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2hs 14 1948 "
Hoaroas. sw
IN VIEW OF
PRESENT-DAY DIFFICULTIES
BY THE REV.
“ALEX. J. HARRISON, B.D.
MASTER OF MAGDALENE HOSPITAL, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE
LECTURER OF THE CHRISTIAN EVIDENCE SOCIETY
EVIDENTIAL MISSIONER OF THE CHURCH PAROCHIAL MISSION SOCIETY
AND BOYLE LECTURER 1892-4
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO,
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1894
All rights reserved
INSCRIBED
WITH DEEP AFFECTION AND RESPECT
TO
THE REV. J. H. CARDWELL, M.A.,
RECTOR OF ST. ANNE’S, SOHO,
AND HIS COLLEAGUES,
THE REY. R. H. GEE, M.A.,,
AND
THE REV. H. B. FREEMAN, M.A.
PoRG Te rN: Gets
I HAVE so fully stated in the Introduction my object in
writing this book, that a preface scarcely seems necessary.
But I take the opportunity it affords of warmly thanking
the clergy who have received me into their churches and
their homes, not only for their bright hospitality, but also
for the exceedingly valuable suggestions they have made.
Foremost among my kindest counsellors I must name the
Rey. Charles Green, of St. Paul’s, Beckenham, to whom I am
very specially indebted. Nor can I forbear thanking again
the Rev. H. Muir, M.A., and the Rev. C. Lloyd Engstrom,
secretaries respectively of the Church Parochial Mission
Society and the Christian Evidence Society, for the immense
help they have given me in my work. If Mr. Engstrom
could only be persuaded to make use of his long experience,
varied gifts, and ripe scholarship in giving to the public the
kind of books he knows to be needed, he would place us
all under great and glad obligation.
ALEX, J. HARRISON.
MAGDALENE LODGE,
NEWCASTLE-UPON- TYNE,
October, 1894,
aire
fy SRT bib oo
INTRODUCTION
BOOK I.
THE REPOSE OF FAITH
CHAPTER I.
REPOSE.
1, Introduction
2. Repose in God . ;
3. The Repose of Unconscious eno
4, The Extent of Love :
5. The Repose of Love that trusts :
6. Repose and Imagination .
7. Repose and Memory
8. Repose and Will
9. Repose and Prayer
Pee eee eee ts
COUNT PN S
CHAPTER IL.
FAITH.
Introduction
Rational Faith .
Faith and the Faith
Undeveloped Faith ‘
The Faith and Theology .
Partial Faith ‘
The Faith of Chit :
The Repose of Intuitional Faith
PAGE
Po et
ae ge ee ak hn ame a om
OG Se ee b=
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
INTUITIONS.
PAGE
Anirocuction to 53
The Intuition of Right 54
The Intuition of Truth 55
The Intuition of Beauty 56
The Intuition of Love . 36
The Intuition of Power ay!
The Intuition of God . 58
The Intuition of Cause 61
The Cause of Intuitions 69
BOOK II.
THE REPOSE OF FAITH IN RELATION TO SCIENCE.
CHAPTER I.
MerErtTuHop,
Introduction som
The Method of Science
The Function of Science .
Assumptions of Science
Induction and Deduction .
Philosophy and Science
The Genetic Method
The Adult Stage of Science .
CHAPTER II.
Tue SCIENCES.
Introduction
First Division .
Second Division
Force and Will .
Third Division .
84
85
88
88
90
CONTENTS. xi
CHAPTER III.
GENESIS.
PAGE
1. Introduction . . SRST ROR tel aaeh, Mand Se idee spent Ok 92
2. The Genesis of the Gaerce & idly, RO Rao, See De th ra nen ONE tay etree LS YS
REALE Of LO LIDIVGISO. cole) Verret ate Meneciy . wh ae cel ta 6 eG
RRP CaN GATS OL) Lil (G8 se de ees, ere weet andl Wawlp eae Wena a? wl te CLUS
Pee Dhentsonesis.of CONSClONSUGKS 6 fl ventas okie: fey a) ) foot sa cyst LED
pee The Gonesis of the New. Univers@ ). 206 be peel we el, ie wt | TS
BOOK III.
THE REPOSE OF FAITH IN RELATION TO THEOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
| Tue GENESIS OF RELIGION.
1. Introduction . . Me Soha pit aaa cg SOHN 34 Ooi Wg ewe as 2!
2. The Karly Date of hen eion RE os mae Vata ta Poa eG tel pee Rep ah Eeeb
| wer bvaorios of its Origin: Fetishism (is. i et Soo wk Pe a KG
| SPA TIOCRLUTSNVOTENI Dera sini het tely ece ei. mh aise dm), ee apeeen eee wed
5. Comparative Mythology . . OAR A eA ter aR EA D1 O%E pal 32)
6. The Genesis of Religion as Mor orality Bee vi Mbp c eR OAS te Pathe LS)
7. Israeland Religion . . DWH TEER PREC ak tN E RTI L939,
CHAPTER. IL.
THEOLOGY.
¥. ‘Introduction. ... AMG ite Smee ahmiy es baa y cea cing to hee LEE
2. The Test of Herparteue MCR Peer meRees Vet Sk tone legge oh, WOME OS
Pemeh enlory Tn Cen eral: fe iyi wiutten as pial ay el be et) hs!) a Wun a Oe
TERS AAS) Votre bog Miu seer iar a ts ne Roan Se area ORAL eracees qaikel. hl he.
: 5. The Catholic Faith . EOE eee ok a a A ee YN peckt WY
: 6. The Inspiration of the Bible ERR Ne eR TE RMUR etry tot do |
7. Christianity and Contemporary Feeling . . . - + + + ~« 195
Pomme Teer IN AIUEV eee eh) ait opie te hon eye ue st op eit et dope ee POW
En towledie BNO HOlial ssh. | sy Soto oy vet e ot) giie ie oe O20
xii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
An APPEAL TO THE CLERGY.
PAGE
1. Introduction . oe cites Cat eth ig tly Seen ats acre
2. Proportion of Faith and Love eerie Sk
3). Soctal Intercourse: 9.) 46 Se ON
4.\ove for the Doubter <4) 2 9 8 kt a
5... Difficulties of the:Thinker .°>.. 2° 4. 2. << 22.9
6. The Faith of Christ < 2. 0s. 5. 9A. Pe ee a
7: The Reality of Difficulty’ << .° 02.50 7) 3
8,-'‘The Freethinkers’,Christ ...- .° 3 0% ©) 6) 2
§..° The Method of Preaching «©. ...9/) Syl)
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.
1. Introduction . . eo ce ok We Ue ea
2. The Value of Relieicn MES LUCIO Cr So
3:- The Necessity of Faith... ..° <4, ) (ste Se
4; Kinds of Faith 2.0%. 3 Sh OS a a
5. Trust in Divine Guidance. . . 9.24. ee
6. Necessity of Sincerity’; 2 = 0 Gi ee
7. Ethical Unbelievers~.:. 20 2. 4539.4 .. A
8, Contemporary Controversies . .. 2-5.) (bales). anee ne
9, The Comprehension of Unbelief <3. 9 9) 7) ee
10." Conclusion: 06.200). a Re
NOTES.
1... The Authority of Consciousness .) . |. 4), eee
2. Mistakes as to Unbelievers . . » SOUS Se ae oe
3. Influence of the East on the West ME ery NOR e Seay A
4. The Witness of the Bjfistles °.° <0) eae
INTRODUCTION.
THERE are two classes of readers for whom this book iS
intended—anxious Christians, and doubters who have not
yet broken away from Christianity. Both may be inclined
to ask the very natural question—What are your qualifica-
tions for the task you are undertaking? The answer is:
Firstly, that I feel very deeply the troubles of both.
Secondly, that I am one of a large number who passed from
Scepticism to Christianity, not only without ceasing to be
free inquirers, but just because they were free inquirers,
Thirdly, because I have, like most of these, the missionary
spirit, and burn with the passion to be a helper of others
—those who need the kind of help we are able to offer,
Next, because I have ample proof that many will read
a book of this kind who will not read any considerable part
of the splendid evidential literature we already possess.
Then, after the twenty years’ experience, which led to my
writing “ Problems of Christianity and Scepticism,” and “ The
Church in Relation to Sceptics,” I was set apart by licence
from the Bishop of Wakefield and the Archbishop of York
as a sort of evidential missionary, to go, during two years
and a half, wherever the Church Parochial Mission Society
thought proper to send me, and during those thirty months
I had unrivalled opportunities of studying the state of mind
of the two classes for whom I write. Lastly, I have no weak-
ening fear of the forces opposed to Christ, Were this merely
B
nce
a eee
2 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
a matter of temperament, it would be a disqualification rather
than otherwise. But, though temperament may have some-
thing to do with it, though I may be one of those of whom
it is true hope springs eternal in the human breast, yet it
is profound conviction rather than a hopeful temperament
which has brightened the spirit in which these pages are
written. I can, at least, say I am not an easy-chair optimist.
Suffering is the badge of all the tribe to which I belong.
We are in constant contact with almost all forms of human
misery. And if we have the brightness of unconquerable
faith, it is not from ignorance of multitudinous pain, deepen-
ing so often into intolerable anguish. Nor is it from un-
acquaintance with the literature of scepticism. We know
better than most men what can be urged against a hopeful
view of human destiny. We are familiar not only with the
number, but also with the power, of the objections to the
Christian faith. We are able to sympathize with every mood
of antagonism. We feel the essential force, now of Atheism,
now of Agnosticism, now of Positivism. We feel the in-
fluences which make men creedless. We have been saturated
with the spirit which is called sometimes scepticism, some-
times free thought, sometimes rationalism, sometimes simply
inquiry. There is no known light or shadow of doubt which
has not brightened or darkened our path. The higher criti-
cism is familiar as a household word. The strains cease-
lessly sung by the poets of doubt are the music of our
everyday life. We can respond to the innermost meaning
of a Matthew Arnold, a Cotter Morison, a Mrs. Humphrey
Ward, an Olive Schreiner, a Sarah Grand, as well as to that
of the opponents who base their attacks on the scientific
reasoning of Darwin, Spencer, Tyndall, Huxley, or Clifford ;
to critics like Stephens, and popularizers like Laing. We
can enter into the feeling that prompted the intense
INTRODUCTION. 3
hostility of Mr. Bradlaugh, the calmer opposition of Mr.
Holyoake, the emotional unbelief of Mrs. Besant. We
can understand the attitude of the Freethinker and the
Agnostic Journal, and we can appreciate the purpose of the
endless series of tracts which call upon men to abandon
all belief in the Bible because, for example, Abraham lied
and David was guilty of adultery. I am but one of a
large number of men who can sympathize with every form
of real or supposed opposition, from Atheism to Buddhism,
from Agnosticism to Theosophy, and who know that every
one of these contains a tribute to Christ. The thing I have
taken in hand is a little thing, but it is mine own. I am,
in one sense, a popularizer of Christian evidences. Yet,
in another, lam more than that. It is true I have never
said anything that some one else has not said better. But,
too often, the banquet which scholars provide is in one place,
while the hungry are in another. It is for such as myself
to find out good bread and pure wine, and to carry them to
those who need. The office is a humble one, but it is useful,
In my other works I have sought to do this for the classes
therein specified. In this work I am trying to do it for
anxious believers, and doubters who are still Christian.
A further question will be—Granting that you have some
fitness to write for the class you name, and that your object
is not unworthy, what is it in particular you seek to accom-
plish? The full answer to this question the reader can find
only by reading the whole book. Nevertheless, I may here
state in general terms what I have in my mind to do. To
explain this, I must say a word of two classes for whom I
do not write. There are many Christians who honestly
believe that they have never had a doubt, and some even
pride themselves on the supposed fact. I think they are
mistaken about themselves. A Midland medical man
4 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
remarked to me, “I do not mean to hear you. I have no
doubts, and I do not wish to have any.” Further acquaintance
proved that he had doubts, which he steadily refused to face.
A Lancashire merchant said, more reasonably, “I went into
the whole subject forty years ago, and arrived then at certain
conclusions. I do not wish to be compelled, now that I have
less leisure, and perhaps less capacity, to go into the subject
again. I will, therefore, stay away from Christian Evidence
Lectures.” A Northumbrian clergyman expressed himself
thus: “I would gladly take the chair for you were you
speaking on any other subject. But I am sure that you
would, with the best intentions in the world, suggest doubts
to me which would haunt me afterwards. I really know
nothing about Christian evidences. I am appointed to teach
definite Church doctrine, and I let controversy alone.” A
distinguished London clergyman said, “ All scepticism is
born of sin;” another, less distinguished, “All doubt comes
from the devil.” What degree of truth or rightness there
may be in these several statements I do not stay to inquire.
It is enough to say that I do not write for those who think
they have no doubts.
There are others who are equally sure that they have no
faith. That they are mistaken about themselves I, at least,
am certain. They say, “Religion was invented by the
priests,” without troubling to ask who, in that case, invented
the priests. “Reason is a sufficient guide,” they affirm,
without particularly inquiring what reason is. “ We will
take nothing for granted,” they ery, without seeing that, in
that very cry, they take themselves, their intelligence, their
vocal organs, their auditors, for granted. “We will follow
truth and right only,” they say, not seeing that faith in truth
and right is here assumed. “ Religion is but another name
for superstition,’ they assert, without troubling to define
INTRODUCTION. 5
either the one or the other. “There is only infinite and
eternal energy,” is their proclamation to the world, without
perceiving that their proclamation is one of faith, since they
do not know there is nothing else, and by their own philosophy
cannot know the infinite and eternal. They hold that “religion ,
has been and is a fatal barrier to progress,” without inquiring >
whether it has not’ been also an incentive to progress, and |
without distinguishing between religion and its corruptions. '
“The reasons for rejecting Christianity are numerous and
powerful,” they assert, not remembering that even so they
leave the question to be asked, Are not the reasons for its
acceptance more numerous and more powerful still? They
declare their allegiance to free thought, taking it for granted
that Christianity and freedom of thinking are incompatible
terms, and failing to realize the possibility that Christianity
may give a fate and more complete freedom than they,
even in their noblest ideals, have ever thought of. They
appeal with confidence to theories of natural law and of
evolution, not realizing that natural laws are but uniform
ways which force takes, and evolution but a uniform method
in which the Evolver works, and that neither necessarily
excludes what has been called the supernatural, since miracles
may be, for all that these deniers can tell, but a higher form
of the natural. The general characteristic of this class is
settled and established hostility to religion in general and to
Christianity in particular. Whatever excuses there may be
for this hostility, it is virulent enough to put an end to all
free inquiry on the part of those whom it possesses, and it is
not, therefore, for these that this book is written. They are
not sceptics, but deniers.
The two classes to whom I eagerly address myself have
this in common—both believe and both doubt; with emphasis
on believe in the first, on doubt in the second, case. The
aed
6 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
inward disturbance of both has much the same source. Their
attention has been so concentrated upon very important
subjects, that subjects more important still have been practi-
cally ignored. They have been unable to take the right point
of view, and the importance of difficulties has been, therefore,
immensely overrated. They have felt, when some supposed
outwork of Christianity has been carried by assault, that
Christianity itself has suffered. The anxious Christian sees
with dismay a cherished opinion gone; the reluctant doubter
imagines, for a time, that the citadel itself must soon yield.
After a while the confidence of the former fastens itself upon
the yet uncaptured outworks, while the expectant dread of
the latter is toned down as he perceives how little has been
really accomplished. It is the aim of this work to induce
both to look at the whole subject from a different point of
view. I would persuade the anxious Christian to ponder
deeply what the repose of faith really means. I would
persuade the earnest doubter to ponder deeply the significance
of the faith that is in him. I would persuade both to look
at all problems from the central standpoint of that faith
which, in its profoundest meaning, is intuition, and to frankly
_and boldly accept the quiet of heart that comes from self-
' surrendering trust in the Perfectly Good.
It would go a long way towards setting our hearts at rest
if we would only remember that that scepticism itself 1s one
of the ways of God.’ It is easy to exaggerate the part of the
voluntary element in the production of states of mind, and,
though one would not willingly weaken any man’s sense of
responsibility for what he is and does, it is surely unques-
tionable that every wave of doubt is under Divine control,
and has its lessons for us all. If, instead of standing in trem-
bling anxiety or frozen fear, we would only set ourselves to
understand the conditions and laws of doubt, we should soon
INTRODUCTION. 7
be able to profit by what it has to teach. It is not so much
the part which is voluntary, though that also has its instruc-
tion for us, as it is the part which is involuntary, in the
doubter’s position, that we ought to study. It is, at least,
probable that there is no excess in scepticism which does not
answer to some defect in faith. It is even likely that the
prolonged study of all the “heresies” would enable us to
appreciate the truth of the “faith” in a way that would
make us feel as if then, for the first time, we really knew
what it was. The benefit is immense which the Church has
gained and is gaining from the relentless criticism of her
enemies. That criticism has taught, is teaching, her where
she has most needed or needs strengthening, while it has |
driven her to her knees that she might obtain the spiritual —
force and guidance by which alone it becomes true that ©
the “gates of hell” shall not prevail against her. Nor
is this all. To a very large extent, the Church has gained
by what she has lost. In some things, many of her foes |}
have been more Christian than herself. And from the ,
moment she has apprehended this fact, and has taken into
her heart whatever there was of truth in thought and of
right in conduct, in the teaching or action of her enemies,
the enmity has lost its power and has become a means.
of preservation and growth. Surely, history makes this
one thing clear.—To learn from our foes is to make them
friends in fact, though they remain foes in feeling. If
we would only remember it! God has something to say
to us by the lips of a Voltaire or a Rousseau, as well as
by the mouth of an Augustine or an Athanasius. Why, then,
should we be troubled or dismayed? The only reason for}
alarm is when we find the Church getting angry and abusive, |
instead of setting herself to learn what her opponents have |
a
to teach. Shall we forget the presence of Him who makes |
Wes te Se]
8 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
even the wrath of nations to praise Him? Shall we forget
\ Him who is with us always even unto the end of the world ?
\Let us tremble only for our sins, never before or because of
jour opponents.
It is not a part of my present purpose to inquire whether
the faith of the Church as formally expressed in creeds can,
in all particulars, be proved. I will not say that the essential
faith of the Church, the faith which is the soul of the body
of divinity, the faith which is the condition of life in every
limb of that body, can be logically justified or even made
intelligible to every one. I do not mean that the classifica-
tion into “spiritual” and “natural,” as referring to absolutely -
different types, is accurate; for the most “natural” man
has, at least, a latent “spirituality” in him, and the most
“spiritual” man is still “natural;” though, as marking
predominant characteristics, the classification is entirely just.
What I mean is, that the essential truths of the Church must
be spiritually understood, if understood at all—must be
received by their own organ, as light by the eye. It would
be as reasonable to try to see with the ears as it would
be to endeavour to know the things of God by our “natural”
faculties, using the word in the Pauline sense; though there
is another sense in which spiritual faculties are as natural as
any other. But supposing the essential faith of the Church
to be, in fact, spiritual apprehension of truths perceived
directly in the “vision” of God, and indirectly in the
historical facts of Christianity, then as against this faith
science has produced and can produce no evidence.
Christianity is a religion at once spiritual and _his-
torical; and each part must be judged by appropriate
faculty and fitting method. If, then, one has merely satis-’
fied himself as to the substantial truth of the Bible, and
supposes himself on that ground to be a Christian, he is
INTRODUCTION. 9
as much in error as would be the man who, discovering in
himself the intuitions to which Christ appealed, should call
himself a Christian though he rejected Christ Himself.
The historical and the spiritual are both essential, but yet
not quite in the same way. A mistake as to the historical
is of far less importance to the one who is mistaken, than
is an error as to the spiritual to the one who errs. As to
their relative importance in their effect upon others, it is not
so easy to speak. But thus much we can say, whether for
others or for ourselves, the order of importance ought to be
intuition first, science next. I shall endeavour to show that
the essential faith of the Christian is in harmony with the
first, and is not opposed by the second, and this in the
following order: The Repose of Faith; the Repose of Faith
in the midst of Science; the Repose of Faith in the midst
of Theology. Throughout, the one thought runs that God
is “better than our fears.”
CaS
BOOK I.
THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
CHAPTER I.
REPOSE.
1. Jntroduction—There is a kind of repose, instinct with
dignity, which one often sees in the faces of infants, and
which, in a certain commandingness of beauty, is rarely
equalled until old age is reached. It suggests the presence
of that Spirit which is immanent in all nature, and accounts
for that reverence for childhood which one may find in
observers as far removed as Cicero and Wordsworth. And
there is a restfulness in landscape loveliness, especially in the
evening or after a storm, that seems to pass into one’s inner-
most nature, and touches us with a sense of spiritual kinship
with all that is. It is then, perhaps, that one most of all
feels that matter is but the shadow of spirit, and that spirit
is ight. The thought thus arising finds its justification in
all that science tells us, not only of the rhythm of motion,
but also of alternate states of activity and rest, the one as
truly as the other suggestive of omnipresent power. But
power, as power, whether in rest or motion, is always at its
highest when fullest of repose.
2. Repose in God.—The repose of faith is really the repose |
of the deepest powers of the soul, whether in movement or
at rest, conscious of God, and content to be and do as He |
wills. Though called for brevity’s sake, and also for the
sake of emphasis needed at the present time, the repose of |
faith, it is rather the repose of love that trusts and hopes.’
Only, hope must not here be understood in the somewhat
os
14 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
faint sense which is its common use. It is, in fact, faith
facing the future with fearless eyes full of light. It is the
faith, not of reason, which infers, but of love, which knows.
It is, as I have said, called hope when it turns from the
_ present to the future—sure and certain hope ; but whether in
_ reference to the present or the future, it is faith that works
_ by love. Love is the inmost meaning and spring, faith its
| expression and clasp.
There cannot be much repose where love is weak. If —
love for God be but a feeble force in most men, there can be
) no steadiness or depth in such repose as the little love they
have may bring. Many will say that until “ conversion ”’
men do not love God at all, and, therefore, the discussion of
the question is useless. Not quite. What these mean 1s
probably right, especially as they will grant that the work
of grace may date from infancy, and that thus the child may
crow up in the “nurture and admonition of the Lord.”
| What is really intended is that until conversion the love
for God is not the ruling passion; until then, there is not at
~ work what Dr. Chalmers regarded as the expulsive power of
a new affection, driving out the evil from the heart. But it
is probable there is no man absolutely without love for God,
while in many there is a paramount love of truth and right
and spiritual beauty not yet realized as the love of Love,
conscious, eternal, infinite. The wakening soul is born from
above, when love gains the upper hand, and, as by duty, so in
fact, begins to rule itself for God. The change from supreme
love of self to supreme love of God is indeed “conversion,”
whether the change had an observed beginning and completion
or not.
3. The Repose of Unconscious Belief—But it is important,
I think, to note that there are some men and women
manifestly unselfish, dominantly ruled by true and righteous
REPOSE. 15
love, who have not consciously “given their hearts to God.”
How is this fact to be interpreted? One way is to dissociate
morality altogether from God, and to boldly affirm that even
the most “moral” men are “children of the devil,” or
“children of wrath, even as others,’ until they are “con-
verted.” But this view presents fatal difficulties. If morality
be understood as true and righteous love, morality cannot be
dissociated from God. And the two texts quoted cannot
apply in the case supposed. For the children of the devil,
as the context shows, are those who do the works of the
devil, and the works of true and righteous love cannot be the
works of the devil. And the children of wrath referred to
were those who had their “conversation” in the lusts of
the flesh. Another way is to deny the reality of the cases
cited. If the denial is based on experience, there is nothing
to be said except that one should take into account other
people’s experience as well as one’s own. Often, however,
the denial is made notwithstanding experience. The argument
is @ priori. It is impossible that any one should be unselfish
until he is consciously converted by repentance towards God
and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, whatever
appearance there may be to the contrary, no one is unselfish
until consciously converted. But this argument may be
challenged at once to produce its proof of the supposed
impossibility. And to take for granted that the man who
gives every possible evidence of unselfishness is unselfish
only in appearance, is to discredit evidence altogether unless
it happen to be in harmony with some preconceived notion.
There is yet another method of interpretation. Let us
say at once there are some who are “naturally” unselfish, as
there are some who have been unconsciously changed, and,
whether one or the other, the source of their moral beauty
is the Spirit of God. That they do not yet perceive it is no
16 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
yeason why we should be blind to the fact. Did not our
Lord say, “ By their fruits shall ye know them”? And does
not St. Paul tell us that the fruits which are called love,
joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness,
meekness, temperance, are the fruits of the Spirit? If, then,
we find the fruits, how shall we deny the Spirit? Ought it
to be so very difficult to believe that the Spirit which is
‘mmanent in us all moves some men to good—men who
yield themselves to His influence—who do not yet know
that it is His influence to which they are yielding ? And
why should it be a thing incredible that these should have
a certain repose of heart, the divinely appointed result of the
worship of righteousness and truth ? Nay, why should we -
question the good faith of those who, in the interest of truth
and right, have refused to accept presentations of Christianity
which appeared false and wrong, even if in doing this they
have unwittingly turned away from Christ Himself? Why,
I ask, should we question their good faith when they say
that they are at rest? The master of a university college
once remarked in public, “One of the best and kindest men
I ever knew told me that he had never known what it was
to have peace until he had rejected Christianity altogether.”
