prea pel ee ‘ ¥ sy Grom fhe Zibrarp of (Professor Wiffiam Henrp Breen Bequeathed Bp Bim fo tbe Library of (Princeton Theofogica? Seminary EN SAMO Widow eeu Fisher, George Pa 1909. : eee Paistche and rationalism Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library httos://archive.org/details/faithrationalismOOfish_0 FAITH AND RATIONALISM., BY THE SAME AUTHOR. THE SUPERNATURAL ORIGIN OF CHRISTIAN- : ITY, with Special Reference to the Theories of Renan, Strauss, and the Tubingen School. New and greatly enlarged edition. One vol., 8vo., cloth, ee $3.00 DISCUSSIONS IN HISTORY we Bees ise One vol., 8vo., cloth, yin Bs Tes OONe THE REFORMATION. One vol., 8vo., cloth, $2.50 THE BEGINNINGS OF CHRISTIANITY, with a view of the State of cts Roman Migrie at aS Birth of Christ. S8vo., >< ave e's 00, THE GROUNDS OF COU es AND CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 8vo., wa tar Se RAS (enl= EN fo Ace 2 I2mo., paper, -30 Clothes. 5 4 oo eAO *,* Sent eeu on fecaipt of price by the publishers, CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, 743 & 745 Broadway, New York. FAITH AND RATIONALISM WITH SHORT SUPPLEMENTARY ESSAYS ON RELATED TOPICS BY GEORGE P. FISHER, D.D., LL.D. PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN YALE COLLEGE If any man will [i. e., willeth to] do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. JoHNn vu. 17, NEW AND ENLARGED EDITION. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1885 ‘ ~ 4 PHILADELPHIA GRANT & FAIRES — BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS COPYRIGHT, 1879, 1885, is s 2 ‘ A i ; ers Wuxixos 5€ avOpwros ov SéxeTat Ta TOU mvEevmaTos TOU Beod. pwpla yap a’TYe €oTt, kal ov dvvaTat yv@vat, OTL mVEVMATLKaS avakpiveTat.—l Cor. ii. 14. “Howbeit, if we will truly consider it, it is more worthy to believe than to know as we now know. For in knowledge man’s mind suffers fiom sense which is the reflection of things material—but in faith the spirit suffers from spirit which is a worthier agent. Otherwise itis in the state of men glori- fied, forthenfaith shall cease, and we shall know even as we are known.” *RE ERK KK “The use of human reason in matters of religion is of two sorts; the for- mer in the explanation of the mystery, the latter in the inferences derived from it. With regard to the explanation of the mysteries, we see that God vouchsafes to descend to the weakness of our apprehension, by so express- ' ing His mysteries that they may be most sensible tous; and by grafting His revelations upon the notions and conceptions of our reason; and by ap- plying His inspirations to open our understandings, as the form of the key to the ward of the lock. But here we ought by no means to be wanting to ourselves; for as God uses the help of our reason to illuminate us, so should we likewise turn it every way, that we may be more capable of receiving and understanding His mysteries; provided only that the mind be enlarged, ac- cording to its capacity, to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mys- teries contracted to the narrowness of the mind.” * * * * * * * “But as the use of the human reason in things divine is of two kinds, so likewise in the use are two kinds of excess; the one when it inquires too curiously into the manner of the mystery; the other when the same autho- rity is attached to inferences as to principles. * * * * * * * Wherefore it appears to me that it would be of especial use and benefit if a temperate and careful treatise were instituted, which, as a kind of divine logic, should lay down proper precepts touching the use of human reason in theology. For it would act as an opiate, not only to lull to sleep the vanity of curious spe- culations, wherewith sometimes the schools labor, but also in some degree to assuage the fury of controversies, wherewith the Church is troubled. Such a treatise I reckon among the things deficient; and call it Sophron, or The Legitimate Use of Human Reason in Divine Subjects.” —Bacon, De Augmen- tis, b. ix. “Je sais qu’ il a voulu qu’ elles”—les vérités divines—“entrent du coour dans I’ esprit, et non pas de I’ esprit dans le cceur, pour humilier cette su- perbe puissance du raisonnement qui prétend devoir étre juge des choses que la volonté choisit; et pour guérir cette volonté infirme, qui s’ est cor- rumpue par ses sales attachements. Et de la vient qu’ au lieu qu’ en par- lant des choses humaines on dit qu’ il faut les connaitre avant que de les aimer, ce quia passé en proverbe [ignoti nulla cupido]: les saints au con- traire disent en parlant des choses divines qu’ il faut les aimer pour les connaitre et qu’ on n’ entre dans la vérité que par la charité, dont ils ont fait une de leurs plus utiles sentences.”—PascaL, Opuscules (de I’ Art de Persuader). PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. In this edition an Introduction and additional remarks on the Atonement are added, together with a few slight modifications in forms of statement. October 7, 1885. PREPACH Having been invited to deliver an address at the Princeton Theological School, I found the theme which I had chosen so attractive, that I wrote much more than it was possible to read in the time proper for such a discourse. I wrote, also, several supplementary essays,—branches, as it were, of the main stem. It turns out, however, that the branches in the aggregate take up more room than the stem out of which they grew. Such is the origin of the present book. I hardly need add that the hospitality of my brethren at Princeton does not render them in the least answerable for its contents. Gy PS New Haven, April 14, 1879. CONE INVES: Sine Introduction . : 5 5 ; e e ® ° ° ° 1 St. Paul on the Limits of our Knowledge in Religion . mare Characteristics of Faith : . < : é : é di elo Connection of Faith with Feeling : ‘i i : k ees Connection of Faith with the Will . 5 : : ALG Criticism of Locke’s Definition of Faith . . , : : “ 316 Extreme Supernaturalism of the early Socinians . > ¢ eats) The Characteristic Temper of Rationalism © é 5 5 a0 Rationalism intolerant of Mysteries . : 4 : ; ; 3 eae What is Meant by a Mysterious Truth oo Se cpinteee Puaabet if 8 28 Mystery not unfavorable to Piety 2 c ; é - £226 Rationalism in conjunction with Orthodox Tenets . : - Be HE Rationalism overlooks the Influence of Sin upon the Intellect .. 28 Rationalism ignores the Premises of Faith : : eine wn 29 Different Degrees of Vividness in the Perception of Sin Rae UES) Catholic Nature of the Christian Sense of Guilt and of Sin . Sapo Tendency of Rationalism to take no account of implicit Reason- ing . - 5 3 ; : 5 aie A = 3 2 SB) Tendency of Rationalism to exaggerate the office of Logic in Re- ligion ; ites - Sees ; Pramas | Tendency of Rationalism to resolve Christianity into a Doctrine. 36 Rationalism inclined to seek for Knowledge for its own Sake 178% The True Motive in the Search for Religious Truth sfubet J Bot Safeguards against Fancy and Enthusiasm F f < ° eee) 40) The Debatable Ground about a great Religious Truth 42 Limits of Responsibility in meeting Objections to Christian Truth 43 The Sources of our Beliefin God . i 2 y F mn 45 Relation of the Will to Faith in God and in Conscience. . & - 49 1x ° Ceo ¥, ej 4 * a Piety ; ee ey . 3 F 3 te ocak Sy Sot = pas Ks : ¢ ; ot a faerie ETE ° - ‘s : et i “. TANT aa RES ee, CoS EAD of Corer oe geitn age AIS ie 4 a CONTENTS. © 7 5 aete i Lit ee sags . es 2 ta, ott Zs 3 - ai . : PAG The Sources of Faith ina Future Life . . . . . . The Mystery.of the ‘Trinity "0/500" Lon Fs GSS nae ae ae The Problem of Universal Sin and Individual Responsibleness _ “Insufficiency of the Moral View of the Atonement . . . Reasonablenesss of the Doctrine of the Spirit’s Influence Sh ee Spiritual Insight requisite in the Interpretation of Scripture . ‘ Contradictory Judgments of Intellectual Men upon Books of the ae 2: NBibles, (23h Ways te ok Se ao ga Power actually exerted by the Writingsof Paul . . . . «2 266: Rationalism involved ina priori Views of Scripture . 4. . Bishop Butler on a priori Ideas respecting Revelation . = Ba : The Gospels not conformed to a priort Expectations . . ‘ The Authority of Scripture not limited by Personal Insight. . The Divine and Human Elements in Scripture . c : The Grand Aim of Christianity an Argument forits Truth . . APPENDIX. THE TEACHING OF THEOLOGY ON THE MORAL Basis oF FAITH. ~— AUSUSUING 9 HE ee ok ht va Vices. WS erie ae Ne nr Anselm peur eg aes ptiee : 2 A Z emf Bernard . “ : c : ; ua Bonaventura. . : . 3 | | Ugo Si Vietor bh te. che ee ee ee - Oa vain ee weet f ys es 4 $ i , E - De Melanchthon’ ec ses Dae eons be eee 3 ae é Tere ie or she ol oe ew cgcine peta te ee ee ea Pascal on Yim ede WOE ig inborn ghd ac = ee a Edwards pty Wai esos 0 eae SRO, a cena nS 2 _ CONTENTS. xi PAGE Schleiermacher . ; . ° ° s ; A C : ‘ 08 Recent German Theologians . F sarees c‘ ; iy to Coleridge . , : 2 : - °93 J.H.Newman , s . ° = ekg! II. THE DOCTRINE OF NESCIENCE RESPECTING Gop. How far “the Infinite” is Knowable . Z : : 5 ome 99 Spencer’s Criticism of Paley’s Illustration . 6 . : «0102 Ly. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION IN ITS RELATION TO THE ARGU- MENT OF DESIGN. Meaning of Evolution . ; ‘ : haere : ; ‘ . 104 The Relation of Science to Religion . : - : : : . 106 The Alternative of Design or Chance yee : : ; - 108 Necessity of assuming Design ; 3 A F : 5 ; . 109 Natural Selection generates Nothing . : : 3 : : eo Variation is under Guidance . : : ; - 3 Rea 8 bY Analogy between Works of Nature and of Art . ; ; J LLG Theory of “Conditions of Existence” . ; F : ; : PhS Mind consciously distinct from its Organism. : ; edd The Intuition of Self completes the Argument of nines : mela ENE THE REASONABLENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. Fundamental Idea of Prayer . ; 2 } : : F ; » 128 Petition not Dictation . : ; : : ; : . 129 Limits to the Proper Sphere of Petition . - ‘ ; : . 180 Means of answering Prayer for Spiritual Good . : ; ; Glo Our Belief in the Supernatural is subject to Education . : . 133 Theistic View of the Order of Nature . ; : : 3 : . 134 : ‘f Peat me Pe % Ys ina se 0 - ; v Jee! 3 7 ek Bt “CONTENTS. ea ae pis mahi}, Nature a Part ofa more ExtensiveSystem . . . ie Ways of answering Prayer for Physical Changes : ‘ Interposition through the medium of Natural Law . The Uniformity of Nature and Miracles”. 5 The Proposal to test experimentally the Efficacy of aes V. ek JESUS WAS NOT A RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIAST. Self-scrutiny necessary toChrist . . . 4 5 : His Sobriety tested by the Ordeal of Suffering . } His Holiness precludes Self-exaggeration . ¢ ee His Anticipations verified °-. 4)... an se le Wa: The Problem of the Atonement . ; 2 é Examination of the Views of President Edwards . The Theory of Dr. J. McLeod Campbell : phe leading Idéas: of Duther) 07.) 12" ee Exposition of Schleiermacher’s Doctrine . : ‘ The Theory of Rothe . . : ; 14 i eee Tendencies of Modern Theology on this aac a Remarks of Canon Mozley . ; & : 5 ae 5 3 . Wits : THE UNITY OF BELIEF AMONG CHRISTIANS. Doctrine and the Philosophy of Doctrine . as Ane Unity in respect to Fundamental Truth . ‘ Ate A Differences from Ambiguity of Languese : + RED RS Dnity in Devotion . ; 5 5 5 : 5 E ; INTRODUCTION. ? THE call for a new edition of this little volume affords an opportunity to prefix a few remarks, for the sake of render- ing its main intent more clear. It is no part of the author’s design to disparage external evidence, or to set faith in any relation of antagonism to reason, or to imply that the - Christian believer has not, or may not have, good reasons to give for the faith that is in him. 1. We give the name of the Christian Faith to the sum of beliefs which make up the substance of Christianity in its objective form. They are set forth in brief in the Apostles’ Creed. They comprise, as we there see, first, what are termed truths of natural religion; secondly, further truths of an abstract nature, such as the relation of Christ to God, which the Gospel Revelation affirms; and thirdly, the main historical facts of Christianity. We may say in general that the Christian Faith, objectively considered, includes doc- trines and facts. 2. Faith subjective is the state or act of mind in which one lays hold of these truths with an inward assent or trust. 9 : INTRODUCTION. They are not looked on as things doubtful or fictitious, but are acknowledged and grasped by the soul as real. — 3. To this internal persuasion and apprehension there are two impelling forces. Faith is the product of an inward and an outward factor. There is the mind’s own feeling of © its dependence, its conscious spriritual hunger, the various operations of conscience, and the like, which are antecedent conditions and impulses from within. There is the address to the mind from without in the phenomena of nature, and in all that constitute the arguments for religion, whether natural or revealed. The distinction is very well stated by Canon Mozley. God may be conceived of as merely the im- personation of causes, the Being who simply gives existence to nature and watches its progress. Or, the mind may go further and conceive of Him as Moral Governor and Judge, “keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and trans- gression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.” * Add to this statement the remark that which of these con- ceptions is entertained, depends for the most part on the ac- tivity of one’s own conscience, or, in general, on one’s moral and spiritual state. Under the first, as the prevailing con- ception, there is no room for miracles; under the last, as the prevailing conception, the historical statements of the New Testament, into which miracles enter, are quite credible. Thus an internal element enters into the proof, even of his- torical Christianity, and alone gives it efficacy. “ External * Lectures of Miracles, pp. xXiv., XXv. INTRODUCTION. 3 or historical evidence has an intrinsic defect in it, for the purpose of full persuasion, standing alone, without this in- ternal auxiliary, because evidence is, by its very nature, a double thing, in which an outer part has its complement in an inner, and both together make the whole thing. Ante- cedent. probability is a constitutional element of evidence, _ and external testimony has reasonably a different weight, according as it comes to us with or without it.” 4. It is important distinctly to remember that as regards historical Christianity, as well as natural theology, the effect of the evidence hinges on the presence or absence of certain primary ideas, perceptions, convictions. Without certain assumptions of this character, not only does the proof fail of its effect; that failure, moreover, is legitimate. It is true, as Mozley avers, that he who rejects the Gospel miracles, “is reasonable in that rejection,” so long as he approaches the subject in that state of mind. There is no internal element to match with the external, and it is both elements, meeting together, by which the proof is made up. 0. The same able theologian who has just been quoted has, also, illustrated another of the characteristics of faith, to which attention is called in the following pages,—namely, the concern which the will has in it. There are reasons to be given for faith, or for the propositions which are the object of faith ; but, in the first place, “the premises of faith are not so palpable as those of ordinary reason,” real and solid though they are: reason “depends entirely. on her own insight into 4 INTRODUCTION. certain grounds, premises and evidences ”; and, secondly, the conclusion—in the particular case supposed, the existe ence of God—is of so amazing a nature that it requires trust to commit one’s self to it. This “principle of trust is faith— the same principle by which we repose in a witness of good character who informs us of a marvellous occurrence—so marvellous that the trust in his testimony has to be sustained by a certain effort of the reasonable will.” There is no ex- perimental verification ; hence there is requisite an exertion of energy on our part in order to accept the issue of the argument.* 6. The reflex influence of character on the intellect, which it is one purpose of the following pages to illustrate, is a fact too plain to be questioned. Affirmations of it without end might be cited from authors of the most diverse creeds. I quote a passage from R. W. Emerson. That Mr. Emerson has been unduly extolled by admiring disciples as a philoso- pher, or expounder of philosophy—of Plato, for example— is true. His writings, nevertheless, contain much pithy and discerning comment on human nature and life. On the topic before us, he says: “So intimate is this alliance of mind and heart that talent uniformly sinks with character. The bias of errors of principle carries away men into perilous courses as soon as their will does not control their passion or talent. . . . Hence the remedy for all errors, the cure of blindness, the cure of crime, is love.” + r * Page 79. }{ Works, Vol. II., p. 431. 4 Pa INTRODUCTION. 5 7. In considering this broad subject of the relations of faith and reason, it is essential to distinguish between the actual genesis of beliefs and their rational basis. Our religious beliefs spring out of experiences native to the soul and spontaneous, —out of the natural activity of the moral and spiritual nature which God has given us, and the likeness to Himself, and the affinity to Him, which are inwrought into our being.* Even John Calvin, in common with profound theologians of all ages, opens the “ Institutes” with an assertion of the “sense of a Deity ” which the human mind has by “ natural instinct,” and the “propensity to religion” which is incor- porated in human nature.t Now, the immediate activities of heart and conscience, which constitute the seed and sustain- ing life of religion, become the object of attention. When we inquire reflectively into the validity of our religious beliefs, the very existence of these instinctive sentiments and tendencies * In a recent work entitled “ Natural Law in the Spiritual World,” these truths appear to be overlooked. In the chapter on “ Biogenesis,” spiritual life is considered to be as foreign to man as physical life to inorganic matter, Spiritual life is made to be a literal creation. This is an over-statement. The “death” of sin isa death “wherein we walked.” The “life” of the be- liever in Christ, though dependent on a supernatural source, is a form of the activity of a moral and religious nature inherent in man (Acts xvii. 22, 28). Religion is not something imported into the Christian mind,—the addition of a faculty or attribute not existing (though it be dormant or misdirected) in the human soul. This over-statement is a fruit of the exaggeration of an analogy into a law of identity, which is at the basis of this otherwise interest- ing and suggestive book. 1 ¢ Institutes, B I. ¢. iii. 1, 2. ee a ee a ae ee ee et Me Re ON OF GP: INTRODUCTION. : s forms one important part of the rational defence of the faith that has grown out of them. This deep peculiarity of our nature is itself an argument, a testimony of nature to the reality of the objects answering to it. It is not that “we believe because we believe;” this is not the true account of the matter; but because we believe, and are thus moved to believe by principles of our nature so deeply implanted, we conclude that our belief is rational, and when we find it, not contradicted, but corroborated from without, in the whole structure of the system of things of which we are a part, we are confirmed and established in the conviction that faith is not illusive. 8. How the judgment respecting religious doctrine and the claims of Christianity to credence may be altered by the quickening of conscience, or by the acquiring of a deepened feeling, is one of the points touched upon in the following pages. Words, the symbols of thought, mean more or less according to the degree of life in the conscience and sensi- bility of him who hears or repeats them. An instructive illustration of this topic is found in one of the letters of Carlyle. His biographer is at pains to proclaim Carlyle’s (as well as his own) disbelief in the miraculous facts of the Gospel. It-does not appear, however, that either the one or the other ever studied with any thoroughness the evidences on which they rest. This is evident even in the case of Mr. Fronde whenever—for example, in one or more of his short essays—he deals with the subject. Carlyle retained the sense of God’s power and reign, which his Scottish birth and INTRODUCTION. 