stainless humanity, He sprang from a village which was a proverb of uncleanness and vice. ‘True shepherd of the human race, folding the lost world in His arms to assuage its anguish, and to wipe away its tears, He sprang from the jealous and exclusive elements of ancient Judaism. The Home at Nazareth. Folded amid its pastoral hills, the little hamlet where He was brought up had no contact with the world of Greek thought or the world of Roman administration and power. It vibrated neither to the tread of armies nor to the more 194 PILLARS OF OUR. FAITH? silent but far mightier tread of mind. From its dark olives rose no portico sacred to the scholar’s foot. No poet known to fame “murmured near its running brooks a music sweeter than their own.” No voices loud in philosophic disputation startled the silence of its sylvan glens. The great wave of thought and impulse which echoes round the world scarcely touched that quiet nook even with the cadence of an inland murmur. Yet here, in this ill-famed, inglorious town, in a house which was at once house and workshop, in poverty, obscurity, and humble toil, He grew, He ripened, Who has ennobled the lives of millions, and filled the centuries with the sound and glory of His name. Here it is evident that the ordinary laws of the moral and intellectual world, with the penalties they impose on a certain environment of thought and culture, are entirely and miraculously set aside. There is nothing in His antecedents which explains Jesus Christ, nothing which leads up to Him, ‘‘a_ solitary peak like Teneriffe, He rises sheer from the ocean to the clouds.” He was born in Judea, and cradled in Judaism, but these no more created Him than the morning star creates the sun, which it precedes and heralds, and which vanishes amid its glory. We search everywhere for His natural fountain-head in a human parentage and a human culture, and we cannot find it. We turn to those theories of blind unbelief which represent Him as a myth, or as a frenzied enthusiast, or as a daring impostor, and we find them dissolve at our touch. What then remains but to listen to His own testimony concerning His origin and His claims? We turn to this anointed prophet moving in His healing and unapproachable majesty amid the shadows and the tears of earth, and we ask, ‘* What sayest Thou of Thyself?” His Testimony Concerning Himself, We have already referred to the character and personality of Christ in that ideal sanctity and perfect balance of every THE INCARNATE WORD. 195 power, which render the supposition that He was a lying impostor or a frenzied enthusiast utterly inconceivable. Let us now, with His sanctity and balanced wisdom still in our remembrance, consider the assertions which He made con- cerning Himself. And turning to this subject we find from the Gospel narrative, that, despite His unobtrusive humility, He constantly claimed Divine prerogatives and Divine honours. The monstrous assertion of Renan, ‘that Jesus never dreamt of making Himself pass for an incarnation of God,” is refuted by the whole tenor of the Gospel records. When Simon Peter, in answer to the inquiry, ‘‘ Whom say ye that Iam?” answered, ‘ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Jesus, so far from repudiating the tribute, blessed him, and declared that the truth to which he had given expression had been revealed to him by the Divine Father. On another occasion, when Philip said to Him, ‘‘ Shew us the Father and it sufficeth us,” Jesus replied, with a sense of injured majesty, ‘‘ Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.’’ Again at another period in His life, when the people cried, ‘‘ How long dost thou make us to doubt? Ifthou be the Christ, tell us plainly,” Jesus answered, ‘‘ The works that 1 do in My Father’s name, they bear witness of Me.” ‘I and my Father are one.” At these words the Jews, who knew full well the meaning of the claim, took up stones to stone Him as a blasphemer, because He made Himself equal with God. Again, when John the Baptist, lying like a fettered eagle on the dungeon floor, bewildered by the mystery of his interrupted ministry, sent two of his disciples to Jesus, saying, ‘“‘ Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another?” pointing to the evidence of Divine power in sight restored, and lameness healed, and leprosy cleansed, and death vanquished, He closes all by saying, ‘¢ And blessed is he who shall not be offended in Me.” Ata later period, when the high priest of His nation addresses to 196 PIALARS OF OUR FAITH: Him in the council the solemn charge, ‘‘ Art thou the Christ the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus said, «I am; and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” Then the high priest rent his clothes and said, ‘‘ What need we any further witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy: what think ye?” And they all condemned Him to be guilty of death (St. Mark xiv. 61-64). Thus the direct cause of the crucifixion of Christ was the assertion of His Divine claims. He died because He would not deny Himself. He died in attestation of the truth that He was the Son of God. (5.) The Pre-temporal Glory of Christ. Jesus Christ stands alone among all historic personages, not only in virtue of His unique and stainless personality, and the unparalleled nature of His claims, but also in virtue of His pre-temporal greatness, and the fact that when He entered the sphere of time He stood upon a pedestal which had been raised for Him by the testimony and anticipation of four thousand years of history. Indeed, the preparation of His way through the ages clearly attests the sleepless activity and the radiant foresight of God. No man can compel the past to give him witness. Being on the earth, he may wield the power of an Alexander or a Napoleon, but he cannot press into his service the witness of past ages. The past is a land closed against God himself except in the way of preparation. But the past is full of Christ. The centuries bore Him in their arms before He was ever cradled in the arms of His holy mother, and yearning peoples peered through the dim twilight of long and tedious years to behold the beauty of His face before it ever felt the imprint of His mother’s kiss. His coming was the one ‘far-off Divine event’’ toward which for centuries ‘“‘the whole creation moved.” As in the ages of geology, all things prefigured and prepared for the coming of man, so in the ages of THE INCARNATE WORD. 197 history all things prefigured and prepared for the coming of the Divine Man. It was the central point of all time and of all history. With His advent the old world closed and the new began. With it the course of ages at once reached its first great landing-place, and started on another and grander career. For that event all the past had been preparing, and from it all the future was to spring. We re-date our years from the day of His advent as though at His coming the angel of time, arrested and astonished, had let his hour-glass fall and forgot the past in his eagerness to chronicle the grander and happier future. According to those Scriptures which are His inspired record, Christ was revealed in ‘the fulness of time.” This term implies the arrival of a given hour, which should com- plete an epoch. The ages were to flow on until they reached a definite boundary line, when a new order of things should be ushered in. Meanwhile, the nations were being prepared for the coming of that new order. Let us first glance at the Preparation in the Jewish World. In the Jewish world all things predicted and waited for the coming of the Messiah from the period when the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head sounded through the darkened paradise to the hour when the hills of Bethlehem flung back to the rejoicing heavens the echoes of the advent hymn. Studying the pages of Revela- tion, we see how that early promise was brightened and enlarged through the ages. The sacrificial flame trembles to heaven at the very gates of Eden. Hoary patriarchs bring to the altar the firstlings of their flock, and as the innocent victim bleeds and dies, we see through the dusk of centuries the Lamb of Calvary. Others of the world’s grey fathers commune or wrestle with an unknown shade, the prophetic semblance of the coming One who is to tread the Judean hills. Anon, the great Levitical system, with its wealth of 198 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH! type and shadow all relating to the Redeemer, rolls in cloud- like majesty before us ; while the inspired prophets pour forth those marvellous predictions concerning Him which are the perpetual miracle of history. Then the sufferings and glory of the expected Messiah are set to more than mortal music in the Psalms; and, finally, the records of the Old Testament are closed with a series of predictions so clear and so definite that they declare the pencil of the seer God-guided. Hundreds of years before the anointed Saviour treads the earth we read alike of His human and His Divine nature, of His wounds and of His triumphs, of His poverty and of His glory. The purple and rags, the splendour and the grief, are strangely blended, so blended that the portraiture seems utterly contradictory until the suffering and reigning Messiah Himself appears. At the portal of the second temple, centuries before His advent, Haggai announces Him as “the desire of all nations,” and all the clarions of prophecy blend their consentaneous music in the final peal of Malachi blown from the peak flushed with the fading glow of the Hebrew sunset, and announcing Him as the ‘sun of righteousness Who shall arise on the earth with healing in His wings.” Thus does He dominate the literature of the people who are the appointed channel of His manifestation. Their entire religious system is indeed nothing more than one great prophecy. All their history is His record, all their song is His music, all their imagery is His glory. Everything in Judaism waits for Him. Divine hands, put forth from the dim eternity, have moulded it to give Him witness. Until He appears nothing is finished, nothing complete. There is a throne in Zion, but it is empty. There is an altar, but it waits for the true sacrifice. There is a sanctuary, but it is veiled. Apart from Him the temple itself is but an aimless, unmeaning grandeur. Its gorgeous buildings; its armies of priests and choristers; its solemn psalms and silver litanies; its cries of slaughtered victims ; its stir and smoke of sacrifice THE INCARNATE WORD. 199 —all bear the stamp of a suggestive incompleteness; they are indeed but “ the shadow of good things to come.” He is the unseen sun which flings tke many-coloured rainbow of Judaism upon the torrent of history, and when He appears it vanishes amid His splendour, The Preparation in the Heathen World. It is a necessary consequence of the Christian idea of God, that all His creatures participate in his care. Because He is God, nay, because He is, as the heathen have confessed from the very earliest ages, the Heaven-Father, He cannot be the God of the Jew and not of the Gentile also. Hence while His grace moulded Hebrew history, His providence moulded Heathen history; and whilst in the Jewish world He pre- pared salvation for man, in the Heathen world He prepared man for salvation. The Heathen also were girded by God, though they knew it not, and moved in stately and progressive march to a great ‘‘ harmony not understood.” They were not damned for ignorance of that they could not know. Such an assumption ‘‘casts a shadow on the throne of God, and darkens Heaven.” No, to quote the bold, grand words of the apostle Paul, “The times of this ignorance God winked at,” that is, He did not regard it; the Heathen were judged not according to the light they had not, but according to the light they had. And they also, by their unconscious prophecies and earnest longings for truth and rest, prepared the Messiah’s way. We find that even the great Messianic idea, which nerved the Jewish people for every conflict and flung a spell over every Jewish cradle, was not confined to the special tradition of the Jewish people. Not to be accounted for, according to the best authorities, by the communications of the Hebrews with the Gentiles, it would seem to have been diffused among the nations anterior to Abraham. « Borne,” says one, ‘‘upon the invisible wings of providence, it penetrated 200 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: the most diverse and distant empires. Confucius in China speaks of the true saint who would appear in the West. Virgil in Rome announces in the Augustan age the coming of a mysterious child, who shall triumph over iniquity and wrong. ‘Tacitus writes of the widely-spread belief that men from Judea would seize the government of things. Volney and Voltaire both testify to this wide unanimity of Messianic expectation, and its deepening intensity led the wise men of the East to the cradle of the future King.’’ And where there is no prophetic voice, there is yet a deep yearning of inarticu- late need. Hindooism in the person of Krishna incarnates the second person of its Triad that God may be brought down to man. Greece deifies its heroes and its sages that man may be lifted up to God. The Buddhist yearns for the great Lama or Reconciler, who shall be the centre of peace and brotherhood among men; the Persian waits for the Lord of Light who shall prevail over and destroy the works of the Prince of Darkness; the Egyptian raises his plaintive hymn to Osiris, the master of life, and quickener of the dead; the Scandinavian longs for the great hero who shall throw open the Walhalla or palace of the gods; Socrates sighs aloud fora teacher from heaven; Phidias in almost breathing marble represents in his Apollo the combination in a Divine deliverer of perfect beauty and superhuman power; while Idolatry in all its forms expresses the hunger of the human heart for a God who may be seen and known. Thus one great end of the Divine discipline with respect to Heathendom is accomplished, namely, that men are led to long for salvation and for a Saviour. Christ has become ‘‘the desire of all nations.” Ages of inquiry and aspiration have resulted in prophecies which Heathenism cannot fulfil, in wants which Heathenism cannot satisfy, in longings which Heathenism cannot still, in questions which Heathenism cannot answer, and in a desire for a deliverance which Heathenism cannot achieve. By the river of time humanity THE INCARNATE WORD. 201 stands like the devotee on the Ganges bank, waiting for the rising of the sun that it may fall down in worship. ‘** Far and wide, though all unknowing, Pants for Him each mortal breast ; Human tears for him are flowing, Human hearts in Him would rest; Thirsting, as for dews of even, As the new-mown grass for rain, Him they seek as God of heaven, Him, as man for sinners slain.”’ (c) The advent of Christ in the fulness of time. At last the hour arrived when He for whom all the past had been preparing, and from whom all the future was to spring, should enter the world He was ordained to uplift and save. We have already seen how His way had been pre- pared through the ages, let us now note the fitness of the hour of his manifestation. According to those Scriptures which are His divine record, He came in ‘the fulness of time.” This term implies the arrival of an appointed period which should complete an epoch. The ages were to flow onward until they reached a definite boundary line when a new order of things was to be ushered in. Politically, morally, and religiously the time was ripe for the appearing of the Redeemer. There was a distinct political preparation for His advent. This was provided by a common language and a common govern- ment throughout the civilised world. The victorious Alexander had spread the Greek language through the nations he subdued; and when the Romans became in turn the conquerors of the Greeks they learnt the language of the vanquished, and made it the common tongue of the Great Roman empire. Thus, an organ of wondrous flexibility and exquisite beauty lay ready for the publication of the new Evangel. The world was also united under a common 14 202 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH, government. Palestine and Spain, Northern Africa and Southern Germany, were all included in the one great Roman empire, and thus there was no jarring of petty states or con- flict of opposing interests to retard the spread of the Gospel message. The seat of the Roman power, again, lay so far distant from Judea, the cradle of the faith, that no opposition couid suddenly arise from thence to the infant religion. It was also a period of universal peace. ‘‘ No war or battle’s sound Was heard the world around : The idle spear and shield were high up hung The hooked chariot stood, Unstained by human blood ; ‘ihe trumpet spake not to the armed throng ; And kings sate still with awful eye, As if they surely knew their sovereign Lord was by.” Fit period this for the coming of the Prince of Peace with His message of spiritual deliverance. There was also a preparation for the advent mm the moral experience of men, Conscious that their religious systems were crumbling away beneath their feet, certain great thinkers toiled to supersede them by a philosophy of despair. Mean- while, the moral outlook was gloomy with the hues of death. Society was corrupt to its core. ‘*The mass of the Roman people,” says Lecky, ‘were plunged in a condition of depravity which no mere ethical teaching could adequately correct. The moral condition of the empire is indeed, in some respects, one of the most appalling pictures on record.” It was the hour of man’s despair and of God’s opportunity. The Redeemer must come now, or come too late,—come to find the evil irremediable and humanity plunged too low to he recovered. In the sphere of veligion, also, the world’s need of light and guidance and celestial help prepared for His glorious appearing. The godsof Greece and Rome had tumbled from their seats, and were felt by the thoughtful to be mere mockeries : THE INCARNATE WORD. 203 ‘‘ The oracles are dumb; No voice, or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof, in words deceiving. Apollo from his shrine Could no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving, No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell.”, The Naiads had vanished from the fountains, and the Dryads from the woods; Jove’s right hand was unloaded of tts thunder; Juno had closed in death her queenly eyes; Bacchus, bound by his own vines, had swooned upon the panther; Neptune lay beside his trident, dull and senseless as a stone; Venus no more ascended in her bewitching beauty from the palpitating sea. Great Panwas dead. The epoch of religious experiments had closed in an epoch of despair which looked to heaven for succour. And at this thrilling period, when Rome had sheathed her sword, and Greece was sick of her philosophy, and the hearts of all nations seemed to pant with an intolerable longing ; when the stillness of expectation seemed to include within it earth and heaven, and time itself grew tremulous and eager, as though the hand of its angel shook,—at this thrilling period, the hour marking the great epoch is struck by the hammer of Providence on the great bell of the universe, and ere its last vibrations melt away into silence the anointed Christ appears, ‘a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of His people Israel.” He comes to fulfil the prophecies and the promises of Judaism and to be God’s Divine answer to the Gentile’s unconscious prayer. Hence, while the Christian teachers of the early Jewish Churches insisted that Jesus corresponded strictly to the Messiah of. prophecy, the Christian teachers of the Alexandrian Churches, dwelling amid a population of cultured Pagans, pointed out to their hearers how Christ corresponded to all that was highest in the old heathen TAS 204 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: philosophies. They showed how all the fragments of truth which were scattered through the various heathen systems met in Christ divorced from the error with which they were elsewhere associated, and how all the momentary intuitions of yet higher wisdom, all the fleeting visions of a purer beauty, all the ecstasies hindled by the glory of the Divine nearness which had visited lofty pagan souls for a moment, were realised, made permanent, and for ever gained to humanity by Christ. ‘‘ No wisdom shone ungilded by His beam, All lights that did His own fore-run, Caught