The master put this down to intellectual pride, quoting as
applicable the words, “Thou hast hidden these things from
the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.”
It is surely true that it is only so far as we are babes that
‘revelation takes place; that is, it is not to our creative but
‘to our receptive faculty that revelation is given. This must —
be so in the nature of the case; it is involved in the very
meaning of the word. But it does not follow that intellectual
pride was the cause of the non-revelation. Men of even
profound humility have not always been able to call them-
selves Christians. Whether humble or proud, the sphere
REPOSE, 17
within which alone revelation of spiritual truth is possible :
is the sphere of intuition, and he who does not wait on God \
to uncover, but looks only to himself to discover, must miss
the truth he seeks. I think the master also thought that the
peace obtained was the calm of despair, the tranquillity that
follows the cessation of struggle, as when the insolvent
merchant is at last openly declared a bankrupt. But surely
there is another explanation possible. May it not be that)
the peace results simply from loyalty to truth and right, |
though that loyalty tear from the heart the Sweetest and |
Strongest “religious” convictions which had rooted there ? |
In all such cases, is it not our wisdom to acknowledge the
depth and reality of the faith in truth and right, which are
nevertheless the truth and right of God, exclaiming with
St. Paul, “Him whom ye unconsciously worship declare
I unto you” ?
4. The Extent of Love-—Some such cases I know there
are, but as far as my own twenty-five years’ experience goes,
they are very few. N evertheless, I cannot but think there
is more real love for God in the average man than he himself
thinks. I grant that it is not conscious in the sense that he
himself would say he was influenced by it. But surely
every one who loves good, even a little, feels good as some-
thing great, something Divine. It may be that, as far as he
knows, it is only regard for his fellow-creature of which he is
conscious. But good regard for his fellow-creature as good
is doubly Divine; for how could man either be, or be
recognized as, good, without God? If his feeling be one of
pity moved thereto by sight of need, is not pity essentially
Divine, and is he not therefore, so far forth, a partaker of the
nature of God? It is urged that animals sometimes show
unselfish love. Be it so. Then animals, so far forth,
resemble God; and who shall grumble to find the universe
C
18 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
more Divine than he had thought it? Ido not see how to
escape—either morally or logically—the conclusion that
whosoever loves love and truth and right for their own sake
is really loving God, though he know it not. The alternative
view I am not quite prepared for—namely, that each man
who loves love and truth and right for their own sake is
himself an independent god, and has no need to go beyond
himself to recognize their greatness. I say I am not quite
prepared for such a view; but if it be true, one can at least
make this appeal: Since God possesses perfectly what you
possess imperfectly, you ought to love Him more than
yourself, We might, perhaps, also conclude that man so
endowed is immortal until the good that makes him a god
dies utterly out of him. But I think the other view is the
true one—that while we love good at all, we are really loving
God, though it be unconsciously. And, of course, it is on
the same line of thought to say that while any one trusts
good he trusts God.
It is the reality of good in man, with all the possibilities
it opens out, which makes so startling and terrible the moral
failure of the many and the abandoned wickedness of the
few. It is because we are children of God that it is so
horrible to see us become, by the evil works we do, the
children of the devil. A clergyman, working in one of the
most difficult of London parishes, being asked whether he
thought there was any one absolutely without love of
God, replied, “I can answer only from my own experience.
You know the parish. You know how little the people are
restrained by any conventionalities. You have heard me
describe from time to time absolutely appalling cases of
vice and wickedness, and every now and again of crime.
Don’t imagine I mean this by way of climax. The most
wicked are very often those who commit no crime, or at
REPOSE. 19
least none that is legally punishable. Now, I know some
men so utterly selfish that I can only hope there is some love
of good in them somewhere. But I should say that at all
events, in nine cases out of ten, there is some love of good—
and I agree with you that love of good is really love of God,
whether consciously or not—however feeble it may be. If it
were not so, I could not work asI do. I am not prepared
to give up any man as altogether hopeless, and my experience
confirms my faith, that in even the worst there is a dormant
love of God which, though very often not on this side of the
grave, may be wakened into life and power by Jesus Christ,
and thus render possible and actual the working out of their
own salvation.”
To this general testimony I may add an incident from
my own experience. I was once roused by the vigorous
ringing of the house bell in the middle of the night, and,
having hastily dressed, ran down to open the door. A girl
with a shawl over her head asked me to go with her to
baptize a dying child. She conducted me to a ruin on the
very verge of my parish—a house that stood, or rather lay, in
the midst of a moor. It had only one habitable room in it,
and had not been occupied for years. When I entered
I found a pale, fear-stricken woman with a baby whose
moans said only too surely the end was near, and a man
whose face was buried in his hands, it might be to hide
his emotion. I began the service. The man did not kneel.
I rose, and laying my hand on his shoulder, said softly, “Is
this your child?” “Ay.” “Will you not kneel while I
Say the prayers?” No response. “My friend, if you have
reverence enough for God to wish your child baptized, or
love enough for your wife to consent to her wish, will you
not so far take part as to kneel down?” Still he neither
Spake nor stirred. I made a last appeal. “If nothing else |
20 THE REPOSE OF PAL,
will move you, think a moment. I, a stranger, have come
a couple of miles in the dead of the night to baptize your
child, and will not you, its father, take your part?” Still
no response. | knelt somewhat sadly and recommenced the
service. Presently I heard a noise as of some one moving,
and glancing for an instant from the book, caught the face
of the father as at last he knelt. The service over, he rose
quickly, and again his face was buried in his hands. I spoke
a few kindly words and then turned to leave, when a gruff
voice asked, “ What’s to pay?” I turned and said, “ Nothing.
The Church does not sell her sacraments. Good night.”
There was no other word spoken, and I found my way
home, wondering who or what these strangers could be, and
remembering hopefully that the man had at last knelt.
Some days after I called to learn whether, as I doubted not,
the child had died, and to comfort, if I might, the mother.
There was no one in the house, and there was so little trace
of recent occupation that I might have imagined the whole
incident a dream. But now for the sequel. One night,
returning from a distant mission-room, I slipt on a slide
which some freshly fallen snow concealed. I fell heavily
back, and, for a little, lost consciousness. When I came to,
a man was standing over me with my watch in his hand.
Another man stood beside him. I may remark in passing
that it did not seem at all strange to me that I was lying
there, or that I was being robbed. As the first of the two
men was stooping down to get, I suppose, my purse also, the
moonlight happened to stream through a broken cloud on to
my face and illumined the faces of the men also. Suddenly,
the same gruff voice that I had heard in the ruin on the
moor rang out, “Put that watch back.” The other remon-
strated. “Put that watch back, I tell you. It’s the minister
of St. James’s.” Huis tone was so menacing, the other yielded,
a i se
ee
KEPOSE, 21
and returned the watch. Then both walked away, without
its occurring to them that I needed to be helped on to my
feet. I longed greatly to find again the man who had had
gratitude enough to refrain from robbing me, and to prevent
my being robbed; for I thought that gratitude turned to God
in Christ might save him from all his sins. But, though I
heard what became of him, I never saw him again.
It is not the men who despair of human nature who will
do most to mend human nature. Cynicism and indolence
are common companions. It is so much easier to regard
others as hopelessly bad than it is to deny one’s self on their
behalf. The convictions of the club lounger are the outcome
of his lounging. As the energy of love is sustained by
steadfastness of faith, so is the indifference of selfishness
bolstered up by the excuses of unbelief. The men whom
God makes mighty to save are the men whose faith in
humanity bases itself in God’s love for man. That is worth
saving which is so dear to Him; and as He sees all men in
Christ, so ought we. The story I have just told was penned
while sitting on a cliff by the sea, from whose multitudinous
diamonds light was flashing. But the same story went with
me in the worst parts of a crowded city, whose most evil
haunts I sought and found. In courts so narrow that the
dwellers could touch hands from opposite windows, in the
midst of air that was almost stagnant from unmovingness,
dens faintly lighted but never illumined by the sun, where
poverty sank into vice and vice into crime in a sort of false
naturalness, I found parsons at work with eyes that were
full of faith and hearts that were full of love. And I
bethought me, What would happen if faith in God and
man, and love for both, died out of the world? This at
least. Hope would shine no more and work would cease,
the man would perish, and the beast would live. Clearly,
22 LHE REPOSE’ OF FATTH.
in this sense if in no other, the heart of unbelief is an evil
heart.
5. The Repose of Love that trusts—On hearing a sermon
of mine in this vein, a lady said to me, speaking with
quivering lips, her eyes full of tears, “How is it possible
to enjoy one’s self when one is daily brought into contact
with so much misery? At times I find it hard not to be
angry with God, He seems so unfeeling!” JI answered, “I
said nothing about enjoying one’s self. The repose of which
I speak is not thinking of self. It does not come in that
way. But tell me, which God do you mean?” She was
startled, and though half guessing, she answered, “I do not
understand.” “The God who seems to you so unfeeling, or
the God who made you so feeling that you are angry with
the other?” “Ah,” she cried, “I see. God must feel more
than I do.” “Yes,” I answered, “TI feel deeply sorry for the
sufferers. But sometimes I feel more sorry still for God.
Were it not that He must see the end, would not He be,
by infinitude, the greatest sufferer in the universe? What
makes our anguish tolerable—whether of our own pain or
of the pain of others—is faith in Him who feels infinitely,
and who knows the end, not as a thing hoped for, but as
a thing certain, while with patient pity He works through
us, and through all, to bring that end about. And while
we are co-workers with Him, we may surely find: repose of
heart in Him who is using us. I grant you that one some-
times sees a sort of surface brightness that suggests glints
of light from granite, a heart too hard to feel. But there
is repose of another kind—the rest of a mountain lake, that
feels the shadow as truly as the light; which, because it is
at rest, can mirror every object on its margin, bright or dark,
but sets them all in heaven. Let the lake itself be disturbed,
and it reflects nothing. It is best to have the ‘heart at
REPOSEA 23
leisure from itself to soothe and sympathize.’ It is then
we can most deeply rejoice with those that do rejoice, and
weep with ‘those that weep.” We do not make other folks’
faces shorter by pulling long faces ourselves.
6. Repose and Imagination.—The want of repose in the
good is, for some, perhaps for most natures, caused in part
by their neglect of imagination—that is, of the power which
seeks to realize the unseen, to throw it into such vivid
imagery as to rouse and content the soul. How needful this
is may be inferred from the example of our Lord. We are
now so used to His words that we hardly perceive how
constant is His appeal to the imagination. Take, for
example, the Sermon on the Mount, consisting of three short
chapters. Note therein the use made of salt, light, the city
on the hill, the bushel and the lampstand, the jot and tittle,
the council and the hell of fire, the officer, the judge, and
the prison, the right eye and the right hand, the heaven
which is God’s throne, the earth which is His footstool,
Jerusalem which is the city of the great King, the head, and
the hair black or white, the right cheek and the left, the
coat and the cloke, the sun rising on the evil and the good,
the rain descending on the just and the unjust, the love of
publicans and Gentiles, the sound of the trumpet, the corners
of streets, the sad countenance, the disfigured face, the
anointed head and the face that is washed, the treasure, the
moth, the thief, the rust, the lamp, the light and the dark-
ness, the two masters, food, drink, and raiment, the birds
of heaven and the lilies of the field, the measure, the beam,
and the mote, the pearls, the dogs, and the swine, the
knocking and the opening, the loaf and the stone, the fish
and the serpent, the gate and the way, the sheep and the
wolves, the grapes and thorns, the figs and thistles, the tree
and the fire, the house on the rock and the house on the
24 THE REPOSE. OF FAITH.
sand, the rain, the floods, and the winds. Following, then,
our Lord’s example, shall we not consecrate our power of
imagining to the service of faith? Let us listen to one
who has done much to brighten life with Christian ideals,
“What,” asks Ruskin, “are the legitimate uses of the imagi-
nation,—that is to say, of the power of perceiving, or con-
ceiving with the mind, things which cannot be perceived by
the senses?” He tells us that its second and ordinary use
is “to empower us to traverse the scenes of all other history,
and to force the facts to become again visible, so as to make
upon us the same impression which they would have made
if we had witnessed them; and, in the minor necessities of
life, to enable us, out of any present good, to gather the
utmost measure of enjoyment, by investing it with happy
associations, and, in any present evil, to lighten it by sum-
moning back the images of other hours, and also to give
to all mental truths some visible type, in allegory, simile,
or personification, which shall most deeply enforce them ;
and finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh
it with such innocent play as shall be most in harmony with
the suggestive voices of natural things, permitting it to
possess living companionship instead of silent beauty, and —
create for itself fairies on the grass and naiads on the wave.”
In this secondary sense all the world of Christian literature
is open to us to reproduce, in imagery of our own, the lasting
lessons it has to give. “We call the power imagination
because it imagines or conceives; but it is only noble imagi-
nation if it imagines or conceives the truth.” And hence, as
Ruskin asserts, “its first and noblest use is, to enable us to
bring sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded as
belonging to our future state, or invisibly surrounding us in
this. It is given us that we may imagine the cloud of
witnesses, in heaven and earth and sea, as if they were
ee ee eee
ae
REPOSE. 25
now present—the souls of the righteous waiting for us; that
we may conceive the great army of the inhabitants of heaven,
and discover among them those whom we most desire to be
with for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the
ministry of angels beside us, and see the chariots of fire on
the mountains that gird us round; but, above all, to call
up the scenes in which we are commanded to believe, and
be present, as if in the body, at every recorded event of the
history of the Redeemer.” Believe me, the province of imagi-
nation is not so much to make things that are not as though
they were, as it is to bring vividly before us, for the quicken-
ing of faith and love, things that have been, and in their
essential lesson are for evermore.
7. Repose and Memory.—And this at once suggests another
source of unrest, the neglect of memory. Just as in indi-
vidual history we are often met by new difficulties, without
recalling the fact that like difficulties have had to be faced
before by us or by others whose experience is at our service;
so, when something occurs anew to disturb our faith, we
allow ourselves to be dismayed, as though the trouble had
come now for the first time. Whereas we had laid this
spectre of the mind, and could lay it again and at once, could
we but recall with what we had laid it before. The habit of
recollection, of daily recalling the great foundation-principles
on which our living creed depends, to focus in our thought
the eternal attributes of God, the certainty of His immanence
in the universe, as well as of His transcendence of all things ;
the assurance that if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground
without our Father, neither without Him can a book be
written or a sentence spoken; the inmost conviction of our
hearts that no theory can account for the Lord Jesus Christ
that does not recognize Him as God manifest in the flesh;
the experience that has been ours from childhood of the
26 LAE ORE OSL AOL, LAL,
ministry of the Holy Spirit ;—if we were daily to recall these
things with some fresh imagining of them in the sense
described, we should be prepared to calmly meet any diffi-
culties the newborn day might bring, or the shadow of any
objection with which the night might fall. Besides, there
is not only the negative advantage of preventing disturbance ;
there is the positive advantage of deepening repose. For
whatever tends to deepen the sense of value and truth and
reality, deepens life and love and faith, and therefore repose.
Think for a moment what, conjoined with imagination,
memory means. “Let the reader consider seriously,” says
Ruskin, “what he would give at any moment to have the
power of arresting the fairest scenes, those which so often
rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in its
fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their
changing; to bid the fitful foam be fixed upon the river,
and the ripples be everlasting upon the lake; and then to
bear away with him no darkness or feeble sun-stain (though
even that is beautiful), but a counterfeit which should seem
no counterfeit—the true and perfect image of life indeed.
Or rather (for the full majesty of such a power is not thus
sufficiently expressed), let him consider that it would be
in effect nothing less than a capacity of transporting himself
at any moment into any scene—a gift as great as can be
possessed by a disembodied spirit; and suppose, also, this
necromancy, embracing not only the present but the past,
and enabling us seemingly to enter into the very bodily
presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to behold
them in act as they lived; but, with greater privilege than
ever was granted to the companions of those transient acts
of life, to see them fastened at our will in the gesture and
expression of an instant, and stayed on the eve of some great
deed, in immortality of burning purpose. Conceive, so far
REPOSE. 27
as is possible, such power as this, and then say whether the
art which conferred it is to be spoken lightly of, or whether
we should not rather reverence, as half divine, a gift which
would go so far as to raise us into the rank, and invest us
with the felicities, of angels.” I have the privilege of visit-
ing once a week a hospitable for incurables. There is hardly,
man or woman, a patient who does not look fairly happy ;
but one woman has a face that shines with an inner light.
Expressing my wonder, she answered simply, “ | remember
what the Lord has done for me.” It is only just to add, she
remembers also what He has done for others.
8. Repose and Will—With imagination to realize and
memory to recall, there must be the will to persist. Memory
and imagination must be forced to obey. They will certainly
take the bits between their teeth and bolt,if we let them.
They need breaking in; and, until broken in, will be of little
use. To will deeply, firmly, steadily, is to share the strength
of all things, for will is the source of all power in heaven and
in earth. But to will shallowly, feebly, inconstantly, is to
make our memories, our imaginations, our circumstances, into
our masters. Instead of victors, we are victims—of ourselves.
Now, there is really no need to be weak-willed; or, rather,
there is no need to continue weak-willed. I know what is
said about chins that fall away, and heads with a hole where
the bump of firmness ought to be, lips that are much too
mobile, jaws wanting in substance and squareness, eyes full
of sometimes pathetic, sometimes contemptible clingingness,
and the like. That is all very well as far as it goes; and
so far aS men are machines, well, we must value them as
machines, and take all these things into account. I suppose
in will, as in all else, there will always be inequalities of
power. But if we can get rid of the miserable ambition,
neglecting our own best to be or do somebody else’s better,
28 TALE REF OSES OP GE ALI.
inequality of natural capacity need not trouble us. That is
God’s affair, not ours. If we are all lamps, our concern is
not our size, but the cleanness of our windows and the purity
of our light. And,as I have said, we need not continue weak
of will. The way to be strong of will is just to try to have
no will at all, except God’s. Now, here it is where trust
enables God to make men into heroes, to use the weak things
of this world to confound the mighty. There is nothing like
faith that has love in its heart to give strength; and if you
trust and love God, strong you will be in Him, and in the
power of His might. Fear is one of the things that make
weak. Well, love casts out fear, because love trusts. Love
God, and you will trust Him, and then your only fear will
be the fear of not loving and trusting enough. As to man,
you cannot be afraid of the man you love. To love your
enemies is to be absolutely without fear of them. The
highest courage is born of love; love that trusts—Love,
the Infinite. Now, if you have a hole in your head, or if
your chin recedes, or if your upper lip lacks stiffness, never
mind. You can be strong as wrought iron, firm as granite,
persistent as the sea, notwithstanding. For you can give
yourself up to God, and then God will give Himself to you.
Then, for all He wants you to be, you will be as strong
as He is, and no man can cap that. There are men—
and they are mostly fools for their pains—who will do
things that they already see to be unwise or unworthy for
no other reason than that they had willed to do them. Well,
you can easily do better. However weak you are, once you
love and trust God, you will be able to do things, not because
you, but because He, willed them. And, as to the case in
hand, so long as it was merely your own will, you could not
train your imagination and memory, and bring them into
subjection to Christ; but what you could not do from trust
REPOSE. 29
and love of yourself—because from time to time a lower love
that had other ends overmastered the higher—you can do
from trust and love of God. Besides, remember that, with
all man’s faults, he is still too noble to give himself wholly,
without reserve, to anything but the highest. And -when
love and trust, centring themselves in God, are possessed
through and through by the infinite “This ought ye to do,”
then the otherwise lowest and weak has the majesty of piled
mountains and the strength of the everlasting hills.
9. Repose and Prayer —I cannot close this chapter
without a word about the prayer of love. If it were only
given me to write a useful book about the laws of prayer,
I think I should be the happiest man alive. At present
prayer seems at once the highest and most uncertain thing in
the world. One can say nothing joyful enough to beat some
experiences, one can say nothing sad enough to equal other
experiences. In nothing I know of is failure go mingled
with success. The man who should make the world under-
stand what prayer really is, and what are its laws—itgs
invariable conditions of success—would be, perhaps, the
greatest benefactor of the race which has appeared for a
thousand years. There are many very thoughtful books—
and some that are merely echoes—on the subject. But they
are badly unscientific. They are not definite in theory, and
they are little use in practice. Many even think it folly to
speak of laws at all. They think they are just to ask, and
take their chance whether they get what they ask for or not.
But this is decidedly anti-scriptural and anti-common-sense.
Our Lord does not seem to think there is any un-
certainty. He seems absolutely sure that we shall be
answered if we pray. “If ye then, being evil, know how
to give good gifts unto your children, how much more
shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to
30 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
them that ask Him?” ‘There is no uncertainty in that.
But here is the trouble. We have often asked God for “ good
things” and He has not given them. I know a great many
of my brethren. One of them said to me sadly the other
day, “I have been here thirty years. I ought to have been
moved long since; and now I am too used-up to be acceptable
to any other parish, and as [ have not private means, I must
stay where I am, though I am little use, until death releases
me.” How is a man like that to interpret the asking for
“good things”? I suppose he has asked the Father in
heaven a thousand times for one of the good things that
patrons have at their disposal. But no answer has come,
and he must stay where he is, apparently, to the end. Shall
I tell you what my own belief is? It is that it is little use,
comparatively, offering up prayers of that sort. I do not say
it ig no use, and that no answer comes. I should say of
myself that God has always given me as much of this world’s
“ooods” as I have been fit to use, and I cannot but add that
not all, but most, of the neglected and forgotten clergy I
have known have shown more anxiety about the welfare of
themselves and of their children than about the welfare of
their parishes or the coming of the kingdom of God. Never-
theless, I have sympathized with them to tears. But when
I asked myself, Had I the power, where would I put them ?
I really could not think of any parish where it would be well
to send them. Because there is no parish where it is right
that the shepherd should be thinking more of himself than
of his flock. And I have come to the conclusion that the
good things in that sense ought to be but little asked for.
They are not the good things Christ meant. In the parallel
account in St. Luke the words are—“ the Holy Spirit.” And,
indeed, the account in St. Matthew itself shows us that it is
not material welfare our Lord was thinking of. He would
ee =
eee el ee ee ee
REPOSE. 31
have us, indeed, ask for our daily bread, for that includes food
for mind as well as body, I think; but the general principle
is that it is beneath Christian dignity to pray very intensely
for anything but the highest blessings. “Seek ye first the
kingdom of God and His righteousness, and these things shall
be added unto you.” Prayer must be the prayer of love to
please Him.
It is plain enough in the order of the Lord’s Prayer that
we must pray for God before we pray for ourselves or others.
It is most wonderful. Beforehand, one would say, it is
incredible. What unutterable folly to talk of praying for
God! Yet there it is. “Hallowed be Thy name, Thy
kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven,”
It seems there are some things that God cannot do—even
things that He greatly longs to do—unless we help Him
‘with our prayers. “What idiocy!” cries the agnostic. “Help
the Omnipotent indeed!” “What blasphemy!” cries the un-
thinking pious. “To imagine that God has need of our help!
Can fatuity further go?” Well, I am not addressing myself
to the agnostic or the unthinking. But consider. Creation
implies limitation. If there be laws of prayer, God is as
much under obligation to His own faithfulness to respect
those laws, as He is to respect any other laws whatever.
And therefore, much as He would have His name hallowed—
though, it may be, rather for our sakes than His own, yet for
His own sake too—and His kingdom come and His will
done, He cannot force them upon us, nor bring them about
without the help of our prayers. So again we see prayer
must be the prayer of love—love of the Highest.
It is a simple fact that such prayer is followed by deep
rest of heart. It is one of the marvellous things of Christ,
that He should so calmly demand from us a kind of praying
possible only to those who love God supremely. It is true
22 THE REPOSE OF - FAITH.
that His peace cannot be given to those whose will is not
surrendered in love to His Father. What, then, are they to
do who would fain have peace, but are literally unable as yet
to really pray the prayer of love? There is but one thing to
be done. They must go on offering the prayer for love until
God translates it into the prayer of love.
CHAPTER II.
FAITH.
1. Introduction —The question is sometimes put—Is faith
trustworthy? Put thus, it is not easy to answer or even
understand. But we can get at its meaning if we travel by
another road. The first point is to make out clearly what
we mean by faith. Well, we mean two things; of which
the first is all those intuitions, or soul-sights, which may
be called the vision of. power, love, beauty, truth, right,
and, as wrapt up in these, “the principle of causality.”
It seems clear that it is in virtue of these we endure as
“seeing the invisible;” it is by these we are able to regard
as manifest in the things that are seen the “eternal power
and divinity ;” it is by these we realize that the “things
which are seen are temporal, the things which are not seen
are eternal;” it is by these we “understand that the worlds
were framed by the word of God”—symbol of His executive
will—and that “things which are seen were not made of
things which do appear ;” and it is by these we are able to
have deepest “realization of things not seen,” and to recognize
the “ certainty and reality of things hoped for.” In short, it is
by these we are enabled to trust God with utter rest of heart,
This, then, is the first and deepest meaning of faith. Let
us now dwell on its second sense. It is still trust, and
always trust. It carries with it into special forms the open
vision, whether it be, as I hold, of God, or whether, as some
D
34 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
think, of the principles which warrant belief in God. From
the latter standpoint, faith is belief justified by evidence ;
and trust resting in character. The evidence may be direct
or indirect, strong or weak; but continuous belief unjustified
by any evidence at all must surely be rare. We know that
one’s mind may accept as true—accept without challenge or
thought of challenge—statements or creeds which come from
well-accredited sources. Here, however, evidence is not
wanting. The very respect for authority implies that it is
authoritative, ¢.¢. that its decisions are the judgments of those
who are in a position to judge. Thus even in unquestioning
reception there is still in the background confidence in the
source from which the teaching comes. The main question
is, in such instances, whether the confidence is well founded ;
and as it is difficult to believe, in any ordinary case, that the
confidence is never challenged, so is it difficult to believe
that the confidence can be continued without any evidence
whatever. I do not suppose that ordinarily, or even very
frequently, belief originates in evidence consciously before
the mind, and it is, of course, easy to conceive as possible the
case of one retaining to the end of his life a belief the
erounds of which it has never occurred to him to examine.