7 training implanted. He preached sincerity and the ab- horrence of falsehood, with passionate fervor. But he re- tained, also, impressions as to historical Christianity which the early reading of Gibbon may have imprinted on his mind. It is doubtful, however, whether, notwithstanding the noble points in his character, there was room left by the colossal conceit and self-assertion that characterized him, for the spirit of dependence and humility which are essential in the Gospel.* Yet it is plain to any considerate reader of his melancholy Memoir that the lessons which thousands upon thousands of Christians learn at the Cross were just what he had need of. The ludicrous, if it were not sad, magnifying of small ills, and of larger labors and struggles such as a mul- titude of scholars and authors have patiently and quietly endured; the thoughtless, but still selfish, negligence of domestic obligations, that awakened too late in his own bosom so poignant remorse; the contemptuous, vituperative dis- paragement of eminent contemporaries (including Coleridge, who lacked Carlyle’s force of character, but was a poet and philosopher of larger and more varied gifts, on the whole, than he),—these glaring defects and faults would not have remained to provoke the chagrin and disappointment of his admirers, could he have listened to the invitation: “Come unto me .. . take my yoke on you . . . learn of * In no literary biography of our times, with the possible exception of the Memoirs of Harriet Martineau (an apostie of atheism), does self-esteem appear in so gigantic dimensions as in the journals and letters of Carlyle. ey Ls. 8 INTRODUCTION. me.” But the particular passage to which reference has been made, is found in a letter of Carlyle to Erskine of Linlathen, written after the death of Mrs. Carlyle :— “*Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy — name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,’-—what else can we say? The other night,in my sleepless tossings about, which were growing more and more miserable,—these words, that brief and grand prayer, came strangely into my mind with an altogether new emphasis, as if written and saiiiee for me in mild pure splendor, on the black bosom of the night there; when I, as it were, read them, word by word, with a sudden check to my imperfect wanderings, with a sudden softness of composure that was much unexpected. Not for perhaps thirty or forty years had I ever formally repeated that prayer,—nay, I never felt before how intensely the voice of man’s soul it is; the inmost aspiration of all that is high and pious in poor human nature; right worthy to be recom- mended with an, ‘After this manner, pray ye.’” Here this old man found something in a familiar scripture which he had never seen there before; or, rather, to use Coleridge’s - expression, the scripture found him: “these words came strangely intomy mind . . . asifwritien and shining for me.” Was there not much more in the teachings of Jesus which Carlyle had failed to discern? Was there not in the character, as well asin the words of Christ, and in his whole personality, a unique peculiarity, an excellence and loftiness, which it only required the right mood of mind in him to Pe epee ae ee ee Se EL ae Pe ee, ee a MD ae aah INTRODUCTION. og recognize? Bereaved and wretched with a sorrow not un- mingled with remorse, he saw something that he had never seen before. And what was the effect? “A sudden softness of composure,” a check to “imperfect wanderings.” Strange _ power in that prayer of Jesus to chasten, subdue, comfort! * * We find the wife of Carlyle, under the pressure of physical distress, writing to him these moving words: “Oh dear! you cannot help me, though you would! Nobody can help me! Only God: and can I wonder if God take no heed of me when IJ have all my life taken so little heed of him?” “They that are whole need not a physician”; but it is a relief to find in those worthy, on many accounts, of honor and esteem, a conviction of this need developing itself. under calamity, and impelling them at last towards the source of help. : In another recent biography—“ George Eliot’s Life,’—there is a touching story of the struggle between the heart on one side and the imaginary teachings of science on the other. George Eliot, “with her pale, sickly face and dreadful headaches,” is toiling over her translation of Strauss. She is reported as saying that “she is Strauss-sick—it makes her ill dissecting the story of the Crucifixion, and only the sight of the Christ image and picture » make her endure it.” “This was an ivory image she had of the Crucified Christ over the desk in her study at Foleshill, where she did all her work at that time.” Yet Strauss’s “dissection” is admitted by discerning scholars of every school to be a sophistical juggle. His method then, in Germany, was deemed even by Baur fallacious and untenable. Yet here Miss Evans, with her restless mind, and subservience to the personal influence of the circle about her, gives up her faith, and apparently yields assent to so base- less a theory as that of Charles Hennell that the Gospel was derived from Essenism. In the “evangelicai period,” or phase, through which George Eliot passed, the faith of the Gospel struck no deep roots in her nature, Her religious expressions at that time are, no doubt, sincere, but they are arti- ficial. With her restlessness of mind, her susceptibility to personal in- fluence, in the absence of a corresponding depth and activity of conscience, she surrendered easily to the sway of the intellectual sceptics and disbe- lievers in whose society she found herself. One looks in vain in her letters for the traces of either a just appreciation or a thorough investigation of the peculiar and exceptional claims of Christianity. FAITH AND RATIONALISM. GENTLEMEN OF THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL: I thank you for the opportunity given me to speak to you to-night. You have invited to address you one who can claim to represent no party or school in theology, but who feels himself drawn with an in- creasing conviction to the catholic truth which has _been the life of Christian piety in all ages of the Church. You will not expect me to traverse the old ground where our fathers crossed their lances in times gone by. Nor will you prefer that I should retreat to some scholarly theme, not more pertinent at one time than at another, and remote from the questions that command the attention of thinking men at present.. Relying on your candor, I choose rather to express frankly my thoughts in connection with a subject, which, though never void of interest, is, in our day, of special concern,—the Ascertainment of Religious Truth ; or, to state it otherwise, Farru anp Ratton- ALISM. 11 12 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. ~ Those who are inclined to chafe at the narrow : bounds and indistinct nature of our knowledge in religion, may remember for their comfort that the Apostle Paul, though conscious of being an organ of ee } divine revelation, places himself in the same category — ~ with themselves. ‘‘ We know in part,” he says: “ We see through a glass darkly.” It was not a complete view, but a fragmentary one that he had of divine truth; as when you look off to a mountain that is partly hidden under clouds. You follow its outline for a certain distance, and then it is lost in the mist. A peak, here and there, emerges in the sunlight, but its connection with the mass below is broken off. And the perception even of what the Apostle did know had a certain obscurity attending it. It was not a behold- ing of the object itself directly. It was only a faint image that was discerned, like that reflected from a dim metallic mirror of the sort used in his time. The — language in which we utter religious thought, and the conceptions at the basis of it, are declared by him to be the lispings of a child, compared with the words and ideas that belong to mature manhood. They answer for the infant, but in course of time they are superseded by something more conformed to the reality. Yet, the boundaries that are set about our knowledge during our life on earth, and the immensity of the realm of the unknown that stretches away CHARACTERISTIOS OF FAITH. 13 beyond our ken, afford not the least warrant for scepticism with respect to anything actually dis- covered. It did not subtract a jot from the confidence of Paul in that truth which had been disclosed to him. It has been well said by Paley that “true fortitude of understanding consists in not suffering what we do know to be disturbed by what we do not know.” * He who despairs of knowing a little, because he cannot know all, may be compared to one who is so bewil- — dered by the thought of the vast amount of pain, and sorrow in the world, which it is beyond his power to relieve, that he does not think it worth while to stretch out his hand to the one or two sufferers within his reach. I shall not undertake here to give an exhaustive definition of religious faith, but simply to point out some of its characteristics. Faith is not sight: it has respect to things not seen. Nor is there an internal organ of vision, corresponding to the eye, which literally gazes upon things invisible to sense. For such an immediate perception of the supernatural world, a miracle is requisite. Faith is the prelude,—possibly, in some way, it is the rudi- ment, of sight. It serves in the room of sight, on the present stage of our being; but sight itself is to follow (1 Cor. xiii. 12). “Faith,,” says Augustine, s * Natural Theology, Ch. v. jt) a ee ae Bn ee ee ¥ * re ne ge orn tate ne prorat 14 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. “is to believe what we do not yet see; and the reward = 3 of this faith is to see what we believe: **. Oi as another deep-thinking writer has expressed it: “The very perfection and final bliss of the glori- fied spirit is represented by the Apostle as a 3 plain aspect or intuitive beholding of truth in its eternal and immutable source.” { Faith is opposed, for one thing, to the assent produced by logical demon-- stration, where the outcome 1s knowledge. Faith, : however, need not involve any doubt or misgivings. In fact, though it may exist in different degrees of energy, may be strong or weak, the word naturally — suggests the absence of doubt, or an inward certitude. One of the disputed questions about faith is whether it be an immediate act of the mind, or the product of in- ference. Is there always a process of reasoning, em- bracing, at the least, one step? Pascal is one of the writers who has compared faith to the intuitions of number, space, time, etc. We have to start wita an act of trust in our faculties; we cannot prove the axioms which are the premises of all proof. Pascal's statement is valid against the logical fanaticism which ss scorns to take anything upon trust. If it were the case that the assent given in faith is immediate, such assent could not, merely on that ground, be branded as credulity. Let the point be decided as it may, still * Sermo xliii. + Coleridge (Shedd’s ed.,) Vol. 1. p. 449. FAITH AND FEELING. 15 not even the primary truths of religion are to be placed in the catalogue of these axioms of the in- tellect,—for example, the properties of number and space—which all sound minds of necessity assume to be true. The grand peculiarity of religious faith is the part which the heart plays in it. Although an act of reason, if reason be taken in the broad sense, and, therefore, capable of a rational vindication, faith, nevertheless, depends on character, and it withers away when the feelings in which it has its root disappear. Faith is subjective to this extent, that its grounds are not appreciable by every mind, by the good and evil alike. A living faith is not connected with any particular grade of intellectual. power. ‘The early Christians were many of them _ slaves; they were generally of the lower class; they could not spell correctly, as we see by the epitaphs in the catacombs. Most believers of whatever age know little or nothing of historical evidences. They cannot tell whether Justin Martyr quotes the Gospels of the canon. ‘They cannot answer the objections of learned infidels to natural or revealed religion. Yet it is far from being true that their faith is the mere result of tradition and education. It may be the natural, legitimate offspring of impressions of feeling, which the universe within and around them, and the Christ of the Scriptures, have made upon their souls. Before 16 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. their faith can be denounced as irrational, the sponta- neous feelings at the root of it'must be shown to be abnormal. This leads me to say that however we may decide the question whether faith is immediate or inferential, this is certain that it need not arise through any explicit process, of the several steps of which the believer takes account. Let me add one thing more. Into the deepest exercise of faith, the will enters. Trust is an act; I might say, a venture. So it is when we believe in Christ. As He identified Himself with us, we identify ourselves with Him. This is the great secret of the Gospel. Because the will turns the scale to the one side or the other, atheism, and disbelief in the Gospel, are treated in the Bible as sins. A demand is made upon men to believe. Who ever commanded another to believe that two and two are four, or to accept the doctrine of — free-trade, or the nebular hypothesis ? No writer has had more influence in forming opinion on this subject, in English-speaking communities, than Locke. He defines faith to be assent to any proposi- tion, which is not made out by deductions of reason, ‘upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God, in some extraordinary way of communication.” You believe on the authority of a witness, having first established by proof his credibility. On this definition LOCKE'S IDEA OF FAITH. 17 the criticism might be made that it limits faith to the eredence of propositions or doctrines; trust in persons, in any other capacity than as witnesses, not being expressly included. Augustine and the schoolmen, whose general notion of faith was a more satisfactory one, do not always keep clear of the same error. An- other exception to be taken to Locke’s view is that it makes no room for the truths of natural religion ; for example, that “ things which are seen were not made of things which do appear ’’—truths, nevertheless, which are proper objects of faith: Moreover, how is the prior fact of the credibility of the divine messengers to be established? No doubt, faith embraces a belief in the testimony of God. But how shall we assure ourselves that we have that testimony? What are the data on the basis of which the mind advances to this conclusion? Certainly, they are not such as avail _ to convince all. Many historical inquirers are found to disbelieve, who ordinarily are chargeable with no special want of discrimination or of candor. Shall we not have to consider the contents of the testimony, to inquire whether any communication is likely to come to us from God, and whether the doctrine delivered bears in it marks of truth, and of having so high and — pure an origin? Have we any need of a revelation? These and other preliminary questions may, perhaps, be answered differently by different persons, and so 18 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. there fails to be an agreement as to the data on which assent or denial must depend. In the ordinary affairs of life, we make up our minds under the influence of multiform impressions, which are often’ subtle, not easy to be analyzed by ourselves, and which are by no means the same in all individuals. These impres- sions have each of them a certain power to induce a judgment one way or the other. The verdict of the mind is the result of their collective action. Locke’s defect is, not so much in what he says, as in what he fails to say, on this topic. He was a lover of truth, an honest man; but we miss in him a certain depth and intensity of moral and religious feeling, which belong to profound teachers upon the philosophy of religion, like Augustine, Pascal, Luther, Coleridge, Edwards. Hence his Socinian proclivities, and the circumstance that he became an oracle of that class. It was the same in politics; his theory of the social compact is a piece of Rationalism. He founds the obligations of civil society on the voluntary agreement of the individuals that compose it. How much pro- founder the philosophy which finds in society “a pre- disposed order of things,” to use the phrase of Burke, with which the will of every rational being is supposed to agree; that philosophy which recognizes in the state, as in the family, an object about which deep instincts of humanity entwine themselves, prior to all THE EARLY SOOINIANS. 19 scientific analysis! The real drift of Locke’s political theory comes out in the Contrat Social of Rousseau. It has been well described as a kind of adventurous courage in Paley, whose mental power was less than that of Locke, but whose general tone of feeling was similar, to go forth against the opponents of Chris- tianity, demanding of them no concession except that a revelation of a future state of rewards and punish- ments “is not improbable, or not improbable in any great degree.”* But this admission, which is all that Paley calls for in his “ Preparatory Considerations,” does not suffice, in point of fact, in numerous instances, to impart a convincing efficacy to his argument, not- withstanding the masterly skill and unrivaled perspi- cuity with which he has presented it. It is a curious and instructive fact that the founders of modern Socinianism were extreme supernaturalists. Their tendency was to attribute our knowledge of re- ligion almost exclusively to Revelation, and to make the one proof of Revelation miracles. Some of the _ Socinian leaders in Poland found no valid evidence of the being of God except in Scripture. The fact of a future life was made to rest, in the same way, wholly on the testimony of the Bible. On this theory, we become acquainted with religion as we learn the exist- * Paley’s Evidences, “ Preparatory Considerations.” 