Rt 
 me the 
 He) 
 
 iis 
 a 
 stats 
 
 Bite 
 be lat 
 Hat 
 i 
 
 seeratests 
 ¥ bitten r} 
 
 <= 
 soos eat eee. 
 SSotire. st teeteaicees 
 
 ay 
 
 a 
 
 DS 6S G3 aS a 
 
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 httos://archive.org/details/christianfaithseOOunse 
 
. THE 
 CHRISTIAN FAITH 
 
 A SERIES OF ESSAYS FOR THE USE OF 
 
 PARENTS AND TEACHERS WRITTEN AT 
 
 THE INSTANCE OF THE CHRISTIAN 
 EVIDENCE SOCIETY 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 vee 
 Bate NOUCULOTH MAND Torr 
 
 HON. FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD 3 
 EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF ROCHESTER 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 1922 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE series of essays contained in this volume 
 has been written at the request of the Committee 
 of the Christian Evidence Society.* 
 
 That Society exists, according to its sub-title, 
 “for the study, proclamation, and defence of 
 Christian Truth.” It works on inter-denomina- 
 tional lines, for it deals with the fundamental 
 verities of our religion. It is perhaps best known 
 through the addresses which are given, both by 
 clergy and laymen throughout the year, from 
 platforms in the parks and open spaces of London. 
 
 The Society is also largely occupied in dealing 
 with the requirements of people of good educa- 
 tion. Courses of lectures are given in churches 
 and colleges in London and other great towns. 
 Certain classes of people who have special diffi- 
 culties to meet, or responsibilities to bear, are 
 considered. Thus, in the present volume, the 
 help and guidance of parents and teachers in the 
 religious instruction of their children or pupils 
 is the object in view. 
 
 * Offices: 33 and 34, Craven Street, Strand, W.C. 2. 
 Hon. Secretary, the Rev. C. L. Drawbridge, M.A. 
 
 v 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 The authors of the following essays have 
 written independently of one another. ‘There 
 has been no previous conference for the exchange 
 of thought. Each writer is responsible for what 
 is contained in his own contribution, and for 
 that alone. The subjects treated are thus 
 regarded from different points of view. But it 
 is believed that, although the writers occasionally 
 differ in their way of dealing with matters of 
 some importance, the consistency of the book 
 as a whole does not suffer, while it gains im 
 directness of treatment, everyone feeling un- 
 trammelled by consideration of the opinions of 
 his fellow-essayists. 
 
 One result of the stress and strain of recent 
 years has been to draw increased attention to the 
 need of soundness of method in the education of 
 boys and girls in all classes of the community. 
 
 In no department of teaching is the use of right 
 method more desirable than in that of religion. 
 
 Two chief factors in the making of a good 
 teacher are adequate knowledge of the subject 
 and the gift of imparting it in such a way as to 
 ensure its reception by the pupil. 
 
 There is also the factor of personal influence— 
 that indefinable force which lays hold of the 
 impulses and the will of another and bends them 
 in the desired direction. It was this gift that, 
 more than anything else, was the secret of Dr. 
 
PREFACE Vl 
 
 Arnold’s power at Rugby. When the Provost 
 of Oriel, Dr. Hawkins, wrote to the trustees of 
 the school in support of Arnold’s candidature 
 for the headmastership, he said that, if Arnold 
 were appointed, he would “change the face of 
 education all through the public schools of 
 England.” This remarkable forecast was liter- 
 ally fulfilled. The beginning of a more rational 
 system in the training of boys dates from 
 Arnold’s appointment, however slowly it was 
 destined to prevail in the country generally. 
 Education was seen to be not so much the im- 
 parting of certain items of knowledge, or even 
 the conveying of sound principles of thought. 
 Rather it meant the drawing out of the pupil's 
 latent powers, inviting the exercise of his own 
 resources, stirring up whatever gift was in him. 
 
 But the improvement of method in education 
 has reacted upon the parent, with the result that, 
 in many cases, too much is left to the teacher, 
 and the parent’s sense of personal responsibility 
 is weakened. There is a feeling that it is the 
 teacher’s business. The call of work or pleasure 
 is more and more withdrawing from children the 
 direct solicitude and care of the parent, with 
 much loss to both. For, after all, the natural 
 guide and mentor is the parent, and there 1s much 
 in the spiritual and moral training of the young 
 which no one else can do so well. 
 
Vill PREFACE 
 
 One aim of these essays is to provide guidance 
 and help for parents who are alive to their duty; 
 who, while necessarily leaving much to the 
 teacher in the way of definite and systematic 
 instruction, feel that there is much which they 
 cannot leave, but in which they must themselves 
 take part if they are to be true to their parental 
 vocation. 
 
 Then, as regards the teacher. It is the aim 
 of the present volume to suggest what, in the 
 opinion of the writers, are the right points of 
 view from which he should regard the subject- 
 matter of his religious teaching. His task has 
 its own special difficulties. The personal element 
 is far more in evidence than in other branches of 
 education. Force of character, strength of con- 
 viction, sincerity of feeling—or their absence— 
 tell here, as nowhere else in the whole field of 
 instruction. If the spiritual element is all- 
 important, the subject-matter of the teaching is 
 hardly less so. It matters greatly that children 
 should be so taught the facts and truths of religion 
 that, however widely their outlook is extended 
 when they grow up, they may not have to unlearn 
 what they were taught when young. While they 
 are encouraged to prove as far as possible out of 
 their own life the truth of what they are taught, 
 nothing should be presented to them which has 
 not stood the test of time and experience. It is 
 
PREFACE 1X 
 
 no occasion for mere experiment, for airing new 
 ideas. Freshness of thought is eminently desir- 
 able; but it must not be at the cost of accuracy 
 in substance and expression. A capable teacher 
 will keep his mind always open to new light. 
 But he will teach what has been proved by an 
 experience wider than his own. The Christian 
 Faith, as it passes down succeeding generations, 
 receives fresh illustration from new sources of 
 knowledge. But, in itself, it does not change. 
 What it needs is restatement in view of the 
 requirements of a changing time, fresh inter- 
 pretation to meet the new questionings that arise 
 in an altered world and in social conditions 
 unknown before. 
 
 The majority of the following essays are by 
 acknowledged masters of their subject. It is 
 hoped that the book will be both a help and 
 an encouragement to those who are entrusted 
 with the sacred task of instructing our boys and 
 girls in the knowledge and the practice of the 
 Christian Faith. 
 
 Cao N-. 
 
 OXFORD, 
 April, 1922. 
 
PN a 
 
 a is “ 
 
 > 
 
 <= 
 
 es FP s 
 page ape ; } 
 a x j , 
 
 ee a8 : 
 hae 
 
 ale 
 
 é te 
 no’ 
 
 ay a * 
 ih =) 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE . - - - - Page v 
 
 i 
 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 By CLEMENT C. J Wesp, M.A., 
 
 Hon. LL.D. (St. Andrews); Oriel Professor of the Philosophy 
 of the Christian Religion in the University of Oxford; 
 Fellow of Magdalen College. 
 
 Philosophy a characteristic human interest. Religion pre- 
 cedes Philosophy, and is concerned with the same object. Hence 
 tension between them is inevitable, and this must be allowed for 
 in the terms upon which alone they can live together. Neither 
 can ultimately take the place of the other, and both are necessary 
 to human life as a whole. 
 
 The philosophical difficulties special to Christianity distinguish 
 it as a peculiarly philosophical religion. Its relations with 
 Philosophy throughout its history have been intimate, and its 
 services to Philosophy great, both in insisting on features of 
 experience which Philosophy has been tempted to neglect, and 
 in calling particular attention to problems of general philo- 
 sophical interest. But Christianity must not be regarded as im- 
 posing any special philosophy upon its adherents, or as forbidding 
 them to explore the possibilities of any line of thought whatever. 
 
 The paper closes with some practical suggestions as to the 
 right way of dealing with the o geeious perpen iy of children 
 and young persons” - ~~ Paget 
 
 xi 
 
Xu CONTENTS 
 
 Il 
 THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 By H. U. WEITsREcuT STANTON, og UROL 955 4 
 
 Warden of St. Catherine’s House, Highbury; Commissary to 
 the Bishop of Lahore. 
 
 Investigation of world religions and rise of Comparative Science 
 of Religion. Progress in research enables us to view religion as 
 a whole in its essential unity. Is this consistent with the 
 uniqueness of Christianity? To answer this, consider the 
 origin, process, and aim of religion. 
 
 1 The Origin of Religion.—(a) Supposed by some to be discover- 
 able in the most primitive forms of religion known as Animism, 
 a dim idea of a soul in men and things leading to propitiation of 
 ghosts and spirits, and on a higher stage to worship of ancestors 
 and powers of nature. (6) Among animists also a belief in a 
 Supreme Being general, but He is remote and harmless, and 
 religious observance is devoted to propitiation of malign beings, 
 a sign rather of deterioration from a nobler ideal than of progress 
 to a higher. (c) Sacrifice and sacrificial feasts in Animism offer 
 partial analogies to Christian rites. But these analogies are 
 rightly understood, not from the embryonic stage, but from 
 that of maturity, as a reaching out of the human soul to the 
 adequate revelation of God and communication of His life. 
 
 2. The Process of Religion.—No classification of religions 
 accurately fits the growth of every one. Apply this to the widely 
 spread theory of evolution as explaining religious development. 
 (a) Supposed to depend on heredity and environment, therefore 
 each several religion best suited to the stage of development of 
 its professors. Why try to change it? (b) The religious 
 demands of conscience regarded as themselves the product of 
 evolution, adapting conduct to the needs of society; good =pro- 
 social, bad =anti-social: radical disturbance of the balance 
 injurious. (c) Evolution not a force which governs things, but 
 a theory which tries to explain them. To be tested by facts. 
 Religion in many cases develops contrary to environment or 
 heredity. (d) Conscience is the persistent demand of the soul for 
 a supreme standard of moral values which on occasion overrides 
 purely social values. Contrariety to that supreme standard is 
 sin, and the deliverance from this universal defect is universally 
 applicable, 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 3. The Aim of Religion —Common idea that belief matters 
 little if conduct is decent, or that the crude popular religions all 
 lead up to the one absolute religion. But different religions 
 clearly give very different ideas of God, and therefore different 
 conceptions of the moral standard of perfection. To be like 
 God is the supreme aim of religion. That depends on the facts 
 of His self-revelation in Christ which are to be truly apprehended, 
 whole-heartedly embodied in life, and proclaimed to the world 
 
 Page 24 
 
 III 
 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
 By W. M. Bzxz, B.D. (Lond.). 
 
 The conflict between religion and science still survives among 
 the masses; religion is still defended by antiquated arguments, 
 and misunderstanding is caused by Bible teaching being separated 
 from definite Christian teaching. 
 
 Wrong Methods of dealing with the Situation. 
 (a) Separation of scriptural and scientific knowledge is at- 
 tempted, but is impossible in practice. 
 (b) “‘ Reconciliation ” of discrepancies between the Bible and 
 science has been tried after the old manner of reconciling all 
 discordant passages in Scripture itself, and is equally impossible. 
 
 General Principles. 
 
 1. Purpose of the Bible.—It is a religious book not meant to 
 teach science, but religion. St. Paul’s view of its purpose. 
 
 2. The Nature of Inspiration.—The sacred writers, inspired to 
 see truth about God, were not rendered incapable of error—e.g., 
 Amos proclaimed a grand religious truth, but was mistaken 
 in secular matters. 
 
 3. The Bible the Record of a Revelation.—Its stages sum- 
 marized. 
 
 Particular Cases. 
 
 (a) The Creation Story—Its religious message and how to 
 teach it in conformity with science. 4 
 
 (b) Jonah.—The religious value of the story aS a missionary 
 lesson. 
 
 The idea of the Bible as the record of a revelation is in accord- 
 ance with the humble origin of man as taught by science. 
 These views not repugnant to Church tradition Page 45 
 
XIV CONTENTS 
 
 IV 
 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 By R. H.” Kenner, Dabs 
 
 Canon of Ely; Regius Professor of Hebrew in the University 
 of Cambridge; Fellow of Queen’s College. 
 
 Our Lord’s attitude towards the Old Testament in relation to— 
 (1) History; (2) morality; (3) ritual; (4) theology; (5) national 
 hopes. 
 
 Futility of attempting to maintain the doctrine of the iner- 
 rancy of all Scripture. 
 
 In order to undeistand the Old Testament, a study of the 
 history of the Israelite people is of primary importance. 
 
 The stories of the earliest reputed ancestors of Israel are 
 coloured by Canaanite tradition. 
 
 The tradition of the time of Moses preserved by the great 
 
 pre-exilic prophets differs from the account contained in the 
 Pentateuch. 
 
 The pre-exilic prophets deny that sacrifice was offered during 
 the sojourn in the wilderness. 
 
 Moses himself and those born during his leadership are said to 
 have been uncircumcised. 
 
 The great prophets were monotheists and apparently mono- 
 gamists. 
 
 The conquest of Palestine; fusion of Israelites and Canaanites. 
 
 Characteristics of Canaanite religion. 
 
 Successive attempts to purge the religion of Jehovah from the 
 worst Canaanite elements which had become associated with it. 
 
 The present value of the Old Testament, not only as containing 
 
 a record of an age-long struggle to separate the true from the false, 
 but also for its example in faith and in worship. 
 
 Parabolic use of Old Testament stories. 
 
 A study of the Old Testament necessary in order to understand 
 the idiom of the New Testament - - - Page 60 
 
CONTENTS XV 
 
 Vv 
 THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 By R. WexBB-OpDELL, B.A., 
 Vicar of St. John the Baptist, Enfield. 
 
 The fact of the Resurrection to be distinguished from the 
 details of its record. 
 
 The Church’s belief in the Resurrection primitive, universal, 
 empowering. “* Delusion theories” pessimistic, inadequate, and 
 based upon an obsolete science. That Christ really rose the only 
 rational solution of the problem of Christian origins. 
 
 This the central evidence for the faith. 
 
 Other evidences for which sceptics have to account. 
 
 1. The Jesus of the evangelic history. 
 
 He is— 
 
 (a) Living. 
 
 (>) Inexplicable. 
 
 (c) Sinless. 
 
 (d) In, yet not of, His age. 
 
 (e) Inclusive of all perfection. 
 
 Either “unlearned and ignorant men ”’ have accomplished a 
 literary miracle or the Gospel story is substantially true. 
 2. The witness of the Saints through the centuries. 
 They witness to a power— 
 (a) Uniform. 
 (b) Objective. 
 (c) Transforming. 
 (2d) Open to all. 
 
 Personal inexperience of this power no argument against its 
 existence. 
 
 3. The evidence from the Church’s history. 
 
 (a) It survived the fall of Jerusalem, the postponement of 
 the end, the break-up of the Empire, the schisms in the East 
 and West. 
 
 (6) It has assimilated the new learning. 
 
 (c) It has been the unique agency for social reform. 
 
 (d) It alone presents an ecumenical faith. 
 
 Yet it springs from a Galilean peasant. 
 
 4. The evidence from Christian doctrine and modern thought. 
 
 (a) “‘ Repugnance to reality,” and the Fall. 
 
 (>) Pain and the goodness of creation; pain and sin; pain 
 and the Cross. 
 
Xvl CONTENTS 
 
 (c) The unknowable God of physical science, and the known 
 Christ. 
 
 (d) God, revealed as Trinity, is love, is a social unity, is in 
 man. 
 
 Modern needs anticipated in the Gospel. 
 The burden of proof on those who oppose, not on those who 
 hold, the historic Faith - . . - Page 91 
 
 VI 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 By Artuur S” Peaks, M.A., D.D., 
 
 Hon. D.D., Oxford and Aberdeen; Rylands Professor of Biblical 
 Exegesis in the University of Manchester; formerly Fellow 
 of Merton College. 
 
 Christianity is inseparably associated with history. If the 
 Gospels were demonstrated to be entirely fictitious they would 
 retain much value, but Christianity could not survive the demon- 
 stration. The alliance with history must be accepted, though 
 it creates grave difficulties. Principles which must guide our 
 investigation. The historicity of Jesus may be proved without 
 appeal to the Christian documents. Since the Jewish law 
 affirmed crucifixion to be an accursed death, the story of a cruci- 
 fied Messiah cannot have been invented. Hence such an 
 abnormal development of Jewish Messianic dogma can be ex- 
 plained only by the actual crucifixion of a man whom His fol- 
 lowers regarded as Messiah. Their belief must have been formed 
 in His lifetime with His knowledge and approval. We have 
 documentary evidence, both non-Christian, especially Tacitus, 
 and Christian, for Jesus as the Founder of Christianity and His 
 execution. The Christian records are entitled to a hearing with 
 all proper precautions. Generally accepted results in the criti- 
 cism of the Pauline Epistles and the Synoptic Gospels. 
 Features in the Gospels which cannot have been invented. 
 The question of miracles. We cannot settle the problem without 
 reference to the Person of whom they are recorded. Forces 
 which tended to modify the strict accuracy of the Gospel record. 
 The Gospels give us what it is vital for us to know—a vivid con- 
 ception of the Personality of Jesus, a trustworthy account of 
 His teaching, a knowledge of the critical events. The first of 
 these is of supreme importance. The “ eschatological theory ” 
 gives a very one-sided view. The problem of “ Jesus and 
 Paul”: Did the Apostle fatally pervert the simple theology and 
 ethic of Jesus into a mythology? He could not, in face of the 
 denial of his right to represent Christianity, have failed to famil- 
 
CONTENTS XV1l 
 
 iarize himself with the teaching of Jesus, and his Christology 
 created no controversy in the Church. Nor need we argue 
 that the primitive Christians applied to Jesus a pre-Christian 
 Messianic dogma. Jesus believed Himself to be the Messiah, 
 the pre-existent Son of Man, the suffering Servant of Yahweh, 
 to stand above angels and men in a unique relation to God. 
 His consciousness of the nature of His Personality and mission 
 is decisive for us, and finds confirmation in the presentation of 
 Him in the Gospels and in the experience of His followers 
 
 Page 115 
 
 VII 
 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 By C. F.“Nornora, M.A., D.Litt., 
 Hon. Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford; Examining Chaplain to 
 the Bishop of Rochester. 
 
 The question of the crowd on Christ’s entry to Jerusalem 
 one of identity, “‘ Who is this?” Does the answer then given 
 still suffice ? 
 
 Growth in apprehension of Christ gradual. 
 
 We have to enquire: 
 
 1. What Christ said about Himself. 
 
 2. What His followers thought about Him. 
 
 1. He accepted the title of Messiah when applied to Him, 
 but preferred to speak of Himself as Son of Man. 
 
 It is certain that He regarded Himself as ‘‘ the Son of God ” 
 in a special sense. 
 
 His consciousness of Sonship was shown in various ways: 
 (a) Full knowledge of the Father; (6) infallibility in divine 
 things; (c) the assumptions which pervade His teaching; (d) His 
 claim of sinlessness; (e) Unique self-assertiveness. 
 
 History has sanctioned His claim. Existence of the Church 
 proves its acceptance of it, not on the ground of His teaching 
 merely. Influence of the Cross and the Resurrection. 
 
 2. Perception of the disciples. The Gospel of the Apostolic 
 Church was from the first the Gospel of a divine Saviour. 
 St. Peter's preaching, St. Paul, St. John. 
 
 The Personality of Christ divine. His true humanity. 
 The reconciliation of what seemed incompatible not attempted 
 by the primitive Church. ; 
 
 Faith and experience came first. Theology, as a body of 
 reasoned knowledge, followed. 
 
 Present-day conditions. Certainty - - Page 139 
 
 2 
 
XV1ll CONTENTS 
 
 Vill 
 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 By Percy GARDNER, D.Litt., 
 
 Professor of Classical Archeology in the University of Oxford; 
 Fellow of the British Academy; Corresponding Member of 
 the Institute of France and of the Academies of Sciences of 
 
 Prussia and Gottingen. 
 
 The foundation of ethics laid down by Christ: first, love of 
 God; and second, love of man. Both principles to be found 
 in the Old Testament in essence, but raised to a new level in the 
 New. The fresh revelation of God’s love. The love of God 
 as applied to the modern world opposed to secularity. The 
 latter believes in the reformation of life by action from without, 
 and the promotion of comfort; the former teaches that life 
 develops from within, and urges the transmuting of society by 
 ideals. The love of God may really be present where God is 
 not recognized. Often men give out trivial reasons for conduct 
 which is really inspired by higher motives. 
 
 In the earliest Christianity no code of morals; only principles. 
 But the working of the spirit of Christ soon produced a visible 
 society and a code for conduct. The first great organizer of 
 Christian ethics was St. Paul, who carried on his Master’s work. 
 Sometimes, however, St. Paul misled by temporary conditions. 
 At the Reformation most of the Catholic ethics preserved. 
 Modern attempts to supersede it have been negative, and their 
 success only momentary. 
 
 Modern attempt to go back to the letter of the Sermon on the 
 Mount not self-consistent nor compatible with organized society. 
 Need rather for an adaptation of it to permanent conditions. 
 It has to be taken in conjunction with the precept to judge 
 beliefs by their fruits. Itis chiefly in the estimate of values that 
 modern Christianity differs from materialist Utilitarianism. 
 
 The reckless hunt for wealth of the last century has brought its 
 natural consequence in envy and jealousy, the clash of classes, 
 and hatred between nations. Itis tempting to try hasty remedies, 
 but the permanent remedy can only be found in kindliness 
 combined with wise consideration of the results of action. There 
 is also discontent with Christian ethics, especially in questions 
 of sex, but here also reckless experiments may be fatal; the only 
 hope lies in a combination of a Christian heart with a scientific 
 mind - - - - . - Page 161 
 
CONTENTS X1x 
 
 IX 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 By Hastinas’ RASHDALt, D.D., D.Litt., D.C.L., LL.D., 
 
 Dean of Carlisle; Fellow of the British Academy; Hon. Fellow 
 (late Fellow and Tutor) of New College, Oxford. 
 
 Christian morality not the arbitrary commandment of God: 
 authority of conscience. 
 
 Necessity of development in the details of morality implied 
 by the promise of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The two great commandments. 
 Christ’s teaching not reducible to bare rules. 
 
 Reply to objections commonly urged against the Christian 
 law in its application to modern social life. 
 
 1. Non-resistance, forgiveness, punishment. 
 2. The lawfulness of war. 
 3. The question of property. 
 
 Modern experience requires the recognition of new duties but 
 no change of principle. 
 
 Seeley on the need of such development: defects of con- 
 ventional Christian morality. 
 
 4, Christianity and socialism. 
 5. Christianity and culture. 
 
 Too little recognition of the claims of art and science, learning 
 and the pursuit of truth in the conventional Christian ideal: 
 need of development in this direction. 
 
 Pursuit of truth and beauty parts of the Christian ideal as 
 well as love - . - - : - Page 185 
 
XX CONTENTS 
 
 x 
 
 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY: ITS BEARING ON 
 RELIGIOUS TEACHING 
 
 By E. W.’Barnus, So.D., F-R.S., 
 
 Formerly Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Cambridge; 
 Canon of Westminster. 
 
 Psychology—the analysis of the working of the human mind— 
 its limitations—will not solve metaphysical problems. Modern 
 psychology based upon experiment; the danger of argument 
 from particular types of mental pathology; theories, to be 
 adequate, must completely explain observed facts. The un- 
 conscious mind and its nature; reasons for accepting belief in 
 its existence. Psychological determinism and its inadequacy. 
 Psychology and divine influence—grace. The unconscious 
 mind suggested as the region where we make contact with the 
 Holy Spirit. Answer to objections to this view. The consciousness 
 of our Lord. Sin and regeneration; confession and forgiveness. 
 Psychology and sacramental grace. The religious value of sug- 
 gestion. Revivals and mental ill-health. The danger to 
 theology of the religious use of suggestion. Psychology and 
 the Eucharist. Types of religious devotion to be tested by 
 their fruits. Tension in the religious life a source of energy. 
 Dr. Rivers on subconscious instability - - Page 216 
 
 XI 
 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
 
 By E. W. Warson, Te 
 
 Canon of Christ Church; Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical 
 History in the University of Oxford. 
 
 Christianity a leaven. It is conditioned by the state of suc- 
 cessive generations. Christians from the first shared the quali- 
 ties of their contemporaries. This was the case in the age of the 
 
CONTENTS XXl 
 
 Fathers. Increasing ignorance affected Christian thought-— 
 e.g., in the fallacy of a Golden Age in the past. So with the 
 influence of philosophy, as in the debt of St. Augustine to 
 Plotinus. Also with Roman law. Yet the Middle Ages, with 
 all their credulity, and because of their peculiarities, produce 
 high types of Christian character. It is impossible to detach 
 Christianity from the age in which it is exemplified. Has 
 progress been continuous? ‘The evidence is inconclusive, but 
 suffices to show that such failure as there has been was not due 
 to Christianity itself. Successive generations vary; change 
 comes by reaction. Hence waves of religion; we are in the 
 trough of one of them. Hence a tendency to despond. Hannah 
 More and Bishop Butler. This largely subjective, and the 
 penalty for previous elation. There is no real failure, but there 
 is a trial for faith - : - - - Page 240 
 
THE CHRISTIAN FAITH 
 
 I 
 
 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 By CLEMENT C. J. WEBB, M.A. 
 
 Man is distinguished from the other animals by 
 a concern which we are probably safe in saying 
 that none of them shares with him, a concern 
 with that which underlies, or lies behind, or 
 includes within its embrace (we may use which- 
 ever metaphor we please) himself and all the 
 many things around him and all that is done 
 by, or to, himself or them. Preoccupied as he 
 often—most often—is with the affair of the 
 moment, he sometimes turns aside to ask, What 
 does it all mean? Whatever befalls him, 
 whether it be good or ill, is seldom or never 
 more than just this—it is always an instalment, 
 so to say, of some fate to which he can set no 
 limits: it increases or decreases the quantity 
 of good or ill, not only in his life but in the world. 
 He “‘ looks before and after,” and to his capacity 
 for doing so his pleasures and his pains alike 
 owe their keenest poignancy. 
 
 Now Philosophy is nothing else than the 
 
 1 
 
2 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 deliberate effort to think about this characteristic 
 object of human interest, about this background, 
 this inner significance, this underlying essence of 
 all our experiences, actual or possible. But 
 before men set themselves deliberately to think 
 about the problem of the ultimate meaning and 
 nature of the world of which they find themselves 
 a part, they express in what they call Religion 
 their sense of being part of such a world, their 
 apprehension that it has a meaning, and their 
 hope that it may mean them well. For to recog- 
 nize any object, however insignificant it seem 
 to us, though it be the “wood and stone ” 
 of the missionary hymn, as a sacred object, is to 
 treat it as somehow containing in itself the secret 
 at the heart of things which gives them influence 
 over us, and makes it possible for us to enter 
 into relations with them and perhaps to control 
 them in our favour. 
 
 Thus Philosophy is from the first concerned 
 with the same object as Religion, although its 
 interest in it is, as compared with that of Re- 
 ligion, what we may call for the moment an 
 abstract and scientific rather than a personal and 
 practical interest. But, as we might expect from 
 this distinction, Religion precedes Philosophy, 
 certainly in the life of human societies and 
 commonly also in the life of individual philo- 
 
CONFLICT 3 
 
 sophers; and thus, when Philosophy comes to 
 occupy itself with the problem of the ultimate 
 nature of the world of which we are a part, it 
 generally finds Religion already in the field 
 with practices intended to make favourable to 
 us the powers which control the course of this 
 world, and with theories designed to explain and 
 justify these practices. Now this can hardly 
 fail to lead to conflict between Philosophy and 
 Religion. For, when men come to ask them- 
 selves what it is that they are aiming at in their 
 philosophizing, they find that it is something 
 which they can only hope to attain on one con- 
 dition. This condition is that they take nothing 
 for granted, and admit nothing to be true without 
 first testing and examining it for themselves. 
 Thus Philosophy is bound, by the very nature 
 of the desires which it comes into being in order 
 to satisfy, to take up an attitude of independence 
 towards the religious tradition which it finds in 
 possession, whether that tradition embodies 
 merely the feelings and speculations about the 
 encompassing mystery of the world of men at a 
 stage of intellectual development earlier than 
 that at which Philosophy arises, or, as often 
 happens among civilized peoples, includes also 
 the results of previous philosophizing on the 
 subject; and this inevitable and_ legitimate 
 attitude of independence may, as the experience 
 
4 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of mankind abundantly shows, pass into an 
 attitude of hostility. 
 
 This is especially likely to happen if the 
 representatives of religious tradition, whether 
 in the community or in a particular family or 
 place of education, take up on their side a re- 
 pressive attitude towards the newly-awakened 
 activity of the intelligence which is seeking to 
 comprehend its experience as a whole—that is, 
 to philosophize; if, instead of welcoming this 
 as just that special kind of service which the 
 intellect has to offer to God, they deny the claim 
 of the intellect to leave no part of experience 
 uninvestigated and to ascertain as far as 
 possible, in the case of every part of that ex- 
 perience, the nature of its relation to the rest. 
 
 But, even where there is no such hostile 
 attitude taken up towards Philosophy by the 
 representatives of religious tradition, it is 
 inevitable that there should be tension between 
 Religion and Philosophy. Nor, indeed, ought 
 we to desire that, in the case of those to whom 
 the problems of Philosophy present themselves 
 as real problems at all, it should be otherwise. 
 To every well-instructed Christian, at any rate, 
 it should appear as natural enough that there 
 should be appointed to all men a night of 
 wrestling with God, a Way of the Cross, which 
 may sometimes culminate, as with our Master 
 
PHILOSOPHIC DOUBT 5 
 
 Himself, in the supreme trial of the withdrawal 
 from the soul of the consciousness of God’s 
 Presence. Now there are those for whom this 
 night of wrestling with God, this Way of the 
 Cross, this hiding of God’s face, takes the form 
 of philosophic doubt. It is not possible, nor is 
 it really to be desired, that some apologetic 
 device should be found which would exempt 
 Christians altogether from such trials. There is 
 room, indeed, for what are called apologetics, 
 just as there is for institutions to aid men in 
 resisting the temptations of the flesh which all 
 or most men must face in the course of their 
 spiritual warfare. But we must not look for 
 victory in this warfare without battles. The 
 strain on religious faith which is involved in 
 philosophic thought is as much in the order of 
 the day—although fewer, no doubt, are called 
 upon to face it—as is the strain on moral 
 obedience involved in the natural development 
 of our instinctive bodily appetites. 
 
 There is, however, an important distinction 
 between the two kinds of strain which I have 
 just compared. It belongs to the very nature 
 of our moral consciousness that the law of 
 Duty presents itself to us as invested, in Butler’s 
 celebrated phrase, with a “ manifest authority ” 
 to which the appetites, urgent and absorbing as 
 they may be, lay no claim. But Philosophy 
 
6 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 and Religion both make a claim which is un- 
 limited. We cannot with a good conscience set 
 either claim aside, and yet the two claims may 
 come into collision. It is this fact which 
 gives its special character to the tension between 
 them. 
 
 There is no region of a philosopher’s life—and 
 I mean here by a philosopher everyone who is 
 conscious of this claim of Philosophy upon him— 
 which Philosophy can acquiesce in leaving 
 unexplored; and, on the other hand, Religion 
 cannot allow that there is any part of life which 
 God has no right to claim for His service, and 
 with which Religion has thus nothing to do. 
 The only satisfactory treaty possible between 
 two powers so exacting must be one comparable 
 to the best kind of marriage, in which there is 
 mutual devotion and mutual respect, each alike 
 without reserve. Philosophy cannot permit 
 Religion to keep, as it were, a secret chamber 
 into which Philosophy may not intrude, nor can 
 Religion suffer Philosophy to treat as illusory 
 what Religion knows by experience to be 
 real. 
 
 Just as Philosophy must allow Religion to 
 claim that the witness which religious experience 
 bears to the nature of Reality be not ignored by 
 Philosophy, so must Religion in turn allow 
 Philosophy to subject religious experience, no 
 
BOTH INDISPENSABLE r 
 
 less than any other kind of experience, to 
 examination and criticism. 
 
 It is sometimes thought that Religion can 
 take the place of Philosophy; or, on the other 
 hand, that Philosophy can take the place of 
 Religion. Now no doubt there are a great many 
 people who are not called upon to be philosophers 
 at all, and of these not a few obtain, through 
 their Religion, their view of that great Whole 
 which includes all that happens to them or falls 
 within their experience, and our concern with 
 which distinguishes us human beings from the 
 other animals; and so, since they do not go 
 on to that closer study of the nature of this great 
 Whole which we call Philosophy, for them 
 Religion may be said to take the place ot 
 Philosophy. But it is vain on this account to 
 tell those in whom the spirit of free and thorough- 
 going enquiry is once aroused that they can 
 satisfy their intellectual hunger by taking on 
 trust from their religious teachers the view of the 
 world traditional among them. 
 
 On the other hand, when the development of 
 the powers of the human mind reaches a certain 
 level, Philosophy does come to do what at an 
 earlier stage is done by Religion in providing 
 a view of the world as a whole; and so people 
 who suppose it to be the sole business of Religion 
 to provide such a view have gone on to think 
 
8 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 that Philosophy, which has thus taken over this 
 function to a considerable extent already, will 
 eventually take the place of Religion altogether. 
 But what is really characteristic of Religion is 
 not the provision of a view of the world as a 
 whole, although such a view is always connected 
 with it and even implied in it. What is really 
 characteristic of Religion is rather what we may 
 call the activity of worship. Now our natural 
 need of an object for worship cannot be satisfied 
 by Philosophy apart from Religion. That 
 worship is natural to man is not the less true be- 
 cause the need of it is not felt equally by all men, 
 nor at all by some; nor is the statement that 
 Philosophy cannot normally satisfy it disproved 
 by the fact that here and there may be found 
 an exceptional person who has enjoyed in 
 philosophical speculation what seems to have 
 been a truly religious experience. 
 
 So far we have been speaking of Religion 
 in general, and not of the Christian religion in 
 particular. With respect to the Christian re- 
 ligion there are two things to be said in this 
 connection. The first is this: that if sometimes 
 it seems more than some other religions to 
 — resist reconciliation with Philosophy, it will be 
 
 found that this is not because it is less but 
 because it is more philosophical than these 
 others. The second is that, as a matter of fact, 
 
HISTORICAL FACTS 9 
 
 the historical relations of Christianity with 
 Philosophy have been intimate and its services 
 to Philosophy great. 
 
 A characteristic feature of Christianity which 
 is often thought to be an obstacle in the way 
 of its reconciliation with Philosophy is the 
 importance assigned in it to certain historical 
 facts. It is true that the importance of the 
 historical element is greater in Christianity 
 than in any other religion, and that this circum- 
 stance exposes Christianity more than any 
 other religion to that particular kind of doubt 
 which is called historic doubt. Yet Christianity 
 is not thereby stamped as a less philosophical 
 religion than one which is not so much exposed 
 to this kind of doubt, but rather as a more 
 philosophical. 
 
 There is no greater or more difficult problem 
 in Philosophy than that of the relation of 
 abstract or universal significance to concrete 
 or historical fact. Philosophy, if it fights shy 
 of facing this question, does but refuse, if it may 
 be so put, to take its last hurdle, and surrenders 
 its hope of winning the race set before it. 
 
 Hence, although religions which remain in 
 the region of the abstract or universal significance 
 and treat what is individual and historical as 
 illusory or unimportant may seem to afford the 
 philosopher a quieter shelter than Christianity, 
 
10 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 they do so at the cost of tempting him to abandon 
 the supreme venture to which as a philosopher 
 he is committed—the venture of understanding, 
 not universal principles merely, but the real 
 world of historical individuals, in which these 
 principles can live and move and have an actual 
 existence. In saying this, however, we must not 
 be understood to deny or dispute the right of 
 historical criticism to examine any historical 
 statement, whether in Bible or Creed, just as it 
 would any other. Though Philosophy has itself 
 no jurisdiction in matters of History, freedom 
 of thought everywhere is the greatest of philo- 
 sophical interests, and there is a real solidarity 
 between the claims of Philosophy and those of 
 History to reject external dictation each in its 
 own department. It is, as was said, a philo- 
 sophical merit in Christianity to attach im- 
 portance to historical facts; but this does not 
 guarantee the truth of any particular fact to 
 which Christian teachers have attached im- 
 portance—that must be ascertained by an 
 examination of the evidence in each case. 
 
 Our second point was that the relations of 
 Christianity to Philosophy had been intimate, 
 and its services to Philosophy great. 
 
 In the earlier ages of Christianity, as soon as 
 the Gospel came to be preached to educated 
 people, those who accepted it began to use the 
 
PHILOSOPHY AND CHRISTIANITY 11 
 
 philosophical conceptions of the world and life 
 which were current in their day to help them 
 in the understanding of their new beliefs; and 
 to this day the language of the creeds and other 
 statements of doctrine used in the Christian 
 Church cannot be fully understood without 
 some knowledge of the philosophies which in- 
 fluenced those who in the early centuries of 
 Christian history formulated these beliefs. The 
 principal of these philosophies were the Platonic 
 and the Stoic; the former especially affected the 
 Christian teaching about God and the soul, 
 the latter that about the rules of Christian 
 conduct. 
 
 In later days, when Christianity had become 
 the established religion of Europe, philosophers, 
 bred in Christian traditions and writing for 
 others so bred, have constantly had Christian 
 doctrines in mind when thinking about the 
 ultimate nature of Reality; and, even where they 
 have not themselves been seriously concerned 
 to find a place in their view of the world for their 
 own religious convictions, they have not been 
 able to ignore the problem of the relation of the 
 teaching of the Bible and Church to the results 
 reached by their independent reflection. Thus 
 if, as we said just now, the language of Christian 
 theology is not intelligible apart from a know- 
 
 ledge of ancient philosophy, that of much 
 
12 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 modern philosophy is barely intelligible apart 
 from a knowledge of Christian theology. 
 
 But not only have the relations of Christianity 
 with Philosophy been intimate, the services of 
 Christianity to Philosophy have been great. 
 In virtue of the comprehensiveness of the 
 religious experience for which Christianity 
 stands, Christian theology has frequently borne 
 useful testimony to aspects of Reality which the 
 philosophical fashion was apt to neglect. Thus 
 a type of thought has sometimes prevailed which 
 is content to acknowledge the obvious distinct- 
 ness of individual persons from one another, 
 and can see nothing but, at the best, a mere 
 metaphor in speaking of a common conscious- 
 ness in which many may share, or of one’s 
 responsibility for what others than one’s in- 
 dividual self have done. Such a type of thought 
 is bound to misconstrue or ignore not only 
 what is called mysticism, but some quite ordinary 
 experiences, such as our pride or shame in the 
 triumph or humiliation of our nation, even when, 
 as individuals, we had no part in bringing it about. 
 But Christianity can never surrender itself to 
 this type of thought; for it empties of their 
 meaning the doctrines of the Trinity, the 
 Incarnation, and the Atonement. Hence, when 
 it has been dominant, Christian theology has 
 remained unsubmissive, and has witnessed to the 
 
CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY 13 
 
 unity which is in the manifold, the identity 
 which is in the diverse, until it has awakened 
 Philosophy to react from the onesidedness of 
 the prevailing doctrine. On the other hand, 
 when a quite opposite type of thought, such as 
 is often called—though not always properly 
 called—pantheistic, has been in the ascendant, 
 which can easily make room for such doctrines 
 as I have mentioned, Christianity has more than 
 once redressed the philosophical balance by 
 inspiring a reaction against principles which 
 would undermine the faith of Christians in a 
 particular providence and their hope of an 
 eternal life for individuals, and would also 
 involve an abandonment of that insistence 
 upon an historical revelation, upon ‘“‘ Jesus 
 Christ come in the flesh,” which in the Church’s 
 first period of controversy was her watchword 
 against the Gnostics who sought to see in 
 her Gospel only a symbol of something not 
 historical at all. 
 
 Christianity has also rendered more positive 
 services to Philosophy. The most remarkable 
 of these were the result of the efforts of the 
 Church in earlier centuries of our era to discover 
 a statement adequate to express her conscious- 
 ness that there had been sent forth into the 
 hearts of her members a Spirit proceeding from 
 her Founder, which (as St. Paul puts it) cried 
 
14 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 in them “Abba, Father ”’—that is, made them 
 aware of being by adoption through Him that 
 which He already was—namely, sons of God. 
 It was found impossible to be content with any 
 formula which made the Fatherhood of God any 
 less than an eternal characteristic of His nature; 
 and this meant that the Son of God and the 
 Spirit in which He is one with His Father and 
 we may be one with Him must be regarded 
 as necessary to the completeness of God’s life. 
 In this doctrine of the Trinity, as it is generally 
 called, there was presented a conception of what 
 a spiritual being at its highest and fullest must 
 be which may fairly be said to be philosophically 
 more satisfactory than any made during the same 
 period on similar lines by thinkers outside the 
 Church. Again, im connection with the 
 elaboration of this same doctrine of God as 
 Father, Son, and Spirit, Christian theology gave 
 the greatest assistance toward the development 
 of the notion of Personality, a notion of the 
 profoundest importance, for which the ancient 
 philosophers had no special name at all; but for 
 which a name, which we still use to express it, 
 was found in the course of the discussions 
 carried on by Christian theologians concerning 
 the union of the divine and human natures in 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 But, although Philosophy has thus profited 
 
UTILITARIANISM 15 
 
 by its association with Christianity, it would be 
 a mistake to regard Christianity as imposing a 
 particular philosophy upon its adherents, or 
 as forbidding such of them as are genuine 
 students of Philosophy to explore the possibili- 
 ties of any line of thought whatsoever. No 
 doubt certain views may be more difficult to 
 reconcile than others with a Christian’s religious 
 experience, just as other experiences—for 
 example, those of an artist or of a lover—may 
 indispose those who enjoy them to embrace 
 opinions in which men of a different tempera- 
 ment might not find the same difficulties. But 
 we have no more right to refuse to tolerate what 
 we ourselves judge to be an inconsistency in a 
 man whose philosophical convictions seem to us 
 to clash with his religion than in one whose 
 philosophical convictions seem to clash with his 
 art or his love. History shows us that eminent 
 Christians have often espoused and defended 
 philosophical positions which appear at first 
 to leave no room for Christian principles. 
 
 Thus, many might be inclined to say that 
 what is called Utilitarianism is such a position. 
 This is the doctrine in moral philosophy that we 
 can ultimately desire nothing but our own 
 pleasure, but that, when we come to recognize 
 that other men’s pleasure is as much to them 
 as ours is to us, we shall feel constrained to set 
 
16 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 before ourselves as the grand end of all our 
 conduct the greatest happiness (meaning by 
 happiness pleasure and the absence of pain) of 
 the greatest number. Yet a doctrine of this 
 sort was earnestly maintained by no less famous 
 a champion of Christianity than Paley, whose 
 work on “‘ Natural Theology ” was long regarded 
 in this country as the standard exposition of the 
 argument for the existence of God from the 
 facts of the natural world, and his treatise on 
 the “ Evidences of Christianity ”’ as the standard 
 account of the historical grounds for believing 
 the story of the Gospels. 
 
 It will repay us to consider a little more closely 
 the problem thus presented to us. Nowadays 
 it would generally be felt that the emphasis laid 
 by Utilitarianism on the satisfaction of the in- 
 dividual’s desire for pleasure was not consonant 
 with the precept and example of self-sacrifice 
 set before us in the New Testament. On the 
 other hand, it cannot be denied that in the 
 New Testament there is no hesitation about the 
 promising of rewards for virtue or threatening 
 of punishments for wrong-doing—rewards and 
 punishments described as everlasting in either 
 case. We are apt to fight shy of such language, 
 the use of which, to enforce moral teaching, 
 agrees very well with the theory of Utilitarianism. 
 We see here a reciprocal action between 
 
IDEALISM 1% 
 
 Philosophy and Christianity, in which they may 
 be said mutually to correct one another. It is 
 principally on the ground of the fact, strongly 
 urged by certain moral philosophers (and notably 
 by Kant), that disinterestedness is of the very 
 nature of Morality, which cannot in the end 
 admit any reason for doing one’s duty except 
 that it is one’s duty, that we are inclined to avoid 
 the scriptural language about rewards and 
 punishments; for it may be interpreted, we 
 think, as meaning that such an external reason 
 can be given, and as disparaging the intrinsic 
 obligatoriness of benevolence and justice. On 
 the other hand, the opposite philosophical 
 theory, which accorded with the use in the 
 Christian Scriptures of promises of future 
 happiness and threats of future misery as induce- 
 ments to the pursuit of virtue and avoidance of 
 vice, is often discarded because it is felt to jar 
 with the supreme dignity accorded in Christianity 
 to the ungrudging sacrifice of self, illustrated 
 by the Cross of Calvary. 
 