He may enjoy his estate without scrutinizing his title-deeds,
but at least he knows the title-deeds exist. Whether the
practical éffect will be good or bad must depend on the
character of the belief itself. If one believes truly, or, more
correctly, if one really believes and acts on the truth, the
effect must be good, whether the truth has passed at once
into the mind, or has been kept standing at the gate of
evidence until it has made good its right to admission.
A great deal, too, turns on the character of the believer.
Even where he is not clever, or very clear-headed, yet,
if he is a man of right feeling and right willing, he is
FAITH. 35
very likely, and almost instinctively, to welcome the good
and to reject the bad. Hence, as respects our children,
character is of much more importance than cleverness, We
may, then, for the present pass by the question, How did
any one in particular come by the belief he holds? in favour
of the larger question, Can faith in God and in Christ be
adequately justified ?
2. Rational Faith.—I should call faith so justified rational,
were it not that there is some danger of rational being under-
stood as rationalistic. By the latter is often meant faith
which has its origin in reasoning: But, then, as we have
seen, there is a deeper faith, which does not originate in
reasoning—in which, in fact, reasoning originates, Though
it 18 not difficult to distinguish the things, it is difficult to
find for them and to remember distinctive names. As lone
as we use the same word for beliefs which do not, and
also for beliefs which do, need to be justified, there is
always risk of error. Yet the context will usually show
which is meant. Taking for granted, then, the deeper
insight of righteousness, truth, beauty, love, and purposive
power, and also the fundamental belief in cause, we may,
I think, call this insight either the higher reason or the
deeper faith indifferently; and if sometimes the adjective
“higher” or “deeper” be omitted, one will know, from the
connection in which the word “faith” or “reason” stands,
whether the first or the second meaning is intended, or,
better, which ought to be intended. This being understood,
let us get firm grip of what, in the second sense, is meant
by Theistic and what by Christian faith. Now, by Theistic
and Christian faith one does not mean any kind of even true
faith in God and in Christ. There may be, as we have seen,
a true faith which, though justifiable, has not been formally
justified to the believer himself. But what is meant by
36 LTE CREE OSLO La tel) dae
Theistic faith goes beyond this. It is belief justified by the
evidence for, and trust reposing in the character of, God. In
like manner, by Christian faith is meant belief justified by the
evidence for, and trust reposing in the character of, Christ.
3. Laith and the Faith.—If your attention be not called
to the point, you may, perhaps, be in some perplexity as to
yet another use of the word. You often hear the terms “ the
Faith,” or “the Catholic Faith,” and you may imagine that
by the repose of faith I mean the unquestioning acceptance
of the great creeds of the Church. I certainly do not mean
that. I must say, for my own part, that I have come to see,
with some reservation as to the threatening clauses, in their
English dress, of the creed called Athanasian, and with some
doubt as to the exact meaning of clauses in the other creeds
touching the resurrection of the body, that those creeds are
the highest intellectual expression of the truth we possess ;
even while I think that the truth itself is higher, deeper,
broader, and more intense than any creed can express.
Nevertheless, I do not at all mean the rest of heart which
must wait until the contents of one’s belief expand them-
selves intellectually into the full and finished form of the
Catholic Faith. I mean a rest of heart which ought to
accompany that expansion, and which ought to exist even
if that expansion never take place in this life. Suppose
I say, “I do not believe in the creeds,’ you would at once
put me down as a heretic; and if you did this with pity,
not with fury, you would, as you understand the words, be
quite right. Yet a man might believe that every word in the
creeds is true, and at the same time properly say, “I do not
believe in the creeds.” I entreat you, think a little, before
you call that a contradiction, or even proof of a perverse
passion for paradoxes. The subject is far too grave for trifling;
and if I did not feel deeply the importance of the distinction
FAITH. 37
I want you to see, I should spend no pains on the point.
Please remember the creeds themselves do not ask you to
believe in them. They do not say, for example, Believe in
the statement that the Being called “God the Father
Almighty” made heaven and earth. They do not even ask
you to believe in God the Father Almighty; but they ask
you, if you do so believe, to say so. The creeds, then, are,
in their very structure and purpose, not oljects but confessions
of faith. God, Christ, the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic
Church, are the objects of faith, and the creed is, primarily,
a confession that you do believe in God, in Christ, in the
Holy Ghost, in the Holy Catholic Church; and, secondarily,
a statement, in part, at least, of what it is you believe con-
cerning them. ‘Thus you confess your faith in God as Father
Almighty, and Maker of heaven and earth, and so throughout.
It would, perhaps, be more correct still to say, without
emphasizing this faith, that a Christian creed is, primarily,
a confession of Christ, and, secondarily, a statement of what
one’s belief in Him is. This is, I think, the true function
of such a creed. At the same time, it is true that it is quite
possible, and perhaps in some cases allowable, to present
creeds as direct objects of belief in the same sense as we
might present any series of propositions the truth of which
we wished others to see. When they did see it, it would, of
course, be accurate enough to say they believed the creed.
But, if one rested there, one would be only believing, not
believing in. And though the creeds take it for granted we
believe them, what they call upon us to say is that we
believe in the Father, in the Incarnate Son, in the Holy
Ghost, in the Holy Catholic Church.
4. Undeveloped Faith—Now, what I want you to feel
is, that a man may have such faith in God and in Christ
before the contents of his faith are expanded into the creeds
38 THE REROSE OF FAITH.
as to warrant rest of heart; and that, after such expansion has
taken place, he may be able to regard, not perhaps without
deep seriousness, but assuredly without confusion, all attacks
which may be made on any particular points in those creeds.
But there is a fixed and immovable condition of this faith.
It is repentance. So long as a man wills to do wrong more
strongly than he wills to do right, no rest of heart, in the
sense here meant, is possible to him, nor will any cleverness
enable him to take fit hold of the truth. From the will
to sin come clouds that darken knowledge. There would be
far more hope for the man who still had doubts as to God,
but who steadily gave himself to good, than for the man
who had no doubt of God, but gave himself to bad. In
the very nature of the case, if the bad must see badly, so
must the man of mixed motives have mixed vision. It is
simply not possible for a man to rest in righteousness, truth,
beauty, love, and purposive power, unless his will—the very
centre and citadel of the man—give itself up loyally to
these, in thought, in feeling, in act, in conduct. How this
is to be brought about is the great problem. But that in
some way the change must take place in every one who has
not already steadfastly given himself up to good, is certain.
The deepest trouble of the earnest man is that when he
wills the good he finds the evil present. The pain of the
struggle is sharp and piercing, and must continue until his
will is fixed, settled, grounded in the good. From that point
onward, he is a new man. Meanwhile, there is enough of
faith in every man to enable him to turn to the right. If
he take that turn, and wills to go straight on, the power
to walk will come in the walking. It is not ruinous to
stumble, or even to fall. It is ruinous to keep down, and
to like to be down. The only really ruined soul is the soul
that loves darkness rather than light because its deeds are
FAITH. 39
evil. But even such a soul may be so moved from within
and so drawn from without, as to cry out of the depths unto
God. And to such a one, if he fall not back willingly into
sin, the day of redemption draweth nigh. Then the changed
life may be filled with light and peace, if only it keep in
the new upward path. Then, as he goes on, he will, if he
look for it, find the landscape of Divine truth spreading more
and more as he rises. But all the way he must keep whole
and undefiled his faith in God, else the dark places within
will throw their shadows outward, and gloom-shrouded
heights and blackening depths will appear, where none exist,
in the Catholic Faith. To the eye that is not single, the
way is never in full light.
5. The Faith and Theology—We may dwell here for a
while on that method of science which starts by taking for
granted the truth of a theory, and then goes on to see how
it fits the facts. I do not know whether any one really gets
his theory from studying masses of facts to begin with. I
rather think he does not often know how he gets it; but
having got it, he tests it, and the more varied the ways in
which he tries it, and finds it fit—the greater the number of
different facts it unites—the more sure he is that he has
got hold of a theory that is true as far as it goes. Now,
T do not at all think that, even to begin with, Theology rests
on a theory of that kind. I believe that in the intuitions
I have spoken of we have either direct vision of God, or,
at the least, principles which at once justify the inference
that God is. All the same, there is nothing to prevent us,
if we so choose, from assuming the existence of God as “the
permanent condition ” of all that is, and then carefully trying
how the facts agree therewith. We may do the same with
the Incarnation; @.¢. assume its truth, and then show how
it fits into the whole system of things of which we are
40 THE REPOSE AOR MRATS F,
a part. In Mr. Strong’s way of putting it, Theology is the
science which deals with the Being and Nature of God. I
shrink from that way of stating it, because of its seeming to
make God the direct Object of scientific inquiry. I should
rather say, Theology is the science which seeks to interpret
the manifestations of God in nature and in human nature,
whether generally in the race, or specially in each of the
races. “Christian Theology is the expression and analysis
of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.” I shrink almost as
much from this description. I do not think that “analysis”
is the best word to use, or that it is quite correct to speak
of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, unless it be intended,
which is a possible conception, that Jesus Christ, man as
well as God, existed before His appearance in the flesh. I
cannot for the purpose of analysis, or for any other purpose,
separate the Incarnation from the Lord Jesus Christ, and
“analysis” is not the word I should use in describing what
goes on in the mind which contemplates Him. I would
rather say, Christian Theology is the science which seeks to
interpret the manifestation of God in Christ. It is possible
that what I look upon as better terms would not express
what Mr. Strong intends, and therefore would not express
so well as his own words the position he takes. For he
takes the method of assuming as true the Catholic concep-
tions of God and Christ, and seeks to justify these by
showing their agreement with accepted truths in general;
whereas the purpose of the present attempt is to help to
preserve the repose of faith in God and in Christ, whether
its contents be or be not expanded into the Catholic creed.
Yet even so Ido not think Mr. Strong’s words the best for
Mr. Strong’s purpose. The phrase, at least, about the In-
carnation of Jesus Christ must be a slip.
What immediately follows, however, is very useful. He
FAITH. 4I
shows clearly that the same subject may be treated either
theologically or. not theologically. “ All speculation into the
First Cause of the world, the ground of moral obligation, even
the immortality of the human soul, is or may be theological ;
that is, any one of these questions may be so discussed as
to bring before us the notion of a Supreme Being, who made
the world, whose nature is the source of the distinction of
right and wrong, who brought man’s soul into being, and pre-
serves it continuously from dissolution. On the other hand,
all such questions fail to be theological just in proportion as
the idea of the Supreme Being is dropped out of sight.” I
would rather say, in proportion as the Supreme Being Himself
is not the Object of the soul’s vision, or, for those who cannot
accept this view, in proportion as the intuitions of purposing
power, righteousness, truth, beauty, and love, which produce
and justify faith in God, are disregarded. “They must then
_ be treated as subordinate sections” (why subordinate ?) “of
physics, or of psychology, or of metaphysics. They take
their theological colour from their contact with the idea of
a Supreme Being” (I would rather say, from the vision of
God, or, at least, from the intuitions named), “and no treat-
ment of them apart from this idea is, in the strict sense,
theological at all.” Mr. Strong adds, “ As for the Being and
Nature of God, apart from the Christian Revelation of Him,
we must derive our knowledge of it from the theological
treatment of the questions mentioned above. By reflection
upon the order of nature, of a certain kind, we reach the
notion of a Creator.’ It is open to grave doubt whether
it is in this way we arrive at the idea of a Creator, unless
the reflection include the contemplation of the principle of
causality as a permanent condition of thinking; and even
then we cannot arrive at the notion of a Creator in the sense
of absolute cause, unless nature itself tell us that not only
42 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
its form but also its substance began to be. “ By reflection
of a certain kind we reach the notion of a Personal Ruler
of mankind, who rewards and punishes; and this result leads
on. to the discussion of the immortality of man.” This is,
I think, true if the reflection of a certain kind includes
the intuition of righteousness; though I think that, at this
point, it would have been better not to introduce the word
“ Personal,’ which no amount of explaining keeps clear from
ambiguity; and better, ialso, to have shown that the state-
ment He “rewards and punishes” is a very incomplete and
often a very misleading statement of the facts. It is doubtful
whether to a being without sin, contemplating God, the idea
of either reward or punishment would ever come at all; and
it is not doubtful that the wish of obtaining reward or
avoiding punishment is only permissible as part motive, and
that not the greater part. But the statement is still very
valuable. “These are the contents of Natural Theology, as
it is called; and these represent more or less completely the
area over which man can move in the way of independent
speculation.” For the rest, there is no need to find fault with
Mr. Strong’s method. Starting with the assumption that the
Catholic Faith is true, he proceeds to explain what it is, and
to justify the assumption of its truth.
6. Partial Faith—The object I have in view is, as we
have seen, different, but in no sense hostile; and I should
have ventured on the same criticism, even had my object
been identical with Mr. Strong’s. It is worth while to say
again What my aim is. It is to encourage the calm sweet
temper which faces with unfaltering faith in God all the
perplexities and difficulties to which theological or anti-
theological controversy may give rise, whether the perplexi-
ties vanish or remain, whether the difficulties melt or persist.
It cannot be denied that, as often treated, questions of
BALE. 43
method, of origin, of life, of consciousness, of will, of morality,
of religion, of predestination, of punishment, of the Bible,
of science and faith, are at least the occasion, if not strictly
the’ cause, of a bewildering perplexity, in which the thinker,
forced to give up some beliefs, staggers blindly through
a maze of unsolved problems; and the trust which might
have kept his heart at rest, finding little room to breathe,
sickens and almost dies. JI can see no reason why a man
who cannot yet believe a// that the Church universal teaches
should on that account reject what he can believe; nor why
that which he accepts should not be allowed to produce its
natural effect on his mind because he may not also have the
effect naturally produced by truths that have not yet fully
entered his heart. If a man is physically happy, is he to
fling that happiness away because he has not yet reached in
any adequate measure intellectual happiness also? If a
man has large intellectual repose, must that repose be flung
to the winds of doubt, only because he has not yet sufficiently
realized that there is a higher happiness still? But the case,
as I conceive it, is much stronger than this. Is a man who
is spiritually happy in God to lose that happiness because
theological controversy presents difficulties he is unable to
overcome? Is aman who has the faith which is the vision
of God, or, at least, who has the intuitions which justify utter
trust in God, to close the eyes of his soul, to give up the
trust of his heart, either because he cannot yet see as true
the whole Catholic Creed, or meet the thousand and one
objections—with the mystery of evil running through them
all—which intellectual study suggests? I think the right
course is to seek first the surrender of self to God, and, in
the peace which God gives when that surrender is real and
full, to study with tranquil and steady persistence the whole
counsel of God. Not otherwise can the Catholic Truth in its
44 THE REPOSE OF FAITA.
fulness be rightly received, and if never received in its
fulness in this life, the peace of God will yet remain.
7. The Faith of Intuition.—One often feels a thing to be
true or false even though the arguments against or for seem
unanswerable. The explanation is that intuition is at work,
though we be unconscious of the fact, and, as we know,
nothing is to be rejected as false or wrong which intuition
approves, or received as true or right which intuition
condemns. That there cannot be, rightly, any exception to
this principle, a little reflection will make clear. Observe,
nothing is here said about multitudes of ideas on which the
verdict of intuition is not challenged. The reference is
simply to those things which are intuitively approved or
condemned. All those beliefs which, whether right or wrong
in themselves, have never been presented in this supreme
court, are, therefore, excluded. It is nothing to the purpose
to say that things seem right in some parts of the world
which seem wrong in other parts. The explanation of that fact
is not difficult, but it is apart from the present question. If the
statement has any relevant meaning, it would amount to this
—it is permissible to receive as true or right what we hold to
be neither one nor the other; it is permissible to condemn
as false or wrong what we hold to be true or right! But, some
one may say, is intuition never mistaken ? That is a question
which will come before us soon. But the present point is that
there cannot be rightly any exception to the principle of abso-
lute loyalty to intuition. From the present writer’s point of
view, that intuition is the vision of God, this is only another way
of insisting on absolute loyalty to God Himself. But if we
regard intuitions, not as the vision of God, but as justifying —
belief in Him, there is no essential difference. For if we
appeal to these as justifying belief in Him, clearly we may not
call in question the very principles to which the appeal is made.
FAITH. 45
But, it will be asked, may there not be things true whose
truth intuition is unable to recognize, or things false whose
falseness intuition is unable to perceive? I do not think
that is a question which can be answered except in the light
of evolution. Though the genesis of intuitions is not here
in dispute ; though it is granted that, whatever their genesis,
their authority remains; it must be admitted that, if there
be truth and right which intuition is incapable of recognizing,
that truth or right is out of relation to us, and until it comes
into relation, until it becomes the object of intuition, we
cannot know it as truth or right. But if it be of a kind
which intuition is incapable of recognizing, why call it truth
or right at all? For, by the supposition, we cannot know
that it 7s truth or right. If, however, what is meant is, May
there not be truth or right which, up to any given point in
evolution, intuition has failed to recognize? the answer must
be given in a different way. For, of course, nothing is
recognized before the faculty of recognition comes into
existence, and at what precise point intuition first appears
no one can say. And no one imagines, I suppose, that the
truth or right to be perceived is created by perceiving it, any
more than looking at a landscape creates the landscape. The
question, therefore, must be answered in the affirmative, in
the sense that experience shows enlargement of intuition as
evolution proceeds, and suggests as a probability which
amounts to practical certainty that the enlargement may go
on for ever.
Some will put their feeling in another form. They will
ask, Is intuition trustworthy ? and will even imagine that
an affirmative answer would, in some unexplained way,
reflect on the Bible. But if intuition be not trustworthy,
how is it possible to distinguish between the claims of the
Bible and the pretensions of its rivals—the Koran, for
46 LUE REP OSENOL PALL.
example, or even the “sacred” book of the Mormons? If
it be a question of truth, right, or cause, the trustworthiness
of our intuitions of truth, right, or cause is at once taken for
granted. Otherwise, no reason can be given why the Bible
should be preferred to any other book. There would be no
difficulty at all on this point if men would only take
the trouble of distinguishing between trustworthiness and
sufficiency. If there were no sin, the distinction would be
unnecessary, or rather would have no existence. Intuition
would be at once trustworthy and sufficient, yet not in a
sense to exclude growth. But sin rises, like fumes from lime
that is being slaked, to obscure the soul’s vision of God.
Intuition makes no mistakes, and is, therefore, trustworthy ;
but intuition is clouded by sin, and is, therefore, inadequate.
The whole truth is given, directly and indirectly, in the
words earlier quoted: “ Blessed are the pure in heart: for
they shall see God.’ When the purity is perfected by our
complete union with the Perfecter, intuition will be not only
trustworthy, but adequate. There will then be no need of the
light of the Bible, nor the temple of the Church, for the Lord
God Almighty and the Lamb will be our Temple and our
Light. Whether intuition warrants the Church’s belief in
the Bible, we need not at present discuss ; but it is certain, if
that belief is opposed to intuition, it is, so far as opposed,
a wrong belief.
If now we turn from the Book to Him on whose account
the Book exists, what 1s the supreme reason for the adoring
acceptance of Christ, but that in His presence intuition cries
ee ge Ee oe a eee ee
aloud, “My Lord and my God!” Admit the value of
Christian evidence to the utmost, yet that evidence takes
for granted to start with the trustworthiness of intuition, and
its one proper aim is to put the student in such a position
that there shall be no hindrance on the part of philosophy, or
FAITH, 47
science, or history, or anything else to his answering the
question, What does intuition see in Christ? Let it also
be granted that even when all hindrances that can be
removed by “Christian evidence” have been taken away,
prolonged contemplation of Christ—a contemplation during
which the power of seeing steadily grows—is, in most cases,
unavoidably necessary ; still, it is intuition which at the last
beholds its God in Him. Let it be further granted that
before one can truly ery, “My God!” he must first have
been able to truly cry, “ My Lord!”—that the power of moral
vision is dependent on moral obedience ; that it is only in
giving one’s self to Christ as Lord—that is, as divinely sent—
that one is able to realize that He is more than this—that
is, that He is truly and properly God ;—still, it is equally
intuition which beholds the ascent of the Divine from the
son of man to the son of God, from the son of God to God
the Son. I do not say that there are no good men who have
failed to see Christ thus. What I say is, that there can be
no sufficient warrant for any man’s affirming that the Lord
Jesus Christ is God until he has the warrant of open vision.
“Cry unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!”
8. The Repose of Intuitional Farth.—lf, then, there be on
our part absolute loyalty to the faith that is in us—to those
ultimates by which we judge all things, but which cannot
themselves be judged by any—and if by their constant
exercise, and by the selection of right environment, we
enable them to steadily grow in power, we may address
ourselves with tranquil, though not with unsorrowing, hearts
to those problems of life and mind and conduct to which
theology relates. If, however, any one is convinced that
the existence of pain is disproof of the existence of God
as good, I do not know how any comfort is to be brought
to him. Such conviction is a disabling agony. Until the
48 LAE MREPOSE OF LAI FA.
intuition of good has become strong enough to resist all the
arguments based on pain, his case must be hopeless. I once
heard a distinguished preacher say, “If this life be not a
preparation for a better, then the universe is governed either
by a fiend or a fool.” It seems to me that one’s intuition
of God as good ought to be so vivid as to render language
of that kind impossible. If it be not, then it matters little
whether one holds the fiend or the fool theory. If we cannot
behold a goodness in God which we may utterly trust,
Atheism seems, on the whole, not so logical as, but more moral
than, Theism. Religion is meaningless, worthless, or worse.
The temper of our times renders it comparatively easy
to doubt Divine goodness. A marked characteristic of the
age is an unevangelical softness—a natural reaction, perhaps,
from Puritan hardness; and hence arises a tendency to make,
not justice, or truth, or love, or ultimate welfare, but pain
and pleasure, the standard of judgment. When to this
tendency is added the tremendous force of the questions
suggested by the almost absorbing contemplation of animal
and human suffering, no adequate explanation of which has
ever been forthcoming, the orthodox heart must rather be
written hard which cannot sympathize with doubt. Add to
this the curious characteristic of our age, that while we have
many examples of men of intellect profoundly patient in
science, we have innumerable examples of men of intellect
profoundly impatient in theology; perhaps because in the
former explanation has surely rewarded inquiry, whereas
in the latter it does not seem as if explanation would ever
come at all. The strange thing is, that while nearly all men
accept certain ultimates in science as beyond explanation,
the very same ultimates are often angrily challenged when
appealed to by the theologian. And the difficulty in which
the conflicts thus resulting place the ordinary inquirer is
FAITH. 49
exceedingly great. I confess that very often I feel the diffi-
culties and doubts of others so acutely that nothing but very
frequent retreat to the mountains of waiting prayer saves me
from again becoming a sceptic myself. It is, alas! only too
easy to lose God in discussions about God. The network of
Logic can never be made too strong, but it ought always to re-
main network ; that is, we ought always to be able to see God
Himself through the meshes of all arguments concerning Him.
If once we trust the absolute rightness of God, despite
all clouds, the repose for which I plead comes of. itself,
and stays so long as the trust stays. But there should be
no mistake as to the trust staying. Strictly speaking, a man
is a believer just so long as he is believing, though this is,
perhaps, too iron a definition for common use. But it is
_ literally true that we have repose only while we are trusting.
Perhaps no one has yet succeeded in trusting so habitually
that there should be no breaks whatever. Yet we can nearly
reach this point. We can secure such recurrent conscious-
ness of God as will keep the heart very near to Him. We
go back so often that we can never get far away. Of course,
in the nature of the case, this kind of faith means the trust of
the will set on being and doing right. This does not mean
the absence of pain; still less does it mean the abolition of
difficulty. The method of the Divine government of the
world will still be hard to understand in view of what are
called the inequalities of Providence, in the Divine treat-
ment of others. The peace that God gives is the peace of
the goodness God creates. Nevertheless, each man in his
own place can be at complete rest touching the Divine
treatment of himself, and may fearlessly trust God in His
treatment of others. He knows, or may know with a cer-
tainty that cannot be shaken, that sinless repose comes with
trusting, and goes when the trust goes.
E
50 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
Others may doubt as to what this peace means, but not
the man himself. To him there is no doubt, and no possi-
bility of doubt, as long as his vision lasts. While he beholds
he, at least, knows that it is God he 1s beholding. As to the
fact that rest comes with trust, dispute is out of the question.