20 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. ence and geographical features of an unknown conti-— & nent, by no other means than through information brought to us by a credible traveler. The principle of authority, which has its rightful place among the bases of belief, is made the all in all. Religion is something imported into the soul by instruction duly authenticated; not a slumbering life waked up within us by a supernatural approach. This character of the old Socinianism shows how extremes meet. There- . bound to entire disbelief in Reyelation naturally fol- lowed such a meagre notion of religion and of the function of Revelation, and the exaltation of miracles to the exclusion of other proofs of Christianity. We shall get more light upon the nature of faith if we. look at its opposite—the temper of Rationalism. Ra- tionalism is a term often used to designate the position of those who disbelieve in Revelation, and suppose that whatever knowledge we have in religion is derived from unassisted reason. It is applied to such as reject the — 2 miraculous element in Christianity ; for example, to the Kantian theologians in Germany, whose creed was made up of three articles; God, free-will, and immor- | tality, and who cared only for the morals of the Gos- pel; and to the later Pantheistic Rationalists, the dis- ciples of Hegel, who resolved Christianity into a meta- physical speculation, of which the Gospel history is a ry a eats 2 " re at ae age ays ae te ha 5 RL EY om : he am. xX Coes , Yijou? S78 eee ‘ THE RATIONALISTIC SPIRIT. Ot loose, popular, mythical equivalent. But I speak of Rationalism now, not as standing for a set of opinions, but rather as a method or spirit. It is not impossible that the Rationalistic temper or method should be as- sociated for the time with orthodox tenets—an unnat- ural union to be sure, and one that could not last. Thus in Germany, before Schleiermacher came for- ward to vindicate for religion an independent founda- tion inhuman nature, much of the current orthodoxy was penetrated with a Rationalistic leaven. It was a verstandes-theologre, to use the term applied to it by later believing theologians like Tholuck and Neander. I think that I am not unjust in saying that a like tendency characterized a prominent section of ortho- dox teachers in New England, before the outbreaking of - the Unitarian revolt. Jonathan Edwards had a large, rich nature, deep wells of feeling, a subtle, spiritual in- sight. His book on the Will is not drawn out of his deepest vein. One should look for that to his sermon on Spiritual Light, or to his remarks on the Satisfac- tion of Christ, a discussion which appears to me, in some of its parts, to go deeper into the heart of that subject, than the treatises of Grotius or Anselm, or almost any - other essay on the same theme, ancient or modern. But the mystical element was wanting in the arid mind of his son, the younger President Edwards, and conspicuously in Emmons; and some of the “‘improve- 92 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. ments” in theology which were brought in by theolo- gians of their stamp are neither tenable in themselves, nor adapted to conciliate philosophical adversaries of the evangelical creed. Rationalism denotes a certain usurpation of reason. The understanding steps out of its province, arrogates — to itself more than belongs to it, refuses to hear other voices than its own, disregards the just claims of other departments of our being, or spurns the aid which they afford in the ascertaining of truth. The understand- — ing exalts its own separate, insulated function, pushes on without its natural auxiliaries—sensibility and — conscience, the life and experience of the soul—and disdains feeling as an indirect source of light, and a legitimate warrant of conviction. Let us attend to several of the phases which the Rationalistic temper — may assume. 1. Rationalism is impatient of mysteries in reli- gion.* It demands that everything shall be made plain. It will not endure the twilight, or the night when only a few stars glimmer to guide the wayfarer until the dawn shall appear. : * The word mystery has in the New Testament a peculiar sense. It signifies what once was hidden, but is now revealed: Rom. xi. 25, xvi. 25, 1 Cor. ii. 7, 9, Eph. i. 9, Mark iv. 11. The truth thus revealed may, or may not be, in our sense of the term, mysterious, t. €., only partly explicable. MYSTERIES. 23 ~ What is meant by a mysterious truth? Obviously not a truth of which we have no knowledge whatever, and which, therefore, stands in no relation to the know- ing faculty. America was not a mystery to the an- cients, before its existence was even surmised. It did not become a mystery until a glimpse was caught of its shores, or until, at least, there was an incipient be- lief that a continent lay to the west of the Atlantic. Many call that a mystery which they cannot wnagine, or present as a concrete object before the mind’s eye. But this we cannot do of man in the abstract, as dis- tinguished from this or that individual, or of any gene- ral notion. Things which persons cannot picture to themselves, they will say that they do not understand. Hiven educated persons, who ought to know better, fall sometimes into this way of speaking. With more truth may obscure or inadequate ideas, like substance, power, the soul, infinite space, infinite duration, be styled mysterious. The conceptive faculty is baffled in the attempt to grasp certain objects, though they are known as realities. Locke has much to say on this subject.* Now we cannot deal with what is partly seen as if it were seen wholly. And so if we proceed to reason upon things imperfectly conceived, if we deal with notions as co-extensive with the object, when they are not, we may be led into contradictions. There are * Essay, b. ii. cc. xxix. xxxi. 24 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. propositions in which we may rest as far as they are Ms, the correlate of moral or practical truth, but which may not be pushed out to further conclusions. This oe : is the nature, then, of mysterious truth. Something . - i is gained if even this obvious fact is admitted, that we : are bound to regard as true much which it is impossi- ble to realize in imagination. God—to take one ex- ample—formed his purposes, yet his purposes are : eaae a ig bs we, pA rae Ss es 3 Mateihs ee ees ons : Pry 2 wale 4 are : ee ee 2 Ache eee ey oe an ear 8 _-RELIGIO Us STUDIES. . 79 » 9 a hg j inspiring studies are to be your lifelong occupation, Ss ov * Ve PHN Ss APPENDIX. ~ S. ¢: i THE TEACHING OF THEOLOGY ON THE MORAL BASIS OF FAITH. The masters of theology in all ages have generally taught that a living faith, as contrasted with an intel- lectual assent to propositions whether of fact or of — doctrine, springs out of the heart; that the existence _ or non-existence of such faith is contingent on the state or ~ of the affections and the will; and that, in many instances, the only remedy for scepticism of the intel- lect is to be found in a change of the moral temper, or in an altered bent of the will. This is the philosophy of Augustine. But in his case, as in the Schoolmen afterwards, the treatment of the subject of faith is somewhat confused by the view taken of the authority of the Visible Church. Faith is partly the loyal acceptance of the Church as the authorized and qualified guide, and partly that imme- diate sense of the truth and excellence of the Gospel, ~ and of its adaptedness to the wants of the soul, which avails to triumph over all doubts. Augustine began 83 84 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. with a restless seeking after God; and in this craving for a supernal good, in his view, the religious life in sinful men must take its rise. This is a distinctively moral feeling, not mere intellectual curiosity. Bat tossed as he had been from one opinion to another, he felt the need of a present, authoritative voice to still the tumult within; and this he recognized in the Catholic Church. Here, again, it was not. external criteria alone, such as miracles, the succession of bishops in the Apostolic sees, and the like, which satisfied. him that the Church could be trusted; but it was the : victory which he saw that Christianity, as preserved ~~ and transmitted in the Church, had gained, in spite of all obstacles, in the Roman world, and the ennobling, purifying influence which had gone forth from the Gospel and the Church upon individual souls and upon society. Here, once more, was a moral source of conviction. ‘Christianity and the Church,” to quote from Neander, “and, indeed, the Church under this particular form of constitution, were confounded in his | view. What he might justly regard as a witness for — % the divine, world-transforming power of the Gospel, appeared to him as a witness for the divine authority of the visible, universal Church; and he did notcon- sider that the Gospel truth would have been able to bring about effects equally great, by its inherent divine power, in some other vessel in which it could — s s 4 Pe a +. a a a aa a as ,2 = he AUGUSTINE ON FAITH. — 85 have been diffused among mankind; nay, that it would have been able to produce still purer and mightier effects, had it not been in many ways dis- turbed and checked in its operation by the impure and confining vehicle of its transmission.” * The maxims, Faith precedes knowledge ; Believe that you may understand — “ Fides preecedit intellectum;”’ b) _“Crede, ut intelligas’””—which were adopted by the Schoolmen, are found, in these very words, in Augus- tine. I believe that I may understand—“ Credo, ut ’ - intelligam”—the noted saying of Anselm, is thus almost verbally identical with sentences of the father of Latin theology. Although the authority of the Church, and, on that ground, the truth of the complex system of doctrines which the Church inculcated, were held to deserve immediate acknowledgment, yet, as we have said above, the intrinsic excellence of the Gospel itself, and the love immediately evoked by it in the soul, were made prominent as the sources of a living faith. The truth, it was held, shines in its own light. The practical experience of the Gospel, in its enlightening and saving power, was held to be the pre- requisite of the intellectual comprehension of it. Iix- perience was put first; science afterwards. It was Anselm, the first of the eminent medizeval expounders of the relation of faith to reason, who said: ‘‘ He who * Church History, vol. II. p. 241. wali a oa re ae ate Se as ie heats on a es aX epi st 86 | FAITH AND RATIONALISM. has not believed, has not experienced, and he who has not experienced, will not understand.” a “ Faith,” says St. Bernard, “is a certain voluntary = and assured prelibation of the truth,” not yet made ; explicit or reduced to science. The heart anticipates the understanding, not waiting for intellectual analysis. < a Alexander of Hales says that in religion the relation - ag of knowledge and believing is the reverse of that . which exists in other sciences, because in religion faith i creates the reason; it is the argument which makes the reason ; it is the light of the soul—lwmen anima- : 5 rum—which makes it perspicacious to find out the — e reasons by which the things of faith are proved. ~ There is an inward certitude, founded on love, or the - 4 surrender of the heart to the truth, which is distinct - from conviction on purely intellectual grounds. Bon- aventura, the great doctor of the Franciscans, founds the conviction that is in faith, not on logical demon- strations, but on love to that which is presented as the - object of faith. It is the contents of the truth, not external verifications, that carry the assent of the — soul. Albert the Great makes religious faith, as dis- 4 tinguished from theoretical certainty, to be an imme- . diate persuasion of the truth, where we are attracted — : by the object of faith, in the same manner that the® will is determined by the moral law. “The merit of faith,” says Hugo of St. Victor 4 SE RIE Seg eS THE REFORMERS ON FAITH. 87 - “eonsists in the fact that our conviction is determined by the affections, when no adequate knowledge is yet present. By faith, we render ourselves worthy of knowledge, as perfect knowledge is the final reward of faith in the life eternal.” William of Paris separates that faith which springs from a rational knowledge of the object, an intellectual comprehension, from that which springs from the virtue of the believer, or his temper of heart. He speaks of a “ fortitude which overcomes the darkness of incoming doubt, and by its own light scatters the clouds of unbelief.’’* The Reformers, while discarding the Scholastic doctrine of the authority of the Church, were pene- trated with the conviction that a living faith has an immediate source deeper than the understanding. As to the existence of God, Calvin says: “We lay it down as a position not to be controverted that the human mind, even by natural instinct, possesses some sense of a Deity.” ‘The minds of men are fully pos- ) sessed with this common principle ’””—the sense of religion — “ which is closely interwoven with their original composition.” He speaks of our “ propensity to religion,’ of the “innate persuasion’’ which men have of the divine existence, a persuasion inseparable from their very constitution ;’ a perception which sin * On the Religious Philosophy of the Schoolmen, see Neander, Church History, vol. iv., p. 367 seq. 88 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. has never wholly extinguished. ‘No man can take a survey of himself but he must immediately turn to the contemplation of God, in whom he ‘lives and moves ’; since it is evident that the talents which we possess are not from ourselves, and that our very exis- tence is nothing else but a subsistence in God alone.”* Melanchthon, the author of the principal doctrinal treatise in the Lutheran Church, says, on the same subject: “God desires to be known and worshiped ; and the clear and sure knowledge of God would have flashed upon the mind of men, had human nature re- mained sound.” Now the minds of men wander “ in a great and gloomy mist, inquiring whether there be a God, whether there be a Providence, and what is the will of God.” + Faith, as is well known, is a great theme with Lu- ther. That the source of inward certitude with re- spect to religious truth, does not lie in the understand- ing, but in the relation of that truth to the appeten- — cies of the soul, is asserted in every variety of form. Take out this general idea from Luther’s discussions of the subject, and no Luther would be left. He plants himself upon the Word of God, but it is to the con- science and heart that the Word comes home with power. The understanding, left to itself, is a blind and false guide. No words are too strong for * Institutes, B. I., i. 1., iii. 1, 2,3. + Loci Theol., de Deo. ar. ae 4 wr it de Oe. 1+ he ee 7-72 tae PONS ne “a4 sgt ge ; 2: - fe Nhe At eae ae > SR Se PASCAL ON FAITH AND REASON. §9 Luther to express his scorn for reason, taken in this sense. The Protestant theology taught that the truth of the Scriptures is apprehended in a penetrating, liv- ing way, only through “the testimony of the Holy Spirit,” who gave it. The Spirit that inspired the sacred writers must move on the heart of the reader. Otherwise, he stands on the outside, and will never get beyond an intellectual assent to the facts and pro- positions which they record. It may be that he will not even reach that. Pascal’s philosophy of religion turns on the distinc- tion between the functions of the heart and of the un- derstanding. The understanding by itself leads to _ pyrrhonism, because the understanding goes out of its province. If there is to be religious knowledge, God must not only reveal or communicate Himself, but, also, that in man which is related to God must be open to the reception of Him. This holds good of the revela- tion of God in the creation, as truly as of the disclosure of Himself in the Scriptures. There is no coercive revelation, no light to which the eyes cannot be closed, no demonstrated truth. There is a mingling of light and shade in the revelation which God makes of Him- self, to the end that the effect of it may not be irresist- ible. If itis true that He reveals Himself, it is also true that He hides Himself. He will be found of those who seek Him. “I wonder at the boldness with which 90 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. ‘men speak of God, in addresses to the irreligious, — Their first undertaking is to prove the Deity by the by a works of nature. I should not be astonished at their — 3 undertaking, if they were addressing their discourses to believers ; for it is certain that all those who have 92% a living faith in their hear ts, see at once that there is nothing which is not the work of God whom they wor- | ship. But it is otherwise with those in whom this light is quenched, and in whom it is desired to revive 4 it, persons destitute of faith and of grace, who seeking, with all the light they have, for everything in nature which can lead to this knowledge, find only obscurity 3 and darkness: to say to these that they have only to look at the least thing in the world, and they will see God unveiled, and to give them, as the whole proof of this great and important subject, the course of the moon or of the planets, and to pretend to have com- pleted the proof by such a discourse,—this is only to furnish them occasion to think that the proofs of our | religion are very feeble; and I perceive, both by rea- son and experience, that nothing is better adapted to make them despise it. It is not in this way that the a : Scripture, which is better acquainted with the things = of God, speaks. On the contrary, it says that He is a hidden God; and that, since the corruption of nature, He has left men in a blindness from which they can only escape by Jesus Christ, without whom all com- = v ¢ hy ps PASCAL ON FAITH AND REASON. 91 munication with God is closed: ‘No one knoweth the Father but. the Son, and him to whom the Son shall reveal Him.’ It is this which is signified by the Scripture when it says, in so many places, that those who seek God find Him. No one speaks in this way of a light which shines as bright as mid-day. We do not say that those who seek for the daylight at noon, or for water in the sea, will find them. And s0 it cannot be that such is the evidence of God in nature.’””* Elsewhere he says: “there is light enough for those who desire to see, and darkness enough for those of an opposite temper.” ‘God would rather make the will, than the mind, susceptible. Perfect clearness would aid the mind and be harmful to the will.” The diff- culties in the evidences of Christianity and theology are to be frankly admitted: they are a part of the discipline of faith. The deep meaning of an Epistle of Paul is opened up only in the heart of a believer. With him the acquaintance with it is not a mere act of memory. A man must, so to speak, live himself into- religion. He must feel his way. The consideration of ~ outward nature, at the best, could only make one a Deist. But “ the God of the Christians is a God who makes the soul feel that He is its only good; that all its rest is in Him, and that it will have no joy except in loving Him; and who, at the same time, makes him *Pensées, c. xxii. (ed. Louandre, p. 320). 92 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. hate the obstacles which hold him back, and prevent — him from loving God with all his strength.”* Chris- tianity, Pascal teaches, accomplishes two things: it makes a man know that there is a God for whom men are susceptible, and that in their nature there is a corruption which makes them unworthy of Him. The consideration of himself and of the world should bring man to Christ as his Redeemer, and through Christ he will learn to find God everywhere and to understand Him. Such is the religious philosophy which satisfied the genius of Pascal. That faith includes a sense, or spiritual recognition of the excellence of its objects, is fundamental in the religious and ethical philosophy of President Edwards. I quote but one out of numberless passages where it is asserted. “If the evidence of the gospel depended only on history, and such reasonings as learned men ~ only are capable of, it would be above the reach of far the greatest part of mankind. But persons with but an ordinary degree of knowledge are capable, without a long and subtile train of reasoning, to see the divine excellency of the things of religion: they are capable of being taught by the Spirit of God as well as learned men. ‘The evidence that is this way obtained is vastly better and more satisfying than all that can be obtained by the arguings of those that are most learned, and * Tbid., c. xxii. “i ca. alla GERMAN THEOLOGIANS ON FAITH. 93 greatest masters of reason. And babes are as capable of knowing these things as the wise and prudent; and they are often hid from these when they are revealed to those.”* The modern evangelical theology of Germany, as a reaction against Rationalism, started first from Schlei- ermacher, who had been preceded, to some extent, by Jacobi. - In very important particulars, Schleiermach- ers conception of religion has been modified by the eminent theologians who have come after, and who have known how to unite a genuine scientific spirit with evangelical belief. But in the radical idea of faith as having roots of its own in the moral and re- ligious nature, they agree with one another, and with the great genius to whom, however much they may differ from him, they consciously owe so much. This remark is true of such men as Twesten, Nitzsch, Ne- ander, Tholuck, Julius Miller, Rothe, Dorner. The conflict with Rationalism in Germany led to a deeper appreciation of the nature of religion, and to views more in consonance with the thoughts of Luther, and of profound thinkers in the Church from the begin- ning. In England, it is Coleridge, more than any other writer, who, by calling up the old divines, and by his own teaching, has done much to promote a like re- * Works, vol. iv. p. 449 (Sermon on Spiritual Light). 