 I will take another instance, and this time 
 I will choose a doctrine, not of moral but of 
 metaphysical philosophy, and one which, in- 
 stead of appearing to many people at first sight 
 inconsistent with the Christian view of the 
 world, has seemed to some to be the only theory 
 fully in harmony with it. It is the doctrine of 
 
18 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 Bishop Berkeley that the external world of 
 material objects, whereof our senses make us 
 aware, depends for its existence upon being 
 perceived by some mind. For, since it is ob- 
 viously very hard to believe that it depends for 
 its existence upon being perceived by any one of 
 us, who perceive it whether we will or not, we 
 may thus be easily led on to the thought of an 
 eternal Mind, to which this world is perpetually 
 present, and which excites the idea of it in ours 
 for the guidance of our lives. 
 
 Berkeley himself held that the one sufficiently 
 convincing philosophical justification of a belief 
 in God lay in the arguments by which he showed 
 that the material world depends on the divine 
 Spirit, not only in its origin, but for its very 
 being at each moment as an object of perception, 
 while, except as an actual or possible object of 
 perception, we cannot think of it at all or attach 
 any meaning to the language we use about it. 
 And in our own day there are distinguished 
 philosophical defenders of the Christian religion 
 who find in this same doctrine, as modified in 
 certain ways which we need not here consider, 
 the most, if not the only, satisfactory basis of 
 a faith im a personal Creator and Ruler of the 
 universe. Yet a majority even of Christian 
 philosophers have never held an “ idealism ” 
 (as it is called) of this kind, and it is possible to 
 
MATERIALISM 19 
 
 give reasons for thinking that it is not really so 
 completely harmonious with the religious ex- 
 perience of Christian believers as its supporters 
 have supposed and contended. And, on the 
 other hand, there have been eminent Christian 
 thinkers who have been, as_ philosophers, 
 champions of materialism, the very theory by 
 demolishing which the system of Berkeley and 
 of the idealists who have succeeded him has 
 earned its reputation of promoting the interests 
 of Religion. The first of the Latin fathers, 
 Tertullian, was a materialist; and it was not 
 because of his materialism that he was denied 
 the title “ saint ’” usually accorded to the ancient 
 doctors of the Church, but because of his action 
 in separating himself from the main body of 
 Christians and joining himself with a group 
 which believed itself to be possessed of prophetic 
 gifts, and insisted on an austere and rigorous 
 rule of conduct, by failing to maintain which the 
 authorities of the Church had, in the judgment 
 of these Puritan sectaries, forfeited their title 
 to represent the Christian name. In modern 
 times, and in our own country, the materialist 
 Hartley was an apologist for Christianity; and 
 Priestley, though not an orthodox Christian, 
 found a similar philosophy compatible with 
 faith in a God, in the divine mission of Christ, 
 and in a future life. 
 
90 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 The lesson to be drawn from these facts is not, 
 however, that which is sometimes drawn—that 
 philosophical theories come and go, while the 
 teaching of the Christian Church remains ever 
 the same, unaflected by the fluctuations of 
 opinion. On the contrary, the teaching of the 
 Church has not, as a matter of fact, been un- 
 aflected by these fluctuations; and if it 1s true 
 that very various philosophies have been found 
 to be compatible with Christianity, it is also 
 true that the same philosophy has often been 
 held by adherents of various religions. The true 
 lesson is rather that Christian experience 1s one 
 of the facts which philosophy must take into 
 account, just as moral experience is, or that of 
 the artist, or, again, of the man of science ; 
 and that therefore one’s philosophical view 
 of the world must not be inconsistent with 
 it, if it is to be satisfactory. Various views 
 of the world may, however, be put forward 
 as consistent with it, and it is possible that 
 more than one may make out its claim to 
 be so. 
 
 It may be well to end this paper with some 
 suggestions on the attitude which should be 
 taken up towards the religious perplexities of 
 children and young people by their elder friends. 
 The poet Tennyson has spoken in a well-known 
 passage of “ In Memoriam ” of those who, when 
 
RELIGIOUS DOUBTS 21 
 
 doubt of the truth of Religion makes its ap- 
 pearance, would have us 
 
 «| . crush it, like a vice of blood, 
 Upon the threshold of the mind.” 
 
 Of late psychologists have been disposed to 
 question whether this is the proper treatment 
 even for a “ vice of blood.” Their investigations 
 have led them to think that mere repression is 
 apt, while driving the perverted instinct or 
 mischievous tendency below the threshold of 
 consciousness, to induce its reappearance in the 
 form of morbid impulses which the will cannot 
 control, and the true source of which is unknown 
 to their victim, and can only be discovered by 
 the skill of experts in the cure of nervous dis- 
 orders. A full confession would often, it seems, 
 be a better remedy in the eyes of the physician, 
 as it has long been in those of the priest. But 
 however this may be in the case of a “ vice of 
 blood,’’ unquestionably it is so in the case of 
 an intellectual doubt; it should be brought to 
 the light, and met, not with shocked disapproval, 
 but with sympathetic interest and rational 
 arguments. Nay, the emergence of doubt in 
 the mind of an intelligent child should be 
 foreseen as a normal phase of intellectual 
 development. The child should even be en- 
 couraged to look forward to changes of view 
 
22 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY 
 
 as he grows older, but meanwhile to acquire 
 a real religious experience of his own by the 
 practice of prayer and of thought about re- 
 ligion. It should never be suggested that 
 religion is afraid of free enquiry. While a spirit 
 of reverence should be cultivated, a superstitious 
 dread of irreverence should be discouraged. © 
 Jests about words or things with sacred associa- 
 tions should not be indiscriminately treated 
 as blasphemous. The right analogy here is that 
 of a child’s jests about his parents. There are 
 some such jests which no child with a real 
 respect or love for his parents would make, 
 others which are compatible with such respect 
 and love, and even significant of affectionate 
 familiarity. 
 
 All genuine love of knowledge should be 
 fostered, and a complete honesty of outlook 
 recommended and encouraged, and the young 
 man or woman should be taught to regard 
 Reason, not as (according to an expression of 
 Luther’s) an evil beast to be slain in sacrifice 
 to God, but rather (in a favourite phrase of 
 Bishop Butler, borrowed from the Book of 
 Proverbs) as “ the candle of the Lord.” Doubt 
 should be looked upon as a natural incident im 
 the life of a thinking servant of God, and as part 
 of his appointed discipline, not to be got rid of 
 at all costs, but to be allowed to play its proper 
 
PLACE OF DOUBT IN EDUCATION 23 
 
 part in the religious development of the young, 
 just as the discussion of controverted questions 
 in the debating society does in their training as 
 citizens of a free State. 
 
 I am, of course, speaking here of genuine 
 intellectual difficulties. But even where there 
 lies behind, and at the root of, discontent with 
 the religion which has been taught, the in- 
 suigence of passions which seek to escape the 
 restraints imposed by religious principles, while 
 a wise elder will certainly be on his guard against 
 encouraging the probably only half-conscious 
 hypocrisy which would put forward the specula- 
 tive problem and mask the unruly desire, he 
 will yet take seriously the speculative problem 
 itself. For, even from the point of view of 
 morality, resistance to temptation may be 
 permanently weakened by recurrmg doubt as 
 to the reasonableness of the principle which 
 prescribes resistance. 
 
 In according to religious doubt such recogni- 
 tion as has here been recommended of its 
 legitimate place in spiritual development, we 
 shall only be assenting to methods actually 
 employed by God in the education of humanity, 
 and obeying the apostolic injunction to be 
 fellow-workers with Him. And it is precisely in 
 the possibility of this co-operation with God that 
 the capacity of man for Religion consists. 
 
Il 
 
 THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF 
 RELIGIONS 
 
 By H. U. WEITBRECHT STANTON, Pu.D., D.D. 
 
 THE present-day student of religion has an im- 
 mense advantage over his fellow of a generation 
 ago in the wealth of material to his hand. The 
 progress made in knowledge of the religions of 
 the world is almost incalculable, and the percep- 
 tion of orderly connection in the great mass of 
 beliefs and worships has greatly increased. In 
 place of two or three historical religions and a 
 dozen mythological ones, surrounded by a mass 
 of confused and savage cults, the student now 
 sees religion, like language, as a living, growing 
 function of man’s nature. The missionary and 
 explorer in many lands have lived with the 
 primitive peoples, entered into their manner of 
 life, got to understand their feelings, and learned 
 their ideas of things unseen which the savage 
 is very shy of expressing to an unsympathetic 
 questioner. On the basis of these observations, 
 and on deeper research regarding the greater 
 
 religions, a new science has been built up, the 
 24 
 
UNITY OF RELIGIONS 25 
 
 Comparative Science of Religion. Time was 
 when some writers freely asserted that the human 
 tribes of low culture had no religion. The very 
 contrary has been proved, as in the case of the 
 Australian aborigines, who were once supposed 
 to be without religion, but are now realized to 
 be tied up in their whole life by a multitude of 
 religious beliefs and observances far more com- 
 plicated than our own. In fact, primitive 
 religions, like primitive languages, are more 
 highly articulated than those more advanced. 
 Amid this great variety are seen both excellences 
 and deformities of growth, both progress and 
 decadence; yet with all the great dissimilarities 
 there is everywhere a fundamental unity: man 
 is seeking adjustment or reconciliation with an 
 unseen power or powers that rule his life. 
 Nothing less than this is sought by the lowest, 
 nothing more is revealed by the highest. 
 
 We and our children are thus able to view 
 religion from a new angle. So to explore the 
 religions of the world and to teach about them 
 is a fascinating and inspiring task, yet in setting 
 ourselves to it certain difficulties arise. Ifthere is 
 this fundamental unity, and if there are so many 
 similarities and excellences in other religions 
 apart from Christianity, have we any longer the 
 right to regard the faith of the Bible as unique ? 
 The missionary who has to deal with non- 
 
26 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 Christian religions of higher or lower culture 
 has to answer this and the like questions 
 both in thought and practice. Perhaps the 
 thinking of a missionary may help some fellow- 
 thinkers. 
 
 The main difficulties that I have come across 
 have to do with the origin of religion, the process 
 of religion, and the aim of religion, and I propose 
 to deal with them in this order. 
 
 1. THE ORIGIN OF RELIGION. 
 
 The material offered to us in the primitive 
 religions of the world is so vast and varied that 
 one can only select a few of the most outstanding 
 features for consideration. 
 
 (a) These religions are often classed under the 
 common term “‘Animism,” because their belief 
 and practices are governed by the conception of 
 a soul or souls in men and things. This soul is 
 often imagined as a kind of fine stuff which 
 inhabits the body, leaving it at times, as im 
 dreams, and permanently at death. It may be 
 increased or diminished, and much of the magic 
 and other observances of these religions has to 
 do with the preservation or strengthening of 
 this soul-stuff. The same kind of life-principle 
 inhabits animals, plants, and even minerals, and 
 all these have to be dealt with, as need demands, 
 
GHOSTS AND DEITIES 270 
 
 by the priest or medicine-man who knows the 
 secret of their connections. When the savage 1s 
 perplexed by the movements and general be- 
 haviour of many men and things, he lays it to the 
 account of this unseen stuff as producing effects 
 the reason of which he cannot see or feel. Can 
 this be the origin of belief in a soul as distinct 
 from the body 2 
 
 Again, the belief in the survival of the soul 
 in some fashion is practically universal among 
 primitive races. The life of the ghost is regarded 
 as a faint continuance of the man’s bodily exist- 
 ence, and the ghost has a desire to remain in the 
 neighbourhood of its body. If balked or ill 
 provided with what is necessary to its comfort 
 in the spirit-world, it becomes an enemy of the 
 living who have neglected it, and it may injure 
 them by bringing disease, death, or loss of 
 property, and the like. Therefore, many of the 
 religious observances of the survivors are in- 
 tended either to drive away the ghost or to pro- 
 pitiate it, and the ritual connected with death 
 and burial, or other disposal of the dead, becomes 
 important and elaborate. Among more advanced 
 tribes, who have learned to value and honour 
 age and experience in the living, departed 
 ancestors are regarded with special veneration 
 and regularly worshipped. Such worship may 
 develop into divine honour, so that a specially 
 
28 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 famous ancestor comes to be regarded as a god. 
 This has been offered by writers of ancient and 
 modern times as a sufficient explanation of the 
 belief in a god or gods. The deity is supposed 
 to be like the spectre of the Brocken, a magnified 
 shadow of man cast by his imagination on the 
 mist of tribal traditions. 
 
 (6) But it is remarkable that among the most 
 different races, and in regions of the earth most 
 widely separated, we find a persistent belief in 
 a supreme God and creator of mankind; yet 
 equally general is the practical conviction that, 
 though benevolent, or at least not harmful, He is 
 a remote being whom men need not much trouble 
 about, and that the beings with whom they are 
 really concerned in their religious observances 
 are the spirits of men or beasts or plants or 
 places, who will hurt them if not worshipped 
 or propitiated. Almost all animistic rites have 
 to do with these spirits. The dread of them 
 dominates the life of the animist, and no feature 
 of the Christian faith is more attractive to him 
 than the message of a Saviour who has over- 
 thrown these evil powers, and an Almighty 
 Father who is not far off, but near by, and who 
 cares for His children. In fact, this aspect of 
 primitive religion does not so much suggest 
 the origin of later beliefs as the deterioration 
 of an earlier and more really childlike belief in 
 
NATURE WORSHIP AND SACRIFICE 29 
 
 a good God who has created and also rules 
 the world. 
 
 (c) These minor deities that dwell in natural 
 objects, and more or less control them, are 
 naturally thought of as intimately connected 
 with the life and phases of nature, such as the 
 growth and decay of vegetation and the changes 
 of the seasons. In some cases worship is paid 
 to the great objects of nature on which man’s life 
 or welfare depends—the gun, moon, and stars; 
 the ocean or the river; the wind and the rain. 
 The priest or magician is he who knows how to 
 make these powers propitious to man. If they 
 have done him harm the deity must be angry, and 
 some kind of sacrifice must be brought which 
 will turn away his wrath. The more costly the 
 sacrifice the greater its effect, and most precious 
 of all is the sacrifice of a man, a world-wide rite. 
 But animal sacrifices and offerings of food or 
 other possessions are even more general. If 
 the substance of the sacrifice ig destroyed by 
 fire or otherwise, it is regarded as being consumed 
 by the deity; but far more often it is consumed 
 by the priests and the worshippers who become 
 guests at the table of the god. In those cases 
 where the god is the personification of a nature 
 process, such as that of the seasons, he may be 
 conceived as dying in the winter and rising to 
 new life in the spring, and this may be repre- 
 
30 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 sented in a sacrificial rite, followed by a meal 
 in which the worshipper is regarded as feeding 
 upon the god. But the more general idea is 
 that of an appropriation by the sacrificial meal 
 of the soul-stuff of the victim and the power 
 inherent in it. We cannot wonder that some 
 have sought in such observances and ideas the 
 origin of the Christian ideas of atonement and 
 sacramental communion. 
 
 In a word, then, there are striking analogies, 
 entirely independent of missionary contact, 
 between certain widely spread pagan beliefs and 
 rites and certain great teachings and observances 
 of the Christian faith. What is the real relation 
 between them? To get a clear reply we must 
 first ask: What is the true origin of religion as 
 such ? That religion is an essential element in 
 human life is not nowadays disputed. It is, 
 then, like other factors in human life, the 
 expression of a need and the effort to satisfy that 
 need, but, unlike those other factors, it has to do 
 with powers or forces that are not discerned 
 by the senses. Now religion, like all other 
 growths, 1s truly understood, not by its rudest 
 and most elementary forms, but by its highest 
 development. The universal sense of man that 
 he must adjust himself to a higher power to 
 whom he is in some way accountable is nothing 
 but man’s universal and elemental need of God, 
 
CHRISTIAN ANALOGIES 31 
 
 and of the fullest revelation of God which he is 
 capable of receiving. Viewed in this light, the 
 ideas of soul-stuff distinct from the body and of 
 the ghost after death are a dim recognition of 
 the spiritual element in man, and a reaching 
 out aiter the hope of immortality; the notion of 
 a great but remote God, and of the dangerous 
 spirits with whom man has practically to do, is 
 a distorted perception of the fact that we fail 
 to reach the good God by reason of the powers of 
 evil that surround us. The sacrifice and the 
 feast on the victim express the need of recon- 
 ciliation with God and of participation in His 
 lite. In other words, these and similar analogies 
 between primitive religions and Christianity are 
 the strivings of man, often pathetic, sometimes 
 heroic, to satisfy the hunger of his soul after 
 those spiritual realities which are revealed by 
 God in Christ. 
 
 Il. THe Process oF RELIGION. 
 
 When a comparative review is made of the 
 history of religions which has resulted in their 
 present distribution, we observe certain lines of 
 growth and progress, though not without in- 
 dications also of retrogression and decay. It is 
 possible to classify the growth of religions in 
 different ways. Thus, according to the object 
 
32 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 worshipped we may distinguish the primitive 
 religions of fetish worship and magic, the higher 
 nature religions which adore and eventually 
 personify the higher powers of nature and some- 
 times lead up to something like theism, and the 
 theistic religions which ascribe a moral character 
 to the one sole God. Or, again, the types may be 
 distinguished according to social evolution as 
 tribal and national and universal. Such classi- 
 fications are useful as enabling us to understand 
 and visualize the main features of religion, but 
 they are not like partitions in a set of pigeon- 
 holes: they cross and interlace; features of one 
 type crop out in another, as, for instance, fetishism 
 appears in a theistic religion in the case of the 
 Black Stone in the sanctuary of Mecca. A 
 gradation from lower to higher forms may be 
 established, but it by no means follows that one 
 form succeeds another in time according to the 
 scheme laid down. 
 
 It is necessary to remember this when certain 
 conclusions are drawn from the application of 
 the theory of evolution to the comparative study 
 of religions. This application has been made 
 both as regards the outward conditions of 
 religion and its inward consciousness. 
 
 (2) Viewing the world religions as a whole, their 
 variety exhibits different stages of development. 
 It is therefore supposed that religions, like other 
 
. 
 
 FACTORS THAT SHAPE RELIGION 33 
 
 aspects of life, are the natural products of various 
 objective factors. There is environment, such 
 as that of the Semite, whose spacious deserts 
 and mountains, with their droughts and cloud- 
 bursts, are supposed to incline him to sombre 
 and elevated notions of a stern and powerful 
 deity. There is the influence of race, as with 
 the virile races of northern peoples of Europe, 
 whose gods are fighters and their heaven a 
 banqueting-hall of heroes. There is the in- 
 fluence of history, as when the age-long, orderly 
 social life of China has minimized the importance 
 of distinctions of belief, and concentrated re- 
 ligion on the worship of the social order as 
 represented by ancestors. It is often argued 
 that religion, by adaptation to successive en- 
 vironments, has thus developed into the forms 
 that we now find, and that, therefore, each such 
 form represents the stage of the religious life 
 which is best suited to the pitch of development 
 at which its adherents have arrived. An ad- 
 vanced form of religion which may in itself be 
 higher would not, it is argued, be so well suited 
 to promote their general well-being. There are 
 those, for instance, who say that though Islam 
 may be, as a religion, inferior to Christianity, 
 yet it is better suited to the culture and 
 temperament of the negro races than Christianity. 
 Such a religion may, they think, by its very 
 
34 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 imperfections, such as the institutions of domestic 
 slavery or polygamy, supply a useful social 
 element that Christianity lacks; or, as in the case 
 of Hinduism, it may teach doctrines, such as that 
 of reincarnation, which are lacking in Christianity, 
 yet seem to meet a need. Why, then, should 
 we insist on the acceptance of Christianity by 
 peoples of every stage of culture and thought ? 
 (6) If, in reply to this, reference is made to 
 the need of deliverance from the moral mischief 
 of sin witnessed by man’s conscience, the question 
 is raised: May not conscience itself, after all, 
 be a result of evolution? That the standards of 
 right and wrong, and with them the judgments 
 of conscience, vary much in different times and 
 places cannot be denied. There are the taboos 
 of primitive religions, the ceremonial food 
 regulations of a higher stage, the ordeal of battle 
 for vindication of honour (still surviving in the 
 duel), the enforcement of religious profession by 
 violence, and a hundred other matters in which 
 the moral standards of mankind have changed and 
 are changing still. Accordingly, there are those 
 who maintain that the development of conscience 
 is nothing but the growth of social sanctions 
 from stage to stage of culture. What is con- 
 ceived as useful to the well-being of society at 
 a given stage is regarded as good or right; what 
 is injurious to it is bad and wrong. As the con- 
 
RELIGION AND EVOLUTION 30 
 
 ception of the social whole is extended and 
 clarified, so the scope and level of morality is 
 raised: social and good, antisocial and bad, are 
 synonymous. If so, then to demand from a 
 people a moral standard above their stage of 
 development is really antisocial and wrong. 
 
 (c) When the attempt is made to explain the facts 
 of religion by the theory of evolution, we must 
 needs ask what exactly is meant by evolution. 
 Very often it is spoken of as if it were a force 
 which produces such and such results, but it is, 
 of course, nothing of the kind. The word simply 
 means unrolling or unfolding, as a flower from 
 the bud, and the theory means that things in 
 nature have in an immense number of instances 
 been observed to work out in this way, and 
 therefore by the constitution of our minds we 
 cannot help expecting that they will do so in 
 other cases also. But in itself evolution is simply 
 the name of a process or way in which a great 
 many things have happened, and its test is that 
 of fact. Do they or did they actually so happen ? 
 How does this test apply to the cases in point ? 
 
 The influence of the outside factors of environ- 
 ment, race, and history on the shaping of religion 
 is not a negligible quantity, but it is so varied, 
 and sometimes contradictory, that it is utterly 
 insufficient, even as an explanation of how 
 matters religious work out as a rule. The 
 
36 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 Christian religion, which sprang from a Semitic 
 source, has had its greatest vogue in surroundings 
 which are most alien from those of its original 
 home. The same race which gave birth to the 
 pantheism of Hinduism produced the atheism of 
 original Buddhism. The same history of a people 
 under a foreign Power resulted in one part of the 
 Jewish nation expanding into the world-wide 
 community of the Christian Church, and the other 
 confining itself permanently within the limits of 
 its old traditional law. The fact is that things in 
 religion do not happen simply on the lines which 
 may be observed in unconscious or subhuman 
 nature. These outward factors have their un- 
 doubted and important influence on religion, but 
 the form in which that influence appears is 
 determined by the factor of human wills which 
 no scientific formula can express. The adoption 
 or shaping of a religion may be affected by a 
 hundred outside influences, but ultimately it is 
 determined by an act of yielding or resisting— 
 in a word, of choice. 
 
 (d) This is even more evident when we come to 
 the development of the moral sense, which we 
 call conscience. The operation of conscience is a 
 kind of thinking, and, like other thinking, it may 
 include error as well as truth. But the reason 
 for giving conscience a special name is not its 
 infallibility, but that it passes a particular kind 
 
THE STANDARD OF CONSCIENCE 37 
 
 of “* value judgment,” and it is not true that this 
 judgment is ultimately regulated by regard for 
 the well-being, in an external sense, of the com- 
 munity. The value standard of conscience, 
 whether for the individual or the community, 
 may, and often does, rule out the values of 
 pleasure, profit, honour, and life itself, and sub- 
 stitutes for them one ruling value of “ ought- 
 ness “—1t.e., right as against wrong, however 
 much the wrong may comprise of other values. 
 In history this has again and again been shown 
 by the example of nations or communities who 
 have preferred the risk of being wiped out rather 
 than be unfaithful to the moral demands of 
 honour or religion. The rejection for conscience’ 
 sake of other human goods is a thing which all of 
 us witnessed in war-time. Liven if in the case of 
 “conscientious objectors’ the general sense has 
 stamped their refusal to fight as contrary to the 
 common interest, that has not meant a denial 
 of respect to the person who acted according to 
 the ideal of right as he saw it. The standard of 
 a particular conscience may not be in itself the 
 highest, but it must be the highest that a man 
 knows, or else it could not override all other 
 standards. Can we, then, believe that the moral 
 tribunal of conscience, which is prepared to 
 negate all other standards of well-being for the 
 man or society, has its origin in a regard for 
 
38 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 social standards as supreme? It would, indeed, 
 be a strange thing if the result of imcreasing 
 clearness of thought about the ultimate moral 
 standard were the complete dethronement of it. 
 As a concrete thing conscience may be ill-informed 
 or degenerate and in need of complete renewal, 
 but ideally it can be nothing less than conformity 
 to a perfect standard, and that standard is to be 
 found, not in the crude and unshaped beginnings 
 of development, still less in deviations and set- 
 backs caused by sloth and selfishness. It comes 
 from above, and is found where the unity of all 
 perfection is realized—that is, in God. 
 
 Nor is this a mere ideal. I have spoken above 
 of the universal need of man for God, and this 
 involves a judgment of himself in the light of the 
 perfect standard when and as he perceives it, 
 and this judgment results in the sense of sin as 
 a falling short of, or an opposition to, the perfect 
 will which that standard expresses. It is sin 
 rooted in the wrong desires and thoughts of man 
 which is anti-social. It is deliverance from sin 
 which is the one fundamental need of man, and 
 the gospel of JesusChrist which offers that deliver- 
 ance has gone and is going to every race of man, 
 and everywhere it meets the need without dis- 
 tinction of stages of culture or differences of race, 
 provided only that it is truly presented, not 
 merely in word, but im life, and that it is sin- 
 
HOW DO RELIGIONS WORK OUT? 39 
 
 cerely received. The claim of Christ to unique- 
 ness and universality is sustained by the facts 
 of experience, and nothing but the highest as 
 revealed in Him will serve the true interests and 
 growth of humanity. The theory of evolution 
 is a very convenient mind garment at our 
 present stage of growth, but it is one which has 
 not a few rents and gaps. It may passably 
 cover the nakedness of our ignorance by helping 
 us to trace how things came about, but it reveals 
 to us nothing of why they are, or what for, and 
 these are the questions which religion is bound 
 to answer. 
 
 Ill. Tae Arm oF RELIGION. 
 
 The aim of religion is both to answer an enquiry 
 and to mark out a course of action, and the value 
 of the answer is tested by the worth, both inner 
 and outer, of the resultant action. Accordingly, 
 in all religions we have some teaching about God 
 or, at least, an unknown power under whose 
 control we are, and about behaviour towards 
 our fellow-men. When men and women go 
 abroad for the first time to non-Christian coun- 
 tries, the impression produced upon them often 
 amounts to this: Here are people who don’t 
 believe in Christianity, and mostly have never 
 heard of it, but they worship a deity of some 
 
40 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 sort, and their religion teaches them to do good 
 much as ours does, and, like us, some of them are 
 good people and some bad. In the last resort it 
 looks as if all religions teach pretty much the 
 same thing. What do the differences matter, 
 and why should we trouble them with our doc- 
 trines, if they are decent people? It is the 
 attitude summed up in Pope’s couplet: 
 
 “For forms of faith let graceless zealots fight; 
 His can’t be wrong whose life is in the right.” 
 
 The same thing in a more constructive way is 
 put by so-called theosophy, especially as regards 
 the higher religions of the East. In all of them, 
 it is said, the real adepts in religion put aside the 
 popular mythology or theology in favour of the 
 belief that God is indwelling in all men and 
 things, and that those who thus recognize Him 
 may find a direct spiritual approach to Him 
 through meditation, asceticism, and rites handed 
 down from ancient sages. The customary 
 beliefs and traditions need not be interfered with; 
 they serve, according to the mentality and 
 habits of different peoples, as avenues to the 
 one centre of ultimate truth, which is the same 
 for all. Can it be that this gives us the reality 
 of spiritual religion without the exclusiveness of 
 Christianity ? 
 
 Here, again, we do well to have recourse to 
 
GOD AND MORALITY 41 
 
 facts. Do all the religions, even the higher ones, 
 teach us much the same about God and morality, 
 and about the relation of God to morality ? 
 
 The fact is that we have in the different 
 religions widely different ideas of God. We have 
 noticed how, in the primitive religions, the idea 
 of a supreme God is so thin and unsubstantial 
 that it has little practical effect on life or even 
 on worship. In the religions of India and the 
 Har Hast we find two aspects of deity. There are 
 for the people gods and godlings innumerable, 
 frankly treated as independent powers; for the 
 more thoughtful worshipper a few main deities, 
 addressed by some as co-ordinate powers, by 
 others as manifestations of a supreme divine 
 unity. Polytheism—that is, the worship of gods 
 many and lords many—is in clear evidence over 
 a considerable part of mankind. Such divinities 
 are necessarily imperfect and mostly disfigured 
 by sins and blemishes like those of men. In the 
 philosophic interpretation of polytheism, as in 
 India, the essence of all life, divine or human, 
 or in nature, is held to be absolutely one. While, 
 therefore, the deities, one and all, are mani- 
 festations of that one Life, men, animals, and all 
 things else are no less so. In it there can be no 
 ultimate distinction of good or bad: all emerge 
 from the same infinite ocean of existence and 
 sink back into it. Over against the pantheism 
 
42 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 of the Hindu religion we find in Islam the con- 
 trary conception of a personal God who has laid 
 down a moral law; but His essence is defined as 
 pure power, and the ultimate distinctions of 
 right and wrong are not based on the moral 
 attributes of deity, but on the power to lay down 
 what omnipotence pleases. He may allow as 
 right to a favoured slave what would be wrong 
 in others, or He may go back from the principle 
 that His kingdom is not to be established by 
 earthly warfare to the command that it shall 
 be propagated by fighting. 
 
 Tn fine, the different religions do not say very 
 much the same about God, but, on the contrary, 
 they put forth very different and even contradic- 
 tory conceptions of Him. And from this it follows 
 that their teaching about morality is not and 
 cannot be identical, for the conception of God 
 radically affects, as we have seen, the conception 
 of morality. So it works out in fact. Rules for 
 individual and social behaviour as a whole are 
 bound to be fairly similar throughout the world, 
 because they represent the conditions under 
 which men get on tolerably well with one another. 
 But where the conception of God is defective it 
 repeatedly happens that there is flat contradic- 
 tion between the sanctions of religion and the 
 dictates of morality. Religious prostitution is 
 a practice of immemorial antiquity which still 
 
TRUTH AND LIFE 43 
 
 survives in modern times, as in the case of the 
 temple girls in India, who are married to the god 
 in childhood and brought up to be used by his 
 priests and worshippers as a religious act. 
 Sunilarly the brotherhood of Thugs, now extinct, 
 had their own divine patroness whom they wor- 
 shipped with peculiarly solemn rites before each 
 expedition for strangling and robbing travellers. 
 Instances of this kind might be multiplied from 
 among many nations. 
 
 Religion is a doctrine, and it cannot be in- 
 different to the truth of the teachings which are 
 put forward in its name, because its doctrines 
 should be founded on facts: by which God has 
 made Himself known. Sincerity in belief is an 
 indispensable condition of true religion, but thé 
 truth of a fact does not depend on the sincerity 
 or warmth of the conviction any more than the 
 satisfaction of hunger depends on the firm belief 
 that a meal is ready. To say that beliefs in 
 mutually destructive doctrines will all lead up 
 to the same truth is as futile in religion as in 
 science. The question whether there can be 
 an absolute religion such as the theosophist 
 postulates is on the same plane as that of 
 a knowledge of the Absolute; it is an academic 
 discussion which we may leave to technical 
 philosophy. But that is not to deny that we 
 
 may have, and should strive after, clearness of 
 i) 
 
44 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF RELIGIONS 
 
 thought in matters of religion. The aim of 
 religion on the side of the intellect is to appre- 
 hend God as He has actually revealed Himself 
 in history—that is, in the affairs of men as we 
 know them in the past or present. But religion 
 is more than a doctrine; it is a life, and the aim 
 of the doctrine is to show how the new life for 
 sinful man flows out of the great fact of God's 
 revelation of Himself in Christ. As we study the 
 comparative science of religion we see the 
 universal need of that life. It is our part to take 
 hold of it, to live it out, to witness it to all the 
 world. 
 
If] 
 
 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
 By W. M. BELL, B.D. (Lonp.). 
 
 ALTHOUGH it may safely be asserted that there 
 is not, and cannot be, any quarrel between true 
 religion and true science, that the discrepancy 
 which was supposed in Victorian times to exist 
 between the two is now happily defunct, it ig 
 still a fact that among the masses a vague idea 
 exists that the Bible is no longer credible or of 
 any value, and that science has “ exploded ” 
 the faith of past generations. The Christian 
 Evidence lecturer in public places finds himself 
 heckled with morsels of Strauss, aphorisms of 
 Haeckel and Huxley which percolated down to 
 the crowds twenty years ago, and have not yet 
 been replaced by anything more modern. The 
 Christian believer, on his side, is at times in no 
 better case; too often he meets a ridiculous 
 attack on his faith with an equally impossible 
 defence of it, with memories of Paley’s evidences, 
 or of the arguments of some champion of bygone 
 ages. Worse still, he sometimes believes him- 
 
 self, quite wrongly, to be unorthodox and dis- 
 4.5 
 
46 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
 
 qualified from active Christian work on account 
 of a general acceptance of the idea of evolution, 
 or owing to some failure to see the true bearing 
 of the Old Testament on the Christian religion. 
 The writer knows of a devout and religiously- 
 minded day-school teacher who felt unable 
 conscientiously to teach a Scripture lesson to 
 children by reason of non-belief in the literal 
 truth of some quite unimportant portion of the 
 Old Testament narrative. The object of this 
 essay is to save would-be defenders of the 
 faith from helping a good cause in a wrong 
 way; to assist those who have to teach Scripture 
 to a scientific point of view; and to show that if 
 the Bible is regarded from that standpoint, 
 difficulties and disbeliefs simply do not arise. 
 
 If the cardinal doctrines of Christianity were 
 the basis of all religious and biblical teaching, 
 most of the contents of this essay would be 
 unnecessary; for in that case every child would 
 understand that the Christian religion does not 
 stand or fall with the story of Balaam’s ass, 
 or with the account of any single incident re- 
 corded in the ancient documents, but that the 
 Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ her 
 Lord. If the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the 
 Ten Commandments were the bed-rock on which 
 all Scripture teaching were based, then nobody's 
 faith would be troubled for more than ten seconds 
 
RELIGION AND SCIENCE 47 
 
 on end by hearing an atheist in the Park make 
 merry over Cain’s wife; but, unfortunately, in 
 Kingland, where the difference between being 
 taught religion and learning lists of Kings of 
 Israel and Judah is not clearly apprehended, 
 where most of the anti-religious attack is directed 
 at the Bible, it is very necessary that special 
 instruction on the best methods and principles 
 of studymg and teaching the Scriptures should 
 be given. 
 
 In practically every English school the pupil 
 has at least one Bible lesson a week and an 
 increasing number of lessons in natural science; 
 and, where the teaching of science is separated 
 from all mention of religion, it is inevitable 
 that he will feel certain discrepancies between 
 the two; but before dealing with such dis- 
 agreements it 1s necessary to issue a caution 
 against wrong and dangerous methods of treat- 
 ing them. 
 
 I. Wrone MeEtTHops. 
 
 (a) The Method of Water-tight Compartments. 
 —By this method the teaching of religion and the 
 teaching of science are kept entirely separate, 
 so that one department of the mind is kept for 
 biblical knowledge and another for scientific, 
 and all interplay of the two, as far as possible, 
 prevented. IfScripture seems to teach one thing, 
 
48 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
 
 well, that concerns religion. If geology teaches 
 something different, that affair belongs to science, 
 and science and religion are different things. 
 This method is impossible in practice. The 
 mind cannot be subdivided into thought-tight 
 compartments, and any new idea presented to it 
 instantly collides with all other ideas in the mind 
 and must either settle down happily with them or 
 berejected. That religious ideas are no exception 
 to this rule is illustrated by the following incident 
 which happened recently in the writer's ex- 
 perience: At the conclusion of a chemistry 
 lesson he was approached by one of his pupils, 
 and asked whether he thought that in the days 
 of Abraham there was more oxygen in the air 
 than there is now, and would that account for 
 the long lives of Abraham, Methuselah, and the 
 patriarchs generally? The answer was, of 
 course, simple, but the incident is of interest as 
 showing that an intelligent boy could not keep 
 what he had heard at home and in his Sunday- 
 school apart from what he was taught in the 
 school laboratory. 
 
 (b) The Method of Reconciliation.—A survival, 
 perhaps, of the days when it was thought 
 necessary to “reconcile” all discrepant state- 
 ments in Scripture. Thus, when Genesis vu. 17 
 says that the flood lasted forty days, Genesis vii. 24 
 says that it lasted one hundred and fifty days, 
 
RECONCILIATION INADVISABLE 49 
 
 and Genesis vill. 13 implies a longer period still, 
 commentators used to “ reconcile ”’ the diflerence 
 either by saying that the greater number in- 
 cluded the smaller, or by some other exercise of 
 mathematical ingenuity. The modern ex- 
 positor, knowing that the story of the flood im 
 Genesis is pieced together from two distinct 
 narratives, does not attempt to reconcile the 
 discrepancy, but says the compiler of Genesis, 
 finding difierent statements as to the length 
 of the flood in his authorities, and feeling unable 
 to decide between them, gave both statements, 
 just as a modern historian would do. 
 
 Again, when it is stated in one place that 
 David paid fifty shekels of silver for the 
 threshing-floor (2 Sam. xxiv. 24), and in another 
 that the price was six hundred shekels of gold 
 (1 Chron. xxi. 25), the two assertions have been 
 harmonized by supposing that each of the twelve 
 tribes paid fifty shekels, and so made up the 
 six hundred; or that David paid the fifty shekels 
 for the threshing-floor and oxen, and afterwards 
 bought the entire estate for six hundred shekels 
 of gold, neither of which suppositions is even 
 hinted at in the sacred text. To-day we should 
 have no hesitation in saying that the Books otf 
 Chronicles, being much later in date, are less 
 trustworthy authorities, and that, where there 
 is a discrepancy between the very early Books 
 
50 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
 
 of Samuel and the late Books of Chronicles, the 
 earlier books are probably right. 
 
 In the same way endeavours at harmonizing 
 the teaching of science with statements in 
 Scripture have been made. The story of creation 
 in Genesis demands a period of six days, whereas 
 geology demands an immense period of time, 
 and attempts have been made to reconcile the 
 two demands by saying that “days” mean 
 “ages.” Again, the Bible regards the sky as 
 consisting of a solid hemisphere called the 
 firmament, which protected the earth from 
 water-floods: “The sky, which is strong as a 
 molten mirror ” (Job xxxvii. 18). We read that 
 the flood was caused by windows being opened 
 in the heaven (Gen. vii. 11, and viii. 2), through 
 which the waters poured. Science, of course, 
 teaches something very different as to the 
 position of the stars in the sky and the nature 
 of the upper atmosphere, and the attempted 
 reconciliation—that the word “‘ firmament,’’ itself 
 implying something firm or solid, only means 
 the air—does not sound very convincing. 
 
 Such methods of reconciliation are mischievous, 
 because they distract attention from the Christian 
 interpretation of the Old Testament; they are, 
 moreover, unnecessary, as will be seen when 
 the purpose of the Bible and the right principles 
 of its interpretation are grasped. 
 
SCRIPTURE TEACHES RELIGION 51 
 
 Il. GENERAL PRINCIPLES. 
 
 It is impossible to deal with every case of 
 discrepancy between the Bible and_ science 
 within the limits of a single essay, but if 
 certain general principles are laid down and 
 applied to one or two cases, the reader can 
 himself apply them to others. 
 
 The general principles which must be borne 
 in mind, if a right view of the relations between 
 biblical and scientific knowledge are to be held, 
 are three in number, and concern the purpose 
 of the Bible, the nature of inspiration, and the 
 nature of the revelation contained in the Bible. 
 
 Purpose of the Buble. 
 1. The Bible is a religious book. Its purpose 
 
 is not to teach science, but to teach religion. It 
 tells us about God and our duties towards Him. 
 Its writers took the learning and science of the 
 day, subordinated them to that end, and made 
 them teach men some truth about God, just as 
 a modern preacher will sometimes use an illus- 
 tration from current science to reinforce his 
 message. The science may grow out of date, 
 but the religious lesson does not. Similarly, 
 the biblical writers took the old national tradi- 
 tions and songs that we find in the Book of 
 Judges, re-edited them, and made them tell us 
 
52 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
 
 some religious truth. In the later books they 
 took the national records (what we should call 
 history), and interpreted it from a religious point 
 of view. Parts of the old traditions may have 
 no basis in fact, but the religion that they 
 teach is true; parts of the biblical historical 
 records may prove to be faulty in details, but the 
 Bible’s religious interpretation of history is valid 
 for all ages. No biblical writer ever regarded 
 himself as a man ordained to teach natural 
 science, nor does the New Testament regard the 
 Old Testament as an encyclopzedia of information 
 on every subject. Speaking of the Old Testa- 
 ment, St. Paul says (2 Tim. i. 15): “ The sacred 
 writings which are able to make thee wise unto 
 salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 
 Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable 
 for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for w- 
 struction which is in righteousness.” ‘The purpose 
 of the Scriptures is here stated to be for in- 
 struction in faith and morals. There is not a 
 hint of a claim that Scripture is meant to teach 
 anything else. 
 
 The Nature of Inspiration. 
 
 2. It is not the printed word of the book that 
 is Inspired, but the soul of the writer. The 
 man himself is inspired to see some new truth, 
 or to revive an old one that has been forgotten, 
 
PROPHETIC INSPIRATION 53 
 
 and if we wish to enquire into the inspiration of 
 Scripture we must enquire into the inspiration of 
 the prophets, using the word in its widest sense 
 of all those men and women who have proclaimed 
 religious truth to the world. On examining the 
 written records about them, it is as obvious as 
 anything can be that the inspiration of a prophet 
 did not destroy his individuality nor make him 
 incapable of error. He was not sent into a 
 trance to utter divine words that were not his; 
 he chose his own words to express the truth that 
 God had planted in his heart. Amos, for in- 
 stance, was inspired to see the truth that God 
 was a Judge, and would visit even His chosen 
 people with punishment. If Israel did not 
 reverence the Creator, nor behave with justice 
 and charity to men, then the divine powers 
 would raise up Assyrians to chastise even the 
 holy people. When opposed by the official 
 priest of Bethel, he prophesied a speedy Judgment 
 on both priest and people: “ Thy sons and thy 
 daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land 
 shall be divided by line; and thou thyself shalt 
 die in a land that is unclean, and Israel shall 
 surely be led away captive out of his land” 
 (Amos vii. 17). Evidently Amos expected that 
 the judgment would take place in the priest's 
 own lifetime, whereas the captivity of the 
 northern kingdom did not occur for another two 
 
54. THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
 
 generations. The prophet’s historical foresight 
 was inaccurate, but his religion was right. The 
 article which he added to the creed, “ God is 
 Judge,”’ was true. Just as the divine influence 
 which made Newton see the law of gravitation 
 did not make him an infallible authority on all 
 topics, so the inspiration which guided the great 
 men of the Bible to see new truth about God 
 did not make, and was never intended to make, 
 them incapable of error in science, politics, or 
 other mundane afiairs. 
 
 The Revelation of the Bible. 
 
 3. The third principle is that laid down by 
 Westcott. It is that the Bible is not in itself 
 a revelation, but the record of a revelation. 
 It tells us how God revealed Himself progres- 
 sively from age to age, until that revelation 
 culminated in the coming of Jesus Christ. The 
 work of biblical critics, in spite of occasional 
 extravagances, has done us immense service 
 in elucidating the progress of this revelation by 
 making clear what is the chronological order of 
 the writings of the Bible. Under their guidance 
 we can briefly summarize the main stages of the 
 religious advance as recorded in the Scriptures. 
 
 (1) Abraham withdrew from association 
 with human sacrifice and began to serve one 
 
 God. 
 
REVELATION PROGRESSIVE 5D 
 
 (2) Moses, many centuries later, intro- 
 duced a moral law into religion. 
 
 (3) The prophets taught men to make 
 religion an affair of the heart, and to banish 
 conventionalism from the service of God. 
 
 (4) The exile and its disasters turned the 
 Jews into strict monotheists. 
 
 (5) In the latest books of the Old Testa- 
 ment we find growing the desire for personal 
 communion with God, a sense of sin, and 
 the need of atonement, and the idea of a 
 Catholic religion which would overleap the 
 boundaries of Judaism. 
 