And that, seeing God as he does, he ought to trust Him utterly,
hardly expresses the fulness of the truth. For he who does
not will to trust Divine goodness when it becomes visible,
cannot see it, and he who does not see it cannot trust it
The final trouble, the deepest of all, is that we so often fall
into carelessness or insensibility. If our lives, say for the
last year only, were mapped out, we should be startled to
find how large were the flat areas of indifference as com-
pared with the elevations in which God was our supreme
Good. What, then, of those, it may be asked, who wish to
go their own way, and, so long as they can please themselves,
simply do not care whether there is a God or not? That
there are many such, especially among the young, who are
full of pleasant interest in the “world;” the very old, who
are apparently past taking much interest in anything; the
extremely busy, whom habit keeps going in their mill-
yound of activity, whether agreeable or not; and the sordidly
poor, to whom there is little wish and less leisure to consider
anything that does not directly affect their bodies,-—cannot be
denied by any one with even slight knowledge of human
nature as it is. Nay, that there are numbers among the
otherwise “good” who do not even strongly wish to be
thoroughly good; who have their little sins they prefer not
to give up; who, in the interest of others, will descend to
small tricks and evasions or colourings of the truth which
they would never practise in their own interest,—is, I think,
undeniable. Nor can it be said that those classed as re-
ligious are always found to be better than others, except in
FAITH. SI
the one point, that being religious is, other things being equal,
better than not being religious. It is a common belief, for
which there must be some ground, that “religious” organs
in the press are, on the whole, somewhat less just and fair
than the so-called non-religious, and it isa matter of common
knowledge that religious enthusiasm is not always favourable
to business honesty, or, indeed, to honesty of any kind. But
all this does not at all affect the reality of intuition, though
it profoundly affects the problem of how the clouds, through
which it dimly sees, may be cleared away. When it is
alleged that by becoming pure in heart a man shall see God,
it is no argument to say the impure in heart do not see God.
If anything is certain, it is certain that the All-Good guides,
and will guide, the man who wills to be like Himself, And
without more than the slightest anticipation of what is to
follow, I may say here that it is a part of our consciousness
of God’s goodness to hold that He must regard, with pitying
will to save, the man who really repents. So that if hereto-
fore we have cared little about “the things of God,” and if
now we turn to Him, having become willing to will as He
wills, if we can but learn what He wills; willing also to bear
whatever suffering may come as a part of our new disciple-
ship; willing, further, to bear the sharp chastisements which
the faults and sins that are not yet cleansed away must
bring upon us ;—then, assuredly, the peace of God will enter
our hearts, even though we have but the vaguest ideas of the
great doctrines of the Christian Faith. For if this change
has taken place in us, we have the Christian Faith, whether
consciously or not, and in due time, here and hereafter, the in-
tellectual development of thought into creed will accompany
and follow the spiritual development of faith into life.
Thus, then, trusting God Himself, whom we know
directly by intuition, we are able to rightly ponder upon
52 THE REPOSE AOL FAITH.
His ways. Let us recall the fact that all ways, except the
way of the transgressor, are the ways of God. Nay, there
is a sense in which we may truly say, in which we must say,
the ways of transgressors, also, are the ways of God. For in
what may be termed the natural history of sin, there are fixed
laws of development, as well as in the natural history of
holiness. Law is, indeed, universal—that is, it is everywhere
throughout the universe—but everywhere it is God’s law.
There is a subtle kind of infidelity that would shut out God
from business and politics and natural science. To the
rightly “religious” man there is no exception to law through-
out creation, though there is need to morally balance this fact
by the recollection of another—namely, so far is law from
excluding choice, that it is only the presence of law which
renders choice practically possible. By intuition we know
God; by science—in its universal sense—we know the ways
of God. By intuition we cry with Tennyson—
“Speak to Him, thou, for He hears; and spirit with spirit may meet:
Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.”
And from the standpoint of intuition we cry—
“God is law, say the wise, O soul, and let us rejoice;
For if He thunder by law, the law is yet His voice.”
CHAPTER III.
INTUITIONS.
1. Introduction.—Christ taught His followers not to let their
heart be troubled. He put, for them, a fixed bound to
anxiety. “ Be not anxious for the morrow,” He said, “for the
morrow will be anxious for itself’ And other words close
by show that He thought it better still that men who steadily
willed to be good should not be anxious at all; but, in pity
of weakness, He would allow anxiety for to-day, if only the
anxiety was about doing right, not about what might follow
the doing. “Have faith in God,” was His cry—a ery which
might well remind His hearers of the prophet’s song: “We
have a strong city; salvation will He appoint for walls and
bulwarks. Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation
which keepeth truth may enter in. Thou wilt keep him
in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee: because
he trusteth in Thee. Trust ye in the Lord for ever: for the
Lord Jehovah is an everlasting Rock.” Now, these words
seem to fit well our present needs. Let us, trusting God
completely, open our gates to every righteous man who keeps
the truth, no matter how unlike the truth may seem to what
_ we are used to.. Let the west open its gates to the east, and
the followers of St. Paul welcome the believers in Gautama,
so only that we keep whole and undefiled our trust in God,
and let nothing pass that is not truth in righteousness. And,
on the same conditions, let the man of thought and the man
54 THRE REPOSE OF (FAITH,
of faith embrace each other, that knowledge and love may
dwell together, and self-forgetting reverence fill them both.
2. The Intuition of Right—The first thing needed is to
get firm hold of foundation-principles, and train our memories
to keep them, having literally learned them by heart. Now,
though men often doubt each other’s good faith and purity of
motive, yet scarcely any one will deny that there are in all
lands many men who are, honestly and earnestly, striving
to be and do the thing that is right according to their
knowledge and power. Though these are not the majority,
they are yet a large number, and they are all at one in this,
that they own there is something not themselves which
makes for righteousness. That is one great uniting fact.
It is among the deepest facts known. It shows the one faith
with which religion is; without which, religion is not. How
we regard that something not ourselves which makes for
righteousness, settles the kind of religion we have; settles,
also, the kind of peace upright hearts may have. But the
faith itself gives the deepest unity we can know. Wherever
its sign-manual is seen by the eye, the goodness that cannot
be seen is felt by the heart; not as simply something belong-
ing to the man, but as something higher to which the man
belongs; to which, also, belongs the man who perceives it
in the other. Call that something higher by what name you
will, it is the something which fits in on the moral side to
that power that has made of one every nation to dwell on
all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed
seasons and the bounds of their habitation; the power that
gives, to all, life and breath and all things—in which, in short,
we live and move and have our being. All men are one in
fact of existence; one in origin; one in structure and life of
the body ; one in having like appetites, desires, passions ; one
in having the same kind of senses for the outward and the
INTUITIONS. 35
inward; one in confessing a great something that is unity
in itself, though it touch sense and thought in many ways.
Perhaps, also, all are really agreed that this something has
caused the feeling of right, even when least moved by that
feeling in their conduct. But, at least, all the good look at
goodness as greater than themselves, and as one in itself,
though countless the men in whom and the ways in which
it is shown.
3. The Intuition of Truth.—What we know of men pre-
vents us from taking it for granted that every one loves to
be true, or, what is not quite the same thing, loves truth for
its own sake. Yet it can scarcely be doubted that there are
many, in most countries, who think it worth while to put
themselves to pain, and even to give up their lives, on
behalf of “truth.” Ido not mean mere knowledge as such.
The passion for truth ought not to be confounded with the
passion for knowing. The wish to have heaps of knowledge
may be quite as selfish as the hunger for heaps of gold, and
may, in excess, prompt to as shameful deeds. The sense
of the value of knowledge might, perhaps, excite a man
to fight to death against those who would take away his
freedom to learn, because they think their own ignorance
knowledge, or his learning a danger to Church or State. It
is not, however, this kind of martyrdom I am thinking of.
I mean the martyrdom that is borne not for the sake of truth
as a possession, but for the sake of truth as a thing possessing,
as a something whose claim to be obeyed is not to be called
in question. To say there is a tendency which makes for
truth is but another way of saying there is a tendency which
makes for righteousness. And all whose lives show that
they do not look down at truth as a thing which they have,
but look up to it as a thing which has them, make it clear
to all like-minded men that they are, so far forth, one—one
56 DHE REPOSE OLW Cs Ltda
in the religion which is the worship of righteousness, one
in the religion which is the worship of truth.
4, The Intwition of Beauty—lIt is not without a touch
of shame that one thinks of the many misuses of the word
“beauty.” One hears everywhere that there is no rule, that
it is only a matter of taste. And yet while many may, perhaps,
belittle the idea of beauty, as they have belittled the ideas of
truth and righteousness, there are others who feel towards it
a self-surrendering passion that has in it no baseness. One
thing that injures beauty is the ugly mark of ownership. A
man took me one day to see his conservatories. It need
hardly be said there was much to praise and be glad in, for
that might be said of the humblest cottage garden, or even
of weeds in rough ground. But one had a feeling like that
which follows an unlooked-for blow in the face when he
suddenly told me what he had given for a rare plant, and
began to enlarge on the thousands of pounds he had spent,
in such a way as to make one think he would have cared
little for the treasures if they had not been his, not in the
sense of having them in his heart, but in the sense of having
them in his greenhouses. The feeling that beauty is ours
is not of itself a religious feeling, or one that tends to union
of hearts. But the feeling that beauty claims us—has a not-
to-be-questioned right in us—is surely a part of religious
feeling all the world over.
5. The Intuition of Love-—It is to be noted that the
agreement of men about love is even wider than their one-
ness in the worship of right, of truth, and of beauty. I do
not, of course, mean that this admiration of love always
produces lovingness, to say nothing of the not uncommon
mistake of supposing ourselves to be loving when we are
only desirous to be loved. And I do not wish to dwell on
that so-called love which is thinking rather of the pleasure
INTUITIONS. 57
it gets than of the joy it gives. Nor is it needful to more
than notice in passing the half-sincere, half-insincere, argu-
ment that all our motives are selfish. For the selfishness
which delights in the welfare of others is so unlike that
which leaves others out of account as to deserve a distinct
name, and the word “unselfish,” if not perfectly correct, is
the nearest to perfect correctness that any one has yet found.
A friend of mine lately read, to a meeting of clergy, a paper
entitled, I think, “Self-Sacrifice the Key of the Universe.”
I was not able to be present, and do not know how the
subject was treated. But there can be no doubt as to the
honour in which self-sacrifice is held, even by those who,
so far as they know, gain nothing from it. Yet there is
nothing in self-sacrifice, as such, to win our hearts. If a
man puts himself in the way of death because he is tired
of life, his visible action is much the same as that of the
saintly hero who risks all for his country and his God.
What men honour is not the sacrifice, but the love; the
sacrifice as sign and proof of the love. We have asked what
the really righteous show as to righteousness, the really true
as to truth, the really beautiful as to beauty. Let us ask,
What do the really loving show as to love? Is not their
life always suggestive of greatness? Do not they show,
in a thousand ways, not so much that they possess love, as
that love possesses them? Is it not the feeling of the truly
loving that love is infinite? Have we not, then, in the one
worship by the good of righteousness, truth, beauty, love,
a spirit of religion in which all the good are one ?
6. Lhe Intwition of Power—If we turn to strong men,
we find an almost universal regard for power. But we have
always, I think, in this regard an idea of purpose. An
entirely meaningless display of strength would excite more
contempt than admiration. Whether the purpose is itself
58 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
praiseworthy or not, we think of the end and of the means,
and we value the latter as they serve the former. We may »
strongly detest the end set before himself by an Alexander,
a Cesar, a Napoleon, but we can blamelessly admire the
persistence of purpose as such, and the adaptation of means
to end which marked these masters of men. The power of
intellect, the force of will, which they showed, still hold,
not without a touch of fear, the admiring wonder of the
world. Perhaps, much of what is called the worthless
worship of wealth has its root in the common appreciation
of power as serving purpose. If we turn to the universe,
we seem to be in presence of a power so great that we cannot
without difficulty think of it as having any bounds at all
except contradictories, such as “being and not being in the
same sense and at the same time.” The feeling acted upon
by the worlds grows apace when we find that what we
supposed to be mere emptiness—the space between the stars
and around them all as a whole—is full of energetic motion.
To most men it is impossible to believe that the universe
is an exhibition of purposeless power. Why it is thus im-
possible we may easily guess. It is a conclusion—if a
conclusion at all—rather of feeling than of reason, but of
a feeling so penetrating and so persistent that no argument
can stand against it; a feeling of such necessity that it is
doubtful whether, without it, or, at least, without what it
implies, reason itself could even begin to act. Probably all
strong men who have been given to reflect on their own
feelings have beheld mirrored in themselves and in all other
men a purposive power great enough to include in one grasp,
and to hold to one end, all that has been, is, and is to be.
The appreciation of purposive power is yet another point in
which the world is one.
7. The Intuition of God.—The greatest of teachers taught
INTUITIONS. 59
His disciples, “ Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall
see God.” We may safely conclude that the “shall see” did
not refer to a far-off future so much as toa law of seeing
the invisible; namely, the sight of God varies with purity
of heart. If this be so, it follows that the good everywhere
do see God’ but not necessarily that they call Him whom
they see by the same name. The Supreme Being must have
been as really seen, in proportion to their purity of heart,
by Gautama, Confucius, Zoroaster, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius,
as by Isaiah, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Luther, or Wesley.
As really, but not as much; or, at least, not altogether in
the same aspects. As really, for to all God is the Source
of the righteousness, the truth, the beauty, the love, the
purposive power, which they behold. But not as much, for
the sight of the righteousness, truth, beauty, love, and pur-
posive power, which revealed God, varied with place and
time, and with what may be called the orderly evolution of
man. As far as one can judge from the facts before us, the
only historic example of perfect consciousness of God is the
consciousness of Christ. All else has been more or less full
and true as it has become like or unlike His.
But here we must ask whether, in these feelings of
righteousness, truth, beauty, love, and purposive power, we
feel God, or whether we feel abstract ideals. Ido not think
any one can well answer the question for another; each one
must answer it for himself. I can only say that I do not
feel truth, and right, and beauty, and love, and purposive
power as my ideals, but as the qualities of a Being as real
as myself, only not bounded as I am. On such a subject
one cannot argue; one can only bear witness. ‘These things
are, indeed, ideals in the sense that they are standards out-
stretching beyond all attainment. But I feel right, not as
a thought, but as the quality of a Living Being who 1s the
60 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
Object of moral worship. I feel truth, not as a thought,
but as the quality of a Living Being who is the Object
of intellectual reverence. I feel beauty, not as a thought,
but as the splendour of a Living Being in whom my soul
delights itself. I feel love, not as a thought, but as love
—love absolutely pure and infinitely perfect—and_there-
fore implying the One who loves. I feel power, not as
a thought, but as the eternal presence of the almighty will
of One who is the Source of all that has been, is, or is to
be. I may add that I do not feel sin as an offence against
abstract virtue, but as a revolt against, or a failure to obey,
a Being with whose righteousness, truth, beauty, love, and
purposive power I ought to be at one. As I thus feel, I
am as sure of God as I am of myself. The feeling ex-
pressed is, I think, nearly universal in the case of those
who acknowledge intuition.
Touching the worth of this testimony, coming from whom
it may, two questions may be asked, of which the first is,
Do you always feel this? I cannot honestly say that I
do; I wish I could. I have often noted in myself the
tendency to become so absorbed in some one thing as, for
the time, to forget everything else; and I can feel something
so strongly as to be, for the time, practically unconscious
of anything else. I do not defend this—it is clearly not
right; but the question must be honestly answered, if
answered at all. The point, however, is not whether I
always feel righteousness, truth, beauty, love, purposive
power; the point is, that when I do feel them, I feel them
as the qualities, not merely of myself and of my fellow-men,
but of a Being of unbounded greatness, to whom my fellow-
men and myself belong. The second question is, May not
the feelings exist without an object? Granting the reality
of the feelings, does it follow that they are to be trusted 2
INTUITIONS. 61
Do not others, whose religion you do not accept, apparently
feel as strongly as you the object of their worship? If they
are mistaken, why not you? I answer at once: I see no
reason to suppose that in a feeling like this any one can
be mistaken. Every man who has the feeling of righteous-
ness, truth, beauty, love, purposive power, not as possessed,
but as possessing him, sees God in the measure in which
his heart is pure; sees God, be the name by which He is
known what it may. But if you give yourself up to mere
possibilities, why stop there? Is it not very possible that
you are mistaken in supposing it possible to be mistaken on
a point like this? Is it not possible that you may be
mistaken even in supposing yourself to exist? May you
not be mistaken as to the existence of anything? If you
grant that anything at all is certain—for example, your own
existence, which is to you a fact of self-consciousness—then
I answer that I am, whenever I have the feeling described,
Just as conscious of a Being not myself, not you, not the
universe, as I am conscious that Iam. For to be conscious
of myself as possessed, is to be conscious of the Being
possessing me.
8. The Intuition of Cause.—Every one sees the truth of
the statement that whatever begins to be is caused. Whether
this is, as some think, an inference from our own experience,
or a kind of instinctive belief that has come to us through
heredity, or an immediate intellectual vision of the necessary
condition of change, I do not care to discuss. It is enough
for my purpose that the principle itself, when rightly stated,
is not challenged by any one, except by some sorely pressed
combatant who does not, for the moment, see how otherwise
to turn aside the point of his opponent’s sword. The prin-
ciple, however, is not always rightly stated. Indeed, a very
common way of putting it one finds to be, Whatever is, is
62 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
caused. One has sometimes the feeling that there may be
a sense in which even that has some element of truth in it,
though to the words “self-causation” it seems scarcely possible
to attach any meaning beyond this, that, granting the exist-
ence of “self,” there must be included therein the cause of
any change which may afterwards take place. In any case,
it is not the right statement of the principle. A gentleman
whom I have known for a long time as one of the most
religious of men once said to me, “I have been troubled for
over forty years with a doubt which I have never yet ex-
pressed. If whatever is, is caused, then there must be a
cause of God; and a cause of that cause, and so on for ever.”
“Well,” I answered, “as I feel righteousness, truth, beauty,
love, purposive power, as attributes of a Being to whom |
belong, and as I do not feel any other Being equal to Him, |
should not be much troubled by a doubt of that kind. But
let me ask you whether you are really conscious of a need to
account for the existence of whatever is, or only for the
existence of some things?” “I do not quite understand,” he
replied; “for if I may except some things, why not every-
thing?” “But at least try,” I answered. “For example, do
you feel any intellectual pressure upon you to account for
unbounded space or unbounded time?” “No,” he said, “I
cannot think of space or time in that sense, as having begun
to be, and therefore I am not conscious of any need to account
for them.” “Then,” I responded, “you have solved your
own difficulty. You feel there is need to account for what
begins to be, but not to account for what does not begin to
be; and that is the true statement of the principle.” So
understood, there is no exception to it. It runs through all
thinking, and science takes it for granted at every step.
Now, it is plain enough that our feeling of God may be
directly produced by God’s possessing us. In that case, there
INTUITIONS. 63
is no difficulty. The Divine Cause acts directly upon us;
we know Him in whom we believe; and though our speak-
ing may blunder terribly, still we speak of what we know.
The blunders spring from the attempt to express in one way
what we know in another. The knowledge that is feeling
has to be run into the moulds of thought, and, as a matter of
fact, is, at the best, never fully given; while, at all degrees
below the best, it is less or more wrongly given. Hence it is
that a man may suffer defeat in argument a hundred times
without feeling in the smallest degree that the cause for
which he strives ought to be given up. He can be convinced
of his own errors of thought or speech, never of the unreality
of that of which he thinks or for which he speaks.. He may
wrongly describe the right ground, but he is sure he is on
the right ground. Hence it is that Theology survives, and
even benefits by, all assaults. For every detection of error
but makes the Church more vividly conscious of Him in
whom is no error, and of the need to speak of Him with
constant increase of reverent care. Thus, the more faults
are found, the more faults will disappear; by the wisdom of
the wise the swords of enemies are turned into the prunine-
hooks of friends.
In some, however, there is a tendency to lay stress on
knowledge rather than feeling, forgetting that feeling 7s know-
ledge. They are so sure that the existence of God can be
proved, that they pass by that kind of knowledge which needs
no proof. I do not say that proof is impossible, nor even that
it is never necessary; but it cannot answer its purpose until
it has wakened into unslumbering activity the feeling of God.
At the best, it is useful mainly as clearing out of the way
hindrances to the pure heart’s seeing God, or to winning the
impure heart to seek purification. But no argument is really
complete that has not its first link securely fastened in that
64 THE: REPOSELV OR WALLA.
which is beyond argument. Thus in every kind of proof what
are called intuitions, necessary ideas, or fundamental beliets,
are taken for granted. A famous argument best known to us
through Dr. Samuel Clarke rests on our feelings of time and
space as unbounded. Mr. Gillespie was in the habit of putting
it in this way: Infinity of duration necessarily :exists ; but
there cannot be infinite duration without a Being infinitely
enduring; there is, therefore, a Being of infinite duration.
Again: Infinity of extension necessarily exists; but there
cannot be infinite extension without a Being infinitely
extended; there is, therefore, a Being of infinite extension.
Now, whatever the value of this argument in itself, 1t can
have no effect on those who do not admit the ideas of space
and time on which it rests; for those who do admit those
ideas, it is but a restatement of what they already hold. ‘So
far as it goes beyond this, it is but a special case of the argu-
ment from causality ; in other words, we cannot account for
our ideas of space and time except by taking them as effects
produced by a Being not less than they. The arguments
from design, from our moral nature, from general consent, are
all special cases of the same argument. They all come to
this: we cannot conceive of design existing without a designer
—that is, without an adequate cause; we cannot conceive of
the existence of a moral nature except as produced by a Being
that is not-less-than moral—that is, again, by an adequate
cause. The most likely explanation of the general belief in
the Divine is that it is divinely produced—that is, once more,
by an adequate cause. But all this implies the intuition, or
necessary idea, or fundamental belief that whatever begins
to be must be caused. Thus the one argument which cannot
be overthrown depends on what is called an intuition.
There are two points to be noted here, of which the first
is this. We must take care not to put more on any form of
s
EE —_—
INTUITIONS. 6s
this argument than it will bear. Let us Suppose that we
have no direct knowledge of God, and that, looking on the
universe as an effect, we argue back to the Cause. Now,
first of all, to apply the principle we must be quite sure that
the universe began to be. But how, apart from what we
think the Bible teaches, can we be sure that the universe
has not always existed? I do not forget—I sometimes wish
IT could—the familiar statement about the absurdity of think-
ing there is a chain that hangs upon nothing. Whatever the
meaning of that statement, it is not in that way one thinks of
the universe. The argument from cause only applies to what
began to be, but we do not know, however strongly we
may believe, that matter, or ether, or whatever the ultimate
substance may be called, began to be. Modern science tends
strongly to the conclusion that the universe as universe
began to be, but it is silent as to whether there was a uni-
verse before this which ran its appointed course, passing at
last into the primzeval mist out of which the present heavens
and earth were formed. Hebrew is not looked on as a
language easily lending itself to scientific precision, but it is
to be noted that the first words of the Old Testament might
be very well understood as referring to the beginning of the
present universe, and therefore as saying nothing against,
perhaps even as saying something for, the idea of a previous
creation. Indeed, the implication seems to be that there was
already at hand the primeval mist which creative energy
was about to fashion into worlds. Besides, there are not
wanting some gifted thinkers, not given to absurdities of
thought, who believe that ether, or some still more refined
substance, of which ether and mere matter are different
modes, must have always existed as the object on which the
Creator, as Eternal Cause, is always acting, in the orderly
realization of Eternal Design. I do not, therefore, feel much
F
66 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
inclined to argue about the eternity of what 1s called matter.
It is enough to hold that our universe began to be. Here
the principle of causality plainly applies ; for whether the
primeval mist previously existed in some other form or not,
the vast series of changes which resulted in our universe,
began to be both as a whole and individually, and must there-
fore have been caused. And surpassingly powerful must the
Cause be. The Being who produced creation, as it has
become, and is becoming, must be immeasurably great; so
creat, indeed, that all our ordinary terms seem far too small
to apply to Him. We are on safe ground in saying that He
cannot be less than all we mean by the All-Powerful, the All-
Knowing, and the like. Yet even here we must, however
difficult it may be, endeavour to be exactly just. It is
cranted that the nature of the universe—uniformity of effect
has for its counterpart unity of cause—forbids the idea of
more than one Creator. But unless we hold the effect which
we call the universe to be infinite, we cannot argue from the
universe alone, as distinguished from space and time, that.
He who caused it is infinite. There are some, indeed, who
apply the term “universe” in the singular—not to one out
of many, but to a unity that embraces all that has ever been,
all that is, all that ever will be—and who thus regard it as
the infinite and eternal effect of an infinite and eternal cause.
That idea has difficulties of its own which need not be dis-
cussed here. But they who hold the universe to be finite
cannot possibly argue, from the universe, that it has an
infinite cause. |
It must also, I think, be granted that we cannot prove
the perfect goodness of the cause of nature, “red in tooth
and claw.” To those who “see God,” this impossibility of
proof will be no reason for unbelief. The evidence that
animals were designed to live upon each other is terribly
INTUITIONS. 67
startling, and the suffering which they have to bear does not
seem to fit our common idea of goodness. In the animal
world life does not appear to have any sacredness; and if
there be signs that the great Being wills animal happiness,
there are also signs that He does not will it to last long,
Things are not much better with man. He has certainly
great happiness, and he might easily make it more; but,
apart from the evils he brings on himself, he suffers from
hunger and cold, deluge and drought, storm and earthquake,
in a way to suggest that there follow fast on the footsteps
of angels scattering blessings, demons scattering curses.