His pre-venient rays, like clouds that gleam In the unrisen sun. The glories of earth’s empires age by age, Submitting calmly to decay ; Were but the illusive dawn that did presage His fixed and perfect day. Art’s beauteous dreams, the charms of thought and song, The majesty of rule and law; The single mind outsoaring from the throng, Gifted a world to draw.” What were they all but symbols poor and faint Of His sublime, imperial reign ; In beauty and in glory, when each saint His likeness shall attain. Who was He ? We have now prepared the way for the fuller consideration of the question: ‘‘ Who was He for whom the way was thus prepared through the ages, and who thus appeared when the fulness of time was come?” ‘The answer is given in the statement of the New Testament, that ‘‘ when the fulness of time was come God sent forth His Son.” Here we are brought face to face with the great ‘mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh.” But having already asserted our conviction that the presence and work of Christ in the world involve the recognition of the supernatural, we shall not THE INCARNATE WORD. 205 attempt to evade this great initial doctrine of the Christian faith. Probably there are those who, because we express our faith in it, will refuse to follow us further, and we do not deny that the entrance of the Creator through the door of birth into human life presents difficulties to our finite thought which we cannot hope to master; but for us it must suffice that the Gospels and Epistles of the New Testament clearly assert it, and that when accepted it explains much which would otherwise be inscrutable, and meets needs in the sphere of redemption, which, as far as we can see, could be met in no other way. The greatest of the evangelists begins his gospel with the joyous message, ‘‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” and his first epistle thrills us with the continual vibration of the same celestial music where he says, ‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life: for the life was manifested and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.” Yes, He was with the Father and came forth from the Father. That “holy thing” which was born of Mary derived His essential being from heaven and not from earth. While a child of time, Christ was yet the Son of the Eternal, “born of a woman, born under the law that He might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” Such is the testimony of the earliest records of the Christian faith, a testimony which, if we reject it because of the mystery involved, we unquestionably part company with genuine and essential Christianity. Something else we may retain which we mistake for Christianity, some higher form of Platonism, some deeper depth of pity for humanity, or some illustrious example of martyrdom for truth; but essential Christianity has taken flight, and the race is practically where it was when Socrates sighed for a teacher sent from God, and when 206 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: Pompey, with sacrilegious tread, entered the ‘Holy of Holies” to find the shrine vacant and the glory departed. (¢) The Possibility of the Incarnation. The possibility of the Incarnation will be denied by none who believe in the freedom of God. As on earth a monarch may lay aside his crown and become a subject, or a millionaire may surrender his wealth and become poor, so the eternal God, if so disposed through the depths of His infinite love, may clothe Himself in our humanity. “Ye know,” says St. Paul, “the grace of our.Lord Jesus Christ that though He was rich yet for our sakes He became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich.” | Furthermore, the doctrine of the Incarnation is simplified by the fact that man was originally created in the image of God. This constituted a fitting preparation for the assumption on the part of God of the likeness of man. The union was not a union of natures essentially opposed. No violence was wrought in the Divine nature by its union with the human. Then, in regard to the Incarnation itself, the question is forced upon us, how otherwise could the human and the divine be brought into intimate union? How otherwise was He to become as deeply and as truly the brother of every man, who was and still is as deeply and truly the God of every man? No helper and redeemer of humanity would suffice save one born out of its own bosom, and yet the regenerator of the human race must not Himself be a polluted member of the corrupt body which he is going to purify.“ He who comes,” says D’Aubigne, “to bring a divine life into the world must himself emanate from that life and possess it in fulness ; for how otherwise can he communicate it?’ The problem is at last solved in the Virgin-born. In Christ the awful and invisible God put on our mortal flesh and entered into the conditions of our human life to lay hold upon us for divine uplifting. The first man of the new creation issued from the THE INCARNATE WORD. 207 hand of God, as did the first man of the old. According to the record of Moses, the body of the first man was iormed out of the dust of the earth—that is, it came into existence as the culminating point of the evolutionary process. But the spirit of man was from above: it was a direct inspiration from the Divine Spirit. So the human body and soul of Christ sprang from the Virgin-mother, while his divine and sinless Nature was born from above. Thus did the new head of the race come into closest contact with the race, to lead it back to sanctity and God. Feeble and polluted man could not uplift and regenerate himself. As Bushnell puts it, “he could as easily leap out of the maelstrom, as set himself in the true liberty and seed-principle of holiness.” He needed a Saviour outside himself, and greater than himself. And such was He who entered into the humanity from above as a divine healing power, and of whom we read that ‘unto as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of. God, even to them that believe on His name; which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Yet further, there ave veasons why the Incaynation should be vegavded as a pre-ordained purpose in the Divine economy apart altogether from the exigencies of human redemption. _ In a profound and suggestive passage St. Paul testifies concerning Christ that He is the first-born of every creature, and that for Him all things were created. This statement enables us to understand more clearly the great doctrine of the Incarnation. That doctrine does not imply a monstrous invasion of the universal order, but it is a part of that order, and as far as we can judge a necessary part. Through the Incarnation of the Divine Word, the great river of being which has gone out from God returns to Him—the creation flows back again to its source. In the natural world we find that all things strive to ascend and ascend in striving. Writing of insensate things ) 205 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: enveloped in the warm air of June, Russell Lowell says, with deep poetic insight :— ** Every clod feels a stir of might, An impulse within it which reaches and towers; And groping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.” Then again the vegetable world aspires towards the animal, and the animal again toward man, until in man we finda creature who is a microcosm, summing up, and including in his personality all life that has gone before him, yet who is greater than it all since he is conscious of relations to the unseen and Divine. Through these felt relations, though rooted in nature, he reaches out toward God. The goal of this ascending creation is attained in the God-man who descending to meet us in our striving, links us with God, and in whom the whole work of the Creator returns to Himself. In the Incar- nate Word the circuit is complete, and the end flows into the beginning. Thus the Incarnation is not a contradiction in creation, but its culmination, its completing link. It is the door by which God enters His creation, and by which His creation returns to its source in Him. Again, we have in Christ the Eternal Word, not only the first-born of every creature through whom the whole work of the Creator. returns to Himself, but also the ideal pattern of humanity, the ideal in which and after which we were created, and toward which our highest nature continually tends and strives. Made in the Divine image, we are intended to be God-like. We are called to nothing less than the attainment in time and within the limit of our finite powers of that perfect sanctity and full-orbed completeness which had shone forth in the Son from all eternity. As the iris of the dew-drop is as perfect, though within smaller limits, as the iris of the rainbow which spans the heavens, so we are called, in our measure, to re- semble our great exemplar the Eternal Word. The possibility, and indeed probability, of such a manifestation as THE INCARNATE WORD. 209 that involved in the Incarnation, is yet further demonstrated by the consideration that from the beginning of time the idea of a Divine [ncarnation has existed as a great hope of humanity. In all ages the yearning heart of man has sighed for an incarnation of the unseen Deity as the means of uniting earth with heaven, and man with God. In the various incarnations of Vishnu, the second person of the Hindoo triad, we learn how this longing is expressed in the myths of India; and in the Greek and Roman worlds we find the same result arrived at in the deification of man. In the one instance, Sons of God have come down to right human wrongs, to assuage human griefs, and to grapple on man’s behalf with death and the grave; and in the other, sons of men have been invested with Divine attributes, and lifted up to heaven as restorers and forerunners of the race. The same deep hunger is ex- pressed by hero-worship in all its forms. Men of god-like stature of soul, wrestlers with oppression, great and sacred teachers, have continually been placed in the forefront of humanity, receiving a homage which not seldom rises into positive worship. Hence the Parsee bows before Zoroaster as the revealer of the one God, an abyss of wisdom, and the lord of the whole earth. Again, in Ceylon, Buddha the en- lightened, who forsook his throne and power to become a teacher and a guide to man, receives the homage of millions. In Egypt, also, we are confronted with the great Osiris, whom his followers adored as the conqueror of the grave, and the judge of quick and dead; while Islam encircles the brow of Mahomet with a halo of glory steeped in the hues of heaven. Thus has heathen desire unconsciously preluded the great truth of the incarnation of the Son of God. This longing again invests the very rudest idolatry with pathos, for every idol is but the expression of the hunger of the human soul for a God whom it may see and know. As Nature throughout all time reached upward to attain its crown and king in man, so humanity has struggled upward 210 PILLAXS OF OUR FAITH; until it attained its crown and King in the Divine Man. Thus the Incarnation is in harmony with Nature. Furthermore, if we study the matter deeply we shall find that man has seldom, if ever, been able to found an experience of godly trust on the basis of abstract Theism. The awful and inaccessible Being who is placed at the summit of Theistic systems is too subtle for our thought and too cold for our heart. Of such a Deity We are constrained to say, ‘‘ The spirit fails before Him, and the souls which He hath made.” There must be some gracious self-limitation on the part of God in order that we may confide in Him and love Him—some shrouding of His dazzling majesty, some contraction of His infinite personality in order to meet our finite necessity. We cannot make a home in cold magnificence or take immensity by the hand. Give us only these, and we are like children lost in stern mountain solitudes, on whom the shadows of night have fallen. We long for the voice of some kind guide, or sight of cot however humble, amid the awful solitariness and grandeur. Hence the deep wisdom of the words of John Ruskin, where, speaking of the Incarnation, he says: ‘‘ The moment that in our pride of heart we refuse to accept the condescension of the Almighty, and desire Him instead of stooping to hold our hands, to rise up before us into His glory, we hoping that by standing on a grain of dust or two of human knowledge higher than our fellows we may behold the Creator as He rises into His own invisible and inconceivable majesty; He goes forth upon the ways which are not our ways, and retires into the thoughts wick are not our thoughts, and we are left alone.” Conscious of this truth, the sigh of the human heart as expressed by Job in the world’s dim twilight is for «a days- man, who should lay his hand upon us both.” We want God brought near to us as a living, loving personality. ‘The heavens declare the Glory of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork.” Things visible in the mighty and radiant THE INCARNATE WORD. 211 universe of which we form a part, declare His Eternal power and Godhead. We mount to the conception of His infinitude by the awful pathway of the stars. We are impressed by the thought ot His eternity as we study the strata of the earth. We infer the scope of His intelligence, and the majesty of His rule, from the tranquil order and the perfect balance which reign through the vast empire which He governs and sustains. But we want some insight into the spirit of the Worker, some unveiling of His heart. And despite the objections which have been made to this form of Divine self- revelation, we do not see how this object could be better achieved than by the manifestation of the Deity in human form. Is not the human form the holiest and the most expressive with which we are familiar? We can indeed conceive of nothing higher, hence if the artist attempts to portray a seraph he merely invests the human form with wings. Again, we are all conscious that our lives have been moulded chiefly, not by visions of natural glory or by mere abstractions in the realm of thought, but by persons. Father- hood and motherhood, together with the impressions created by our nobler friendships, have done more to shape and mould our life than all other influences. Purity and gentle- ness have passed into our hearts from those who, moving before us in actual life, have manifested these qualities. We have been shamed into nobleness by communion with the noble, and we have been won for purity by the vision of the pure. Thus if God was so to reveal Himself as to come within the range of our immediate knowledge, and to attract our will without overpowering it, we know not how this could be better accomplished than by a manifestation of His personality and sanctity in a human life. ‘It has been said,’ writes a modern apologist, ‘‘that if God had given a revelation, it would have been written in letters of fire on the firmament. The principle assumed in the objection is true. If God had given a revelation it must be so written 212 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: that in respect to its substance he that runs may read, if he will. But how could a personal being be revealed in the mere phenomena of inanimate Nature? A person can only be revealed in and through other persons, and by means of his relation to them. The Divine revelation accordingly was from the first entrusted to human hearts, and it was finally enshrined in the heart of Christ. It has been written in letters of fire in the soul of the Son of Man; it was described with tongues of fire by those who first read it there: and the Spirit, by whom that sacred fire was kindled, is ever present to fulfil our Lord’s promise, ‘‘ Ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.” How many has this revelation filled with joy unspeakable! How many have truly found God in Jesus Christ, ‘‘the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”! Hence the wisdom of the revelation of God found in the Incarnate Word. The dew- drop mirrors the sun better than the mountain, and God can be imaged in a great and holy life as He cannot be by the grandest objects of material creation. ‘Of a spirit,” says one, ‘‘spiritual being alone can be the true portraiture. Matter can be moulded in the likeness of matter, mental and moral glory can be represented only by mind.” (¢) The Gulfs Spanned by the Incarnation. Writing of a severed friendship, Coleridge says: ‘They stood aloof, the scars remaining Like cliffs that had been rent asunder; A dreary sea now flows between; But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, Shall wholly do away, I ween, The marks of that which once hath been,” These lines aptly express the broken fellowship between man and God, Created to find perfection and happiness in God, man has been severed from his Divine source, though the lingering elements of nobleness which still cleave to him THE INCARNATE WORD. 213 demonstrate the glorious end for which he was created. Now Christ is the medium through which this shattered fellowship may be restored. By His Incarnation, through which He assumed a twofold personality which touches both natures, the Word made flesh has bridged over this dreary sea, and linking both shores has opened out the way for a restored communion. There are two gulfs which separate us from God—the gulf of our lowliness as finite creatures, and the gulf of our guilt as fallen creatures; and both these gulfs are spanned by the mediation and work of Christ. He first bridges by His Incarnation the gulf between the finite and infinite, bringing God near to us as a living, loving personality. We cannot know God in His essential nature. ‘ Dwelling in light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see,” we cannot know God without some stoop of condescension on His part, some veiling of His majesty by way of self-revelation. Now the Incarnation meets us here, providing in “‘ Emmanuel—God with us,” a visible object on which we may fix in our effort to think of God, and to our sympathies and affections in the effort to love Him. God has graciously veiled His splendour in a human form. The Eternal has subjected Himself to the conditions of time and space. The Divine Word, who was one with God, as God has become one with man, as man. Through the door of birth He has entered into our human life. He has becomeas thoroughly man as before He had been thoroughly God. He has become as deeply and truly the brother of every man, as He was and still is deeply and truly the God of every man. ‘¢ Shows the hid heart beneath creation beating, Smiles with kind eyes, and is a man with men.” We behold in Christ the invisible God clothed in the robes of humanity, and radiating a glory so softened and subdued that our eyes can gaze on it without dismay. In all our endeavours to raise our thoughts to God for love or worship, the idea of 214 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: Jesus comes in like the mystic ladder of the patriarch’s dream, and our wishes and prayers ascend, and our help and blessing descend, upon the Son of Man. Our thoughts need no longer to wander through eternity in search of the living God, since here we can clasp by faith the hand of the Infinite, and feel the throb of the heart which keeps creation warm. And this manifestation of the Deity also meets us in our conscious alienation. We are separated from God not only by our finiteness, but also by our sin. Made in the image of God, and created to glorify Him, we have broken away from our appointed destiny. Our sin, indeed, has rendered it needful not only that God should be brought near to us, but also that His anger should be turned aside. To think otherwise is either to cherish an unworthy view of the Divine character or a mistaken estimate of our own. Our sin has offended God, it has grieved Him, it has insulted Him, it has desolated His temple in our nature, it has sullied and defiled His world, and it has cast a dark and chilling shadow athwart His eternal purposes. Furthermore, we cannot think of our guilt and its issues without being overwhelmed with a sense of the miserable disproportion between the evil we have done and any repara- tion which we can possibly make. Hence, though a daring philosophic Theism may assume the possibility of a communion of trustful love with the Holy Father in heaven, without some satisfaction for sin, in this matter also the instincts of humanity go deeper than the dreams of the philosopher, and demand some provision for reconciliation with God as the basis of a restored fellowship. This conviction it is which explains the prevalence of sacrifice in human religions. We may strive to forget our sin or to ignore it, but conscience still ‘makes cowards of us all.” Hence, the trembling awe of A®schylus as, hearing from afar the thunder-tread of the power which governs destiny, he exclaims, “‘O never may my will be brought into collision with his stern decrees! ” Hence the pathetic appeal of Job as, quailing beneath the THE INCARNATE WORD. 215 touch of the Omnipotent One, he cries, ‘‘ Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro?”’ Hence the dread utterance which Shakespeare wrings from the heart of Macbeth, whose hands are stained with the blood of murder— ‘* Whence is that knocking ? How is’t with me when every noise appals me ? What hands are here? Ha! they pluck out mine eyes. Will ail great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine, Making the green one red.” And hence the monitory words of Byron, where writing concerning conscience he says: ‘6 The mind that broods o’er guilty woes Is like a scorpion girt by fire, In circle narrowing as it glows, The flames around their captive close. So writhes the mind remorse has riven, Unfit for earth, undoomed for Heaven; Darkness above, despair beneath, Around it flame, within it death.” Here again Christ meets us by the revelation of the love and power of God im self-sacrifice. Moved by unutterable love he becomes a burden-bearer for the race which, through the Incarnation, he identifies with Himself. He stoops to sorrow, and shame, and shudderings of nameless agony, and a bitter and cruel death that He may atone for our guilt, and roll it into the gulf of God’s forgetfulness. He unveils to mankind the redeeming purpose of God; nay more, He accomplishes that purpose by the sacrifice of Himself. ‘This is my blood of the New Testament which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins.” He is ‘¢made of a woman, made under the law, to vedeem them that were under the law.”” Sin, as an obstacle to forgiveness on repentance, no longer éxists in the government of God. We 216 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: behold Him “ whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation, through faith in His blood, that He might be just and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.” And thus the gulf not only between the finite creature and the Infinite Creator is spanned by the Incarnation, but also the gulf betwixt the sinner and the holy God. The emerald bow of peace circles the throne where before clouds and darkness sat. Fiery cherub and flaming sword disappear. The gates of the eternal city are held open by a pierced hand. We may arise, we may enter in, and join in the chorus pealing from the lips of unnumbered millions of the redeemed. ‘‘ Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever and ever.” (f) The Divine Representative. When Philip said to Jesus, ‘Show us the Father and it sufficeth us,” he interpreted the deepest desire of the human race. Deeply conscious of our frailty and our sin, it is not the Creator or the Lawgiver whom we chiefly yearn to know, but the Father. And in our noblest moods we also feel that the most God-like thing in God is not Justice, or Power, or Sovereignty, but Fatherhood. The heart of the King is more than the sceptre of the King, and since God asks from us a love which reposes on liberty, He must first love us or He can never win it. Ifthe sun were to say to the sleeping blooms of spring, ““O ye fair blooms, waiting to appear from your winter prison, I will retire until you come forth, and then I will return and look upon your beauty,” the blooms might fitly answer, ‘‘O sun, if thou retirest we shall never spring from the dark earth at all; thou must shine upon us, and so shining call us forth, or we shall remain in our prison-house for ever.” So it would be useless for God to demand love from his creatures except under the quickening touch of His THE INCARNATE WORD. 2i7 own love first manifested to them, Goethe makes Prometheus say to his deity— ‘*T reverence thee? Wherefore ? Hast thou ever lightened the woes Of the heavily-laden ? Hast thou ever stilled the tears Of the troubled in spirit ?” To be God is not primarily to thunder or to govern, but to pity and to love. Other attributes may make God feared, but it is these alone which make Him venerable. Hence Christ came into the world, not merely as a prophet to tell us that we had a Father, not merely as a priest to atone for our guilt, but as a Son in the Father’s image to reveal the Father. ‘‘ He that hath seen Me,” said Christ, ‘“‘ hath seen the Father.” Very God incarnated Himself in the Christ who trod our earth. It was the compassion of God which streamed from the heart of Christ. It was the love of God which spake to men in the pitying voice of Christ. It was the mercy of God which touched men in the healing hand of Christ. Christ was not something apart from God—God standing on the side of justice, and Christ on the side of mercy. Christ did not come into the world to make God love us, it was because God loved us that He came. Christ has not somehow softened God, and made Him kinder, but he has interpreted for us the love with which God has regarded us from the beginning. ‘‘Thus the All-Great is the All-Loving too— Thus through the thunder comes a human voice, Saying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here.’ ” Christ interprets for us the nature of a God who suffers Him- self rather than inflicts suffering on others, who uses His strength to uplift the weak, whose glory and whose joy is not that He can mould worlds and swing them through space, but that He can bless human hearts and light up within them fires TS 21S PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: of gladness which will never die. ‘‘ The ofiice,” says one, ‘‘of revealing and representing the character of Deity was reserved sor Him who had been from eternity in the bosom of the father, the image of the invisible God. What no verbal description could portray, what no image in creation could represent, what the loftiest seraph in heaven would have shrunk from under a sense of infinite inadequacy—that Christ undertook, professed, and accomplished to bless the world with a living, actual, adequate impersonation of the supreme God. It was for this that He stooped to employ the organs and faculties of a human being, for it was only thus that He could make Himself visible and familiar to our eyes while working out and embodying the character of Infinite Love. ‘‘No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” And this revelation, in place of being disproved by the con- clusions of modern science, is only rendered all the more necessary and all the more welcome to the yearning heart of man. The further God is put away from us by the study of Creation, the more needful it is He should be brought near tc us in Jesus Christ. The inadequacy of the modern conceptior of the natural universe—with its march of changeless, pitiless laws, in the presence of which man is as helpless as the dying leaves that flutter before the storm—to meet our deepest need, only renders more probable and more blessed that unveiling of the heart of God which is given us in the Incarnate Word. In the light of such a revelation our loneliness and our despair depart, and we eagerly exclaim, ‘‘ Thou God of reason, thou God of compassion, thou God of infinite love, whose thoughts toward us are ever of good and not of evil, who livest not for Thyself but for Thy creatures, whose joy it is not to thunder, not to govern, not to punish or reward merely—but to love, Thee we behold, to Thee we submit, because Thou art good beyond all conception, Thee we worship, and Thee we obey.” THE INCARNATE WORD. 21g (g) The Divine Worker. “‘ His was a life of miracles, and might, and charity, and love.’ — SMART. As we have just intimated, our lot is cast in an age which is peculiarly impatient of the miraculous. We are taught by our new masters that it is needful we should lay aside the dreams of human infancy, and overcome in the interests of sound reason “that last infirmity of the intellect, the love of the supernatural.” Fascinated by the study of the harmonious regularity of Nature, the modern scientist cannot brook the idea that this harmony has ever been interfered with for any purpose however beneficent. The truth is that in our time the order of Nature is set above the God of Nature, and the Omnipotent Deity himself is made a helpless prisoner in the prison-house of his own laws. According to many of our scientists, the chariot of the universe rolls out of eternity into eternity without a controlling hand, no Divine providence superintends the fall of the atom or the travel of the star, and man is an orphan in a godless world. The believer in the Gospel records is, however, delivered from these chilling negations by the mighty works of Christ. We have already seen that Christ himself is a miracle, since there is nothing in His birth or His surroundings adequate to explain Him; we need not wonder therefore that from a Divine personality there should proceed evidences of Divine power. The true and grand miracle is the Incarnate Word. Conceive Him to have trod our shadowed world, and what can be more natural than that He should attest by His deeds the might of His Divinity! And as far as we can see, it was needful He should do this that men might be convinced of the reality of a Divine presence in their midst. The first and chief idea which we associate with Deity is the idea of power. The child and the savage identify God with the tempest more readily than with the flower, and stand in awe before His might while insensible of His goodness. If one professing to be a Divine rise 220 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. teacher were to visit our earth to-day, we should say to him, ‘Show us what you can do; attest your Divine claims by the self-evident grandeur of Divine works. Bid music ripple on the closed ears of the deaf. Pour light upon the darkened eyeballs of the blind. Heal the sick. Cleanse the leper. Raise the dead.” Now these are the very things which Jesus did, and their natural result is seen in the confession of Nicodemus,—‘* We know that Thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do the miracles which Thou doest except God be with Him.” Neither, as Dr. Trench has beautifully shown, is it fair to speak of the miracles of Christ as violations of natural law. ‘Beyond and above the nature which we know,” he says, ‘‘they are, but not contrary to it. The true miracle is a higher and a purer nature, coming down out of the world of untroubled harmonies, into this world of ours, which so many discords have jarred and disturbed, and bringing them back again, though it be but for one mysterious, prophetic moment, into harmony with that higher order. The healing of the sick can in no way be termed against Nature, seeing that the sickness healed is against the true nature of man—sickness being unnatural, and not health. It is unnatural that a man should be blind, not that he should see. The healing is the restoration of the primitive order. We should term the miracle not the infraction of a law, but behold in it the lower law neutralised and for a time put out of working by the higher, just as the law of gravitation is set aside by the higher law of my will when I raise my arm: just as the law of sin in a regenerate man is held in continual check by the law of the spirit of life. The law of all the great system of laws is, that when powers come into conflict, the weaker shall give place to the stronger, the lower to the higher. In a miracle, this world of ours is drawn into and within a higher order of things; laws are then at work in the world which are not the laws of its fallen condition, for they are laws of mightier THE INCARNATE WORD. 221 rang> and higher perfection; and as such they claim to make themselves felt, and to have the pre-eminence and predomi- nance which are rightly their own.” Every miracle wrought by Christ was a direct and instantaneous evidence of a present Deity. The miracles of Christ were simply God coming near to men. The power which ordinarily works beyond the clouds and the stars, thrusts forth its hand, and the might of the Divine worker is instantly realised. Furthermore the mighty works of Christ differed from those of Prophets and Apostles in this, that instead of being answers to prayer as an appeal addressed to a higher power, they flowed from the majestic life resident in the worker. ‘I will, be thou clean,” said He to the wondering leper at His side; and that calm “T will” is sufficient, for behind it there is the might of essential Deity. Thus Jesus Christ bore upon His brow the sign of absolute force. At His appearing, as John Foster has said, the great bell of the universe was rung through miracle that men might be induced to listen to the sermon. Such a manifestation of Divine power over the Kingdom of Nature was needed in that hour, inasmuch as the truth and the life revealed in Christ had not yet displayed their energy in the higher kingdom of the human spirit. But now that in the unsealing of spiritual blindness and the healing of spiritual leprosy, and the quickening into the life of God of souls ‘dead in trespasses and sins,” the Divine energy of Christ has been amply demonstrated in a higher realm than that of Nature, miracles in the natural realm have ceased, being rendered unnecessary by those “ greater works,” which have been, and are still, wrought by Christ in the hearts and lives of men. We are aware that some have come to regard the gospel miracles as a difficulty in the way of the Christian argument rather than a help, and that others have sought to sever them from the life of our Lord altogether. But nothing is gained by such concessions made to the rationalistic spirit of the age, since, as far as we can see, the miracles of Christ 222 ‘ PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: are inextricably interwoven with the ethical beauty of his character. ‘Art thou He that should come, or do we look for another ?” was the question of the messengers of John the Baptist. And the reply of the Master is distinct and clear: ‘Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached unto them. And blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me.” The Resurrection. It is important also to remember that the scepticism which denies the possibility of miracle, denies that crowning miracle of Christianity—the resurrection of Christ—which is supported by proofs which have never been invalidated. Without question the unanimous faith of the Apostles in the resurrec- tion of Christ, as having occurred the third day after His death, is the cause of the continued existence of Christianity beyond that date, and of the founding of the Christian Church. Whether Christianity should survive or perish turned on that pivot. Before Christ rose His followers were mourning as for a lost cause. Their hopes were buried in that grave from which they turned away with the melancholy reflection, ‘‘We trusted that it had been He which should have redeemed Israel.” Confirmatory evidence to the same effect is found in the First Epistle of Peter, in the words, ‘‘ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to His abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” that is, who has restored us from the condition of despair into which His death had plunged us, to a renewed hope by His rising again. On the day after the crucifixion all was despair and confusion, but after the resurrection these timid fishermen, encouraged by a fact in attestation of wnich they were ready to lay down their lives, went forth with the courage of lions THE INCARNATE WORD. 223 and the patience of martyrs to preach the Gospel to the world. Nothing but the reality of this central miracle of the faith could have revived the spirit of these men, and produced that revulsion of feeling out of which sprang the Christian Church, concerning which an apologist could say to the Roman Emperor within fifty years of the death of the last Apostle: ‘We are but of yesterday, and we have filled all that belongs to you; the cities, the fortresses, the free towns, the very camps, the palace, the senate, the forum—we leave to you the temples only.” All that tremendous energy of faith, by which young men and maidens, old men and children, senators and noble ladies, soldiers of the legions, and plebeians of the imperial city, triumphed over the persecuting power of a cruel and remorseless government, attests the truth of this majestic miracle, which, if accepted, bears all others in its train, as the sun controls and leads the march of the hours. 224 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH; 2. THE DIVINE TEACHER. When we approach the subject of the teaching of Jesus Christ, we approach that which has transformed the world. There can be no question among the students of history that the words of Christ have pointed mankind to a new destiny, created new hopes based not on dreams but on divine realities, and revealed to the human soul a new reason for its existence. Truly has Bushnell said: “All the conditions of our lives are raised by the meaning which Christ has shown to bein them. The world itself is changed, and is no more the same that it was; it has never been the same since Jesus left it. The airis charged with heavenly odours, and a kind of celestial consciousness, a sense of other worlds, is wafted on us in its breath.” Not only are our circumstances changed, but also our inmost thoughts— ‘* New passions are wakened within us, New passions that have not a name; Dim truths that men knew but as phantoms Stand up clear and bright in the flame. And our souls are possessed with yearnings, Which make our life broaden and swell; And we hear strange things that are soundless, And we see the invisible.” So far changed are we that the moral condition of the ancient world, which the coming of Christ overthrew, is a condition to which we cannot return, even if we would. Ideas of man’s inherent dignity, and of the divine interest in his destiny, are now made familiar to the race which unspeakably greaten it. A new illumination has been poured upon it from which it cannot turn heedlessly away. A new accession of nobleness has invested it from which it cannot fall back into the old degradation. A new vision of magnificent possibilities has arrested it, which must urge it onward until men have become like God, and earth has become like heaven. Those who THE INCARNATE WORD. 225 formally reject the authority of Christ, still stand morally on the ground which He has created, and depend for all which makes existence desirable on the civilisation which He has established. The age of the trampled weak, and of the tyrant strong, is virtually past. The order for universal emancipation has gone forth, and the widening reign of God brings with it the widening reign of the creature made in His image. Upward moves the race despite its glooms and tears, for ever upward, led on by Him whose words have fused the fetters of its bondage, whether forged by earth or hell. ‘‘ Deep in the general heart of man His Power survives; ”’ and its present issues, measured with those which are yet to be, are but as the first fires of dawn kindling in the windows of the East, compared with the golden day when it floods the world with splendour. ‘‘Never man spake like this Man.” Such was the tribute paid. to Christ in the days of His sojourn on earth, and the lapse of eighteen hundred years has not reversed that verdict. What a gulf of difference separates the dialogues of Plato from the Sermon on the Mount, and how striking is the contrast between the confession of Socrates, that ‘‘he knew only this, that he knew nothing,” and the testimony of Him who said, ‘‘ I am the truth.” ‘‘ Our highest Orpheus,” says Thomas Carlyle, ‘‘ waiked in Judea eighteen hundred years ago. His sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished souls of men; and being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold accompaniments, and rich symphonies through all our hearts; and modulates and divinely leads them.” When a student at Oxford, Dean Stanley, being on the Continent with some fellow-students, sought in their company an interview at Dresden with Ewald. As they entered the 226 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: room where he was sitting, the great thinker grasped the small Greek Testament which he had in his hand, and said, ‘In this little book is contained all the wisdom of the world.” This statement is profoundly true, since for the highest know- ledge possible to man we are indebted to the works of Christ. Science proudly boasts of the knowledge with which it has endowed us in recent years; but, compared with the teach- ings of Christ, all the thoughts which the visible universe is capable of stirring within us are superficial and poor. Neither do they suffice us in our deenest sorrow, nor meet our mightiest needs. Pioneers in this or the other sphere of physical discovery may flatter themselves that they are pre- eminently the sons of wisdom; but how limited, after all, is their message! Their knowledge is of the flesh, which profiteth little ; but Christ’s is of the spirit, which quickeneth. Their bread is the manna of the wilderness which the fathers ate and are dead; but Christ’s is that bread which came down from Heaven, eating of which we live for ever. The teaching of Christ takes us up where science leaves us, and bears us toward the infinite and the everlasting. We are thankful to science that she has taught us how to weigh and number the stars; but we bless the Lord Christ, for He has taught us how a poor prodigal spirit may find its way back to the great Father. We are thankful to science that she has seized the electric fluid and bid it bear our messages from place to place—that she speaks to the lightnings that they go and say unto her, “‘ Here we are!” but we bless the Lord Christ who has taught us how our poor prayer, whispered from the dust, may thrill to the throne, and each reach the ear and touch the heart of God. Weare thankful to science for the remedies which alleviate human suffering and prolong human life; but we bless the Lord Christ, for He has ‘brought life and immortality to light” by His gospel. We ask the masters of physical science whether we are of THE INCARNATE WORD. ; 227 any value amid the stupendous sum of things, and they are dumb. But the Lord Christ says, ‘‘ There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.” We ask the masters of science whether the mysterious Power who dwells beyond the stars really exercises any active pro- vidence over the children of men, and they are dumb; but the Lord Christ says, ‘‘ The very hairs of your head are all numbered.” We ask the masters of science whether there is any hope for the feeble and the unfit, and they are dumb; but the Lord Christ says, “It is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” We ask the masters of science where the holy mother is who in the wealth of her tenderness would have died for us, and they are dumb; but the Lord Christ says, ‘“‘I am the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in Me though he were dead yet shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth in Me shall never dies It is not within the scope of our purpose, neither is it necessary to our argument, that we should traverse the whole area of our Lord’s teaching. The New Testament is in our hands, and on its gleaming page we may read the message of Him who is ‘‘the truth,” and through whom we come to the Father. NHcnceforth we are not relegated to a God disclosed in the order of Nature only, with its revelation of pitiless strength and of inexorable law. From out the vast and desolate Infinite a countenance beaming with ineffable love looks out upon us, and ‘*God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Furthermore, if we enquire what are the elements which constitute a sufficing religion for the human race, we find that they are provided in Christianity, and in Christianity alone. If we askin what these elements consist, it may be said that a sufficing religion for man must contain —first, an adequate revelation of God, His nature, and His 228 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: will concerning us; second, a correct view of man, his endow- meuts, his duties, and his destiny ; third, a provision for the pardon of sin which satisfies the conscience and preserves the order of the moral universe ; fourth, a perfect, ideal pattern of life for human study and imitation; fifth, a gift of enabling power for the attainment of holiness; sixth, a sufficing refuge in sorrow and bereavement; and, seventh, a clear revelation of a future life, together with the fittest preparation possible for entrance on its duties and its fellow- ships. Now, all these essential requisites of a sufficing religion are found in Christianity, and they are found in no other religion ever given to the world. Only the system announced by Christ is really full-orbed and complete,— solving the problems of the mind,—quenching the thirst of the heart,—realising the hopes of the imagination,—empower- ing the dictates of the will; in short, taking hold of the soul's eternity, and of the soul’s deep need, to uplift and settle it in the everlasting rest of God. (a) New Things in Morals. It has been frequently asserted, indeed it is one of the commonplaces of unbelief, that Christ revealed nothing new in morals—that the moral precepts of the Gospel were not original, but had all been anticipated by Greek or Eastern sages. To this we reply that the great laws of morality are older than the winds, or the stars, and it would be strange indeed if there had been no intimation of them until they received in Christ their perfect embodiment and their com- plete announcement. Furthermore, as we have already seen, Christ as the Eternal Logos, ‘the light which lighteneth every man that cometh into the worid,” did vouch- safe to many devout and earnest minds gleams of moral truth shining in darkness. But He was the central orb from whence they radiated, and to Him they returned as their centre and their source when in the fulness of time He was THE INCARNATE WORD. 229 manifested as “the light of the world.” Thus we say with Tennyson :— ‘‘ Though truths in mankind darkly join Deep-seated in our mystic frame, We yield all blessings to the name Of Him that made them current coin.” But, beyond all this, in the days of His sojourn on earth as the embodied Word, He inculcated precepts in morals of the utmost value which were unknown to Egypt, or India, or Greece, or Rome. The forgiveness of injuries; the love of enemies; the law of a purity which took down its judg- ment to the hidden springs of motive and desire ; that broad humanity which included the whole race in its regard, infusing a social conscience which felt a wrong done to another as a personal wound; the renunciation of vanity and folly, together with every form of unscrupulous ambition ; the willing sacrifice of self in the interests of others; the declaration of service as the only greatness; the praise and the glory of meekness, and humility, and mercy; the recog- nition of goodness as the highest order of rank, and the only honour worthy of esteem ; the inculcation of moral perfection ; the claim of woman to respect and honour, not only because of equality with man, but because of the Christian lesson that the measure of ampler strength should be the measure of willing service ; and the duty of supreme love to God as the root of all-sufficing virtue ;—all these were new unfoldings of celestial truth for the guidance and uplifting of the world. A New Centre of Morals. While all the rest of the virtues above mentioned have a profound significance with relation to conduct, the last, namely the duty of supreme love to God, is constituted in the system of Christ, the root and centre of them all. And this is the great distinguishing feature of Christian ethics as contrasted with the ethics of Paganism. Ancient 230 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: philosophy divorced morality from religion, and thus de- prived it of all real efficiency; Christ, on the other hand, made religion the moral centre of gravity, and thus restored the balance of the soul. None of the Greek or Roman teachers ever dreamed for one moment that God was the finalendof man. Epictetus held that the will of man had no object beyond itself, and he taught a morality which was centered in self alone. Marcus Aurelius, the philosophic emperor, rendered worship to himself as being a part of the Divine nature. In common with all the stoics, these men professedly sought their final end in themselves. And if we take the most celebrated philosophers of the Grecian schools, we find that one seeks his final end in health of body or mind, another in honesty, a third in wisdom, a fourth in the contemplation of ideas, a fifth in the science of numbers, a sixth in the moderation of desire, and so on. Nothing was done with any conscious relation to God. But Christ, while re-proclaiming with new sanctions and in new and diviner aspects the moral law, calls attention to the sun which rules the planets in the magnificent utterance, ‘* Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.” The crowning sin of man consists in putting him- self in the place of God, and his crowning calamity is that in separating himself from God he has withdrawn himself from the centre of light and joy and order, and wandered into gloom, and misery and confusion, and the disturbance of this great relation of his being has involved every other relation in proportionate disorder. At war with God he is also at war with nature, with his fellows, and with himself. Hence Christ, in calling man back to God, and opening up by His mediation the pathway of His return to God, restores man’s great relation, and in the train of this mighty recon- ciliation all other virtues follow. The creature made for God, and destined to be for ever restless if separated from THE INCARNATE WORD. 231 God, has found his true centre, and sings in his path like a planet in the glow of its central sun. Here is The Swift and Easy Way to Perfection. It is not mere rules of moral conduct which we need to make us pure, but a power which will sway and govern our entire nature, bearing it onward in the paths of obedience and sanctity. The planet does not need a chart of its course to keep it in its orbit, but a centre of gravity around which it may revolve. Give it this, and its course will be perfect. Now love to God is the gravitation of the soul; secure this, and the soul gets back to its orbit, and thus secures rectitude. Hence, when the lawyer asked which was the first and great commandment, our Lord, as a supreme master of divine philosophy, gives him in reply that which includes all the rest: Love to God alone fulfils all the commandments at once, and is the perfection of all duties. It is the secret of obedience, the soul of worship, the centre of duty, and the life of good works. When it becomes the dominant principle of a man’s existence, all the powers of misrule fall into chime withit. The king is on the throne, and the turbulent passions are awed into silence. A soul so full of God that there is no room for sin, and so happy in God that there is no craving after sin, is a soul emancipated from evil. “Thus,” says one, ‘‘ Jesus Christ has proved to the world that He alone of all the world’s wise men perfectly under- stands the nature of the soul, the purpose of the soul, the law of the soul.” As the Divine Physician, he places his finger on the central malady of the human race and heals it. He knew what was in man, and His method only needs to be tested by experience to be triumphantly proved. Hence one of the deepest thinkers of this century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, says: ‘ Christianity 232 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. has been in the world eighteen hundred years, and who has ever been able to affirm ‘I tried it, and it did not answer’? Have you, in your own experience ever met with any one, in whose words you could place full confidence, who has seriously affirmed, ‘I have given Christianity a fair trial. I was aware that its promises were made only conditionally ; but my heart bears me witness that I have to the utmcst of my power complied with those conditions. Both outwardly and in the discipline of my inward acts and affections, I have performed the duties which it enjoins, and I have used the means which it prescribes. Yet my assurance of its truth has received no increase. Its promises have not been fulfilled, And another able if errant 999 and I repent of my delusion. thinker, whose words may have still more weight with some of our readers than those of Coleridge—we allude to the late Matthew Arnold—says: ‘ Jesus Christ and His precepts are found to hit the moral experience of mankind; to hit it lastingly; and when doubts are thrown upon their really hitting it, then to come out stronger than ever.” And again, in another place, he says :—‘‘ God is the author of righteous- ness; now Jesus is the Son of God because He gives the method and the secret by which alone righteousness is possible. And that He does give this can be verified by experience. It isso; try, and you findit to beso! Try all the ways to righteousness you can think of, and you will find that no way brings you to it except the way of Jesus, but that this way does bring you to it. Attempt to reach righteousness by any way except ‘teh Si Jesus, and you will find out your mistake. This is a thing that can prove itself, if it is so, and it will prove itself because it is so.” Testimonies such as these amply verify the assertion that Christ ‘‘knew what wasin man.” We stand before ourselves as before an enigma which Nature cannot explain, and which our own self-consciousness cannot fathom, the key to which THE INCARNATE WORD. 2323 indeed is found only in the teaching of Christ. He, and He alone, holds up to us the mirror of our own heart; He, and He alone, explains to us the secret of our own personality, its shame and its pride; its debasement and its greatness; its cleaving to the creature and its thirst after God; its temporal environment and its eternal hope. (b) The Perfect Law. It is also without question that the teaching of Christ includes every essential element of the highest morality: Reverence toward God and respect for man; the loftiest dis- interestedness and the most generous magnanimity ; justice toward the weak, forgiveness toward the erring, and com- passion toward the unfortunate; manliness which stands erect with its face toward heaven, and the humility which hushes each self-righteous boast. Consider, too, how the teachings of Christ cross what may be called our natural inclinations, and judge us by a standard which is not of earth but of heaven. Our own carnal hearts suggest to us other things than those which Christ ordains. “They,” says one, ‘“ would beguile us into believing that, as we have fleshly appetites we may indulge them, imposing only the restraint marked out by nature, that we should pause when excess becomes injurious. They would assure us that our own gratification and our own aggrandisement are rightly and naturally the main business and purpose of our lives. They would tell us that we are to fall down and worship the images of honour, or fame, or beauty which the world has set up; that if we are reviled we do well to revile again ; and if smitten to smite again; and if scorned and hated to give back hate for hate and scorn for scorn; taking care only that our retaliation does not exceed the offence.” These are the things which Nature has taught man through the ages until One coming from a higher sphere reversed her depraved order, and taught us how men should live who are made in the Divina 16 234 PILLARS OF OUR “FAITH ; image, fitted for Divine fellowship, and called to the inheritance of the saints in hight. Where, in any system of Pagan ethics, shall we find an utterance like that of Christ where he lays down for his followers a law of chastity, even in thought, in the words ; ‘‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, thou shalt not commit adultry ; but I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart,” Matt. v. 27, 28. A startling feature in ancient systems of morality is the total absence of any injunctions with regard to purity. To say that they directly sanction impurity would be going too far, but it is certain that they take little trouble to check it. Among the Stoics and Epicureans, many of the most disgusting vices are considered as not contrary to nature, and therefore not to be condemned. The subjection of the sensual passions to the rule of reason is inculcated, but the Christian horror of impurity is nowhere found. Thus it may be truthfully asserted that Christianity absolutely created the idea of purity in European civilization. The respect for purity, and the command for its maintenance, is perhaps the most important difference between the old world of morality and the new. Chastity is the consummate flower of the Christian graces, and its inestimable value in the conduct of life, will be realized if we consider that among the vices which it is necessary to subdue in order to build up the human character in righteous- ness and true holiness, there is none to be compared with impurity either in strength or in virulence. ‘“ It can outlive and kill a thousand virtues ; it can corrupt the most generous heart ; it can madden the soberest intellect; it can debase the loftiest imagination.” Thus there is no prayer which we need to utter before God with more passionate persistence than that of David: ‘¢ Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” As love is the real master of life, its most THE INCARNATE WORD. 235 subtle and potent force, so the degeneration of love into lust is life’s greatest peril. Impurity is the most corrosive and contagious of all poisons. Let it once be permitted to satu- rate the soul with its vileness, to brand it with its “wild beast mark of panther’s fangs,” and then farewell to peace and virtue. And that which is true of the individual is also true of society. The most appalling vice of the civilised world is impurity. The saddest spectacle of the age is that which confronts us in the lost women who parade the streets of our great cities; and the vilest scandal of the age is the indul- gence granted in this matter to the strong, and the cruelty dealt out to the weak; the condonation of impurity in the man, and the ruthless treatment of it in the case of his victim. Hence the wisdom of the Great Teacher in the clear light which he pours upon the conscience with reference to this degrading vice. Judged by this test alone, He must be pronounced the greatest master who ever dealt with the nature and the peril of the human soul, or with the evils which disintegrate society, causing its root to be as rotten- ness, and its blossom to go up as dust. (c) The Gospel of Humanity. We have already seen how Christ, in his announcement of the first and great commandment, inseparably united morality with religion. We now desire to show how, in the second great commandment, He united religion with humanity—the love of God with the love of man. From the first great commandment—* Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart ”—there proceeds, as a vine from its stem or as a river from its source, the second, which is like unto it, “‘ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ Our duty to our fellow men is thus made to rest, in the first instance, on the relation in which we all stand to God. If we love God we shall love the creature made in His image and folded in the embrace of 16* 236 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: His compassion and regard. The ancients viewed man only in his relation to the world or to the state, Christ views Him primarily in his relation to God. The second commandment ‘5 “like unto” the first, for it is only a development of ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.” What God? The Father of all human creatures. To love Him is to do His will. What is His will? The well-being and happiness of all His creatures. Then we cannot love Him without working for the good of all; the love of our neighbour is the natural outcome of love to the Universal Father. ‘‘ We desire,” says Tertullian—uttering the sentiments of the early Church—‘* we desire a republic of the whole human race.” Here, guided by the Great Teacher, we front a new duty and a new obligation. Heathenism knew nothing of this law. The largest object or sphere of service to the heathen was his family, his tribe, or at most his city or state. ‘‘The word mankind,” says Max Miller, ‘‘ never passed