 (6) Finally, thousands of years after 
 Abraham, Jesus Christ comes to make real 
 communion with God possible, to deal 
 effectively with sin, and to found a universal 
 Church. 
 
 The Bible is the record of these great stages in 
 religious advance, which came by the inspirations 
 given to gifted men in order that mankind might 
 have knowledge of God and His will. 
 
 ILI]. ParTICULAR CASES. 
 
 Having stated the fundamental laws of 
 Scripture interpretation, we can apply them to 
 some special cases of discrepancy between the 
 Bible and science. 
 
D6 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
 
 (a) The Story of Creation im Genesis—In 
 accordance with the first principle laid down, 
 we must ask the question: “ What religious 
 message does this story teach ?’”” Answers come 
 crowding thick and fast. It teaches that the 
 universe is the creation of God, the expression 
 of His will; that it is something separate and 
 distinct from Him, and that in His sight it is 
 good. The story tells us also something of 
 the nature of man, that he is the crown and 
 climax of creation, that he was made so that 
 he knew God naturally; he was made to be 
 religious. 
 
 In teaching the story to children who have 
 learned something of physical geography and 
 the solar system, the teacher might explain 
 what was a Jewish boy’s idea of the earth and 
 sky in the year 100 B.c.; how he regarded the 
 earth as immovably fixed on foundations 
 (Ps. civ. 5), as having a solid firmament above 
 it on which the heavenly bodies moved; how he 
 thought there were waters above the firmament; 
 and how, finally, he regarded God as enthroned 
 above all. ‘The Lord sitteth above the water- 
 flood: the Lord remaineth a king for ever” 
 (Ps. xxix. 9). Then the teacher may ask, 
 “Was the Jewish boy’s physical geography 
 correct ?’’ and the answer will be “No.” Then 
 he may put the query, “ Was his religion right 2?” 
 
APPLICATION OF PRINCIPLES = 57 
 
 and the answer will be “ Yes. He knew that God 
 was exalted above all created things.” 
 
 (6) The Story of Jonah and the Great Fish_— 
 Here, again, the religious message is so obvious 
 that we can only marvel how men can have 
 wasted their time in trying to discover what 
 kinds of fish have gullets large enough to swallow 
 aman. ‘The story is a magnificent missionary 
 lesson telling us of God’s love for the heathen 
 Ninevites, of Jonah’s wicked pride as a Jew in 
 not wanting foreigners to be saved, of how God’s 
 will triumphs in spite of man’s rebellion, and 
 in the last chapter tells a very human story of 
 Jonah’s mental reaction after the success of his 
 preaching, and of how God deals with it. 
 
 The writer’s biological knowledge was dis- 
 tinctly imaginative rather than accurate, but 
 his knowledge of religion and human nature can 
 hardly be surpassed. 
 
 * * K K *f 
 
 Finally, the significance of the principle that 
 the Bible is the record of a revelation must be 
 dwelt on in its relation to science. It will be 
 seen at once that religion had a humble origin, 
 that man’s early ideas of God were crude and 
 like those of a modern child who imagines God 
 in his simple, artless way to be a larger edition 
 of a man like his own father, and that very long 
 
58 THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 
 
 ages of time elapsed while primitive notions were 
 being improved. Scripture testifies that the 
 first man was in a low state of spiritual develop- 
 ment; he had not the discriminating knowledge 
 of good and evil. Anthropology reveals to us 
 the immense age of human life on this planet; 
 between the first man to whom was revealed the 
 idea of God and Abraham countless centuries 
 must have elapsed, and the time between 
 Abraham and Jesus Christ must be measured in 
 thousands of years. The slowness of religious 
 progress need not be considered as a stumbling- 
 block, for biology will come to our rescue, saying 
 that this conception of religion is consonant with 
 what the science of life teaches. The spiritual 
 side of man, as well as the physical, developed 
 from small origins. Psychology will step in as 
 well and say how imperative it is that man should 
 have started with rudimentary ideas of God, 
 to be improved in the slow process of time as his 
 mental power grew. 
 
 In these three principles, which are necessary 
 for the right understanding of the relations 
 between the Bible and science, there is nothing 
 repugnant either to what Scripture says of itself 
 or to Church tradition. No special view of the 
 inspiration of Scripture has ever been laid down 
 by a General Council, no theory of its verbal 
 inspiration making every word and sentence of 
 
CHURCH TRADITION 59 
 
 equal value, no theory of plenary inspiration 
 (v.e., an inspiration which covers all subjects 
 treated of) has ever been made binding on the 
 Christian conscience. On the question of the 
 literal accuracy of every sentence, of the literal 
 truth of every story related in the Bible, the 
 official Church is silent. And when we reflect 
 that at one time the majority of Christians 
 accepted without question as literally true all 
 statements in the Bible, we cannot avoid the 
 conclusion that in her silences, as well as her 
 utterances, the Church has been guided by 
 the Holy Spirit. 
 
IV 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS VALUE OF THE OLD 
 TESTAMENT 
 
 By R. H. KENNETT, D.D. 
 
 in 
 
 It will be admitted by all who are familiar with 
 the thought of the present age that on no subject 
 is it more important that the Christian Church 
 should know and speak its own mind than on 
 the Old Testament. On the one hand, many 
 who are hostile to Christianity imagine that in 
 the Old Testament—not only as regards its 
 historical and scientific statements, but also in 
 the more important matters of its morality and 
 theology—they have discovered a vulnerable 
 point at which they can aim a death-blow to 
 Christianity itself; and, on the other, there are 
 not a few Christians who, while acknowledging 
 Jesus as Lord and Saviour, are sorely perplexed 
 to reconcile His teaching with the Scriptures, on - 
 which they believe Him to have set His seal. 
 
 At the outset, therefore, it will be well to 
 enquire what was the attitude of Jesus to the 
 
 Old Testament. If He corroborated all itg 
 60 
 
CHRIST AND THE LAW 61 
 
 statements, it 1s obvious that a Christian cannot 
 criticize or repudiate a single one without under- 
 mining His authority; while, on the other hand, 
 if Jesus Himself criticized or repudiated some of 
 its teaching, those who endeavour to maintain it 
 as a whole are disloyal to Him. 
 
 It must, of course, be remembered that biblical 
 criticism, as the term is understood nowadays, 
 did not exist in the time of Jesus. There were, 
 indeed, disputes as to the meaning of various 
 passages in the law, and rival schools of inter- 
 pretation; but the authority and permanent 
 value of the law was unchallenged, and the 
 question of its authorship or of its absolute 
 inerrancy had never been raised. Jesus, there- 
 fore, was never asked His opinion about what 
 we should call the Higher Criticism, and we can 
 only discover His attitude towards the Old 
 Testament by comparing His teaching on various 
 matters with the statements therein contained. 
 It has, indeed, often been supposed that at least 
 on one occasion Jesus used language so clear 
 and emphatic about the authority of the Old 
 Testament as to make any further investigation 
 unnecessary. Hor in St. Matthew v.17/. He is 
 reported to have said, “ Think not that I came 
 to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not 
 to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto 
 you, Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot 
 
62 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, 
 till all things be accomplished.” It may be well 
 to point out here that the ‘“‘Sermon on the 
 Mount,” from which the above quotation is 
 taken, does not represent a discourse all delivered 
 at one time, but is a collection of sayings of Jesus 
 which were doubtless uttered on various occa- 
 sions during His ministry. We cannot even 
 assume that verse 18 had originally any connec- 
 tion with the preceding verse. Indeed, the fact 
 that, whereas verse 17 mentions both “ the law 
 and the prophets,” verse 18 mentions only “ the 
 law,” rather points to the original independence 
 of the two sayings. It is not impossible that 
 the Evangelist placed the latter immediately 
 after the former simply because it also con- 
 tained a reference to the law.* We must there- 
 
 * Both in the Prophets and in the Gospels the arrange- 
 ment is frequently not in accordance with any logical or 
 chronological principle, but is one which was natural 
 enough to those who were trained in oral tradition—that 
 is to say, it is based on the merely mechanical method of 
 placing in juxtaposition passages which contain certain 
 outstanding words or topics. Thus, for example, the first 
 and second paragraphs of the book of Isaiah are not in 
 chronological order, for the second is the earlier of the two. 
 The catchwords which have caused them to be placed 
 together are “Sodom” and ‘‘ Gomorrah.” Similarly, 
 Isaiah ii. 1-4, 5, and 6 ff., are arranged together because they 
 contain the words ‘“‘ house’’ and ‘‘ Jacob”’ (see verses 3, 5, 
 and 6); Isaiah v. 1-7 and 8-10 are arranged together because 
 
MEANING OF “ FULFIL ” 63 
 
 fore consider the meaning of each verse by itself. 
 In verse 17 the interpretation turns on the 
 meaning of the word “fulfil.” What did Jesus 
 mean by “ fulfilling ” the law and the prophets ? 
 It is important to remember that the Greek word 
 here translated “‘ fulfil’ is also used in the New 
 Testament with reference to concrete things, 
 where the rendering “ fulfil’? would be quite 
 unsuitable. It is used, for example, of filling a 
 fishing net (St. Matt. xii. 48) and a ravine 
 (St. Luke in. 5). It is scarcely possible in 
 English to adopt a uniform translation, but in 
 general the Greek word might be rendered “ to 
 make full.”’ Jesus therefore protested that He 
 did not want to destroy the law and the prophets, 
 but to make them full; and we must accordingly 
 examine His teaching, where it 1s concerned with 
 matters which are also treated of in the law and 
 the prophets, in order to discover what He meant 
 
 they contain the word “vineyard ”’; the following para- 
 graphs, 11-17, 18-19, 20-21, 22 ff., come next because they 
 begin with the word “ woe.” So St. Mark ix. 49, which has 
 no logical connection with the preceding verse, stands after — 
 it because it contains the word “ fire,’’ and 50 follows 49 
 because it refers to ‘“‘salt.”’ Similarly, in St. Luke xiv. 
 the paragraphs 7-11, 12-14, 15-24 are arranged together 
 because they all contain some reference to a meal, and in 
 the case of the last two, “ the poor, the maimed, the lame, 
 and the blind,” are mentioned both in verse 13 and in 
 verse 21. 
 
64 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 by the assertion. Did He mean to “ make full” 
 every statement of the law and the prophets, 
 or to “ make full ” only that which was capable 
 of development in accordance with the highest 
 teaching by separating it from that which could 
 not be so developed, and was in itself mischievous 
 or misleading ? It will be convenient to consider 
 Jesus’ attitude towards the law and the pro- 
 phets under five heads in relation to (1) history, 
 (2) morality, (3) religious ritual, (4) theology, 
 (5) national hopes. In respect to each of these 
 Jesus made the most definite statements, which 
 are found to be quite incompatible with the 
 supposition that He set His seal upon every- 
 thing contamed in the law and the prophets. 
 Let us, then, consider them in order. 
 
 1. History —tn Genesis 11. 2, 3, and Exodus xx. 
 11 it is asserted that after six days of creative 
 activity God “ rested ” on the seventh day. It 
 is to be noted, however, that the Hebrew word 
 here translated “rested ” is quite distinct from 
 that which is similarly rendered in Deuteronomy 
 v. 14 (“that thy manservant and thy maid- 
 servant may rest as well as thou’’). It means 
 “to be inactive,” “ to be at a standstill,” and it 
 is the word which is translated “‘ ceased ” in the 
 sentence, “How hath the oppressor ceased ” 
 (Isa. xiv. 4). How, then, does the teaching of 
 Jesus agree with the statement that God “ ab- 
 
CHRIST AND THE SABBATH 65 
 
 stained from activity ”’ or “was at a standstill” 
 on the seventh day ; or with the injunction 
 based upon that statement, that on the Sabbath 
 day there must be abstention from activity, that 
 work must be at a standstill ? 
 
 It is evident from several passages in the 
 Gospels that Jesus’ attitude towards the Sabbath 
 differed widely from that of His contemporaries. 
 He affirmed that “the Sabbath was made for 
 man, and not man for the Sabbath ” (St. Mark 
 ii. 27); He healed on the Sabbath day a man with 
 a withered hand, who was not in pain, and who 
 could have waited another twenty-four hours 
 (St. Mark iii.1-5). But He went further; He told 
 the sick man at the Pool of Bethesda on the 
 Sabbath day to arise and take up his bed and 
 walk; and when He was persecuted by the Jews 
 for thus breaking the Sabbath, He defended 
 Himself, not by affirming that what He had done 
 and had caused to be done was not work, but 
 by appealing to the precedent of God Himself, 
 Who, He declared, had never ceased from work: 
 “My Father worketh even until now, and I 
 work” (St. John v. 8-17). It is evident that 
 the Evangelist, in relating this incident, means 
 us to understand that the teaching of Jesus 
 involved a denial of one of the most definite 
 and solemn historical statements of the law. 
 But if Jesus denied the account, contained in 
 
66 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 the law, of God’s abstention from activity on 
 the seventh day of what the law represents as the 
 first week, is there any reason to suppose that 
 He must necessarily have “ fulfilled,’ ‘“ made 
 full,” the previous account of God’s activity 
 on the preceding six days? Clearly, in “ making 
 full”’ the law He did not corroborate all its 
 statements about historical events. 
 
 It is undoubtedly a fact, however, that the 
 Old Testament writers themselves had little 
 interest in history as the word is understood 
 nowadays, and that they cared for the traditions 
 of the past more on account of their value as 
 parables to inculcate certain lessons than on 
 account of their historical truth; and it may 
 reasonably be contended, therefore, that in re- 
 pudiating an historical statement Jesus was not, 
 alter all, setting any startlingly new precedent. 
 We may, therefore, consider His attitude to the 
 law under the next heading. 
 
 2. Moral Teaching —Here it is important to 
 note that the same Evangelist who hag recorded 
 Jesus’ words about “ making full” the law has 
 recorded other sayings which are a direct repudia- 
 tion of some portions of its moral teaching. 
 “ Ye have heard that it was said to them of 
 old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but 
 shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: but I 
 say unto you, Swear not at all” (St. Matt. v. 
 
MORAL TEACHING OF THE LAW 67 
 
 33, 34). Here Jesus not only goes beyond those 
 passages of the law which forbid false swearing— 
 e.g., Leviticus xix. 12 (cf. Exodus xx. 7)—He 
 sets aside those passages which require that 
 people shall swear by Jehovah’s name only— 
 e.g., Deuteronomy vi. 13, x. 20. It is surely a 
 misuse of language to ne a prohibition of all 
 swearing a “ fulfilling ’ or “ making full” of an 
 Injunction to swear By Jehovah! But St. 
 Matthew has recorded (v. 43, 44) an even more 
 striking instance of the setting aside of the law 
 by Jesus: “Ye have heard that it was said, 
 Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate 
 thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your 
 enemies.” It is true the actual words, “ Thou 
 shalt hate thine enemy,” are not found in the 
 law; it cannot be denied, however, that they 
 are a perfectly correct summing up of such 
 passages as Deuteronomy xxiii. 2-6, xxv. 17-19. 
 It is a curious mental perversity which can find 
 in the words “Love your enemies” a “ ful- 
 filling ” of the injunction, ‘‘ Thou shalt not seek 
 their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for 
 ever.” further, according to St. Mark (x. 5), 
 
 in response to the Pharisees’ statement Bo 
 Moses suffered a man to write a bill of divorce- 
 ment and to put away his wife, Jesus retorted, 
 ~ For your hardness of heart he wrote you this 
 commandment.” Did He desire to “ make 
 
68 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 full’ a commandment originally given only 
 because of the hardness of men’s hearts ? 
 
 3. Religious Ritual—What, then, we may 
 ask, was Jesus’ attitude towards the religious 
 ritual of the law and its kindred injunctions % 
 It will be remembered that the law lays down 
 the most stringent regulations as to what food 
 is to be regarded as clean and what as unclean. 
 See, for example, Leviticus x1., Deuteronomy 
 xiv. 1-21. But Jesus declared (St. Mark vu. 
 18 f.) that “whatsoever from without goeth 
 into the man, it cannot defile him, because 1t 
 goeth not into his heart, but into his belly.” 
 That is to say, according to Jesus, in themselves 
 all meats are clean, and it matters not whether 
 an animal slaughtered for food chews the cud 
 and parts the hoof or not. Meat cannot defile, 
 and therefore the teaching of Jesus makes null 
 and void such injunctions as Leviticus vii. 19-27. 
 It must not be overlooked that the sacrificial 
 laws are so closely bound up with the laws 
 concerning cleanness and uncleanness that a 
 repudiation of the latter must seriously afiect 
 the attitude towards the former. 
 
 St. John (vii. 1-24) implies on the part of Jesus 
 at least a disparagement of an even more im- 
 portant injunction of the law. The making 
 of a man every whit whole on the Sabbath by 
 Jesus is evidently contrasted with the wounding 
 
THEOLOGICAL IDEAS OF THE LAW 69 
 
 in circumcision, also performed on the Sabbath, 
 in order to conform to the law. 
 
 4. Theology.—tIn regard to the theology of the 
 law—that is to say, the teaching about God 
 which is found in many parts of it—the teaching 
 of Jesus is equally uncompromising. It is not 
 only that Christian doctrine (e.g., St. John iv. 24) 
 makes impossible the acceptance of such crude 
 anthropomorphisms* as are found, for example, 
 in Genesis iii. 8, Exodus xxiv. 10, 11; the 
 character of God, as set forth by Jesus, differs 
 wholly from that conception which is found in 
 many parts of the law, and, indeed, in much 
 of the Old Testament. The central point in the 
 teaching of Jesus is the Fatherhood of God, and 
 He appeals to the best instincts of human father- 
 hood (see, for example, St. Matthew vii. 9-11) 
 to enable His hearers to understand the character 
 of the Heavenly Father (cf. St. Luke xv. 11-32). 
 But such teaching stands in sharp contradiction 
 to the idea of God found in more than one passage 
 of the law, which regards Him as giving way to 
 paroxysms of anger, and as needing to be ap- 
 peased with offerings (¢f., e.g., Numbers xvi. 44-49). 
 
 * It is important to distinguish between expressions 
 which imply a really crude conception of God and those 
 which are obviously merely metaphorical, which neither 
 the author nor his original readers ever dreamed of taking 
 
 literally. To the latter belong such utterances as Psalm 
 xliv. 23 (cf. Psalm exxi. 4). 
 
70 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 Further, whereas in the law, and, indeed, in 
 nearly the whole of the Old Testament, every 
 sort of disaster whatsoever is regarded as due 
 to a withdrawal of the divine favour, Jesus 
 emphatically declares that suffermg is not 
 necessarily to be attributed to any such cause 
 (St. Luke xiii. 1-5, St. John ix. 1-3). 
 
 5. National Hopes.—In regard to the national 
 hopes of His people, the teaching of Jesus shows 
 a wide divergence from many parts of the law 
 and the prophets. Almost throughout the Old 
 Testament Israel is regarded as standing in a 
 special relation to Jehovah, and as receiving 
 from Him favour which is not bestowed upon 
 the Gentiles. See, for example, such passages 
 as Deuteronomy xv. 1-6, xx. 10-18. Similarly, 
 Jehovah is represented as not caring whether the 
 Gentiles do the things which are required of 
 Israel or not (cf. Deuteronomy xiv. 21). But the 
 teaching of Jesus, though originally addressed 
 to Jews, burst the bonds of Judaism, and is 
 correctly summed up in St. Matthew xxviii. 19; 
 howbeit, the Evangelist has probably given here, 
 not the ipsissima verba of Jesus, but what he 
 rightly believed to be the will of the risen Lord. 
 
 In view of the facts considered above, it is 
 clearly impossible to maintain that it was the 
 purpose of Jesus to “ fulfil,” to “ make full,” 
 every part of the law and of the prophets. 
 
“ FULFILMENT” OF THE LAW 71 
 
 What sort of “ fulfilment,” then, did He con- 
 template ? Now some years before He bégan 
 to preach the Rabbi Hillel, who lived till Jesus 
 was about twelve years old, and who may 
 actually have talked with Him on the occasion 
 of the visit to the temple recorded in St. Luke ii. 
 41-51, had summed up the law to an impatient 
 Gentile inquirer as follows: “ What is hateful to 
 thyself, that do not thou to thy neighbour, 
 This is the whole law; all the rest is commen- 
 tary.” Hillel’s heart in respect of this saying 
 was better than his head. ‘ Thou shalt not seek 
 their peace nor their prosperity for ever ”’ cannot 
 be a commentary upon “Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself.’’ There can be little doubt, 
 however, that the saying of Jesus recorded in 
 St. Matthew vi. 12 is an adaptation of Hillel’s 
 dictum; and the account given in St. Mark xu. 
 28-34 makes it clear that in the mind of Jesus 
 the two essential commandments of the law 
 are those which inculcate love to God and man 
 (Deut. vi. 5; Lev. xix. 18). These two com- 
 mandments He made the touchstone to apply 
 to all the rest. That which was in agreement 
 with them was to be “ made full’; that which 
 was contrary to them was to be pruned away, 
 that it might not interfere with the development 
 of that which was capable of “ fulfilment.” H, 
 therefore, as we must infer from the sayings which 
 
72 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 the Evangelists have preserved, Jesus affirmed 
 that the law which He had come to “ make 
 full *’ meant all that was in harmony with the 
 two great commandments, the saying recorded 
 in St. Matthew v. 18 is in perfect agreement with 
 the rest of His teaching. Even one of the 
 apparently least important commandments, if a 
 embodied the principle of love towards God and 
 man, could not lightly be set aside. 
 
 It will thus be evident that Jesus was the first 
 Higher Critic. Those who treat the whole of 
 the Old Testament as on one level of inspiration 
 are not loyal to His teaching, but disloyal. Asa 
 matter of fact, they reject the Gospel in favour 
 of Pharisaism. 
 
 If. 
 
 We have seen that, according to the teaching 
 of Jesus, the Old Testament contains some 
 passages which are capable of infinite develop- 
 ment in the light of the highest truth, and some 
 which are incompatible with that truth. It 
 would be a mistake, however, to include all the 
 latter under one category. There are some 
 things which are wholly false, and there are 
 others which contain an important element of 
 truth, but truth so mixed with alloy that the 
 effect is harmful rather than good—at least, in an 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INCOMPLETENESS 73 
 
 age of higher spiritual development. It is some- 
 times contended by those who desire to maintain 
 the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture that, 
 although certain passages of the Old Testament 
 are incomplete, every passage is free from error 
 as far as it goes. But freedom from error ig 
 incompatible with incompleteness. The maxim 
 that “nature abhors a vacuum ” is just as true 
 in regard to matters intellectual or spiritual as in 
 matters physical. If a man does not possess 
 the whole truth, he will inevitably combine such 
 truth as he does possess with error to fill up the 
 gap; and according to the proportion of truth 
 the result will be mainly good or mainly evil. 
 Thus, for example, there can be no progress in 
 human society till the principle of Justice is 
 recognized; but true justice cannot be done 
 unless it be administered in accordance with 
 some understanding of, and some sympathy for, 
 human nature. A mere mechanical application 
 of the lex talionis—a giving of tit for tat—will, 
 in many cases, not be justice at all, but a clumsy 
 vindictiveness. Again, individualism is a late 
 development in the progress of human thought. 
 Whereas with us the unit is the individual, 
 among primitive races the individual is scarcely 
 taken into account, the family or clan being 
 regarded as essentially one. By many of the 
 more backward peoples of the world at the present 
 
74 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 time all Europeans are regarded as forming 
 practically one whole; the ‘‘ untutored savage,” 
 therefore, considers it perfectly just and right 
 to avenge himself on any European who may 
 come in his way for a wrong inflicted upon him 
 by another. Hence, in ancient Palestine the 
 execution of seven descendants of Saul for a 
 wrong done by Saul to the Gibeonites would 
 not shock the ideas of justice held by the great 
 majority of the nation. Probably even the 
 innocent men who suffered would not dispute 
 the justice of the sentence. In this and in 
 many other stories of the Old Testament the 
 discriminating reader, while recognizing the 
 superiority of the precept in Deuteronomy 
 xxiv. 16, may yet discern an element of justice, 
 though the justice is rendered almost entirely 
 null through the absence of that individualism 
 which to our way of thinking is all-important. 
 The above will serve as an illustration of 
 many passages in the Old Testament where the 
 incompleteness of the truth causes, indeed, serious 
 error, but where, in spite of the error, the truth 
 is not entirely obliterated. There are, however, 
 other passages which are wholly erroneous, or in 
 which the germ of truth is discoverable only 
 by a student of comparative religion and of 
 primitive thought, such as the law which enjoins, 
 or at least sanctions, the sacrifice of the first- 
 
HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE 15 
 
 born (Exod. xxii. 29 f.; cf. Gen. xxii. 2), the trial 
 by ordeal (Num. v. 11 ff.), the wrestling of Jacob 
 with God (Gen. xxxii. 24-30), the belief that 
 Samson’s strength lay in his hair (J udg. Xili.-xvi.), 
 ete. SirJ.G. Frazer has familiarized our genera- 
 tion with the idea that the Old Testament 
 contains folklore. It remains to be shown how 
 this folklore came to be combined with Scriptures 
 which Jesus declared that it was His mission to 
 “ make full.” 
 
 Now, although the Old Testament was not 
 intended primarily to teach history, it will not 
 be intelligible as a whole apart from the study 
 of history. It is only when we know of what 
 elements Israel was composed, and what events 
 and what environment moulded its character, 
 that we are in a position to understand the Old 
 Testament and to estimate its value. 
 
 ITI. 
 
 The history of Israel begins with the deliver- 
 ance from the Egyptian bondage. It is to that 
 great event that the prophets appeal as the 
 beginning of Israel’s peculiar relation to Jehovah. 
 Not that the narratives contained in the Book 
 of Genesis are all devoid of historical value, nor 
 that we can entirely reconstruct the history of 
 
 the period subsequent to the exodus. It is fre- 
 7 
 
76 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 quently difficult to decide whether a name denotes 
 an individual or a tribe, and even more difficult 
 to determine the exact chronological order of the 
 events recorded and their precise relation to one 
 another; but we can at least sketch in outline 
 the history of Israel from the exodus onward 
 with a tolerable degree of probability, whereas 
 any reconstruction of the history of the pre- 
 ceding age is extremely uncertain. 
 
 It was believed by the authors of the earliest 
 portions of the Old Testament that the ancestors 
 of the Israelites had lived in Palestine before 
 settling in the land of Egypt; but even if this 
 belief was well founded, there is no evidence that 
 the tradition of the reputed ancestors of Israel 
 was preserved during the Egyptian sojourn; it 1s, 
 indeed, more probable that it was only relearnt 
 after the conquest of Palestine from the Canaan- 
 ites, who worshipped at the holy places which the 
 patriarchs were said to have founded. In other 
 words, the stories of the patriarchs came to Israel 
 through a Canaanite channel, and, whatever 
 they were originally, they have been coloured by 
 Canaanite tradition. 
 
 From the evidence at present available it 
 seems probable that the exodus from Egypt took 
 place in the last quarter of the thirteenth century 
 B.c. The exact date is, however, of compara- 
 tively little importance; the essential fact is that 
 
THE PROPHETS AND THE LAW 77 
 
 certain clans of a nomad race known as Hebrews, 
 on whom some of the Pharaohs had imposed 
 forced labour, broke away from Egypt under the 
 leadership of Moses, and returned to their 
 nomadic life in the oases of the desert south of 
 Palestine. The accounts of this period in the 
 Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and 
 Deuteronomy are coloured by the thought of a 
 much later age, when the fusion of Israelites and 
 Canaanites was almost complete. In the utter- 
 ances of the great pre-exilic prophets, however, 
 we find references to a tradition of the sojourn 
 in the wilderness in many respects widely 
 different. Thus, whereas a large part of the 
 Pentateuch is wholly concerned with the ritual 
 of the tabernacle, the prophets of the eighth and 
 seventh centuries B.c. assert that in the wilder- 
 ness there was no sacrifice, and that the religion 
 of Jehovah which Israel* there learnt was con- 
 cerned solely with justice and mercy and truth. 
 The provenance and the original meaning of the 
 name which we know as Jehovah (properly 
 Jahveh, shortened Jah, as in hallelu-jah) is un- 
 certain. Two of the Pentateuchal documents— 
 viz., those commonly denoted by the symbols 
 
 * For clearness’ sake those whom Moses led in the wilder- 
 ness are called here Israelites. It is, however, possible 
 
 that the name Israel was not assumed before the conquest 
 of eastern Palestine. 
 
78 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 and P—represent it as first revealed to Moses. 
 The Judean document J, on the other hand, 
 states that the invocation of God by this name 
 originated in very early times (Gen. iv. 26). It 
 is possible that the name came from the eastern 
 side of the great Syrian desert, and that it took 
 root in southern Palestine some centuries before 
 the exodus. It may be that Jehovah was wor- 
 shipped among the Kenites and other tribes who 
 occupied the wilderness to the south of the land 
 of Canaan, and that during the stay at Kadesh 
 Barnea Moses adopted it as the name of the God 
 of the people whom he led. On these points it is 
 impossible at present to arrive at any certain 
 conclusion. ‘The origin of the name, however, is 
 of merely antiquarian interest. The outstanding 
 fact 1s that Moses associated with the name ideas 
 which, so far as we know, were not at that time 
 associated with any other deity. Certainly the 
 patriarchal conception of Jehovah and of the 
 essentials of His religion—at least, as indicated 
 in the Jahvistic document of the Pentateuch— 
 was very different from the tradition of Israelite 
 religion in the wilderness to which the prophets 
 appeal. That tradition entirely ignores all 
 ritual obligation, expressly asserting that sacri- 
 fice was not offered during the sojourn in the 
 wilderness. In one important matter, indeed, 
 the Pentateuch itself and the allied book of 
 
UNCIRCUMCISION OF ISRAELITES 79 
 
 Joshua have preserved traditions startlingly at 
 variance with the priestly law. Moses himself 
 had never received circumcision, and those whom 
 he led who were born in the wilderness were 
 uncircumcised (Exod. iv. 24-26; Josh. v. 5)—a 
 fact which can only mean that Moses rejected 
 the rite, since there would have been nothing 
 to prevent its performance at Kadesh Barnea. 
 This tradition of the non-circumcision of Moses 
 and the Israelites in the wilderness is of great 
 importance as proving that the religion which 
 Moses taught his people was not derived from 
 Egypt. If Moses’ religion had been learnt by 
 him in Egypt, he and his people would all have 
 been circumcised, for the Egyptians practised 
 circumcision.* 
 
 It is not easy to form an exact idea of the 
 religion of which Moses was the exponent. It is 
 to be noted, however, that the prophets believed 
 themselves to have preserved the true tradition 
 of it, and that they repudiated as something 
 extraneous the popular religion of their time 
 which in many respects has found expression in 
 the laws of the Pentateuch. They were not 
 merely henotheists or monolaters, but mono- 
 
 * The text of Jeremiah iv. 4, ix. 25, 26 has perhaps come 
 down to us not quite in its original form. It is not im- 
 possible that Jeremiah rejected circumcision as an ordinance 
 of Jehovah. 
 
80 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 theists—that is to say, they believed Jehovah 
 to be the God of the whole world. Probably 
 none of them would have called the Moabites 
 “sons and daughters of Chemosh,” as does the 
 poet of Numbers xx1. 29. This monotheism was 
 not derived from Egypt. 
 
 In another respect also the religion, or at any 
 rate the ethics, of the prophets would seem to 
 have differed from that of the majority of the 
 population of Palestine. There is not a hint in 
 any of the prophets, whether pre-exilic or post- 
 exilic, to suggest that they approved of polyg- 
 amy, and there are several passages which imply 
 monogamy. Here, again, it 1s probable that the 
 prophets’ ideas about marriage belong to the 
 general tradition of what was learnt in the 
 wilderness—in other words, the teaching of Moses. 
 
 But this brings us to the question, ““ Whence 
 had this man this wisdom ?” and it is a question 
 to which those who deny all inspiration will find 
 it hard to give an answer. Moses did not learn his 
 doctrine from Egypt,* nor from the rude tribes 
 of the wilderness. It has sometimes been sup- 
 posed that he learnt the religion of Jehovah 
 
 * A negative proof of the complete independence of the 
 religions of Israel and of Egypt is the absence from the 
 former of any idea of a future life and of a judgment to 
 come. Hven among the highest teachers in Israel down to 
 
 the post-exilic period there is no hint of a doctrine of a 
 future life. 
 
ISRAELITE INVASION OF CANAAN 81 
 
 from the priest of Midian; but at all events 
 this was not the belief of the writer of Exodus 
 xvi. 11. 
 
 The people whom Moses led were by no means 
 as numerous as the authors of the latest sections 
 of the Pentateuch imagined, and probably they 
 did not number more than a few thousands. 
 After a sojourn in the wilderness, which tradition 
 estimated as lasting forty years—.e., a genera- 
 tion—an attempt was made, probably in con- 
 junction with other nomadic tribes, to gain a 
 settlement in the cultivable land of Palestine. 
 At this time the Egyptian rule over the Canaan- 
 ites was at an end, and from various quarters 
 invaders were pressing forward, anxious to 
 possess themselves of a country which in that 
 age appeared so desirable. Before the death of 
 Moses Israel had found a settlement in eastern 
 Palestine between the Arnon and the Jabbok, 
 and after his death an attack, or, more probably, 
 9 series of attacks, was made on the country 
 west of the Jordan. The invaders made little 
 progress in the valleys, where the Canaanites were 
 able to employ cavalry; but at length, after hard 
 fighting, they established themselves firmly on 
 the mountain range which forms the backbone 
 of western Palestine. For some time, as in 
 England after the Saxon invasion, the land 
 appears to have been divided up under a number 
 
82 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 of petty chieftains. Here the Israelites pre- 
 dominated, there the Canaanites. By 1000 B.c., 
 however, Israelites and Canaanites were united 
 under one king, and the Israelite conquest had 
 been so far successful that the name of Israel 
 was applied to the whole people, and the God 
 whom the Israelites called Jehovah was regarded 
 as the national God. The fusion of Canaanites 
 and Israelites was greatly expedited by the need 
 of making common cause against other invaders 
 of the country, prominent among whom were the 
 Philistines. The fusion was, however, greatly 
 facilitated by the fact that the pre-Israelite 
 inhabitants of the land of Canaan were in the 
 main of Semitic stock, and spoke a language 
 closely akin to that of the invaders. 
 
 In material culture and in religion, however, 
 Israel and Canaan differed greatly. Before the 
 Egyptian supremacy in Palestine the country 
 had been subject to Babylonia, and the Canaanite 
 civilization was mainly Babylonian. Many ele- 
 ments of Babylonian religion and mythology had 
 also taken root in Palestine, such as the story 
 of the flood, etc. It ig possible that some 
 points of resemblance between the laws em- 
 bedded in the Pentateuch and the ancient 
 Babylonian code of Hammurabi, which are not 
 very humerous, may be due to this early Baby- 
 lonian influence on Canaan. Since, however, 
 
EARLY RELIGION OF CANAAN _ 83 
 
 Babylonians were transported to Palestine in the 
 seventh century B.c. (see 2 Kings xvii. 24 ff.; 
 Ezra iv.), it is possible, if the earlier documents 
 of the Pentateuch took shape as late as this— 
 which is on other grounds probable—that Baby- 
 lonian customs exercised a direct influence on 
 Israelite law. There is, however, no trace of 
 Babylonian influence on the religion of the pre- 
 exilic prophets. 
 
 At the time of the Israelite conquest the 
 Canaanites were nature worshippers, venerating 
 a mother goddess Ashtoreth, and her male partner 
 Baal—1z.e., Lord—besides other minor deities. 
 Sacrifice, including human sacrifice, especially 
 of the first-born, played an important part in 
 their religion, and their sanctuaries, which were 
 very numerous, resembled in some of their worst 
 features, especially their personnel, certain Hindu 
 temples at the present day. They practised 
 circumcision, which was commonly performed 
 in manhood, and they had numerous idols, some 
 of which were of an obscene character. In some 
 cases their kings, like the kings of Bunyoro in 
 recent times, were priests; or perhaps it would 
 be more correct to say that they were regarded 
 as the embodiment of the tribal god to whom 
 sacrifice was offered. 
 
 _ It was scarcely possible that a people whose 
 religious ideas were of such a character should 
 
84 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 accept at once the higher religion which the 
 Israelites brought with them. The Canaanites 
 were indeed compelled to acknowledge Jehovah 
 as the God, or, as the Canaanites would have 
 phrased it, the Baal of the land; but they 
 ascribed to Him the attributes of the Canaanite 
 Baal, continuing at their sanctuaries their 
 ancestral worship, which was little changed 
 except that it was ostensibly performed in 
 honour of Jehovah. 
 
 There can be little doubt that the Canaanite 
 element in the nation was greatly in excess of 
 the Israelite, and this being the case, we should 
 expect to find the religion of the Israelite 
 minority influenced by that of the majority. 
 Some families doubtless preserved in a pure form 
 the tradition of the teaching which Moses had 
 given in the wilderness;* but probably many, 
 though holding aloof from the worst of the 
 Canaanite superstitions, would take over other 
 practices which were equally foreign to the 
 religion of Jehovah. It was almost inevitable 
 
 * How long a time a section of the people could remain 
 entirely apart from the religious observances of the majority 
 is seen in the case of the Rechabites (2 Kings x. 15 f.; 
 Jer. xxxv.). Since the Rechabites rejected agriculture, 
 they could have taken no part in the great agricultural 
 feasts—the only feasts which are obligatory in the earlier 
 
 documents of the Pentateuch—viz., Unleavened Bread, 
 Harvest, and Ingathering. 
 
REFORMS IN POPULAR RELIGION 8) 
 
 that it should be so; for the Israelite nomads, 
 when they took up agriculture, could only learn 
 it from the Canaanites, and to the Canaanites 
 certain ritual was as essential to agriculture as 
 ploughing or sowing. 
 
 But though the Israelite leaven was hidden in 
 a great many measures of Canaanite meal, it had 
 power enough gradually to leaven the lump. 
 Sometimes a king, imbued with something of 
 the old Israelite tradition, would make an effort 
 to abolish the worst of the superstitions which 
 had survived from Canaan. Such were Asa and 
 Jehoshaphat. Sometimes a king naturally super- 
 stitious or weak would yield to popular senti- 
 ment, and there would be a recrudescence of the 
 old abominations. But with few exceptions the 
 Canaanite system of sacrifice held its ground, and 
 the Canaanite feasts became the feasts of Jehovah. 
 
 Nevertheless, we can trace certain definite 
 stages in the progress of religion. In the ninth 
 century B.c., under Jehu, the way was paved for 
 monotheism by the prohibition of the worship 
 in the land of Israel of any god other than 
 Jehovah. In the eighth and seventh centuries 
 B.o. an attack was made by the great prophets on 
 the idols, on the system of sacrifice, and on the 
 religious prostitution associated with that system 
 at the various sanctuaries. The prophets were, 
 indeed, unable to induce their people to abolish 
 
86 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 sacrifice; but their attack on its concomitant 
 superstitions led in the seventh and sixth 
 centuries to the limitation of it to one altar; 
 and with the consequent diminution in the 
 number of times when sacrifice was offered, it 
 became easier to lay stress on the weightier 
 matters, Justice and mercy and truth. Josiah’s 
 reformation, which continued sacrifice, though 
 limiting it to the one altar, was, in fact, a com- 
 promise between the Israelite and Canaanite 
 elements of religion; and although in the fifth 
 century B.C. under Nehemiah the sacrificial 
 system was developed to an amazing degree, the 
 apparent triumph of the Canaanite over the 
 Israelite element was not so great as might 
 appear at first sight. The ethical teaching of 
 the prophets came to be accepted as part of the 
 religion of Jehovah without any enquiry whether 
 the ritual system was in accordance with it; 
 and the ritual system had this practical utility, 
 that it separated Israel from the polytheistic 
 nations with which it had to deal—such as the 
 Babylonians and their imperial successors, the 
 Persians and the Greeks—protecting Israelite 
 monotheism from that which might have de- 
 stroyed it, just as a husk, worthless or even 
 injurious in itself, protects the kernel till the 
 latter is ready to germinate and the husk is 
 no more needed. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF RELIGION = 87 
 
 Present limits forbid the tracing out of the 
 later developments in the religion of Israel, the 
 rise of individualism, the gradual emancipation 
 of thought from the terrible doctrine that all 
 disaster presupposes a withdrawal of the divine 
 favour, the recognition of the value of martyr- 
 dom, the perception that if Jehovah is the God of 
 the whole earth He must desire that other nations 
 also besides Israel should know His will. It 
 must suffice to say that a critical reading of the 
 Old Testament shows us a picture of a ceaseless 
 struggle of mercy and truth against selfishness 
 and superstition, and of the triumph of the good 
 over the evil. 
 
 IV. 
 
 If the Old Testament were nothing more than 
 the history of a struggle between a lofty con- 
 ception of God and dead and degrading super- 
 stition, its religious value would be very great; 
 for as the prophets laboured to purify the 
 religion of Israel from the Canaanite elements 
 which threatened to overwhelm it, so in these 
 days the Christian Church must strive unceas- 
 ingly to purge Christianity from the many pagan 
 influences which dilute and pervert the teaching 
 of Christ. Those who labour for the truth of 
 Christ are indeed “ the children of the prophets ”’; 
 
88 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 and in their struggle the record of their spiritual 
 ancestors cannot fail to inspire them to more 
 vigorous efiort. 
 
 But this is not the sole merit of the Old 
 Testament. In every great crisis men find in it 
 a spiritual tonic, giving courage to endure in 
 sure and certain hope of the victory of the good. 
 It was given to Israel to manifest to the world 
 what faith means—that is to say, absolute trust 
 in One Who is the refuge of those who know 
 Him, and Whose everlasting arms uphold and 
 protect even the weakest. Moreover, as Israel 
 has taught the world faith, so from Israel the 
 world can best learn to worship. Hebrew poets 
 have set forth in inimitable language the great- 
 ness, the righteousness, the holiness, and, above 
 all, the unspeakable tenderness, of the love of 
 God. In the Old Testament we have an ideal 
 of life ever directed Godward: “ I will sing unto 
 the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God 
 while I have my being.” 
 
 It is right that we should read the Old Testa- 
 ment with discrimination. It is futile to re- 
 present an earthen pot of Canaanite heathenism 
 as a chalice of pure gold divinely wrought; but 
 even the Canaanite pot, when its real nature is 
 recognized, may serve to enshrine a lesson which 
 ought not to be lost. A story which bears un- 
 mistakable marks of its Canaanite origin may 
 
PARABOLIC USE OF OLD TESTAMENT 89 
 
 yet be profitably used as a parable to teach a 
 lesson worthy of the God of Israel. We know, 
 for example, that God never required the 
 sacrifice of a man’s children in the original 
 sense of the word sacrifice, that He ““ commanded 
 it not, neither came it into His mind”; but 
 Genesis xxii. may nevertheless serve to us as 
 a parable to remind us of our duty. How many 
 a husband or father tries to justify to himself 
 some unworthy practice on the ground that 
 otherwise his dear ones may suffer. To such the 
 story of Abraham, taken as it stands, may serve 
 as a parable, to teach the truth which Jesus 
 taught, that if a man would come to Him, he 
 must, as it were, hate even those who are nearest 
 and dearest to him. God perpetually tries us, 
 as He tried Abraham, by requiring of us a 
 course of action which must entail loss or 
 suffering to those whom we love, bidding us, as 
 it were, sacrifice wife or children for the truth’s 
 sake. 
 
 But besides the help which the Old Testament, 
 when rightly used, can supply both in our 
 devotion and for our direct spiritual edification, 
 there is another use to which Christians may 
 apply it—a use too frequently overlooked, but 
 of the utmost importance. It was of Israel 
 that, according to the flesh, Christ came. He 
 spoke the language of Israel; He taught as a 
 
90 VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 prophet of Israel; and, therefore, if we would 
 understand His words, we must study the idiom 
 of the language of Israel, for which purpose the 
 whole of the Old Testament is of inestimable 
 value. We know what absurdities are produced 
 by translating a French book, for example, 
 literally into English, regardless of the idiom 
 of either language. It is, however, commonly 
 overlooked that as great perversion of the sense 
 may result from translating Hebraic idiom 
 literally ito English. 
 
 No small effort is necessary in order to 
 apprehend the thought of Christ. If such an 
 effort is to be successful, we cannot afford to 
 discard the help which we have already to hand— 
 viz., the study of the Scriptures, which Jesus 
 knew and loved so well, and which, by the 
 application of a searching criticism, He “ ful- 
 filled’ to the building up of His Church in the 
 knowledge of God. 
 