An old man said to me one day, “I think most of us will
have had about enough of this world by the time we are
called upon to leave it.” If that is the feeling of the “most,”
I suppose death will be no evil to them. But to a ereat
many death seems too hard a way to life to be thought of as
good ; and they who do not think of it as a door that opens,
but as a door that is shut for ever, cannot have much comfort
in dying, unless their life has had in it such an excess of
misery as to make them welcome the end of all power of
thinking and feeling. No doubt there is real gladness to
men of noble hearts in the thought that they have not lived
in vain, having done something to make life better for those
who come after them. But that itself gives birth to some
sadness. The gladness can last only as long as they last,
and since there is to them no life beyond, the gladness does
not last long. Then there is not very much to be glad about ;
for the happier they make life for others, the harder it will
be for those others to leave it when their time comes. And,
in the long run, there will be nothing to be glad about, except
that one has lived; and that, of course, will stop when life
stops. For if we suppose that the lives of the last men will
have been made, by the efforts of those who went before them,
68 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
the happiest of all, yet these last, as they lie dying, will not
have the gladness of thinking they have made it better still
for those who come after, since, as they are the last, there
will be none to come after. That, at least, is all that science
has plainly said up to the present, though not, perhaps, with-
out a faint voice of protest from Spiritualists, Theosophists,
and a few others, who interpret nature in another way. I
grant it is possible that science itself may yet give grounds
for believing in the “immortality of the race,” and also in
a future life for every man, and, it may be, for every animal
also. But it cannot be said that, up to the present, it has
plainly done this; and, therefore, up to the present, the
perfect goodness of God has not been proved, and, at present,
cannot be proved, apart from intuition. I do not say that
goodness cannot be proved. Notwithstanding all the suffering
we have to bear, most of us might truly say, if we had as
vivid memory of the joy and glory of life as we have of its
sorrow and weariness, “It is good to be;” and, in dying, “ It
is good to have been.” Though I have known many cases
in which mind and body were in such a state that one could
not but welcome death as a release, whether it could be
rightly called a “happy” release or not, 1 cannot say I have
known many in which it was not, on the whole,*good to
have been. I am not, therefore, able to say that goodness
cannot be proved. But it is, I think, plain that if we leave
intuition out of account, our present knowledge of the
universe does not authorize us to say that its cause 1s
perfectly good.
And I say this in full sight of the fact that the common
idea of perfect goodness is partly wrong. It cannot be wholly
wrong. If it were, men would not know what goodness is,
and proof could have neither use nor meaning. We must
take it for granted that there is enough of the true in the
- INTUITIONS. 69
common idea to enable men to see what is false when it is
pointed out. I might argue that this implies the presence
of intuition, which is supposed to be left out of account.
But, passing this by, take any purified idea of perfect good-
ness you please, how will you prove from the universe, apart
from intuition, that its cause is perfectly good? I admit at
once that, if you choose to make the statement, I cannot
disprove it, for I am no more willing than you to make the
mere presence or absence of pain the standard of judgment.
It may be that a perfectly sinless and happy existence in
our present universe was not one of the possibilities open
to Omnipotence. But the point is, not whether I can dis-
prove, but whether you can prove, your statement. Up to
the present there has not been seen by the eyes of mortal
man any argument which, leaving out intuition and belief
in a future life, proves the perfect goodness of the cause of
the universe. I grant that, to those who infer a future life
from the goodness of the God they know, the presence of
pain and grief is, indeed, an unsolved problem, but not a
contradiction. You, however, cannot put it in that way
without giving up your case. For to put it thus is to take
in that intuition of perfect goodness which you have agreed
to leave out.
9. Lhe Cause of Intuitions.—The second point to be borne
in mind is, that the argument from causality may be put in
such a way as to include intuitions, without granting that
they are the direct vision of God. A very thoughtful clergy-
man spoke to me lately to this effect: “I cannot say that
I have any such feeling as you describe. If any one were
to ask me, ‘Are you directly conscious of God?’ I am afraid
I should have to answer, ‘No.’ To me the whole question is
one of justified belief. I have no means of saying plainly
how I came by the belief. I do not remember enough of my
70 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
childhood, even if I had taken any note at the time, to say
when the idea of God came to me. I suppose it came from
the teaching of my parents, like many other ideas the source
of which I never thought about. But I do not lay stress on
how it came. The question to me is whether the belief is
justified or not. I am sure it is; but it is belief, not know-
ledge, even in that sense of feeling to which you attach so
much importance. I agree with you that we must acknow-
ledge the trustworthiness of our intuitions, for if we do not,
we can have no certainty at all either in religion or in
anything else. But I do not regard them as visions of God.
It is, perhaps, too much to say that the finite cannot
mentally behold the infinite at all. But I can say that, if
I rightly read myself, I have, as a matter of fact, no con-
sciousness of the infinite. I look upon intuitions as necessary
laws of thought, or, in other words, as things I cannot but
believe; and these, like all things else, I look upon as the
effects of one cause. What I am conscious of is the effects,
not the cause. But I feel that I am justified in drawing
from the effects certain inferences as to the cause. Enlarging
my conception of design in the way that evolution, as de-
scribed by Professor Huxley, suggests, 1 cannot but believe
in the universality of purpose, and in a conscious Being
whose will the purpose implies. Looking at external nature
only, I cannot see that the purpose is wholly good ; but when
in nature I include man, and think of the idea of perfect
eoodness as produced by the cause of the universe, though
I am somewhat depressed by the bewildering contrast, I
cannot but believe that He who produced in man the idea
of perfect goodness is Himself perfectly good. If I am
asked, ‘Is not the cause of the universe the cause of evil
as well as of good, and if from goodness in the effect we may
infer goodness in the cause, why not from evil in the effect
INTUITIONS. 71
infer evil in the cause?’ I do not know how to give a
sufficient answer. If I could regard, as you do, the intui-
tion of goodness as the intuition of God, I should feel greatly
relieved. For then I should set that direct vision of Him
over against all questionings suggested by nature. I should
say, ‘I immediately know God as good, however evil came
to be.’ Even as it is, I do not feel at all that God is the
cause of evil in the same sense that He is the cause of
goodness. Though I am not a dualist, I feel that the idea
of goodness expresses what God is; the idea of evil expresses
that against which God works. I do not think much of the
objection that no one really has the idea of perfect goodness.
For no one can argue that nature is against the idea of
perfect goodness in its cause without implying that the idea
exists, for otherwise the argument could have no meaning.
i think, then, my belief in God is justified by the argument
from causality, including intuitions as effects produced by
Him, whether those intuitions can or cannot be rightly
regarded as direct vision of a Being whose measureless
purposive power is directed by perfect love in stainless
righteousness, in absolute truth, in unblemished beauty.
What is to you vision is to me inference; but we both hold
the same faith.”
And that faith may well give us rest of heart. It is,
then, with fearless confidence we pursue the study of the
ways of God. We know already that we shall come face to
face with many hard facts, that we shall find knots beyond
our power of untying, and shall, perhaps, be forced to give
up some ideas that have seemed to us both true and precious.
Yet we need have no fear that we shall lose thereby. A
man may like the little house that has grown dear to him
as his home through years of toil better than the grand
dwelling which that toil has at last enabled him to make
72 THE REPOSE OF FATT.
his own. But it is not thus with him who loves the truth.
It has always been to him great, and every enlargement of
view which has rewarded his toil, has but answered to the ~
upspringing of his heart to larger views still. The glad —
hunger and thirst for the infinite is always, yet never, satisfied.
He can lose nothing of the true save as the less is lost in
the greater, provided always that he hunger and thirst most
for the infinite of righteousness.
BOOK II,
THE REPOSE OF FAITH—IN SCIENCE.
*! Nis Gites |
ideas
CHAPTER I.
METHOD.
1. Tntroduction—Let us now see the man whose heart rests
in God face to face with the first of a long line of hard
things. His will is to trace, as far as he may, the ways
of God. But before the start he has to ask, How am I to
set about it? Philosophy, with deep eyes that see afar off,
eravely offers her method. Science, with clear-cut coun-
tenance and a business-like air, offers hers. Poetry, with
trailing clouds of glory, descends from on high and whispers,
“Come with me.” Well for him who, whatever method he
chooses, can hear always, as the poet, the deep soul-song that
is ever sung; and feel always, as the philosopher, the unity
that makes all things akin; and see always, as the man of
science, the definite varieties into which unity passes—ever
passing and ever returning. Yet there are perplexities at the
very outset, arising from rival claims and apparently equal
rights. Suppose we take the method of philosophy. We
are immediately, we are told, in a babel of voices, that cry,
like Dublin drivers, “Take this car, your honour; this is
the car for you!” And hard by is one who looks with con-
tempt on the noisy, struggling throng. “If you are wise,’
he says, “you will trust yourself to none of them; make
straight for the station, and go by the railroad of science ”—
oblivious of the fact that even on the iron way disasters
are not unknown. Moreover, he may find that as even the
76 LE REPOS Ol PATI.
railway must start from somewhere, so science takes philo-
sophy for granted, and, therefore, he has first to make up
his mind as to how far he must travel by the one, how
far by the other. It is well, however, to remember that
method itself is one of the Divine ways, and is, therefore,
to be studied with serious and reverent interest.
2. The Method of Science-—The method of science is
really the method of the highest common sense resting on
intuition, and whether we regard it as the only method or
not must depend on our view of what science is. Now let
us note carefully the fact that science supposes us to be
already in possession of some knowledge. It takes for
granted the usual impressions which are produced by the
external world through touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight ;
and through senses that seem to belong to the whole body
rather than to the surface, such as those of forcee—weight and
energy, for example—and vitality, including that of state,
such as fatigue and freshness, or depression and springiness,
and the like. It assumes the existence of what is called
mind, in some close way connected with the impressions
made through the nerves on the brain, in which are, it
would seem, great multitudes of little cells, securing room
for a vast number of minute changes in brain substance,
which thus becomes a kind of printed record of our whole
life. It assumes feeling of different kinds—appetite of
varied sorts, desires of several grades, affections with many
aspects; thought—conceptions, perceptions, judgments, beliefs,
memory, and imagination; and will—choice and volition,
It assumes consciousness, whether as feeling, thought, or
will. It also assumes self-consciousness—that is, conscious-
ness of self as feeling, thinking, willing. Ought it not to
assume the intuitions already named? Does it not, as a
matter of fact? If it does, then science must be interpreted
METHOD. DF
as, in its largest sense, including philosophy. It is a mistake
to regard the science of matter as meaning material science.
There is no need to discuss at present the distinctions of
matter and spirit. It is enough to remember that all know-
ledge is mental, and therefore the science of matter is still
a mental science as truly as is the science of mind. It
further takes for granted the existence of what is called
space, time, matter, motion, and force, the ideas of which
are regarded as ultimates. As implied in the foregoing, it
regards as true the ordinary assumption of the existence of
self and not self; and thus has for its material all known
facts either of the outer or of the inner world.
3. The Function of Science.—Science, then, takes for
granted common knowledge, and whatever we know, we
know, whether it has yet taken scientific form or not. It is
not, therefore, to science one must look for vivid feeling of
nature, but to nature herself. Yet science, if nature is
kept before us, will help to intensify the feeling. It
is not to science we must look for vivid feeling of man,
but to man himself. Yet here, also, science, if rightly
used, will intensify the feeling. It is not to theological
science we must look for vivid feeling of God, but to
God Himself. Yet here, again, science, if rightly used,
will intensify the feeling. In fact, the function of science
is partly to classify or organize common knowledge, and
partly to reveal and name hidden facts, whether as sub-
stance, force, or law. It can never be a substitute for,
or override the authority of, common consciousness, but it
can make that consciousness more full, more accurate, more
corresponsive to the ways of matter, motion, and force, in
their space and time relations, and in their relations to each
other. It can perform a similar office for self-consciousness.
It can help to interpret man to himself, and give wider and
78 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
deeper meaning to the ordinary ideas of the relations of man
to man. As theology, it can give a profounder tone to our
consciousness of God, and at once a greater fulness and
speciality to the common conceptions of the relations to Him
in Whom all things have, their being. In every department,
its first business is to make sure of the facts—that is, to
make sure that they are facts and not fancies, to have them
in sufficient variety and in adequate number; then to note
the conditions under which they exist—that is, to register
their laws; then to arrange them in classes as their like-
nesses and differences warrant; then to formulate the theories
which they are found to illustrate and confirm ; and, finally,
the point at which science passes into philosophy, to bring
to them all the greatest and most harmonious principle or
principles which will set forth their essential unity—in other
words, to effect the unification of knowledge.
4, Assumptions of Science—As no special science attempts
to prove its own first principles, so science in general does
not attempt to prove those principles which are common to
all. Thus, reflection enables us to see that the man of science
walks by faith as well as sight. He takes for granted not
only common knowledge, but also the validity of that common
faith implied in common knowledge. Thus he makes no
attempt to prove either the existence of himself or of the
external world, or of the Great Power manifested in both.
If any man choose to question the existence of himself, or
of the external world, or of the Great Power, science leaves
him to his own devices. It assumes the trustworthiness of
the common consciousness in these respects. It assumes the
reality of the great intuitions already specified, even though
it sometimes calls them by other names. It takes for granted,
even when tracing their supposed origin, the intuitions of
power, love, beauty, truth, and right; and it does not suppose
METHOD. 79
that any account of their genesis is entitled to weaken their
authority. If it is specially concerned with them under the
aspect of truth, it never questions that truth owght to be
followed whithersoever it leads, and in its very effort after
unification confesses the claim of beauty. If it is more
reticent concerning love, that is because love can be only
known by love, and it regards its own province as the
province of thought rather than that of feeling; yet not,
when it is true to itself, in any sense as exclusive of feeling.
For that would be to ignore the largest area of human con-
sciousness, and the one most of all needing scientific inter-
pretation. Only its province is less to make feeling manifest
than it is to make manifest the conditions or laws under
which feeling is and acts. If sometimes, in scientific study,
we are conscious of a certain deficiency of reality, that is
only because science is specially concerned not so much
with consciousness of space, time, motion, matter, force, life,
feeling, thought, volition, as with the conditions under which
these exist or persist ; it being left to the consciousness itself
to maintain the feeling of reality, which it always does when
science is rightly used. The last remark is exceedingly
important in the study of theological science. The sense
of emptiness one often has in reading theological treatises,
as well as the uncertainty as to whether there is proved
anything worth the proving, comes from this, that students
so often lose all but the faintest consciousness of God Him-
self in the study of His ways. For, in effect, they are
studied as ways, not as His ways. In every case, the funda-
mental faith ought to be more than a number of things taken
for granted. It is always present in the sense that it is a
necessary condition of study. But it ought to be consciously,
vividly, actively present; otherwise, the feeling of emptiness
or unreality cannot be avoided. Indeed, the time will
80 THE: RELOSINOT) Pali,
probably come when men of science in general, as well as
the theologian in particular, will feel that meditation and
prayer to begin with, and what is called inward recollection
to go on with, are necessary conditions of the highest daily
scientific work.
5. Induction and Deduction—There are two methods
which go by the names of induction and deduction, and
concerning their claims some hot controversies have raged.
We need not enter within the area of dispute, for it is already
fairly plain to all clear-headed thinkers that neither will
take us far without the other; that they are, in fact, but two
limbs of one instrument which cannot work well unless
both be used, any more than a pedestrian can get along
comfortably, or travel far, on one leg. Deduction starts with
theories and then looks for the facts; induction starts with
facts and then looks for the theories. If you begin with de-
duction, you must go on to the facts, and these will probably
suggest an improvement on your theory, and then you have
got to induction. If you begin with your facts, you must
find your theory, and this will probably have to be appled
to more facts, and then you are at deduction again, and so
on very likely for ever. In one respect, however, deduction
has the pull over induction. As one who starts must start
from somewhere, so the scientific traveller must set out from
things taken for granted. The illustration is wrong in one
point. It implies the idea of going away from, whereas we
can never get away from our intuitions. They are permanent
suns in the sky of consciousness, whose light we have not
the power, and ought not to have the wish, to put out.
6. Philosophy and Science—We are now in a position to
see that we need not trouble ourselves about the rival claims
of philosophy and science. For a philosophy that includes
and explains all the facts that knowledge presents cannot
|
MISL HOLD. SI
help being scientific, and a science which unifies all the facts
that knowledge presents cannot help being philosophic: Of
course, we must not forget that many still regard science as
having to do with nothing but matter, motion, and force;
and philosophy as having to do with nothing but mind,
consciousness, and self-consciousness. There are many others,
however, who deny that either ought to be so limited. To
them science is one in many, with the emphasis on Many ;
philosophy is, also, one in many, with the emphasis on one.
So far as we truly study the many in one, we are scientific
in the largest sense; so far as we truly study the one in
many, we are philosophic in the largest sense. What has
been already said within narrower limits of deduction and
induction holds true, in the widest sense, of philosophy and
science. We cannot get on as well as we ought with either
without the other.
7. The Genetic Method—A recent writer has set forth
the claims of what is known as the genetic method with
considerable force. It starts, he says, with the assumption
that truth is to be discovered, not made; a curious remark,
it seems to me, since I have never heard of any one who
supposed it could be made, except in one sense—that, for
example, of making thought true by bringing it into harmony
with fact, a process to which the author—Mr. Hill—would
certainly not object. He holds that philosophers have erred
in beginning with certain principles that seemed true, and
which they thought truth could be evolved from or tested
by. But clearly, if there be any necessary principles at all,
the error of the philosophers has not been in assuming them,
but in making unnecessary additions to them. He is not
one of those, however, who imagine assumptionless science
possible, as he begins with the assumption that truth is to
be discovered—which implies, of course, the power of knowing
G
82 THE REP OSHAOL ME Ada:
it as truth when found. The positive work of science, he
says, begins by seeking a real, as distinguished from an ideal
order of phenomena, through direct observation. That,
doubtless, is right, if he include so much of the ideal order
as is also real, and if the observation extends to the whole
contents of human experience, in which case the intuitions
will have their place and authority recognized. A real order
of phenomena being thus arrived at, he continues, the law
of recurrences of these phenomena is next observed. Here,
again, he thinks, no principle is assumed, but a new fact is
apprehended, for every natural law is simply a universal fact
stated generally. Then a law of recurrence being established,
the real order is found to be susceptible of an ideal extension
in time and space; for the real order, known as actual,
within limits, excludes every contradictory order under like
conditions. Here, ati least, there is an assumption of the
principle that a thing cannot be, and also not be, in the
same sense, in the same place, and at the same time. Every
state of reality, he maintains, is thus regarded by science as
the reappearance of a previous state of reality, under changed
conditions. “There is no room in the universe, according
to science, for an effect without a cause, for a consequent
without an antecedent, for a state of reality without a prior
state of reality.” Well, the assumptions begin to multiply.
Here, to name no other, we have the principle of causality.
Following everywhere this thread, and proceeding nowhere
without it, he sums up, the method of success is the genetic
method. To that we can surely have no objection. For the
genetic method shows the intuitions of power, love, righteous-
ness, truth, beauty, growing ever clearer, correcting errors,
increasing in range of vision, and justifying, more and more,
utter trust in their all-perfect object—God.
8. The Adult Stage of Science—The genetic method thus
METHOD. 83
described does, no doubt, approach more nearly to complete-
ness than any other, but it does not follow that we must
neglect the more highly developed forms of knowledge until
we have first made ourselves familiar with the less highly
developed. We are under no sort of logical or moral
necessity to limit our acquaintance with men to those whom
we knew as boys. There is a sense in which we know
better those who have grown up with us than we can ever
know any one else. But if the friends we have in manhood
must be only those who were boys with us, our friends will
be few indeed. If we are not to know the sciences as they
are, and are becoming, until we have learned their past life
through every stage, our knowledge will be small indeed.
Yet, though we are justified in choosing the adult stage of
any science, we are not justified in forgetting that it had
a boyhood. And it would be better to trace any one science
through all stages than to have a slight acquaintance with
several. Better still to learn one genetically, and the rest as
we can, for the one thus known will help the learning of
the rest.
CHAPTER II.
THE SCIENCES.
1. Introduction.—There is a vague fear in many men that
further knowledge of science, whether of its present results,
or of the mode in which it came to be what it is, would
prove fatal to their existing beliefs. ‘The fear may or may
not be well grounded. ‘Their beliefs may be right, and then
there is no need to fear; if their beliefs are wrong, of course
there is ground for the fear. Yet fear is not the fitting state
of mind. If the loss of present belief were really loss, one
might well dread increase of knowledge. And, doubtless,
there are some men eminent in science who hold opinions
about the destiny of man and the universe that are fatal to
all but the lowest form of possible Theism—the form which
recognizes only one of our intuitions and identifies God with
power, to the exclusion of conscious intelligence, love, and
will. The question, however, is not whether some scientific
men hold certain opinions fatal to Theism, but whether these
opinions are scientifically necessary. It is by no means
clear that men of science are never anything but men of
science. They may be sometimes men of prejudice also.
And nothing to the point is proved, unless it be proved that
science logically necessitates the abandonment of religion.
Even then it might easily be the science that had to be
modified. For as science finds its material in sub-scientific
knowledge, it has no authority whatever as against the
LTHE SCIENCES. 85
necessary elements in that knowledge. We have already
seen that there are certain principles common to all science,
and, indeed, continuously necessary to its existence. If a
Scientific doctrine comes into collision with any of these
principles, that scientific doctrine is wrong. Science has no
authority against intuition. But if the existing religious
beliefs be wrong, the only ground of fear that could be
justified would be the conviction that any change would
be a change for the worse. It is just here that the genetic
method comes to our aid, as showing that the change may be,
not to something worse, or as bad, but to something better.
To aid in putting an end to this fear, let us look for a while
at science as it is; for if we have nothing to fear from what
it is, we need not dread what it has been. Taking science,
then, as it now is, it is convenient to follow three main
divisions, which, though necessarily stated one after the
other, must be understood as existing together.
2. First Division—The first is knowledge considered
abstractly. Let no one be alarmed. You are not going to
have sprung under your feet a metaphysical mine whose
explosion blows everything into an invisible mist, lost in the
infinite, the absolute, the unconditioned. They who know
what those words mean have no need to be alarmed at any-
thing; those who do not will be spared the trouble of trying
to understand. To avoid any question as to what spirit is,
or as to what matter is, let us take the word “being,” which
certainly includes both, whatever they are. I do not at this
point commit you to anything but the innocent statement
that whatever is, is, and that it cannot both be and not be in
the same sense and at the same time. ‘You are as sure as
I am that there are like and unlike ways of being. A sea
and a star, for instance, are like in some points and very
unlike in others. In saying that I make no questionable
86 THE REPOSE (WOOF OEAIL Es,
demand upon you, I only ask that you grant kind or quality.
You, then, grant being and modes of being. You will further
grant that modes of being are connected with each other.
The sea and star, for instance, may be connected in this way :
the sea may reflect the light of the star, and, if you take the
sun instead of a star, you may add that it affects the tides
and temperature of the sea. You will admit that both may
be connected with something else. The sea is in the earth,
and the earth, like other planets, moves round the sun.
Now, as you know that all bodies that exist are of some sort
or quality, so also you know that they are of some size or
quantity, which includes number. You can think of bodies
as large or small, or between the two in size, but you cannot
think of bodies of no size at all. You have granted, then,
that things that are, are, and that they are of some sort—that
is, they have quality; and that they are of some size—that is,
they have quantity. And you know that all bodies that
exist must exist somewhere and somewhen, that is, you have
ideas of space and time. But, you know, you can think of
qualities without bothering your heads about the particular
things which have the quality. Thus, if I am speaking of
hardness or of softness, I do not need to name the things
that are hard or soft, so long as I keep myself to statements
that are true of all hard or of all soft things. In lke manner,
if I am speaking of quantity, I do not need to state the
things that have quantity, so long as I make statements that
are true of all of them. Thus, if I put two and two together |
and so come into possession of four, the statement is equally
true whether the two and two be men or mice. Now, there
is really no difficulty, if you will only remember the meaning
of the words. If I say there are modes of being, and these
all have quality and quantity, and all exist in space and
time, and are all connected in certain regular ways, you
THLE SCIENCES: 87
know what I mean. Well, I mean just the same thing if I
say, Uniformities of connection obtain among modes of being
in space and time both qualitatively and quantitatively. It is
plain that we may, if we choose, keep qualities before our
minds. I call, let us suppose, the connections of things
touching their qualities, qualitative relations. Well, the
sclence a qualitative relations is the first branch of abstract
science. JI may call the connections of things touching
quantity, quantitative relations. The science of quantitative
relations is the second branch. Of course, I never leave out
the ideas of space and time, for wherever there is sort and
size the sort and size must be somewhere and somewhen,.
These two branches are called abstract science, because in it
we “abstract” or leave out of account the things, and think
only of their qualities and quantities. And this ig quite
right so long as we make only such statements as are
necessarily true of all things of whatever sort or size. Some
writers call the first branch logic, though the word is more
commonly used in a somewhat different sense; the second
branch is known as mathematics. One knows that there are
those who noisily say, without specifying, that science is
against religion. But it would puzzle the man of the most
inveterately objecting temper to show that either logic or
mathematics was hostile to Theism or to Christianity. They
might both be helpful in giving the happy despatch to bad
arguments on behalf of folie on but that is quite another.