94. FAITH AND RATIONALISM. _generation of theology. The two characteristic points in Coleridge’s philosophy of religion are the distinction between Nature and Spirit, and the distinction be- tween Understanding and Reason. The doctrine of the free, self-determining power of the spirit, itself | involves an immediate recognition of a fact of con- sciousness, a fact swi generis; the will, in its very idea, presupposing an exemption from the law of cause and effect which extends over Nature. Coleridge’s idea of Reason mingles in it elements suggested by Kant and Jacobi. It is defined as “ the mind’s eye,” of which realities, not creatures of fancy, are the ob- jects. Itis the organ of the supersensuous, by which truths ave beheld which neither the senses, nor the understanding which deals with the materials provided — by sense, furnish. Faith is defined generally as “fidel- ity to our own being—so far as such being is not and can not become an object of the senses,” together with its.concomitants. The first recognition of conscience by ourselves partakes of the nature of an act. Through conscience, which commands and dictates, we know ourselves to be agents. ‘We take upon ourselves an allegiance, and consequently the obligation of fealty ; and this fealty, or fidelity, implying the power of being unfaithful, is the first and fundamental sense of Faith.” The preservation of our loyalty and fealty amid the se- ductions of sense and of sin constitutes the second we ail aay a Tae ee or Pie ee COLERIDGE ON FAITH. 95 sense of Faith. And the third is what is presupposed in the human conscience, the acknowledgment of God, the rightful Superior whose will conscience reveals, duty to whom imparts their obligatory force to all other duties.* We believe in God because it is our duty to believe in Him. “The wonderful works of God in the sensible world are a perpetual discourse, reminding me of His existence, and shadowing out to me His perfections. But as all language presupposes, in the intelligent hearer or reader those primary notions which it symbolizes; as well as the power of making those combinations of these primary notions which it represents, and excites us to combine; even so I believe that the notion of God is essential to the human mind; that it is called forth into distinct con- sciousness principally by the conscience, and auxiliarily by the manifest adaptation of means to ends in the outward creation. It is, therefore, evident to my reason, that the existence of God is absolutely and _ necessarily insusceptible of a scientific demonstration, and that Scripture has so represented it. For it com- mands us to believe in one God. Lam the Lord thy God ; thou shalt have none other gods than me. Now all commandment necessarily relates to the will : whereas all scientific demonstration is independent of the will, and is apodictic or demonstrative only as far * Essay on Faith (Shedd’s ed.,) vol. v., p. 557 seq. é 96 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. as it is compulsory on the mind, volentem, *nolencoa tem.” * With Coleridge, it is the intrinsic character oa of Christianity, not the external proof, which leads the — ig way in inspiring a conviction that God is its author. As “to matters of faith, to the verities of religion,” in : 3 the belief of these “ there must always be somewhat of | 4 moral election, ‘an act of will in it as well as of the understanding, as much love in it as discursive power. True Christian faith must have in it something of in- evidence, something that must be made up: by duty. . 9) and obedience.’” + The quotation included is from — Jeremy Taylor. In another place, Coleridge exclaims: “ Hvidences of Christianity ! I am weary of the word. : ~ Make a man feel the want of it; rouse him, if you -* can, to the self-knowledge of his need of it; and you. we may safely trust it to its own evidence; remembering 3 3 only the express declaration of Christ Himself: ‘ No a man cometh to me, unless the Father leadeth him.’”{ -— Of the principles which underlie all specific precepts q of the Bible, Coleridge writes: “From the very ‘ nature of those principles, as taught in the Bible, they — are understood in exact proportion as they are believed — and felt. The regulator is never separated from the 4 main-spring. For the words of the Apostle are liter- a ally and philosophically true: We (that is, the human — _ race) live by faith. Whatever we do or know that in * Vol. vp, 15.6 Voli. p, 328.12) Vol. i) pecess J. H. NEWMAN ON FAITH. 97 kind is different from the brute creation, has its origin in a determination of the reason to have faith and trust in itself. This is the first act of faith, is scarcely less than identical with its own being.” * Among living theologians no one has set forth the moral basis of faith with more philosophical depth than Dr. John Henry Newman. Faith, a living faith, “lives in, and from, a desire after those things which it ac- cepts and confesses.” ‘‘ Philosophers, ancient and mo- dern, who have been eminent in physical science have not unfrequently shown a tendency to infidelity.” “Unless there be a pre-existent and independent interest in the inquirer’s mind, leading him to dwell on the phenomena which betoken an Intelligent Creator, he will certainly follow out those which ter- minate in the hypothesis of a settled order of nature and self-sustained laws.” “The practical safeguard against Atheism in the case of scientific inquirers is _ the inward need and desire, the inward experience of that Power, existing in the mind before and independ- ently of their examination of His material world.” “Faith is a process of the Reason, in which so much of the grounds of inference cannot be exhibited, so much lies in the character of the mind itself, in its ge- neral view of things, its estimate of the probable and the improbable, its impressions concerning .God’s will, # 5 * Vol. i. p. 323. 98 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. 1 ed a ey ’ 2 ¢ os cee ae et , ra ‘yy pe 2 and its anticipations derived from its own inbred — wishes, that it will ever seem to the world irrational and despicable ;—till, that is, the event confirms it,” “Can it, indeed, be doubted that the great majority of those who have sincerely and deliberately given them- — selves to religion, who take it for their portion, and stake their happiness upon it, have done So, not on an examination of evidence, but from a Spontaneous move- ment of their hearts towards it?” Faith “is said, and rightly, to be a venture, to involve a risk.” “We be. lieve because we love. How plain a truth!” “The safeguard of Faith is a right state of heart, This it is that gives it birth; it also disciplines it.” “Why does he’ —the believer—feel the message to be probable? Because he has a love for it. ..... He has a keen sense of the excellence of the message, of its desirable- ness, of its likeness to what it seems to him Divine © Goodness would vouchsafe, did He vouchsafe any, of the need of a Revelation, and its probability.” God, “for whatever reason, exercises us with the less evi- dence when He might give us the greater.” ....., “perchance by the defects of the evidence He is trying our love of its matter.” Faith “rests on the evidence of testimony, weak in proportion to the excellence of the blessing attested.”* These quotations, after what I have said on preceding pages, need no comment. eo nd ee ee, ee Sy 24 ' Sey meh Se ee Pa Cee, Eig ee ee * University Sermons, pp. 193, 194, 203, 216, 225, 234, 236. il; THE DOCTRINE OF NESCIENCE RESPECTING GOD. That there is a First Cause, an eternal, self-existent being, the source whence all things spring, is implied in the intuitive idea of cause. Something eternal must have existed; otherwise nothing could exist now. An infinite series of existences, each produced by the one before it, gives no true causal agency, and thus fails to satisfy the rational demand for a real cause. The mind is simply set off on a fruitless chase where there is no goal. Only an uncaused cause, or a self- existent, eternal being, corresponds to the rational demand, and gives rest to the mind. This is substantially conceded at the present day by the class known as agnostics. The question is, What _are the attributes of this eternal being? Is the First Cause intelligent and moral? Here we are met by the assertion that the First Cause is utterly unknowa- ble. It is declared to be impossible for us to make any assertion respecting its nature. In separ we 100 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. are forbidden to consider the First Cause to be a person. _ All such representations are pronounced anthropomor- phic, or the offspring of the groundless fancy that the cause of all things is like ourselves. Mr. Herbert Spencer goes so far as to call the belief in the person- ality of God, that is, the ordinary Christian faith on this subject, ‘‘impious.” One ground of this surprising assertion is the al- leged inconceivability of the “Infinite.” “The infi- nite” is a metaphysical abstraction, and is nothing real whatever. What we have to inquire into is the mean- ing of this term as the predicate of a being or of some attribute of a being. Space offers the readiest example of an infinite, and by looking at our idea of space we can see the extent of our power to apprehend what is denoted by this term. First, it is clear that we cannot. picture with the imagination the infinitude of space. We can thus represent mentally a given portion of space, and we can extend this portion by addition in- definitely. But in this process we can come to no li- mit, for the obvious reason that space has no limit. Neither can we conceive of space as infinite, if it be meant that we set boundaries round the object. Space is one object; it is not an individual in a class; and thus imagination and conception with respect to it co- incide. Shall we say then that our idea of the infinite as \ - [THE INFINITUDE OF GOD. 101. predicated of space, is simply an expression of our im- _ potence to find a limit, to reach in our travels through immensity a place beyond which we cannot go? More than this is included in our cognition. Not only are we conscious of an inability in ourselves to.reach a limit in imagination; we know that there is no limit to be reached. Our assertion goes beyond a confession of our own weakness, and includes a positive affirmation respecting the object, respecting space it- self,—viz., that it is boundless. We have a belief pos- itive in its character, a conception incomplete, or inchoate, which is a state of mind removed, on the one hand, from nescience, and, on the other, from full or adequate comprehension. We know infinite space, but we know it imperfectly, obscurely. It is incompre- hensible, yet not a zero to our apprehension. In the same manner, we may know the infinitude of the attributes of God, of His power and His other per- - fections, without comprehending them. We are not driven to choose between the two extremes of complete ignorance and complete knowledge. Personality involves no curtailment of infinitude, as long as the world is absolutely dependent upon the will of God for its being, and when all limitation upon the exertion of His power is a self-limitation on His part. Secondly, it is objected that Christian theism falla- ciously assumes that the cause is like the effect, that 102 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. God is like ourselves. “Tf for a moment,” says Spen- cer,—referring to Paley’s illustration of the watch— “we make the grotesque supposition that the tickings and other movements of a watch constituted a kind of — consciousness ; and that a watch possessed of such a consciousness insisted upon regarding a watchmaker’s actions as determined like its own by springs and es- capements ; we should only complete a parallel of which religious teachers think much.” The parallel fails, since religious teachers do not ascribe to God limbs and other physical organs, Spencer’s remark has no force except on the materialistic petitio prin- cypw that consciousness is nothing but a function of the bodily organs. If there were a thinking prin- ciple in a watch, which could adjust its move- ments at will, and act upon it and through it, as the mind of man acts upon his body, finding in-it arrangements adapted to his needs and purposes, then S this thinking principle, or mind in the watch, would. refer it to an intelligent maker. If the cause need not be like the effect, it must nevertheless be related to the effect ; it must be an adequate cause. This requires” us to assume a designer wherever there is order, or the adaptedness of means to ends, since prevision is | implied in the cause which produces it. There is no escape from this reasoning on the ground of the alleged relativity of our knowledge. — -* _ . shi as Sh tee Be fae ee Tipe wy ee or rt ets 4 ola ich sj aa PERSONALITY OF GOD. 103 If this phrase means that all that we know we know through our faculties of knowledge, none will deny it. If, for this reason, our knowledge is denied to be real, or objectively valid, this is scepticism, and must equally debar us from believing that there is a First Cause. All our knowledge, including the assumption of “the unknowable,” goes overboard at once. A like remark is to be made of the alleged growth of the intellectual principle, or its evolution from animal instinct. We are in possession of this principle, what- ever may be the method of its origin. Discredit it, and all our science vanishes into thin air. Do we know that there is a First Cause? If so, we know, also, that this cause is moral and intelligent, since the effects are such as imply these qualities. An inad- equate cause, a cause in its nature standing in no rational relation to its effects, is equivalent to no cause. The peculiarity of the effects is left unexplained. If we looked on the conceptions formed by us of God as fully coincident with reality, if we imputed to Him the infirmities inseparable from a finite mind, and re- garded our operations of thought as an exact repre- sentation of His, we might be charged with an offen- sive anthropomorphism. But this charge does not hold against the assumption that He is a Spirit, an Agent acting intelligently ; for this the effects of His action plainly reveal Him to be. - ITT. THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION IN ITS RELA- TION TO THE ARGUMENT OF DESIGN. Evolution, as a method of accounting for the origi- nation of living beings in Nature, and of physical changes, stands in contrast with the idea of separate acts of creation by the immediate fiat of God, or by His direct interference. When applied in zoology, it means that the different kinds of animals are geneti- cally connected with one another, just as individuals of the same species have commonly been acknowledged to be. It signifies that the different species arise, not by a special fiat calling each into being independently, but by transmutation, there being a genealogical rela- tionship between them. As regards the origin of indi- viduals, it is as if there were only one species, embra- cing the animals that are now alive, and such as have lived in the past. Among the scientific men who adopt the theory of Evolution, there are wide diversities of Ben as to the extent to which it is justly applicable A . ; a. Ma ; ets: : 7 ; J . rh DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 105 to explain the origin of the various groups of natural objects. Some deem it necessary to suppose special ex- ertions of creative agency at particular points of tran- sition in the history of animal life. Many would re- gard the introduction of man upon the stage of being as constituting one of those epochs. Mr. Darwin be- heves that animal life, including the human species, is traceable to a few primitive germs, possibly to one. Others think that evolution provides a bridge to span the interval between animal and vegetable, and even between vegetable and inorganic existences, and as- sume as probable a continuous process extending back from the highest living being to the formless material of which the world was originally composed. Few, if any, however, would maintain that so sweeping an hy- pothesis can claim, in the present state of knowledge, any higher rank than belongs to a conjecture. That life is developed out of inorganic matter, or that man is the offspring of a lower animal, are certainly not as yet fully established or universally accepted truths of science. It is obvious that the doctrine of Evolution relates _ to the extent of the operation of second causes, or effi- cient causes, in the production of the world as we see it—the cosmos. That doctrine does not touch the question of the ultimate origin of the world; it does not necessarily touch the question whether the world, 6* 106 FAITH AND RATIONALISMN. as we behold it, is the fruit of a designing mind; nor does it affirm or deny the continuous co-operative agency of God in the processes of nature. Physical and natural science, as such, has nothing to do with religion. Its field of inquiry is second causes. In ex- : ploring for links of causal connection between the ob- jects of nature, it is engaged in its proper work. — Wherever it judges it impossible to find such links, it must say so. But science is right in never giving up the search so long as there is any probability of success; and nothing is more unreasonable than to raise an out- cry against a man like Mr. Darwin for broaching the __ hypothesis of a common descent of animals, and for ad- ducing the evidence which leads him to favor it. If there be any thing in that hypothesis to affect the doc- trine of theism, it must be in collateral assertions which are sometimes made in connection with it. It does not inhere in the theory itself. When a human being is born into the world, the proofs of a designing Creator are not in the least weakened by the fact that he comes into existence by ordinary generation, and that physio- logical science can explain the successive stages of his ~ embryonic life. What is true of the individual in re- lation to his kind, is equally true of one species in re- lation to another. We may take an illustration from one of the triumphs of modern inventive genius, the printing-press. A huge roll of blank paper is at one DESIGN AND SECOND CAUSES. 