the lips of Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle. Where the Greek saw barbarians, we see brethren ; where the Greek saw nations, we see mankind, toiling and suffering, severed by oceans, divided by language and by national enmity, yet evermore tending, under a Divine control, towards the fulfilment of that inscrutable purpose for which the world was created, and man placed in it bearing the image of God.” We do not find anywhere in heathenism the idea of the equal and universal brotherhood of man. If we imagine we have found it, it is only because we have read Christian ideas back into some heathen utterance. That much-vaunted speech of Terence, ‘‘ 1am aman, and therefore nothing that is human can be foreign to me,” is, in the comedy from which it is quoted, merely a busy-body’s apology for interfering with the concerns of his neighbour. The real fact is, that before Christ came walking on the shadowed side of the world with His peerless religion of love and sorrow, the masses were neglected and despised. They THE INCARNATE WORD. 237 were supposed to possess no rights, and to be able to establish no claims ; the Greek looked down upon them as barbarians ; the free-man despised them as slaves; the philosopher disregarded them as unlettered ; and even the Jew expressed his contempt for the lowly in the Pharisaic utterance, ‘the poor which know not the law are accursed.” Tools to be used in the grasp of the tyrant, or beasts of burden to minister to the luxury of the wealthy—such were the multitude before Christ came and had compassion on them. Antiquity and the Poor. If we seek for further proof of our last statement, the evidence furnished by history is at once ample and appalling. It is truly distressing to notice the cruel indifference to the poor which marks the annals of the ancient world. They have no record and no memorial. On Egyptian tablets thousands are seen under the lash of the task-master, toiling to build the pyramid which shall enclose the dust of kings. Later on, thousands at the bidding of some haughty despot are mown down like grass before the cruel scythe of war; but they fall unpitied. Like pebbles flung into the seething sea, they are cast away, unmourned and unregarded. Slaves in the ancient Roman world were the absolute property of their masters; they could treat them as we have power to treat our dogs. Aristotle states that in a well-ordered house- hold there are two instruments—inanimate and animate—that is, chairs and tables, and slaves, which were both regarded as of thesame value. Florus, among the Romans, characterises slaves as another race of men. Domitius, the Prator, caused a slave, who, in hunting, had killed a wild boar at the wrong moment, to be crucified, on which Cicero says, ‘‘ This might, perhaps, seem harsh.” Flaminius, when a gay young friend said he had never seen a man in the agonies of death, had a slave tortured for the gratification of his desire. Pollio, who 238 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: liked to furnish his guests at his feasts with delicate lampreys, had the fish fed with flesh cut from living slaves and flung into the pond. When Alexander, in a fit of drunkenness, slew Clitus at the banquet, a flatterer whispered, ‘‘ There is no law above the will of the Monarch,” and there was no one to give him back in his throat the wretched lie. At the gladiatorial shows in the Colosseum at Rome, those who hesitated to die were driven into the fight with scourges and red-hot irons, while the frenzied spectators screamed ‘ Kill! lash! burn!” In the pauses, between the fighting, the soil of the arena, saturated with blood, was turned over with shovels, Moorish slaves threw on fresh sand, and smoothed again the place of combat. Then the shedding of blood began anew. Such was the brutal and merciless indifference of antiquity toward the poor—and this, too, amid the culture and civilisa- tion of ancient Rome when she was mistress of the world, when art flourished in her academies, when Horace and Virgil sang for her, when military genius achieved for her such wondrous triumphs, and when she was founding that science of law which she has bequeathed to modern nations as her richest legacy. So hard, and cruel, and pitiless was civilisa- tion without Christianity. A New Era. But all this was altered by the new evangel. A new era dawned for the race when, amid the wonder-stricken listeners in the synagogue, Christ appropriated to himself the pro- phecy, ‘‘ The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” It should never be forgotten that true humanity is the product of Christianity. Not until men were taught that whom the Son makes free, they are free indeed; not until He was proclaimed who Himself took the THE INCARNATE WORD. 239 form of a servant and died the death of a slave on the cross, did the day of liberty begin to break for slaves, a day which neither the theories of the Stoics, nor Seneca’s fine words about the dignity of man, could have brought without the teaching and the example of the holy and compassionate Nazarene. He revealed the value of man as man, a value shared by all, apart altogether from the accident of outward condition. No mean creature could that be on whose brow, however crossed by care, or bowed by shame, or branded by tyranny, were found the traces of that regal spirit which God the Father kindled, which God the Son redeemed, and over which God the Spirit yearned with intensest yearning. The conscience with which the Highest could commune, and the spirit which was not too mean for His abode, could be no . fitting object for blight or scorn. The noble canon of Kant, ‘make no man a means to thy ends, but hold every man to be an end to himself,” then received its full recognition. A heathen teacher had said, ‘‘ man is a wolf to a man whom he does not know;” but, speaking of the early Christians, a pagan says with astonishment, ‘they love each other without knowing each other.” Then dawned upon the world that exquisite pity which the Christian calls the ‘love of souls,” ‘“‘his sense,” says James Martineau, ‘‘of the infinite worth there is in man, his sigh for what he ought to be, his grief for what he is; his faith that the meanest is but the highest in the germ ; his vow to lift every burden from the lot, to clear every film from the mind, that makes his poor brother seem less than a Son of God.” Thus it was reserved for Christ to usher into our world the era of humanity, to “lift the needy from the dunghill and to set the poor among princes.” We read that in the old time, ‘‘the common people heard Him ’ gladly.” And well they might, and well they still may do, for He has done more for the common people than all the fiery demagogues who ever lashed them into frenzy, or all the loving watchers who ever bathed their scarred feet with 240 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: tears. To adapt to our purpose a few noble lines from the pen of Bulwer Lytton :— ‘‘ Old Grecian lore was for the few conceived, By schools discussed, but not by crowds believed, The angel ladder clomb the heavenly steep, But at its foot the priesthoods lay asleep. Not to the fisherman said they ‘ Arise’”’! Not to the lowly offered they the skies. Not so with Christ, He pitied human-kind : To the uncultured reason, to the unlettered mind, To the poor, the oppressed, the toiler, and the slave, He said, “ Be light,”’ and light was on the grave. No more alone to sage or monarch given— For all His nail-pierced hand flung back the gates of heaven.”’ The Politics of Christianity. If Christianity can be said to have any politics, they are essentially democratic. The faith of our Lord Jesus Christ has no respect of persons. When true to itself, the gold ring or the goodly apparel do not weigh in its divine regards. It honours and addresses the poor man in vile raiment, throwing it aside only for a moment to discern beneath it a spirit capable of God and virtue, and dowered with a capacity for an endless life. True, it has shared the common lot of Divine ideas entrusted to the hands of men. It has been debased and misinterpreted by priests and tyrants, and the churches have apprehended only very imperfectly its finer issues. Its face has been marred more than any man’s, and its form more than the sonsof men. Unworthy and selfish disciples have taken out of it its love, its socialism, its proclamation of spiritual equality, and of equal rights and duties before God ; its contempt for gold, which is only dust, though it may be yellow; its hatred of oppressors; its love for the poor, the ignorant, and the low-born. But though clouds have veiled the sun, they have not extinguished it, there is yet healing in its wings, and before its heavenly warmth the icy fetters of tyranny must melt and vanish. The greed of landlordism, THE INCARNATE WORD. 241 the selfishness of capital, the shame of inadequately-remu- nerated labour, the reeking dens in which men have thrust the poor to rot and perish, the barbarism of war, all are destined sooner or later to vanish before its healing might. And they will be slain not by vevolution, but by evolution. John Stuart Mill has said with profound wisdom, that ‘the besetting sin of enthusiastic philanthropists is a proneness to anticipate events, a desire to legislate as if mankind were already what it is barely conceivable that they may become, and to force upon them ideas and institutions to which they can only be fitted by long ages of training.” But to Jesus Christ this charge does not apply. According to His method the full greatness of a truth is not unveiled until men have been educated into fitness for its reception, and its existing social arrangements are not shattered until a true substitute has been provided. Hence He did not by positive precept forbid slavery, or war, or imperial tyranny ; but the new principle which he infused was directly opposed to them, and He knew that, in the evolution of the years, that principle would eventually destroy them. Christ is no past personage. We do not go to the tomb to find Him. He lives evermore ; He is moving through the world to-day, and upon His words there are fewer signs of age than upon the unwrinkled summer sea, and fewer signs of decay than upon the stars which throb in the evening sky. ‘‘ His,” says one, “was the most potent intellect that ever found its organ in a human brain. His teachings underlie all that is best in our modern civili- sation—all progress, all philanthropy—nor is there a maxim in the improved philosophy of life, of society, of commerce, of government, which has not emanated from His gospel, and may not be translated, and for the better, into the very words which fell from His lips.” It would not be difficult to show that every step in the progress of European civilisation has resulted from the taking up, into the national conscience and polity, 242 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: of some great truth in the system of Christian ethics. Chivalry owed all that it possessed of good—its grace, its honour, its courtesy, its respect for woman—to the principles of the Gospel. The Protestant Reformation was but the moral virtue streaming from the words of Christ, which were then recovered from the grasp of monk and prelate—from the cathedral cloister and the convent cell. Our hospitals and orphanages are but the crystallisation of these ideas. It is these words which were echoed by the clank of the African’s fetters as they fell to the ground, and the cry of the Russian serf as he sprang into liberty. To these words, however they might affect to ignore them, Rousseau and Voltaire owed that sympathy with the oppressed which attracted its thousands; and Comte and Mill their noble enthusiasm for the progress of humanity; and Huxley his concep- tion of the ideal man; while literature and commerce, government, and art have gathered here their loftiest consecration and their sublimest ministry. Let those who dream that they have superseded the teaching of Christ as a force for human alleviation and uplifting, seize the chariot wheels of their imagined progress and drag them back to these precepts, for they still judge and guide the world. Itis true there are many things in Christendom which still mock these words, as for instance the twelve million bayonets of Europe, the harlot’s cry, the gambler’s oath, the drunkard’s curse. But the words of Christ are mightier than the embattled power of hell, and they must ultimately triumph. ‘The years are slow, the vision tarrieth long, And far the end may be. But one by one the fiends of ancient wrong Go forth and leave us free.”’ We read in a review the other day that Christianity had been ‘found out.” Would to God it were “found out” and translated into human action, and the bewildered race would THE INCARNATE WORD. 243 cease from sighing and the wilderness would rejoice and blossom as the rose. That ‘civilized heathenism” which has stolen the christian name and disgraced it by its bigotry, its other-worldliness, and its hypocrisy, is indeed ‘found out,’ and we very willingly consign it to perdition; but genuine Christianity is still in front of us, and there is universal and eternal ‘‘ healing in its wings.” The Master’s Example. Yet further, the words of Christ receive a deeper meaning from His own personal example, the example of one who said, from under the shadow of His cross, “‘ A new command- ment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” The teaching of Christ cannot be learned from His precepts alone. We must go to His life, and especially to His cross, if we would truly understand His words. The Paganism of the age of the Stoics did not lack fine precepts concerning the duty of man toward his fellow man, though many of them may be explained by the fact that Christianity was already in the air. But these fine precepts fall poorly from the lips of Cicero in his pride, or Seneca in his greed, or Marcus Aurelius with the blood of the early Christians on his skirts. These could not say with Christ, ‘“* Love one another as I have loved you.” Into these words the agony and bloody sweat of Geth- semane is pressed; the mysterious and unfathomable cry coming from “ His pale lips in the black night of His eclipse” on Calvary, “‘ My God! My God! why hast thou forsaken me?” charges them with boundless meaning, as well as that majestic litany of mercy rising above the clamour of His murderers—‘“ Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” ‘Truly is it said that the heart of Christ was the heart of infinite love, beating and bleeding for human happi- 244 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. ness. His love was not an occasional outburst, but a principle of constant unwearied devotedness ; no service was too hard for it, no sacrifice too great, no suffering too infamous. For the sake of others He preferred poverty to wealth, toil to ease, reproach to honour, and death to life. The deeper the need of men, the more tender His compassion. He suffered with those who mourned more intensely than themselves. He bled with all the wounds of men, wiped away every tear, and opened His heart to every feeble cry which would have been lost for other ears in the incessant roar of life. See Him weeping for the living and weeping for the dead; taking up little children in His arms to bless them; lifting the lost woman like a trampled lily from the mire; pitying the shunned, the weary, the shelterless, the waifs of the world, the outcasts from the temple, the poor, the wretched, and the broken-hearted, whom the Priest and the Levite had alike passed by. By all this divine beauty in His matchless life, and in His atoning death, is enforced that law of sacrifice, and that law of service, which embrace within their ample range all other possible duties toward men, whether indivi- dual or social. The Law of Sacrifice. The distinction between Paganism and Christianity cannot be more strikingly illustrated than by the law our Saviour enunciated when He said, ‘‘ Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosover will lose his life for My sake shall find it.’ Human theories of morals, before Christ, ever made self the centre of life. The supreme good of man was to be content with himself, to find peace in his own power, and happiness in his own dignity. When Aristotle depicts the man who is his moral ideal, he is one who, being complete in himself, neither has need of nor renders service to others, whe proudly and tranquilly goes his own way, self-sufficient and self-approved. And with this self-content the misfortunes or THE INCARNATE WORD. 245 the claims of others must not be permitted to interfere. Hence opening the manual of Epictetus, we read, ‘‘Is it a vase that pleases thee? It is fragile: if it should be broken do not trouble thyself. Is it thy son, thy wife, a friend that thou cherishest? Nature made them mortal: if they die, be not thou disconsolate. Dost thou hear a raven croaking out an evil augury? Let this not disturb thee. Reflect an instant and say: This sinister cry cannot forbode any evil to me; it can only menace my body, my goods, my reputation, my wife, or my children.” Thus are the finest feelings of the heart insulted in the ethics of Paganism. And not only so, but the conscience is also wounded, for in another passage we read: “If thou wouldst advance in the way of wisdom, drive from thee this thought. If I do not chastise my slave he will be wicked. Itis better that thy slave should be wicked than that thou shouldst be unhappy.” In opposi- tion to all this Christ teaches that the beauty, the truth, and the maturity of moral being are found in self-sacrifice. Our personal feelings prompt us to do everything with reference to ourselves, Christ demands that we shall labour for the good of others. If we follow our natural inclinations we make ourselves the centre of everything that exists; if we follow Christ we deny ourselves. Self is absorbed in the interests of universal being. The finest intellect that ever came under the spell of Christianity thus expresses the very essence of Christian discipleship: ‘‘ Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and, being found in fashion as aman He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Thus does Christianity pour contempt upon the doctrine that the interests of man- kind are best promoted by an enlightened and well-regulated selfishness, and summon men from the slumber of self-regard 246 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: to the glory and the dignity of self-sacrifice. It proclaims with no uncertain voice how— ** He that loves life overmuch shall die The dog’s death utterly: And he that much less loves it than he hates All wrong-doing that is done Anywhere, always underneath the sun Shall live a mightier life than time’s or fate’s.” And how fruitful is this doctrine in its application to human life and human necessities? The essence of all sin is selfish- ness, the essence of all virtue is benevolence. The destruc- tion of selfishness would mean the destruction of evil, for there is no evil which does not find its root in perverted self-regard. Truly is it said: ‘We touch here upon the centre of all sin, of all the evil in the world, of all possible evil. We stand—and it is with a subtle thrill of awe—at the edge of the fountain from which all the guilt and crime of the race has flowed.” Destroy selfishness, and all the wrongs which darken human life and cause good men to dispair, would vanish. Thus by His assertion of the principle and the duty of self-sacrifice, Christ stands above all social reformers, and its universal acceptance would restore the lost order of the world. The Law of Service. Another law which Christ inculcated, flowing naturally from the law of sacrifice, was the law of service. He said: ‘‘ Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister: and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant; even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Men say, ‘We will ascend!” Christ says, “I will descend.” Men say, “‘ We will rule!” Christ says, «I will serve.” When His disciples, on the eve of His passion, disputed as to which should be the greatest, He girded Him- self with a towel and knelt before them, and washed their THE INCARNATE WORD. 247 feet, thus assuming the functions of the lowest of slaves, to teach them how they should serve each other. Furthermore, the record of this act implies that the highest dignity of God Himself consists in service. Hence St. John introduces the story