_ affair, It is nothing to the purpose to say they are not
distinctively religious, except as they imply the love of truth
(without which theology, in any high sense, could not exist),
for that is not their business. The point is that, as far ag
they are concerned, theology has little to fear, and that only
as regards some bad arguments; and religion which bases
itself on intuition, nothing at all,
88 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
8. Second Division—In its second great division, science,
while of course constantly applying the truths given in
the first, passes so far into the concrete that it deals with
force. It is still abstract, however, in the sense that the
qualities and quantities of force are considered without
reference to the particular bodies in which force is mani-
fested. Thus one may regard the flowing tide, the rushing
wind, the radiant sun, as manifesting force; but what we
are here concerned with is not tide, wind, or sun, but the
qualities and quantities of force they are found to show.
The distinction of force and energy need not delay us here.
You may call that which is manifested force, and its modes
of manifestation energy, as that of attraction and repulsion,
of sensible motion, as in the movements of bodies, of insen-
sible motion, as heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and, it
may be, of others yet unnamed. In any case, all the known
examples of force can be and are arranged into classes pos-
sessing common features. Starting, then, with force, you
may at once ponder its most general aspects as given in
what is called the “theorem of the composition and resolu-
tion of forces”—a somewhat difficult study, requiring com-
petent knowledge of mathematics. Easier to grasp at once
are the branches into which the science is divided. To the
science itself you may give the easily understood name of
mechanics. Every one is not familiar with the words “molar”
and “molecular,” but their general meaning is not hard to
erasp. If you are thinking of masses, you have “molar ;” if
you are thinking of the opposite of masses, you have the
word “molecular.” And these two are supposed to include
all manifestations of force as force.
4, Force and Will.—Now, the only point where a doc-
trine of force can come into collision with theology is on
the question of will. It is granted that there is nothing in
THE SCIENCES. 89
science contrary to the idea of design when interpreted in
a sense that recognizes and includes all the laws of the
universe. But it is thought by some that the idea of will
takes in that of change in the total amount of energy, and
this is opposed by the doctrine of the persistence of force,
which holds that whatever changes of form energy may
undergo, its quantity as a whole is neither increased nor
diminished. I cannot see, however, that Christianity is
committed to any opinion on that subject. Were it granted
that all the power and energy of all the wills of men must
be regarded as partial manifestations of universal force, one
need not be alarmed by that. Surely no one supposes that
the power of the will is created by the will! Its charac-
teristic is not the creation but the direction of energy, and
if this implies power, still, as that power is given to man, his
having it, even if it imply transfer of energy to him from
the plants and animals which he eats, and from the liquids
which he drinks, does not lessen or increase the amount
in the universe. It simply means transfer and change in
the part, not increase or decrease in the whole. A more
serious difficulty is that which rises from the contemplation
of what is called the Divine Sovereignty. It is not just the
best term to use, for one can easily think of God as a
Sovereign so great that He chooses to have sovereigns for
His subjects. Human sovereignty seems as real within its
own narrow limits as is the Divine Sovereignty over all.
Nor is it well to think of the majesty of God in such a
sense as to exclude some human control over a part of His
universe, and, therefore, in a minute degree over all the
universe. Jor to think of God as putting a measure of His
own power at the service of man is not to lessen the idea
of majesty, but only to intensify that of His good will
towards us. It is but the extension to nature of the sublime
90 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
principle of Jesus Christ—“ the Son of man came not to be
ministered unto, but to minister.” The point of the difficulty
is, How can God have His own way with us, and we also
have our own way with ourselves, unless the two ways
become one? If it be hoped that that will at last be the
case, the fact cannot be overlooked that we have followed
a way which was not God’s. Still, that does not mean that
we can defeat the purpose of God. It is quite conceivable
that while we can choose either of two ways, one of which
we must take, we can choose none which will not take us
to the Divine goal. Freedom is within limits, and, very
likely, those limits are of such a nature as to secure, one
way or another, that man’s will shall come in the end into
oneness with God’s will. It may be said that, meanwhile,
the Divine wish is not fulfilled. Yes, but inasmuch as God
has, if one may so speak, chosen to allow His wish to be for
a time resisted, we cannot say that His will has been
defeated. As to the difficulty of foreknowledge and fore-
ordination, not much can be wisely said. It is true that one
can form some idea of a pre-ordination which foresees and
provides for everything that man may do without taking
away the limited freedom he has. But the subject is much
too difficult for popular treatment, and, in any case, it is not
necessary to see more than this, that predestined freedom is
still freedom; and that while its limits may be regarded as
a means of securing the accomplishment of the Divine pur-
pose, the freedom itself is not contrary to the Divine will.
The certainty that we are free, however limited the freedom
may be, is part of our certainty that we are. Once more,
science has no authority against intuition.
5. Third Dwwision—Into the third great division of
science we carry both of the preceding divisions, in con-
sidering the redistributions of matter and motion actually
THEO SCLENCES. OI
going on, whether in the heavenly bodies or in the earth.
Under the last aspect are included Biology, Psychology, and
Sociology. An obvious criticism will occur to you. You
will naturally say that you do not see how we can rightly
regard the facts of hfe and mind as included in the redis-
tributions of matter and motion. The criticism seems to be
perfectly just. If lfe and mind are to be included, some
more comprehensive words than matter and motion ought
to be employed. If they are not to be included, then their
sciences ought to stand out of the list. But while agreeing
with this criticism of the classification, we may still let the
list remain as including matter and motion in the degree in
which they constantly accompany, and are closely connected
with, life and mind. The only point in which this division
of science suggests perplexity has reference to some of the
theories of evolution. or those who accept evolution as a
fact manifest in what we know of the history of the physical
universe, and of the history of all organic life, including that
of our own bodies, the perplexity vanishes from the moment
they are able to regard the Bible as not intended to teach
the doctrine of special creations. In the case of those who
adhere to what is called the traditional view, the perplexity
must remain. Still, it ought not to be more than a per-
plexity. Our inability to settle a difficulty which rises from
our ignorance ought never to be allowed to trouble a con-
fidence which is based on our knowledge. And there is
no knowledge so deep and true as our vision of God; or,
at least, there is no trust so well assured as that which rests
on the direct inference as to what God is, drawn imme-
diately from our intuitions of purposive power, love, righteous-
ness, truth, and beauty. As before, science has no authority
as against intuitions, and those intuitions should maintain
our gladness and peace against all perplexities whatsoever.
CHAPTER III.
GENESIS.
1. LIntroduction—The greatest difficulty of exact thinking
is definition. Yet no one need marvel at this, when he
remembers that perfect definition can hardly be expected
until we have reached perfect comprehension. But shall we
ever reach that? They who believe that after death is no
knowledge must, of course, answer, No. Can they who
believe that knowledge will grow from more to more, here-
after as here, give any other answer? Formally, perhaps
not; for perfect comprehension, as to either extension or
intension, would seem to belong to God alone. Yet the
answer is essentially different—different as light that grows
for ever from light that dies at noon. And this may well
be enough for us. “We surely need not wonder that mist
and all its phenomena have been made delightful to us, since
our happiness as thinking beings must depend upon our
being content to accept only partial knowledge even in those
matters which chiefly concern us. If we insist upon perfect
intelligibility and complete declaration in every moral sub-
ject, we shall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our
whole happiness and power of energetic action depend upon
our being able to breathe and live in the cloud; content
to see it opening here, and closing there ; rejoicing to catch,
through the thinnest films of it, glimpses of stable and
substantial things; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in
the concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread
GENESIS. 93
where the untempered light might have scorched us, or the
infinite clearness wearied. And I believe that the resent-
ment of this interference of the mist is one of the forms of
proud error which are too easily mistaken for virtues. To
be content in utter darkness and ignorance is indeed un-
manly, and therefore we think that to love light and find
knowledge must always be good. Yet wherever pride has
any share in the work, even knowledge and light may be ill
pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good; yet man
perished in seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking
light; and if we, who are crushed before the moth, will
not accept such mystery as is needful to us, we shall
perish in like manner. But, accepted in humbleness, it
instantly becomes an element of pleasure, and I think that
every rightly constituted mind ought to rejoice, not so much
in knowing anything clearly, as in feeling that there is
infinitely more which we cannot know. None but proud or
weak men would mourn over this, for we may always know
more, if we choose, by working on; but the pleasure is, I
think, to humble people, in knowing that the journey is
endless, the treasure inexhaustible,—watching the cloud still
march before them with its summitless pillar, and being sure
that, to the end of time, and to the length of eternity, the
mysteries of its infinity will still open farther and farther,
their dimness being the sign and necessary adjunct of their
inexhaustibleness. I know there are an evil mystery and
a deathful dimness—the mystery of the great Babylon, the
dimness of the sealed eye and soul; but do not let us confuse
these with the glorious mystery of the things which the ‘angels
desire to look into, or with the dimness which, even before
the clear eye and open soul, still rests on sealed pages of
the eternal volume.”! Yet, as there is constant need to insist,
? Ruskin’s “ Frondes Agrestes,” p. 44, et seq.
94 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
we may know, not only too ill, but also too well, for defini-
tion. And this is probably true of all our “ultimate ideas.”
That one attempted definition after another breaks down
hopelessly is proof, not of ignorance, but of knowledge; that
is, of a knowledge so great that we cannot compress it into
the forms of definition. There has not yet been given of
force, or matter, or space, or time, or life, or mind, or con-
sciousness, any definition which can be accepted as final;
and this proves that, at every point, we have, or have
reached, a knowledge in excess of that which the definition
marks off. Taking for granted, then, knowledge that con-
tinually exceeds description, men of science have been
content to use the current terms to indicate the things
spoken of, and have set themselves to learn whatever may
be known of their history. This is the process already
described as the genetic method.
2. The Genesis of the Universe—The very use of the word
“genesis”? implies that there is a history. Passing by the
theories as to what matter is “in itself”—whether points of
force, whirls of ether, solid particles that have yet no con-
tinuity, or a permanent possibility of sensation—one seeks
to know how it has become what it is to us. Yet, something
we have to take for granted touching the historian, some-
thing which may modify the ideas we form as to the reality
of the history. “Psychological analysis of the process of
perception proves that what we call ‘objects’ are perceived
only through the union in our minds of impressions upon
our senses which are only representative of the objects them-
selves. What we call ‘things, that is, visual or tactual
configurations in space, such as books, tables, houses, etc.,
are results of our own mental activity in grouping together
various impressions which, in their unrelated state, are only
the elements of construction, not individualized objects. But
GENESIS. 9s
while the immediate perception of such complex and yet
individualized objects cannot be maintained, in every ‘im-
pression’ there are involved the correlative terms ‘subject’
and ‘object.’ However elementary such impressions may be,
and their elementary character must be conceded, in every
sensation there are to be found a subject and an object. The
knowing subject apprehends objects and distinguishes them
from itself. The construction of definite configurations is,
it is true, a psychical process—an effort to put together in
thought what is presented as reality, and to do this in con-
formity to the order and measure of successive presentations.
By whatever subtle alchemy of brain and nerve this js
effected, subject and object always stand over against each
other as different modes of being. To say that sensations
in the knowing subject are uncaused, is to break with the
principle of continuity. We therefore refer our sensations
to causes in space by which they are produced. And these
causes are not mere permanent ‘ possibilities’ of sensation :
they are forms of real being which precondition and deter-
mine feeling and knowledge in us. Collectively we call
them ‘matter, which cannot be sublimated into a mere
‘possibility, but is an actuality whose properties are to be
discovered in and through continued experience. Inasmuch
as 1t constitutes our constant environment, it is pre-eminently
the form of reality with which, in a general sense [ourselves
excepted], we are most familiar. It cannot legitimately be
identified with our thought about it, for our thought is
sometimes erroneous, and yet it is the continuous substratum
of our thought, which is chiefly occupied with some aspect
of it.”* If the reader will recall what has been said touching
faith as intuition he will see, in the foregoing, reason to say,
Verily, in science as in religion, we walk by faith, not by
1 “Genetic Philosophy,” p. 31, et seq,
96 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
sight. We can form no ideas either of matter itself or of
its history without taking for granted some of those perma-
nent elements of consciousness called intuitions. In this
sense, faith is the foundation of science.
The confidence with which science is regarded, so long
as it does not contradict or subvert the intuitions which, as
we have seen, are necessary to its own justification, is not
misplaced. If the more we examine any object the more
certain we become of its properties, then the greater the
number of examiners the greater the certainty that the results
in which they agree are real and true results, provided the
examination be thorough and long continued, and that no
overmastering desire to arrive at like results has vitiated
inquiry. In any case, we have no choice but to accept “ the
accumulated facts which science has established.” And the
probability that the inferences drawn from these facts by
scientific philosophers are true inferences, will mount into
something like unwavering certainty when we find these
philosophers in agreement in all parts of the civilized world
and in every variety of circumstances, always provided their
judgments have not been blinded by the “excessive light”
of some one splendid theory which promised to unify all
knowledge. Hence we learn to regard with profound respect
any great cosmic conception which appears to have slowly
emerged from the labours of multitudinous experts. “By.
the process of scientific synthesis there has been elaborated
a cosmic conception which is not, indeed, a mere collection
of sense-phenomena, but an order of ideas based upon an
ever-present reality, permeated everywhere with mathematical
consistency, and reduced to the harmony of a rational system.
It is true that it is limited in extent both in time and space,
which is a proof of its essential coherence, and yet it fatigues
the powers of even a trained intellect to compass and
a
GENESIS. 97
comprehend its totality.” Yet it is indispensable to have
some notion of what this cosmic conception is. No thoughtful
man can afford to be wholly ignorant on the subject. Even
the barest outline—and no more can be attempted here—will
serve to show its almost immeasurable importance.
So vast are the series of figures needed in any statement
of the extent of the universe, that it is impossible to have
anything more than what have been termed symbolic con-
ceptions of the distances involved. It is doubtful if we have
any clear realization of even short distances. “When we
speak of a thousand miles, we pass into the sphere of mere
symbolic notation—a realm of purely mathematical con-
cepts. Multiply this distance by the number of hours in
a day, and we arrive approximately at the girdle of the
globe.” “To reach the moon, our nearest neighbour, we
must travel ten thousand times the circumference of our
planet. If a cannon-ball could be fired into the sun, it
would require fifteen years for it to reach its destination.
Had the Pilgrim Fathers, who sailed from Delftshaven for
America in the Mayflower, taken a limited express train for
the sun, they would not at this time have arrived at their
journey’s end.” A curious and striking illustration is given
by Professor Langley: “It has been found that sensation is
not absolutely instantaneous, but that it occupies a very
minute time in travelling along the nerves; so that if a child
puts its finger into the candle, there is a certain almost in-
.conceivably small space of time, say the one-hundredth of a
second, before he feels the heat. In case, then, a child’s arm
were long enough to touch the sun, it can be calculated from
this known rate of transmission that the infant would have
to live to be a man of over a hundred years before it knew
that its fingers were burned.” The same authority says “that
if we could hollow out the sun’s globe and place the earth
H
98 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
at the centre, there would still be so much room that the
moon might go on moving in her present orbit at two
hundred and forty thousand miles from the earth—all within
the globe of the sun itself—and have plenty of room to spare.”
But we have to remember that the sun itself is but a star,
and, as compared with others, not a very large one. The
real number of these others passes expression. ‘ With the
unaided eye about five or six thousand stars may be seen
in the whole heavens. With a good opera-glass as many as |
one hundred thousand become visible. The Lick telescope,
with an object-glass three feet in diameter, reveals nearly
one hundred million.” And so great are their distances that
“light, travelling at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six
thousand miles a second, would require three and a half years
to reach us from the nearest of these blazing suns. From
the more distant, thousands of years may have been required.”
Mr, Dolbear puts it thus: “That lght we see from them
to-day left them before America was discovered, before Jesus
was born, before the pyramids were built, and, for all we
should be able to see, they might have ceased to exist long
ago, though their light continues to shine.” Mr. Hill remarks,
“When we try to form a conception of these dizzy distances,
intelligence staggers'and reels beneath the burden.” Better
not try, then. I do not myself see why intelligence should
stagger and reel before distances, however vast. With another
remark of the same author one has more sympathy. “It is
not wonderful that Kant exclaimed that the two facts which
most stirred his mind to reverence were ‘the starry heavens
above and the moral law within.” Yet there is strong
scientific reason for believing that the starry heavens them-
selves are but a part of the real universe. “In fine,” say
Professors Stewart and Tait, “ we do not hesitate to assert that
the visible universe cannot comprehend the whole works of
eC
GENESIS. 99
God, because it had its beginning in time, and will also come
to an end. Perhaps, indeed, it forms only an infinitesimal
portion of that stupendous whole which is alone entitled to
be called THE UNIVERSE.”
: If we turn now to the constitution of matter, we learn,
from the latest scientific teaching, that it varies little in its
elements throughout the heavens. The spectroscope is re-
garded as having made it certain that the seventy elements
found in the earth exist also in the stars. There is a substance
lighter than hydrogen, to which the name “ helium ” ig
given, because, up to the present, it has been detected in the
sun alone. On the other hand, it appears the earth has one
“element” which the sun has not. But, speaking generally,
whoever knows the elementary substances of the earth knows
also the elementary substances of the entire material universe.
If we try to form some idea of the minuteness of the least
particles that will enter into chemical combination, we shall
probably find it as difficult to picture matter in its molecules
as we have already found it to adequately think of matter in
its masses. One-eighth of a grain of indigo, dissolved in
sulphuric acid, “will impart its colour to two and a half
gallons of water.’ That means that there is about a
millionth part of a grain to a drop of water. “A grain of
musk will scent a room for many years, losing but little of
its weight, although it sends off its particles into thousands
of cubic feet of air. A spider’s web is so delicate that an
ounce of it would make a line three thousand miles long.”
An attempt, approximately successful, has been made to
ascertain the diameter of a molecule of water, which is
about the fifty-millionth of an inch. Dr. Bowman says that
the mean free path—z.c. the distance within the gas volume
in which the molecule can move before it comes into collision
with any other molecule—is less than the two hundred and
100 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
thirty-seven millionth of an inch. Let the reader, if he
wishes to parallel the great distances of the stars by the
minute distances of the molecules, remember that the former
are multiples of a mile, and the latter fractions of an inch,
and he will see at once that while we have in the former
the inconceivably great, we have in the latter the incon-
ceivably small. If one asks for a rough approximation to
the size of the hydrogen molecule, we are told to make what
we can of the following statement: About one hundred
thousand million billion of molecules are contained in a
cubic inch of hydrogen gas, when the thermometer 1s at the
freezing-point, and the barometer thirty inches. If we ask
what is the weight of one of these molecules, the answer 1s
that it would take two hundred million billion of them to
weigh one milligramme, which is equal to 0:0154 of an
English grain. If we ask for the size of molecules of matter
generally, Lord Kelvin, better known as Sir William Thomson,
finds the size to be not more than the two hundred and fifty
millionth of an inch, and not less than sppq000000 Of an
inch. If we inquire, How near are these to each other ? the
reply is, Adjoining molecules are probably not more than
the four hundred and fifty millionth of an inch apart. If
we exclaim, Have we now reached the end? the answer is,
No; for molecules are composed of atoms. Thus a molecule
of water contains two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen,
which are, of course, invisible. One hundred and twenty-
five millions of atoms would occupy about the one hundred
thousandth of an inch, the smallest space visible in the
highest power of our microscopes, “and to see one of them
we should need to increase our power of perception through
the best microscope at least five hundred times.” All this
may give us some faint notion of the immensity of the
knowledge to be yet acquired, as our powers develop, even
GENESIS. IOI
under the one head of quantity. Though trenching some-
what on another subject, we may here add the following
suggestive passage from Professor Dolbear: “We have read
of spirits that could dance on the point of a needle; but the
point of a needle would be a huge platform with the last
visible point with the microscope, and the spirit that should
dance upon it might be a million times bigger than an atom
of matter, and not be in danger from vertigo. One may be
astonished at the amount of intelligence associated with the
minute brain-structure of some of the smaller forms of animal
life—say the ant; but it will be seen that, so far as such
intelligence is associated with atomic and molecular brain-
structure, the size of the brain in the smallest ant, though
measured in thousandths of an inch, is sufficiently large to
involve billions of atoms, and the permutations possible are
almost unlimited.” As we shall presently see, none of these
wander darkling in eternal space. Every one is bound to its
use and destiny.
It is well to note here the facts expressed in the words
“Conservation of Matter,’ namely, that, however great our
power over its other attributes, we cannot change its mass
or quantity. It does not, of course, follow that the Power
which called it into being cannot put it out of being; but, so
far as science is concerned, the indestructibility of matter,
or, what amounts to the same thing, the permanence of its
quantity, must be taken as an established theory. The same
must be alleged of continuity of motion. But what most
concerns us at present is that both of these are involved in
the persistence of force. We have now reached a region of
cloudy controversy—a region which I prefer to skirt rather
than enter. Whether atoms have a real objective existence,
whether matter is anything but “ points of force” or “ vortices
in ether,” whether the universe should be called finite or
102 THE REPOSEOF FAITH.
infinite, whether the so-called elements are modifications of
one substance or real ultimates, must be left unanswered.
We may, however, rightly regard what is called the material
universe as a system of matter, motion, and force, in which
the first is indestructible, the second continuous, the third
constant, notwithstanding incessant changes of form. ‘The
whole system is penetrated through and through by what
are called laws, and by a law of laws, which is called
the Principle of Evolution. We must, therefore, regard it
almost as a living thing, as an organism, and, notwith-
standing the indestructibility of its substance, as an organism
which has a biography, birth, development, decay, and death.
Newton has shown us that every particle is bound to every
other by a constant law of attraction. The examination of
any mass of matter shows us that the molecules of a solid,
a liquid, or a gas—in which form it is believed that any one
of the elements may exist—have a relation that is measured
by the presence of heat, so that a cohesive force is resident
in every material mass; and we may well remember that,
in comparison with this, gravitation is a very feeble force
indeed. And chemistry has revealed the presence of a certain
affinity between the, atoms—‘a sort of selective agency,
which sorts and segregates them.” Physics will tell us that
all the so-called forces—which are thought to be but varied
manifestations of one force, just as the elements are held
to be varied forms of one substance—are all translatable into
each other—“ heat, light, electricity, magnetism, mechanical
energy, and chemical affinity.” Mr. Hill goes so far as to
say, “The firmest generalization of physical science is, that
matter is essentially dynamic and essentially one.”
Let us try to imagine some medium in which matter may
have had its beginning. Such a medium scientific theory
presents to us under the name of ether, which some hold
GENESTS, 103
to be non-atomic, homogeneous, universal, and frictionless.
Helmholtz has shown mathematically that if vortex motion
were originated in such a medium, the motion would be
permanent, and could not be transformed. “Sir William
Thomson concluded that, if such motions were set up in the
ether, the persistence of their form and the possible variety
of motions would correspond closely to the known properties
of matter.’ Professors Stewart and Tait remark that this
most recent speculation revives the atom, but not “strong in
solid singleness,” like those contemplated by Lucretius,—
“much rather yielding to the least external force, and thus
escaping from the knife or wriggling round it, so that it
cannot be cut,—not, however, on account of its hardness, but
on account of its mobility, which makes it impossible for the
knife to get at it.’ Sir William Thomson’s idea is, then,
that matter may consist of the rotating portions of a perfect
fluid, which continuously fills space. But note, as the
writers just quoted remark, “this definition involves the
necessity of a creative act for the production or destruction
of the smallest portion of matter, because rotation can only
be produced or destroyed by us in a fluid in virtue of its
viscosity (or internal friction), and in a perfect fluid there is
nothing of the kind.” Of course, the question may be asked,
Whence this fluid? Yet the fact that we can say nothing
as to the origin of ether is no reason why we should say
nothing as to the origin of matter. The only point is, that
as ether is credited with inertia, it ought, perhaps, to be
called a more refined sort of matter. Even so, it is as well
to have distinct names. Let ether stand for the higher
and matter for the lower. Starting, then, with Thomson’s
primordial atoms, and assuming them to be all of one kind,
what does science say of the development of the worlds ?
Following Stewart and Tait, we may answer this question
104 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
under the heads of (1) Stuff Development and (2) Globe
Development.
(1) Stuff Development. Whether we accept Thomson’s
theory or not, there is reason for holding that all the ultimate |
inhabitants or aborigines of space were of one and the same
race. Dr. Prout’s suggestion, that as the atomic weights of
the various so-called elements were very nearly all multiples
of the half of that of hydrogen, the elements might be looked
upon as consisting of groups of atoms of half the mass of the
hydrogen, has been laboriously opposed by M. Stas, but the
discrepance discovered by him has seemed to others to be
no more than what might be attributed to “unavoidable
impurities in the substances operated on.” The fact that
there are certain families of elements whose members are
related to each in the same way as the members of other
families are related to each other, points to community of
origin, and so far favours the idea that the “elements” are
really composite structures. Against this has been urged
the apparent impossibility of decomposing such family
eroups. “It has, however, at the same time, come to be
recognized that heat of high temperature is a very powerful
decomposing agent, and that its office is by no means limited
to causing the separation from one another of the molecules
of a substance,” but also of separating the atoms which
compose the molecules. If, then, heat of higher temperature
were obtainable, it is probable we should be able to decompose
some of the so-called elements. There seems, moreover, to
be good reason to believe the whiter stars to be the hotter,
and the atmosphere of some of these, such as Sirius, do seem
to contain nothing but hydrogen, which makes for the idea
that were these others as hot as Sirius, their now complex
atmospheres would be reduced to the same simplicity.