V 
 
 THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 By R. WEBB-ODELL, B.A. 
 
 SUPPOSE one of our soldiers in the late war, 
 smitten down into unconsciousness and escaping 
 with his bare life in the tragic days of March 
 and April, 1918. His last thought had been 
 of contusion, defeat, and despair. The high 
 hopes of earlier days had been shattered. The 
 enemy was pressing in force, apparently irre- 
 sistible, on Amiens, on Paris, on the Channel 
 ports; and our armies, with their backs to the 
 wall, seemed to have no means of withstanding 
 his onset. Our soldier lingers unconscious for 
 two years, and then is restored by medical 
 science to find our troops at Cologne, the Kaiser 
 in exile, the German, Austrian, and Turkish 
 Empires dismembered, and a crushing indemnity 
 laid upon the fragments which survive. He will 
 hear many explanations of the causes of the 
 change. Some will ascribe the victory to the 
 genius of Marshal Foch, some to the advent of 
 the Americans, some to the miseries entailed 
 
 by the blockade, some to the campaign of 
 91 8 
 
92 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 propaganda. On deliberation, he will make up 
 his own mind, doubtless; but one thing he will 
 not be so foolish as to doubt, that the war was 
 well and truly won. 
 
 Suppose a Galilean disciple, so stricken by 
 erief at the defeat and crucifixion of Jesus 
 that he lingered for two years in the delirium 
 and exhaustion of mental trouble in his remote 
 home, ignorant of what was passing elsewhere. 
 He recovers to find that the same Apostles, 
 whom last he had heard of in panic flight, were 
 the heads of a busy and confident community 
 which had covered with its propaganda all 
 Palestine and Syria. He finds that the same 
 priests, who had had no throne for Jesus but the 
 cross, had in great multitudes become obedient 
 to the faith. He finds that a new power of 
 overwhelming force had descended upon the very 
 humblest of the disciples, transforming them 
 into the likeness of their Master. He finds that 
 all agree that that Master is alive, not dead; 
 that all date the beginning of the wonderful 
 change from the third day after the Crucifixion; 
 that all speak of a tomb found empty, but none 
 can produce the body that once it contamed. 
 He sees a joy and a certainty hitherto alien from — 
 the earth, and a contempt of death and suffering 
 springing from the certainty of that Joy. 
 Already, if he be a man of enquiring mind, he 
 
THE RESURRECTION EVIDENCES 93 
 
 will discover that the details of that first Easter 
 Sunday are obscure. The wonder of the revela- 
 tion and the daily expectation of Christ’s return 
 will forbid a connected story. Some will place 
 the first appearance of the living Lord in Galilee, 
 and assert that He so revealed Himself to Peter. 
 Others will connect it with Jerusalem, with 
 Mary Magdalene, with the empty tomb. He 
 will notice, perhaps, that the accounts are not 
 reconcilable. But one thing he cannot doubt, 
 if he have any regard for evidence at all. On 
 the third day that happened which turned 
 defeat into eternal victory. On the third day 
 the Crucified One rose from the dead. The 
 greatness of the effect, here as everywhere in 
 history, witnesses to the greatness of the cause. 
 We may see, inthe changed lives and expectations 
 of the disciples, the central and inexpugnable 
 evidence for the Resurrection, and therefore the 
 central evidence for all our Christian faith. 
 Those who would analyze, critically and soul- 
 lessly, the documentary evidence in the Gospels, 
 start their enquiries a generation late. When 
 this or that detail has been ascribed to varying 
 tendencies of influence in the Church which 
 gave us the Gospels, the questions have yet to 
 be faced: Whence came the Gospel 2? Whence 
 came the Church? Assign the historic origin 
 of Catholicity, if you will, to a Pauline syncretism 
 
94 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of Hellenic and Semitic aspirations after, 
 righteousness, and the prior question yet re- 
 mains: Whence sprang the belief which Saul 
 of Tarsus persecuted ? Whence the vision that 
 appeared to him on the Damascus road? ‘The 
 presence of the Holy Spirit, the ministry of 
 evangelization, the observance of the Lord’s Day, 
 the Eucharist of praise and thanksgiving on the 
 same Lord’s Day (no pathetic yearly memory 
 of the prelude to a tragedy, but a remembrance 
 parallel to that of the exodus from Egypt)— 
 these things, in their essentials, Saul of Tarsus 
 found, and did not institute; and their historic 
 origin must be sought. 
 
 That origin is either grounded on delusion or 
 on truth. If on delusion, we must accept the 
 situation manfully, but must yet observe how 
 utterly hopeless is the pessimism concerning 
 human nature and human progress involved in 
 such an absence of belief. A spring of en- 
 thusiasm, of martyrdom, of sanctity, hitherto 
 unknown—and behind it all a lie! The 
 foundation of hope for the woman and for the 
 slave, the widest influence for beneficence the 
 world has yet known—and it all came from 
 a hysterical delusion! Jesus, the great idealist, 
 went down to the grave defeated and deserted; 
 and Caiaphas, and not He, was right in his 
 cynical summing up of the situation. Thus, on 
 
FAILURE OF COUNTER-THEORIES 95 
 
 3 
 
 the supposition of “delusion,” moral and intel- 
 lectual integrity were sharply dissociated in the 
 persons of their protagonists that first Good 
 Friday and first Easter Day, and have ever since 
 remained divorced! Surely, since evidence 
 against the Resurrection is not obtainable, only 
 presuppositions of the weightiest kind, only 
 counter-theories of the highest plausibility, can 
 avail to maintain so monstrous a conclusion as 
 this. 
 
 From external facts, as all reputable rationalists 
 now admit, no such counter-theory can proceed. 
 The hypotheses either that He did not really die, 
 or that His body was secretly removed from the 
 grave, are seen to be inconsistent with evidence 
 and common sense. The theory of subjective, 
 self-generated visions fails to account either for 
 the definitely early date of the first appearance— 
 “the third day ’—or for the equally definite 
 and early close of the series of appearances, just 
 when on the vision-hypothesis it should have 
 been at its ecstatic height. Moreover, no men 
 would have been less likely to see visions and 
 to dream dreams than these Jews, whose con- 
 ception of Messiahship had been so rudely 
 falsified on Calvary. Kein’s objective vision 
 theory is at least respectable. The Almighty 
 despatched “telegrams from heaven’ to pro- 
 duce the Apostolic faith. But this view, while 
 
96 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 escaping none of the difficulties of tradition, 
 carries with it other grave and peculiar diffi- 
 culties. Could God only convey a stupendous 
 spiritual truth to men by wrapping it in the 
 grave-clothes of a lie? What Christians believe 
 is not merely that Jesus lives, but that He rose 
 from the dead. 
 
 ‘wo concluding observations before we leave 
 this branch of our subject. The objections to 
 the Resurrection are based on a crude conception 
 of matter which the whele trend of modern 
 knowledge tends continually to revise. The 
 Gospel narrative and its deduction, the Catholic 
 Creeds, do not dogmatize as to the nature of the 
 risen body in the manner of some provincial 
 confessions. Some portions of the story assign 
 to it a greater, some a less, corporeity. All the 
 story yields the impression of human faculties 
 endeavouring to grasp, and human language 
 seeking to describe, something hitherto uncon- 
 ceived, something incredibly wonderful and new. 
 We may well emulate in this its reverent 
 agnosticism, content to wait for exact informa- 
 tion till that day when we shall know even as 
 also we are known, and confident algo that no 
 advances in science can discredit the Gospel 
 narrative. To sum up, the Resurrection is the 
 completion of what was initiated on this planet 
 at Bethlehem: the intervention and the vindica- 
 
THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS 97 
 
 tion of God in history, not merely in psychology, 
 but in the arena of human interests and of human 
 life. 
 
 So irresistibly cogent is the evidence adduced 
 above that the Christian apologist might well 
 rest there, and not pursue his subject further. 
 Granted the Resurrection, what need we any 
 other witness? There are many other con- 
 siderations, however, solemn and confirmatory, 
 which may be taken into account. Four only 
 of these will be dealt with in these pages. 
 
 The first is the account of the life and character 
 of Jesus presented to us by the Evangelists, 
 only one of whom has any pretensions to educa- 
 tion or literary skill. Let us contrast with them 
 for a moment Shakespeare, the greatest of 
 dramatists in his knowledge of the human heart, 
 of whom it has been said, by a not irreverent 
 exaggeration, that, “after God, Shakespeare has 
 created most.” What is it that gives to Shake- 
 speare this pre-eminence? As critics point out, 
 it is that his characters léve, and therefore share 
 with living men that quality of uneapectedness 
 which is utterly lacking in the creations of lesser 
 artists. We cannot explain Hamlet, or account 
 for his actions, as we can explain Sam Weller, 
 for example. Yet we feel that Hamlet is a 
 man; Sam Weller a pleasant imagination. As 
 a merely literary problem, the same is true of the 
 
98 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 synoptic Jesus as of Hamlet. Many explanations 
 have been given of the historic Jesus. He has 
 been accounted for eschatologically, didactically, 
 mystically, ecclesiastically; and, at most, each 
 endeavour to ascertain the secret of Hig person- 
 ality has just added something of value to the 
 study of an inexhaustible problem. This, in 
 itself, gives food for thought. We have either 
 to maintain that the Evangelists, within their 
 limitations, confined themselves to rendering a 
 faithful record, or to assert that unlearned and 
 ignorant men have placed themselves on a level 
 with the greatest human genius. But there is 
 more to be said. Shakespeare—may we Say, 
 knowing what was in man ?—never once at- 
 tempted to portray a perfect human being. 
 Inferior artists—Richardson, Thackeray—did so 
 attempt; and, with the whole weight of the 
 Christian tradition behind them, succeeded in 
 little more than the creation of preposterous lay 
 figures. The Evangelists have succeeded where 
 these failed, and where Shakespeare never 
 adventured. Rationalists, such as Mill and 
 Lecky, acknowledge generously the unique moral 
 supremacy of Him whom they would own 
 merely as a Palestinian Jew. Sinless, needing 
 never confession, and yet needing the aid of 
 prayer. A detail surely beyond the compass 
 of the Evangelists’ invention, or of any!~ Perfect, 
 
HIS INCLUSIVE PERFECTION PH, 
 
 with all the strength of the strongest man and all 
 the tenderness of the most gracious woman. In 
 His age, and fallible, doubtless, in all that was 
 irrelevant to His mission, and yet not of His 
 age, transcending its moral delusions and its 
 spiritual limitations; giving to the world an 
 eternal and unconditioned ethic, in which all 
 classes in this troubled twentieth century can 
 at least see the one way out from sorrow and 
 calamity, and yet not primarily a teacher, but 
 rather straitened till the accomplishment of a 
 dread baptism. A miracle-worker, and yet— 
 not primarily a doer of good; and yet—limited 
 by the faithlessness of man. A social reformer 
 who yet could envisage the emptiness of mere 
 social reform, and held Himself determinedly 
 aloof from the political ideals of His time. A 
 pious and orthodox Jew who yet could speak 
 with authority, and take upon Himself to re- 
 interpret and to cancel the most binding religious 
 traditions. One who claimed for Himself the 
 most unhesitating allegiance, the most utter 
 self-sacrifice, and yet was meek and lowly in 
 heart, the servant of the servants of God. 
 Optimist and pessimist, poet and seer, obedient 
 to the uttermost, and King to the uttermost— 
 such is the personality of Jesus as revealed to us 
 in the Gospels. He was seen, and His life was 
 recorded, by men, some of whom could little 
 
100 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 understand Him, and none of whom could know 
 Him perfectly. That was inevitable. But he 
 who would ascribe the portrayal of Jesus in the 
 Gospel to human invention is not to be con- 
 gratulated on the acuteness or honesty of his 
 intellect. He who will not yield Him the tribute 
 of his service can little boast of the integrity of 
 his heart. 
 
 Yet, if we stop here, the story is maimed of its 
 conclusion, and the secret of Jesus still eludes 
 us. Forced so to record it—as it were, not 
 knowing what they say—the Evangelists assign 
 even the life of lives in a rank subordinate to 
 His death. The work and office of Jesus was to 
 die. Just as Calvary was infinitely more than 
 tragedy, so was He infinitely more than saint. 
 The more we place ourselves in the atmosphere 
 of the Gospel narrative, the more we are led to 
 conclude that He of Whom it tells was more than 
 man, the nearer we are brought to the Catholic 
 doctrine of the Deity of Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 Our next evidence is the witness of the saints. 
 Jesus has not vanished from the world which He 
 made. ‘The spiritual history of mankind is rich 
 with the wonders of answered prayer. The 
 succession of those called mystics, who have 
 fulfilled the conditions of discipleship, and so 
 have inherited the Master’s promises, is the most 
 indubitable Apostolic succession known to the 
 
THE MYSTIC WITNESS 101 
 
 Church on earth. “Old and young, rich and 
 poor, one with another ’—all “ have climbed 
 the same mount, and their witness agrees 
 together.” Francis of Assisi, Mother Julian ot 
 Norwich, Catherine of Sienna, John Wesley, 
 Pastor Hsi, the Indian Sadhu of our own day, 
 all unite in a threefold testimony, and are only 
 units out of thousands through the ages whose 
 message is the same. Differmg in every out- 
 ward circumstance and mental endowment, they 
 witness to an overruling unity in spiritual life. 
 First, they tell us of an ordered, definite progress 
 in the discernment of God—‘‘ The Mystic Way ” 
 —of a going on from grace to grace, parallel to 
 the development of the man Christ Jesus. 
 Secondly, they assert that this is no mere 
 subjectivism or self-hypnotism, but rather a pro-_ 
 eressive revelation of deity at once transcendent 
 and immanent—in short, a growing knowledge 
 of God. Finally, they would claim that God’s 
 strength is so made perfect in weakness that 
 they who in themselves are nothing can, in God, 
 perform the otherwise impossible. As a matter 
 of fact and history, this witness is entirely true. 
 Statesmen, warriors, men of science and letters, 
 these had their little day and ceased to be. ‘The 
 pageants of empire pass; the august political 
 imaginings of a Dante are as the shadow of a 
 shade; even the inspiration of a Chatham may 
 
102 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 endure but for a time. The work of Francis 
 and of Wesley remains, and Francis and Wesley, 
 and all the rest, agree in ascribing the glory to 
 God_alone.;.What are we to make of this 
 unique unanimity in spiritual experience, of this 
 strange empowering of the weak ones of the 
 earth? Nay, what are we to make of the humbler 
 order of facts, that even here and now, in lives 
 not entirely dedicated, that have fulfilled but 
 few of the conditions of discipleship, Jesus is 
 still the greatest world power 2 What but this 2 
 That what some have accomplished, all may. 
 That ready to all our hands, close to all our lives, 
 there is the regenerating, transforming power 
 of the risen Christ. Even in these days there 
 must be many in London wholly ignorant as to 
 the origin and generation of electric power; but 
 no one can doubt that the power on which our 
 lighting and transport depend ezists, and that 
 knowledge concerning it may be obtained. May 
 we suggest a like attitude with regard to the 
 existence of the spiritual power revealed in Jesus 
 and conveyed by His Spirit 2 
 
 Our next appeal is made to the witness for 
 Christ in history, and first to the recurrent 
 miracle of the survival and extension of the 
 Church. Whether Jesus intended to found a 
 Church or no is a question of criticism which 
 need not detain us. It is enough to say that the 
 
THE WITNESS OF THE CHURCH 103 
 
 first company of disciples was a nucleus from 
 which the Church developed. At the outset it 
 was little more than a party or sect within the 
 Jewish Church, difiering only from others in 
 its proclamation of the Messiahship of Jesus. 
 Gradually, and with controversy, it enlarged its 
 borders by admitting Gentiles without the pre- 
 liminary of circumcision. Gradually there was 
 effected, with St. Paul as the human instrument, 
 a syncretism between Semitic and Hellenic 
 elements, which, while retaining all that Jesus 
 gave of revelation and of ethic, yet made 
 Christianity possible as a European religion. 
 Even the Churches of St. Paul’s foundation, 
 however, derived their being and inspiration 
 from the “ great hope ” of the imminent end of 
 the age,.and reverenced very deeply the im- 
 memorial sanctities of Jewish Church and 
 temple. The temple fell, the nation was 
 scattered abroad, and the end was not yet. 
 “ Where,” men said, “is the promise of His 
 coming ?’”? The answer came in the teaching of 
 the Fourth Gospel and in the formation of the 
 Catholic Church. Then—and the comment will 
 equally apply to the subsequent crises of Christian 
 history—the Gospel passed out of one age into 
 another, the same in its eternal content, differing 
 in stress and application to meet new needs, 
 enriched for the changing time. That which 
 
104 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 should have been for its falling became to it an 
 occasion of wealth. Four hundred years on we 
 find the Church as thoroughly identified with 
 the cause of the Roman Empire—the greatest 
 secular civilization the world has ever known— 
 as once it was with Judaism. The Empire fell 
 before the barbarians of the North; but not all 
 the courtly subservience of Church officials could 
 make the Church so feeble as to share that fall. 
 Leo, confronting the Goths, is but the type and 
 symbol of the undying Gospel facing new 
 problems and bringing all into allegiance to 
 Christ. Teutonic Christianity takes its place 
 beside Jewish and Greek and Latin presentments 
 of the Christ, one more “ broken light ’”’ of the 
 many-coloured wisdom of God. Six hundred 
 years more, and Christianity is again faced with 
 ruin, this time through the pride and folly of 
 its own chief pastors. The unity of the Church, 
 God’s chief external witness to the world, is 
 broken. Hast and West separate, each claiming 
 to be the whole Church, and all our Christianity 
 is the poorer to this day for that first and greatest 
 schism. Yet the Gospel lives in spite of the 
 unworthiness of its professors. The great Latin 
 Church is stronger, more spiritual, more devout 
 in the twentieth century than in the eleventh. 
 The Eastern Churches, then, it would seem, so 
 incredibly Erastian and corrupt, how have they 
 
THE MIRACLE OF SURVIVAL 105 
 
 fared ? Let the martyrdom of thousands upon 
 thousands testify, laying down their lives for 
 Jesus under the brutal Turkish rule; let the great 
 Church of Russia—now, too, being purified 
 through sufiering—add its witness that, though 
 men sin, though human institutions perish, the 
 Gospel does not die. Four centuries on, and the 
 Western Church itself is riven asunder, again 
 not without grave and universal fault. Much 
 was lost at the Reformation which has yet 
 painfully to be recovered. Yet the corruption 
 and worldliness of the Roman Curia, the coarse 
 ambition of secular princes, the conceited 
 theorizings of theologians, could not ‘‘ doom to 
 death’ the faith of Christendom. It was 
 “fated not to die.’ The national and con- 
 fessional Churches, begotten at the Reformation, 
 have made, and are making, their full and worthy 
 contribution to the Kingdom of God. 
 
 In the eighteenth century a great Bishop 
 declined the throne of Canterbury on the ground 
 that it was too late to prop a falling Church, 
 a great Frenchman boasted that he had extin- 
 guished the lights of heaven. The Churches of 
 Hngland and of France to-day are the most 
 eloquent commentary alike on these assertions, 
 and on His prescience and authority who pro- 
 claimed to the few at Caesarea Philippi, “On 
 this rock I will build My Church, and the gates 
 
106 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of hell shall not prevail against it.” If mere 
 survival has pragmatic value as a test of truth, 
 how much more to have survived and grown 
 against all expectations and in defiance of all 
 prophecy. This, as some of our opponents are 
 acute enough to see, is in itself a miraculous 
 evidence for the Christian faith. 
 
 There is no need to dwell at length on the more 
 obvious witness to Christ, drawn from the course 
 of history since His coming. We need only 
 mention—what is brought out so fully in Brace’s 
 ‘ Gesta Christi ’’—the reforms which have fol- 
 lowed the spread of the Gospel. Woman has been 
 enthroned; the sick, the poor, the children cared 
 for; the slave set free. Slowly, with God’s 
 slowness, but surely, with God’s sureness, the 
 work has been done. A. word, too, will suffice 
 for the uniqueness of Christianity as a religion 
 for the whole world. Other faiths are pro- 
 vincial (Islam, for example, only for the torrid 
 zone); this alone is ecumenical, for it is faith 
 in the Universal Man. Once Asiatic, now 
 European, but to be in all likelihood pre- 
 dominantly Asiatic again, it can yet find a home 
 for the African native—witness the Uganda 
 Church—can give a message, and receive from 
 him a message in return. 
 
 All these mighty issues spring from the impress 
 of the personality of Jesus upon a few disciples 
 
PSYCHOLOGY AND SIN 107 
 
 in an obscure Roman province in the first 
 century. Even in this narrower field of facts 
 the question forces itself, “ Who was He ?” 
 
 Finally, let us consider the evidential value otf 
 the Christian doctrines of God and of man, 
 agreeing as they do with the profoundest 
 speculations of modern philosophy and of the 
 surest discoveries of psychology and of science. 
 This evidence is the more valid as theology and, 
 still more, philosophy are but by-products of the 
 historic faith, which is essentially the revela- 
 tion of a Person and of a Life, and which has been 
 deeply wronged in past ages by being wholly 
 identified with passing systems of thought. 
 We take but two examples from the Christian 
 doctrine of man, and two from the Christian 
 doctrine of God. 
 
 Psychology has been forced to recognize that, 
 most deep-seated of human instincts, is a rooted 
 repugnance to reality, the undue yielding to 
 which is, as alienists tell us, the root cause of all 
 mental trouble. Man is ever seeking a way to 
 escape from the pressure of circumstances, trom 
 the burden of an unintelligible world. Some find 
 this way in alcoholism, some in drugs; others in 
 field sports, art and letters, religion. But all 
 must find some way. It is imperative for human 
 nature. Man, alone of created beings, is out of 
 
 harmony with his environment. What is this but 
 9 
 
108 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 the doctrine of the fall, of original sin, of the 
 need of regenerating and prevenient grace ? 
 Attenuated or ignored as this teaching has been, 
 especially by us self-relying Englishmen, given 
 from the first to Pelagian theory, it now stands 
 out as affording the only satisfying explanation of 
 a whole range of obstinate psychic facts. A man 
 gets drunk, as the story goes, because that is “ the 
 shortest way out of Manchester.” But he who 
 finds his way of escape in a loyal acceptance of 
 Jesus is regenerated himself, and reforms 
 Manchester as well. For our purpose, however, 
 the point is this. The conclusions of experi- 
 mental psychology were anticipated and ac- 
 counted for by Christ and His Apostles nineteen 
 hundred years ago. 
 
 The many appearances of pain in the world, 
 the spectacle of nature, “red in tooth and 
 claw,” have led men to discredit not only the 
 old argument from design, but also the goodness 
 of God, if, indeed, He exist at all. It would be 
 sufficient, indeed, to indicate that Christianity is 
 based, not on dogmatic reasonings at large upon 
 the relation of God to the world, but on the 
 personality of Jesus, revealing to us as much 
 of God as we are able here to know. “ He that 
 hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” We are not 
 now compelled, however, to take refuge in a 
 necessary ignorance, but can boldly challenge the 
 
PAIN AND SIN 109 
 
 facts of the situation.* The capacity for feeling 
 pain depends, as we now know, on the develop- 
 ment and organization of the nervous system, 
 specifically upon the brain. Only the highest 
 orders of vertebrates are susceptible of pain in 
 the human sense at all, and the capacity for 
 pain possessed by animals is exceptionally low, 
 lower even than that of the less advanced races 
 of mankind, whose insensibility is the constant 
 marvel of competent observers. Moreover, there 
 is a mass of evidence, collected in part from first- 
 hand human experience, that beasts of prey 
 bring with them a natural anesthetic, abolishing 
 pain and apprehension in their victims. Man 
 brings with him no such anesthetic, and there 
 is every ground for presuming that the only true 
 pain, other than human, on the earth 1s that 
 of the domesticated animals, brought, under the 
 shadow of the tragedy and of the sin of man. 
 Startling truths, brought recently to light by 
 anatomists and zoologists, but again anticipated 
 nineteen hundred years ago: “ The whole creation 
 eroaneth and travaileth together until now, 
 waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.” 
 When man is redeemed, nature will be redeemed 
 
 * The author owes his knowledge of these facts as to the 
 physiology and sensibility of animals to an interesting 
 lecture by the Rev. Theodore Wood. The inferences from 
 the facts are the author’s own. 
 
110 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 too, and all, as at the first, very good. Buta 
 deeper consideration arises. If Jesus were 
 unique, His sufferings, whether physical or 
 spiritual, were unique too. His exquisite con- 
 stitution was capable of pain, transcending, both 
 in kind and in degree, that possible to coarser 
 beings. It was a sure instinct of prophecy that 
 so laid stress on the Passion of Jesus, and that so 
 linked with tribulation the possibility of progress. 
 It knew not why. It only knew what the 
 Master taught and His Apostles recorded. It 1s 
 certain that Christian experience has already 
 verified the truth of the message. The prophetic 
 instinct could afford to wait through all the 
 centuries for the further vindication by human 
 research, and now the vindication has come. 
 
 To turn, in conclusion, to the Christian 
 doctrine of God. Physical science, in itself 
 and by itselfi—and we must remember, of course, 
 that it only purports to deal with a narrow and 
 specifically separate range of facts, and pretends 
 not to account for the essential things of life— 
 has removed Him farther from the universe. 
 No longer is the lightning His visitation, the 
 thunder His voice. The Creator of such a 
 universe as 1s revealed by modern astronomy is 
 virtually unknown to human faculties, is not 
 even remotely conceivable as a tribal God. 
 The philosopher, for his part, will tell us of an 
 
MAN'S KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 111 
 
 Absolute, in whom all things have their necessary 
 unity, impassible and unconditioned, more re- 
 mote still than the God of physical science. 
 And yet, by an aboriginal and universal instinct, 
 the heart of man cries out for God, and is rest- 
 less till it finds its rest in Him. No Allah, 
 throned irresponsible despot of the skies, nor 
 yet any Buddhistic abstraction, can meet the 
 cravings of the modern man, imperative alike 
 on the side of reason and of devotion. To a 
 people complacently self-satisfied as to their 
 knowledge of God Jesus came, with claims and 
 revelation which earned for Him the blasphemer'’s 
 death. His proclamation of God as the eternal 
 Lover, Worker, Sufierer, as the universal Father, 
 transcended the needs of His own time, to meet 
 those of the present day. Our reason and our 
 devotion alike crave for a reconciling unity, and 
 we find it in Him in whom God and man, heaven 
 and earth, eternity and time, are united for 
 evermore. Christ had first to be interpreted 
 in terms of God. The problem now has shifted, 
 and God is interpreted in terms of Christ. It 1s 
 surely most highly evidential that the revelation 
 of our Master should meet such widely differmg 
 needs, that all problems of thought are so solved 
 in Him. 
 
 Man is differentiated from the rest of the 
 animal world by the possession of an individuality 
 
112 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 which can transcend the law of his species. 
 Reason, not instinct, is his primary guide; and 
 in the endowment of free will he has the proof 
 of his creation in the divine image. 
 Personality, therefore, is God’s special gift 
 to man; and unity, which is the attribute of 
 personality, is man’s greatest, unaided thought 
 of God. When the Jew degraded the gods of 
 the surrounding nations to the status of demons 
 or of nonentities, and thus substituted mono- 
 theism for monolatry, there was a great stage 
 marked in the development of the religion of 
 mankind. But personality is not an ultimate 
 truth, and unity in diversity is the prerequisite 
 of social life. A God Who is only one cannot 
 be known by His creatures unless He be con- 
 ceived anthropomorphically, unless man has 
 created Him in his own image, which is, indeed, 
 the human origin of all theologies. A God Who 
 is only one cannot be love, for it would be in 
 Him at most an adventitious attribute, and He 
 would also be essentially devoid of that seeking 
 sympathy which unites with the loved one, and 
 gains the interior knowledge which alone is. 
 knowledge indeed. Very slowly—overheard, as 
 it were, rather than heard in Scripture—the 
 doctrine of the Trinity came to formulation. 
 A treasure, doubtless, in earthen vessels, couched 
 in forms of thought which the world has out- 
 
THE BURDEN OF PROOF 113 
 
 grown, and needing—in the writer’s opinion, at 
 least—a restatement in terms of contemporary 
 thought and science; yet, even 80, the nearest 
 approach in speculation to a satisfactory philo- 
 sophic conception of God, though gathered, at 
 any rate in its main conceptions, from the 
 message of simple folk of the least speculative 
 and metaphysical of the nations. Can there be 
 a surer evidence of our holy Faith than this— 
 that from such earthly beginnings it 1s yet able 
 to meet the intellectual as well as the religious 
 needs of man ? 
 
 To sum up briefly. The need of the present 
 day is an aggressive, missionary, forward-looking 
 Christianity, aflame with the fire of its first love. 
 Entrenched ecclesiasticisms no longer suffice. 
 Nowhere is this more to be desired than in the 
 specifically evidential field. The Christian 1s 
 ready to answer questions, but should be readier 
 to ask them. The Faith and the Church are 
 here, and have to be accounted for. The burden 
 of proof is upon those who oppose, not upon 
 those who uphold the Gospel. We would ask in 
 all seriousness of all men of good will, What 
 estimate can you give of Jesus, of His resur- 
 rection, of the Gospel story, of His saints, of 
 His Church, of His teaching as to God and man, 
 which is intrinsically as probable as that which 
 Christians give—nay, which has in it any shadow 
 
1i4 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 
 
 of probability at all? If, then, the weight of 
 presumption be on the side of Christ, is it not 
 your duty to your intellect as well ag to your 
 conscience to make full trial of His claims, to 
 become His disciples, in due course His Apostles 
 too? So will experiment pass into experience; 
 so will the promise be fulfilled, ‘‘ Whoso doeth 
 My will, he shall know of the doctrine.” Not 
 by dialectic, indeed, does God will the salvation 
 of His people; but he who changes his view- 
 point (which is repentance), and begins to see 
 things as Jesus sees them, must end in con- 
 fessing, ‘“‘ Truly this is the Son of God.” 
 
VI 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 By ARTHUR S. PEAKE, M.A., D.D. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY is an historical religion. It stands 
 or falls with an historical personality, with a life 
 lived here upon earth, with events which hap- 
 pened in space and time. If Jesus of Nazareth 
 never lived, if He lived but we have no trust- 
 worthy record of His life, if He died and death 
 meant for Him a return to non-existence, then 
 the Christian religion would rest upon illusion. 
 It is true that the Gospels would remain great 
 literature. They would offer us a wealth of moral 
 teaching, and move us profoundly by their deep 
 spiritual quality, and the central figure would 
 remain for us an imperishable ideal. But much 
 even of this value would disappear if the story 
 were just a romance. Tor the critic would say 
 that the ideal was too remote from our common 
 life, the moral demand was pitched too high, the 
 religious teaching it contained had no guarantee 
 of reality, while the ethical principles were 
 exposed to serious objections. If, however, the 
 
 Gospels paint a sufficiently accurate portrait of 
 115 
 
116 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 a real personality and describe with reasonable 
 fidelity the outstanding events of His career, then 
 the moral principles He proclaimed and illus- 
 trated in His own character and action, the 
 faith He taught to others, in the strength of which 
 He lived and died, are not the ethics of a paper 
 Utopia or the religion of cloud-land, but find no 
 little of their guarantee in historical facts. 
 
 When we affirm the inseparable connection of 
 Christianity with history, we create serious 
 difficulties for the modern mind. These diffi- 
 culties are, in fact, so grave that many would 
 view with relief the dissolution of so entangling 
 an alliance. But we cannot accept this way of 
 escape, partly because it would mean the aban- 
 donment of Christianity as it has always been 
 understood, partly because other difficulties 
 would remain, and, apart from the historical 
 guarantee of the truths for which Christianity 
 stands, it would be much harder to meet them. 
 We must then face the formidable problems 
 involved in the historical basis of our religion. 
 The Christian position involves both an affirma- 
 tion of facts and an interpretation of facts. 
 When we say Jesus of Nazareth died upon the 
 cross, we are affirming an historical fact; when we 
 say Jesus died for our sins, we are putting an 
 interpretation upon the fact, transforming a 
 bare event into a Gospel. Difficulties arise in 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 117% 
 
 connection with both sets of affirmations. Our 
 present concern is with the former. One principle 
 must be laid down at the outset. The investiga- 
 tion of alleged facts must follow the method 
 proper to historical enquiry. It is illegitimate 
 to demand that it shall satisfy the standard 
 applied to other types of investigation, such as 
 those of physical or biological science or those of 
 mathematics. Further, the enquiry must not 
 be split up into a series of mutually independent 
 investigations. We cannot, for example, reach 
 a final decision on such a question as the super- 
 natural birth of Christ or His resurrection apart 
 from the general conviction we have formed as 
 to the real nature of His personality. Once 
 more, we must seek to make our study of the 
 evidence as honest and as scientific as possible. 
 We must be guided, not by our wishes, but by an 
 austere devotion to truth. We must rid our- 
 selves, so far as we can, of presuppositions and 
 prejudices, and seek with a single eye to see the 
 past as we can recreate it by historical research 
 and scientific use of the imagination. On the 
 other hand, we should avoid unfairness to the 
 witnesses whom it is our duty to cross-examine, 
 and approach our task im a temper and attitude 
 other than that of a suspicious, captious, and 
 bullying counsel for the prosecution. 
 
 The first question we must face is this: Did 
 
118 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 Jesus ever live? No reasonable student of 
 history would deny that the evidence for His 
 existence is overwhelming. But as we have to 
 deal with unreasonable people, whose policy is 
 to deny everything and who brush aside the 
 Christian evidence, we must see if we can 
 establish the fact independently of the New 
 Testament. We know that the Jews expected a 
 Messiah—that is, a king of the lineage of David— 
 who would crush the foreign oppressor, lift 
 His nation to unchallenged supremacy, and rule 
 the heathen with a rod of iron. We can trace 
 the Christian people back into the first century 
 of our era by evidence independent of the Ne 
 
 Testament, and we find that they, too, believed 
 ina Messiah. But the Messiah whom they pro- 
 claimed was very different from the Jewish 
 Messiah. They identified Him with a Galilean 
 artisan who, they said, had been crucified by 
 . Pontius Pilate. How did such a sect originate, 
 and how did the Jewish doctrine of a Messiah 
 undergo so strange a transformation ? It is said 
 that the Jews had a doctrine of a suffering 
 Messiah. It is just possible that this was the 
 case, but probably it was restricted to quite small 
 circles, and it is very questionable if it arose as 
 early as the first century. But it would not, 
 even if it was earlier and widely accepted among 
 the Jews, account for the rise of a belief in a 
 
A CRUCIFIED MESSIAH ike, 
 
 crucified Messiah. What is all-important here 
 is not the fact, but the mode of death. The 
 Jewish law pronounced a curse on him who 
 suilered by this form of death, and this has always 
 been a great obstacle to the acceptance by Jews 
 of Jesus as Messiah. Accordingly, no develop- 
 ment of the Jewish Messianic doctrine could 
 possibly have given rise to the belief in a crucified 
 Messiah, nor could any founders of a new 
 religious society among the Jews, except under 
 compulsion, have hung such a millstone around 
 the neck of their new movement. There is no 
 explanation of this fact that they were driven 
 to assert Messiahship for a Jew who had been 
 crucified other than this—that a Jew whom they 
 regarded as Messiah had suffered this accursed 
 death, and in spite of it was believed by His 
 followers to be the Messiah. We can accordingly 
 deduce with certainty from the mere existence of 
 a Jewish sect based on the belief in a crucified 
 Messiah the following facts: First, the historical 
 existence of Jesus; secondly, His death by cruci- 
 fixion; thirdly, the belief that He was the 
 Messiah. Wecan probably go somewhat further. 
 They must, even before His death, have believed 
 Him to be Messiah, for to maintain their faith 
 at all under so staggering a blow was difficult, 
 to rise to a loftier height of faith than they had 
 previously reached was in such conditions a sheer 
 
120 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD. 
 
 impossibility. But we can draw a further in- 
 ference with great confidence. They cannot 
 have reached and held this conviction without 
 the cognizance of Jesus, and they must have 
 known whether He approved or disapproved. 
 If He disapproved, they could neither have 
 continued to hold it in His lifetime nor have 
 maintained it after His death. We are driven, 
 then, to the conclusion that Jesus believed 
 Himself to be the Messiah. Since, however, it. 
 is one thing to claim a position for oneself and 
 quite another to convince others of it, we may 
 infer that the impression He made on His 
 followers was such that they willingly accorded 
 this dignity to Him, and maintained their belief 
 in it even after His cause had been irretrievably 
 discredited, as it would seem, by a death which 
 expressed, not simply repudiation by the leaders 
 of His people, but the verdict of God Himself 
 in His law. 
 
 So far, then, we have been brought, without 
 any appeal to documents, by a series of irre- 
 sistible inferences from the undoubted fact that 
 a sect arose in Judaism tracing its origin to a 
 Jew whom its members admitted to have been 
 crucified, but whom they affirmed to be the 
 Messiah. But this line of argument has been 
 adopted only for the sake of unreasonable people. 
 Those who accept the ordinary laws of evidence 
 
DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE 121 
 
 will recognize that the direct documentary 
 evidence amply attests the historicity of Jesus. 
 In the nature of the case, this is mainly Christian 
 evidence. But it is not entirely so. Tacitus, 
 the Roman historian, writing early in the second 
 century with a bitter prejudice against the Jews 
 and their contemptible superstitions, and re- 
 garding Christianity as touching a still lower 
 depth, gives an account of “ Christus,” the 
 founder of this execrable superstition, and asserts 
 that he was executed by Pontius Pilate. 
 Naturally, however, it is to the Christian docu- 
 ments that we must turn for most of our in- 
 formation. It is unreasonable to ask for con- 
 temporary pagan or Jewish evidence, for Greek 
 and Roman writers disliked and despised the 
 Jews, while an obscure religious sect in Palestine, 
 proclaiming that a Galilean carpenter had been 
 crucified by Pilate, had risen from the dead, and 
 was preached as Messiah, Saviour, and Lord 
 by His adherents, would have been deemed by 
 them too insane even to stir their contempt. 
 Tacitus speaks of the Christians only because 
 they had been executed with atrocious tortures, 
 as scapegoats to divert from Nero the odium of 
 having set fire to Rome. Nor would the Jewish 
 authorities, who were ultimately responsible for 
 the crucifixion of Jesus, who utterly repudiated 
 His claims and regarded Him as a blasphemer, 
 
122 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 have been specially interested in perpetuating 
 His memory. We must accordingly go to the 
 Christian records, and there is not the slightest 
 reason why they should be denied a hearing. 
 It must, of course, be an impartial hearing. We 
 must recognize that they were written by be- 
 lievers who looked at the events from a favour- 
 able standpoint, who wrote to edify and strengthen 
 their fellow-Christians, to defend the religion 
 and its Founder against misrepresentation and 
 attack, and to commend them to those who were 
 without. And for our judgment on the origin 
 and date and historical character of these docu- 
 ments we must turn here, as in similar cases, to 
 the experts. In doing so, we must not forget 
 that many of the experts in New Testament 
 criticism have entirely broken with Christianity 
 in its orthodox forms, and that some of them 
 could scarcely be considered Christians in any 
 tenable sense of the term. 
 
 The earliest documents in the New Testament 
 are probably the authentic Pauline Epistles. 
 The number of those who deny the genuineness 
 of them all is infinitesimal, and the minimum 
 of generally recognized Epistles is seven: | Thes- 
 salonians, Galatians, 1 and2 Corinthians, Romans, 
 Philemon, Philippians. Many scholars allow, 
 in addition, the authenticity of Colossians; 
 fewer, perhaps, that of 2 Thessalonians; some- 
 
THE EPISTLES AND THE GOSPELS 123 
 
 what fewer, again, that of Ephesians. The 
 Epistles to Timothy and Titus are generally 
 rejected by scholars who are not bound to tradi- 
 tional opinions, though even in them authentic 
 fragments are frequently recognized. Paul was 
 a contemporary of Jesus, and knew personally 
 some of His leading followers, including St. Peter 
 and St. James, the brother of Jesus. His letters 
 leave no room for doubt as to the historicity of 
 Jesus; they give us some facts as to His life and 
 teaching, and imply more. The dates and 
 authorship of the Gospels are by no means so 
 assured. St. Mark is the oldest of our existing 
 Gospels; it was probably written before the 
 destruction of Jerusalem in a.p. 70, but may 
 possibly have been a little later. St. Matthew 
 and St. Luke are partly based upon St. Mark, 
 but also on a lost collection of sayings and dis- 
 courses of Jesus commonly referred to under the 
 symbol Q. This was probably nearly con- 
 temporary with St. Mark, but may have been 
 somewhat earlier. The dates of St. Matthew and 
 St. Luke are uncertain, but they probably lie 
 within the last quarter of the first century. The 
 Gospel of St. John is still the subject of much 
 debate. Its Apostolic authorship is now largely 
 denied, and many think that it contains very 
 little historical matter. I do not myself take go 
 negative a view of it, but we are compelled to 
 10 
 
124 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 rely in the main for our purpose on the Synoptic 
 Gospels. And here some scholars would contend 
 for earlier dates than I have mentioned. Har- 
 nack, perhaps the most distinguished of all, is 
 convinced that the Acts of the Apostles was 
 written by St. Luke early in the sixties, while 
 St. Paul was still alive. This implies a somewhat 
 earlier date for the third Gospel, so that St. Mark 
 and Q would be put back into the fifties at the 
 latest—that is, within thirty years of the death 
 of Jesus. While I believe that this 1s too 
 optimistic, we are justified in placing our oldest 
 sources at a time when many who had known 
 Jesus were still living, and the tradition about 
 Him in the Church was still fresh. This also 
 guarantees not only the historicity of Jesus, but 
 the preservation of much trustworthy informa- 
 tion as to His life and teaching and His person- 
 ality. 
 
 This is confirmed by the presence in the records 
 of elements which can hardly have been invented. 
 With the growing reverence for Jesus, as the 
 historical life receded into the past—a more timid 
 reverence, we might say—there was a tendency 
 to omit or modify features which created diffi- 
 culties. Examples of such features are the 
 apparent disclaimer of “ goodness”’ in the 
 question: “ Why callest thou Me good ?”; the 
 confession of His ignorance as to the time of 
 
STORY OF JESUS NOT INVENTED 125 
 
 His second coming; the cry of desertion on the 
 Cross, which suggested that Jesus felt Himself 
 abandoned by God and died in despair; the 
 Kvangelist’s statement that at Nazareth Jesus 
 could do no mighty works. These and similar 
 features are reported, because they really hap- 
 pened. ‘To have invented them would have been 
 to run counter to the interests the writers were 
 seeking to serve. Moreover, the character is 
 portrayed with such consistency in the sources 
 that it makes the impression of having been drawn 
 from the life; and the personality, the events, and 
 the utterances, are such as entirely transcended 
 the power of the Evangelists to imagine. 
 
 I have spoken of the historicity of Jesus at 
 such length because it is so fundamental, and 
 because I think that the more negative criticism 
 may find itself more and more driven to this 
 extreme position. But I have desired to deal 
 with it in such a way as to lay the foundation for 
 further argument. Very few, in fact, question 
 it, or doubt that in our oldest sources the main 
 outlines of His teaching and career are reproduced 
 with considerable fidelity. But several points 
 emerge here to which some reference is necessary. 
 In the first place, the miraculous element is very 
 prominent even in our earliest narrative. The 
 problem is complex and difficult, and demands 
 a more elaborate examination than igs here 
 
126 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 possible. But the following observations may be 
 made: There is a general tendency to allow 
 that the cases of healing may, as a whole, be 
 historical. They have already been largely 
 paralleled, and it is felt that a personality so 
 commanding as that of Jesus, gifted with faith 
 so illimitable and contagious, may well have 
 effected cures of the most marvellous kind. 
 With reference to other wonderful works, it 
 ought to be said at the outset that we are com- 
 mitted to no theory of the events, but at most 
 to the fact that they occurred. The drift of 
 recent thought and discussion has been to make 
 us more cautious in drawing the line between the 
 possible and the impossible. And we may find 
 that they constitute no violation of natural 
 order. Still, we justly demand unusually strong 
 evidence for events so abnormal. The miracles, 
 as a whole, are free from bizarre, extravagant, 
 and repulsive features. They harmonize with 
 the character of the central figure, fit naturally 
 into the record, and are of a piece with the 
 teaching. It is notoriously difficult to detach 
 them from the general structure of the narrative. 
 Moreover, we cannot finally judge the stories 
 apart from the personality of whom they are 
 told. If on other grounds we are convinced that 
 the claims Jesus made for Himself and those 
 made for Him by the Church from the beginning 
 
THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 127 
 
 are true, then the uniqueness of the personality 
 makes more credible the unique events. The 
 interests of His mission were of supreme moment 
 to mankind, and for their sake, whatever powers 
 over nature were needed could fittingly be 
 granted to Him. To the ordinary man such 
 powers could not safely be trusted, and even now 
 the knowledge of natural forces has far outrun 
 our moral fitness to use them. Even to very 
 good men such powers would offer a great 
 temptation. If Jesus was what His followers 
 believed Him to be, they could securely be placed 
 in His hands. It may be granted that the age 
 was uncritical, ignorant of our ideas of the uni- 
 formity of nature, and apt to magnify the 
 unusual into the miraculous; that the witnesses 
 were not trained observers, and that the stories 
 lost nothing in the telling; that parable may have 
 been transformed into miracle; that Old Testa- 
 ment narrative or prophecy may have given rise 
 to some of the stories; but it may be questioned 
 whether the operation of all these forces together 
 suffices to eliminate “miracle” in the strict 
 sense of the term. This is especially the case 
 with the resurrection of Jesus, the central core 
 of which neither the discrepancy of the witnesses 
 nor the explanations of the irreducible facts have 
 sutticed to dissolve. 
 