thus, ‘* Jesus, knowing that he was come from God and went to God, riseth from supper.” By which is meant, that in full consciousness of union with the Father, and knowing that He was in harmony with God, He did this thing, and as such expressed in it the character of God. He did it as the Revealer of the Divine life. God reigns over the universe because He is love; it is being the servant of all, as no other can be, that makes Him Lord of all. This idea of the grandeur and the divineness of service appears through all the teaching of Christ, and it propounds the germinant principle of a new civilisation. The civilisation of Paganism was one of trampled weak and tyrant strong, but in the Kingdom of Christ the strong are to serve the weak, and the motto of each is to be *“*Ich Dien,’—‘I serve.” The great law which Christ exemplified was that of the higher descending to the lower to lift it up; of the perfect seeking the imperfect, the richly endowed seeking the poor and unfortunate, bearing to them the gifts which they lack. It is always the shepherd going to the mountains to seek the lost sheep and to bring them back to the fold. (dq) All Things New. And how fruitful and blessed would be the application of this principle in social and political life. If consistently followed, how surely would it transform society, and eliminate from our boasted civilisation the elements which shame it. That which we lack for the reign of love and justice in the world is not finer teaching, or a loftier example, but only a deeper insight into the meaning of the words and life of Christ, and a grand resolve to walk in the way which He has prepared for our feet. ‘Thereis much of truth in the 248 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: oft-quoted saying of Lessing, that ‘the Christian religion had been tried for eighteen centuries—the religion of Christ remained to be tried.” Let no man speak of Christianity as out-worn; it has never yet been fairly applied as a means of human uplifting. Let no man speak of it as ‘ played out,” it has never yet had fair play. Those elements in our social condition which are the scandal of our boasted civilisation really demonstrate a defective recognition of its spirit and its aims. They arise either from an imperfect apprehension of the law of love which Christ laid down for our guidance, or from an ignoble unwillingness on our part to translate it into action. The cold economic law of supply and demand, the iron law of wages, the scientific law of the survival of the fittest, all need to be controlled and regulated by that higher law of love and brotherhood which would banish the injustice and heal the miseries of the world. ‘Amongst men,” says Laveleye, the great Belgian philosopher, ‘‘ since cannibalism has proved insufficient, the strong have found a more profit- able way of using the weak than eating them; this is to force them to labour, whilst depriving them, by different methods, of the fruits of their toil.” Now this is simply monstrous, and an insult to Christianity. Did the spirit which Christ laid down in His teaching and manifested in His life permeate the world, we should have more wisdom in the production of wealth; more equity in its distribution; and less waste and extravagance in its con- sumption. It would be accounted a disgrace to any Christian State that a pauper should dwell in it, and that any human creature should die of starvation within its pale would blanch each cheek with shame and bow each head in sorrow. The toiler would no more be committed in his old age to the cold charity of the workhouse, and the friendless girl would no more sell her body and soul for bread. The great gulf which now yawns between the rich and poor would be spanned by loving sympathies and by Christian service, and the superfluity THE INCARNATE WORD. 249 of the wealthy would find a channel through which it could flow to the needy and the destitute. The white slavery, and the sweating, ringing, and cornering, of the capitalists would be renounced for ever, and with it would cease the bitter cry of the ill-fed and the houseless poor. Then humanity would be one, even as the Father and the Son are one. ‘Then all the gifts of men, whether natural or acquired, would result in ministry to those less favoured. The forces which have so often proved only ministers of despotism, would be trans- formed into instruments for the elevation of all. Those who are above would help those who are below to ascend towards light and liberty. Instead of a few alms thrown hastily into the pit of human misery, ora few works done to still the cries of an insulted conscience, men’s hearts would turn towards misery and suffering as naturally as the needle to the pole. Then civilised and Christian nations, instead of making their superiority an instrument of conquest, would stoop towards the people still plunged in heathenism and barbarism, and say: ‘¢Come and sit down beside us.” Then those who have know. ledge would not be content to “‘ know for knowing’s sake, but to become as stars to men for ever.” Then those who possess, in place of making their wealth a pedestal for selfishness or a plea for arrogance and pride, would make it ministrant to the nameless thousands crushed by daily cares and ceaseless toil. Then those conflicts between the classes and the masses, between capital and labour, which are the peril and the disgrace of our brilliant civilisation would cease. ‘‘ Then the bloodshed and aggressions of nations, the over-reachings of commerce, the unequal administration of governments, the barbarous contrasts of Christian cities, the private hatreds that disfigure households, would yield to a construc- tive and benignant principle of heavenly order.” Then ragged schools would collect all the rags of the world, and Reformatories all the fallen, and comfortable homes all the squalid paupers, and philanthropy commencing at the very 17 250 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: foundation would wash the feet of our common humanity. Then glorious works of tenderness and truth would kill in men the thought which maddens, and fill the void which despairs. Then that holiest of prayers, ‘Thy kingdom come,” uttered for ages by watchers hungering for the morning, would flash into the sunrise of a glorious answer. “Then,” to quote the glowing language of ancient pro- phecy, ‘‘ the eyes of the blind would be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped: then would the lame man leap asa hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing, and in the wilderness would waters break out, and streams in the desert.” **Come quickly, O King of mercy! and Thou His glorious Spirit. The soul of tired humanity and o’er-wearied nature crieth out, Amen! ” 3. THE PRINCE OF LIFE. Of all the names given to Christ in the Scriptures that is the most fitting, as well as the most commanding, by which He is designated ‘The Prince of Life.” This He is, not only in virtue of His resurrection, but also from the fact that He is the great kindler and sustainer of the life of God in the human soul. The opinions of men may differ with regard to His person, or His claims, but none can deny that a spiritual power so sublimely creative as that which He wielded, and still wields, was never before or since manifested to the world. In the study of His life and work we are confronted not only with a unique personality, and with a new body of teaching ; but also with a new spring and centre of spiritual energy. His mission in the interests of humanity was manifold, but its final and victorious end was that men might live through Him. If while He moved amid the shadows and the tears of earth we had been privileged to behold Him and to say,—‘‘ Strange and mysterious visitant, why art Thou here?” He might fitly have replied,—‘* I am here that ye THE INCARNATE WORD. 251 might have life, and that ye might. have it more abundantly.” Christ is not merely the reformer of an old and corrupt world ; He is the creator of anew. He has not only become a new conscience to humanity; He has thrilled it with the life of God. Other teachers have given precepts; Christ gives not pre- cepts merely, but life. He differs from the moralists in this, that while all that they can do is to assert that righteousness 1S an imperative pursuit of the soul, He by His inbreathed power renders it a practical pursuit. Jt isnot enough for us to know the right. We know much better than we do. The words which Ovid puts into the mouth of Medea, ‘I see and approve the better, and yet I pursue the worse,” are the formule of universal experience. Speaking of one seeking purity of life in his own strength, the poet says: ‘‘ Each morning hailed a new Endeavour’s birth, Each evening wept its pitiful corpse before.” We have all tasted this bitterness, and sighed for a power within us, a soul within our soul, which would make virtue possible to us. For such a power the old Greek teachers also sighed, but found it not. Aristotle in his treatise on Ethics mournfully confesses the inadequacy of such precepts as those which he enforced to ennoble the lives of the people, and Plato, while depicting the war ever present in the human soul betwixt passion and reason, desire and duty, admits the inability of philosophy to tame the wild beasts of sensual appetite, or to drive them from the arena. All that it can do is to set them in balancing antagonism one against the other, and to hope that reason will have the final mastery. But in Christ the world beheld a teacher who gave not only precepts but life, one who in the might of a Divine Omnipotence said to the moral leper,—‘‘ I will, be thou clean,” and to the soul dead in trespasses and sins,—‘‘I say unto thee, arise.” And, lo, at His word pollution gives place to purity, and life throbs 17* 252 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH « where death hath reigned. He imparts to the enfeebled souls of men, if utterly surrendered to Him, the energy for which they sigh. ‘To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God,” and that ancient miracle is continually repeated in the Christian experience oi to-day. ‘The spirit of life in Christ Jesus” frees men from ‘‘the law of sin and death.” A vital inspiration of goodness, of faith, of purity, of love, and of self-sacrifice streams into the soul united by faith to the living Christ, imparting to it a true salvation by delivering it from the sin which is its great curse and its real damnation. Jesus Christ does that which no other being who ever trod the earth has been able to do. He raises men from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. He wakes the dormant eternity in their hearts; He nerves them for battle with evil angels, and with evil men; He strangles the serpents of vile habits which, as in Dante’s awful vision, had become incorporate with their blood and life, and flings them to the dust; He kindles within them love, and pity, and joyous self-sacrifice ; He gives them new hopes, new aims, new enthusiasms; He regenerates their affections and desires: He energises their wills with the inbreathed power of God. (a) The Secret of Christ’s Victory. In this new spiritual energy we have the secret of the victory of Christianity in the Roman Empire. It triumphed through the supernatural influence of its Divine Head. There is no other rational explanation of its success. As if one who, treating of the order of the heavens, should omit all mention of gravitation, Gibbon, in enumerating the forces which built up Christendom, omits this from his catalogue. But he had nothing to draw with, and the well was deep. To the Christian student, however, it is abundantly evident that it was by His power to make men new that Christ created a new world. Divinely appointed for the uplifting of our race, He indulged in no dream of renovating the world THE INCARNATE WORD. 253 from without, but addressed His appeal to the man within, looking there for the creative and vital forces which were to transform society. External civilisation, together with human schemes for social and political improvement, have their value, but they deal with things to be done for us, rather than with things to be done iz us, with what we are to get rather than with what we are to be. They change the circumstances, but they leave the man untouched ; they alter the surroundings, but they have no power to transform the character. Hence their failure to uplift humanity. The roots of the evils which curse men are found in the human heart estranged from God and deceived by evil. Any reform therefore which does not reach the heart is of necessity superficial and transitory. In Horace Bushnell’s pregnant words, ‘‘ The soul of all improvement is the improvement of the’ soul.” Hence the Lord of Life, leaving the surface of things, sank His shaft deep down into the moral and spiritual nature of man. Repentance, regeneration, holiness, these were the watchwords of His Kingdom, and His power to confer them on all the souls which sighed for forgiveness and moral perfection was the guarantee of His ultimate triumph over all the alien forces which have drawn men aside from - God and virtue. This was the energy which, working in silence and obscurity, permeated the empire of the Cesars and called forth from a civilsation reeking with corruption 4a band of witnesses whose history might be summed up in the words, ‘‘ they resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” A new power was stirring in their hearts which was nothing less than the power which had been embodied in the divine-human life of Christ when on earth. It was He, whose life had been so strange and brief a miracle of beauty, who was still present with them moulding them into some faint resemblance to His own loveliness. The same life which had shed its healing influence over the sick and the sinful in Galilee was active in them, moving them to deeds of tender 254 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: sympathy and loving service amid the squalor and misery of Rome, and that celestial power which death and the grave obeyed rested on them in their day of battle, inciting them to efforts which amazed the Roman world, and shook the thrones of Paganism from Cyprus to Gibraltar. It was not they but “ Christ that worked in them,” and as the tide of Pagan corruption rolled back before the breath of their witness they raised the cry of rapturous thanksgiving : ‘‘ Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of His knowledge by us in every place.” (2 Cor. ii. 14.) To embody our lesson in the forceful lines of Mrs. Alexander :— ‘* Then souls of men were shaken with emotions new and strange, And creeds and thoughts were tossing in an agony of change, The world that had grown weary of its pleasures and its gains, Felt a tide of youth and rapture rush through its wasted veins, And life it never knew before was stirring at its care, The proud and mighty empire that was ‘ pagan Rome’ no more.” Every unprejudiced reader of history will admit that at the time of the advent of Christ the whole world lay shrouded in moral and spiritual death. ‘‘ Darkness covered the earth and gross darkness the people.” The old monarchies had sunk one by one—Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia— ruined by their own vices. ‘‘ They rose while all the depths of guilt their vain creators sounded, They sank because on fraud and force their corner stones were founded.” Rome did indeed stand at the height of her power, but it was the power to be vile, and therefore wretched. As Matthew Arnold puts it :— ‘‘On that hard Pagan world disgust And secret loathing fell; Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell.” Even Judza had lost sight of God, and would have been THE INCARNATE WORD. 255 utterly degraded but for the few faithful ones, like Simeon and Nathanael, who lingered about the Temple like the spirits of the old prophets. From this deep darkness human misery sent up its wail, but no voice of hope or comfort responded. Men stumbled without a guide in that region of the shadow of death, and sank to the earth in despair. The cries of slaughtered thousands rose from the Coliseum where Paganism in its brutal cruelty ‘‘ butchered men to make a Roman holiday. It was as though mercy had spread her wings and fled from a race which had forsaken God, and earth was sinking into hell. Over this world, as it lay writhing like a dying athlete in the arena of time, Christ stood and said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ and through His power a new soul began to breathe beneath the ribs of death. Those who deny His physical resurrection cannot deny the moral resurrection of humanity through His influence. The Christ of History is attested by the Christ in history, closing the abyss of perdition under human feet and leading men back to sanctity and God. The true and divine Hercules, He turned into the Augean stables of Pagan society the river of cleansing. The true and grander Atlas, He took the falling world upon his godlike shoulders and lifted it toward Heaven. In words wrested from him by the stern facts of history, Renan says, ‘‘ Jesus Christ created a paradise out of the hell of Rome.” He dispersed the dark- ness of the world’s spiritual ignorance. He took away the load of the world’s spiritual guilt and despair. He broke the sullen sleep of the world’s spiritual death. The Eternal Life which was with the Father manifested itself to men, and in that life they lived. He found men sensual, proud, and bigoted ; He made them pure, and lowly, and large-hearted. He found the ascendant principle of the world’s life to be selfish passion, and He infused into its veins the sweetness of disinterested love. The sick and paralysed empire began to feel creeping through its jaded pulses the stirring of a 256 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH! new life. Polluted Rome came forth from the slough of her vices with the New Testament in her hand, and the Church, with her charities and her sanctities, began her beneficent career. ‘‘ Then,” says one, ‘tthe world saw a spectacle which it had never beheld before, which it has never been wholly deprived of since. Poor unlettered men were seen to reach a height of moral dignity and beauty which the most cultured philosophers had failed to win. . . A glow of conscious divine life inspired all their thoughts and actions. This the Pagans around them could not fail to notice ; and to this the Christian apologists loved to appeal as the surest proof of the divine origin of their religion. Athenagoras, with noble pride, contrasts the effects of the teaching of the philosophers with those that follow from the Christian faith. ‘Among us,” he writes, “you will find uneducated persons, and artizans, and old women, who if they are unable to prove in words the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth. They do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck they do not strike again; when robbed they do not go to law: they give to those that ask of them, and love their neighbours as themselves.” If we turn to the earliest of all the apologists, Justin Martyr, we find like passages in abundance ; for instance—‘* We who formerly delighted in fornication now embrace chastity; we who formerly used magical arts dedicate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God ; we who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and of possessions now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to everyone in need. We who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not use a common hearth and fire with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavour to persuade those who hate us unjustly to live comformably to the good precepts of Christ, THE INCARNATE WORD. 257 to the end that they may become partakers with us of the same joyful hope of a reward from God, the Ruler of all.” Similar passages might be multiplied almost indefinitely ; but it is needless to accumulate proof of that which is patent on every page of early Christian history. The annals of the Primitive Church that remain to us in the Acts of the Apostles are full of this feeling of conscious power and life. The Church felt, and the world felt too, that strength from on high had entered into it; that hope had no longer fled to its heavenly home, but that it had been brought back to earth by Him who is at once ‘“‘ the Light and the Life of men.” (b) The abiding miracle of the Gospel. And that olden miracle is continually repeated. To quote the words