1 We have learned from Mendelejeff’s researches that if the “elements”
_ ee ee ee ee
GENESIS. 105
(2) Globe Development. Whether the ultimate units be
regarded as distinct elements, or as having been at first all of
the same kind, they are supposed to have been originally
widely diffused through space, but exerting upon one another
gravitating force, and possessing, therefore, what is called
“potential energy.” As these ultimates came together, and
smote each other in elemental strife, heat was naturally
evolved. “We may thus imagine the cooling and (except
under very strict conditions of original distribution) necessarily
revolving matter in course of time to have thrown off certain
parts of itself, which would thereafter form satellites or
planetary attendants, while the central mass would form the
sun. We have here, in fact, the development hypothesis of
Kant and Laplace, and it is greatly in favour of the truth of
this hypothesis, that all the planetary motions of the solar
be placed in a series according to their atomic weights, beginning with
hydrogen as 1, and ending with Uranium as 240, there are gaps in the order
which seem for their filling up to require new substances. Now, some of
these thus theoretically required have been actually discovered. “ 'This,’’
says Mr. Hill, “places the theory upon a strong vantage-ground, for it
endows it with a predictive value analogous to that of astronomy. It was
Bode’s law which led Leverrier and Adams to assign a position to an
unknown planet from the anomalous movements of Uranus, so that Dr. Galle
of Berlin, at Leverrier’s suggestion, turned his telescope to the indicated
portion of the heavens, and discovered the planet Neptune.” But Mr. Hill
is careful to warn us against laying too much stress on the analogy of the
two cases. Conclusive as this seems, he says, there is still a possibility
that we have only here a remarkable coincidence, for the late Professor
Benjamin Pierce, said to be “one of the most competent mathematicians
that ever lived,” declares that “Galle’s discovery was only a happy accident,
the calculations being only approximately correct, and equally valid fora
planet one hundred and eighty degrees from the one discovered.” Still, the
balance of evidence points in an ethereal direction for the origin of matter.
A remarkable effort of Dr. Johnstone Stoney has resulted in a logarithmic
law of atomic proportions from a comparison of the cube roots of the atomic
weights. His calculations require three “elements” lighter than hydrogen,
so that we get continually nearer to ether as the ultimate “substance” of all
the atoms. See “Genetic Method,” p. 49.
106 THE ORERPOSE) OLY PALTA.
system are nearly in one plane, and also that, looking down
on the system from above that plane, all these motions are
seen to be in one and the same direction. Assuming, therefore,
that the solar system and, pari passu, the other sidereal
systems have been formed in this way, it is very easy to see
why the central mass should be hotter than its attendants.
Two causes would conduce to this. In the first place,
assuming that the heat of a mass is due to the rushing
together of its particles under the force of gravitation, the
velocities would be much greater for the central mass, and
hence the amount of heat (per unit of mass, z.e. temperature)
developed would be greater also. In the next place, the
body being a large one would cool less rapidly than its
attendant planets. These two causes thus combine to render
the largest bodies of the universe ever since their aggregation
(and still more now) the hottest, so that the same body which
forms the gravitating centre of the system becomes, when
required, also the dispenser of light and heat.”
3. The End of the Universe-—lIt is scarcely possible to
refrain from the inquiry, What, in the view of science, will
be the end of this process? According to one view, the end
will be the aggregation of all the matter of the universe into
one mass, from which all “energy” has disappeared. What-
ever opinion we hold about ether, we must grant that “all
but an exceedingly small fraction of the light and heat of the
sun and stars goes out into space, and does not return to
them,” or, in other words, the sun and stars are slowly
cooling. To this must be added that the visible motion of
the heavenly bodies is being gradually retarded, and must
ultimately cease. There will inevitably be collisions, which
for a time will set agoing again the original process, but on
a diminishing scale, and hence in the end all matter will
form one cold inert mass. When, for example, the earth
ee ee
—— ——
GENESIS. 107
has, by something which may be called ethereal friction,
gradually lost its orbital energy, it must be devoured by the
sun, which will similarly absorb all the planets. And the
same thing must happen with all other suns and planets.
Then, in like manner, all the suns must approach a common
centre. In doing this collisions will take place, which will
reduce them to dust and gas, only again to aggregate and
cool. But the fact that the large masses are finite shows
the process cannot have been or be going on for ever; that
it began and will cease. And the point of cessation will be
that at which all matter has been finally gathered into one
inert body silently poised in infinite space.
The authors of the remarkable work! from which I have
already quoted take another view. “All this is what would
take place, provided we allow the indestructibility of ordinary
matter; but we may perhaps suppose that the very material
of the visible universe will ultimately vanish into the
invisible.” If we should be led to adopt the view held by
Helmholtz and Lord Kelvin as to the origin of matter, we
shall not have much difficulty in accepting the opinion of
Professors Stewart and Tait as to its end. They give reasons
for the belief that the available energy of the visible universe
will ultimately be appropriated by the invisible, and then
strongly suggest that matter itself will be similarly appro-
priated, “so that we shall have no huge useless inert mass
existing in far remote ages to remind the passer-by of a form
of energy and a species of matter which will then have
become long since out of date and functionally effete. Why
should not the universe bury its dead out of sight?” Why
not, indeed? Only let us remember that this kind of death
is but a return to original condition. The cycle of the visible
universe begins with the invisible and ends with the invisible.
1 “Unseen Universe,” p. 16f.
108 THEVREP OSLO AIL Th
What unseen forms of substance, life, consciousness, love,
therein live, move, and have their being, physical science
can but hint, and mental science conjecture. But for
those whose intuitions of power, love, beauty, truth, and
right have been quickened by contact with Jesus Christ,
there is the repose of perfect content in that which He
reveals.
4. The Genesis of Life-——A curious reaction has taken
place among many thinkers in their way of looking at matter
and energy. Once matter was looked upon as a sort of inert
something into which energy had to pass as a sort of life.
Now it is rather regarded as being itself a mode of energy ;
and energy a mode of manifestation of the Eternal Power.
However true this may be, there will long be difficulty to
most men in thinking thus of matter. It is true they can
easily pass in thought, guided partly by what they see, partly
by inference from what they see, from solid to liquid, from
liquid to gas, and, perhaps, from gas to ether. And it is not,
perhaps, quite beyond their power to think of matter as ether
differentiated by motion ; for, at all events, we are not called
upon to think of motion without something moved. And
heat, light, electricity, magnetism, may perhaps be conceived
as varied modes of motion in the ethereal medium. I doubt
if, for many generations to come, most men—even of the
cultured—can get beyond that. But granting that in some
sense matter may be called a mode of energy, in which other
modes are present, can it be said that heat, light, electricity,
magnetism, can and do exist where there is no matter at all
—not even in the ethereal state? Not even scientific theory
seems at present to warrant that. Perhaps all that is meant
is that the medium of energy is ether, and that matter is
simply a mode of ether—that is, a mode of energy’s medium,
not of energy itself. And yet even that way of putting it
GENESIS. 109
brings us to energy as a real something. From which it
would appear there are two ultimate scientific somethings—
energy and its medium. And thus we get very near to the
idea that our consciousness of reality resolves itself into
consciousness of force. But this again resolves itself into
consciousness of will, and will is always associated with life.
Thus our ultimates really are living will and the medium on
which the living will works.
It may be, then—perhaps it must be—that in a sense
there is no distinct beginning to life. The quarryman’s
phrase—the living rock—may have more meaning than we
thought. The origin of species, in this point of view, no
longer presents either the difficulties or the importance it
once did. If it be held—as I think it must be held—that
ether is, in a sense, living, we need not quarrel with Haeckel’s
notion that the entire universe is a living organism. What
is distinctively called life, becomes only a matter of degree.
And yet even as degree it cannot be regarded only as a mode
of energy in the ordinary sense. It is only by identifying
energy and life that we can call the difference one of degree,
But though there is a sense in which I think this is true,
great practical inconveniences would result from using energy
as equivalent to life. Thus we are told that men of science
have long since given up the idea that life can produce
energy, and, it is added, they must also abandon the idea
that energy can produce life. Adhering, then, to the ordinary
use of the terms, it would seem there is nothing for it but
to refer the origin of life to some special action of the unseen,
just as we have found it necessary to do in the case of
matter. Yet, for my own part, I would rather hold to the
theory that, in a lower sense, whatever is lives, and passes
by insensible gradations into the higher life. But be it one
way or the other makes no difference to our faith in God.
110 THE REPOSE, OF FAITH.
Whichever way He has chosen will always prove to be
the best.
It is hardly worth while entering. into any discussion of
“natural selection,” or, better, the “ survival of the fittest”
and the like, though it is important to see, with Professor
Drummond, that the charge made against nature of non-
moral indifference—a charge which, if it has any meaning
at all, must be made against God—has centred itself on the
struggle for life, omitting altogether the struggle for the life
of others, as though this were never seen in any part of
nature lower than man. It is granted all round that, when
every possible element is taken into account, we cannot
directly answer Spencer, Mill, Clifford, or Huxley. But
this does not trouble us much. All pain is not necessarily
evil, and the only question is whether any pain is. Of that
I cannot be sure. But moral disorder, which results in pain,
assuredly is evil, and it is not yet proved that it was open
to Omnipotence to prevent that. It is true that science
renders it to the last degree improbable that all evil in this
world was the result of Adam’s “ fall,’ but it may be, as
some hold, that evil originated in an earlier “fall” still—
that of the “Prince of this world”—and next that the fall
of the founder of the Adamic race increased the evil effects
in nature. But be this as it may, the very intuitions of good
which prompt the charges against “nature” are themselves
witnesses for God, and however present controversies con-
cerning the theory of evolution may be finally determined,
the result is sure to be a higher, not a lower, conception of
the Divine action. The dawn of the higher thought has
been followed by a somewhat cloudy morning, but already
the sky is clearer, and there is ample promise of a brilliant
noon. But whether this promise be fulfilled or not, faith
knows that the sun is always shining, and has always
GENESTS, III
strength enough to rise until she sees the clouds beneath
her feet.
5. The Genesis of Consciousness.—To give an account of
the actual origin of consciousness is still beyond the power
of science, but certain features of its development have been
very carefully observed and recorded. Mr. Hill remarks
that every known mental manifestation is associated with
organic movement—a statement which may be accepted with
some reserve touching the higher consciousness, which is
passive rather than active. “In man both mind and its
expressive activities are centred in the cerebro-spinal portion
of the nervous system, and especially in its encephalic
ganglia, the brain.” The most important result of recent
Investigations is the evidence adduced for localization of
function. In many points specialists are far from being
agreed, but I suppose it may be assumed that they are
almost at one in the following propositions. The first is,
“that organic and mental phenomena—neurosis and psychosis
—have common space-relations.” The second is, “that they
are manifested in distinct tracts of organic tissue, and are,
therefore, not only correlated generally but specifically in
the organism.” The third is, “that these specifically corre-
lated psychoses and neuroses result from a differentiation of
function that accompanies a differentiation of the tissue in
which they have their seat; or, in other words, that as parts
of the brain are developed and adapted to specific uses, the
correlated psychic manifestations, although not identical
either with their substance or their activities, are also de-
veloped and adapted in a corresponding manner.” In short,
the common knowledge of the relations of mind and body
is beginning to receive something like a definite scientific
interpretation. It is not, however, intended, though con-
sciousness, at least in the lower sense, is always accompanied
Liz THE REPOSE VOL ATLA,
by nerve-action, that nerve-action is always accompanied by
consciousness.
The phenomena of somnambulism and of hypnotism
seem to imply that either there is a kind of consciousness
of which no recollection is preserved, or else that there is
no consciousness whatever of the actions performed. Indeed,
it has even been said to be scientifically conceivable, such
ample provision is there made in the nervous system for
something approaching to automatism, that a man should
live for years, regularly performing the functions essential
to life, without being conscious at all. It is also suggested
that consciousness looks like a sort of god frequently in-
specting the lower world of nervo-mental phenomena, with-
out having anything whatever to do either with their causes
or effects! This, however, is probably granting more than
the writers in question intend. For it is practically admit-
ting a dualism which they elsewhere deny, and asserting,
since the consciousness must belong to something, a spirit
in man which is not affected by, as it does not affect, the
phenomena of nerve and mind, and which may therefore be
immortal.
As consciousness is intermittent, one naturally asks what
are its physiological conditions so far as science has succeeded
in ascertaining them. These are broadly specified by Richel
as circulation of the blood, respiration, nutrition, temperature,
age, sleep. 1. Every one knows that interrupted circulation
is followed by syncope. “A moment’s pressure of the great
arteries supplying blood to the brain renders the subject
unconscious.” 2. It is unnecessary to say anything of the
familiar phenomena of asphyxia. 3. “The cerebral cells are
renewed by the aliments contained in the blood. Hunger
and thirst are psychic notifications of its changed condition.
Although consciousness continues long after the supply of
GENESTS. 113
aliment has been withdrawn, delirium at last sets in, ideas
become incoherent, sensibility is modified, and at last death
ensues. (It seems as if the separate centres, and even the
Separate cells, have a life of their own which endures after
the bond that unites them in rational co-ordination has been
broken.) 4. It sometimes startles one to think how narrow is
the range of temperature within which consciousness can be
Manifested. A little above or a little below the normal,
and consciousness apparently ceases. 5. We have seen the
necessity of nutrition. It is now to be noted that nervous
tissues have their birth, their growth, their death. “The
brain, like a tree withered at the top, may lose its vitality
long before the other parts of the organism have yielded to
the law of death.” The reverse may also occur—the brain
yielding last—“like the pine tree whose evergreens wave
in the breeze above the scar of the lightning’s stroke.” But
whatever the area in which nervous action fails, from that
area consciousness retires. 6. It is curious that observers are
still unable to decide whether sleep is the suspension or the
diminution of consciousness. Yet we need scarcely wonder.
For suppose sleep to be unconsciousness, how are we to know
it? Can we be conscious of our unconsciousness? Direct
testimony seems, then, impossible, and we can judge, not
from our observation of ourselves, but from our observa-
tion of others. And here the difficulty presents itself that
we can only decide from external signs which, in many cases,
might mislead. Yet there are cases where the inference is
that @ consciousness is suspended. When coming out of
Syncope, consciousness to all appearance is resumed at the
point where it had ceased, as in the case of the man who was
interrupted in the middle of a sentence by a railway collision,
and finished it weeks afterwards, the interval being one of
apparent lifelessness. I have said a consciousness, for there
I
114 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
are some reasons for believing that one may pass from lower
to higher states of consciousness, and that while each series
of states has its own memory, there is no recollection in
either series of what happened in the other. But sleep—
whether it is properly called diminution or cessation of con-
sciousness—is, of course, a physiological condition of its con-
tinuance or recurrence, for it seems that no living creature
with a physical organism can continue always awake. It
is scarcely necessary to add, except for formal completeness,
that whatever tends, whether the instrument be a blow or a
poison, to injure the brain tends to obliterate consciousness.
But in all this we have been only considering conditions,
the failure of which would be accompanied apparently by
failure of what, for want of a better word, I have called the
lower consciousness. Hertzen has endeavoured to supply
a fuller account. He holds that “consciousness is connected
exclusively with the disintegrating phase of central nervous
action,” and he says that the following laws may be noted:
“1, The intensity of consciousness is in direct ratio to the
intensity of functional disintegration. 2. The intensity of
consciousness is in inverse ratio to the ease and quickness
of the central translation of stimulus into action.” This,
in everyday phraseology, means that what we learn to do
quickly and well, we soon do without thinking about the
process—as walking, playing an instrument, and so forth.
This fact is full of significance and importance touching
habit. A man must be to some extent the servant of habit,
good or bad. The advantage of making the virtues auto-
matic in action is enormous, not only as to their continuity
and certainty, but also as affording a secure platform from
which to ascend to greater heights. We may accept Hertzen’s
statement of these two laws without accepting the theory
with which he weds them. For he identifies consciousness
GENESIS. 115
with motion, which seems like the identification of the con-
ditions of a thing with the thing itself. Even were we able
to say that we were directly conscious of molecular motions
in the brain—which we are not—we should still have but
consciousness of motions, and this would give us no right
to say that consciousness is motion. Unless a man believes
that nothing but himself exists, he would not be entitled to
identify “objects of consciousness with the consciousness of
objects.” Hertzen really brings us back to what is known
as subjective idealism, which, rigidly carried out, compels a
man to hold that the entire universe—including all other
thinkers than himself—exists merely in himself. We may
well conclude that the origin of consciousness is not within
our ken, and that as to its nature, we know it too well to
be content with any explanation that has yet been given.
But as with life, so with consciousness, If we cannot
state its origin—if we know it too well for definition—it is
yet useful to learn what we may of its development. But
here I must ask the reader to bear in mind the distinction
between consciousness generally and the consciousness of
self. I do not venture to say there is no self-consciousness
in the lower forms of life; I only ask you to remember that
there may be creations that are conscious without being
self-conscious. The controversy as to where psychic life
begins is still vigorously carried on. Mr. Spencer, in taking
to pieces, finds the lowest terms of consciousness in sensation,
but in building up starts with reflex actions devoid of
sensation. This has called forth from Siciliani a vigorous
protest. “Why, in a word, does analytical psychology arrive
at a conscious act, however rudimentary, while synthetic
psychology starts from an unconscious and automatic
activity?” Mr. Hill thinks that this criticism “ applies
equally to Romanes’s endeavour to trace the evolution of
116 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
psychic phenomena, since he denies them altogether to the
lowest beings in the zoological series, and marks their appear-
ance, one after another, in the ascending scale of life, in
what seems an arbitrary manner.” Binet, on the other hand,
holds that psychic manifestations occur in the very lowest
forms of life. The Amceba, a “ simple, undifferentiated, pro-
toplasmic cell,” shows signs of intelligence. Binet gives
the following description of what occurs when it happens to
meet a foreign body: “In the first place, if the foreign
particle is not a nutritive substance—if it be gravel, for
instance—the amceba does not ingest it; it thrusts it back
with its pseudopodia. This little performance is very signi-
ficant; for it proves that this microscopic cellule in some
manner or other knows how to choose and distinguish
alimentary substances from mere particles of sand. If the
foreign substance can serve as nutriment, the amceba engulfs
it by a very simple process. Under the influence of the
irritation caused by the foreign particle, the soft and viscous
protoplasm of the amceba projects itself forwards and spreads
about the alimentary particle somewhat as an ocean wave
curves and breaks upon the beach: to carry out the simile
that so well represents the process, this wave of protoplasm
retreats, carrying with it the foreign body which it has
encompassed. It is in this manner that the food is enveloped
and introduced into the protoplasm ; there it is digested and
assimilated, disappearing slowly.” Binet also says that in
a large number of species this prehension of food is preceded
by the search for food, and, in the case of living prey, by
its capture. The same author carries us a little further in
the case of the Infusoria. He tells us that if a drop of water
containing these be placed under the microscope, organisms
are seen swimming rapidly about, and traversing the liquid
medium, in which they are, in every direction. “ Their
GENESTS. 117
movements are not simple; the infusory guides itself while
swimming about; it avoids obstacles; often it undertakes to
force them aside; its movements seem designed to effect an
end, which in most instances is the search for food; it
approaches certain particles suspended in the liquid; it feels
them with its cilia; it goes away and returns, all the while
describing a zigzag course similar to the paths of captive
fish inan aquarium. This latter comparison naturally occurs
to the mind. In short, the act of locomotion, as seen in
detached infusoria, exhibits all the marks of voluntary
movement.’ Nor is this all. It seems there exist organisms
which, though living a life of habitual isolation, understand
how to unite to attack prey at the desired time. The
Lodocandatus, for example, will combine to attack animal-
cule one hundred times its own size. Binet, as quoted in
“Genetic Method,” to which book I am largely indebted for
these illustrations, gives the following as psychic traits of
these micro-organisms: 1. The perception of external objects.
2. The choice made between a number of objects. 3. The
perception of their position in space. 4. Movements calcu-
lated either to approach the body and seize it, or to flee from
it. These are characteristics found in unicellular organisms
at the very basis of life. It is difficult to go lower; yet
one finds it hard to stop. Is there consciousness in all life,
and is even inorganic matter in some sense alive? Are
the atoms and molecules living and conscious things, with
some power of perception and choice? Has the living and
conscious will in which the universe originates, imparted
life and consciousness to all that is? Should it so turn out,
what is there in that to distress us? Should it appear that
from atoms to man there is an unbroken development of life
and consciousness, why should that in the slightest degree
disturb our faith ?
118 THE REPOSE ROR AIT:
Let it not be imagined that what we give to nature is
taken from God. The whole controversy: turns, not on the
author, but on his way of writing. It does not, of course,
follow that because God has manifestly worked in the way
of evolution, He has worked in no other way. But surely
the man of science is right in acknowledging only the way
of evolution unless and until some other way is found.
Only let us not exaggerate. However reluctant we may be
to admit any “absolute” commencement, we cannot ration-
ally deny relative commencements. Absolute beginning of
being is as inconceivable to the theologian as it is to the
physicist. If our present universe is the child of one, the
erandchild of another universe, and so backwards for ever,
if each in its turn emerges from and returns to the unseen,
then the written record of its life is a biography not
only of itself, but also of God. If we may speak of the
evolution of universes for ever—the ever of the past and the
ever of the future—then for ever does evolution imply an
evolver. The ultimate manifested is not space or time,
ether or spirit, motion or force, life or consciousness, volition
or law; it is not these, for they are all effects: it is the
eternal cause manifested in them and in all their combina-
tions and developments. Science writes the history of the
effect; theology reads it as the biography of the cause.
Until we study the universe, or the universes, as a manifesta-
tion of the life of God, we do not rise as high as we ought.
The history of Nature, like the history of her highest
product, has its epochs, but more pronouncedly epochs than
anything in the story of man, except his beginning as man,
and his consummation as Christian. It is no wonder that
the beginning of each epoch is regarded as a miracle. For,
looking backward, each epoch is traceable to a point which
marks the fact that a new departure has been made, though
GENESIS. 119
the point of the new departure itself be not visible. Or we
may go back as far as we can and then forward. We cannot
find the exact commencement of our universe, but the
evidence shows that there was a commencement. This was
followed by the stupendous series of physical actions and
events still proceeding. We cannot say precisely when life
began, but we know that it did begin, and was followed by
the long development of which the human body appears
as the crown. We cannot discover the starting-point of
animal consciousness, but we are sure that it has not always
been, and we can in some sort follow its rise from amceba
to man. We cannot observe the first appearance of the
higher consciousness which has for its object God and self,
but we cannot doubt that there was a first appearance. It
is only the last of these great beginnings we can find with
any approach to definiteness, though one can hardly say
exactly when Christianity commenced. For we have still
what we may call Pree-evangelical as wellas Part-Evangelical
and Sub-Evangelical Christianities, as in Judaism, Mahome-
danism, and Buddhism, and, indeed, in all forms of religion.
It is, I think, to be held that the Lamb which was slain from
the foundation of the world began to influence man from
the moment man became God-conscious, self-conscious, and
moral; for the Incarnation, which manifests God in the flesh,
must not be regarded as the absolute beginning of Christ’s
influence on man, but as being the supreme feature of the
new epoch—the conclusion and crown of all that Christ had
done, the beginning and source of all He was todo. Now,
let us call the first the epoch of creation; the second, the
epoch of life ; the third, the epoch of consciousness ; the fourth,
the epoch of the higher consciousness; the fifth, the epoch of
the Incarnation. Yet we must be on our guard against the
misleading associations of the word “epoch.” Often we suppose
120 THE REPOSECOR TALL A,
epochs to follow each other serially, one ending where the
other begins. But that is not the case here. There is —
succession in the beginning, and there may be succession
in the ending, so far as they do end; but meanwhile they run
on side by side, or in closer union than that. Now,as I have
said, it is no wonder these beginnings should be called
miracles; and I cannot but think that some men of science
manifest a not altogether reasonable dislike of the word, or
rather of what the word stands for. The objection to the word
“supernatural” is more just. Still, as far as science clearly
sees at present, extraordinary Divine action there must have
been at the beginning of the epochs named. For my own
part, I should be quite content to regard all five epochs as
being but humanly marked stages in the ordinary action
of God, and it would not greatly surprise me if, some day,
“miracles” being abandoned in the name of religion, they
were taken up and retained in the name of science. For,
“quite seriously, unless we are to believe in uncaused effects—
or, at least, in beginnings without cause—I do not see how
science, In its present state, can explain the appearance of
these epochs at all, without attributing them to extraordinary
Divine action.
The reply is sometimes the denial of commencements,
the assertion of a continuous development without breaks.