 It is a mistake, however, to suppose that 
 
128 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 critical theories are mainly inspired by the desire 
 to get rid of the supernatural. They are largely 
 suggested by the comparison of the documents 
 with each other or of different sections within 
 the same document. It is undeniable that the 
 accounts of the same incident frequently differ. 
 Moreover, we can see that one is likely to be a 
 closer representation of the fact than another, 
 and not infrequently it 1s possible to explain what 
 causes were operative in creating the secondary 
 out of the original version. There was a tendency 
 to idealize and to soften, an apologetic interest 
 was also at work, and there was possibly a certain 
 influence of later dogma colouring the report of — 
 the teaching. But the action of all these forces 
 has been greatly exaggerated. They can be 
 traced more clearly in the later narratives than 
 in the earlier, and, above all, in the Fourth 
 Gospel. Perhaps we ought to be rather surprised 
 in the case of the Synoptists that the contem- 
 porary theology has affected them so little. We 
 might have expected the characteristic teaching 
 of St. Paul to have been read back into the 
 teaching of Jesus much more freely than proves 
 to have been the case. But when all is said and 
 done, we have first-rate sources in addition to the 
 Pauline Epistles: St. Mark, Q, the special source 
 employed in the Third Gospel, probably not a 
 little in the Fourth Gospel. 
 
GOSPELS GIVE ALL ESSENTIALS 129 
 
 Even the discrepancies are of service to us, 
 for by comparison of different accounts we may 
 be able to work back to the original from which 
 they have come. Even legend, if legend there 
 be, has its value, for it enables the historian to 
 see what the impression made by the personality 
 was. If we stipulate that a canonical document 
 must be free from error in matters of fact, our 
 Gospels will hardly satisfy such a test. But we 
 must not demand too much. We have a right to 
 expect that the sources should tell us all that it 
 is essential for us to know. Judged by the 
 requirements of a modern historian, our docu- 
 ments are meagre and unsatisfactory. They 
 fail to tell us many things we greatly desire to 
 know. But they give us what is vital and 
 essential—all, indeed, that is necessary for their 
 purpose and that we have a right to require. 
 They give us a vivid conception of the personality, 
 a sufficiently trustworthy record of the teaching, 
 a knowledge of the critical events. It 1s, above 
 all, the first of these which is important, for the 
 chief contribution which Jesus made to religion 
 was not His teaching, not even His teaching 
 about God. His supreme contribution was Just 
 Himself, His personality, His character, what 
 He was and what He did. And that is because 
 to know Jesus is to know God. Our fullest and 
 most vivid conception of God cannot be conveyed 
 
130 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 to us by verbal description, however copious 
 and exact. Personality alone can reveal person- 
 ality in its richness and depth, its variety and 
 flexibility, its subtle shades, its unceasing and 
 automatic reaction to environment. And thus 
 it is, as we steep ourselves in the Gospels and 
 our knowledge of Jesus grows in depth and large- 
 hess and sympathetic understanding, that our 
 apprehension of God’s inmost character and His 
 relation to us becomes more luminous and more 
 profound. Even what may seem the trivialities 
 in the record are not its least precious feature ; 
 for in these unstudied words’and actions the 
 true nature may be revealed at points which in 
 great moments are apt to be submerged and 
 lost to view. 
 
 Yet recent discussions have raised other diffi- 
 culties which cannot be ignored. I refer in the 
 first place to what is frequently called the 
 eschatological theory. It has, of course, for long 
 been a difficulty that Jesus seems to have 
 anticipated that He would return, and the 
 Kingdom of God would be set up on earth, while 
 some of those to whom He was speaking would 
 be still alive. But this has not been generally 
 regarded as His central and most characteristic 
 message which has been sought in His ethical 
 and religious teaching. Recently, however, it 
 has been urged that the whole thought of Jesus 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGICAL THEORY 131. 
 
 was concentrated on the approaching coming of 
 the kingdom. The existing constitution of 
 society and its most fundamental institutions 
 would be swept away, and a wholly new order 
 would be introduced by God’s sudden catastrophic 
 intervention, and in this new order Jesus Him- 
 self, Messiah and Son of Man, would reign upon 
 earth. True, He did give ethical teaching, but 
 this was “interim ethic,” designed to control 
 men’s conduct in the interval before the new era 
 should come and prepare them to be citizens in 
 that kingdom. No human effort could bring it 
 nearer. Only when the predestined hour had 
 struck would the new divine order suddenly 
 replace the kingdoms of this world. This theory, 
 while of service in calling attention to phenomena 
 in the Gospels which had not received their due, 
 seems to compromise very gravely the claim of 
 Jesus. For it represents Him as the victim of a 
 delusion which did not touch something that 
 lay on the circumference of His thought, and 
 was a mere limitation of outlook shared with the 
 men of His time, but a delusion which lay at 
 the centre of all His interest and was the absorb- 
 ing theme of His mission. 
 
 But this theory in its thorough-going and 
 radical form is grossly one-sided and exaggerated. 
 It represents the Kingdom of God as still entirely 
 in the future, though very near, whereas there are 
 
132 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 sayings of Jesus which imply that in a sense 
 it is already present, though not in its fulness. 
 It throws the teaching and the career of Jesus 
 out of focus, placing in the forefront what has 
 proved to be but the temporary vesture of the 
 conception He had formed of the kingdom, and 
 pushing into the background what has proved to 
 be of imperishable significance. And if this was 
 really the essence of His message, and if on this 
 hope the new religion was entirely based, we fail 
 to understand why, when it proved a delusion, 
 Christianity did not collapse. But, as a matter 
 of fact, it advanced at an ever-expanding rate as 
 though nothing at all had happened. 
 
 On another side the closer study of the Synoptic 
 Gospels has suggested to many that the develop- 
 ment which Christianity took, notably under 
 the influence of St. Paul, was quite other than 
 Jesus had intended. When we pass from the 
 Synoptic Gospels to the Pauline Kpistles we 
 seem, it is urged, to be in another world. Jesus 
 is a preacher to whom the common people 
 listen gladly. He speaks with simplicity, charm, 
 and power on the deepest themes, which He 
 illuminates by His matchless parables; while 
 St. Paul seems like a Christian Rabbi entangled in 
 tortuous dialectic on theological problems which 
 have for us long lost their interest. Jesus, it is 
 said, preached a lofty ethic, marked by excep- 
 
PAUL AND CHRISTIANITY 133 
 
 tional inwardness and delicacy, and had no con- 
 cern for theology; while St. Paul defaced that 
 lucid and precious Gospel by transforming it into 
 an abstruse theology which he defended in arid 
 controversy. But we must point out in answer 
 to this that Jesus was concerned above all 
 things with religion, and religion implies 
 theology. To this the retort is made that with 
 the theology of Jesus there is no need to quarrel, 
 but that of St. Paul is quite another matter. 
 Jesus made the Fatherhood of God His starting- 
 point, the Kingdom of God the goal. But St. 
 Paul placed Jesus in the centre, and gave an 
 entirely new prominence to His Person and work. 
 The Galilean teacher and martyr was turned into 
 a divine being, the pre-existent Son of God; 
 while His characteristic teaching was thrust into 
 the background, His death and resurrection were 
 viewed as a drama of salvation; in a word, 
 theology became mythology. Not a few have 
 argued that even in the first generation of the 
 Church this radical departure from the pure 
 and simple teaching of the Master was made. 
 Must we believe that St. Paul effected this 
 fatal transformation? Not consciously, as- 
 suredly, since his devotion to Jesus was too 
 deep to admit of such disloyal perversion. But 
 it is asserted that St. Paul’s mystical experience 
 of Jesus made him feel independent of a know- 
 
134 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 ledge of His teaching. This cannot be con- 
 ceded, for, with his adoration of Jesus, Hig 
 lightest word would have claimed his reverent 
 attention. And in face of the bitter hostility of 
 those who denied his Apostolic status and the 
 genuinely Christian quality of his teaching, he 
 could not have neglected to familiarize himself 
 with the career and teaching of his Master 
 without presenting his antagonists with a welcome 
 and fatal weapon. His alleged mythology roused 
 no controversy in the Church, such as was 
 excited by his doctrine of the Law; and the 
 leaders of the Church at Jerusalem recognized 
 the validity of his Gospel, and had already inter- 
 preted the death of Christ as suffered for our 
 sins. Indeed, it has become more and more 
 difficult to fasten the responsibility on St. Paul, 
 and much stress is now laid on earlier movements 
 in the Church itself in this direction. It is 
 urged in particular that before the rise of Chris- 
 tianity a Messianic theology had been elaborated 
 in Judaism, and that the primitive Christians, 
 convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, simply 
 applied this doctrine to Him. But this could 
 hardly have been done unless they had felt 
 it to be in harmony with the character of Jesus 
 as they had observed it and Hig teaching as 
 they remembered it. 
 
 Really the hypothesis is unnecessary. For, 
 
WITNESS OF JESUS TO HIMSELF 135 
 
 in the teaching of Jesus itself, this doctrine is 
 essentially contained. It is sufficiently attested, 
 even if we limit ourselves to St. Mark and Q. 
 Jesus thought of Himself as Messiah. This is 
 implied in the stories of the temptation and 
 the triumphal entry, in the confession of 
 St. Peter at Caesarea Philippi, in the title over 
 His cross. The very fact of the Crucifixion 
 implies it, for the one charge which Pilate could 
 not afford to disregard was the charge that Jesus 
 was setting Himself up to be King in place of 
 Cesar. We may go further. Jesus believed 
 Himself to be the Son of Man. This is attested 
 by every one of our extant sources. The term 
 all but entirely drops out of use as a title of 
 Jesus except on His own lips. We may, there- 
 fore, infer that for some reason it was not con- 
 genial to the early Church, and was only retained 
 in the Gospels because it was too deeply rooted 
 in the tradition to be ignored. The Son of Man 
 was known in Jewish apocalyptic as the pre- 
 existent heavenly being who was to come with 
 the clouds of heaven to judge mankind and reign 
 upon earth. This role Jesus believed Himself 
 destined to fulfil, but He expanded and deepened 
 its significance by connecting it with the figure 
 of the suffering Servant of Yahweh, whose 
 mission was to reveal the true God to the world 
 and to suffer for the sin of mankind. He lives 
 
136 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 in an intimate and unshared relation to the 
 Father as His Son. He stands above all His 
 predecessors, and is of higher rank even than the 
 angels. He forgives the sins of men, and will be 
 their Judge. He claims an absolute obedience 
 which overrides the dearest and most authorita- 
 tive of human relations. His Blood inaugurates 
 the New Covenant, and He gives His life a 
 ransom for many. 
 
 It is true that the emphasis is different in Jesus 
 and in St. Paul. But for this neither St. Paul 
 nor his predecessors were responsible. It was 
 fitting for Jesus to be more reticent than His 
 followers in speaking about Himself; nor could 
 detailed teaching as to the great redemptive 
 facts which closed His earthly career have profit- 
 ably been given to those who were incredulous 
 of His predictions of the Passion. But if Jesus 
 truly was what our earliest documents represent 
 Him as claiming to be, the death and the resur- 
 rection must be momentous in their significance. 
 They created a problem, and to its solution St. 
 Paul contributed most. If his account of the 
 Person and the work of Jesus is mythology, 
 we cannot acquit Jesus from the responsibility of 
 originating it. 
 
 But that He was deluded by megalomania is 
 assuredly not easy to believe. For, by the 
 testimony of the wisest and the best, no figure 
 
CHRIST OF HISTORY AND OF FAITH 137 
 
 in history is more marked by perfect poise and 
 mental balance, none more utterly sincere, more 
 searching in His moral judgments, more relent- 
 less in His exposure of unreality. Such was 
 His inmost consciousness; for us it is decisive. 
 Its truth is attested by the Gospel portrait. 
 What such men as our Evangelists might have 
 been expected to achieve had they been left to 
 themselves may be guessed from the Apocryphal 
 Gospels. They had, indeed, no skill to fashion 
 such a figure from their own resources. It is con- 
 vincing, because they drew it from the life. The 
 Jesus whom they present to us is not the stifi 
 and artificial product of laboured invention, but 
 free and natural, moving as a living man among 
 living men. He is a Jew of His own country 
 and His own age. But He is more than the 
 flower of Judaism, the heir to its rich and wonder- 
 ful inheritance. He rises sheer above all these 
 limitations of race and country and time. He 
 is strange in no land or age, alien to no nation, 
 but at home and welcome in every century and 
 among every people. The passing of the years 
 does not render Him obsolete. He keeps pace 
 with all our progress, He marches at the head 
 of each generation, beckoning humanity forward 
 to new and higher endeavour. 
 
 But He is not merely the guide of the pilgrim, 
 setting the goal plainly before him, and mapping 
 
138 THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD 
 
 out the path he is to follow. He comes to us in 
 our weakness and our despondency, our weariness 
 and despair; He unseals within us the springs 
 of courage and hope, and fills us with His 
 divine energy and power. So no day passes 
 over us but tne claim He makes to be our Lord 
 and Master and Saviour is confirmed by vast 
 multitudes who have in their own experience 
 verified its truth. 
 
Vil 
 
 JESUS CHRIST 
 By C. F. NOLLOTH, M.A., D.Lrrr. 
 
 AN excited crowd is seldom to be credited with 
 wisdom, either of word or action. Yet in one 
 case, at least, this rule does not hold good. 
 When Christ rode into Jerusalem, the first day 
 of the week before His death, “all the city was 
 moved,” and out of the stir came a question, 
 a very momentous and a very wise one, so wise 
 that, wherever men have heard that name and 
 have begun seriously to think about it, the same 
 question has come into their minds: ‘‘ Who is 
 this ?”’ 
 
 The object of this essay is to raise the question 
 once again, and, so far as the space at disposal 
 will allow, to indicate in outline what may 
 reasonably be said in reply to it. That day an 
 answer was at once forthcoming. It came from 
 another crowd—the multitude who were accom- 
 panying Him. They had no doubt whatever. 
 “This is Jesus, the prophet, of Nazareth of 
 Galilee.’ A confident answer, and one based on 
 
 personal knowledge. But does it suffice? It 
 139 1l 
 
140 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 could establish Christ’s identity with the Rabbi 
 who went about doing good, healing and teach- 
 ing; and so far it appears to have satisfied the 
 questioners. But there is much more in the 
 question than a matter of identity. As time 
 went on it gathered a deep and an enlarged 
 meaning. Men began to ask themselves: “* What 
 is He?” They were not content to think of Him 
 merely as Jesus, a prophet who had lived at 
 Nazareth, and had moved on the ordinary plane 
 of human experience. Other questionings arose 
 within their minds. They came to see that He 
 was not as other men, or even as other prophets. 
 When those who had been with Him in the 
 course of His ministry recalled well-remembered 
 words and acts of which the marvellous and the 
 supernatural elements were less surprising than 
 the love and graciousness which gave rise to 
 them, they had no doubt whatever that He had 
 come from a higher world than this and, when 
 His work was done, had returned to it. 
 
 Thus, the apprehension of those who first 
 companied with Him moved along this line of 
 srowing knowledge and insight. They knew 
 Tim first as man. It took time to see in Him 
 a personality of which the visible manhood was 
 at once the veil and the expression, now dis- 
 closing, now hiding the true self. But time 
 alone would not have sufficed to reveal Him. 
 
 — 
 
APPREHENSION OF CHRIST GRADUAL 141 
 
 Men saw in the Theophanies, which form so 
 characteristic a feature of Old Testament 
 religion, an intimation that God was very near 
 to His people, and that they might look for 
 “ greater things than these.” The question 
 asked by Solomon at the dedication of the 
 temple, ‘* Will God indeed dwell on the earth ?”* 
 seems to have haunted the minds of devout 
 people, and helped to attune them to a state of 
 expectancy which the Gospels clearly indicate.+ 
 
 We have to take account of this condition of 
 things if we are to understand what the first 
 Christians thought of Christ and—what is even 
 more important—the light in which He claimed 
 to be regarded by them. It prepared men for a 
 disclosure. It enabled them to see that the 
 perfection of human nature, as they recognized 
 it in all that He said and did, could not explain 
 the secret of His personality. He was man, 
 indeed—man at his best; but, as we shall try to 
 show, while they felt this, they realized that 
 manhood could not account for heights and 
 depths of character that now and again revealed 
 themselves, nor for self-disclosures of His own 
 which, though they proceeded from the lowliest 
 of men, seemed to place Him on the throne of 
 God. 
 
 * I Kings ‘viii. 27. 
 Tt St. Luke iii. 15 (of St. John iv. 25, 29). 
 
142 JESUS CHRIST 
 We shall therefore proceed to enquire: 
 
 I. What Christ said about Himself; what 
 He claimed to be. 
 II. What His first followers thought and 
 believed about Him. 
 
 I. It is very generally admitted that Christ 
 regarded Himself as the subject of prophecy, and 
 as the Messiah for whom His people had waited, 
 with varying degrees of expectancy, through 
 the greater part of their history.* If He had 
 not done so, it would be difficult to explain the 
 extreme importance which the Apostles attached 
 to the proof that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth 
 was none other than the looked-for Messiah.y7 
 
 But our Lord put forth a higher and a wider 
 claim than that of being the Jewish Messiah. 
 He styled Himself “Son of Man.” Whatever 
 may be the precise value and meaning of this 
 self-chosen title—a question much debated— 
 there is little doubt that Christ adopted it in 
 preference to ‘ Messiah,” not in order to reject 
 the latter title—for that He never did—but 
 because the latter title was too much involved 
 in the political and mundane aspirations of the 
 Jewish people. He Who came to save the world 
 was the crown and glory, not merely of a separate 
 
 * St. Mark xiv. 61, 62; St. Matt. xxvi. 64. 
 + Acts ii. 36; iii. 15, 18; vii. 52. 
 
SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD 143 
 
 nation, but of mankind as a whole: “ the Son of 
 Man,” at once the offspring and (to use a later 
 term) the representative, in His own Person, of 
 the whole race. 
 
 So far we have not gone outside the limits 
 of pure humanity in our statement of Christ’s 
 claim to be Messiah and “Son of Man.” But 
 He made a far greater demand on the faith and 
 allegiance of men. It is quite certain that He 
 thought of Himself as “ Son of God ”’ in the sense 
 of an unique relationship shared by no one else. 
 This appears from the expression, “ My Father.” 
 He makes a sharp distinction in speaking to His 
 disciples between “My Father” and “ your 
 Father.”* There is the same connection in 
 name and in the exercise of paternal love, but 
 a whole world of difference in the inner and 
 essential relationship. 
 
 In the one case, Sonship is due to creation and 
 adoption; in the other, it is a necessary element 
 of the Godhead, an eternal relationship, so that 
 God has always been Father as the original 
 source of all being, and Son in respect to its 
 expression. For perfect love and goodness must 
 find an outlet for its exercise; hence the fact of 
 the Eternal Son, who, though said to “ go forth ” 
 from the Father, to be “sent” by Him, is yet 
 
 * Of. St. Matt. vi. 1, 14, 15, 26 with St. Matt. xviii. 10, 
 19, 35; St. John viii. 19, 28, 38, 54. 
 
144 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 ever with Him,* bound by the spirit of love and 
 unity, the Holy Spirit, who thus forms a third 
 ‘Person ” in that Divine Society which is God. 
 
 But we gather that our Lord made this claim 
 to be in an unique sense Son of God, not only 
 by inference from His use of terms, but from His 
 express declaration. Challenged at the supreme 
 crisis of His career, as He stood before the Council, 
 ** Art Thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed ?”’ 
 He said, ““ILam.” It was on the resulting charge 
 of “blasphemy” that He was condemned. f 
 There is the same consent to the application of 
 the title in His reply to the confession of St. Peter 
 at Caesarea, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of 
 the living God ”’; “ Flesh and blood hath not 
 revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is 
 in heaven.”’{ It implies full assent to the truth 
 conveyed, irrespective of the question whether 
 St. Peter was conscious of the full meaning of 
 his words. 
 
 In the triple Synoptic accounts of the Baptism 
 and the Transfiguration we have the testimony 
 
 * St. John i. 1, rpds rdv Ocdr, “¢ourné ou dirigé vers 
 Dieu,” J. Réville, Le Quatr. Hvang., p. 98. 
 
 7 St. Mark xiv. 61, 62; St. Matt. xxvi. 63-66. 
 
 { St. Matt. xvi. 16,17 (cf St. Mark viii. 29). Christ con- 
 firms the relation in which St. Peter acknowledges that He 
 stands to God with the words, “‘ My Father which is in 
 
 heaven,” an indication of the priority of the Matthean 
 source of the incident. 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS OF HIS SONSHIP 145 
 
 of the Eternal Father. In each case Jesus is 
 acknowledged as “‘the beloved Son.”* ‘There 
 can be no question that this voice from heaven, 
 confirming the verdict of His own consciousness 
 of Sonship, as it was gradually developed in the 
 course of His experience of life, was intended to 
 be, and actually was, a message of strength and 
 comfort to the human heart of Jesus—an external 
 sanction to the movements and impulses of His 
 own spirit as it responded to the Father’s love. 
 
 This consciousness of a divine and unique 
 Sonship made itself felt in several ways. 
 
 He speaks as one who is perfectly at home 
 with all the mysteries of the Godhead. His 
 knowledge of the Father is on a complete equality 
 with the Father’s knowledge of Himself, and this 
 is the ground of His capacity to be “ the perfectly 
 sure revealer of the whole wealth of divine 
 mysteries.” He speaks, not merely as a man 
 singularly possessed by the Holy Spirit, but, if 
 we accept the assurance of the disciple who 
 knew Him best, as “God only begotten, He 
 
 * The term dyaryntos appears to mean “only.” Cf. 
 Gen. xxil. 2 (Ixx.). 
 
 + Dalman, ‘“ D. Worte Jesu,” p. 232; vide St. Matt. x1. 27; 
 St. Luke x. 22, a passage derived from the earliest Gospel 
 source, “‘Q.” It tends to prove the authentic character 
 of the type of saying which the Fourth Gospel attributes to 
 
 Christ, ‘‘ He that seeth Me, seeth Him that sent Me,” and 
 others similar (St. John xii. 45; xiv. 9). 
 
146 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Who is in the bosom of the Father.”* He is thus 
 the exclusive bearer of revelation. All our 
 knowledge of God comes through Him. His 
 authority is original and it is supreme, for it is 
 that of God Himself. He is “the Truth.” All 
 heaven lay open to Him. Hence, all that He 
 said of life and death, of God and man and 
 man’s salvation, was said out of the fulness of 
 knowledge. Christ as the teacher of divine 
 things was infallible. “We speak,” He says 
 of Himself and those taught by Him, “ that we 
 do know, and testify that we have seen.”} If 
 He were not sure and unerring, He could be no 
 guide to the wandering soul of man. We should 
 still be waiting for one who could speak the 
 decisive word on human life and destiny. 
 
 Tn all things pertaining to His mission from 
 the Father He was infallible, unerring. But 
 infallibility is not the same thing as omniscience. 
 Though He came from God He lived here as man 
 and, with His humanity, He accepted certain 
 limitations on the full exercise of all His divine 
 powers. He expresses surprise and He asks 
 questions, clearly for the purpose of obtaining 
 information.t He used the language of His 
 time, or He would not have been understood. 
 
 * St. John i. 18, according to the true reading. 
 T St. John iii. 2. 
 t St. Mark vi. 38; viii. 5, and parallels; St. John xi. 34. 
 
CHARACTER OF HIS KNOWLEDGE 147 
 
 It is a mistake to expect from Him decisions 
 on literary or scientific matters that would be 
 in advance of the current thought. There is no 
 trace in the Gospels of any willingness to relieve 
 men of trouble by forestalling the results of 
 study and inquiry, or to provide them with a 
 royal road to learning. There were many things 
 of which He Himself was ignorant, as His 
 questions show. He had one end in view when 
 He came among us—the glory of God in the 
 salvation of man; and for this His knowledge 
 and His authority were complete and _ all- 
 sufficing. 
 
 But nothing discloses the Deity of the Lord 
 Jesus so clearly as the wonderful assumptions 
 which permeate His teaching. Himself‘ a man of 
 sorrows and acquainted with grief,” accepting 
 without a murmur the place between two thieves 
 which the world assigned to Him, “ meek and 
 lowly of heart,” as He owned Himself to be, He 
 speaks, when He has cause, as from the very 
 throne of God. To what order of being do you 
 assion one who can look a whole sorrowing, 
 sinning world in the face and say, “ Come unto 
 Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and 
 I will give you rest ’?* Surely if to that of 
 manhood merely, even at its best and highest, 
 you must be repelled by the effrontery of the 
 
 * St. Matt. xi. 28. The “I” is emphatic in the Greek. 
 
148 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 saying. Yet, from all you know of Him, that 
 is a position in which you cannot acquiesce; and 
 the experience of all who have taken Him at His 
 word will uphold you. Or, again, what is the 
 status before God and men of one who, looking 
 forward to the Day of Judgment, when the Son of 
 Man shall come in His glory, proclaims that the 
 decisions of that day will turn on one thing—our 
 service, or lack of service, to Himself in the 
 persons of His “ brethren.’’ Here, too, the 
 thought of mere manhood, exalted to however 
 high a degree of excellence, is hopelessly in- 
 adequate. The idea shocks. It is safe to say 
 that a religion based on claims such as these, if 
 put forward within the ranks of mere humanity, 
 would not have outlived the generation which 
 was deluded by them. Nothing so revolts our 
 sense of what is right and fitting as the inordinate 
 pretensions of an overweening pride. But of this 
 we can detect no sign in the bearing of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 And here we touch on another characteristic, 
 which is quite inexplicable if He was no more 
 than man. Always, as we follow His footsteps, 
 there steals upon us the conviction that here is 
 one who is without sin. Twice, at least, He 
 makes this claim.* “For Him, all men are 
 sinners; He has no wounded conscience. They 
 
 * St. John. viii. 46; xiv. 30. 
 
SINLESSNESS 149 
 
 need repentance and forgiveness; He does not.”* 
 But to be sinless is not to be without capacity 
 to feel for the sinner and to enter into his case. 
 Already, before His ministry began, Christ had 
 been brought face to face with sin. Temptation 
 had assailed Him, and continued to do so all 
 through. He knew, as none other, the awful 
 nature of what, in its excess, is a “ departing 
 from the living God.’+ But it remained out- 
 side. His inner life was untouched. His human 
 will, free to yield, stands firm. No discord mars 
 the serenity of His bearing. The sins that He 
 denounces—and who is so unsparing as He in 
 face of the hypocrisy and hardness which block 
 every avenue of grace ?—are without Him. 
 Between the Reprover and the reproved there 
 is a difference which cannot be bridged. The 
 sinless Son of God and the sinner in his sin are 
 in this wide as the poles apart. Goodness is the 
 
 possession of God alone.t And this Christ 
 ~ claims to share. 
 
 * Von Soden, “ Die wichtigsten Fragen,” p. 91. 
 
 + Heb. iii. 12. 
 
 + St. Mark x. 18 has been interpreted to mean a repudia- 
 tion of moral perfection by Christ (Pfleiderer, Weidel, 
 etc.). It is nothing ofthe sort. Our Lord will take no idle 
 compliment. Goodness in its perfection is the property oi 
 God alone. ‘‘ Why callest thou Me good ?’”’ The question 
 
 is to make the young ruler think. It draws his attention 
 to the Person with whom he is conversing, like those other 
 
150 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Now, in all these self-disclosures there is con- 
 fessedly a spirit of assertiveness which is quite 
 unparalleled in history. No one else has put 
 forward such claims among the sons of men. 
 They cannot be explained away. They lie em- 
 bedded in the oldest Gospel sources, and as soon 
 as the men who first heard and wondered at them 
 have organized themselves into a Church, 
 charged with a commission to go and make them 
 known to all the world, it is Christ and these 
 clams of His that form the staple of their 
 preaching, His Name into which their converts 
 are baptized. How is this to be accounted for 2 
 History is the grave of hollow pretensions by 
 whomsoever they are put forward. But history 
 has given its sanction, and admitted that the 
 claims are well founded; while the Church points 
 to them as the ground of her existence, and goes 
 on her way with the song: “Thou art the King 
 of Glory, O Christ; Thou art the Everlasting Son 
 of the Father.” He has been taken at His word. 
 No demand of faith and allegiance put forth 
 by Him has been refused. We ask again, Howis 
 this to be accounted for ? 
 
 UIA Gee ecneraeartere ee 
 questions, “Whom do men say that I am 2” (St. Mark 
 vill. 27), “ What think ye of Christ 2?” (St. Matt. xxii. 42), 
 He should consider what his words imply if brought to 
 the test of reality. Christ probes the imputation. He 
 nowhere rejects it. 
 
CROSS AND RESURRECTION 151 
 
 Certainly not through the mere impression 
 made upon the first disciples by the character 
 and teaching of Jesus, great as that impression 
 was. Christianity was not built upon the 
 Sermon on the Mount, nor upon the effect of a 
 daily intercourse with a mind of singular purity 
 and elevation. Doubtless the influence of com- 
 panionship with Him formed a necessary step 
 in the attainment of their subsequent. belief. 
 But there was the Cross—that overwhelming 
 catastrophe, for which, as they acknowledge, 
 all His warnings had left them quite unprepared. 
 
 To those who loved Him best it seemed the 
 end of all things. Where now were the claims, 
 the intimations, the veiled allusions which had 
 so perplexed while they attracted them? “ We 
 trusted that it had been He which should have 
 redeemed Israel, and beside all this, to-day is 
 the third day since these things were done.’’* 
 They do not complain—the spell of His presence 
 is still upon them; but they have well-nigh lost 
 all hope. And then comes the Resurrection, 
 with all it meant of vindication of His claims, 
 of confirmation of His teaching, of explanation of 
 His purpose. Then these great sayings were 
 not the ebullitions of a vain, self-centred en- 
 thusiasm. Those acts of healing and of benefi- 
 cence were not the work of one who was playing 
 
 * St. Luke xxiv. 21. 
 
152 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 apart. His trust in God, His constant reference 
 to the Father’s will, His days of labour and 
 nights of prayer, were not so much struggling 
 after effect. He is risen. He has overcome 
 death. And sayings hardly noticed and never 
 understood come back to their minds. Putting 
 together all they had learnt in their daily ex- 
 perience of His companionship—all the humility, 
 with all the majesty of His bearing, His tenderness 
 and His strength, His love of children and His 
 courage and endurance under wrong—putting 
 all these recollections of the past beside the 
 wonder of His re-appearing and the joy of once 
 again beholding Him in His glorified manhood, 
 they own Him Lord and God.* 
 
 II. We cannot stay to trace the steps by which 
 the disciples arrived at this stage of their 
 religious experience. They were rapid in the 
 case of certain elect souls, who had been to 
 school with the prophets and spiritual leaders of 
 their people. Others were slow in apprehension, 
 and were chided for their dulness by the Saviour 
 Himself. 
 
 * St. John xx. 28. 
 
 T Luke xxiv. 25. This double strain of perceptiveness 
 is a stumbling-block to some of the critics, who, thinking 
 that they can find a progressive receptiveness in the Synoptic 
 Gospels, are inclined to doubt the truth of the early con- 
 fessions which are a characteristic feature of the Fourth 
 
THE EARLIEST GOSPEL 153 
 
 But one thing is clear. The belief that Jesus 
 was Christ and Lord and, in a sense shared by 
 no one else, the Son of God was already the 
 possession of the Pentecostal Church when, under 
 the influence of the Holy Spirit, it came forth 
 with its message of salvation. 
 
 The Gospel of the Apostolic Church—the 
 “ good tidings ”’ that it proclaimed to the world— 
 was from the first the Gospel of a divine Saviour. 
 We can call two witnesses to prove this allega- 
 tion: the preaching of St. Peter on and shortly 
 after the Day of Pentecost, and the conviction 
 of St. Paul that his teaching in no wise differed 
 from that of the primitive Apostles.* To 
 St. Peter, whose thought is dominated by the 
 effect of the Resurrection, Christ is ‘‘ the Prince of 
 life’; “He is Lord of all’; “ both Lord and 
 Christ.”— We may be sure that when engaged, 
 after Pentecost with showing that “the Son 
 of the living God” was identical with Jesus of 
 
 Gospel. As a matter of fact, the quickness of apprehension 
 recorded by St. John rests on evidence quite as secure as 
 that of the slowness of perception to which the Synoptists 
 bear witness. “The idea of progress, when allowed to 
 dominate the mind, is as fatal to the formation of sound 
 judgments in historical theology as in other matters.’’ 
 With the early receptiveness of St. John the Baptist and 
 Nathanael compare that of Simeon as recorded by St. Luke. 
 
 * Gal. ii. 2, 9. 
 
 { Acts iii. 15; x. 36; 11. 36. 
 
154 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 Nazareth, he did not go back upon his con- 
 fession at Caesarea Philippi.* To St. Peter 
 Christ is Lord, a title applied in the Book of Acts 
 both to God the Father and to the Son. 
 
 St. Paul came into this heritage of faith at 
 his conversion, a year or two after the Resur- 
 rection. It was the same Gospel that he began 
 to preach: “I delivered unto you first of all 
 that which also I received.”+ When he came 
 to compare notes with those who were in Christ 
 before him, and “‘ communicated unto them that 
 Gospel ”’ which he had been preaching, they had 
 nothing to say against it, for they gave him ~ 
 “the right hands of fellowship.”t He claims 
 to have received his Gospel “ by the revelation 
 of Jesus Christ,” and to be indebted for it to no 
 man.§ But the pomt to be emphasized is the 
 complete agreement of his own Gospel with 
 that of the earlier Apostles. Now we have every 
 means of knowing what St. Paul’s Gospel was. 
 One outstanding feature of it was the divine 
 personality of the Redeemer. Therefore, in 
 
 * St. Matt. xvi. 16; St. Luke ix. 20. It is untrue to the 
 evidence to say with A. Meyer that “ to the Jewish primi- 
 tive community Jesus was still a human Messiah.” Lepin 
 is nearer the mark: “ The Christ of the first days of the 
 Church is the Son of God, sharing in the powers and privi- 
 leges of God, the Christ all Divine.” 
 
 AME tha rele ar Dye H t Gal. is. 9; 
 § Gal. i. 12. 
 
ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL 455 
 
 addition to the testimony of St. Peter, we have 
 the witness of St. Paul that the primitive Gospel 
 of the Apostolic Church implied the Godhead of 
 Jesus Christ. It was into this faith, and nothing 
 short of it, that the first converts on the Day of 
 Pentecost and henceforward were baptized. 
 Christian baptism, as soon as it was practised, 
 as it could not be until after the descent of the 
 Holy Spirit, was always in the Name of Jesus, 
 and carried with it the promise of the Spirit. 
 Who this Jesus was St. Peter plainly declares in 
 the first Christian sermon—“ both Lord and. 
 Christ.”* But it is to St. Paul that we owe 
 the first attempts to bring together and to 
 harmonize the different conceptions which attach 
 to the terms “ Jesus” and “Lord” when ap- 
 plied to Christ. He is the earliest New Testament 
 writer to state in clear terms the truth, which 
 St. John tells us was taught by our Lord Himself, 
 of His pre-existence with the Father.f He is the 
 first writer who declares plainly that Jesus is 
 God.{ 
 
 Thus, from the very heart of the earliest 
 Christianity, within a few years of the Cross 
 
 * Actsii. (cf. verse 38 with verse 36). 
 
 { Gal. iv. 4, “ God sent forth His pons Coli He 
 is before all things.” 2 Cor. viii. 9, “ Though He was rich, 
 yet for your sakes He became poor.” 
 
 t Rom. ix. 5; Phil. ii. 6 (cf. Acts xx. 28; Tit. ii. E3). 
 
 12 
 
156 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 and the Resurrection, comes that truth about 
 the Person of our Lord which we connect with 
 His incarnation. In other words, when men 
 had time to think about Him under the guidance 
 and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they at once 
 perceived that He Who had moved among them 
 during His ministry, Who appeared to Saul 
 outside the gates of Damascus, was not merely 
 the flower of humanity, the product of an age- 
 long development, the pride and crown of His 
 race. He was not so evolved from the bosom 
 of humanity that He owed nothing to any force 
 outside of it. On the contrary, His appearance 
 among men was an incursion from another world 
 than this. He ‘‘ was with God” and He “ was 
 God” from all eternity; but “in the fulness of 
 time,” at a certain moment in the procession of 
 the ages, He was “sent forth” from the side 
 of the Father, laying apart the glory which He 
 had with Him “before the world was,” and 
 “took upon Him the form of a servant, and was 
 made in the likeness of men.”* 
 
 It is a great mystery. In the Person of His 
 Son, God has consented to subject Himself— 
 the infinite, eternal God—to the conditions of 
 a finite life in time. In order to lead that life, 
 without ceasing to be what He had ever been, 
 He took to His unchanged divine personality 
 
 * St John xvii. 5; Phil. ii. 7. 
 
THE MYSTERY OF HIS PERSON 157 
 
 human nature. He “was made flesh,” “‘ He 
 emptied Himself” (of His glory). And yet, 
 in this life of humiliation and self-sacrifice, there 
 dwelt in Him “all the fulness of the Godhead 
 bodily.’’* 
 
 This, then, is the answer of the primitive 
 Christian community to the question, “ Who is 
 this ?” EKmbodying the personal experience of 
 the Apostles, taught by the Spirit, confirmed 
 “with signs following,” it is the only answer 
 that has been found to satisfy the conditions 
 under which Christ manifested Himself to the 
 world. He appeared a man among men. 
 Otherwise they could not have consorted with 
 Him. His glory was veiled, withdrawn from 
 sight, or they could not have endured His 
 presence. Yet such was His indissoluble union 
 with the Godhead that He could say, “He that 
 hath seen Me hath seen the Father ”; “ I and My 
 Father are one.’’} Those who looked upon Him 
 saw God. The self, the ego, the personality 
 was divine, made bearable to the society of men 
 by taking to Himself man’s nature, in which He 
 lived a true human life, suffered, died, rose again, 
 ascended, and ever liveth at the right hand of the 
 Father. 
 
 Only gradually did the first Christians arrive 
 
 * Col. ii. 9. 
 7 St. John xiv. 9; x. 30. 
 
158 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 at this conception, compelled to it by facts of 
 their own experience as reasonable beings. 
 Through knowledge of Him as man, they came 
 to see that Manhood failed to furnish a category 
 within which the actualities of His life and 
 character could be contained. He was con- 
 stantly transcending human nature. Not that 
 He ever so acted as to do violence to what is best 
 and greatest in Manhood. But now in a strange 
 word, hardly understood at the time, yet coming 
 back to memory under some spiritual stress or 
 strain; now in an act which showed that all the 
 resources of heaven were at His command; now 
 by a mode of bearing Himself that was quite 
 indefinable, and that attracted while it amazed 
 them,* His followers were led irresistibly to the 
 conviction that in Him they had had to do with 
 one whose inner life lay within the circle of the 
 Godhead. And so they came to worship Him— 
 Him, the lowliest of men—and were not reproved. 
 
 The reconciliation and adjustment of the 
 thoughts which jostled and surged in their 
 minds they did not attempt. They were per- 
 suaded that He was Man, yet more than Man. 
 It was reserved for later times and for subtler 
 intellects to reduce the seemingly incompatible 
 elements of His personality to a system. Even 
 St. Paul, with all his training in Rabbinical 
 
 * St. Mark x. 32. 
 
FAITH OF THE EARLY CHURCH 159 
 
 scholarship, his Greek learning, and his almost 
 unequalled power of thought, if he had the 
 capacity, did not try, to arrange in an ordered 
 whole the constituents of his belief. 
 
 Faith came first, a faith that carried with it 
 every force of heart and will. Theology as a 
 science, a body of reasoned knowledge, was to 
 come later. This order is natural. Appre- 
 hension of separate facts must always precede 
 their co-ordination into the framework of a 
 science. We should not demand from the 
 Church of the first days what it is unreasonable 
 to expect. Believers had their own experiences; 
 they led their life, and they gave forth their 
 message that others might share their certainty 
 and enjoy their peace. “That which we have 
 seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also 
 may have fellowship with us.”’* 
 
 With ourselves in these later days things are 
 different. We have not to work our way pro- 
 gressively from the Manhood to the Godhead 
 in order to know Christ as our Saviour and Lord. 
 We shall have our difficulties if we are serious 
 thinkers. But we enjoy this advantage: in our 
 Baptismal Creed and in every ordinance of our 
 religion, as well as in the completed canon of 
 Scripture, we have the full truth presented for 
 our acceptance. 
 
 * 1 St. John i, 3. 
 
160 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 But that which comes to us on the authority 
 of Church and Bible has to meet the shock of 
 contact with enquiry and criticism carried on 
 under conditions very different from those of 
 the time when the facts and the truths of the 
 Christian Faith were being proclaimed by the 
 Apostolic Church. Historical criticism has 
 become a science, although its rules are con- 
 stantly being set at naught by those who most 
 loudly appeal to it. We have learnt to dis- 
 tinguish the primary and secondary values of 
 the sources underlying our present Gospels. 
 We have found that no great religion can be 
 safely studied in isolation, and without reference 
 to the light thrown upon it by comparison with 
 the other religions with which at any period of 
 its career it has come in touch. 
 
 In view of all this change of method and 
 outlook, it is often asked whether we are justified 
 in holding the Creed of our Fathers with the 
 conviction that it is grounded in Holy Scripture, 
 as well as in the personal experience of holy 
 lives in every age of the Christian Church. 
 
 “The answer is in the affirmative.” The 
 critical study of the documents and the rigid 
 application of new tests to the verdicts of history 
 have only brought out into clearer light the 
 Deity as well as the Manhood of our Lord and 
 Saviour, Jesus Christ. 
 
Vill 
 
 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 By PERCY GARDNER, D.Lrrr. 
 
 Tue foundation of Christian morality has been 
 laid by Jesus Christ Himself so clearly and so 
 strongly that it is beyond doubt or denial. 
 Man, He said, has two duties: First, a duty to 
 God, “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 aaa, 
 second, a duty to man, “Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour as thyself.” These two command- 
 ments are not put side by side as equally im- 
 portant, but an immense stress is laid on the 
 first; it is the great commandment, and the 
 second is but complementary to it—that 1s 
 to say, all morality is to be rooted and grounded 
 in the love of God; even the love of one’s fellows 
 derives from the love of God its power and its 
 sanction. This is very noteworthy. Most 
 ethical writers discuss man’s duties, his duties 
 to his family, to his friends, to his fellow- 
 citizens; and then try to find for such duties 
 a religious ground, to show that the service of: 
 16 
 
162 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 man 1s really a religious service. But there is 
 a deep contrast between the way of the moralist 
 and the way of Jesus in two respects. In the 
 first place, the service of mankind is spoken of 
 by Jesus as an offshoot and a consequence of the 
 service of God; and, in the second place, He 
 tegards all service as only duly carried out when 
 it is rooted and grounded in love—love of God 
 in the first place, and love of man in the second 
 place. 
 