of Fichte: ‘‘ The lapse of time serves only to con- firm the everlasting miracle, that in all who come unto God through Christ Jesus a new heart is created; and until time expires, all who enter into the Kingdom of God must enter by Him: and until the end of time, all who truly know them- selves in their relation to Him will bow down to acknowledge the incomparable glory of His manifestation.” Christ raises men from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. Heimparts to those whoreceive Him a fuller, richer, grander life, than they had hitherto known, a life as superior to the mere life of the intellect, as that is superior to the life of the senses. Ask those who have entered into its blessed secret the source of this new energy, and they each and all reply: “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” As the sun enters into the rose-bud and glorifies it and pierces the lily-roots to make them bloom in beauty and in pureness, so Christ enters into human souls to transfigure and glorify them with Himself. Thus was the persecuting Saul trans- formed inte Paul the Apostle, the hero, and the martyr. Thus 258 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH} was the vision of the titanic Luther unsealed when he descended the staircase of Pilate with the great Reformation surging in his heart. Thus was Bunyan redeemed from the utterance of awful blasphemies to become the pioneer of the king’s highway—the writer of the ‘‘ Pilgrim’s Progress.” Thus was William Wilberforce drawn from the racecourse and the ball-room into the orbit of piety, to live a life so fragrant that its perfume lingers with us still. And in many instances the importation of this life is so vivid and so instantaneous that no one can escape from the conviction that it is nothing less than miraculous. After a long and hopeless wrestling with evil, in its own strength, only to be again and again defeated in the conflict the soul unites itself with Christ, and is immediately healed. At a leap, at a bound, they pass from the Kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of God’s dear Son. The weeds and poisonous growths of the soul’s neglected garden are not cleared away by the patient hand of tillage, but consumed at a single breath. The fetters of evil habit are not slowly filed away, but fused as by a lighting flash from heaven. Who can refuse to recognise in this moral miracle an evidence of the true and proper divinity of Him by whom itis wrought? If there is anything which we feel to be the special prerogative of Deity, it is power to confer life, whether it be the life of the tiniest moss which blooms upon the way-side stone, or the life of the seraph who worships amid the sanctities of heaven. Our poor pretensions to greatness are swiftly put to flight by such a question as that addressed to Job by his Creator—* Whose spirit came from thee?” The finite creature may, in a sense, create beauty, but he cannot endow it with lite. Delicate human fingers may pro- duce from the yielding wax flowers of purest whiteness or of loveliest hue, but they cannot give them life—they open not their petals to the kiss of the morning sun, they fling no perfume on the ambient air. The sculptor may fashion the THE INCARNATE WORD. 259 marble into wondrous forms, turning as it were the wrestler or the maiden into stone amid the very drawing of the breath or sway of the vesture, but he cannot give them life—there is no animating soul beneath that beautiful exterior, all is dead marble still. When the form of the first man stood erect amid the wonders of creation God alone of all the powers in the universe could breathe into it the breath of a life which could know Him, and which could worship Him. And when the soul of man, through the influence of self-chosen evil, is ‘** dead unto God,” ‘‘ dead in trespasses and sins,” only by the will and power of Omnipotence can it pass ** from death unto life.” There are times when in the strong yearning of compassion we would give our all to wield such a power over some who are near and dear to us. But it cannot be; we must leave that alone for ever. We see them tortured and degraded by the demons of lust, or hate, or pride, but we cannot cast them out. We must needs bring them to Him who is ‘able to save to the uttermost.” The kindling of the life of God in the human soul is His sublime prerogative. The renovation and consecration of the living temple of the human spirit,— its darkness chased away, its foul things expelled, its idolatries cast out,—these are the evidences of His lonely and un- approachable pre-eminence. That celestial and creative energy, which goes deeper than feeling, deeper than thought, deeper than desire, which enters into the very substance and tissue of the soul, thrilling it with a conscious sense of the life of God, whence did it ever flow but from Him who says: ‘‘T am the vine, ye are the branches. He that abidethin me, and Jin Him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without Me ye can do nothing.” Here again Christ stands alone among all the teachers and reformers of the race. Other teachers and founders of religions propose to benefit man by instructing him, Christ does it by saving him. Other teachers help the race, Christ 260 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: renews it. He comes in above the broken strength of the soul, touches it with His inspiring power, renews it by His grace, sanctifies it by his love, and sustains it by a presence with it so near and so intimate that the soul may be said to dwell in Him and He init. Where shall we find a parallel to this influence? In no proper sense can the Brahmin be said to be in Brahma. The Buddhist never speaks of himself as being in Buddha, nor of Buddha being in him. The devout Moslem never speaks of himself as being in Mahomet. There is no interior union of lives, no interfusion of celestial energy, no felt presence of the master in the soul of the disciple as the secret of strength, the fount of joy, and the hope of glory. Other faiths have no regeneration in them, but “if any man be in Christ he is a new creature, old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Reviewing the experience of Christian believers we hear them say, through the medium of a great representative, ‘‘ We all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath even as others.” This was their state of death. ‘ But,” continues the Apostle, describing their transition from death unto life, ‘God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Now it is vain and useless for the objector to assert that this is merely the testimony of a few fanatics self-deceived and deceiving others, for there are thousands, nay, millions, moving in the world to-day, for whom the words just quoted express a certainty as absolute as any other other certainty of their being. The divinity of Christ is attested to them by the supernatural life which He has imparted to them, through faith in Him, and which He still sustains. The manner of the co-existence of the human and the Divine in “*‘ Him whom they THE INCARNATE WORD. 261 have believed” they cannot attempt to explain, but the fact of that co-existence is in-wrought in their consciousness, and forms the basis of a certainty of His divinity which nothing can shake or destroy. Interrogate them and they might say, ‘‘As a question of metaphysics we are baffled when we approach the mystery of the life of God incarnated in Christ ; but as a fact of spiritual experience we feel the marked dis- tinction which exists between union with Christ and any other fellowship, though it be with the wisest and the holiest of our race. The statement that ‘‘in Him was life, and the life was the light of men,” is an open secret to those who by living faith have entered into union with the redeeming Saviour. Plato, and Milton, and Pascal, and Wordsworth, have spoken to us, and that so intimately that, through the study of their writings, we may be said to have become one with them and they with us. Our sainted dead also may be felt to dwell in us as truly as they dwell in the mansions of the Father’s house. But the life and strength which we derive from our fellowship with Christ are something higher and diviner far. Here it is evidently not merely a human friend, but a divine Saviour who has taken hold on us, blending His serene, triumphant, and eternal life with ours—one ‘** Who feeds our hearts For His own service; knoweth us, loveth us,”’ and through whom we consciously participate in the life of God. Yes! Christ is the “‘ Prince of Life,” and the proof of this is found not only in the statement of those Gospels which are His inspired record, but also in the moral miracles which He is now working in our midst. His influence is not a spent force; on the contrary, it widens and deepens with the lapse of years. Wedo not confide ina dead Christ, but in one who grandly living still attests His divinity by the uplifting and transformation of men. Yes, the Kingdom of Christ is here. His disciples are here. His credentials are here. Behold 262 PIILARS OF OUR FAITH. them in blind souls at His word receiving sight; in lame souls by His energy, walking erect and strong; in deaf souls, at His mandate, listening eagerly to the divine message; in leprous souls, at His bidding, flushed with health and beauty ; in dead souls, at His call, issuing from their moral sepulchres. Behold the proofs of His celestial might in the faithful of all lands who worship God in spirit and in truth, and who toil and pray that His will may be done on earth even as it is in Heaven. ‘* They know whom they have believed, and are persuaded that He is able to keep that which they have committed to Him until that day.” They are brought by faith into living union with the God-man. He is the vine rooted in God, and they are the branches; and as the life of the vine pulsates through the branches, so, by their union with Christ, the life of God pulsates through them. This is the grand open secret of Christian experience, Christ in the soul forming it into a new creature. This is the abiding miracle of the Gospel rooted in the consciousness of every true Christian, and secure against all assaults of unbelief from whatever quarter they mayarise. ‘Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree; and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.” (Is. lv. 13.) Before men attempt to snatch from the brow of Christ His peerless diadem, let them equal this power. Let them make one man penitent, and humble, and chaste. Let them make one man loathe the guilty and shameful past, and rise in the strength of God to front a grander and holier future. This is a task, however, which mocks the might of the Czesars, and before which Confucius, and Buddha, and Plato, and Socrates are powerless, veiling their faces in the bitterness of a noble sorrow. Mightier than the lightning which rends the rugged oak ; mightier than the earthquake which shakes the mountain summit—this is the power which attests divinity, and before which the world must ultimately bow. Yea, and this THE INCARNATE WORD. 243 is the power before which the rebel world is slowly but surely bowing. East, West, North and South we trace the conquests of the wondrous Nazarene. To Him is evidently given the sceptre of that universal empire of which the Cesars vainly dreamed. Races exhibiting the widest divergency of intellect and character acknowledge His sway. ‘“ He is followed by the Greek, though a founder of none of his sects ; revered by the Brahmin, though preached by one of the fishermen caste; and worshipped by the red man of Canada, though belonging to the hated pale-race.” His empire may be said to embrace to-day all the progressive peoples of the world, and for a people to reject or disown it is the sure precursor of their paralysis and decay. His star burns on the crest of the Himalayas, and mirrors itself in the Chinese sea. Africa looks up from her misery to catch its tender gleam, and in its light the islands of Oceana rejoice. From three hundred-and-fifty millions of glad hearts the hymns of His worship rise, incense-like, to heaven, never ceasing with the revolution of the hours, but caught up by the morning of one land as they die away in the night of another. As we ponder, the fore-ordained and ever-advancing issues of His glorious kingdom prose kindles into verse, and we are con- strained to write :— Christ is King, His piercéd hand, Holds the sceptre of command, Tell the news in every land. Alleluia! Silent as armies on the snow, His conquering legions onward go, To lay the proud oppressor low. Alleluia ! He will smite the sword to dust, Shield and battle axe shall rust, For His reign is kind and just. Alleluia ! 264 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. He will hush the cannon’s thunder, Tear the battle-flags asunder, Fill the world with joy and wonder. Alleluia! He will flood the Pagan’s night, With the rush of living light, Make the old dark world grow bright. Alleluia ! Widow’s wail and orphan’s cry, Pleading in their misery, At his gentle feet shall die. Alleluia! Ragged babes no more shall weep, Pitying love no longer sleep, But perpetual vigil keep. Alleluia ! East and west shall feel His care, Slaves shall lose their wild despair, Lift their scarréd hands in prayer. Alleluia ! Rescued by His love and might, We may walk with Him in white, We may reign with Him in light. Alleluia ! O, the beatific vision, After death’s subliine transition, O, the endless life elysian. Alleluia : Bs VI—THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. After the death of Jesus Christ, twelve poor fishermen and mechanics undertook to instruct and to convert the world. Their method was simple; they preached without art, but with hearts deeply moved, and of all the miracles with which God honoured their faith the most striking was the saintliness of their life. Their disciples followed their example and their success was prodigious. . + The history of those first centuries is a continual prodigy. —Rousseau. The history of Christianity reviews the majestic pre-eminence of its earthly founder.—Theodore Parker. Nothing but the miracle of resurrection could overcome a doubt, which would have doomed faith itself to the night of an eternal death.—F. C. Baur. Glory to Him who from the mire, In patient length of days; Elaborated into life A people to His praise! —F. H. Newman. Probably we Christians are too familiarized with the blessed presence of the Church to do justice to her as a world-embracing institution, and as the nurse and guardian of our moral and mental life. Like the air we breathe, she bathes our whole being with influences which we do not analyze; and we hold her cheap in pro- portion to the magnitude of her unostentatious service. —Canon Liddon. The greatest of all societies among men at this moment is the Church of Jesus Christ.—Jbid. NA AMEOD: ACISNSIESMNIVNINS MO1S AUMECONS jpes that celestial energy in the conversion and santification of men to which we called attention in our last chapter, Christ became the creator of His Church, which is a sacred society drawn from the world by the attraction of His love and transformed by the breath of His power. It has been truly said that to live is only the first act of life, the second act of lifeis that of outliving ourselves. All life, worth the name, has an object, and the grander the life, the grander are the results expected from it. ‘‘ Spirits are not finely touched, save to fine issues.” That the Son of God should have become incarnate on our earth and yet left behind no memorial worthy of His presence in our midst is inconcievable. This would indeed be ‘‘ Ocean into tempest tossed To waft a feather or to drown a fly.” Behold, however, the abiding monument of Christ in the Christian church, that Kingdom of God on earth which He founded and created, and of which He is the living, life-giving centre to the end of time. The life with which Christ has penetrated and inspired the human race is not merely a diffused influence pervading and vivifying human souls as ozone or electricity pervade and vivify the atmosphere. It has created a visible organization. It has manifested itself in effects which can be historically traced. Out of this world of mire and change a sublime and enduring temple has sprung, rising from the ruins of humanity oi 268 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH! and shaping itself in divine beauty asa shelter and a home for consecrated souls. Gdéethe described Nature as the living garment woven by Deity in the roaring loom of time, and by which we see Him whose sleepless energy has created and sustained all things. So the Church forming itself in human history, is the living garment woven by Christ, by which we see Him, whose unresting energy is for ever shaping it into new forms of moral loveliness, and thrilling it with celestial life. All devout historians of the Church recognise it as the manifestation of the divine life of Christ owing into human history. This they could not fail to do, inasmuch as they have realised within its pale that assured consciousness of union with God, which attests the presence and the reality of that supernatural life which faith in Christ inspires. 1. THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH TO CHRIST. The Christian Church is an abiding witness to the divinity of its Creator and Lord, for the stream can never be more abundant than the source from whence it flows. He who has transformed and who still sustains the life of millions of trusting souls who abide in Him, as the branches in the vine and bear fruit through that abiding unto eternal life can be no merely human leader or teacher. We bow with sacred awe before this power, and feeling that we are greater than we know, because of our union with it, urge the continual prayer— ‘‘ Breathe through my soul the blessing of Thy grace: Glad through a perfect love, a faith sincere, Drawn from the wisdom that begins with fear, Glad to expand, and, for a season free, From finite cares, to rest absorbed in Thee.” As the physical universe has its centre of gravity, so has the moral. Christ is the centre of gravity for souls, drawing men by the attraction of His love, and by the power of His spirit, from selfishness and all baseness into fellowship with THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 269 Himself and with His gracious purposes for the uplifting of the race. Christ is more than the founder of the Church, He pours into it His own life. ‘*The Church is His body.” Those who gather together in its worship, assemble ‘‘in His name.” The personal status of the believer is that of one who dwells in Christ and in whom Christ dwells ‘‘ the hope of glory.” Christ has not left the world, but lives in His disciples, thinks in their best thoughts, feels in their purest emotions, toils in their noblest effort and throbs in the energy of their purest virtues. Thus Christ is the centre of the Christian Church—the ever-present, quickening spirit of Christian humanity. The hopes, and fears, and joys, and sorrows of Christians all cluster round Him. His word is their law. His love is their motive. His example is their pattern. His sympathy is their solace. His power is their defence. His indwelling is their life. ‘If they love their brethren, it is in the fellowship of their Lord; if they look for heaven, it is because He is the light of it.” Here in this in- timate union, between Christ and His Church, a union of which the most perfect marriage is but an imperfect symbol, we have another striking distinction between Him and all other teachers or founders of religions. The Church is His body, it is at once the monument of His power and the organ of His manifestation, perpetuating together with the action of His Spirit, His influence among men. This remarkable organisation exists as a fact among the facts of the world, a fact which finds no equivalent and no parallel among the creations of men, consisting as it does of a kingdom of living souls who acknowledge Christ as Lord, and who pray and toil that His will may be done on earth even as it isin Heaven. Despite the weakness and imperfec- tion incident to all things made up of human elements, this organisation is still the divinest thing found amongst men—it is indeed a divine creation, the ideal purpose of which is to embody the perfections of its Creator, and to mould man in 270 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: His image. It is a union of men arising from a common life and a common hope,a union differing essentially from all other forms of human association in this, that it over-leaps all barriers of class, race or nationality, and lays its foundations in the consciousness common to all men, of their relation to God and to a future life. For such a union men had already sighed before the Reconciler moved in the world which He was manifested to redeem. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, cherished it as a noble dream when he proclaimed it as the highest of human aims that “men should not be separated by cities, states, and laws; but that all should be considered fellow-citizens and partakers of one life, and that the whole world, like a united flock, should be governed by one common law.” But such a dream it was impossible to realise in the sphere of philosophy, since the needs it addressed were comparatively trivial, while its doctrines were conflicting, and it had no central principle of love to form a common bond. Plutarch thought he saw its fulfilment in the commingling of nations through the conquests of Alexander, but the antagonisms of races found no healing in the sword, and the kingdom thus founded contained within it the elements of its own destruction. Men had to be freed from the power of sin, with its brood of repulsive and warring forces, before there could be any Divine communion of life which could over-leap without destroying the natural divisions of nations. It was reserved for Christ to realise this idea, and to include millions of human souls in the wide embrace of a spiritual empire, of which He was to be the living and life-giving centre to the end of time. It was the contemplation of this empire which drew from Napoleon I. the remarkable confession: “I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ was more than man. Alexander, Czsar, Charlemagne, and myself have founded great empires, but on what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus Christ alone planted his empire THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 271 upon love, and at this day there are millions who would die for Him.” In the presence of the Christian Church, the mythical theory concerning Christ breaks hopelessly down. If men affirmed the mythical character of Michael Angelo, they would still have to account for St. Peter’s Cathedral, with its pillars grasping the soil of Rome, and its dome rising to touch the clouds. And those who assert the mythical character of Christ have still to account for the existence of His Church, with its pillars based on every continent, and its dome soaring aloft toward the inviolate heavens. 2. THE MIRACULOUS HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. None can study the origin and growth of the Christian Church without the conviction that its triumph over the forces arrayed against it, from its infancy until now, constitutes the greatest moral phenomenon in the history of the world. Never since time began its course has there been such an example of the things which were weak confounding the things which were mighty. No instance can be produced in history where the resisting forces were so strong, and the aggressive agency, to all outward seeming, so feeble and insignificant. Judaism was, from the first, a national system set up in the world by the employment of national resources. Mohamedanism found its emissaries in warriors, and its argument inthe sword. Buddhism appealed to a people who were in sympathy with all its leading ideas. Not so was it with Christianity. The Cross was to conquer the world. The religion of ignominy and weakness was to triumph over the gods and the glory of the nations. A few unlettered fishermen and publicans of the most despised nation of the earth were to win the rest of the world for a religion whose central object was a crucified man—a religion which included all men under sin, and which summoned them from their darling vices to a life of chastity and self-denial. If we only 272 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: pause to ponder it, the very conception is itself a miracle, and its realisation the greatest of miracles; and, in the terms of Hume’s famous argument, ‘‘contrary to all experience.” The difficulties to be overcome were stupendous. How, then, were they met and vanquished ? What was the secret of that power before which the sceptres of the Czsars were but as shrivelled reeds, and the might of pagan Rome a wreath of trembling foam waiting to break and fly before the winds of God? What was the source of that mysterious energy which enabled Tertullian, the noble preslyster of Carthage, to say, at the close of the second century, ‘‘ We are a people but of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place belonging to you—cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camps, your tribes, companies, palaces, senate, forum. We leave you only your temples ? ” The answer is that as the first conception of the Church was divine, so the power to give it effect was divine also. Here again, despite the scorn with which men have treated the idea of heavenly forces consecrated to earthly issues, we have to ascend into the region of the supernatural. In the teeth of all opposers we affirm that two miraculous events can alone explain the Church’s triumph in the Roman empire, and these were the Resurrection of Christ, and the Baptism of the Pentecost. The first of the events attested the divinity of Him whom the Jews had crucified and slain; the second, endued the fishermen of Gallilee with the power through which they essayed the conquest of the world. But for the first these timid disciples of the Nazarene carpenter would have returned spiritless, afflicted, fallen, into the obscurity from which their Lord had called them. But for the second they would have gazed in pitiful impotence into heaven, while the scornful and guilty world swept on regardless of their anguish or their hope. Hence Dante wisely contended that if the idea of the miraculous was eliminated, the achieve- ments of Christianity would only be the more miraculous. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 273 Inspired, however, by the magnificent attestation of the Deity of their Lord furnished through His resurrection and ascen- sion into glory, and grandly mitred with Pentecostal flame by the baptism in the upper room at Jerusalem the first Apostles went forth without faltering to their heaven-appointed task. Then commenced the strangest contest earth had ever seen. On the one side were the Jews with their antiquity, their priesthood, their temple, their prestige. The Greeks with their mythology a chaos of mingled beauty and folly. The philosophers with their wonderful blending of shrewdness and blindness, sublimity and absurdity. The Barbarians with their uncouth languages and bloody rites: The world with all that it could summon to its aid, from the pride of intellect or the passions of perverted nature. On the other side there were a few men for the most part poor, ignorant, ignoble, weak. But they preached the gospel of Christ, and what was the issue? Judaism burnt out in the fires of its own temple. Idolatry fell like a smitten Dagon before the ark of the Lord. Philosophy, heathen and sceptical, became lifeless, and lies entombed in the death of the language in which it was chiefly uttered. The Barbarians were evangelised; Spain heard the gospel voice; far-off Britain listened to its call; Egypt Ethiopia and Africa, had Apostolic missionaries ; Gaul bowed to the cross; the inhuman superstitions of the Druids faded before its gentle lessons; the bloody war-gods of the Goths were given up for the rule of the Prince of Peace. Wild Arab tribes and fierce men of Parthia and Bactria were among the converts. India was not so far distant, but some gleams of that primitive light reached and goldened her coralstrand. Many a strange tongue swelled the church’s anthems. The gospel everywhere silenced false oracles, abolished foul rites, softened rude manners. It suppressed polygamy, raised woman from the dust, checked the licentiousness of divorce, gave sanctity to the bond of marriage, stopped the slaughter and the sale of children, hallowed all the domestic relations, created homes 274 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH. and brought to the fireside those virtues which invest that name with all its music and its charm. How complete the victory! The false religions were not only rebuked, but destroyed; not only crushed, but annihilated. Those old idolatries, Classic, Druidic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, are gone from the face of the earth, and their gods have perished from under these heavens. The gospel was no cunning trick performed at a lucky hour, no fierce fanaticism bursting its way to supremacy amid rivers of blood. No, it was a gush of Divine light cleaving the darkness and giving day to the devil-shadowed world. The enmity of the vicious; the dull- ness of the indifferent; the nets of the sophists; the scorn of the fashionable; the artifice of priests; the might of the strong; the reverence of forms cherished a thousand years; the armies of purple kings, all were impotent against the power of the truth and the plenitude of the spirit. Our space does not permit, neither does our purpose demand, that we should minutely trace the history of the Church in its development through the ages. We need not tell of the Emperors who crowned the Roman capitol with its central symbol of love and sacrifice; or of the martyrs like Polycarp and Ignatius, who amazed the world by their meek endurance; or of the schoolmen like Anselm and Aquinas, who welded its doctrine into logical completeness; or of the toilers like Bernard, and Zavier, and Francis of Assisi, who widened its victorious empire; or of the children of genius like Dante and Fra Angelico, who adorned its pillars with lily-work ; or of the saints like Tauler and Thomas 4 Kempis, who won for it the reverence of men. Let it suffice to say that animated by the faith and love inspired by its Divine head, depending on His word, worshipping in His name, and nourished by His grace, it continues from age to age. It has suffered many things at the hands of its enemies and it has been greviously wounded in the house of its friends. Never has an institution been so tried by the follies and crimes of THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 275 its own adherents. Hardly a wrong can be mentioned which has not been perpetrated in its name. It has been made to subserve the vilest purposes of king-craft. It has been used as an instrument for the aggrandizement of the wealthy, and for the wronging of the toiling masses. Its simplicity and spirituality have been corrupted by hireling priests. Its sacred scriptures have been hidden from the eyes of the people, or grossly misinterpreted for their deception. Its lamp untrimmed by watchfulness, and unreplenished by the voice of prayer, has waned and flickered in the encircling gloom. And yet, singulary enough, it has never become extinct. Nothing has been able to quench it utterly. In the worst days of rebuke and blasphemy, from many a secret altar and many an unknown and humble heart “hidden privily by His presence from the provoking of all men” the worship of the Church has gone up unceasingly, while many an apostle of resurrection has been raised up to revive it at home, or to extend it abroad. Cast down it has often been, but never utterly forsaken. Its chequered history is mournful read- ing, and we grieve as we study its changing fortunes. But from the hour of its origin a divinity has stirred within it which could not be destroyed. Nothing equivalent to its mysterious power of righting itself after long corruption, or of being righted from above, is exhibited in any other religious organization. A resisting vital principle has sustained it in every crisis, and at the beginning of its history there is an ideal which is never exhausted, and upon which every generation can throw itself back. With the marvellous elasticity of an imperishable life it has survived under the most unfavourable conditions and ‘the hope of unaccomplished years hangs large and lucid on its brow.” It is this spectacle of a continual renovation from within which establishes the Church as a miracle in human history. Like its Divine Head it finds the path of life through the valley of death. ‘Destroy this temple,” said our Lord, 276 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: ‘‘and in three days will I raise it up.” This saying holds good in reference to the Church, as well as to its Creator. It is this which explains its triumph through the changing years. In virtue of the indwelling power of Christ it continually renews itself. After every interval of corruption and dissolu- tion, when it lay in ruins, and faith seemed to be vanquished by the world, it has risen anew, like spring from the chill grasp of winter. It cannot die, for its life is “‘ hid with Christ in God.” Many, it is true, in these days of opposing forces and dissentient voices, are ready to prophecy the limit of its existence, and even to declare that its end is at hand. But it constitutes an everlasting society, and domes us round like the tender blue of heaven, which all the tempests which hurry through it are powerless to wreck. Men will see the end of it only when the blue fades out of the sky ; when the stars no longer reveal their lamps as the twilight shadows fall, and when morn forgets to lift ‘The dark eyelash of the night From off the rosy cheek of waking day.” The power of God is in it which waxeth not old and which no oblivion can fold in sleep. ‘ Weakened by no Opposition and fettered by no limitation, it is still pliant for all the pur- poses required at its hands. In its seeming poverty of resource there is untold wealth, and its imagined imperfections are as wisely appointed as the Divine disorder of the stars. Some complain that the creed of the Church as’ contained in the New Testament is not more clearly defined, and that its order and ritual are left loose and indefinite. But it is this very absence of rigid outline which constitutes its adaptation to all ages and peoples. Writing of that style of architecture in which the finest temples of our faith have been reared, Mr. Ruskin says: ‘Inone point of view Gothic is not only the best, but the only rational architecture, as being that which can fit itself most easily to all services, vulgar or noble. Undefined in its slope of roof, height of shaft, breadth of arch, THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 277 unity or majesty, or disposition of ground plan, it can shrink into a turret, expand into a hall, coil into a staircase, or spring into a spire, with undegraded grace and unexhausted energy; and whenever it finds occasion for change in its form or pur- pose, it submits to it without the slightest sense of loss, either to its unity or majesty.” In this matter of flexibility and adaptation to every necessary purpose, the Gothic style of architecture is a fitting symbol of the faith which it was destined to express in its forms of beauty and of grandeur. The Christian Church, considered in its essence, is not dependent upon any form of ecclesiastical organisation, or any fixed hierarchical order. It is as much at home in the humble barn as in the proud cathedral. It can flourish in the bosom of the wilderness as well as in the high places of the commonwealth. The silence of the Quakers’ meeting cannot chill it, and the rude shouts of the Salvationist cannot scare it. From the hour of its birth it has been a world-wide thing. The ‘“‘cloven tongues” of the Pentecost attested its mission to other lands than Palestine, and in forms as varied as the light which glances on lake and stream, floods the moorland with golden splendour, makes the mountains burn with beauty, nestles amid the secresies of the woodland, and touches the tiniest things with the gentleness which makes them great, the Church of God manifests itself to-day for the illumination of men and the healing of the nations. 8. THE BENEFICENT MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. From our glance at the glory of its past history as a miracle of heavenly creation, and from the consideration of its proved adaptation to the moral necessities of man we now turn to consider the ministry of the Church in the present hour. And first its presence in our midst is of inestimable value, 278 PILLARS OF OUR FAITH: inasmuch as it provides a place for the positive institutions of religion. It is urged by some that the form does not give life, but to this we reply that the form is the theatre of life conserving, and manifesting it. Great doctrines, great principles, and sublime impulses to worship need a local habitation. In the old Greek legend, when the tree was destroyed the Dryad vanished with it, and silence and desolation fell upon the place. The visible Church is to religion what the body is to the soul. Take it away and religion is a ghost only, flitting through the world, but never clearly manifested in it. Truth is vagrant. Worship has no time or seat. Godly workers have no training-ground. The preacher has no platform for his living message. Lacking embodiment and actual expression the forces of religion are dissipated and fail to impress or to attract the world. There have been many instances in which good men living in foreign lands, and separated from the privileges of public worship have drifted from religion altogether through the loss of those familiar forms by which its realities were presented to their minds. They err, therefore, who regard the positive institutions of religion as an encroachment on their liberty, since by such institutions a present God is offered to their trust, and His kingdom in the world is actualised and made visible. The Church is not the light it is true, but it is the lighthouse which enshrines the light, lifts it up, and casts its radiance over the heaving sea. The value of the Church is yet further seen from the fact that, when it is true to its high vocation, if purifies and strengthens national life. In the vision vouchsafed to the prophet Ezekiel, it was shown that the stream which fertilized the nation and saved it from corruption and death flowed fromthe sanctuary. Not from the marts of its commerce, or from the halls of its education, or from the centres of its civil government did THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 279 those influences proceed which made the nation strong and beautiful, but from the shrine of its worship. History amply demonstrates that a nation dies only with the decay of its religion. No people strong in faith, in reverence, in chastity, in the virtues of the hearth and of the temple, has ever yet perished. Society becomes possible only through religion. It is the great cohesive bond of nations. When it increases they rise. When it declines they droop and fail. Writing of Rome, in its last century, just prior to the overthrow of the Republic, Froude says, ‘* The Romans ceased to believe, and in losing their faith, they became what steel becomes when it is demagnetized. The spiritual quality was gone out of them, and the high society of Rome itself became a society of powerful animals with an enormous appetite for pleasure.” Still more recently Jules Simon has remarked concerning France. ‘ The gods are withdrawing themselves, and behind them they leave nothing but uncurbed passions.” But in a nation where the Church is true to its high calling these things cannot be. Even among ourselves there is reason that we should ‘‘be not high-minded, but fear,’ for there are not wanting signs that the moral soundness of our civilization is in jeopardy. But God has not yet taken the candle-stick out of its place. Despite its jealousies and divisions the Church is still a healing and purifying presence in our midst, and as long as it is capable of progress in the assimilation of truth and responsive to revival from on high we shall not fear for the land of our birth. Apart altogether from its work in the conversion and _sanctifi- cation of individuals its moral influence is extensive beyond calculation. Every triumph of truth and right achieved over the selfish passions of men, like the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women, every principle of justice gaining ascendancy in human legislation, such as political equality ; every institution which toils in the name of Christ for the relief of human misery,