107 end of a machine; at the other end there are thrown | out the newspapers, in large double sheets, each of the = right dimensions, printed on both sides, counted out in separate parcels, or neatly folded, in readiness for the mails, The whole operation of supplying the ste- reotype plates with a due quantity of ink, of cutting i the paper into separate sheets of the requisite dimen- sions, of printing it, first on one side and then on the other, and of folding each sheet in a suitable manner, is done by the machinery, without human interference. The marks of design in the machine are not dimin- ished, they are rather increased, by the circumstance that no interference is required. The machine at pre- i . f- _sent used in the New York Tribune office does not put R the supplement, in case one is printed, into the main a sheet. That work must be done, if done at all, by | hand. But they are now constructing a printing-press a which will perform this additional task also, without human aid. Who will say that this additional perfec- tion in the machine lessens the evidences of design in connection with the production of the newspaper? __. This analogy, be it observed, is not intended to ilus- trate the probable relation of the agency of God to what we call second causes—as if He stood without, and ____ merely watched their operation. It is intended simply ~ to show that extraordinary interpositions are not ne- cessary to the proof of design, and that the absence of yt ay 108 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. such interferences raises no presumption on the side of atheism. It is obvious that the more complete and in- genious the mechanism in any invention of man, the less need there is of special assistance in the working tsi: Proceeding now on the supposition that nature’s method is that of evolution, the question is whether the order that we behold, the cosmos, the manifold examples of apparent adaptation of means to ends, justify the impression, which has been made on the generality of mankind in all ages, that the world was. planned, or that forethought and design have been exercised in the framing of it. Behind the instru- mentalities, the efficient causes, or acting through them, is there evidence of a directing intelligence? The alternative of design is chance. But, confining our attention for the moment, to the Darwinian theory, it is impossible to refer the animal kingdom to the agency of chance; quite as much so as on the old con- ception of the radical distinction of species> “Phe issue,” as Professor Gray correctly remarks, ‘ between the sceptic and the theist is only the old one, long ago argued out—namely, whether organic nature is a- result of design or of chance. Variation and natural selection open no third alternative; they concern only the question how the results, whether fortuitous or designed, may have been brought about. Organic DESIGN OR CHANCE? ~~ 109 nature abounds with unmistakable and_ irresistible indications of design, and, being a connected and con- sistent system, this evidence carries the implication of design throughout the whole. On the other hand, : chance carries no probabilities with it, can never be developed into a consistent system, but, when applied to the explanation of orderly or beneficial results, heaps up improbabilities at every step beyond all computa- tion. To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceiv- able. The alternative is a designed Cosmos.’* That 4 i — the argument of design is not weakened by the Dar- winian doctrine is thus illustrated by the same able . naturalist: “All the facts about the eye, which con- vinced him [the sceptic] that the organ was designed, remain just as they were. His conviction was not produced through testimony or eye-witness, but design was irresistibly inferred from the evidence of design in the eye itself. Now if the eye as it is, or has become, so convincingly argued design, why not each particular - step or part of this result? If the production of a per- fect crystalline lens in the eye—you know not how— as much indicated design as did the production of a Be ~ Dollond achromatic lens—you understand how—then _ why does not ‘ the swelling out’ of a particular portion of the membrane behind the iris—caused you know not how—which, by ‘correcting the errors of disper- * Darwiniana, p. 158. the audacity with which that omission is made; by the circumstance that it fastens the mind upon sequence, and thrusts aside and ignores the natural, the unavoid- able aspect of provision. In every system or compages of forces which issues in some particular result, any one of the forces of which the whole is composed, is the condition of the production of that result. In chemical combination each separate item is the condition of the whole. One pipe or one artery within the body, one. * “ Les causes finales ne sont, en dépit de leur nom, que les effets évidens, ou les conditions memes de Vexistence de chaque objet.”— Revue Encuclopedique, vol. v., p. 231. “Cuvier seems to have adopted the term in a sense not opposed to final causes.”—Owen’s Comparative Anatomy, vol. iii., p. 787. “QONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE.” 119 single ingredient in the air outside of it, is the condi- tion of existence. But it is evident that an apparatus, as one harmonious whole, stands in a different relation toward the result which it produces, from that of one or other single item of it; and that the relation of sine qua non, though included in, is not the complete and adequate expression of that aspect of the machinery as a whole. That whole is naturally regarded by the mind not only in this light, viz., that something follows from it, but also in another light, viz., that it is con- structed for something. We see a concurrent action towards, as well as a sequence from; we see more than conditions of existence,—we see a provision for exist-— ence. The end does not simply come after the means, but the means intend the end. But the formula—‘ Con- ditions of Existence ’—will not recognize a consequence ; only see the retrospective view, not the prospective. It only sees in sentient life the upshot of the bodily combinations, and discards the aspect of it as the end and scope of them. ‘The formula, therefore, attains its purpose by omission. Look only at a sequence, and you will only see a sequence. Geoffrey St. Hilaire, who carried the art of shutting the eyes toa high point of philosophical perfection, applied a scientific culture to this act of the mind. The point of view which he constructed for the purpose of exactly cutting off the approach of the proposition of common sense, reminds 10 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. one of some skilful piece of military engineering, which — projects the angle of a bastion in the direction which cuts off the assault from one threatening quarter in the country around; and is a curious specimen of the dogged perversity of a man of genius when he does not like one direction in which things are going, and opposes to obtrusive evidence the science of not seeing. ‘Voir les fonctions d’abord, puis aprés les instrumens qui les produisent, c’est renverser l’orde des idées, Pour un naturaliste qui conclut d’apres leg faits, chaque étre est sorti des mains du Oréateur, avec de propres conditions matérielles: il peut, selon qu'il lui est attribué de pouvoir: il emploie ses organes selon leur capacité d'action.” * It is a misstatement, then, to say that the advocates of design look at functions first, and at * Prineipes de Philosophie Zoologique, p. 66. His illustration against design is: “A raisonner de la sorte, vous diriez d’un homme qui fait usage de béquilles, qu’il était ori ginairement destiné au mal- heur d’avoir lune de ses jambes paralysée ou amputée.” It is, however, a most gratuitous transposition of the final cause to fit the man to the crutch, instead of what is much more obvious,—the crutch to the man. We cannot but add, with reference to the defect of logical training which these great scientific investigators some- times show, that it is singular that Cuvier and St. Hilaire should dispute over two hundred pages upon the identity of organs, e. g., whether the fore-hoof of an ox is exactly the ‘same otgan” with the wing of a bat, without it occurring to either of them to ask, whether they were using “identity ” in the same sense or using it in different senses and different respects, 3 eee hs ~ , - - “CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE.” 121 instruments for the functions afterwards; what they do is to look at both together, and argue from their con- currence. But this, looking at them both, and looking at them in concurrence, is what St. Hilaire prohibits ; it is not our seeing one before the other, but seeing the two in relation, which constitutes our offence. He will not allow the instrument to be looked at as agreeing with the work, but only at the work as necessarily coming out of the instrument. That is his point of view. Looking at the case, then, in this accurately limited point of view, design is undoubtedly excluded. Granted the construction of the instrument, the em- ployment of it, or the function, does not flow from the construction by design, but by necessity. The instru- ment works, and works according to its make, and according to its component parts. How can it work otherwise? The function is the only action of which the instrument is capable, and therefore is an unavoid- able derivation for the instrument. But though, this point of view granted, design is excluded, what right has St. Hilaire to impose this point of view? On what ground does he assert that the instrument works according to its construction, and that that 1s all? We say there is something besides the instrument working according to its construction, viz, that the instrument is constructed for its work; we assert this on the ground of the plain agreement and coincidence t 122 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. of the two. St. Hilaire says you have no right to see coincidence and correspondence; you have only the right to see the work proceeding from the instrument; you have no right to see the adaptation of the instru- ment for the work; you are at liberty to perceive the motion derived from the oars and sails; you are forbid- den to discern the aptitudes of the oars and sails to pro- duce the motion of the boat. But if there are two rela- tions to be seen, why should we only see one of them ?” All criticism of the methods of Nature, all accusa- tions of a want of simplicity, or a want of benevo- lence, in its arrangements, have no force as arguments against the existence of an intelligent Creator. What- - ever weight may be supposed to belong to such objec- tions, pertains to them as bearing on the conception that is to be formed of the attributes of God. From this point of view, they are generally specimens of reason- ing upon a vast system, of which material things form only a part, and which is imperfectly comprehended. . The force of the argument of design depends on the assumption that man has a ‘soul, that he is a spirit, personal and free. Materialists deny this. By others, it is left doubtful. Professor Huxley, in his Essay on Protoplasm, says: “What do we know of that-‘ ‘spirit’ over whose threatened extinction so great a lamentation is arising . . . . except that”—like matter— “ it is also the name for an unknown and hypothetical MATTER AND SPIRIT. 7 es ies: cause, or condition of states of consciousness ?” “Matter and spirit are but names for the imaginary substrata of the groups of natural phenomena.” That is to say, self, the ego, is a “hypothetical,” “imaginary” substratum of mental states. Here our knowledge of matter and mind are put on a level. But of our- selves we have undeniably a direct, immediate intui- tion. It is far less unreasonable for one to be a Ber- keleian, or even an idealist, than to question the reality of himself as a substance, or personal subject. But, following Hume, Professor Huxley calls in question the fact of the intuition of self. Kant reached the same conclusion on other grounds. But the cogito, ergo sum of Des Cartes stands firm; not as a logical inference, but as giving the condition of the intuitive idea, which is the unassailable guaranty of the reality of the object —the ego. As the personal subject is grammatically involved in the cogito,so in the act of thought is the reality of the thinker implied. If he knows that he thinks, he knows that he exists. The existence of the ego is as evident in consciousness as is the existence of the thought. The thought is, and is known to be, the act or state of the ego. The idea of mental “phenomena” without mind, is as absurd as the idea of luminosity without a thing that is luminous. I know myself, as an entity, maintaining persistently its identity; and I know myself as distinct from my 124 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. - organism, from my heart, and lungs, and liver, and brain, and the whole material system with which I am connected.* It is granted that the “phenomena” are _ known to be toto genere distinct from those of the body and of matter; desire, memory, love, hate, are abso- lutely dissimilar to nerves and blood-vessels. The substance of which these thoughts and feelings are the manifestation 1s equally distinct. Dr. Tyndall has well said: “Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor, apparently, any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from one phenomenon to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why.” “The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is — unthinkable.” “ The problem of the connection of the body and soul is as insoluble, as it was in the pre- scientific ages.”+ To say that the soul is the body, or a portion of the body, or a mere function of the body, is, therefore, not only to make an -assertion of which science can offer no proof; but it is to make an asser- tion which consciousness repudiates as inconsistent — with the intuition of self. * Compare Mozley, Vol. IL., p. 368. + From the Address on the Methods and Tendencies of Physical Investigation, t J ‘, Ay = pis 5 f are mi, i = pee ee NS gs ee ee ene SOS Se et Ce Pee eee Pe Lee ae ee ee aM re Behe whee THE INTUITION OF SELF. 125 This recognition of our own personality is essential _ to the due validity and impressiveness of the argument of design, in two ways. It is the consciousness of my- self as a free intelligence, adapting means to ends, that raises in me the image of a higher Intelligence to whom Iam like. Without this idea and norm within me, I should neither have any conception of God as a Crea- tor, nor any proof of His existence. Secondly, in man there is presented a worthy end, towards which physi- cal arrangements point; and thus completeness is given to the argument of design. This last point is forci- bly presented by the author from whom I have already cited. Nothing but “the spiritual principle can give that strong, pointed and masterly end of the physical apparatus, which our reason wants in order to crown that apparatus with design.” “It is only when we come to man that an end in immediate connection with an animal machinery shines forth with such overpower- ing intrinsic evidence, and stands out in so conspicuous and irresistible a light, that the completing stroke and _ finish is given to the evidence of design. In man the end is so distinctly superior to the machine, the end is so clearly beyond the machine, that the argument strikes home.” ‘Can any thing exceed the conviction with which any man, when he really thinks of himself, and thinks of his body, must say, This body exists for the sake of me: I am its end, all this machinery is no- “a \ 126 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. thing without myself as an explanation? A man can- not rid himself of this sense of the object of his own body, that it is for the sake of him—that personal self ; of which he is conscious: the purpose clings to the ma- chine, and cannot be parted from it. And, therefore, inasmuch as he is a different thing from the machine, he sees distinctly that this machine exists for an end beyond itself, which is the coping-stone of the argu- ment of design.” “Does not the great argument of Paley derive its real pungency from the reader having always, consciously or unconsciously, man in his mind — in connection with the machinery of Nature? In the description of the eye, he thinks of man, of himself, who sees.” * The atheism that rests in second causes, that traces the world back to a collection of atoms, and there halts, could not be more pointedly condemned than in the words of the founder of the inductive phi- losophy, who knew how to use without abusing the truth of final causes. “It is true,” says Lord Bacon, “that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to athe- ism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them, and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them, confederate and linked together, it must * Mozley’s Essays, Vol. IL, p. 366 seq. Ke ay BACON ON A PHBISM. is ie Avie to ahha tnd Dee Nay that school _ ; Bye which is most accused of atheism doth most demon- 4 i strate religion; that is, the school of Leucippus and IG 5: De emocritus and Hpicurus. For itis athousand times __ so om more credible that four mutable elements, and one im- _ os. ) iuitable fifth essence, duly and eternally placed, need a! . no God, than that an army of infinite small portions | ns “or seeds, unplaced, should have produced this order ee and beauty without a divine marshal.’* ee. eg *esayss xvi., of Atheism, IV. THE REASONABLENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. Prayer, in its fundamental idea, is petition. It is so described in the teaching of Christ (Matt. vii. 7 seq., Luke xi. 5 seq., xvii. 1 seq.). A child goes toa father with a request for something. It is a perfectly natural and reasonable act where there is dependence and want on one side, and strength and the spirit of helpfulness on the other. Nothing is more common than for men to answer the prayers addressed to them. Sometimes they will do this where there is no stronger motive _than a desire to get rid of the suppliant. To represent - God as moved by prayer to grant what He is asked to give, does not imply that He is mutable in character, but it implies the opposite. For the prayer is a new fact. The sincere, filial uplooking to Him, which is the root and essence of supplication, finds a fit response in the bestowal of the good that is sought. If God were eee in all respects, with the prayerful, as He 28 PRAYER. 129 deals with the prayerless, it would be treating the humble and the self-sufficient, the good and the ~ evil, in all respects alike. This would not be un- changeable goodness and justice, but would indicate 4 the absence of these qualities. | Petition is always to be broadly distinguished from demand or dictation. It may be granted or not, at Bm ~- the option of the person addressed. In a family, there are some requests which are certain to be complied with. “What man is there of you if his son ask a _ bread, will he give him a stone?” If a child asks for moral direction, for light respecting matters of great q - concern to him, or if he appeals for support in tempta- tion or sorrow, no one with the heart of a father would ever withhold the good sought. So in the Bible, the promise of the Spirit of God is made, without qualifica- ~tion, to every one who petitions for this best gift for himself (Luke xi. 13). As to a great variety of things which children may ask of a parent, while the simple fact of an innocent request produces an inclination to comply with it, and thus tends to procure the good sought, it is yet, of course, left to the discretion of the parent to give or to withhold it. So of petitions to the Heavenly Father. It may be for the real interest, if not for the immediate gratification, of the petitioner to have them denied. It rests with the perfect wisdom and love of God to determine: ‘ Nevertheless, not my 6* 130 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. will, but thine be done.” No one can say with cer- tainty that it would be better for him to be rich than to be poor, to escape from bereavement rather than to suffer it, to have honor than to have reproach, to live on to old age than to die young, etc. These are ques- tions of probability, where human judgment may be quite astray, and human preference may be unwise. It requires omniscience to decide them infallibly. This is true of a thousand things which may be suitable objects of prayer. There is a limit, however, to the proper objects of petition. A father has a given system, certain known principles, for the management of his household. It would be wrong, as well as futile, to ask him to do something which clashes with the wise and well-under- stood method under which the affairs of the family are conducted. A child who, perhaps, might properly ask his father to change the hour of dinner, either perma- nently, or on a particular day, might be guilty of dis- respect if he were to request that all the meals of the family should take place in the night-time. To ask for a new article of furniture is one thing; to ask that the house may be burned down is another. When the head of a household has acquainted his family with the arrangements, from which he chooses not to deviate, — an enclosure is made within which, in all ordinary cir- cumstances, petitions are out of place. ~ MEANS OF ANSWERING PRAYER. iio Al Applying the analogy to God in His relation to men, we find certain fixed arrangements in the constitution of man and of the world, and we meet, in the course of - events, with certain plain and decisive indications of what the will of God is for the future. No reverent or reasonable man would pray that the sun might rise at midnight, that an apple-tree might bear fruit out of _ doors in mid-winter, that a young child might have at once the mental power and knowledge of a man, or that certain invalids, in the last stages of mortal dis- ease, might recover. There is virtually a declared _ purpose of God to the contrary, as evident as if it were expressed in words, upon the matter of these petitions. _ They manifestly call for such a revolution in God’s mode of governing the world as we have no right to look for, under the ordinary circumstances of human life. — But it does not follow, because there is an appointed order of things, that there is no space left for the hearing and answering of prayer. There are channels | open between God and the human soul. God is a Person, and He does not withdraw Himself from con- verse with His children. The divine Spirit can impart light, guidance, courage, strength to resist temptation, comfort in despondency, to the spirit of man. And outward changes, within the sphere of material nature, are largely dependent on human perceptions, feclings, Bay ee FAITH AND RATIONALISM. and volitions. Indirectly, thus, changes in the material sphere may be effected by a divine influence on the mind of man. The physician, the nurse, the sea-cap- tain, the general, every human being who has the lives and temporal interests of his fellow-men under his charge, may be guided, enlightened, practically con- trolled, by a divine influence exerted upon the mind in response to supplication. Although there are laws of mind as well as of matter, the reasonableness of prayer for changes of the character just stated is compara- tively seldom questioned. It is in respect to prayer for purely physical changes, where material forces are exclusively concerned, that the difficulty is chiefly felt. It is sometimes said that to grant such prayers would argue an inconsistency, or fickleness in God, who has already established the course of Nature. It is, also, urged that the course of Nature being fixed and uni- form, no means are open for rendering answers to sup- plications of this sort. Before taking up this topic, it is well to notice a preliminary objection which is sometimes raised on this subject. It is said that an exact boundary cannot be fixed between the provinces of Nature, where prayer, — by common consent, is shut out—as the astronomic system—and the sphere within which prayer is consid- ered to have an influence. But here the analogy of sthe family comes in, where the line of demarcation 33 * zy 3 * a j 48 co ( me Pr. eee ye EY ee Z U A ) wa | a) Be ‘ ee te a = ~ PRAYER FOR PHYSICAL CHANGES. Nips ts: beyond which petitions to the parent are precluded by unalterable arrangements may not always be correctly defined by the children. The possibility of mistake in this regard does not do away with the admitted fact that there is a real distinction of the kind, and one which is practically acted on. The circumstance that there may be extravagant petitions does not prove that there are none which are reasonable. Our belief in the supernatural, and the expéctations dictated by it, are modified by education. They are not extirpated, but pruned and directed; in this respect resembling the other faculties and tendencies of our nature. It is so with regard to the belief in miracles. Once they may have been expected on many occasions where now they are not looked for. On this ground it would be a rash and false conclusion that they are impossible, or that, under given circumstances—as parts and proofs of a Revelation—they are unlikely to occur. The question whether prayer for physical changes is answered is to be considered from the stand-point of theism. On the pantheistic or atheistic assumption, or on the plane of materialism, there is no room for such adiscussion. If there is no God to answer prayer, of course prayer will not be answered. An Epicu- rean deity who stands aloof from the world, and is indifferent to the wants of men, is equivalent, as regards the present inquiry, to no God at all. We 134 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. assume, on evidence which need not be recapitulated here, that God is a Person, who is capable of entering into communion with men, and of hearing their peti- tions, and that He is merciful. But there are laws of Nature, and the question is whether they constitute, . for any reason, a barrier in the way of His responding to these petitions. It is altogether a mistake, we may add, to suppose that the existence of natural laws and a natural order is a modern discovery. ‘The idea of ‘the tree yielding fruit after his kind whose seed is in itself” is in the beginning of Genesis; the uniform movement of the tides and of the heavenly bodies, and the regular processes of animal life, are the subject of sublime passages in Job; the constant procession of Nature in seed-time and harvest, in day and night, is recognized throughout the Scriptures. The ascription of natural phenomena to God’s agency, and belief in supernatural interpositions, did not exclude a belief, likewise, in natural laws. In fact, this belief- was implied in the idea of a miracle. But, to return to the point, what to a theist is natural law? Law is not a being; it is an abstraction. It is a term for expressing the uniformity of the sequences of Nature. Law is another name for invariable succession. ire, brought into contact with a certain class of material things, burns; not once, or twice, but always. The conditions being the oe ile i dS tial, ; } ™~ OQ as nk ae yes aD an ad on == Pome Sr MR IS GER PRP EEE Ne SEC ee Ree MeN Eee of ~ ~, é . - We i ote ‘s THE ORDER OF NATURE. 135 same, the same effect follows. This, we say, is a law. But theism holds not only that law is no agent, but that agency, so far as it belongs to objects in Nature, is dependent upon, and either immediately or ultimate- ly derived from, the Creator and Preserver of Nature. Law signifies His plan of acting, or the plan which the living God ordains for the action of the forces of matter. That there is an order of Nature, the theist fully recognizes. Indeed, from this order—as far as the evidence from Nature is concerned—he derives his proof that God is an intelligent being. The wisdom of instituting such an order, on which all our anticipa- tions of the future rest, is too obvious to be denied by anybody. The theist holds, however, that Nature has not its end in itself, is not for its own sake. The whole end of the visible creation it-is beyond our pow- er to ascertain ; but one end is the well-being of man. To man the lower orders of being point. No sanctity belongs to the laws of external Nature, as such. They are a method adapted for an end beyond themselves. They are a part of a more extensive order, which em- braces moral and spiritual being, and can only be imperfectly comprehended. If any of the foregoing propositions are disputed, the controversy lies back of the question now before us. It pertains to the grounds of theism. Now to assert that God cannot answer prayer for 136 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. physical changes—cannot, if He will—is to assert what it is impossible to prove. He who remembers our very limited knowledge of Nature,—how much we have to learn, notwithstanding the remarkable progress of na- tural science in recent days; who is sensible, too, that we are in the dark as to the modus operandi of God in His relation to Nature, will be slow to limit thus the resources of omnipotence. But there are ways in which we can conceive that prayers for physical changes may be answered. I dis- miss, at the outset, the idea that the benefit of prayer is purely reflex, as if it were a spiritual’ gymnastic having its whole effect on the mind of the suppliant. No one can offer a real prayer on such a theory; for the subjective benefit from it, whatever that may be, is conditioned on the belief in its objective efficacy. Schieiermacher’s idea that prayer answers itself by ope. rating, as a cause among causes, producing its own ful- filment, and a similar suggestion of Chalmers—which, however, is not given as his own opinion—that there — may be conceivably a subtle tie of connection between the prayer and its answer, in the domain of second causes, are liable to the same objection. Under such a view, prayer ceases to be a bona fide petition. More- over, no room, apparently, is left for the exercise of discretion as to granting or denying it. There are two ways, at least, in which it may be ‘PRAYER FOR PHYSICAL CHANGES. Ty. conceived that prayers for physical changes are com- pled with. The first assumes a pre-arranged harmony between the prayer and the answer provided for it. Both had their place—the one as a free act of man, the other as a physical change ordained to correspond to it—in the plan of the world. ‘The train of causes is set at the be- ginning, in the foreknowledge of the petition to be of- fered, for the evolving of an appropriate response. No interposition is required. The reign of law is undis- turbed.* Itis felt by many to be an objection to this view that if nothing is to occur except what causes al- ready in operation virtually contain, it scems like praying about what is past and beyond recall. The second view is that, in answering prayer, God “may interpose, not manifestly as in the case of a miracle, but, by the control which He exercises over the laws of Nature, may modify the effect of their action. That such power belongs to God no one who believes in Him will think of questioning. A like power, in a less degree, belongs to men. It is exerted every time one raises his arm by an act of will. It is exerted whenever a man pumps water out of a well. The ~ initial force is in his volition; the effect is a phenome- non that would not have occurred, independently of that new, and—as regards material nature—supernatu- ~* See McCosh’s Method of the Divine Government, p. 0 138 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. ral antecedent. Yet it is through the instrumentality | of Nature and of its laws that the human will pro- duces these new effects. All that is included under the term Art, all the works and contrivances of man- kind, spring from such interpositions of the human- will, which produce through the medium of natural forces new products. The botanist and the cattle- breeder exert an almost creative power, not by coun- teracting the laws of nature, but by using and directing them. If, it has been well said, Professor Espy can cause a shower of rain, God can. If, nature~ is thus plastic in the hands of the creature, how much more in the hands of the Creator! What we call the course of Nature is the will of God acting systemati- cally, either as the sole efficient, or through the inter- mediary agency of second causes. On either hypo- thesis it is easy to suppose a new influx of energy from the primal source of power, or a new combination in the occult laboratory of Nature, which shall modify, in a corresponding degree, visible phenomena. Such an act of God need produce no variation in the sequences of phenomena so far as they are cogni- zable by man. The modification of causes may take place back of all proximate forces, in a region which science cannot penetrate; for science does not pretend to follow phenomena back to their ultimate antece- dents. There is a curtain which is soon reached, THE UNIFORMITY OF NATURE. 139 through which human observation cannot pierce. The intervention of Deity is out of sight, among the remoter forces that are nearer the primitive fountain of power in Himself Chalmers illustrates this view _ by showing how a prayer for a prosperous voyage may be answered without any violation of established sequences so far as they fall under human observation. God causes a wind to arise; but this was by the condensation of vapor, according to the natural law. The vapor was raised by the action of heat, the natural process. Carry these explanations to the uttermost limits to which science can push its observa- tions, all might move in strictly undeviating order. But ulterior to this there is a “deep and dark abyss between the furthest reach of man’s discovery, and the forthgoings of God’s will,” where the finger of the Almighty touches the mechanism of the world.* It is worth while to stop and inquire, what precisely is meant by the uniformity of Nature? It is not meant that the phenomena which we now witness have always existed, or will always exist in the future. It is not supposed that the sun has always risen and set, as is the fact at present; and it would be impossible to prove, if any one believes, that the sun will continue to rise and set to all eternity in the future. What is the history of Nature but a record of perpetual * Natural Theology, Vol. II., p. 339. 140 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. changes—new beings, new phenomena, and -new collo- cations of phenomena, presenting themselves on the scene. ‘To this extent, our expectation that the future will be like the past is subject to qualification. No doubt, we believe that the same assemblage of antecedents will be followed by the same consequent. That is to say, there are laws of Nature. On this assumption, inductive reasoning is founded. It would be a flagrant violation of logic, however, to infer that miracles have never occurred. A miracle, as Mr. Mill has remarked, supposes the introduction of a new antecedent, the volition of God; and the presence or absence of the antecedent is shown by the effect pro- duced. If this effect surpass that which the physical antecedents have been shown by experience to be capa- ble of producing, the new antecedent must be pre- supposed. Now Nature is not uniform in the sense. that miracles have not occurred, or in the sense that they may not, if God so will, occur hereafter. An epl- 4 leptic son, who had been afflicted with this terrible — 3 disorder from childhood, was brought by his father to Jesus, and was immediately cured by Him (Mark ix. 17-28). This is a perfectly well-attested historical fact. Disbelieve it (and other like facts in connection _ with it), and you cannot account for the existence of the Christian Church, a fact not less substantial and . stupendous than the solar system. Generally speak- +e ee ae uy “ ~~ re , A - pee dl at THE HOSPITAL-TEST. 141 ing, answers to prayer, on the view presented above, lack one element of a miracle; the supernatural inter- position is not manifest, palpable to the senses. But the cause is the same, and the effect, viz., a modifica- tion of the course of Nature, is the same. Can a theist suppose that such interpositions are not possible? To say that God is put in fetters by natural law, which is only His own habitual procedure, is to make Him a slave to habit. If He “makes the rain to fall,” He can send it or withhold it, as He deems best. Nature is flexible in His hand. The distinction of the natural and the supernatural is made for certain purposes; but the natural 7s supernatural. It is said that, as a matter of fact, prayers for physical changes are not answered. Whether they could be or not, it is said that, in point of fact, they are not. But this assertion stands without proof. It has been proposed to test the efficacy of prayer for the recovery of the sick by experiments in a hospi- tal. This is the so-called “ prayer-gauge.” This would be to test the benevolence of a Ruler or Benefactor—or one thought to be such—by bringing to him petitions to see whether he would grant them or not. This ex- periment would be apt to fail of its end if it were tried even upon a man reported to be goodand kind. The proper quality of prayer, that it shall be heart-felt 142 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. petition, offered in faith, and having no ulterior motive beyond a desire of the good sought, is wanting. The experiment is vitiated from the start by a disregard of the conditions essential to the idea of true prayer. Another difficulty with the hospital-test is that such an experiment, independently of the objection just named, would be an utterly insufficient basis for an induction relative to the utility of prayer. Prayer does not operate like a natural force. If fire burns once, on the principle of the uniformity of Nature we infer that it will burn again, and as often as the experiment is repeated. But petitions do not act with this invariable eficiency. There may be reasons why they should be granted here, and denied there. The materials for induction are complex, and scattered over a vast area. Besides, they are not of a nature to be tested in the crucible, or weighed in the balance. Who can judge of the character. of a particular suppliant, and estimate the degree of likelihood that he will be heard? It must be confessed that the crude attempt to apply an experimental test to devotion has its parallel in the practice of those who undertake to demonstrate the efficacy of prayer by special instances, where none of the criteria of logical induction—such a& discrimina- tion between effects and coincidences, or the impar- tial gathering of facts in a sufficient number—are present. A man may be convinced for himself, and i) ints Cel eee Pa oe Hei .! “s ‘a oe ‘ Se yt Ne ee GROUNDS FOR FAITH IN PRAYER. 143 on sufficient grounds, of “the unbounded might” * of prayer, when the means of logically establishing the fact to the satisfaction of another are not at hand. To avoid the objections to the “hospital-test,” it has been proposed to appeal to statistics, and to inquire whether facts gathered from observation warrant the conclusion that supplications for long life have had an effect. But here the circumstances are so complicated as to baffle calculation. If prayer for long life tends to produce longevity, it is only one out of various causes which may go to determine the result. Prayers are offered by religious men for others not less than for themselves. Good men do not always pray for long life. The elements of a statistical estimate, then, are wanting. The phenomena are not observable to such an extent and in such form as to furnish a basis for an inductive conclusion. Science does not contradict faith; but it is impracticable to resolve faith into science. If it is possible for God to answer prayers, even for physical changes, and if there is no proof that He does not, what reason is there for believing that He will? The first is that prayer has the same foundation in hu- man nature that religion has, of which it forms an es- * From Wordsworth’s Excursion, b. i. + This is clearly set forth by an ingenious writer, Mr. G. J. Romanes, Christian Prayer and General Laws, etc., p. 259. ee aes Lie eet Aree ahs F eas Soy 2% ; as AS es roe 444 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. = St a S Beis i ine sential part. There is a well-nigh irrepressible instinct Ee which impels men to call upon the Author and Ruler of the world, the Father of the spirits of all flesh, fa help, and for deliverance in trouble. They believe that _ He can meet their need, even if they cannot tell hows and sooner than give up this faith, they will suspect, — if they cannot detect, fallacies in fine-spun arguments to prove the contrary. The second reason is the au- thority of Revelation. Prayer is there encouraged by injunction and example. The lordship of God over | material Nature is declared in tones that carry convic- ae tion to the soul, and is demonstrated by miracle, | a Christ Himself prayed. ee ye. asta A, | - 4 oe . iy q is x ~ ~ 4 i. ¥ d 3 a } . Ni 3 4 ¥ 3 ; ¥ a atl = . V. JESUS WAS NOT A RELIGIOUS ENTHUSIAST. Those who disbelieve in the supernatural mission and authority of Christ can do so at present only by assuming that He was a religious Enthusiast. It is no longer pretended, as it was by some of those about Him, that He was a “deceiver” (Matt. xxvii 63, - John vii. 12.) He was either the self-deluded victim of his own imagination, or He was in truth the Son of God, sent by the Father, having “power on earth to forgive sins” (Matt. ix. 6). All who gave credence to the record of His miracles are thereby precluded from disbelieving in Him. This record cannot be set aside without our involving our- selves in a labyrinth of historical perplexities from which there are no means of escape. How shall we explain the existence of the record? How shall we divide the miracles from the teaching which is obviously authentic, and has them for its sub- ject or occasion? What could have moved the disci- ples to accept Him as Messiah without the expected 7 145 Peal i 18) FAITH AND RATIONALISM. and proper signs of Messianic office, especially when their national and political aspirations were utterly disappointed ? But apart from the miracles, the character and cir- cumstances of Jesus are inconsistent with the idea that he was an Enthusiast, elated and bewildered by the dreams of fancy. ; . 