 Thus arose the great feature of the earliest 
 Christian teaching, which has been called by 
 the author of “ Ecce Homo ” the enthusiasm of 
 humanity. It was not so much the love of 
 individuals, or even of humanity, as a love for 
 the divine in every man, and the conviction that 
 everyone, however perverted or degraded, could 
 not wholly lose the divine element in his nature, 
 which was worthy of infinite regard. And this 
 enthusiasm, working like leaven, procured in 
 time the victory of Christianity. 
 
 The precepts of Jesus concern us more in their 
 relation to religion in practice and the ethics of 
 the Church than in relation to their historic 
 setting. But the historic setting also is a matter 
 to be considered. The context shows that both 
 the clauses of His ethical basis are quotations, 
 and meant to be quotations, from the Jewish law, 
 The clauses do not occur together in the books 
 
THE GOD OF ISRAEL 163 
 
 of Moses; one is to be found in Deuteronomy 
 and one in Leviticus, and the putting together 
 of them was, as Mr. Montefiore has pointed out, 
 a brilliant innovation. But the phrase as to 
 the love of God in particular was, in fact, the 
 nearest approach to a creed which Israel ever 
 possessed, and it was constantly repeated at 
 Jewish assemblies, so that it must have been 
 familiar to every hearer. It expressed the 
 fundamental devotion of the race, and its mission 
 in the world, the conviction of a spiritual power 
 in contact with man, a power devoted to righte- 
 ousness, which inspired man with every power 
 and virtue which he possesses—that is, through- 
 out, the line taken in the Jewish Scriptures. It 
 was God or the Divine Spirit who gave strength 
 to Samson and wisdom to Solomon; who put 
 words of power into the mouths of the prophets 
 and valour into the hearts of the warriors of 
 Israel. ‘‘ The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,” 
 was the exclamation of Isaiah. “I was no 
 prophet,” said Amos, “ neither was I a prophet’s 
 son, but I was a herdman and the dresser of 
 sycamore trees; and the Lord took me from 
 following the flock, and the Lord said unto me, 
 Go, prophesy unto My people Israel.” This 
 overshadowing power, this very present help in 
 trouble, was the inspirer of Jewish religion. And 
 love for such a power, a love absorbing every 
 
164 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 human faculty, dominated the leaders of the 
 Jewish race. It finds constant expression in 
 the Psalms: “I will love Thee, O Lord, my 
 strength ”; “ Ye that love the Lord, hate evil ”; 
 ‘‘ My heart and my soul crieth out for the living 
 God.” 
 
 Thus it was no new commandment which the 
 Saviour gave to His Jewish hearers, but it was 
 a new and loftier reading of a commandment 
 with which they were familiar. And no one 
 used to Jewish literature and history could doubt 
 that the love of the deity whom they recognized 
 was intense in the race; that it bore them through 
 innumerable pains and troubles, brought back 
 the nation from exile, sustained it amid bitter 
 persecution, was its salvation and perpetual 
 refuge. 
 
 But there is this to be said about love, that 
 it grows up far more readily and is more easily 
 sustained when the object of it is near and 
 concrete. It was the limitation of the idea of 
 God in Israel, its simplicity and anthropo- 
 morphism, which made love easy. A deity of 
 the tribe and confined to the tribe, a deity who 
 bestows worldly prosperity on his votaries, a 
 deity who is thought of as closely like man 
 himself, may become an object of intense 
 affection even to the most ordinary people. 
 Every Jew felt that if he fell away from Jehovah 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD 165 
 
 he would cease to have any right to exist, would 
 be without help and hope in the world. When 
 the Saviour and His disciples raised the idea of 
 God, so that the power they proclaimed was no 
 longer merely Jewish, no longer merely anthro- 
 pomorphic, but the creator and preserver of the 
 world and all who dwell in it, the love of God 
 became less easy, less simple, and the reaching 
 up to it more difficult and far higher from the 
 spiritual point of view. 
 
 If, then, we accept the general view of 
 morality set forth by the Founder of Christianity, 
 what does it imply ? In the first place, what 1s 
 this love of God, which is to be the basis and 
 spring of action? What the love of our fellow- 
 men is we all know in greater or less degree, 
 for every man who is not a monster or a 
 demon cherishes love for some person or other. 
 But the love of God! Is it not some exalted 
 state, reached perhaps by a few saints, but 
 quite beyond the reach of those who mingle 
 daily with the world, who have their living to 
 make, who go on from day to day in a routine 
 which is not of their own choosing, but which is 
 fixed by the society in which they dwell? One 
 can think of the love of God as a predominant 
 motive in the case of St. John, St. Francis, 
 Thomas 4 Kempis, Father Damien among the 
 lepers. One can think of such men as these as 
 
166 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 constantly inspired and lifted up by a love of 
 God so pure and so urgent that it had become 
 to them a second nature, and they lived in it ag 
 an atmosphere to breathe. If they lost it, they 
 would be like shells from which the kernel has 
 been taken, like corpses from which the vital 
 breath has departed. But we are not of that 
 kind, nor capable of such a noble transfiguration. 
 
 Yet it is quite clear that when the Saviour 
 spoke as He did of the love of God, He was not 
 addressing or thinking of such rare and ex- 
 ceptional souls. He was addressing a throng of 
 very ordinary Jews, an audience of average 
 people such as might be found in the streets or — 
 in Hyde Park. Not that He came down to their 
 level, or diluted the pure spirituality of His 
 teaching to the thinness of daily life. But 
 clearly He intended His words for them, thought 
 that they bore a meaning for each of them, and 
 that each could appreciate that meaning if he 
 chose seriously to try to grasp it. He was 
 stating fundamental facts of human life and 
 conduct—facts not obvious, but certainly true— 
 the truth of which would appear to all who 
 reflected. The love of God, of which He spoke in 
 language so calm and deliberate, was not out 
 of the reach of all but a few people of highly 
 spiritual nature, but at the door of every heart 
 and close to the spring of every will. 
 
THE LOVE OF GOD 167 
 
 That love is the most potent of all urgings 
 towards action is a simple fact of psychology. 
 Everyone knows how easily any deed is done 
 when love prompts it. This is true in everyday 
 life. We may help our friends from a con- 
 scientious principle, but we can do so with 
 infinitely greater ease and far greater eflect 
 when we desire to please one we love. In the 
 case of moral conduct also, if we act from a 
 motive of love we are far more efficient and far 
 happier. We may call to mind a memorable 
 saying in “ Eece Homo”: “No heart is pure 
 which is not passionate; no virtue is safe which 
 is not enthusiastic.” 
 
 But Jesus transformed the love which the 
 better sons of Israel bore to God by infinitely 
 raising and expanding the idea of God. He made 
 a new revelation of God by showing His followers 
 that God was infinitely worthy of being loved, 
 and thus Jesus laid the foundation of a new 
 religion. He proclaimed that we should love 
 God because God first loved us, that the Father 
 in heaven is the source of every good, and that 
 His providence watches over every moment of 
 our lives. And, further, the life of the Saviour 
 on earth was a practical exemplification of the 
 love of God; ‘‘ God was in” Him “ reconciling 
 the world to Himself.” The doctrine of the 
 Incarnation was worked out and put into words 
 
168 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 at a later time, but it was built upon the love 
 of Jesus for men, His suffering and dying for 
 men, His revelation of God as the only object 
 of the highest phase of love. And the love of 
 mankind was in the life of the Saviour so closely 
 blended with the love of God that it grew with 
 it as two plants may grow from one root. 
 
 But let us turn from the primitive revelation of 
 Christianity to the Spirit of Christ as working 
 in the modern world of thought and action. 
 What does the love of God mean for us ? 
 
 There are two radically different ways of 
 regarding what the Greeks called the ecumené— 
 the world of our fellow-men. The first is the 
 way of secularity, which regards it as the sum 
 of virtue to improve the physical and social 
 conditions of the society in which we live. The 
 secularist places the love of one’s neighbour at 
 the apex of virtue, and considers that to help 
 him is the whole of morality. The first precept 
 of Jesus, to love God more than one’s neighbour, 
 he sets aside as either an unmeaning phrase or 
 as a pernicious perversion, the invention of 
 priests and visionaries. 
 
 The immediate results of thus turning the 
 eyes of conduct from heaven to earth, of giving 
 up the divine sanction and the ideal character 
 of goodness, are visible enough in the modern 
 world wherever we turn our eyes. Such re- 
 
OPPOSED TO SECULARISM 169 
 
 striction is openly defended by the secularist 
 moralists. Mr. Belfort Bax, for example, 
 writes: ‘‘ According to Christianity, regeneration 
 must come from within. The ethics and religion 
 of modern socialism, on the contrary, look for 
 regeneration from without, from material con- 
 ditions, and a higher social life.’ There is the 
 contrast in a nutshell. The secularist thinks 
 that morality can be established by legislation ; 
 that strikes are the chief means for securing the 
 happiness of the proletariate; that State regula- 
 tions as to housing and drainage and hygiene 
 will produce not only a healthy but a happy 
 people. The Christian thinks that God is the 
 Source of all good, and that it is by working with 
 God that man can improve his surroundings, 
 first by striving for what is just and kindly in 
 thought and action, and as a result in improving 
 physical conditions also. 
 
 We may see by observation how the secularist 
 principle, in setting the love of our neighbour 
 before, and in the place of, the love of God, 
 tends by an inevitable law of human nature to 
 the degradation and demoralization of a society. 
 For it sets aside ideals, shuts out the view of the 
 infinite heaven above us, and makes us look 
 with the eyes of practical materialism on the 
 lives of people about us. Thus, more and more 
 the visible and concrete—that which can be seen 
 
170 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 and measured—becomes the one standard of 
 conduct. One sees that better houses, more 
 palatable food, more provision for ease and 
 enjoyment, are the things which men most 
 obviously desire and strive for. Social service 
 becomes the systematic effort to improve the 
 outside of men’s lives. And since all these things 
 can be provided by money, the search for it 
 becomes the one absorbing object of life. Aftera 
 while, even the ends are lost sight of in struggling 
 for the means by which they can be attained. 
 Everyone is battling eagerly for wealth: the 
 meaner souls that they may spend it on their 
 pleasures; the nobler souls that they may pro- 
 mote the physical well-being of their friends, 
 their class, or it may be their town and their 
 country; and in the battle for wealth, one after 
 another the ideal purposes of life are set aside 
 and disregarded. “Is not the life,” said Jesus, 
 “ more than meat, and the body than raiment 2” 
 But in the struggle for wealth, men will easily 
 disregard their bodies and their lives. The 
 community is beset on the one side by the 
 reckless and devastating competition of capl- 
 talists, and on the other by the hard selfishness 
 of trades unions, which pursue their ends in 
 complete disregard of the general good. Hence, 
 an utter eclipse of real values and universal 
 striving for material advantages. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD 171 
 
 One of the earliest recorded sayings of the 
 Saviour, when He was hungering almost to 
 death, is, “Man shall not live by bread alone, 
 but by every word which proceedeth out of the 
 mouth of God.” And all the rest of His ministry 
 was devoted to the setting forth of the will of 
 God, the doing of which is as necessary to man’s 
 real life as the bread is to the body. He taught 
 that there exists, around and beneath the visible 
 world, an ideal realm where God’s will prevails, 
 where righteousness and beauty and truth are 
 the dominant principles; and that it is the 
 primary duty of every man to do something to 
 realize that world upon earth, to transmute the 
 visible order of society into an ideal order, to 
 bring down the city of God on to the earth. 
 And as love is the source and origin of all life in 
 the world, so the love of God, He taught, is 
 the source of all higher and ideal purpose. It is 
 only by loving the divine ideas that we can 
 be stirred up to work for them, to suffer for 
 them, to live in them. Only by such love do 
 men become united to God, and through God 
 to all men who love and live for the Kingdom. 
 
 But in reality the love of God, thus interpreted, 
 belongs not only to the lofty spiritual natures, 
 the mystics of the cloister, but in a greater or 
 less degree to everyone who has in him the least 
 
 spark of spirituality. Even the secularist 
 13 
 
172 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 moralists, whatever they may say, do, in fact, 
 usually accept ideals. They do not really be- 
 lieve that man can live by bread alone. Every 
 touch of unselfish devotion has really in it 
 something of the ideal. When a son or daughter 
 accepts a more painful or a more narrowly 
 limited kind of life in order that he may save 
 a parent, he acts not merely for the love of that 
 parent, but also for the love of God, even though 
 he may not in words recognize God. When an 
 artist refuses to be content with mere con- 
 formity to the popular taste, but endures penury 
 in order to strive after the ideal in art, he shows 
 that he loves God. When a man of science 
 “ scorns delights and lives laborious days,” and 
 even ruins his health, in order that he may learn 
 more of the secrets of nature, he shows that he 
 loves the God who is behind nature. When a 
 lover sets aside the passion which burns in him 
 in order that he may meet a call of duty, or in 
 order that he may avoid any degradation or 
 defilement of the loved one, he works by a higher 
 love than human, and does something to bring 
 in the Kingdom of God on earth. The call of 
 the Kingdom is constantly sounding in every 
 life, and in every day of our lives we are helping 
 or hindering its appearance. 
 
 It is very likely that many or most men, 
 when they are moved towards the higher life 
 
LOWER AND HIGHER MOTIVE 173 
 
 by the urging of the ideal, would deny that they 
 acted for the love of God, but put forward some 
 far more trivial and mundane motive. This is 
 the way especially with Englishmen, who in 
 their quiet, inexpressive way look askance at 
 all profession of high motives, and regard such 
 profession as a mark of priggishness or of 
 hypocrisy. Many of the men who were really 
 swayed by high motives when they threw up 
 professional prospects and the most cherished 
 hopes of their lives to undergo the bitter hard- 
 ships and cruel dangers of the Great War would, 
 if asked why they had done so, merely say: “I 
 wanted to do my share.” “I could not hold 
 back when others came forward.” “I am not 
 a cur.” In old days people spoke of hypocrisy 
 as the homage paid by vice to virtue; but with 
 us hypocrisy is often the homage paid by virtue 
 to convention. We are so shy and s0 averse 
 from boasting that we English constantly repre- 
 sent our motives as lower than they really are. 
 But we must try to look beyond lofty preten- 
 sions on one side, and cynical disparagements 
 on the other, into the truth of things. And if 
 we do so, we shall see that men cannot give up 
 what they greatly desire, or undertake what they 
 bitterly dislike, without some urgent motive. 
 And all, except the thoroughly sordid, have 
 beneath the surface a spring of idealism. When 
 
174. THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 they see clearly the ways leading upwards and 
 downwards they will usually choose the former. 
 “We needs,” says Tennyson, “ must love the 
 highest when we see it.” ‘T’o many or most men, 
 probably, the leading of the ideal would be 
 represented by the thought of those whose 
 opinion they valued; they would see the ideal 
 reflected in human friends. But this does not 
 really alter the case. When we walk by moon- 
 light, we really walk by sunlight reflected from 
 the moon. 
 
 The Founder of Christianity, in nearly all 
 His utterances, contented Himself with stating 
 the great underlying truths of religion. He did 
 not attempt to apply them to practice, so as 
 to form a moral code for conduct. In the eyes 
 of Jews and Mohammedans it is a great defect 
 of Christianity that the Founder did not draw 
 up any scheme of duties or lay down any 
 definite rules. The Mosaic books and the Koran 
 contain a quantity of rules and regulations for 
 daily life, rules which every adherent of the 
 founders is bound to keep unless he would 
 become a renegade. Undoubtedly the absence 
 of an ethical code in the Gospels does make 
 Christianity a more difficult religion for weaker 
 brethren. But, on the other hand, it makes 
 the religion capable of an infinite development, 
 a constant adaptation to the temperament of 
 
A SPIRITUAL ESSENCE 175 
 
 nations, of Churches, and of individuals. It was, 
 as it was first preached, an essence which had 
 to be diluted before it became fit for general 
 preaching and acceptance. It was a spiritual 
 religion, which might be embodied in more than 
 one religion of authority or institution. And 
 if the Founder had departed and left His deposit 
 of teaching to be adapted to the conditions of 
 the world by the unaided work of His followers, 
 or of various groups of followers, the flowing 
 spring of Christianity might have been divided 
 into innumerable little channels, which might 
 soon have disappeared in the sands. But the 
 Spirit of Christ worked in the world after the 
 visible Christ had departed, worked as a con- 
 stantly active leaven, transmuting all values, 
 conquering all opposing forces, establishing in 
 the world a visible Church which carried on the 
 work of the Founder and remoulded society. 
 The Church was never really undivided; from 
 the beginning there were visible diflerent 
 tendencies, and even when most at unity in itself 
 the Church was never infallible. It suffered 
 from all sorts of human frailties and short- 
 comings; it very soon became contaminated 
 by the world which it was leavening; it suffered 
 from want of wisdom, want of courage, want of 
 charity. But, on the whole, it kept burning in 
 all ages the torch which the Founder had lighted. 
 
176 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 The divinely kindled enthusiasm was never 
 wholly wanting, even in the darkest period of 
 the Middle Ages. 
 
 The first to set seriously about adapting the 
 pure spiritual teaching of the Saviour to the 
 frame of mundane society was St. Paul. St. Paul 
 had probably never seen Jesus in the flesh, nor 
 heard Him speak; yet he was inspired by Christ 
 to develop and adapt the spirit of His teaching. 
 For him also the love of God was the root and 
 ground of all goodness, and the Christian code 
 of morals, which he was the first to draw up, 
 arose from the application of the spirit of Christ 
 to the conditions of life in the social world. 
 St. Paul, whether we regard his spiritual en- 
 thusiasm, his keenness of intellect, or his practical 
 good sense, was one of the greatest men of genius 
 who ever lived. But his genius was shown, not 
 by the promulgation of an entirely new scheme 
 of duty and ethics, but by the adoption of what 
 was best in the world of the time, and baptizing 
 it into Christ, transmuting it by the Spirit of 
 Christ into something of a higher type. The 
 domestic and private morality of the Jews was, 
 at the time, at a far higher level than that of 
 the Gentile world; and it was therefore natural 
 that St. Paul should build on Jewish foundations. 
 It has been the domestic and family morality 
 of the Jews which has preserved the nation amid 
 
 ———— 
 
ADAPTATION BY ST. PAUL 177 
 
 the terrible persecutions which the race has 
 endured. And it is St. Paul’s adaptation of that 
 morality which has preserved Christian society 
 from the laxity in sexual and social affairs which 
 brought about the ruin of the ancient world. 
 But it could not have exercised this saving 
 influence if it had not been based upon the love 
 of the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Stoicism, 
 the highest morality of the Graeco-Roman world, 
 never had much influence beyond a narrow circle 
 of the enlightened. But the Pauline morality 
 was adapted to all classes. 
 
 Of course, St. Paul, in his practical rendering 
 of the precept, “ Thou shalt love thy neighbour 
 as thyself,” was not infallible. Indeed, he 
 expressly disclaims all infallibility. And in some 
 respects, according to modern thinking, he made 
 mistakes by supposing that the existing social 
 conditions—slavery, for example—were per- 
 manent, whereas they were defective and 
 transient. But the world’s debt to him is 
 enormous. On his foundations the Christian 
 Church by degrees built up a system of morals, 
 which, however defective, is incomparably the 
 best which has ever been put forward. At the 
 Reformation no great changes were wrought in 
 it; it was the Roman venality and materialism 
 against which the great reformers revolted. 
 There were in those days revolts against Christian 
 
178 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 ethics; but they were local and partial, and they 
 were put down by the general voice of the 
 Churches, Roman and Reformed. To-day there 
 is a much wider, if a less definite, revolt against 
 Christian morality, a revolt which has for the 
 moment gained the upper hand in Russia, and 
 which is strong in all the countries of Europe. 
 But up to now its power has only been critical 
 and solvent; it has never succeeded in setting 
 up a new system of ethics, and, in fact, has never 
 seriously tried to do so. It has assumed that 
 if the old landmarks of morality are removed, 
 an ideal state of things will immediately ensue. 
 This is, of course, a delusion, almost an insanity. 
 One cannot venture to say that it is not possible 
 that some un-Christian frame of society may 
 hereafter be discovered which may endure, but 
 it is fair to say that no frame as yet suggested 
 would have the least chance of endurance. All 
 the new Utopias are built up, as was the first and 
 greatest of them, in Plato’s Republic, without 
 any due regard to the essential facts of human 
 nature; and they can no more stand than a 
 house can stand which should be built in disregard 
 of the law of gravity. “Every plant,” said 
 Jesus, “which My heavenly Father hath not 
 planted shall be rooted up.” And so it has 
 proved in every age. All attempts at a non- 
 religious scheme of ethics have been overwhelmed 
 
LITERAL ACCEPTANCE 179 
 
 by degeneration and decay. The most notable 
 of them, the attempt at the French Revolution 
 to put liberty and equality in the place of the 
 service of God, led in a few years to the military 
 tyranny of Napoleon and to a great reaction. 
 Among the conflicting currents which appear 
 on the surface of the troubled ocean of modern 
 ethical tendency one must command, at least, 
 the respect of all Christians. This is the en- 
 deavour to work back to the actual precepts of 
 the Founder of Christianity, and to find in them 
 a remedy for the selfishness and blindness of 
 mankind. In particular, men of blameless 
 character and profound earnestness, especially 
 among the Friends, have turned to the Sermon 
 on the Mount in St. Matthew’s Gospel as a guide 
 in the darkness. Their tendency has been to 
 preach non-resistance of evil; that instead of 
 fighting our enemies we should suffer in patience; 
 instead of punishing crime we should try to 
 convert the criminal by kindness; that we should 
 regard all men, even yellow and black men, as 
 brethren, and make love of all the ruling principle 
 in life. One mentions these enthusiasts with 
 respect, for some of them certainly have gone 
 through suffering for their principles. But their 
 position is one which a little consideration shows 
 to be hopeless. In the first place, they are never 
 consistent. Some of the precepts of the Sermon 
 
180 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 on the Mount they accept; others they simply 
 ignore. They go to prison rather than bear 
 arms; they endure theft rather than appeal to 
 the law; they devote themselves to works of 
 mercy and kindness. They are ready not to 
 resent injuries, but do they give to everyone 
 that asks, and lend to every would-be borrower ? 
 In that case all private property would be 
 doomed. Tolstoy, who had the candour to 
 acknowledge this fact, made over all his property 
 to his wife, who supported him: an obvious 
 subterfuge. Non-resistance of evil and refusal 
 to possess property has been sometimes practised 
 in the world by small and devoted societies. 
 It was accepted by the mendicant orders of the 
 medieval Church, for a short time by the original 
 society of Christians, and long before by the 
 Buddhist monks of India. But to pretend to 
 accept literally the precepts of the Sermon on 
 the Mount, while living in a comfortable house 
 and engaging in business in the world, is a mere 
 self-deception. They are obviously inconsistent 
 with any ordered civil society, unless interpreted 
 with regard to conditions. 
 
 We cannot in this age of the world throw 
 aside the experience of the Christian Church 
 through all its ages of existence, and go back 
 to the simple and child-like surroundings of the 
 first century. Perhaps serious attempts to do 
 
NEED OF INTELLIGENCE 181 
 
 so in any age may help the world by a vision of 
 pure and simple life. But it is much more to 
 the point in the present complex state of society 
 that those who call themselves Christians should 
 in business rigidly observe the laws of honesty 
 and honour, should devote such wealth as comes 
 to them to high and ideal ends, and banish from 
 their homes greed and luxury. Plain living and 
 high thinking with charity will bring men 
 nearer to the spirit of the Master than asceticism 
 and the shirking of duties to society, except in 
 the case of a few devoted souls to whom the way 
 of asceticism may be the road to life. 
 
 In the ethical life of our time there is a thing 
 quite as necessary as good intention and en- 
 thusiasm. That thing is a quiet and impartial 
 intelligence, which will consider in a dry light 
 the results of various courses of conduct in 
 order to determine which are justified. The 
 teaching of the Saviour in the Sermon on the 
 Mount requires as a supplement His teaching 
 that all principles of action must be judged by 
 their fruits. To regard the consequences of 
 beliefs was the Christian way long before it was 
 the way of the Utilitarians. The difference 
 between the Christian and the secularist Utili- 
 tarian is not in method, but in estimate of values. 
 The secularist considers only consequences which 
 can be seen and measured, and which belong to 
 
182 THE ETHICS OF CHRIST 
 
 the outward conditions of life. The Christian 
 believes that life develops from within; that 
 health in the souls of men will produce happiness 
 and a nobler order in society; that it is the 
 striving after the ideal, and not a struggle for 
 the good things of life, which really helps. And 
 although at present the enormous increase of 
 wealth and spread of comfort have given undue 
 advantage to the spirit of materialism, yet it is 
 not in the nature of materialism permanently to 
 satisfy the spirit of man. And we have only to 
 look around us to see to what a quagmire it 
 leads. Setting out to improve the circumstances 
 of life and to produce wider happiness, it only 
 succeeds in enthroning envy, jealousy, and dis- 
 content in our midst. In the last century the 
 hunt for material prosperity was carried on by 
 capitalists without regard to moral considera- 
 tions. The earth far and near was exploited 
 in utter disregard of the claims of other races, 
 and of the degradation and squalor of the town 
 worker. Even slavery was tolerated by most 
 Christian countries. We are reaping the harvest 
 then sown. The pursuit of wealth in disregard 
 of moral considerations has spread to all classes 
 of the community, and has had its natural results 
 in short-sighted egotism, in dislike to steady 
 and honest work, in the conflict of classes and 
 the unsettlement of the financial world. And 
 
 kt eae 
 
PRESENT DANGERS 183 
 
 the enmity and jealousy between nations seems 
 even to be increasing, and threatens to wreck 
 the noble efforts to establish a League of Nations, 
 and to bring in a danger of terrible future wars. 
 The way to a settled order must needs be long 
 and difficult, and can only be followed if our 
 leaders combine wisdom and moderation with 
 a better and kindlier feeling between man and 
 man. 
 
 It is easy to see the perilous condition of the 
 modern world, and it is tempting to try short 
 cuts towards the reconstitution of society. 
 But we have to deal with facts as they are: the 
 consequences of past lines of action cannot 
 be easily set right; rather, they can only be 
 remedied by high idealism combined with steady 
 and persistent study of facts and of human 
 nature. The Christian doctrine, that man is 
 a spiritual being, and that society can only be 
 healthy when it is based on the love of God and 
 man, is eternally true. 
 
 As there is a widespread distrust between 
 classes, so there is a general rebellion against 
 the ethical teaching of the Christian Churches, 
 which is accused of being unreal and out of date. 
 Especially in regard to the morality of sex there 
 is extreme unrest, and a readiness to try reckless 
 experiments. But anyone who considers how 
 the future morality and even the future existence 
 
184 THE ETHICS,;OF CHRIST 
 
 of the race is deeply involved in these matters 
 will be unwilling to upset the family morality 
 laid down by early Christianity, and more or 
 less dominant in Europe ever since, unless it 
 can be clearly shown to be inconsistent with 
 happiness and with human nature. Mere revolt, 
 unless it leads to a new and stable order, can 
 lead to nothing that is good, but may easily lead 
 to race suicide. But these are matters too great 
 and difficult to be dealt with in so slight an essay 
 as the present. They can only be rightly ap- 
 proached by a Christian heart combined with a 
 scientific mind, on the possibility of which 
 combination the future of Europe depends. 
 
IX 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 By HASTINGS RASHDALL, D.D., D.Lirr., D.O.L., LL.D. 
 
 THERE was a time when Christians were disposed 
 to think of morality as a set of rules arbitrarily 
 imposed upon mankind by God, and com- 
 municated to them in a series of supernatural 
 revelations which were to be accepted solely on 
 the evidence of miracles historically proved. 
 This was never in its full extent the view of the 
 greatest minds in the Church. The greatest 
 Christian teachers have all with one consent 
 believed in the existence and authority of 
 conscience. Most of them have recognized 
 the existence in the human mind of a power of 
 seeing for itself what was intrinsically right or 
 wrong. Most of them have believed in the view 
 of Bishop Butler, that there is “‘a superior 
 principle of reflection or conscience in every man 
 which distinguishes between the internal 
 principles of his heart, as well as his external 
 actions: which passes judgment upon himself 
 and them; pronounces determinately some 
 
 actions to be in themselves just, right, good; 
 185 
 
186 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 others to be in themselves evil, wrong, unjust: 
 which, without being consulted, without being 
 advised with, magisterially exerts itself, and 
 approves or condemns him, the doer of them, 
 accordingly.” They have seen in this power a 
 revelation of God’s will, indeed, but not of an 
 arbitrary will. They have taught that God 
 commands things because they are intrinsically 
 right; not that they are right simply because 
 God commands them. ‘ God’s nature,” in the 
 words of the great Anglican theologian Hooker, 
 “is a law to His actions.” Still, in spite of this 
 teaching, there has been at some periods, even 
 among the learned, and there still survives in 
 popular conceptions of Christianity, a disposition 
 to think of Christian morality as consisting In 
 a number of arbitrary rules imposed from 
 without by an external authority like Acts of 
 Parliament or the commands of a General. 
 
 I need not dwell upon the causes which have 
 led to the abandonment of this way of looking 
 at the matter. More and more Christians are 
 disposed to treat revelation in the region of 
 ethics—whether the revelation contained in the 
 deliverances of the ordinary conscience, or the 
 higher degree of revelation which comes through 
 the great teachers and prophets of mankind— 
 as a gradual development and enlightenment of 
 man’s natural, but none the less God-derived, 
 
CONSCIENCE 187 
 
 power of seeing the difference between right 
 and wrong, and to base the authority even of 
 Christ Himself very largely on the supreme and 
 unique appeal which His teaching makes to the 
 heart and conscience of mankind. It would be 
 difficult to find a modern argument for the 
 divinity of Christ which does not make much 
 of the fact that now, after the lapse of nearly 
 two thousand years, the fundamental principles 
 of Christ’s moral teaching appeal to the con- 
 sciences of the best men as no less true than when 
 they were first taught by Him. In the details of 
 morality there has necessarily been continual 
 development, continuous fresh applications to the 
 changing needs and circumstances of successive 
 ages; but when we look back at the most modern 
 developments of Christian ethics, we can see 
 how they are all really implied in the teaching 
 of Christ, and the Christian will be disposed to 
 see in this process a fulfilment of the promise 
 that the Holy Spirit, working in the minds 
 of men, and especially in that society of 
 Christ’s followers which we call the Church, 
 should “take of Mine, and shall declare it 
 unto you.” 
 
 lt is extremely important that we should 
 recognize the necessity of such change and 
 development in the details of morality. If it 
 were claimed that Christ put forward a body of 
 
 14 
 
188 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 detailed rules which should be equally binding 
 upon all men at all times and in all stages of 
 civilization, philosophy and ordinary common 
 sense alike would protest against the possibility 
 of such a code. What im detail any man ought 
 to do in any complication of circumstances must’ 
 depend upon a multitude of conditions, and 
 these conditions are ever changing. It would 
 have been impossible for a teacher who lived 
 in an age which had no hospitals to lay down 
 how much we ought to give to them, to insist 
 upon the observance of sanitary laws at a time 
 when such laws were unknown, or to give rules 
 for the punishment of offences which should be 
 equally suitable to the most barbarous and the 
 most civilized state of society. No rules could 
 deal with the infinite variety of circumstances 
 and social conditions; had such rules been given, 
 they could not have been understood, nor could 
 they well, without a perpetual miracle, have 
 been handed down to us unaltered. No religion 
 which professed to supply such a detailed in- 
 fallible code could possibly have become a 
 universal religion. One of the great qualifica- 
 tions which Christianity possesses for being 
 a universal religion—a religion equally adapted 
 for all times and for all nations—is the 
 fact that its Founder made no such attempt, 
 and confined Himself to laying down a few general 
 
SUPREMACY OF LOVE 189 
 
 principles of life and conduct. All else in His 
 teaching takes the form of illustration or ap- 
 plication to the simplest cases and the circum- 
 stances of His immediate hearers. 
 
 What, then, were these principles? They may 
 all be reduced to the two great rules of love 
 to God and love to one’s neighbour. These rules 
 were not unknown to the Jewish morality of His 
 time. They are laid down in the most legal book 
 of the Jewish Scripture—the Book of Leviticus— 
 and the best of the Rabbis were quite alive to 
 their supreme importance. But the morality 
 taught by the Scribes and Pharisees laboured 
 under two great defects: (1) It was the tendency 
 of Jewish ethics to treat “my neighbour” as 
 meaning—at least, in the full extent—at most 
 “my brother-Jew”’; and (2) the Mosaic law 
 practically put on a level with eternal moral 
 principles a multitude of ceremonial rules—laws 
 about avoiding contact with a corpse, about 
 sacrifices and offerings, about abstaining from 
 certain kinds of food. Our Lord did not positively 
 tell His hearers not to observe these rules; He 
 observed them Himself when they did not 
 interfere with the higher law of love, though not 
 with the punctilious strictness upon which 
 the Pharisees insisted. But He laid down 
 principles which must, when they came to be 
 thoroughly appropriated, lead to the sweeping 
 
190 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 away both of Jewish exclusiveness and of Jewish 
 legalism. “That which entereth the mouth 
 cannot defile the man.” These words contained 
 the death-knell of the whole system of clean 
 and unclean meats which was vital to Pharisaic 
 religion, and constituted the great barrier be- 
 tween it and the Gentile world. It was especially 
 the teaching of St. Paul which brought home 
 to the Church what was really implied in this 
 teaching of its Founder. He taught that the 
 Mosaic law was not binding upon Gentiles at 
 all, and it soon ceased to be observed even by 
 Jewish Christians. 
 
 When we say that all Christian morality can 
 be reduced to these two great principles, it must 
 not be supposed that the value of Christ’s 
 teaching preserved in the Gospels is limited to 
 the bare enunciation of these principles. The 
 value of the Gospels to us consists, not in the bare 
 enunciation of the “‘ Golden Rule,” but in the 
 penetrating originality with which Jesus Christ 
 brought out the full meaning of the rule, the 
 way in which He applied it to the regulation, not 
 merely of outward conduct, but of desire and 
 motive and aspiration, and the thoroughness 
 with which He attacked and pushed aside 
 principles and ideas which were inconsistent 
 with it. The Stoics had taught the duty of 
 universal benevolence, but they never taught it 
 
THE TEACHING OF CHRIST = 191 
 
 with the force and persuasiveness with which 
 it is taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan. 
 Rabbis had taught that love includes forgive- 
 ness, that God is forgiving, and that men should 
 be so too; but they had not taught it so simply 
 and beautifully as Jesus in the parable of the 
 Prodigal Son. Hardly ever, if ever, had it been 
 taught before that, if love is to be universal, it 
 must extend to enemies (whether national or 
 private enemies) as well as friends. We cannot 
 fully appreciate the moral revolution introduced 
 into the world by the teaching of Christ without 
 dwelling in detail upon His most memorable 
 sayings and parables, and on His applications 
 of the great law of love to such matters as the 
 love of enemies, forgiveness, self-sacrifice, the 
 danger of riches, humility, purity, repentance, 
 the duty of making others better as well as 
 happier, the duty of avoiding “ stumbling- 
 blocks,” the danger of hypocrisy. But for this 
 there will be no space in this short essay. Our 
 special subject is the application of Christian 
 morality—that is to say, the fundamental law 
 of universal love—to social problems. And this 
 application may most conveniently be dealt with 
 by discussing briefly some of the objections 
 commonly made to our Lord’s teaching when 
 considered as a practical rule of conduct for 
 modern communities. 
 
192 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 1. The Use of Force——It is often contended, 
 sometimes by Christians—by the Society of 
 Friends, for instance, and in a more consistent and 
 extravagant way by such modern Christians as 
 Count Tolstoy—that Christ intended altogether 
 to forbid the use of force, and that no one can ~ 
 really be a consistent disciple of Christ without 
 condemning all punishment, all war, all re- 
 sistance to force. Is this the true meaning of 
 His teaching? In reply to this question I would 
 say: 
 
 (a) Jesus Christ was an Oriental teacher, and 
 it is natural to an Oriental teaching Orientals 
 to teach by means of paradox, by startling 
 sayings never intended to be taken quite literally 
 or without the modifications, exceptions, reserva- 
 tions which the application of all general precepts 
 to the details of practical life demands. 
 
 (6) It is very easy to show that, in many cases 
 where the literal application of His precepts 
 strikes us as practically inconsistent with the 
 welfare of society as we understand it, He could 
 not have intended this command to be taken 
 literally. We cannot suppose that He who 
 taught that we are to love all men, even our 
 enemies, meant us to take literally the command 
 to hate father and mother. He taught that in 
 certain circumstances to call a man a fool might 
 be as bad as murder, because it might express as 
 
FORCE AND FORGIVENESS 193 
 
 much hatred; yet He is reported on several 
 occasions to have used the very word Himself. 
 He said, “ Resist not the injurious person ”’; 
 yet the “cleansing of the temple” was, in its 
 way, an act of violence. We cannot suppose 
 that, when He spoke of cutting off the offending 
 member, He meant to recommend actual self- 
 mutilation. We must therefore conclude that 
 these paradoxical sayings were not intended to 
 be taken as literal rules of action immediately 
 applicable to the duty of all men in all circum- 
 stances, but as illustrations of the duty of 
 universal love. What He meant to condemn was 
 the spirit of revenge, of personal or anti-social 
 hatred. It is always right to love—.e., to desire 
 the true good of every human being with whom 
 we come into contact. In very many circum- 
 stances love will prescribe the literal forgive- 
 ness of injuries in the sense of submitting to 
 loss, the not exacting of penalties, the returning 
 of good for evil. In other cases the interests 
 of society will demand resistance to illegal 
 violence, the expression of resentment by word 
 or deed, the demand for reparation, legal 
 prosecution. What is the right conduct to be 
 adopted will depend upon the circumstances of 
 the particular case. One of those circumstances 
 is the attitude of the offender. Sometimes our 
 Lord’s own injunction to forgive is qualified 
 
\ 
 
 194 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 by the condition that the offender repents of 
 his wrong, and desires reconciliation: ‘‘ If he 
 repent, forgive him.” The spirit of malice or 
 personal revenge is always wrong. What the 
 injunction to forgive means, when translated 
 into the cold form of formal ethics, is ‘ Act 
 in such a way towards the injurer as will best 
 promote the true good—not the mere maximum 
 pleasure—of the offender himself, and of all 
 those other persons who are no less our neigh- 
 bours.” Sometimes the true good of the offender 
 himself will demand some expression of resent- 
 ment or punishment: much more often that is 
 demanded by the interests of society in general. 
 “ Resentment,” as Bishop Butler puts it, “is 
 not inconsistent with good-will; for one often 
 sees both together in very high degrees, not only 
 in parents towards their children, but in cases 
 of friendship or dependence where there is no 
 natural relation.” “The injured person ought 
 to be aflected towards the injurious person in the 
 same way any good man uninterested in the 
 case would be, if they had the same just sense 
 which we have supposed the injured person to 
 have of the fault, after which there will yet 
 remain real good-will towards the offender.” 
 Butler, perhaps, hardly does justice to the way 
 in which forgiveness—of the most literal kind— 
 touches the heart and conscience of the offender 
 
PUNISHMENT 195 
 
 and moves him to repentance. Nothing appeals 
 to the better side of most men so much as love, 
 and there is no such convincing proof of love 
 as forgiveness of a personal injury—just because 
 it is so hard. 
 
 (c) It is easy to show that in many cases we 
 have to choose between contradicting the letter 
 of these paradoxical commands and proving 
 unfaithful to the spirit of His teaching. To stand 
 by while a ruffian brutally assaults a woman, 
 on the ground that he is a man and a brother, 
 and that we are bound to love him, would be to 
 show the reverse of love to the woman, who is 
 no less our sister. Habitually to allow criminals 
 to go unpunished would be very bad for the 
 criminals themselves. Christ always put moral 
 well-being above mere pleasure and _self-in- 
 dulgence; and such a policy would be injurious, 
 and therefore unloving, to thousands of persons, 
 no less our brethren, who would suffer if such 
 indulgence should become universal. I assume 
 that punishment must, from the Christian point 
 of view, be remedial or medicinal, preventive 
 or reformatory, not retributive. The “ retri- 
 butive theory of punishment ”’ seems to me to 
 be wholly opposed to the spirit of Christ’s 
 teaching, as it is to the enlightened conscience of 
 mankind, though it is frequently defended even 
 at the present day by some philosophers and 
 
196 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 by theologians anxious to bolster up “ theories 
 of the Atonement” which have no foundation 
 in the teaching of Christ. 
 
 2. The Question of War—KtUxactly the same 
 principles which justify punishment within the 
 State justify the waging of war by one State 
 against another in certain circumstances. So 
 long as no international tribunals exist for the 
 adjustment of international quarrels, or so long 
 as the habit of obedience to such tribunals is 
 not generally established, war is the only means 
 of defending the rights and liberties of one nation 
 against an aggression on the part of another. 
 Exactly the same principles apply to the employ- 
 ment of force by one nation against another 
 nation as apply to the use of force by the 
 community against offending individuals. A 
 Christian nation should go to war only when the 
 common interest of all nations—not merely its 
 own honour and glory, or even its own purely 
 national interests—demands it. Patriotism is 
 noble, because it represents devotion to the good 
 of the community; but, as Edith Cavell said, 
 “patriotism is not enough.” A Christian nation 
 can only fight in the maintenance of rights and 
 liberties which it is for the common interest of 
 mankind to defend. And when the war is over, 
 exactly the same principles which demand a 
 forgiving spirit in the individual will be applicable 
 
PROPERTY 197 
 
 to the settlement of terms of peace. For obvious 
 reasons their application will be in many ways 
 different, but the principle is the same. Terms 
 of peace should be settled in the interests of 
 human society generally, and the interests even 
 of the offending nation must be given their due 
 weight. After the conclusion of a righteous 
 war, the punishment of an offending nation 
 may often be demanded; but international 
 punishments, like State punishments, must be 
 preventive, deterrent, reformatory, not mere 
 explosions of national hatred or revenge; nor 
 must any attempt be made to impose upon the 
 offending nation conditions which will involve 
 permanent humiliation or unduly fetter its 
 national development. 
 
 3. Lhe Question of Property—The same people 
 who suppose that Jesus Christ taught the duty 
 of unlimited non-resistance frequently, though~ 
 not always, hold that He taught also the duty of 
 unlimited giving, and that no one can be a 
 genuine Christian who does not divest himself 
 of all his property, and lead the life of a wandering 
 mendicant. Much the same considerations apply 
 to this part of His teaching as to the case of non- 
 resistance. Here, also, we may show that our 
 Lord clearly did not lay this injunction upon 
 all men. It must be remembered that (as 
 M. Paul Sabatier has remarked) Jesus did not, 
 
198 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 especially in the earlier part of His ministry, ~ 
 think of Himself as founding a new religion 
 (though in point of fact He was doing that), 
 but rather a new Apostleship. It was not all 
 His hearers, not even all His converts, whom 
 He summoned to join His missionary band 
 and to engage in preaching the good news of the 
 Kingdom of God to their fellow-countrymen. 
 St. Luke alone, among the Evangelists, repre- 
 sents Him as saying in a general form: “ He that 
 forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My 
 disciple.”* If He did use these words, and if He 
 meant them to be taken quite literally, we must 
 suppose that He meant them to apply only to 
 those whom He called to be His “ disciples ” in 
 the stricter sense, to those who were called to join 
 His band of mission preachers. To lead the 
 life of the mendicant friar was the form which 
 the life of the religious teacher—the religious 
 teacher anxious to proclaim new ideas-— 
 naturally assumed in that age, and he would 
 be a bold man who would say that he knows 
 of a way in which the new truth about God and 
 human life could have been preached better and 
 more eflectively than the way which was actually 
 adopted by Christ Himself. But He certainly 
 did not lay down that such a mode of life was 
 necessary to “salvation ”’ or (as He would rather 
 * St. Luke xiv. 33. 
 