1. Self-searching was inevitable in the situation wn which He was placed. The question who He was, and whether there was any ground for His claims, was con- - stantly brought home to Him. Was it reasonable to believe in. Him—the same question that is agitated now, was agitated by everybody near Him. There were different opinions. His own kinsmen at first did not believe in Him. His townsmen were sceptical as to His claims. Some people said that he was in a league with Satan, and got help from him. The influ- ential classes were mostly incredulous and_ hostile; and their influence was great among the common peo- ple. Many were perplexed, and knew not what to think. ‘The question respecting Himself was thus per- petually thrust upon His attention. But He showed no disposition to shun the inquiry, or to escape from self-scrutiny. We find Him, in the calmest manner possible, asking His disciples whom the people took Him to be. Having been told what the different sup- positions were, He goes on to interrogate them as to re A! | * a ML LS ES Peg ae os EO EL NS IONS ee, ee Pe” ae eee d ‘ } é a. , JESUS NOT AN ENTHUSIAST. 147 their own idea of Him: “ Whom say ye that Iam?” (Matt. xvi. 15). Then we find Him predicting that His adherents, even His chosen disciples, will be moved to desert Him. Nothing was wanting in His circumstances to call out misgivings in His own mind, had there been any ground for them. 2. The sobriety of His conviction respecting Himself is made manifest wm the ordeal through which He passed in His trial and crucifixion. When He is forsaken by all, will not His confidence in Himself waver? Will He not see now that He is not what He thought Himself to be? Mark His demeanor! Carried from one priest to another, and from priest to governor, from Pilate to Herod, and back again to Pilate, He “answers not a word.” Is this because there is a doubt of Himself? No: He breaks silence to avow to the High Priest that He is in truth the Son of God; and to explain to the Roman Procurator, that, though a King, His kingdom was not one that could possibly involve rebellion against the civil autho- rity. The look which He cast upon Peter, a look of sad rebuke, implied an unshaken confidence in the truth of all His claims, at the very moment when they . were the object of all sorts of contempt and ridicule, and were bringing upon Him a violent death at the hands of the authorities of His nation. The few words to the thief at His side on the cross, the prayer for the 148 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. fanatics who were destroying Him, His last words commending His departing spirit to the Father, in- volve the same undoubting consciousness of His excep- tional character and office among men, which had attended Him at every moment of His career. It was a terrible test for pretensions that rested on fancy. In the fire of it, one would have supposed that they — must shrivel away; that, if never before, He must have been exposed to Himself, and have seen through Himself. 38. The holy character of Christ excludes the suppo- sition of religious enthusiasm. Self-exaggeration, even when it takes the form of enthusiasm, springs out of a root of moral evil. It has its ultimate origin in self- seeking. As Jesus Himself said: If the eye be single, the whole body will be full of light; a man will know himself. Hence enthusiasm, if balked in its aims, will often assume the form of conscious ambition, or turn into knavery. This is seen in popular leaders, like Mohammed, who begin as enthusiasts, but end worse than they began. The enormous self-delusion implied in the exalted pretensions of Jesus, in case they were not founded in truth, would have broken up the sobri- ety of His spirit, and deranged the harmony of His character. The safeguard against self-deception is thorough moral rectitude, by which all unhealthy and unreasonable self-exaltation is kept out. It is clear oars as ‘ 7 4 ; Se ee AA PL abee n - 24 , a Re Ea eee Sn a ee a eo a ae gia a a : 4 e. = . q ; 7 5 7 4 % : B. Be 3 se a JESUS NOT AN ENTHUSIAST. 149 that the absolute purity and humility of Jesus ensure the truthfulness of His estimate of Himself. 4, [His anticipations respecting the effect of His work, as the event has proved, were not enthusiastic. What He said of the “much fruit” that would follow if the corn of wheat should fall into the ground, and die (John xii. 24), has been verified. He was in truth lifted up to draw all men unto Him. He was the founder of a unique and. mighty kingdom, to which history affords no parallel, as He foresaw just at the moment when He stood alone, mocked, and scourged, and crowned with thorns, with a reed placed in His hand for a sceptre. None of the wise men of the world at that moment would have given the slightest credit to His prediction of the consequences of His work and of His death. They would have disregarded them as a ridiculous, hypocritical boast, or a madman’s dream. But history has pronounced its verdict, and that verdict is that they corresponded to the coming reality. Was it intoxicated imagination, then, that governed him? or was it the calmest, the truest, the profoundest wisdom? Was that consciousness a nest of delusive fancies respecting Himself, or was it a clear, just perception of what He really was, and of the work which God had given Him to do? VI. THE MORAL AND SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS IN THE ATONEMENT. The problem of the Atonement is to determine how the work of Christ influences God to forgive sin. How does it move Him to receive back into His fellowship and favor those who, notwithstanding their guilt for the past, and their remaining sin, betake themselves to Christ, cordially avail themselves of His intercession, and give themselves up to Him to be moulded in His image? The effect on the mind of God, especially on the retributive feeling in His nature, which stands in the way of the practical exercise of mercy, is the question of main difficulty. Some of the ideas of President Edwards on this sub- ject are of deep interest, and merit more attention than they have ever received.* My object is not to present his entire view, some parts of which are more open to criticism than others, but to set forth briefly certain leading points in his discussion. * They are in his “ Miscellaneous Remarks,” ete., Dwight’s ed., V ol V LT 150 vk je wee ; EDWARDS ON THE ATONEMENT. 151 Where there is sin, something of the nature of com- pensation is required; either punishment, or a repent- ance, humiliation, and sorrow which are proportionate to the guilt incurred. This fitness of punishment (or of an equivalent repentance) is founded on the abhor- rence and indignation which sin necessarily excites. Since punishment is a part of the fitness of things, is the correlate of ill-desert, the justice of God obliges Him to inflict it. Edwards explains the significance of punishment as consisting in the contradiction af- forded by it to the implied language of sin, which is that God is not worthy to be respected and obeyed. Here there is some resemblance to suggestive remarks of Anselm respecting the proof of subjection to God, which the transgressor in suffering punishment in- voluntarily affords. Anselm speaks of God, and His will. Applying his idea to the law, we might say that the transgressor does not escape from its grasp by the revolt of his will against it. The law, cast off as a precept, lays hold of him with its punitive clutch. He flies from one side to the other, but the horizon ever surrounds him. No repentance answerable to the guilt of sin is possible to men. The reason of this, according to Edwards, is the infinite guilt of sin, as committed against an infinite being. Those who are not satisfied with this idea of the infinitude of guilt, might, perhaps, prefer to rest the impossibility of ade- 152 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. quate repentance on other grounds,—as the power of sinful habit partially to benumb conscience and para- lyze the will. Let the case be supposed of an enormous and long- continued wrong committed against me by another; ‘though at length he should leave it off, I should not forgive him, unless upon Gospel considerations.” But suppose an Intercessor comes forward, (1) a dearer friend to me, (2) always true and constant to me, (3) a near relation of the offender, and (4) under- goes hard labors and difficulties, pains and miseries to procure him forgiveness; and (5) the offender seeks favor in his name, flies to him, and is sensible how much the mediator has done and suffered, I should be satisfied and be inclined to receive him back to friend- - ship. The Intercessor may be called the Patron, the offender the Client, and the offended party the Friend of the patron. Merit is anything in one that recom- mends him to another’s esteem, regard or affection. It is reasonable to show respect or grant favors to one on account of his services to, or connection with, another. The stricter the union, the more does it pre- vail to the acceptance of the person, for the sake of him to whom he is united. There are many familiar illustrations of this law or principle of our nature. If the union be such that the two can be taken as com- a aes Se a EEL TT a A hg eb : ee | 5 | ES es Pas hg te ea any te eee EO ee a co oN oT OR EDWARDS ON THE ATONEMENT. 193 pletely one and the same, as to the interest of the client in relation to the patron, the patron may be taken as the substitute of the client, and the merits of the client may be imputed to him. What degree of union is complete? When the patron is willing to take the client's destruction on himself, or what is equivalent to that, so that the client may escape: who is thus willing for the reason that his love puts him into the place of the client. Such love takes in the client’s whole interest, is an equal balance for it, puts him thoroughly in the client's stead. Their interest becomes identical. Especially is the client’s welfare regarded for the patron’s sake, when the patron expresses his desire for the client's welfare by being at the expense of his own personal and private welfare for the welfare of the client. The interest in the good expended is trans- ferred into the good sought. The good of the price is parted with, for the good of the thing purchased : a proper substitution of one in the place of the other. Especially, again, is the client’s welfare regarded for the patron’s sake, if the patron not only expresses his desires of the client’s welfare, and that what is ex- pended for him be given to him; but if, also, the merit of the patron consists and appears in what he does for the client’s welfare—if his merit has its existence for the sake of the clrent. 154 FAITH AND_RATIONALISM. It is still more rational to accept the patron’s merit if he goes where the client is, clothes himself in his form, is made like him in all respects, etc..—his own merit, it being carefully observed, remaining all the while inviolable. The union of the patron and client must not infringe on two things,—the patron’s union with the friend whose favor'he seeks for the client, and the patron’s own merit. For his recommending influence is in two things: (1) his merit, and (2) his union with the client. The patron must appear united to his unworthy and offending client, under such circumstances as to demon- strate that he perfectly disapproves of the offence, and to show a perfect regard to virtue, and to the honor and dignity of his offended, injured friend. This can be done in no way so thoroughly as by put- ting himself in the stead of the offender, under the vio- lated law and rule of righteousness, and suffering the whole penalty due to the offender, and by himself, un- der such self-denial, honoring those violated rights and rules. Hereby he gives testimony to all beholders that, notwithstanding his love to his client, he would rather deny himself so greatly rather than see the welfare, authority, honor, and dignity of his friend, diminished or degraded. If the dignity of the patron, taken in connection with his friend’s regard for him, and his union to the client, eee. a, EDWARDS ON THE ATONEMENT. 155 | countervail the favor which the client needs, then there is a sufficiency in the patron to be the representative and substitute of the client. If the patron and client are equals as to greatness of being or degree of existence, and the patron is so unit- ed with the client that he regards the interest of the client equally with his own personal interest, then his client’s welfare becomes perfectly, and to all intents and purposes, his own interest, as much as his own personal welfare; and his friend will regard the client's welfare in an equal degree with the patron’s welfare. If the patron is greater than the client, then a less degree of union has the same effect on the friend. Such a union may most fitly and aptly be represent- ed by the client’s being taken by the patron to be a part or member of himself, as though he were a mem- ber of his body. When the suffering of the patron for the client is equal in value or weight to the client’s suffering, con- sidering the difference of the degree of persons, it shows that the love to the client is equal or equivalent to his love to himself, according to the different degree of the persons. The client must actively and cordially concur in the affair. There must be towards the patron the feelings and acts appropriate to this relation; he must cleave to him, commit his cause to him, trust in him, approv- 156 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. ing of his friendship, kind undertaking and patronage; also, he must feel an approbation of the patron’s union to his friend, whose favor he seeks; also, an approba- tion of the benefits which ‘the patron seeks of his friend for the client. ‘The mediator must unite Himself to God and man ; or, as it were, assume them both to Himself But if He unites Himself to guilty men, of necessity, He brings their guilt—i. e. exposedness to penal evil—on Himself; He must take the rebel’s sufferings on Him- self, “because otherwise His undertaking for, and unit-— ung himself to such an one, will appear like counte- nancing his offence and rebellion.” If He takes it up- | on Himself to bear the penalty, He quite takes off this appearance. Christ suffered the wrath of God for men’s sins in such a way as a perfectly holy person would who knew that God was not angry with him personally, but loved him. Christ bore the wrath of God in two ways: 1, He had a clear sight of the wrath of God against the — sins of men, and the punishment they deserved. 2. He endured the effects of that wrath. Without the sight of the odiousness of sin and the dreadfulness of punishment, He could not know how great a benefit He procured for them in redeeming them from this punishment. He had this sight, be- cause sin fully revealed its odiousness in murdering the i, He i> Soon ga Ree 4 ae te eee A a, Seat eget 3 Rees ge Bar age TR LES wher, ms Paes PNK $e : . ws} aa, NP EDWARDS ON THE ATONEMENT. 157 Son of God, and everything in the circumstances of His last suffering was adapted to heighten this impres- sion. This view of sin was, to Christ, a most painful sensation; it was immense suffering, not being bal- anced or neutralized by other feelings of an opposite nature; since God forsook Him, 2. ¢., took away these feelings. So Christ bare our sins, and, also, suffered wrath, or had a sense of the dreadfulness of the pun- ishment of sin. ‘A very strong and lively love and pity towards the miserable, tends to make their case ours; as in other respects, so in this in particular, as it doth in our idea place us in their stead, under their misery, with a most lively sense of the feeling of that misery; as it were, feeling it for them, actually suffer- ing in their stead by strong sympathy.” Christ was sanctified in His last suffering; first, as He had a great sense of the odiousness of sin, and, secondly, as He had that experience of the bitter fruit and consequence of it. Moreover, He was then in the exercise of the highest act of obedience or holiness, which tended to increase the principle. This suffering “added to the finite holiness of the human nature of Christ.” It was like fire which increased the precious- ness of the gold, though it burned away no dross. Christ endured the effects of the wrath of God. Satan and wicked men were left free—‘ let loose —to inflict upon Him pain. God forsook Him; 1. ¢., withheld 158 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. pleasant ideas and manifestations of His love, Ghrist, — 9am _ thus tasted in His inward experience the terror and dis- may of souls forsaken of God, though Himself con- sciously free from guilt. I remark upon these statements of Edwards: 1. Christ is first presented in them in the character’ of an Intercessor. Nor is this conception entirely dropped out of mind in the process of the discussion. As a prerequisite to this office, He must enter fully into the mind of the offended party, as well as the distress of the party offending. This absolute sympathy, or iden- tification of Himself in feeling, with both parties, is necessary to qualify Him to intercede. Without it, His intercessions would not be intelligent on His own part, or acceptable, and prevailing. 2. The sympathy of Christ with God and with man, the offended One and the offender, was perfected by means of His death. Then and thereby it attained to its consummation. Then He understood fully what guilt involves; He appreciated both the holy resentment of God, and the criminality and forlorn situation of man. We do not depart from the spirit of Edwards's teaching, if we say that the prayer of Christ for His enemies, on the cross, emanated from a state of mind that absolutely meets the conditions of acceptable in- tercession. 3. The substitution of Christ was primarily in His 2 EDWARDS ON THE ATONEMENT. 159 own heart. It was love, which comes under another’s burden, makes another’s suffering lot its own, lays aside self, as it were, and becomes another. ‘This ,inward substitution led to, and was completed in, the final act of self-sacrifice. 4, By His voluntary submission to death, Christ signified His absolute approval of the righteousness of the law, on its penal, as well as its preceptive side. He gave the strongest possible proof of His sense of the justice of the divine administration in the allotment of death to the sinner. Being among men, and one of them, He honored and sanctioned the law both by keeping it, by overcoming temptation, and also, by sharing, without a murmur, in the righteous penalty which He had not personally incurred. The originality and attractiveness of Edwards's dis- cussion lies in the circumstance that it is an attempt to find the moral and spiritual elements of the Atonement, and thus unfold its rationale. It isnot in the quantity of the Saviour’s suffering alone, but in the sources and meaning of it, that he is interested. While holding that Christ suffered the penalty of sin, Edwards not only carefully excludes the idea that He was in con- sciousness, or in fact, an object of wrath; but he dwells also upon those spiritual perceptions and experiences which gave significance to the pain which He endured. 160 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. Dr. J. McLeod Campbell, in a treatise on the Atone- ment, which for its depth and religious earnestness has commanded general respect, starts with the alter- native of Edwards, that sin must be followed by punish- ment, or by an adequate repentance. Discarding the © idea that the Atonement is the bearing of the penalty, he regards it as an adequate repentance effected in the consciousness of Christ, the ingredient of personal remorse being absent, but all the spiritual elements being present which Edwards finds in the experience of Christ. Christ made an expiatory confession of our sins, which was “a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.” * Faith is our “Amen” to this condemnation in the soul of Christ. Christ enters fully into the mind of God respecting sin; into His condemnation of it, and into His love to the sinner. There was “the equivalent repentance” which Edwards makes the alternative of punishment. With this, sanctioned, reproduced in its essential ele- ments, in the believer, through his connection with Christ, God is satisfied. Dr. Campbell goes beyond the Moral View of the — Atonement. He makes the death of Christ necessary to the realization by Him of God’s feeling and man’s need. Without “the perfected experience of the en- mity of the carnal mind to God,” “an adequate con- * The Nature of the Atonement, etc., 3d ed., p. 186. % os a on ) * Paes 7 \ Fd & os : ca 4 Sl : * ae SAM, ech Lg Ce aR Log ps BAT Rp eS NT 3 ae ee ae De ae OO eee a Se ; . 53 Ton = — we Se a Ne ee eee eT Ee NS Vee Cos »\ CAMPBELL ON THE ATONEMENT. 161 fession of man’s sin” could not have “ been offered to God in humanity in expiation of man’s sin, nor inter- cession have been made according to the extent of man’s need of forgiveness.” * Moreover, it is declared - that Christ endured, and that it was necessary to the development of His inward experience that He should endure, death, under a sense of its character as “ the wages of sin.” “As our Lord alone truly tasted death, so to Him alone had death its perfect meaning as the wages of sin, for in Him alone was there full entrance into the mind of God towards sin, and perfect unity with that mind.” + Christ, as being alone holy, could alone understand, and duly feel, what the forfeiting of life means. If men were mere spirits, a response to the divine mind concerning sin could only have had spiritual elements; but man being capable of death, and death being the wages of sin, it was not simply sin that had to be dealt with, but “an existing law with its penalty of death, and that death as already in- curred.” Hence a response was necessary to “that expression of the divine mind which was contained in God’s making death the penalty of sin.” { The cha- racteristic of Campbell’s view is that suffering as such, he regards as of no account, but suffering and death are necessary as a conditio sine qua non of that enter- ing into the mind of God—that expiatory confession— P2389. 7 P. 302. ft P. 303, 162 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. which he considers the moral essence of the Atonement. Yet, it will be observed that, according to this repre- sentation Christ endures death, and with a vivid, pain- ful, complete consciousness of the penal quality that belongs to it. How could this death come nearer to being identical with penalty, save by the introduction of an element of personal remorse or self-accusation, which Edwards equally excludes ? I make one further criticism upon Campbell. He brings out with great force and impressiveness the significance of the Saviour’s intercessory prayer on the eross, with the confession of human guilt implied in it, as a full revelation of the righteous displeasure of God against sin, and at the same time, of His love and merciful inclination towards the sinner, which are pre- supposed in that supplication. There is a revelation of God’s holy anger and His mercy; involving, to be sure, intense suffering in Him through whom it is made, in the act of making it. I am not certain that Campbell would confine the value of this confession and prayer of Christ to their significance as a revelation of God’s mind, which we can lay hold of, and respond to with humble, grateful hearts. This, however, is the predominant representation in the treatise. Why not consider the supplication of Christ as, also, a real means of procuring the good sought? Why not consider the actual bestowal of grace—not the disposition to be- - ~~ we og 24x oe Pe ee we tee al oe eo ee (i te et Parte LUTHER ON THE ATONEMENT. 163 stow it—as consequent on the intercession? The in- tercession presupposes, indeed, that God is merciful; but so does all prayer. And yet the idea of prayer is nullified if we do not hold that it procures, or tends to procure, a good not otherwise to be ex- pected. Those who have read Luther’s Commentary on the - Galatians will remember how earnestly he insists on the truth of Christ’s unification of Himself with us, -and of the unification of ourselves with Him through faith. In all the writings of Luther which bear on the subject, the same thought is prominent. Amid impor- tant diversities, there is yet a fundamental resemblance between his conception of the moral and spiritual ele- - ments of the Atonement, and that of Edwards. As regards what is conceived to have taken place in the soul of Christ, the two theologians have much in com- mon. Dorner has clearly set forth Luther's ideas on - this theme.* The soul of the Reformer entered deeply into the crushing feeling of guilt, as distinguished from that of misery or finite weakness. In this feeling, we first appreciate our unworthiness, but at the same time understand the value of our personality in the eyes of God. The longing for expiation or atonement involves - the first pure ethical impulse. Conscious of our help- lessness, our inability to make an atonement ourselves, * Lehre y. d. Person Christi, i1. 513 seq. 164 _ FAITH AND RATIONALISM. we are met by the joyful tidings of a Mediator, sent 3 from God, and of a righteousness in Him, which cor-. responds to the divine righteousness. This righteous- ness, although, in the first instance it is His, may also become ours through faith; faith being the personal assent and affirmation which we give to that Love on His part which takes our place, to its righteousness, holiness, and power. This substitution on His part — carries in it so high a respect for us as individuals, for our personality, that it does not aim to do away with it, or to absorb it. The aim is, rather, to present it as righteous before God in a substitution which shall act upon it, recognizing it all the time as a separate person- ality, while the individual, on his side, gives himself up ~ to Christ in faith, to be moulded by His plastic influence — into the divine image, to be transformed into a child of God—a child in whom, reconciled and made holy, the righteousness of God attains to a personal manifesta- tion. By faith we are drawn into the spiritual death of penitence, through the consciousness of being con- demned in Him, but not without at the same time becoming aware of the divine will to save us—save © our personal being itself—as reconciled in. Christ. ~ Luther states that before the Evangelical doctrine was brought out, preachers aimed to depict to their hearers the sufferings of Christ for the purpose of exciting their pity, and to rhake them weep. This, he says, is _ ¢ n 1M 4 a . A 1 tpt apt ay MES joe en 4 x PSL SS te a) ice Lee Soh haere a oa es eae ry Pee Eider 87 eet ee a : PA ay US Aa an LUTHER ON THE ATONEMENT. 165 wrong. We make the right use of Christ’s sufferings, when we are led, by seeing Christ so sorrowful on our account, to sorrow for ourselves, for the sins that made Him mourn and suffer. We are to mourn over our- selves, and not over Him. His contrition in our be- half should make us contrite. Christ is to Luther the Child of God, who offers Himself to our faith that we may be clothed upon with divine sonship. God gives to us His Son, and tells us that He is well pleased with all that Christ says and does for us. “ Thinkest thou not that if a human heart truly felt that good- pleasure which God has in Christ when He thus serves us, it would for very joy burst into a hundred thous- and pieces? For then it would see into the abyss of the fatherly heart, yea into the fathomless and eternal goodness and love of God, which He feels towards us, and has felt from eternity?” “ God’s good-pleasure and his whole heart thou seest in Christ, in all His words and works;” and in turn Christ is in God's heart, and an object of His good-pleasure. Since Christ - igs thine and mine, we, too, are in the same good-pleas- ure of God, and as deep in His heart as Christ Him- self. “ We must first be in Christ, with all our nature, sin, death, and weakness, and know that we are freed therefrom, and redeemed, and pronounced blessed by this Christ. We must swing above ourselves and be- yond ourselves over upon Him, yea, be utterly incor- 166 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. porated in Him, and be His own.” Then sin, and fear, and death are gone: “I know of no death or hell. For I know that as Christ is in the Father, I am, also, in Christ.” ‘In fine, by the word we become incor- porated in Christ, so that all that He has is ours, and we can take Him on, as our own body. Hein turn must take on Himself all that which befalls us, so that neither the world, the devil, nor any calamity can hurt or overcome us.” ‘One must teach of faith correctly —even thus—that by it you become bound and united with Christ, so that out of Him and you there arises, as it were, one person, which does not suffer the two to be parted or sundered from one another, but where you evermore hang on Christ, and can say with joy and comfort--‘I am Christ; not personally ; but Christ's righteousness, victory, life, and everything which He has, is my own;’ and so that Christ can say—‘I am this poor sinner, that is all his sin and death are my sins and my death, since he hangs on me by faith, I on him,’—therefore, St. Paul says, ‘we are members of Christ’s body, of His flesh and His bones.’ Wherefore when you in this affair separate your person and that of Christ from one another, you are under the law and live not in Christ.” “ Christ has taken on our flesh, which is full of sin, and has felt all woe and calamity, has demeaned Himself not otherwise before God, His Father, than if He had Himself done all the sin which nf Pel = ek ee oe ] : oe cP which is the punishment of sin. That is, he submitted willingly to death, and in the exercise of so complete a sympathy with the holy God, and with condemned and lost man, that he knew and felt what is the wrath of God against sin. He felt with God the ill-desert of sin; he felt with man what it is to be exposed to a just banishment from the light of God’s favor. The end of punishment is reached when a full in- sight into God’s holy condemnation of sin, and a heart- felt sanction of it, are evoked. The desire to punish is then sated. It is not difficult to see that when Christ thus makes himself one with God in the most intimate sense, God then and there re-connects himself with estranged man. So far as Christ can represent the world otf mankind, the world is reconciled to God. The world is punished, and is punished effectually. That is to say, punishment has done its work upon the conscience and will. A true sonship is established in the midst | of our race.. 16* | 186 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. Faith in Christ is the willing recognition of His pain of conscience and affliction of spirit on account of sin, as being meet for its guilt and unworthiness—as alone answering to the measure of our guilt and un- worthiness,—and faith is a self-committal to Him as - the fountain of a new life of sonship, of perfected love to God and man, or sanctification. To him who is thus sympathetic with Christ sin is graciously forgiven. Forgiveness thus bestowed does not lessen his sense of the holiness of God and of his own ill-desert. The guasi punishment suffered for our benefit on the cross is an expiation, if we recognize it as the means whereby man representatively rendered to God an adequate tribute of sympathy with his righteous displeasure and with the ordinance of penalty through which—were justice to be done—it would be_ exerted and expressed. Behind and below all is the love of God, who spared not his own Son, but through Him, lifted upon the cross, entered into communion with the race of mankind, estranged and condemned. In Christ, the race may be conceived of as returning, like the Prodigal, to the Father,—one with Him in his retributive sentiment, not less than in the percep- tion of His love and mercy. The Son of God became man: He took on Him our human nature: ‘He condemned sin in the flesh;” that is, He adjudged it a usurper, broke its control, - ’ ¥ THE ATONEMENT. 187 expelled it from the nature which he had taken on, and thus became a leaven for the purification of that same nature in all who share it with Him. In doing this, He did not evade, but submissively carried that nature through, the righteous penalties allotted in the moral order to sin, thus glorifying God, and appealing only to His mercy on behalf of His brethren. So there was a reparation in the moral order, violated by our dis- loyalty; and that holy feeling of God, coexisting with a desire to save, which lies at the root of penal inflic- tion, and which man must understand if there is to be a reunion of God and man—that feeling which is likened to “wrath” in us—was appeased.* * To ascribe anger to God is not more anthropomorphic than to ascribe to Him compassion. Is it said that anger and love are in- compatible? This is so far from being true that an iniquitous child moves to anger (as well as to sorrow) even the tenderest parent whose moral sense is not blunted: the deepest anger may mingle with a yearning love, and stand as a barrier to fellowship. . Nay, it is the love that stirs to anger: without this element of righteous anger, love is mere good-nature,—void of earnestness, void of all ethical quality. That in the experiences of death, and of death under the circum- stances which brought Him to the cross, Jesus may have gained an insight into the holy anger of God, not possible without such an - experience, is, to say the least, quite possible. The lament over Jerusalem, ending with the words, “ Behold, your house is left unto you desolate,”—shows how love mingled in his heart with a sense of the deserved condemnation that rested on the objects of that love. The gravest difficulties of the subject are avoided when the crude commercial conception of the paying of a debt is cast away, and with it the scheme of legal weights and balances, and a strained literalism in the conception of penalty as borne by Christ. The death of Jesus is properly said to be vicarious. It is, moreover, so far a substitution that the result of it is to deliver the believer from merited punishment. It may be added here that if the world is said by the Apostle to be reconciled to God, it is to bring out the fact that it is He who takes the initiative, and that the whole transaction by which God is reconciled to the world—the objective Reconciliation—emanates from His own love. Vad: THE UNITY OF BELIEF AMONG CHRISTIANS. | The alleged diversity of belief among Christians, in the past ages of the Church and at present, is often made an apology for scepticism. The first of the causes to which Lord Bacon attributes atheism is “ divisions in religion, if they be many.”* Who shall determine what the truth is, it is asked, in this chaos of opinion? Who shall pronounce upon the meaning of the Bible when interpreters are in perpetual discord with one another? These questions are founded on a mistaken assumption. In the first place, the essential religious truth is confounded with the varieties of ex- position and philosophy in which it has been formulated and defended at different times and in different schools of thought. Secondly, upon the fundamental princi- ples of the Gospel, the Church has not been thus distracted. There has been no such revolution of opinion as took place in physical science, when, for ex- ample, the Ptolemaic doctrine which made the earth * Essays, xvi., of Atheism. 188 FAITH AND RATIONALISM. 189 the centre, the geocentric theory, was supplanted by the Copernican which made the sun the centre, the heliocentric. Christ has held the central place in the Christian system from the beginning until now. His Incarnation and Atonement have been continually the objects of faith. The primitive church discarded alike Ebionism which rejected His divinity, and Docetism which rejected His humanity. The Nicene theology was the perfecting of a definition, not the introduction of a new opinion. That theology has been for substance the creed of Greek, Roman Catholic, and Protestant, the only exception being sects which have professed to dissent from the common belief. Various explanations of the Atonement have been made. There were early theories which were, in some of their details, crude. But even those theories, and all others of later date which have obtained a lodgment in the Church, have recognized the mediato- rial agency of Christ in procuring forgiveness by His humiliation and death. As to the main fact of the Atonement there has been a general concurrence. The controversy of Protestant and Roman Catholic does not turn on these cardinal points of doctrine. Both stand for the truth declared in the ancient cecumenical creeds. Their differences relate to the value of tradition, to the constitution and authority of the Church, to the nature of the Sacraments, to the way in which the Atonement 4 190 ’ UNITY OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF. becomes available to the individual—whether by faith alone, or by faith and something else—also, to various minor particulars of creed and rite, most of which are the direct or indirect offshoot of the last mentioned difference. But behind these diversities, grave and important as they are, there is a common Christianity in the profession of which they unite. Here they stand _ together, rendering one answer to the question, “‘ What think ye of Christ?” It is not to be overlooked that debates among Protestants have been largely owing to ambiguities of language. One of the most laborious disputants of the seventeenth century——that era of stormy debate— Richard Baxter, towards the close of his life, wrote: “I perceive that most of the Doctrinal controversies among Protestants are far more about equivocal words than matter.” He adds with affecting - candor: “‘ Experience since the year 1643 to this year, 1675, hath loudly called me to repent of my own prejudices, sidings, and censurings of causes and per- sons not understood, and of all the miscarriages of my ministry and life which have been thereby caused ; and to-make it my chief work to call men that are within my hearing to more peaceable thoughts, affec- tions, and practices.” At an earlier day, Bacon wrote: “Tt cannot but open men’s eyes, to see that many controversies do merely pertain to that which is either not revealed or positive; and that many others do UNITY OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF. LOE erow upon weak and obscure inferences or derivations: - which latter sort, if men would revive the blessed style of that great doctor of the Gentiles, would be carried thus, Lgo, non Dominus [I, not the Lord], and again, Secundum consilvum meum [according to my - counsel]; in opinions and counsels, not in positions and oppositions.” * The most striking sign of that unity of Christians which underlies their multiplied discords and differ- ences, is in the degree of harmony which exists in acts of devotion and in the devotional literature which the adherents of diverse communions value in common. There are hymns, some of them involving the inmost experiences of piety, which are sung by congregations of worshippers, in other respects widely at variance. A portion of these accepted songs are a product of ancient or medieval piety. Hymns composed by op- posing theological disputants are cherished in common by the Christian communities that profess to follow them. The “Imitation of Christ” is one example, but the most remarkable example, of the welcome accorded to a religious work by Protestant and Catholic alike, and by multitudes differing most widely in creed, as well as culture. No book except the Bible has been F< 50 widely circulated. Yet it enters into the very ” heart of spiritual religion. * Of the Advancement of Learning, b. ii.