ATTITUDE TOWARDS RICHES — 199 
 
 have put it) to entering the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 The penitent publican went down to his house 
 “ justified,’ though nothing is said about a total 
 renunciation of property. When another 
 publican or tax-gatherer, moved to repentance 
 by His teaching, announced that he was ready 
 to make fourfold restitution to those whom he 
 had wronged and give half his goods to the poor, 
 the Master pronounced that salvation had come 
 to his house; He did not tell him that he could 
 not be saved until he gave up the other half 
 also. He did teach the perilousness of wealth; 
 He did say that it was difficult for a rich man 
 to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; He did not 
 teach that it was impossible. There is nothing 
 in our Lord’s strong sayings about riches to 
 contradict our general conclusion that He con- 
 fined Himself to the laying down of principles, 
 and that the most detailed rules of action which 
 He suggested were intended as illustrations of 
 these principles. The universal principle is 
 “love all men.” The ideal of the Christian life 
 is to be willing to make any self-sacrifice for the 
 good of others which is really demanded by 
 the true good of human society. What kind 
 of life, what use of riches, what social and 
 economic arrangements are for the true good 
 of human society is a problem upon which He 
 did not enter. The most obvious application 
 
200 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of the duty of love is to give, to lend, to feed the 
 poor and clothe the hungry. But it is quite 
 consistent with the spirit of Christ’s teaching 
 to recognize that the literal and universal 
 practice of these injunctions would not be for 
 the true good of human society. Indeed, to 
 attempt to practise them universally would be 
 self-contradictory. An individual who gave away 
 all that he had could no longer practise the duty 
 of giving; a society in which everyone re- 
 nounced everything and devoted himself to 
 preaching would have no property at all, and 
 all would perish of hunger. To give the in- 
 dividual the means of living without labour 
 would seldom be for his true good, even for his 
 worldly, economic good, still less good for his 
 character; to “ give to him that asketh ” in that 
 way would obviously be fatal to the true interest 
 of society. 
 
 The enlarged social experience of modern 
 times, the scientific study of human society and 
 its needs, the discovery of “economic laws” of 
 which the ancient and the medieval world knew 
 little, have altered materially the detailed rules 
 of conduct which a teacher thoroughly embued 
 with the spirit of Christ’s teaching would 
 prescribe, and which a society under the in- 
 fluence of that spirit would practise. The duty 
 of literally feeding the poor, clothing the hungry, 
 
MODERN CHRISTIANITY 201 
 
 and tending the sick has not been in any way 
 cancelled, though we have discovered more 
 scientific and effectual ways of doing these 
 things; but new duties have been revealed on 
 which conventional Christian teaching has not 
 much insisted. We have come to see that, if 
 it is a duty to relieve disease, it must also be 
 a duty to prevent it by sanitation, by improved 
 housing, by the discovery and teaching of 
 sanitary laws. We have discovered that, if it 
 is a duty to relieve poverty, it must also be 
 a duty to prevent the extremes of poverty 
 occurring, and this cannot be done by mere 
 individual assistance to individual cases, but 
 by so organizing human society as to secure to 
 all the possibility of earning enough material 
 wealth to give them the opportunity of enjoying 
 the higher goods of human existence. And so 
 it has at last begun to be recognized that the 
 precepts of Christ may, and should, inspire not 
 merely private acts of individual beneficence, but 
 the life of politics and trade, commerce and 
 industry. And so we are beginning to see that 
 a man may be as actively carrying on Christ’s 
 great task of setting up the Kingdom of God 
 among men by his work as a statesman or a 
 town councillor, as a man of business or an 
 author, as by adopting the career of a preacher 
 or missionary or a professed philanthropist. 
 
202 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 The characteristic feature of the best Christian 
 ethics of our day is that it tends to substitute 
 a positive promotion of that ideal life of human 
 society which Jesus called the Kingdom of God 
 for the observance of merely negative rules of 
 personal conduct or the performance of isolated 
 acts of personal self-sacrifice. I cannot illustrate 
 the point I am making better than by quoting 
 a paragraph from Seeley’s great book, “ Ecce 
 Homo,” which may now be considered some- 
 what obsolete as a study of the historic life and 
 teaching of Christ, but which has, I believe, 
 lost none of its value as an interpreter of the 
 Christian ideal in its application to the circum- 
 stances of modern life. 
 
 “We have advanced by eighteen hundred 
 years beyond the Apostolic generation. All the 
 narrowing influences which have been enumerated 
 have ceased to operate. Our minds have been 
 set free, so that we may boldly criticize the 
 usages around us, knowing them to be but im- 
 perfect essays towards order and happiness, and 
 no divinely or supernaturally ordained con- 
 stitution which it would be impious to change. 
 We have witnessed improvements in physical 
 well-being which incline us to expect further 
 progress, and make us keen-sighted to detect the 
 evils and miseries that remain. The channels 
 of communication between nations and their 
 
DEVELOPMENT IN ETHICS 203 
 
 governments are free, so that the thought of the 
 private philanthropist may mould a whole 
 community. And, finally, we have at our dis- 
 posal a vast treasury of science, from which we 
 may discover what physical well-being is and 
 on what conditions it depends. In these cir- 
 cumstances the Gospel precepts of philanthropy 
 become utterly insufficient. It is not now enough 
 to visit the sick and give alms to the poor. 
 We may still use the words as a kind of motto, 
 but we must understand under them a multitude 
 of things which they do not express. If we 
 would make them express the whole duty of 
 philanthropy in their age, we must treat them 
 as preachers sometimes treat the Decalogue, 
 when they represent it as containing by im- 
 - plication a whole system of morality. Christ 
 commanded His first followers to heal the sick 
 and give alms, but He commands the Christians 
 of this age, if we may use the expression, to 
 investigate the causes of physical evil, to master 
 the science of health, consider the question of 
 education with a view to health, the question of 
 labour with a view to health, the question of trade 
 with a view to health; and while all these in- 
 vestigations are made, with free expense of 
 energy and time and means, to work out the 
 rearrangements of human life in accordance 
 
 with the results they give.” 
 15 
 
204 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 The weak point of conventional religious 
 teaching in the past has been to limit the ap- 
 plication of Christ’s teaching to the duties of 
 private and family life, to occasional acts of 
 private benevolence, or (for the few who take 
 the commands of Christ very seriously) to the 
 regulation of lives wholly devoted to religious 
 teaching or works of charity. Sometimes this 
 restriction has been formally enunciated, as 
 when the late Archbishop Magee proclaimed that 
 the Sermon on the Mount had no application to 
 politics. Few really earnest Christians would 
 say that to-day, though such language may still 
 be used by ‘‘ men of the world.” 
 
 4. Christianity and Socialism.—At the present 
 day there is among thoughtful Christians an 
 almost universal recognition that, if the Christian 
 law of love is valid at all, it must be applied to 
 the whole of life, political, economic, commercial. 
 And under the influence of this attitude many 
 are disposed to run to the opposite extreme, and 
 definitely to identify Christianity with some 
 particular programme of social or economic 
 reform. Many, convinced that the true road 
 to that ideal state of society which Christ called 
 the Kingdom of God is some form of socialism, 
 tend to identify Christianity with socialism. 
 The youngest of our English diocesan Bishops 
 in his still younger days laid it down that a man 
 
SOCIALISM 20D 
 
 could not be a Christian without being a 
 socialist. Of course, if by socialism is meant 
 simply the doctrine that the welfare of society 
 should be.the ultimate criterion of conduct, and 
 if that welfare is understood to mean, not merely 
 the maximum of pleasure, but the highest kind 
 of human life—including the highest develop- 
 ment of character, as well as the highest kind of 
 happiness—then no doubt there is no harm 
 in saying that the Christian is necessarily a 
 socialist. But that is not what is usually meant 
 by socialism. If socialism means a particular 
 scheme of economic reorganization, then no 
 doubt Christianity would, for a man who believes 
 that such a reorganization will be the best means 
 of securing that highest kind of life, include the 
 duty of being a socialist, and trying to make 
 other men socialists. But there are those who 
 quite seriously believe that, at present or 
 permanently, the true welfare of society—the 
 truest good for the greatest number—is best 
 secured by some other form of economic and 
 social organization. To such a man Christianity 
 will prescribe that he should not be a socialist. 
 To represent Christ as a socialist is historically 
 an absurd misrepresentation. It is equally un- 
 historical to represent Him as teaching anti- 
 socialism, because He habitually assumed the 
 obligation of observing the rules of the then 
 
206 ~CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 existing social order. A voluntary renunciation 
 of property is not socialism, nor is it ~ in- 
 dividualism ” to teach that not everyone is 
 bound to renounce all his property. If the 
 question had been put to Him whether He 
 approved of socialism or not, He would doubt- 
 less have replied, as He replied to the man who 
 asked Him to bid his brother divide the in- 
 heritance with him, “ Who made Me a judge or a 
 divider among you?” Seeing that the Kingdom 
 of Heaven was not at all likely to be realized 
 by a revolt against the Roman Government (to 
 which the sect known as Zealots were instigating 
 His countrymen), Jesus did “take part in 
 politics’ to the extent of discouraging such 
 schemes; but it was, He felt, no part of His mission 
 to advocate any system of political reform.™ 
 But because our Lord personally kept aloof from 
 politics, it does not follow that modern men and 
 women can be true followers of Christ if they 
 do not bring their Christianity to bear upon their 
 
 * We need not for the present purpose discuss the very 
 difficult question how far the thought of the “‘ Parousia,” or 
 ‘“‘ second coming,” as destined to take place in the near 
 future may have contributed to prevent His attaching much 
 importance to questions of political organization. What 
 is certain is that the Kingdom of Heaven was for Him 
 primarily a certain spiritual condition of human society, 
 
 and was not identified with any kind of political or social 
 revolution. 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD 207 
 
 politics. We may not identify Christianity 
 with any particular scheme of social reform, but 
 we must say that a man cannot be a Christian 
 without applying the Christian law of love 
 to his politics. And we may most confidently 
 say that no scheme of political or social reform 
 will ever bring about a true Kingdom of Heaven 
 which does not include the acceptance and 
 practice of His teaching. It is to my mind an 
 exaggeration to say that if a human society were 
 sufficiently penetrated by the Spirit of Christ 
 there would be no social problem to solve; for 
 even if all the members of a society desired each 
 other’s good as fervently as Christ bade them 
 do, there might still be difficult questions about 
 the best means of realizing that good. Know- 
 ledge and insight are required for the solution 
 of social problems, as well as good-will. But 
 it is true to say that the greatest social problem 
 arises precisely from the fact that the most 
 Christian statesman has to legislate for a society 
 in which such mutual love is in the vast majority 
 very imperfect, and nothing will contribute so 
 powerfully to promote the removal of these 
 difficulties as the wider diffusion and a more 
 enthusiastic practice of that principle of mutual 
 love or brotherhood which constituted the 
 essence of Christ’s teaching. : 
 D. Christianity and Culture.—There is one more 
 
208 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 objection to the ethical teaching of Christianity 
 which I think it will be desirable to notice. It 
 is felt generally, perhaps, by a different class of 
 persons from those who urge the former objec- 
 tions. The objection is, indeed, upon a higher 
 level, and implies, to my mind, less misunder- 
 standing of the true meaning of Christianity than 
 the others. There are many who, while thoroughly 
 in sympathy with the teaching of Christ and 
 Christianity about human brotherhood, feel that 
 in the Christian ideal as preached by the early 
 Christians, and in most modern representations 
 of it, there is too little recognition of the claims 
 of knowledge, art, science, all that is commonly 
 embraced under the name of Culture. They feel 
 that, while the essence of true morality does lie 
 in unselfishness, subordination of the claims of 
 self to those of others, willingness to sacrifice 
 self to any extent which the true interests of 
 society demand, this is not the whole of life. 
 In a true ideal of life there must be some 
 recognition of the claims of “ self-realization ”“— 
 or what is better called self-development—as 
 well as of self-sacrifice. What are we to say to 
 this suggestion ? 
 
 First, as to our Lord’s own personal atti- 
 tude. It is true that there is no express recog- 
 nition of the claims of art, literature, science 
 (used in the widest sense). It is vain to seek 
 
CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE 209 
 
 in the teaching of Christ any express sanc- 
 tion for the value which modern cultivated 
 Christians do attach to such things. We may 
 point to the saying about the lilies of the field 
 as an indication that our Lord was not blind to 
 the beauty of the world. We may note that His 
 mind was saturated with the literature of His 
 country—a literature chiefly religious, but of 
 high intellectual and esthetic rank. We may 
 note that the most certain thing about Him is 
 that He was condemned by the religious world 
 of His day just because He was not in the 
 ordinary sense of the word “ascetic.” He at- 
 tached no high value to ecclesiastical fasting 
 (which He certainly disparaged, if He did not 
 altogether condemn it), We may point out 
 that His religious and moral teaching implies 
 thought, and thought of the very highest order. 
 If we look at Christ (without any theological pre- 
 suppositions) simply as a human teacher, we can 
 see in Him intellectual development of the 
 highest order; and there is nothing in His teach- 
 ing which is opposed to the fullest recognition of 
 culture as an element in the highest human life. 
 He taught that a man should love his neighbour 
 as himself—not, indeed, better than himself: 
 that would be illogical, for the very considera- 
 tion which imposes the duty of love and the 
 intrinsic value of every human life implies the 
 
210 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 value of one’s own life. He taught that we 
 should promote the true good of all mankind. 
 But it did not lie within the scope of His mission 
 to analyse that good. A few broad principles 
 are all that He lays down. He insists upon the 
 superiority of the moral and the spiritual above 
 the pleasures of the senses. He insists upon 
 sexual purity as.one of the conditions of that 
 highest life which a man should seek for himself 
 and promote for his neighbour, as something 
 demanded by respect for oneself and respect for 
 womanhood. Yet there is no condemnation of 
 ordinary human pleasure, no suggestion that 
 self-inflicted torture is meritorious or acceptable 
 to God. He spent much of His life in the healing 
 of bodily disease by spiritual means; He was not 
 indifierent to human suffering or contemptuous 
 of ordinary human joys. He put character, 
 goodness above happiness, or (if we like so to 
 put it) He made these things the most important 
 part of human happiness. But as to the relative 
 value of different kinds of pleasure, as to how 
 far intellectual and esthetic pleasures should be 
 regarded as of higher rank—more important 
 elements in a true human life—than mere sensual 
 enjoyments, He is silent. There is, however, 
 nothing in His teaching which can prevent our 
 recognizing the value of these things—on one 
 condition: that we apply to this side of life the 
 
THE GOOD INCLUDES CULTURE 211 
 
 principle which He laid down as applicable to 
 the whole of life—viz., that whatever we regard 
 as part of true human good for ourselves we 
 must also try to promote for others also. A life 
 of self-centred intellectual enjoyment or dilet- 
 tantism is, indeed, anti-Christian. It is not 
 inconsistent with the Christian ideal of brother- 
 hood that we should spend some part of our lives 
 in intellectual enjoyment; it is self-contradictory 
 to say that it is a Christian duty to give others 
 enjoyment and un-Christian ever to enjoy our- 
 selves. And the higher the enjoyment, the less 
 does that enjoyment imply “ selfishness.” But 
 even the highest kind of enjoyment must be 
 subordinated to social needs; we may take our 
 share of them, but we must try to secure that 
 our neighbour gets his share too. And therefore 
 the devotion of a whole life to science, or art, or 
 the like, can only be justified when the fruits of 
 such devotion are in some way shared with 
 others. The lives of the artist, the scholar, the 
 man of letters, are Christianized by the services 
 which they perform for society, even when that 
 service consists merely in contributing to the 
 enjoyment of truth and of beauty for their own 
 sakes in other men, without any further utili- 
 tarian results. 
 
 This is one of the directions in which the 
 teaching of Christ, if it is to be made the basis 
 
212 CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 of a detailed code of ethics for modern life, 
 requires development. Development in this 
 direction, as in others which have been mentioned, 
 may be recognized as part of that leading unto all 
 truth which the Gospel itself bids us to expect 
 from the work of the Holy Spirit in human 
 society. How far has the Christian Church 
 actually supplied the needed development ? 
 To a large extent it has undoubtedly done so. 
 The actual ideal of the best Fathers of the 
 Church—most fully so in men like Clement of 
 Alexandria and Origen, to a less extent in men 
 like Ambrose and Augustine—includes a recog- 
 nition of the claims of culture. The same may 
 be said of the great schoolmen. All that was 
 good in the moral teaching of Cicero and the 
 Stoics, much of the thought of Plato, was 
 embodied in the teaching of the Fathers. The 
 schoolmen Christianized the ethical system of 
 Aristotle. The Puritan ideal was not averse 
 to philosophy and learning, if it was somewhat 
 hostile to art. No doubt there has sometimes 
 been a disposition on the part of the austerer 
 teachers to justify learning and art, so far as 
 they are justified, under cover of their direct 
 services to religion and what is_ ordinarily 
 called morality. No doubt it should be more 
 clearly recognized than it has sometimes been 
 that a due appreciation of the claims of truth 
 
DUTY OF TRUTH-SEEKING 213 
 
 and beauty is part of the highest morality. At 
 the present day this is more or less fully recog- 
 nised by cultivated Christian theologians and 
 teachers. But it must be admitted that the 
 popular religious teaching of all ages has been 
 deficient on this side. Too often popular 
 religion has actually condemned all intellectual 
 pursuits which have no direct tendency to 
 edification. Still more often it has condemned 
 art or some particular and arbitrarily selected 
 forms of art, such as the drama or even the 
 novel, 
 
 And this tendency is by no means extinct. 
 Outside the narrowest religious circles it seldom 
 assumes the form of direct hostility to the 
 pleasures of the ordinary cultivated man. It is 
 to the higher manifestations of the intellectual 
 life that “‘ the religious world ”’ is most indifferent 
 or actually hostile—to the life and pursuits of 
 the philosopher, the scholar, the enquirer 
 into religious truth. “‘ Science” escapes con- 
 demnation on account of its obvious practical 
 utilities. But the discovery and proclamation 
 of new truth about the universe in general, or 
 about its history—especially when the new truth 
 tends to the modification of some traditional 
 theological belief—is still looked upon with 
 dislike, suspicion, or positive hostility. It is 
 constantly assumed that the man who questions 
 
914. CHRISTIANITY—SOCIAL PROBLEMS 
 
 a traditional belief is moved only by “ intellectual 
 pride” or love of notoriety; and even Bishops 
 of high academical record are found ready to 
 suggest that, even when true, new ideas which 
 are opposed to conventional opinion should be 
 kept very dark. But it is not so much positive 
 hostility as indifference to the claims of the 
 intellect which is lacking in average religious 
 teaching. During more than fifty years of 
 church-going I have hardly ever heard from 
 the pulpit—not very often even from the 
 University pulpit—any insistence upon this duty 
 of seeking for truth. The general tone of 
 ordinary pulpit instruction and of ordinary 
 religious literature suggests complete want of 
 sympathy with this side of life. No doubt the 
 main object of sermons is to enable men to 
 resist temptations coarser, stronger, and more 
 deadly than the temptation to think too little 
 of truth. But, still, the common religious 
 indifference to the pursuit of truth is one of the 
 things which prevent many cultivated people from 
 heartily identifying themselves with the Christian 
 ideal, from taking an active part in Church 
 activities, and, in particular, from attendance 
 on Christian worship. And a vague feeling that 
 the Church is not heartily in sympathy with 
 much that is best and highest in modern ideals 
 weakens its influence upon the more thoughtful 
 
TRUTH, BEAUTY, LOVE 215 
 
 and educated minds in all classes. I have tried 
 to ‘show that, while it has been chiefly the 
 mission of Greece rather than of Juda to make 
 men appreciate the intellectual side of human 
 life, there is nothing in the teaching of Christ 
 which should prevent our recognition of its 
 claims, nothing in such a recognition which is 
 incompatible with a whole-hearted following of 
 Christ. No doubt righteousness, love, brother- 
 hood, are the chief things; but truth and beauty 
 are valuable too. They, too, must be included 
 in the “ good” which Christ bids every man 
 to give to others as well as to enjoy himself. 
 And no interpretation of the Christian ideal is 
 wholly true which fails to recognize the fact. 
 The love of truth and of beauty comes from God, 
 as well as the love of our neighbour. They must 
 be recognized as elements in the character of 
 God Himself, and of that likeness to God which 
 represents the true ideal of human life. It is as 
 possible to follow Christ by ministering to these 
 higher needs of the human soul as by ministering 
 to the elementary demand for food, clothing, and 
 bodily health. ‘“‘ Man shall not live by bread 
 alone ” has an application to the intellectual side 
 of life as well as to the life of practice and of 
 devotion. 
 
Xx 
 
 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY: ITS BEARING. 
 ON RELIGIOUS TEACHING 
 
 By E. W. BARNES, Sc.D., F.R.S. 
 
 PsycHoLocy is the study of the working of the 
 human mind. As soon as men began to think 
 about the sources and meaning of their thoughts 
 and emotions, and to consider how in their minds 
 they formed pictures of the external universe, 
 they entered upon psychology. It is a difficult 
 subject, for it is an attempt to use the human 
 mind to analyze itself. In the investigations of 
 natural science we use the mind to explore the 
 properties of matter or the phenomena of life. 
 Inert matter and living tissue are, we believe, 
 lower types of reality, more primitive things, 
 than human consciousness. So we expect that 
 our intellectual faculties will enable us to 
 discover the laws of their behaviour. The re- 
 markable advance in our knowledge of physics 
 and biology seems to prove the soundness of our 
 assumption that the mind of man is not merely 
 a by-product of living matter, but a new and 
 higher type of reality which has come into being 
 
 in recent stages of evolution. 
 216 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS AND REALITY 217 
 
 Now, if we possessed a something which repre- 
 sented a still further evolutionary advance— 
 some super-mind whose nature we cannot 
 possibly imagine—we might expect to use it 
 eflectively to formulate the laws of psychology. 
 But we have no such faculty. We have to use 
 the mind to explain the working of the mind; the 
 instrument is not superior to the object. There- 
 fore, as it seems to me, we cannot hope to solve 
 the ultimate problems of human consciousness. 
 We remain baffled, and we are likely to continue to 
 remain baffled, when we attempt to demonstrate 
 the reality of religious experience. Similarly, 
 we cannot justify our belief that we form true 
 pictures in our minds of the external world, 
 neither can we prove that our criteria of beauty 
 are right. We think that certain pictures, 
 statues, or pieces of music are supremely beauti- 
 ful: does our judgment correspond to the essential 
 nature of the Universe? We cannot prove the 
 fact. Neither can we prove that the material 
 universe is anything like what we conceive it 
 to be. All that we can assert is that we have 
 certain aspirations, emotions, and mental re- 
 actions set up by phenomena. These differ in 
 different individuals, and, more markedly, as 
 between races of men in different stages of 
 civilization. We can compare the varied 
 aspirations and emotions. We can see how they 
 
218 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 are changed and refined as development takes 
 place. But we have to assume that such 
 development is progressive—that is to say, 
 that it leads men to a truer understanding of, or 
 at least sympathy with, the fundamental nature 
 of the universe. Yet there seems to be no way 
 of justifying our assumptions. Psychology can- 
 not, in this respect, change faith into knowledge. 
 
 We must not, then, expect psychology either 
 to confirm or destroy the value of the ultimate 
 experiences on which religion is built. Man, 
 when he reaches what we deem to be the highest 
 level that he can attain, 1s compelled by some- 
 thing inherent in his nature to believe that 
 goodness, beauty, and truth express the inner 
 meaning, the spiritual foundation, of the 
 universe. Similarly, many men and women 
 in whom this conviction is strongest have 
 moments when they seem to themselves to 
 pass away from the spatial and temporal world 
 to another realm. In this realm they find, as 
 they believe, God, the source and stay of all 
 things, the ground of being. With Him there 
 appears to be love and joy and peace, activity 
 unmarred by evil, the perfection of the highest 
 which it is given to man dimly to realize in his 
 normal life. 
 
 In so far as we individually have had religious 
 experience, we cannot set aside our sense of the 
 
MECHANISM AND EXPERIMENT 219 
 
 value of prayer. However we may explain the 
 occurrence, we have known the transcendent 
 widening of our horizon which sometimes comes 
 in solitary meditation, the occasional flooding 
 of the soul with light. Psychology cannot reduce 
 these facts to hallucinations any more than it can 
 demonstrate that our intuitions deceive us when 
 they compel us to think that beauty, goodness, 
 and truth reveal the nature of absolute reality. 
 There is, however, reason to hope that psycho- 
 logy will tell us something of how our minds 
 work and describe their internal mechanism. 
 It may be expected to show the relation between 
 our spiritual instincts and other instincts, such as 
 those of sex, which seem to be derived from our 
 animal origin. We may discover reasons for 
 the different ways in which spiritual funda- 
 mentals are used, and come to understand why 
 religious inspiration seems to unify personality 
 and to show its unifying power in physical energy 
 and well-being. 
 
 Recent progress in our knowledge of the 
 working of the human mind is due to the fact 
 that psychology has been made an experimental 
 science. The pioneers of modern research have 
 experimented—sometimes dangerously—with the 
 minds of their patients. They have elaborated 
 theories to explain the results obtained, and 
 they have then tested those theories by making 
 
 16 
 
220 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 other experiments. It is necessary, however, 
 to remember that, for the most part, the abnormal 
 has been investigated to give a clue to the normal. 
 Physicians have sought to discover how the 
 mind functions by examining what has happened 
 when it fails to function properly. Such a study 
 of mental pathology has undoubtedly led to 
 valuable results. But it may easily lead an 
 investigator to believe that the abnormal is the 
 normal. Freud, for instance, made the greater 
 
 part of his experiments with patients in Vienna — 
 drawn from a sexually-demoralized class. In 
 consequence, he ascribes to sex a dominating im- 
 portance in mental life which we claim to know 
 from our own experience that it does not possess. 
 The instincts which are necessary to the preserva- 
 tion of the race are strong, but so also are 
 those which preserve the life of the individual. 
 Both types of instincts may be expected to 
 combine with the consequences of spiritual per- 
 ception. But to isolate sex and make it the 
 eroundwork of our mental constitution is surely 
 wrong. It suffices in this connection to say 
 that social reformers value religion just because 
 of its observed power to control animal appetites. 
 Religion, save when it is transformed into a false 
 asceticism, neither drives sex underground nor 
 does it cause us to ignore the well-being of the 
 body. It makes man whole, gives unity and 
 
THEORY AND OBSERVATION — 221 
 
 balance to his life. ‘They that are whole,” 
 said our Lord, in one of those ironical touches 
 which gave point to His teaching, ‘‘ have no need 
 of a physician.” “I came to call, not the 
 righteous, but sinners to repentance.” 
 
 It is important to dwell on the obvious beauty 
 and strength of the Christian life, and on the 
 permanent enrichment of personality which 
 often results from what we term “ conversion.” 
 Especially nowadays must we emphasize such 
 facts, because there exists a widespread and 
 wholly erroneous belief that, in some undefined 
 way, modern psychology has disintegrated these 
 truths. Let us insist that theories will not 
 alter facts. Any theory, for instance, which 
 does not satisfactorily explain the vast moral 
 uplift due to the Evangelical movement of 
 Wesley and his friends in the eighteenth century 
 is imperfect. Theories are attempts to explain 
 facts, and so long as they do not explain all the 
 facts they are inadequate. Many modern 
 theories put forward by distinguished teachers 
 we must consequently regard as provisional; 
 but the discovery of the subliminal part of 
 personality or, as it is also termed, the unconscious 
 mind must rank as a permanent addition to know- 
 ledge. The very phrase “unconscious mind ” 
 seems at first sight to imply a contradiction. We 
 are tempted to think that we know of all that 
 
222 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 goes on in our minds. But—so modern teachers 
 assure us—this is untrue. There are mental 
 regions below manifest consciousness where past 
 experience is stored, and where this experience 
 is active, although we are not aware of the fact. 
 We forget events of the past, but they do not 
 necessarily cease to influence us. The experience 
 of such events may remain with us, stored in the 
 unconscious mind. The experience may have 
 been unpleasant, its memory hateful. It may 
 have been, as it were, thrust out of sight. But, 
 though repressed so thoroughly that it has passed 
 out of manifest consciousness, it may still be 
 active below the threshold, subliminally. As, un- 
 known to us, it there germinates, it may become 
 the centre of a whole bundle of morbid ideas and 
 emotions; it may, in technical language, form a 
 repressed complex. And because this complex 
 exists buried in the mind it will send up shoots 
 into manifest consciousness. Thus arise im- 
 pulses, of whose origin we are ignorant, which 
 may powerfully affect our conscious lives. The 
 crank and the lunatic will often reason with much 
 shrewdness. On many subjects they may be 
 sane. But certain false ideas they hold with 
 invincible tenacity, the reason being that these 
 ideas are products of the morbid processes 
 that have been set up in the unconscious 
 mind, 
 
THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND 223 
 
 This theory of the unconscious mind appears 
 to be confirmed by the success of the process of 
 mental healing which has been founded upon 
 it. If the physician can discover the origin of 
 the repressed complex, he can at times bring 
 it into manifest consciousness. By getting the 
 ' patient to realize its existence, he can gradually 
 lead him to destroy the morbid mental growth 
 of which it has been the source. If he is success- 
 ful, normal mental health will be restored. 
 Moreover, this theory of the unconscious mind 
 can be used to explain our inherited instincts. 
 Undoubtedly, the past mental experiences of our 
 ancestors contribute to some extent to make us 
 what we are. We inherit mental tendencies. 
 If we gave precisely the same education to the 
 child of an Australian savage and to a child 
 sprung from one of the English intellectual 
 families, the results would be widely different. 
 No doubt inheritance of physical structure, the 
 contormation of the brain, and so forth, will 
 in part explain the difference. But it does not 
 seem possible in this way to explain all the facts 
 of observation. We are, it appears, forced to 
 the conclusion that our minds, below the level 
 of consciousness, retain racial experience. This 
 inherited experience combines with personal 
 experience to make our personality what it is. 
 Thus, in fact, are formed the data of the logical 
 
224 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 processes of our conscious minds, the stuff which 
 is the basis of thought. 
 
 Very naturally many psychologists are thus 
 led to deny that we have free-will. They are, in 
 philosophical language, determinists. [If we know 
 all the forces which act on a material particle, 
 we can predict which way it will move. And 
 it is asserted that if we knew all the experience, 
 inherited and personal, which has affected any 
 individual, we could predict his every action. 
 On this view there is no such thing as sin. 
 Christians reply that the theory is not true to 
 their own experience. We are not automata, 
 for we can conquer temptation. We habitually 
 exercise freedom of choice. There is in us some 
 power of originating courses of conduct. Of 
 course, we do not claim to be independent of 
 our past. Hereditary influences are potent. 
 Our present lives, moreover, are afiected by our 
 past conduct. We are stronger for the conquest 
 of past temptations. Character is weakened 
 by past sins and follies. All this we admit; but 
 still we have some measure of free-will. 
 
 Moreover—and this is the primary Christian 
 claim—we assert that both among personal and 
 hereditary experiences we must include divine 
 influence. How is it that man, evolving from 
 some ape-like creature, has developed spiritual 
 instincts? The fact cannot be denied. How is 
 
GRACE AND ITS ORIGIN 225 
 
 it to be explained ? Only, so far as I can see, 
 by the moulding influence of the Spirit of God, 
 by the work of the Holy Ghost among men. 
 
 There are times when we feel the power of 
 righteousness, when we respond to it, when we 
 know that we are the stronger and purer for our 
 response. We are, moreover, convinced that 
 by prayer and meditation we can enrich our 
 personality; we feel that in such enrichment we 
 have become more true to the purposes for which 
 we were created; we have gained grace, spiritual 
 power, which seems to have come from some 
 infinite reservoir of enfolding love. The term 
 grace has become old-fashioned. It has acquired 
 an atmosphere of unreality. Christians badly 
 need a more adequate doctrine of grace, and it 
 appears probable that modern psychology will 
 supply it. Natural grace, such as seems native 
 to many children of good stocks, will be the 
 result of divine influences on past generations— 
 influences which have been inherited and stored 
 subliminally. Acquired grace comes from the 
 divine influences which we have personally 
 received; the experience affects both the con- 
 scious and, more especially, the unconscious 
 mind. 
 
 But, it may be objected, “no man hath seen 
 God at any time.” We may, indeed, be sure 
 that the search for goodness and truth is re- 
 
226 - MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 warded. Yet, save in most exceptional moments, 
 we have never heard a personal God speaking to 
 us; and even when we may think that we have had 
 such a revelation, it may have been a delusion. 
 
 Now, in answer, I would allow that we do not 
 know God; at best, we get emotional intuitions 
 of His nature. If we could know God perfectly, 
 we should have no’need of revelation. Christ, 
 we believe, did know God as fully as was possible 
 for anyone who was perfect man to know Him. 
 In fact, because our fragmentary intuitions of 
 God find their completion in Christ’s revelation, 
 we deem Him the Son of God. 
 
 But how do those intuitions come to us? It 
 is suggested that the unconscious mind is the 
 region where we make contact with the Holy 
 Spirit. If we agree, ag seems necessary to 
 explain man’s spiritual evolution, that God 
 directly influences men, and if, further, we admit, 
 as I believe to be true, that normally we ex- 
 perience only the effects of God’s activity, it must 
 needs follow that communion with Him takes 
 place below the level of manifest consciousness. 
 It is in underground regions of the mind that 
 His presence originates those spiritual impulses 
 that are the foundation of the religious life. 
 Our knowledge of God is thus secondary or 
 derived knowledge: the primary experience is 
 subliminal. 
 
WILL AND UNCONSCIOUS MIND 227 
 
 It is sometimes objected that, if it be in the 
 unconscious mind that we make contact with 
 the Spirit of God, then by our own efforts we 
 can do nothing to know Him. But this objec- 
 tion rests upon a misunderstanding, As Christ 
 taught, the pure in heart are they who see God. 
 The unconscious mind is not normally an 
 independent centre of consciousness; it is a part 
 of the complete psychic organism, continually 
 influenced by, and influencing, the mental states 
 of which we are fully aware. To describe it as 
 an ageregate of fringes of consciousness is 
 inadequate, because experience stored there 
 seems to be made the basis of logical processes 
 of which we are unwitting. If, in ordinary 
 language, we do not “ overcome,” but merely 
 “thrust aside,’ evil acts or thoughts or dis- 
 tressing accidents, the danger is that they will, 
 though apparently forgotten, lodge in our sub- 
 consciousness and be, as it were, the seeds of 
 morbid mental growths which will contaminate 
 manifest consciousness. If, on the other hand, 
 we constantly seek to purify our minds, wrestle 
 till we have overcome evil, dissipate bogies by 
 “facing up to” them, we shall free our sub- 
 consciousness from sources of infection. By 
 constantly seeking for righteousness and strength 
 we shall find them; and they will be established 
 both above and below the threshold. When the 
 
228 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 unconscious mind is thus purified we have 
 spiritual health, we are fit to receive the influence 
 of the Spirit. 
 
 This account of spiritual progress agrees, I 
 believe, with commonly observed facts. “ Ask, 
 and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; 
 knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” ‘The 
 more we rid ourselves of all that is bound up with 
 selfishness and sensuality, the more do we under- 
 stand what God would have us be and do. 
 Sometimes after exhausting struggles for light 
 there comes a sudden illumination. God seems 
 to speak clearly, as Josephine Butler thought 
 she heard Him speak during her great purity 
 campaign. So, too, the Hebrew prophets thought 
 they were His mouthpiece when they declared: 
 “ Thus saith the Lord.’ It may be that in such 
 cases God directly makes contact with manifest 
 consciousness. But, just as some uprush 
 from the unconscious mind gives to the 
 mathematician after long search a solution of 
 his problem, so it seems probable that divine 
 influences received subconsciously are un- 
 wittingly used to create the clear message of 
 God. The really important fact, however, is 
 that barriers, raised by evil lodged in the un- 
 conscious mind, tend to exclude the influence 
 of God. 
 
 All great religious teachers have condemned 
 
THE MIND OF CHRIST 229 
 
 certain types of action, because they have in- 
 stinctively felt that they tended to set up barriers 
 against those spiritual influences which enrich 
 personality. Christ’s teaching is supreme, be- 
 cause He so accurately diagnosed the sources of 
 spiritual ill-health. He showed men how to 
 destroy the barriers which shut out God; and 
 I suggest that, in the light of modern psychology, 
 we must regard Him as one in whom those 
 barriers did not exist. Dr. Sanday, some dozen 
 years ago, first put forward, I believe, this way 
 of understanding Christ. Our Lord had, of 
 course, human limitations, mental no less thaw 
 physical; otherwise He could not have been man. 
 But there was in Him a spiritual and moral 
 perfection unintelligible save on the assumption 
 that His mind was perfectly open to, and per- 
 fectly responsive to, God. Now He would not 
 have been truly man, for His knowledge would 
 have been co-extensive with that of God, had 
 His conscious mind been divine. But if there 
 were nothing to separate His unconscious mind 
 from the divine mind, the result of this perfect 
 unity would have shown itself in exactly the 
 kind of consciousness which all Christians believe 
 Him to have had. Sanday’s suggestion has been 
 attacked from many sides, but it is probably 
 destined to have an important place in future 
 Christological speculation. 
 
230 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 Questions raised by Christ’s moral perfection 
 and supreme spiritual insight may become less 
 difficult as we better understand the more general 
 problem of sin and regeneration. All modern 
 research goes to show that, if we let sin, false- 
 hood, or ugliness lodge in the unconscious mind, 
 our personality, the soul, will be harmed. It is 
 now emphasized that we must not repress evil 
 experiences; we must not try to forget or ignore 
 them; we must destroy them by conscious en- 
 deavour. The physician who seeks to heal a 
 disordered mind helps the patient to effect such 
 destruction. His methods are very similar to 
 those of the wise priest in the confessional. Ido 
 not, of course, allude to perfunctory confessions, 
 but to those unburdenings of a tormented goul 
 which ought to be great and rare occasions. This 
 use of confession to physician or priest is of 
 undoubted value. But if by the guidance of 
 Christ we learn to know ourselves, there should 
 be no need of human aid to help us to get divine 
 grace. By prayer, by meditation, by that private 
 recognition of sin which leads to abasement 
 before God, we can without human aid destroy 
 the effects of evil. We can thus prevent it from 
 contaminating the hidden recesses of the mind. 
 We can, in Christian language, get the sense of 
 God’s forgiveness, the assurance that our sin 
 is so far blotted out that we can still receive 
 
SUGGESTION 231 
 
 the influence of His Spirit. “Lay bare your 
 sins before Him, seek His pardon and love, 
 and though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
 become white as snow.” The old empirical 
 teaching is fully confirmed by modern investiga- 
 tion. 
 
 Christians naturally wish to know whether 
 modern psychology throws any new light on 
 sacramental doctrines. How far does it confirm 
 the Christian belief that there exist material 
 channels of spiritual grace? All who are con- 
 vinced that the Spirit of God is active among 
 men will allow that His influence may come 
 both directly to the human soul and indirectly. 
 His indirect influence may be received through 
 other human beings, who convey to us their 
 spiritual experience. They may do this by 
 explicit statement, or, and perhaps more 
 effectively, by the process of suggestion. When 
 suggestion operates, a bond of emotional 
 sympathy is formed between different in- 
 dividuals. There seems to be reason to hold 
 that the bond is strongest when it is established 
 unwittingly as a link between mental regions 
 that are below the level of consciousness. It is 
 well known that a crowd, at a period of excite- 
 ment, will be set on fire by some common 
 emotion. Words spoken by a leader may be 
 such as normally would have little effect. But 
 
232 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 his unconscious mind somehow makes contact 
 with the unconscious minds .of his hearers. 
 A wave of emotion then runs through the crowd. 
 The emotion sets up similar trains of thought 
 in all present, and “a collective consciousness ” 
 is established. The capacity of human beings 
 to influence one another in this way, by com- 
 municating emotions subliminally, is probably 
 much more important than is generally recog- 
 nized. Whether explicit ideas can be thus con- 
 veyed is doubtful. It may be that what is 
 conveyed is a vague feeling which, however, 
 since men’s minds work with a general similarity, . 
 leads to fairly uniform ideas. In view of man’s 
 animal origin, we must regard this process of 
 unwitting communication as of the same nature 
 as that which makes a herd of animals act as 
 one when danger threatens. We do not know 
 yet whether in man the faculty has been de- 
 veloped since he emerged from some ape-like 
 stock, or whether it is in process of decay. 
 Certain hypnotic experiments, however, seem 
 to show that between individuals subliminal 
 mental intercourse can be surprisingly complete. 
 Many men of good judgment hold that telepathy, 
 the communication of ideas without the use of 
 material means such as speech or sight, is an 
 established fact. If this be the case, it is prob- 
 able that “thought reading” is effectively 
 
RELIGIOUS USE OF SUGGESTION 233 
 
 limited to individuals whose mental develop- 
 ment is exceptional, and that even with them 
 success 1s by no means uniform. 
 
 Though the collective consciousness of a 
 crowd is usually on a lower moral level than 
 that of the individuals who compose it, the 
 influence of suggestion on a group of men and 
 women can be used with great value to spread 
 spiritual understanding. The associations of the 
 building in which a group assembles, the appeal 
 of hymns and music, the earnestness and 
 possibly the fame of the leader, all combine to 
 arouse collective devotion. The Divine Spirit 
 then enters and enriches those present through 
 channels which experiment has proved effective. 
 Grace is thus conveyed sacramentally through 
 human agency, and through material media 
 which men have discovered to be of value. Alike 
 the silence of a Quaker meeting and the noise of 
 a Salvation Army band are effective means of 
 sacramental grace. Some may be repelled by 
 the thought that the same psychological processes 
 which lead a Communist crowd to wreck a 
 jeweller’s shop are at work in a devotional 
 gathering. But, of course, the mechanism of 
 the human mind, its susceptibility to suggestion, 
 may be used well or ill. That the process of 
 suggestion is rightly employed in religious 
 worship is proved by the value which such 
 
234 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 worship has in strengthening character and 
 developing spiritual insight. 
 
 Great religious excitement may produce 
 morbid mental states. Critics of “ revivals ” 
 lay stress on “ hysterical outbursts” which are 
 sometimes witnessed, and the belief is prevalent 
 that such movements increase the number of 
 those who need to be cared for in our lunatic 
 asylums. It is doubtful whether statistics con- 
 firm this belief. No one denies the existence 
 of religious mania; but its origin almost certainly 
 lies, not in true religious experience, but in some 
 sin or shock which has led to morbid growths 
 in the unconscious mind. The “ religious ” 
 concomitants of the malady are accidental. 
 Furthermore it must be remembered that a true 
 revival calls sinners to repentance. The damage 
 to the mind done by past sins and the effort to 
 cleanse the mind from their corroding influences 
 are factors sufficient to account for “ hysterical ” 
 symptoms at conversion. Conversion does not 
 always produce results of permanent value. 
 But, in so far as the experience is not counterfeit 
 and just so far as it is complete, it leads to that 
 significant transformation which we term “ new- 
 ness of life.” 
 
 One danger is common to every religious use 
 of the process of suggestion. Whenever de- 
 votional fervour is quickened at some service of 
 
 — -. f+ 
 
SUGGESTION AND BELIEF 230 
 
 special significance—whether it be a revivalist 
 meeting or a celebration of the Eucharist—the 
 religious beliefs of those whose influence is 
 dominant tend to be uncritically accepted by the 
 rest. ‘The ordinary worshipper thus puts his 
 religious experience in the mould provided for 
 him. He accepts not merely the fact of the 
 Spirit’s presence and influence, but also the 
 interpretation of that fact which is offered to 
 him. As a consequence, he is convinced that 
 an unexamined system of doctrine is absolutely 
 true. Thus it comes about that a belief in the 
 infallibility of the Scriptures or in transubstan- 
 tiation may be held with fanatical zeal. It 
 cannot be too strongly emphasized that sound 
 theology is the result of prolonged and patient 
 intellectual enquiry. Beliefs have no valid 
 basis when they are acquired by passive 
 obedience to suggestion. Of course, only 
 theologians can develop their science so as to 
 preserve its harmony with the growth of human 
 thought. But religious leaders and teachers 
 of the people are gravely at fault if they ignore 
 the results of theological study. By doing so 
 they must inevitably produce the sort of an- 
 tagonism between faith and knowledge which 
 showed itself a generation ago in the so-called 
 conflict between religion and science. 
 
 Modern psychology, as we have previously 
 
 17 
 
236 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 insisted, will not enable us to solve metaphysical 
 problems, but it does show us how, by sug- 
 gestion, men and women are led to assume that 
 particular solutions of such problems are in- 
 dubitably true. It is, unfortunately, not rare 
 to hear from the pulpit that a particular 
 view of the nature of the Christian sacraments 
 is “proved by psychology.” Such a statement 
 merely shows confusion of thought. For a 
 magical or ex opere operato view of the Eucharist 
 psychology affords no support. As a means of 
 enriching spiritual life, those who come with 
 faith to the Lord’s Supper find the service 
 effective; their sense that Christ is always at 
 hand to guide and help them is increased. 
 Psychologists would point to the hallowed 
 associations of the service with the Lord’s 
 Passion. It uniquely links the worshipper to 
 Him who said: ‘‘ Wherever two or three are 
 gathered together in My name, there am I in the 
 midst of them.” Love and hope and trust, 
 triumphant over death; the intimate common 
 meal of the Earthly Life; the broken Body and 
 the outpoured Blood—all come before the mind. 
 Before us is the outward sign of the invisible 
 srace. Faith worksinus.... But psychology 
 has nothing to say as to theories of the trans- 
 formation of material substance into something 
 other than itself. 
 
VALUATION OF FORMS OF WORSHIP 237 
 
 All religious means of quickening spiritual 
 life must be judged by their fruits. “ The fruit 
 of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, 
 kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, 
 temperance.” Just in so far as these qualities 
 show themselves naturally and, as it were, 
 inevitably as the result of particular forms of 
 worship, such forms (though not necessarily the 
 theories associated with them) are justified. 
 But when religious devotion produces intolerance, 
 mental inertia, extravagant asceticism, or hypo- 
 crisy in one of its many forms, it is psychologically 
 harmful. In such cases there may be some 
 measure of genuine spiritual insight, but it is 
 incomplete. The study of primitive religion 
 shows with what difficulty human worship has 
 been separated from cruelty, lust, and supersti- 
 tion. Even now magic dogs religion like an evil 
 shadow. Tothe Hebrew prophets humanity owes 
 an immense debt of gratitude for their efforts 
 to free religion from evil associations. Christ 
 accepted their work as the basis of His own revela- 
 tion when He called men to enter His Father’s 
 Kingdom, and there find spiritual health. 
 
 What should be the result of such spiritual 
 health? I ventured to say that the lethargic 
 contentment of the fat monk who, remote from 
 the storms of life, is happy in a round of liturgical 
 services and humble duties—such is a parody of 
 
238 MODERN PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 spiritual peace. Not the obliteration of human 
 instincts which may lead to sins, but their control, 
 should be our ideal. St. Paul describes the 
 religious life at its highest when he says, “ I beat 
 down my body and bring it into subjection, lest I, 
 when | have preached to others, myself should 
 be a castaway.” We degenerate unless there is 
 internal tension in our minds. The finest 
 spiritual life is a life of ever-victorious conflict. 
 When Christ comes to a man He brings, not peace, 
 but a sword; not apathy or stagnation, but a 
 constant struggle for newness of life. The 
 antinomian who says, “I am saved; no evil 
 that I may do can deprive me of God’s favour,” 
 reveals that his mind is diseased. The saint, 
 on the contrary, says: “I die daily. Every 
 day I am in danger of the wrath of God. Every 
 day, through His grace, I put on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ.” One would think that such an approach 
 to instability would be destructive of personal 
 energy. Nothing could be farther from the 
 truth. Spiritual tension is an amazing source of 
 energy, as the lives of St. Paul, St. Catherine of 
 Siena, John Wesley, General Booth, and count- 
 less others reveal. 
 
 Let me end with a quotation from Dr. Rivers,* 
 one of our leading psychologists: 
 
 * “Instinct and the Unconscious,” 1920, pp. 157, 158 
 (condensed). 
 
ENERGY BY SPIRITUAL CONFLICT 239 
 
 “Many lines of evidence are converging to 
 show that all great accomplishment in human 
 endeavour depends upon processes which go on 
 outside those regions of the mind of the activity 
 of which we are clearly conscious. There is 
 reason to believe that the processes which underlie 
 all great work in art, literature, or science take 
 place unconsciously. ... Whence comes the 
 energy of which this work is the expression ? 
 Many pathological facts point to the conclusion 
 that the energy so arising is increased in amount 
 through the conflict between controlled and con- 
 trolling forces. Whatever be its source, we do 
 not know how high the goal that it may reach. 
 
 “ Exceptional accomplishment seems to need a 
 certain degree of instability in those subconscious 
 strata of the mind which form the scene of the 
 conflict between instinctive tendencies and the 
 forces by which they are controlled. This in- 
 stability under the conditions of war produced 
 disease. Now that the struggle is over, we may 
 expect it to be a source of energy from which 
 should come great accomplishments in art and 
 science. It may also be that, through this in- 
 stability, new strength will be given to those 
 movements which under the most varied guise 
 express the deep craving for religion which seems 
 to be universal among mankind.” 
 
 Dr. Rivers writes objectively, unemotionally, 
 asaman of science. God grant that the religious 
 revival at which he hints may come in power 
 among us. 
 
XI 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
 By E. W. WATSON, D.D. 
 
 “THE kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, 
 which a woman took, and hid in three measures 
 of meal, till it was all leavened.” This parable 
 of our Lord is the best starting-point for a con- 
 sideration of the effect which the Church and 
 the Christian mode of thought of which the 
 Church is the vehicle have produced upon the 
 world. The point of the parable is the reciprocal 
 relation of the two forces. Each works upon 
 the other, and each is changed in the process. 
 The woman does not drop her wedding-ring, 
 or some other intractable substance, into the 
 dough, but a material which is sensitive to its 
 environment. And so we learn the lesson, which 
 is confirmed by all experience, that Christianity 
 does not work in isolation, and cannot, except as 
 an Intellectual exercise, be contemplated apart 
 from its relation to men and circumstances. 
 Therefore, it cannot be judged apart from these, 
 nor can we justly and reasonably say in regard 
 to some particular combination of events that 
 240 
 
CHRISTIANITY A LEAVEN 241 
 
 Christianity has been a failure because things 
 have turned out ill; nor, conversely, may we give 
 the whole credit to Christianity, as distinguished 
 from the general civilization of an age, when 
 conspicuous graces of character and conduct 
 have displayed themselves in Christian men. 
 In either case, though not with equal rapidity 
 or intensity, the leaven has been at work, and 
 we must not allow ourselves to be disappointed 
 or to think Christianity a failure if we can find 
 occasions when its efficacy is not apparent, 
 nor even if such an occasion thrusts itself upon 
 our notice. It is not for us to be impatient 
 or desponding; hope is one of the cardinal 
 virtues. 
 
 The thesis of this paper, then, is that there 
 is no unconditioned Christianity; that in the 
 providential order the faith must work with or 
 against, as the case may be, the wills of men 
 and the broader forces of history and human 
 nature. This was evident in the very beginnings 
 of our religion. We cannot assign limits to the 
 thought of our Lord, but we may say that some- 
 times He limited its expression so that it was 
 intelligible to His generation. But His first 
 disciples were encumbered by their hereditary 
 Judaism. It was the meal which worked upon 
 the leaven of the new doctrine, though it is 
 needless to say that the leaven mastered it. 
 
242 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
 
 The point is that there was a conflict between 
 the two, and that the faith which shaped itself 
 was the resultant of the two forces. So also 
 was the character and conduct that developed 
 among Christians, though here the victory of 
 the new leaven has been less conspicuous. 
 
 Let us compare the first Christians, mis- 
 sionaries as earnest as have ever lived, with 
 those who have advocated the same cause in 
 later days. They were not professional advo- 
 cates, and therefore probably they were the 
 more eflective. But, being amateurs, if the 
 term may be used, they had no special training; 
 they spoke from inward conviction, but with 
 nothing to separate their mode of thought, except 
 in the one essential respect and in its implications, 
 from that of the society around them. Our 
 modern missionaries have the advantage, which 
 is also a disadvantage, of appearing to primitive 
 races as the representatives and teachers of a 
 higher civilization. They have medicine and 
 education, and many other desirable things to 
 offer. They are above the level of those whom 
 they strive to win. Or, again, they may be 
 offering their faith to alien races which possess 
 ancient creeds and philosophies of which they 
 are proud. In this case they are outside the 
 society they are trying to convert. The first 
 teachers of Christianity were within the society 
 
 2 
 ee 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF THE AGE 243 
 
 of their time, and shared its ignorances, its pre- 
 Judices, and some of its vices. A Cambridge 
 scholar, Dr. H. F. Stewart,* makes the striking 
 assertion that “lying was never an ecclesiastical 
 offence, and rigid veracity cannot be claimed as a 
 constant characteristic of any Christian writer 
 of the period, except Athanasius, Augustine, 
 and (outside his panegyrics) Husebius of 
 Cesarea.”’ Some students might make reserves 
 in the case of one or other of these great names. 
 But, speaking generally, there is no reason to 
 think that the Christians had surpassed the 
 standard of the world in which they lived. For 
 all that, their Christianity was not a failure. 
 Nor does the relentlessness which they shared 
 with their age condemn them; it was a phase 
 which they had not outgrown. It was natural 
 enough for them to take it as an obligation upon 
 Christians that they should hate their adver- 
 saries as the Psalmist hated his, and any qualms 
 of pity were rejected as unworthy of men who 
 were called to follow the example of the man 
 after God’s own heart. Here, and in many other 
 respects, the absolute acceptance of the whole 
 Scripture as equally inspired and equally bind- 
 ing on Christians worked sad results. There is 
 a striking passage in a homily of St. Hilary of 
 Poitiers, a younger contemporary of Athanasius 
 * “Cambridge Medieval History,” vol. i, p. 571. 
 
244 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
 
 and the chief exponent in the Latin tongue of 
 Nicene orthodoxy, in which he enforces our 
 Lord’s command not to return evil for evil by 
 the consideration that the Christian who does 
 so will spoil the completeness of God’s vengeance. 
 When we think of the bitterness with which 
 doctrinal conflicts were waged, we must bear 
 in mind that Christian hearts had been hardened 
 by almost three centuries of persecution, and 
 had learned to regard any adversary as also the 
 adversary of God. We see controversy at its 
 worst when calumny is used as a weapon. It 
 was used on the orthodox side as well as on 
 the heretical. But here, again, we find that 
 the customs of the old world were too deeply 
 rooted to be purged out by the new spirit of 
 Christianity. The least attractive aspect of 
 the great classical orators is their invective; 
 we see it at its worst in the insults of Demos- 
 thenes towards the mother of his rival. Now 
 all ancient education was rhetorical, and the art 
 of insolence was regularly taught and practised 
 in the schools. Every educated Christian author 
 was a rhetorician, and used the weapons of his 
 craft. When we find him bespattering an 
 opponent, we need not suppose that he meant 
 more than that he heartily disapproved his 
 doctrine; nor need we suppose that the readers, 
 who knew the rules of the rhetorical game and 
 
THE OLD CIVILIZATION 245 
 
 expected to see them dexterously employed, 
 would take these assaults as meant for literal 
 truth. Our modern Church historians have 
 often been too credulous of charges against the 
 character of erroneous teachers; not that, like 
 some of their predecessors, they have taken 
 pleasure in tracing a connection between false- 
 hood of doctrine and depravity of life. 
 
 In these and in other ways we see that the 
 old civilization retained its grip on the adherents 
 of the new faith. They adapted it to their 
 creed; they also adapted their creed to it. They 
 had to work with the same set of general ideas 
 as their pagan compeers. And in some respects 
 it was an age of decadence. If it was one of 
 progress in ethics and in the science of law, depart- 
 ments of thought in which, as Dean Inge has 
 told us, the Christians were disciples in the school 
 of their time, and learned lessons which they 
 have handed on to us, it was an age of decline 
 in the physical sciences. The great compilation 
 of Pliny, which garnered the knowledge and the 
 ignorance and superstition of the period, offers 
 a sad contrast to the intelligence of Aristotle 
 The Christians had to bear the load of the 
 credulity which was common to themselves and 
 their contemporaries, and some of its effects 
 upon religious thought have been permanent. 
 But it was their environment, not their 
 
246 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
 
 Christianity, that was at fault. The faith, then 
 as little as now, was working in vacuo ; it was 
 conditioned by circumstances. It is vain, there- 
 fore, to look to the early Christians without 
 reserve as patterns to be followed. To do so 
 would be to accept one of the strangest of 
 fallacies which they shared with their time. It 
 was that of a golden age in the past. It was 
 not merely a poetical imagination, it was a 
 reasoned philosophy of nature, that mankind, 
 like the whole universe, is deteriorating and near 
 its end. All evolution (for they had the idea) 
 was by way of degeneration. The notion found 
 its classical expression in Horace: 
 
 ‘* Aitas parentum peior avis tulit 
 Nos nequiores, mox daturos 
 Progeniem vitiosiorem.”’ 
 
 The Christians, too, held that the remoter the 
 past, the healthier, the more virtuous, the wiser, 
 were those who lived in it. St. Cyprian pointed 
 to children born with the white hair of age as 
 evidence of the decrepitude of the race, and 
 this doctrine of degeneracy fitted well with 
 the Christian and Jewish expectation of an 
 approaching end of the world. Wisdom, then, 
 was not garnered by experience, but was a 
 primal gift, and Moses, the original recipient 
 of the true revelation, must therefore be the 
 
DEGENERATION 247 
 
 earliest of sages. ‘‘ What,” said a critic quoted 
 by Clement of Alexandria, “is Plato but Moses 
 talking Attic ?’’ Whatever truth he possessed 
 must have been borrowed, and distorted in 
 transmission, from the virgin source. Reasoning 
 so grotesque worked sad havoc in Christian 
 minds. We are not concerned here with its 
 effects, but with its cause. It was not specifically 
 Christian; it was part of the common heritage 
 of the time, and is part of the evidence for the 
 fact that the Christian faith was but one element, 
 though the strongest, in the furniture of their 
 mind. 
 
 It was a more serious matter that in two 
 most important regions of thought, those ot 
 philosophy and of law, the Christians moulded 
 their mind after the current pattern. ‘The 
 educated among them could not escape the 
 influence of the higher thought of their age. 
 Christian speculation on the supreme topics of 
 theology was guided by the philosophy of the 
 time, as is most strikingly shown in St. Augus- 
 tine’s use of the very language of Plotinus, 
 the neo-Platonist, to express his own most 
 intimate convictions after his conversion. And 
 so it was with legal thought. Christian order 
 followed the majestic system of Rome. To take 
 only its discipline, omitting the administration 
 which was borrowed from the imperial system, 
 
248 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
 
 canon law is the twin of civil law. Both are 
 descended from the old Roman jurisprudence, 
 and show it in their assumption of the guilt of 
 a person criminally charged and in their demand 
 that he should answer questions of the court 
 that might inculpate him—a method that excited 
 deep repugnance in English minds, whether it 
 were practised in ecclesiastical courts in ac- 
 cordance with the canon law or in the Star 
 Chamber in accordance with the civil. We have 
 anticipated the course of history, but the case 
 shows how religious discipline has been affected 
 by secular; and the converse is equally true. 
 For instance, our English law of trusts, as 
 interpreted in Chancery, was worked out on 
 ecclesiastical principles by a Bishop of Salisbury, 
 who was also Master of the Rolls under 
 Richard IT. 
 
 To return to the consecutive proof of our 
 thesis that Christianity never has been, nor can 
 be, a force working in isolation, let us consider 
 its state when it began to dominate the world. 
 The age was one of intellectual decline, in which 
 men lost all sense of probability. The early 
 monks of Egypt, where the institution began, 
 lived in a world of unrealities, which obfuscated 
 minds that yet were profoundly Christian. 
 When we read the very entertaining record of the 
 miracles which befell them, we are not for a 
 
MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 249 
 
 moment tempted to ignore their deep faith and 
 keen spiritual insight, but we are inevitably 
 reminded of the equally improbable stories with 
 which religionists of an older creed regaled 
 Herodotus by the banks of the same river. 
 Pagans and Christians had been victims of an 
 equal credulity, or perhaps both had found an 
 equal and an equally innocent pleasure in 
 mystifying the credulous admirer. In any case, 
 from the expansion of monasticism, or at any 
 rate from the time of that expansion, there dates 
 an increasing feebleness of human intelligence. 
 Strong and shrewd though he was, the writings 
 of Gregory the Great are an unrivalled treasury 
 of superstition and folklore, though it must be 
 added that St. Augustine himself had not been 
 immune from the infection. From this time 
 onward the Christian faith was to labour under 
 a burden which it had not imposed upon itself, 
 and it cannot be blamed for errors which its 
 adherents were unable to reject. They were 
 men of their time. And not only was their 
 mental, and to some extent moral, state inevit- 
 able. It was a phase through which Christianity 
 was designed to pass, and reaction from it was 
 the necessary method of progress. But within 
 this range of ideas—cramping, as 1t seems to us— 
 the faith did, in fact, work some of its most 
 striking victories, and types of Christian character 
 
200 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
 
 were developed which could not have developed 
 in other surroundings. St. Louis and St. Francis 
 were what they were in great measure because 
 of their environment; it suited them, just as the 
 quaint French of Joinville and the picturesque 
 compromise between Latin and Italian of the 
 “ Canticle of Brother Sun ” suited the thoughts 
 and adventures they were used to describe. 
 
 So we might continue through successive 
 centuries, always finding that Christianity is 
 conditioned by circumstances, and that even 
 when earnest people have striven to cultivate it 
 in isolation their environment has broken in and 
 spoiled the experiment. This has equally been 
 the case when, as in the monasteries, worldly 
 cares and temptations have distracted the mind 
 from the purpose for which they were founded, 
 and when, without the searching test of endow- 
 ment, select companies have failed to maintain 
 their strictness of life and doctrine. Their 
 Christianity has not been at fault, even though 
 we might find some inadequacy in it; the cause 
 lies in the inseparable combination of Christianity 
 with other forces, each acting upon the rest. 
 Sometimes it is a Mezentian union; sometimes, 
 on the other hand, if only for a while, there have 
 been most inspiring illustrations of what 
 Christianity at its best can achieve. But always 
 in the providential order, whether for help or for 
 
THE IDEA OF PROGRESS 251 
 
 hindrance, the surrounding world has worked 
 in and on Christian souls and the Christian 
 society. 
 
 Has this operation been progressive? The 
 comfortable doctrine of continuous progress 
 has received of late shrewd blows, philosophical 
 and practical. As Christians, we are not pledged 
 to assume that, within our narrow horizon, 
 progress can be clearly observed; for us the 
 world is in the hands of one for whom a thousand 
 years are but a day, and the cumulative evidence 
 of the power of the Christian faith on personal 
 character and on the conduct of masses of men 
 is among the proofs of our faith. The effects 
 repeat themselves in successive generations and 
 among all races, and are strikingly uniform. 
 It does not matter that interspersed among these 
 phenomena are facts of a contrary kind—in- 
 dividual souls over which their faith exercises 
 no control, or a control that is intermittent. 
 This does not prove that Christianity is a failure, 
 but that it has not had a fair trial. And in the 
 wider sphere of religious and national life it is 
 not that Christianity has too often broken down, 
 but rather that it has not been fully or genuinely 
 applied. In fact, the course of Christianity may 
 be likened to a procession of waves in which the 
 crest 1s followed by the trough; or rather, as in 
 
 a troubled sea, there is a simultaneous action of 
 18 
 
252 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
 
 waves in every stage of rise and fall. National 
 apostasy may be accomplished amid the silent 
 protest of a wide and deep personal religion, 
 and an effective maintenance of Christian causes 
 may coincide with a low standard of Christian 
 life in the nation which is their champion. 
 
 But there is not a simple succession of phases. 
 There is a continuous change by way of reaction. 
 It is one of Cardinal Newman’s charges against 
 the Church of England that this has been its 
 history. It is perfectly true, and quite credit- 
 able. The somewhat violent spirit of our early 
 reformers was a healthy revulsion from decadent 
 medievalism, and each change of religious 
 temper that has followed has had the same 
 origin, nor need we think that the process has 
 reached its end. We shall, indeed, be very 
 unwise if we pin our trust to the permanence of 
 our present modes of religious thought and 
 religious expression. There is the same in- 
 evitable change in the wider sphere of national 
 tendencies. Some generations have greater 
 powers of religious apprehension than others, — 
 and it seems a safe generalization to say that 
 days of great action have not been days of deep 
 religious feeling. In few periods has religion 
 in England been less conspicuously effective 
 than in those of the Black Prince, the elder Pitt, 
 and the Duke of Wellington, nor need we be 
 
PHASES OF THOUGHT 203 
 
 unduly depressed that our own should resemble 
 theirs in both respects. 
 
 But we have not to consider only objective 
 facts. In all impressions concerning the state 
 of religion and character there is a strong 
 subjective element. With perfect sincerity 
 people exaggerate, and the picture is too bright 
 or too dark to be true. There never was a more 
 admirable woman than Hannah More, but what 
 are we to think of her assertion that when she 
 settled at Cheddar there was but one Bible to 
 be found in a cottage, and it served to prop a 
 geranium-pot ? The Methodist movement had 
 been in full blast for two generations, and no- 
 where with more energy than in Somersetshire. 
 Can we believe Miss More’s account of its failure ? 
 It is conceivable, though most unlikely, that the 
 movement had spent itself and provoked a 
 reaction to indifference. It is more probable 
 that the lady’s sense of disappointment at some 
 failure of her own efforts had persuaded her 
 that things were worse than they really were. 
 But such despondency is a frequent phenomenon. 
 Bishop Butler’s grave preface to the “ Analogy,”’ 
 written in 1736, is well known: “ It is come, I 
 know not how, to be taken for granted, by many 
 persons, that Christianity is not so much as a 
 subject of enquiry; but that it is, now at length, 
 discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly 
 
254 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
 
 they treat it as if, in the present age, this were 
 an agreed point among all people of discernment; 
 and nothing remained, but to set it up as a 
 principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were 
 by way of reprisals for its having so long inter- 
 rupted the pleasures of the world.” Of Scotland 
 in the next generation, that of David Hume, 
 Professor Hume Brown has bluntly told us that 
 religion was dead there. These were subjective 
 impressions, destined to be quickly falsified. 
 There was neither more nor less truth in them 
 than in the exaggerated cheerfulness of other 
 generations. We are now labouring under the 
 reaction from an unbalanced optimism. Matthew 
 Arnold exclaimed, in scorn of mid-Victorian 
 sentiment: 
 
 ** As if the world had ever had 
 A faith, or sciolists been sad.” 
 
 Our sciolists are never cheerful. But it must be 
 admitted that serious people, too, have mis- 
 calculated in their hopes, and suffered the 
 penalty in depression. In regard to the Church 
 of England, this was the case about 1885, when 
 the establishment in Wales was first attacked. 
 There arose a chorus of self-gratulation, in 
 which, it must be said, Archbishop Benson was 
 a leader. We were accused of inefficiency, of 
 failure to attract and influence the multitude. 
 
FAILURE ONLY APPARENT — 255 
 
 In reply, we praised ourselves lustily; never was 
 a Church so beneficently active, so spiritual, 
 in the best sense so successful. We forgot that 
 we had some dull preachers, some empty 
 churches. We are suffering still from the reaction 
 against this exaggeration; we are perhaps too 
 conscious of failures, and pay undue attention 
 to the fact that some methods of appeal are 
 outworn, while failing to notice that others are 
 taking their place. It is, for instance, psycho- 
 logically intelligible that mission preaching, 
 which produced wonderful results in the heroic 
 days of Aitken and Twigg, is now much less 
 effectual, in spite of (perhaps in part because of) 
 great improvements in technique. 
 
 Some of the illustrations that have been used 
 may perhaps seem narrowly ecclesiastical, but 
 they will serve to point the moral as well as if 
 they had been chosen from a wider range. The 
 problem before us is an apparent failure of 
 Christianity. We have tried first to satisfy 
 ourselves that Christianity neither fails nor 
 succeeds in a broad sense apart from the world 
 which it is set to influence. To use a further 
 illustration, as planets control each other’s course, 
 so it is with Church and world. But the in- 
 fluence exerted is not uniform; there are re- 
 current periods of advance and retreat. This is 
 the case when the facts are objectively con- 
 
256 CHRISTIANITY AND HISTORY 
 
 sidered; it is still more obvious when mental 
 states are taken into account. The contempla- 
 tion of the whole world order is an exercise for 
 our faith, and, indeed, a trial. But we may see 
 in it a proof of Divine patience and wisdom, 
 and if we try to conform our will to the Will that 
 is supreme, we may hope not only to strengthen 
 our assurance, but to bring nearer the fulfilment 
 of God’s purpose for His creation. 
 
 a a a a 
 PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BILLING AND 8ONS8, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER, 
 
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF BELIEF 
 
 BELIEF IN GOD 
 
 By CHARLES GORE, D.D. 
 
 Formerly Bishop of Oxford 
 
 This Volume—which is to be followed by two others entitled 
 ‘* Belief in Christ ’’ and ‘* The Holy Spirit and the Church,”’ 
 
 each volume, however, being independent of the others—is an attempt 
 to construct a rational fabric of belief from the foundation, as far as may 
 be, without assumptions. Accordingly, after an introductory chapter 
 in which the breakdown of traditional belief is noted and its causes 
 analysed, the author proceeds to enquire afresh what are the grounds, 
 first, for any sort of belief in God and, secondly, for belief in a specific 
 revelation such as Christianity postulates. The idea of God resulting 
 from this enquiry is thus analysed and tested, the question of the 
 credibility of the miraculous being considered at length. The book, 
 which represents a lifetime of study and thought, necessarily traverses 
 the area of all the most fundamental modern controversies, but the 
 desire is to make it intelligible to men and women of ordinary 
 education who are not specialists. 
 
 CONTENTS.—The Breakdown of Tradition—The Conditions of 
 Hopeful Reconstruction—Grounds of Belief in God—The Question of 
 Revelation—The Contents of the Prophetic Faith—Revelation and 
 Reason—The Historical Religion—Historical Worth of the New 
 Testament—The Prejudice of Criticism—The Prejudice Examined— 
 The Historical Evidence—Conclusion, etc. 
 
 ‘It is not too much to say, after reading this volume, that the 
 Church will be materially and permanently indebted to him, if 
 he is able to complete the programme he sets down with so 
 much courage.”—Church Times. 
 
 ‘With his habitual honesty he faces the facts of the present 
 situation. . . . He is critical, to a degree that will startle some 
 people even to-day, but he establishes the fact that in the 
 Hebrew prophets, especially those of the great canonical 
 sequence, there is, on the whole, a firm declaration at once of 
 the righteousness and of the love of God, which could not be 
 based on the superficial experiences of the time, and yet bears 
 the impress of an ‘ experience of reality.’ ”"—Guardian, 
 
 ‘But the first thing that strikes one about the book is its 
 complete sincerity and naturalness. It is written with a fine 
 reticence and restraint, partly temperamental, partly due to a 
 high sense of responsibility.”— Christian World. 
 
 LONDON: JOHN MURRAY 
 
THE STORY OF THE PASSION 
 
 ITS OWN MESSAGE CONSIDERED IN 
 SIMPLE ADDRESSES. By the Very Rev. Henry 
 Wace, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. The author’s pur- 
 pose in this book is to elucidate the history of our Lord’s 
 Passion from the words of the Evangelists alone, to bring 
 out into clear light the words that were uttered and the 
 deeds that were done during that solemn day, and to 
 leave them to make their own revelation. Those words 
 and deeds bring us into the heights and depths of Divine 
 and Fluman Life, and they afford the best evidence of 
 our Christian Faith. 
 
 FAITH, BELIEF, AND PROOF 
 
 AN INQUIRY INTO THE SCIENCE OF 
 NATURAL THEOLOGY. By the Rev. J. H, 
 Beipirz, M.A., Vicar of All Saints, Warwick ; Examining 
 Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of Coventry; sometime 
 Vice-Principal of Litchfield Theological College. With 
 an Introduction by the Right Rev. BisHor Gore, D.D. 
 This book is occupied with a criticism of the old so-called 
 ‘proofs of the existence of God” in the light of recent 
 scientific and philosophical thought. In the introductory 
 chapter the writer seeks to distinguish between “ belief” 
 and “ faith” as two different mentalattitudes. The main 
 thought running through the essay is the possibility of 
 
 applying a tested scientific method to the subject matter 
 of theology. 
 
 LONDON: JOHN MURRAY 
 
BY THE REV. HENRY WACE 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH. 
 Being the Bampton Lectures for 1879. 75. Od, net. 
 
 PROPHECY: JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN. 
 Considered in a Series of Warburton Lectures at Lincoln’s 
 Inn, 35. 6d. net. 
 
 THE SACRIFICE OF CHRIST: ITS VITAL 
 
 REALITY AND EFFICACY, 
 
 Reissued with New Introduction. Is. net. 
 THE APOCRYPHA. 
 
 By Various Writers. Edited by the Very Rev. Henry 
 
 Wace, D.D. 2 vols. 505. net. 
 MURRAY’S DICTIONARY OF CHRISTIAN 
 BIOGRAPHY AND LITERATURE. 
 
 To the end of the Sixth Century A.D., with an account of 
 
 the Principal Sects and Heresies. In 1 vol. 255. net. 
 
 BY CHARLES GORE, D.D., 
 
 Formerly Bishop of Oxford, 
 
 BELIEF IN GOD. 
 The Reconstruction of Belief. 7+ Impression. 75. 6d. net. 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. 
 A Practical Exposition. 5s. net. 
 Cheap Edition in paper covers, Is. 6d, net. 
 THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 2 vols. 5s. net. 
 THE EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS. 5s. net. 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. 6s, net. 
 THE INCARNATION OF THE SON OF GOD. 
 
 Bampton Lectures, 1891. 5s. net. 
 DISSERTATIONS ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED 
 WITH THE INCARNATION. 5s. net. 
 THE BODY OF CHRIST. 65. net. 
 
 LUX MUNDI, 
 Edited by Cuartes Gort, D.D. A Series of Studies in the 
 
 Religion of the Incarnation. By Various Writers. 6s. net. 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, Albemarle Street, LONDON, W.1. 
 
By DEAN STANLEY. 
 
 SINAI AND PALESTINE 
 IN CONNECTION WITH THEIR HISTORY. With 
 Maps, and Plans. 
 
 THE BIBLE IN THE HOLY LAND, 
 Being Extracts from the above Work for Young Persons, 
 With Illustrations. 
 
 THOMAS ARNOLD: 
 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF. In Two Volumes, 
 with Portrait. Also in one Volume, with Portrait and 16 half- 
 tone Illustrations. 
 
 HISTORICAL MEMORIALS OF CANTERBURY. 
 With 24 Full-page Illustrations and 2 Plans, Large Crown 8vo. 
 Also with Illustrations, Crown 8vo. 
 
 THE HISTORY. OF THE JEWISH CHURCH, 
 LECTURES ON. From Abraham to the Christian Era, 
 With Portrait, Maps and Plans. In Three Volumes. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE EASTERN CHURCH, 
 LECTURES ON. With an Introduction on the Study of 
 Ecclesiastical History, and a Map. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 Lectures delivered in Edinburgh in 1872. 
 
 WESTMINSTER ABBEY : 
 HISTORICAL MEMORIALS OF. From its Foundation to 
 the Year 1876. With Illustrations, 
 
 CHRISTIAN INSTITUTIONS. 
 
 Essays on Ecclesiastical Subjects. 
 
 ESSAYS CHIEFLY ON QUESTIONS OF CHURCH 
 AND STATE FROM 1850 TO 1870. 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, 
 LETTERS AND VERSES OF. Edited by ROWLAND E, 
 Peo (Lord Ernle). A Companion Volume to the 
 above. 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF. Three Lectures delivered in 
 Edinburgh, in November, 1882. By the Very Rev. DEAN 
 BRADLEY. Second Edition. 
 
 — 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, Albemarle Street, LONDON, W.1. 
 
THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE 
 
 ALLEN, the Venble. Willoughby C., M.A., 
 
 Archdeacon of Blackburn, 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN HOPE. Addresses, Sermons, and Popular 
 
 Lectures. Crown 8vo, 55. net. 
 
 ARNOLD, Matthew. 
 LITERATURE AND DOGMA, An Essay towards a better 
 apprehension of the Bible. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 GOD AND THE BIBLE. A sequel to ‘Literature and 
 Dogma.” Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 ST. PAUL AND PROTESTANTISM. With Other Essays, 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 LAST ESSAYS ON CHURCH AND RELIGION. Crown 
 8vo, 35. 6d. net. 
 
 BEECHING, the Very Rev. H. C., M.A., D.Litt., 
 Late Dean of Norwich. 
 THE BIBLE DOCTRINE OF THE SACRAMENTS. Six 
 Lectures given in Westminster Abbey. Crown 8vo, 35. 6d. net. 
 
 THE APOSTLES’ CREED. Six Lectures delivered in West- 
 minster Abbey. Large Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 BENSON, the late Rev. Robert Hugh. 
 
 HUGH: MEMOIRS OF A BROTHER. By A. C. BENson. 
 With Illustrations. Large Crown 8vo, 9s. net. 
 
 BIBLE COMMENTARY. 
 
 A COMMENTARY ON THE HOLY BIBLE, Explanatory 
 and Critical, with a Revision of the Translation. By Bishops and 
 Clergy of the Anglican Church. Edited by F. C. Coox, M.A,, 
 late Canon of Exeter. 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT. 6 vols. Medium 8vo. 
 
 Waeteie ccs, net. Vol. Ii, 2orenet. Vole IT, 10s-'net.. Vol: 
 IV, 24s. net. Vol. V, 205. net. Vol. VI, 255. net. 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT. 4vols. Medium 8vo. Vol. I, 18s. 
 net. Vol. II, 20s. net. Vol. III, 28s. net. Vol. IV, 28s. net. 
 
THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE 
 
 THE APOCRYPHA. By various writers. Edited by the Rev. H. 
 Wace, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. 2vols. Medium 8vo, 50s. net. 
 
 STUDENT’S COMMENTARY ON THE HOLY BIBLE. 
 Abridged from the above Work. Edited by JOHN M. FULLER, 
 M.A., Vicar of Bexley, and Professor of Ecclesiastical History, 
 King’s College, London. 6 vols. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d. net each. 
 
 *.* Arrangements have been made with the booksellers enabling 
 them to offer special terms for the above two works complete. 
 
 BICKERSTETH, the Right Rev. Edward, D.D., 
 Late Bishop of South Tokyo, Japan. 
 
 OUR HERITAGE IN THE CHURCH. Papers Written for 
 Divinity Students in Japan. With a Preface by the late Right 
 Rev. B. F. Westcott, D.D. Large Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS OF EDWARD BICKERSTETH, 
 late Bishop of South Tokyo. With Map and Illustrations. Cheap 
 Edition. Cr. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. Alsoan Ed., Demy 8vo, 10s. 6d. net. 
 
 BOYD-CARPENTER, the Right Rev. William, D.D., 
 Late Bishop of Ripon. 
 
 A POPULAR HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENG- 
 LAND, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. With LIllus- 
 trations. Cheap Edition. Large Crown 8vo, 6s. net. 
 
 BROOKE, Rev. Stopford A. 
 
 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THE REV. STOPFORD 
 A. BROOKE. By LAWRENCE PEARSALL JACKS, M.A., Hon. 
 LL.D., D.D., Principal of Manchester College, Oxford. With 
 Portraits. 2vols. Large Post 8vo, I5s. net. 
 
 BURKITT, F. Crawford, 
 
 Lecturer in Paleography in the University of Cambridge. 
 
 EARLY EASTERN CHRISTIANITY. St. Margaret’s Lec- 
 tures, 1904, on the Syriac-speaking Church. With Illustrations. 
 Large Crown 8vo, 75. 6d, net. 
 
 CAILLARD, Miss E. M. 
 A LIVING CHRISTIANITY. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 CARNEGIE, the Rev. W. H., 
 
 Canon of Westminster. 
 
 CHURCHMANSHIP AND CHARACTER. Three Years’ 
 
 Teaching in Birmingham Cathedral. Crown 8vo, 55. net. 
 
 PERSONAL RELIGION AND POLITICS. Crown 8vo, 
 
 6s. net. 
 
 ao” a 
 
MR. MURRAY’S CATALOGUE OF 
 
 CLARKE, Sir Edward, the Right Hon., P.C. 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT. The Authorised Version Cor- 
 rected. The Text prepared by Sir Edward Clarke. Demy 8vo, 55. net, 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. The Authorised Version 
 Amended. The Text prepared by Sir Edward Clarke. Demy 
 8vo, 35. 6d. net. 
 
 THE BOOK OF PSALMS, The Prayer Book Version 
 Corrected. The Text prepared by Sir Edward Clarke. F’cap 
 8vo, 25. 6d. net. 
 
 CLARKE, the Rev. J. Langton, D.D. 
 
 THE ETERNAL SAVIOUR-JUDGE. Fresh Light and 
 Comfort from the Holy Scriptures. With an Introduction by the 
 Rev. J. R. ILLINGWorTH, D.D. Demy 8vo, 4s. net. Simplified 
 Edition, Crown 8vo, 2s. net. 
 
 COHU, the Rev. J. R., M.A. 
 Rector of Aston Clinton, Bucks. 
 
 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Demy 8vo, 16s. net. 
 
 COLLINS, the Right Rev. William Edward, D.D., 
 Late Bishop of Gibraltar 
 
 HOURS OF INSIGHT and other Sermons. Crown 8vo, §5, net. 
 
 CONTENTIO VERITATIS. 
 
 CONTENTIO VERITATIS. Essays in Constructive Theology. 
 By Srx OxForD Tutors: the Rev. H. Rashdall, D.Litt., the 
 Very Rev. W. R. Inge, the Rev. H. L. Wild, the Rev. C. F. 
 Burney, the Rev. W. C. Allen, the Rev. A. J. Carlyle. A Re- 
 vised Edition. Demy 8vo, 6s. net. 
 
 CUNNINGHAM, the Venble. W., D.D., F.B.A., 
 Late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Archdeacon of Ely. 
 CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS. The Substance of the 
 
 Lowell Lectures delivered at Boston, Mass.,1914. Demy 8vo, 6s. net. 
 EFFICIENCY IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Some 
 
 Remarks Occasioned by the Report of the Archbishops’ Com- 
 mittee on Church Finance. Crown 8vo, 3s. 6a. net. 
 
 DANNATT, William, 
 Of Great Waltham. 
 
 THE FAITH OF A FARMER, Extracts from his Diary, 
 edited, with an Introduction, by J. G. MONTMORENCY, M.A., 
 LL.B. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. 
 
THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE 
 
 DEARMER, the Rev. Percy, D.D. 
 PATRIOTISM AND FELLOWSHIP. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net. 
 
 DIFFICULTIES IN CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 A Letter toa Layman. In Paper Covers. Demy 8vo, Is. net, 
 
 DIGBY, Mother Mabel. 
 
 MOTHER MABEL DIGBY, 1835—1911, Superior General of 
 the Society of the Sacred Heart. By ANNE POLLEN. Witha 
 Preface by Cardinal BouRNE. FourthImpression. With Illustra- 
 tions. Demy 8vo, 16s. net. 
 
 DUCHESNE, Monsignor L., 
 
 De VAcadémie Francaise; Hon. D.Litt. Oxford, and Litt.D. 
 Cambridge. 
 
 THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CHURCH. From its 
 Foundation to the End of the Fifth Century. Rendered into 
 English from the Fourth Edition. 
 
 Vout. I. To End of Third Century. Demy 8vo, 12s. net. 
 VoL. II. Demy 8vo, 12s. net. 
 
 ERNLE, Lord. 
 
 THE PSALMS IN HUMAN LIFE. _ Enlarged Edition. 
 Large Crown 8vo, 6s. net. New Pocket Edition. 2s. 6d, net. 
 
 EYRE, Douglas—Edited by, 
 Of Lincoln’s Inn, Barrister-at-Law 
 REFORM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. A Re- 
 vised Edition of ‘‘ Essays in Aid of the Reform of the Church.” 
 Crown 8vo, 55. net. 
 
 FAWKES, Rev. Alfred, M.A., 
 Vicar of Ashby St. Ledgers. 
 STUDIES IN MODERNISM. Demy 8vo, fos. 6d. net. 
 THE THINGS THAT ARE C/ESAR’S. Thoughts on Church 
 
 Reform. In Paper Covers. Demy 8vo, Is. net. 
 
 CHURCH AND STATE IN ENGLAND. With a Preface 
 by the BisHop OF HEREFORD. In Paper Covers. Demy 8vo, Is. net. 
 
 FLYNN, the Rev. John Stephen, M.A., 
 Hon. Canon of Truro 
 THE INFLUENCE OF PURITANISM ON THE POLITI- 
 
 CAL AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT OF THE ENGLISH. 
 Demy 8vo, 5s. net. 
 
~~ 
 
 The Life and Works of 
 CHARLOTTE BRONTE 
 
 and her Sisters 
 
 EMILY AND ANNE BRONTE 
 HAWORTH EDITION 
 
 In seven volumes, with Introductions by Mrs. 
 Humphry Ward, and Illustrated with Portraits and 
 Views of places described in the books. A facsimile 
 of the title page of the first edition is included in 
 each volume. Large Crown 8vo. 
 
 1. JANE EYRE. By Cuar.otre Bronri:. 
 2. SHIRLEY. By CuHaARLoTTE Bronvié. 
 3. VILLETTE. By Cuar.ortTe Bronri, 
 
 THE PROFESSOR. By Cuartorre Bronté, and 
 POEMS, by Cuar.otte, Emity, and ANNE Bronrii, 
 and the Rev. Patrick Bronrii, 
 
 5. WUTHERING HEIGHTS. By Emity Brontié. AGNES 
 GREY. By Anne BrRonreé. 
 
 6. THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL. By ANNE 
 BRONTE, 
 
 7. THE LIFE OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE. By Mrs. 
 GASKELL. With an Introduction and Notes by 
 CLEMENT K. SHORTER. With Photogravure Por- 
 traits and other Lllustrations. 
 
 POPULAR EDITION. 
 7 volumes (as above). Small Post 8vo. 
 
 POEMS: Selections from the Poetry of Charlotte, Emily, 
 Anne, and Branwell Bronté. Including some Poems 
 
 hitherto unprinted. Edited by A. C. Benson, with 
 Portraits and two Facsimile MSS. 
 
 LONDON: JOHN MURRAY 
 
THE 
 CORNHILL 1/6 net 
 
 MAGAZINE — MonTuLy 
 
 Edited by LEONARD HUXLEY, LL.D. 
 
 ‘‘Can a magazine have a soul ? In turning over the pages 
 
 of the hundred volumes of the ‘Cornhill,’ I have been on © 
 
 the search, and I believe I have foundit. . .. The range 
 of subjects is very wide, the methods of treatment are 
 
 infinitely various. Politics and public affairs have for the — 
 
 most part been avoided, though the fringe of them is often 
 touched. . . . The ‘note’ of the ‘Cornhill’ is the literary 
 note, in the widest sense of the term; its soul is the spirit 
 of that human culture, as Matthew Arnold describes it in 
 the pages, reprinted from the ‘Cornhill,’ of ‘ Culture and 
 Anarchy.’ ’—SIR E. T. COOK. 
 
 OPINIONS OF LIBRARIANS. 
 
 “T find upon inquiry at our five Libraries that the ‘Cornhill’ is well 
 read, and certainly it appeals to a section of readers who can appreciate 
 better literary fare than is offered in most of the modern monthlies. May 
 I take this opportunity of expressing my own admiration for the high 
 literary tone which you preserve in the ‘Cornhill,’ ” 
 
 ““My Committee are of opinion that there is room for one of its kind- 
 (Personally, I think there is only one of the ‘Cornhill’ kind, and that is 
 the ‘Cornhill’ itself.) I may say at once that the ‘Cornhill’ exactly meets 
 the wants of a select body of readers.” 
 
 “Tt is one of the few magazines of which a complete set is kept in stock 
 for the benefit of borrowers.” 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 “Cornhill is in a class by itself and is full of the most entertaining reading 
 with real literary flavour.” —Liverpool Courier. 
 
 “The counsel of perfection is to purchase the ‘Cornhill,’ that you may 
 not only enjoy its contents but keep them to show a friend.’’—Guardian. 
 
 “ Those of us who are not in the habit of reading the magazine will be 
 well advised to repair the omission.” —Ovwxford Magazine. 
 
 THE “CORNHILL” can be obtained of all Booksellers and Newsagents, 
 price 1s. 6d. net monthly. The Subscription for a year, including postage, 
 is 20s. 6d. (Canada 20s.) 
 
peer th aay a 
 Hee ear ae 
 
 73 
 ny 
 
 woe 
 
va 
 
 aw 
 * 
 
 un 
 rye f 
 
 \ nH Apts 
 
 ee aly . 
 Hatt i yi 
 
 veh M ly 
 
 "y 
 Mtl 
 Wit 
 daa’ 
 of 
 
ye 
 
 AY Wi Act 
 1 
 r 
 
 a 
 ee 
 
 ——— 
 
 +3 
 ‘i 
 Ae 
 
 Sib nT Ky 
 ’ i IY ali 
 ida uy 
 
SoS Sse