Let us test this as fairly as we can. It will be observed there
is here no question of piety or of its sincerity. There is
nothing that I know of to prevent the denier being as pious
—as sincerely pious—as his opponent. But I cannot help
thinking that he is under some illusion as to the meaning
of continuity and commencement. Take the ascent of a
mountain. Unless the ascent be infinite, there must be a
point where one begins to be nearer the top than the bottom
—there is a commencement. Take the transition from
GENESTS. 121
night to day. There must be a point where it is no longer
night—there is a commencement. Suppose, for a moment,
that ether did not begin to be, and that it was originally
motionless, and that matter is ether in vortical movement ;
then matter began to be. Grant that non-living matter
became living, still there was commencement; that living
matter became conscious, then self-conscious, then moral,
——still there was beginning of conscious, self-conscious, and
moral beings. Suppose that the being at once conscious, self-
conscious, and moral, becomes completely—perfectly—human
in Christ; still there was a commencement. In short, all
change is commencement, no matter how gradual the change
may be. The only question, really, is not whether the great
epochs began, but whether each epoch required a distinct
interposition of Divine action, or whether the original force
which showed itself in differentiated ether is sufficient to
account for the successive changes into the physical universe,
into living beings, into conscious beings, into beings with the
higher consciousness, into Christ.
In answering this question, we must make sure of what
we mean. If the force which does all this is identical with
God, then the question is answered at once in the affirmative,
and the physical universe, life, consciousness, the higher con-
sciousness, Christ, are all ascending effects of one and the
same cause, and in this sense perfectly natural. But if we
mean one force that goes out from God—say, a single execu-
tive volition which contemplated and provided for the entire
series of changes in each of the successively appearing epochs
—then we must take a little time to consider. It is, I think,
conceivably true up to a certain point. I can imagine it
possible that the original substance had locked up in it, as in
coiled springs, certain forces, of which each of the higher
would be liberated only when the lower had reached a given
122 LHE REPOSE OF FAITH.
point; and it may be that the original substance contained
in itself all the powers, successively appearing as physical
universe, living beings, and conscious beings. Yet that
conscious beings should become in this way God-conscious
and self-conscious, there is great difficulty in believing. But
suppose that difficulty surmounted, and that we finally come
in view of Christ asa man. We must, I think, hesitate long
before we can accept the detached-force theory as accounting
for His humanity. And yet it may be that our hesitation
would end if we once grasped the conception that the
Incarnation was the one far-off Divine event towards which
the whole creation moved. All other epochs have led up to
Christ. We cannot be led past Him or beyond, because in
Him man passes into visible union with God, and thenceforth
the realized union of the human and Divine becomes the per-
manent condition of the continued evolution of man. There
is no break in continuity. The epoch of man ascends to the
epoch of Christian man, in which not only is he the highest
product of the single executive volition in which we have
supposed the universe to originate, but also becomes by his
union with God a sharer of the Divine nature, a partaker of
the eternal life.!
6. The Genesis of the New Universe. When one learns the
enormous sizes of the innumerable suns, and the relative
smallness of their attendant planets, one naturally asks,
What becomes of all the heat and light radiated into space ?
To supply at least a partial answer to this question was one
of the objects for which the “ Unseen Universe” was written.
1 Of course, the view here presented implies a very great departure from
the common notions of matter. An ultimate something, in which are in-
herent all the powers which are successively seen as physical universe, life,
consciousness, etc., is not matter in the ordinary sense. But then science,
while retaining the word, has changed its meaning—a fact too often for-
eotten even by men of science themselves,
GENESIS. 123
There are parts of this remarkable book not very easy for the
non-mathematical reader to grasp, but the general outline of
the argument may be followed with facility by any one who
is familiar with the great theories of modern science. “ Now,
if we regard the dissipation of energy which is constantly
going on, we are at first sight forcibly struck with the
apparently wasteful character of the arrangements of the
visible universe. All but a very small portion of the sun’s
heat goes day by day into what we may call empty space,
and it is only this very small remainder which can be made
use of by the various planets for purposes of their own.
Could anything be more perplexing than this seemingly
prodigal expenditure of the very life and essence of our
system? That all but a petty fraction of this vast store of
high-class energy should be doing nothing but travelling
outwards in space at the rate of 188,000 miles per second
is hardly conceivable, especially when the result of it is
the inevitable destruction of the visible universe, unless we
imagine this to be infinite, and so capable of endless degra-
dation. If, however, we continue to dwell on this astounding
phenomenon, we begin to perceive that we are not entitled to
assert that this luminous energy does nothing but continue
to travel outwards. It is, perhaps, too much to say that
Struve’s speculations prove an ethereal absorption, but they
must be taken in connection with other considerations. We
have already maintained that we cannot regard the ether as a
perfect fluid, and that we must look to the unseen portion of
the universe as that out of which the seen has been developed.
We must, therefore, regard this unseen as possessing an
extremely complicated structure. Now, it is not easy to sup-
pose that in such a substance all vibratory motion should pass
outwards without in the smallest degree becoming absorbed or
changing its type. We are prepared, doubtless, to expect a.
124 THEDRKEROSEVORA LAI A,
great difference between the unseen and visible matter in this
respect, but can hardly imagine that the unseen is absolutely
free from the capacity of altering the type of the energy
which passes through it. Such an DY appears to us to
violate the principle of continuity.”
It will require some little effort of thought to realize the
significance of the foregoing statement. Let the reader, how-
ever, try to accustom himself to observe the transformation-
scenes continually presented in the great theatre of nature.
Here, for example, is an iceberg—a solid mass floating in a cold
sea. It is, however, drifting to the south, and, coming under
warmer skies, melts and is absorbed. It has ceased to be as
an iceberg. Annihilation of form has taken place, while its
substance remains; annihilation not only of form, but of
state. Note that this change of state is accompanied by
change of properties; we pass from stereostatics and stereo-
dynamics to hydrostatics and hydrodynamics. Now observe
the action of the sun on the sea in which the iceberg has
been absorbed. A mist rises from the surface of the waters.
It slowly ascends into the sky, and floats overhead as clouds.
A partial change of form and of state has taken place; but
though floating in the firmament, it is still the same substance.
Next, we can easily imagine a heat great enough to change
the entire waters of the world into steam; for this, on a
small scale, we know to be done every time the “firing up”
of a railway, or ship, or mill boiler takes place. Observe
that we are no longer dealing with water as such. Again
there is annihilation of form and state, and the changed
substance has changed properties. It may be doubted
whether there is strictly a science of the statics of gases,
but let us say that we have passed from hydrostatics
and hydrodynamics to pneumastatics and pneumadynamics.
Observe that our iceberg has passed into a state in which
GENESIS. 125
it can be no longer seen, but still belongs to the visible
universe. Now, what has thus taken place in a small mass of
matter may take place in all matter ; that is, it is scientifically
conceivable that all the worlds might be made hot enough to
pass either through liquid state or instantaneously into the
gaseous. Imagine this to have taken place. We still call
the worlds the visible universe, though no longer seen and no
longer worlds, because so far we are thinking only of what
has been seen.1 So far the state, the form, of matter has
been changed, but its more fundamental structure is not sup-
posed to have undergone change. Matter in its gaseous state
is still the same matter so far as its units of composition in the
mass are concerned. Though the universe has, by supposi-
tion, entered the gaseous state, it is not one gas, but an im-
mense variety of gases, exceedingly compound and complex.
Now imagine a great increase of heat. What happens ?
The compound gases separate into their simple constituents.
Now, the smallest particles of matter that will enter into
chemical combination in the formation of compounds are
called molecules. But these molecules are themselves com-
pounds of the same substance. Suppose, then, the increase
of heat to have split up the molecules. If, before the change
took place, we had been studying the subject, we might have
said we had passed into a new branch of science, which dealt
with molecules whether in solids, liquids, or gases; in other
words, molecular mechanics with its parallel divisions of
molecular statics, subdivided into molecular stereostatics,
molecular hydrostatics, molecular pheumastatics; and mole-
cular dynamics, with subdivisions as before—molecular
stereodynamics, molecular hydrodynamics, molecular pneuma-
dynamics. Do not suppose that this classification implies
* Of course, readers will not forget that one of the senses is here taken
for all. Visible is equivalent to sensible.
126 THE REPOSE. OI PAITA,
any theory as to whether the molecules themselves are to
be considered as solids, or liquids, or gases. It is simply
the science which studies their properties as found in
solid, liquid, or gaseous bodies. But, passing this by, let
us return; and take for granted that the universe, reduced
to its ultimate molecules, is to be still further reduced by
the splitting up of the molecules into atoms. Remember,
we are still dealing with the visible, though not seen,
universe. We suppose the heat to have been great enough
to successively reduce solids to liquids, liquids to gases, com-
pound gases to simple, simple gases to molecular, and mole-
cular to atoms. It was for some time supposed that we had
at last reached our ultimates. There are some seventy
so-called elements known to chemists, and they were called
elements because it was believed they were the simplest
forms of matter. But of late the idea has been started that
really there is but one element, and all the so-called elements
are but variations of that one. Now let us suppose all these
elements to melt with a fervent heat, and the universe to
be reduced to one ultimate gas, which we may now call the
elementary substance. What are we to think of this sub-
stance? We are still concerned with the not-seen-but-
visible universe. From what we know of heat, we are,
I think, compelled to conceive this ultimate substance as
being in a state of extreme movement, and as diffused in
a rain of atoms in all directions. We must remember
all these have yet attraction for each other, every atom for
all the rest, and all the rest for every atom. We have also
to bear in mind that mysterious something which comes into
operation as soon as the “ultimate” has passed into the
“elements ”—7.¢. affinity, with its counterpart of repulsion.
We have thus, without passing from the visible-but-not-seen
universe, gone as far as we can go. The next step must
GENESTS. 127
be not only into the unseen, but into the invisible. And the
belief that the visible universe was born out of the invisible,
seems to be steadily growing. Professors Stewart, Tait, and
Clerk-Maxwell and others, hold that the atoms themselves
present what, for want of a better phrase, they call all the
appearances of manufactured articles. And, as we have
already seen, Helmholtz and Lord Kelvin have traced this
“ultimate ” substance to endless whirls of differentiated ether.
All this time we have said nothing of the mighty agent
employed to effect these marvellous transformations—heat,
As every one knows, heat, like its transformees, light,
electricity, and magnetism, is not a substance. It is held to
be a mode of ethereal motion, and thus we are again taken
into the invisible. Ether and motion would now seem to be
our ultimates. But can we stop here? Is it possible to
think of motion without a cause? Even if we suppose the
ether and the movements in ether to be eternal, can we
content ourselves with that supposition? Let us see what
this involves. We cannot suppose that the idea simply of
motion in ether explains the facts. For behind every
thought of motion is the thought of power producing the
motion, as well as of energy in the motion. Now, it is
impossible not to credit the power producing with the power
of producing. Even if we recognize certain qualities as
belonging to the ether, and are content to ask nothing as
to how those qualities came, or even whether they did come,
we must still take into account the power acting on the
ether. Suppose, even, that this power is “conditioned” by
the medium on which it works, then to the power and the
medium jointly we must attribute all the phenomena of
matter, life, and consciousness which the evolved universe
presents. Is it conceivable that the power which, acting on
ether, produced matter, life, and consciousness is less as to
128 LHE REPOSEC OR VFAITA,
existence, as to livingness, as to consciousness, than its own
products? We are not bound so far to say that this power
is material, living, and conscious; but we are bound to say
that this power is not less than these. If now we choose
to regard ether as possessing the power which acts on itself,
and thus produces matter, life, and consciousness, the same
argument holds good. As before, we are not logically bound
to say that ether is material, living, and conscious; we
are forced to say it is not less than these. Moreover, as
many have shown, and most acknowledge, we have no idea
of power that is not derived from the consciousness of our
own volition. Hence we must also say, whether of the
power acting on ether, or of ether as possessing the power to
act on itself, it cannot be less than real, living,'conscious Will.
It is quite conceivable, however, that the ether itself is not
the final agent between the visible universe and its ultimate
' Cause. There may be a more refined and subtle universe
still out of which the ether has been evolved, there may
even be a spiritual universe out of which this other was
born; but science and religion, in their deepest and most
reverent mood, simply say alike, whatever contemporaneous
universes there may be, each growing out of the other, the
one Eternal Cause of all is not less than the highest con-
ception we can form—as real, living, conscious Will.
It is time to return to our authors. “But we may go
even further than luminiferous vibrations which take their
rise chiefly at the surfaces of bodies, and extend our specu-
lations into the interior of substances, since the law of
gravitation assures us that any displacement which takes
place in the very heart of the earth will be felt throughout
the universe, and we may even imagine that the same thing
will hold true of those molecular motions which accompany
thought. For every thought we think is accompanied
{
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|
GENESIS, 129
by a displacement and motion of the particles of the brain,
and we may imagine that somehow—in all probability
by means of the medium—these motions are propagated
throughout the universe. Views of this nature were long
ago entertained by Babbage, and they have since commended
themselves to several men of science, and amongst others
to Jevons. ‘Mr. Babbage, says this author, ‘has pointed
out that if we had power to follow and detect the minutest
effects of any disturbance, each particle of existing matter
must be a register of all that has happened.’ But again we
are compelled to imagine that what we see has originated
in the unseen. And we must resort to the unseen not only
for the origin of the molecules of the visible universe, but
also for an explanation of the forces which animate these
molecules. So that we are compelled to conclude that every
motion of the visible universe is caused by the unseen, and
that its energy is ultimately carried again into the unseen.
To conclude: we are thus led to believe that there exists
now an invisible order of things intimately connected with
the present, and capable of acting energetically upon it; for, in
truth, the energy of the present system is to be looked upon
as originally derived from the invisible universe, while the
forces which give rise to the transmutation of energy probably
take their origin in the same region. And it appears to us to
be more natural to imagine that a universe of this nature,
which we have reason to think exists, and is connected by
bonds of energy with the visible universe, is also capable of
receiving energy from it, and of transforming the energy so
received. In fine, it appears to us less likely that by far the
larger portion of the high-class energy of the present universe
is travelling outwards into space with an immense velocity,
than that it is being gradually transferred into an invisible
order of things.”
K
130 LHE REP OSE OF VRALITA.
All this, however, though exceedingly interesting, does
not touch upon what is to many the most interesting subject
of all—individual future life. To this point let us now
turn. After stating that the speculation just given is not
essential to their argument, the authors proceed: “If we
now turn to thought, we find that, inasmuch as it affects the
substance of the present visible universe, it produces a
material organ of memory.” The authors hold the incon-
celvability of such intelligence as that of man existing
without some sort of embodiment. To this the materialist
answers, You are quite right. We cannot conceive of mind
without matter, but we can very easily conceive of matter
without mind. We do not, of course, deny consciousness,
which comes and goes. But may not the case stand thus:
When a certain number of material particles, consisting of
phosphorus, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and perhaps
some other elements, are, in consequence of the operations
of their mutual forces, in certain positions with respect to
each other, and in certain states of motion, consciousness is
the result; but whenever this relative state is brought to an
end, there is also an end to consciousness and the sense of
individual existence, while, however, the particles of phos-
phorus, carbon, etc., remain as truly as ever. But all this
is nothing more than a “may be.” No one denies that
consciousness, so to speak, becomes latent at times, which
our authors illustrate by the energy of visible motion dis-
appearing by transformation into the dormant or latent
energy of position. Disappearance is not destruction. For
the rest, to say that the living brain consists of. “particles
of phosphorus, carbon, etc., such as we know them in the
common state, and that when the particles of the brain have,
in consequence of the operation of physical forces, a certain
position and motion, then individual consciousness follows,
GENESIS. Vie i.
is to assign a peculiar relation between the brain particles
and such consciousness for which we have no scientific
warrant ;” and if there is no scientific warrant, it is certain
there is no metaphysical one.
Of course it must be granted that, if there be in the
body nothing else than the visible particles, and in the
brain nothing else than a certain quantity “of phosphorus
and other things, such as we know them in the common
state, and if individual consciousness depends upon the
structural presence of these substances in the body and
brain, then, when this structure falls to pieces, there are
reasonable grounds for supposing that such consciousness
has entirely ceased. But, as we have seen, there are various
scientific reasons for believing that there is something beyond
that which we call the visible universe; and these reasons
also hold good for the belief that individual consciousness
is in some mysterious manner related to, or dependent upon,
the interaction of the seen and unseen.” How far science
is from pronouncing against the possibility of a future life,
the statement of these scientific men may serve to show.
“The sensation,’ as Professor Huxley says, “which has
passed away leaves behind molecules of the brain competent
to its reproduction, ‘seniegenous molecules, so to speak,
which constitute the physical foundation of memory.” If,
then, there should be reason to hold that this process is not
confined to the physical body—that the thought which affects
these memory-bearing molecules at the same time affects that
which by comparison may be called the spiritual body—
then there is no breach of continuity. “The motions which
accompany thought must also affect the invisible order of
things, while the forces which cause these motions are like-
wise derived from the same region, and thus it follows that
thought conceived to affect the matter of another universe
132 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
simultaneously with this may explain a future state. This
idea, however, requires further development and explana-
tion. Let us, therefore, begin by supposing that we possess
a frame, or the rudiments of a frame, connecting us with
the invisible universe, which we may call the spiritual body.
Now, each thought we think is accompanied by certain
molecular motions and displacements in the brain, and parts
of these, let us allow, are in some way stored up in that
organ, so as to produce what may be termed our material
or physical memory. Other parts of these motions are, how-
ever, communicated to the spiritual or invisible body, and
are there stored up, forming a memory which may be made
use of when that body is free to exercise its functions. Again,
one of the arguments which proves the existence of the in-
visible universe demands that it shall be full of energy when
the present universe is defunct. We can, therefore, very
well imagine that after death, when the spiritual body is
free to exercise its functions, it may be replete with energy,
and have eminently the power of action in the present,
retaining also, as we have shown above, a hold upon the
past, inasmuch as the memory of past events has been stored
up in it, and thus preserving the two essential requisites of
a continuous intelligent existence.”
A conclusion in favour of a future life has been reached
by other men of science in other ways. Stewart and Tait
wrote as physicists. Shaler, writing from the naturalist’s
standpoint, says, “The facts already ascertained concerning
the conditions of inheritance, although they are only a small
part of what we have to learn in the matter, show us clearly
that the ancient apparently simple explanation of mental
phenomena can no longer be safely trusted. Ifa mechanical
explanation can be used at all, it must be vastly more com-
plicated than that which has been hitherto adduced. It is
GENESIS. 133
clear that all the essential qualities of the mind pass from
generation to generation over the reproductive bridge, borne
onward in the keeping of chemical molecules.” So far one
may be in doubt as to what is intended. Professor Shaler
continues: “There is only one conclusion of evident value,
at least at the present time, which we can gain from the
facts above noted, and this is in effect that matter, even
in its simpler states of organization in the atom or mole-
cule, may contain a practically infinite body of latent
powers. So far, of course, we have seen this soul-bearing
capacity of matter, in its simpler states, only in the organic
realm; but he would be a rash man who should affirm that
this was the only place in nature where the material or
chemical substances were enabled to become the keepers
of intellectual seed. From an @ priori point of view, and
without reference to the facts which we have gained con-
cerning the sequences of organic life, it appears to me less
difficult to suppose the capacities of an individual mind to
be perpetuated after death, and this in a natural manner, than
to explain the phenomena of inheritance which are clearly
indicated in the organic series. To account for these evident
truths demands the supposition of such colossal potentialities
in the psychic capacities of matter, that we can hardly see a
limit to the field of its possible action.”
From yet another point of view Professor Drummond
arrives at a conclusion which embraces that of Stewart and
Tait:1 “Darwin’s great discovery, or the discovery which he
brought into prominence, is the same as Galileo’s—that the
world moves. The Italian prophet said it moves from west
to east; the English philosopher said it moves from low to
high. And this is the last. and most splendid contribution
of science to the faith of the world. The discovery of a
1 ©The Ascent of Man,” p. 436, et seq.
134 LAE: REROSE OF PATTA.
second motion in the earth has come into the world of
thought only in time to save it from despair. As in the
days of Galileo, there are many even now who do not see
that the world moves—men to whom the earth is but an
endless plain, a prison fixed in a purposeless universe, where
untried prisoners await their unknown fate. It is not the
monotony of life which destroys men, but its pointlessness ;
they can bear its weight, its meaninglessness crushes them.
But the same great revolution that the discovery of the axial
rotation of the earth effected in the realm of physics, the
announcement of the doctrine of evolution makes in the
moral world. Already, even in these days of its dawn, a
sudden and marvellous light has fallen upon earth and
heaven. Evolution is less a doctrine than a light; it is a
light revealing in the chaos of the past a perfect aA eTOw-
ing order, giving meaning to the confusions of the present,
discovering through all the deviousness around us the paths
of progress, and flashing its rays already upon a coming goal.
Men begin to see an undeviating ethical purpose in the
material world, a tide that from eternity has never turned,
making for perfectness. In that vast progression of nature,
that vision of all things from the first of time moving from
low to high, from incompleteness to completeness, from
imperfection to perfection, the moral nature recognizes in
all its height and depth the eternal claim upon itself.
Wholeness, perfection, love,—these have always been re-
quired of man. But never before on the natural plane have
they been proclaimed by voices so commanding, or enforced
by sanctions so great and rational.
“Ts nature henceforth to become the ethical teacher of
the world? Shall its aims become the guide, its spirit the
inspiration of man’s life? Is there no ground here where
all the faiths and all the creeds may meet—nay, no ground
a Ve ee
GENESIS. ; 135
for a final faith and a final creed? For could but all men
see the inner meaning and aspiration of the natural order,
should we not find at last the universal religion—a religion
- congruous with the whole past of man, at one with nature,
and with a working creed which science could accept? The
answer is a simple one: We have it already. There exists
a religion which has anticipated all these requirements—a
religion which has been before the world these eighteen
hundred years, whose congruity with nature and man stands
the tests at every point. Up to this time no word has been
spoken to reconcile Christianity with Evolution, or Evolu-
tion with Christianity. And why? Because the two are
one. What is Evolution? A method of creation. What
is its object? To make more perfect living beings. What
is Christianity ? A method of creation. What is its object ?
To make more perfect living beings. Through what does
Evolution work? Through love. Through what does Chris-
tianity work? Through love. Evolution and Christianity
have the same Author, the same end, the same spirit. There
is no rivalry between these processes. Christianity struck
into the evolutionary process with no noise or shock; it
upset nothing of all that had been done; it took all the
natural foundations precisely as it found them; it adopted
man’s body, mind, and soul at the exact level where Organic
Evolution was at work upon them; it carried on the building
by slow and gradual modifications; and, through processes
governed by rational laws, it put the finishing touches to the
Ascent of Man.
“No man can run up the natural lines of evolution with-
out coming to Christianity at the top. One holds no brief
to buttress Christianity in this way. But science has to deal
with facts, and with all facts, and the facts and processes which
have received the name of Christian are the continuations
136 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
of the scientific order, as much the successors of these facts
and the continuations of these processes—due allowances
being made for the differences in the planes, and for the new
factors which appear with each new plane—as the facts and
processes of biology are of those of the mineral world. We
land here, not from choice, but from necessity. Christianity
—it is not said any particular form of Christianity—is the
Further Evolution.” |
I have quoted here at large the testimony of men of
science, partly because such testimony is valuable in itself
and on account of its source, partly because of the wonderful
vistas into the ways of God it opens to our thought. But
for myself, I would say at once that my certainty as to God
and Christ does not need any such support. It is so clear
to me that science has and can have no validity, and all
this testimony has and can have no virtue, unless they
repose on the intuitions of truth, right, beauty, purposive
power, and love. These intuitions seem to me to directly
justify faith in God and Christ, and that faith when perfected
carries in its heart complete repose concerning the future
life. The right attitude towards science is not that of
hostility which is half fear, nor of dependence which is
half servile, but of glad and reverent recognition none the
less sincere that we have another and deeper source of
certainty. The Church has often been to blame for its
treatment of science, and greatly to blame for its treatment
of men of science, but not for her assertion of a distinct,
authoritative revelation as the fountain of her knowledge.
It is one thing—a noble thing it is—to trace the relations
of Christ to philosophy and science; it is another—and
by no means noble—to postpone our faith in Him until
philosophy and science have made up their minds how to
regard Him. His appeal is directly to our intuitions, call
— ed as _——)
GENESIS. 137
them by what name we may, and by their answer we abide.
If the theory of evolution be true, it is certain all the
testimonies given will be modified into higher forms, or be
replaced by better testimonies, and these by better testi-
monies still, though, perhaps, with intervals in which the
lesser have been discredited and the greater not yet arrived ;
but Christ and the intuitions to which He appeals are
yesterday, to-day, and for ever the same.
BOOK III.
‘THE REPOSE OF FAITH—IN THEOLOGY.
ree
ular
hata
CHAPTER I.
THE GENESIS OF RELIGION.
1. Introduction—If I were asked for a definition I should
simply say, Perfect religion is perfect love of God; im-
perfect religion is love dashed with fear; the lowest religion,
fear lighted by love, of God or gods. A doubt has been
raised as to whether religion is universal. Certainly, in the
sense of belief, it would be rather difficult to prove that it
is; and even in the true sense of the word, it might be said
that great numbers in the more civilized parts of the world
manifest but little love or fear of God, while in the un-
civilized the fear and love of the gods seem to alternate with
other emotions, of disgust and wrath. Still, whatever the fact
may be worth, it may be conceded that religion, low or high,
exists in every part of the earth. “The statement,” says
Professor Tiele, “that there are nations or tribes which possess
no religion, rests either on inaccurate observation, or on
a confusion of ideas. No tribe or nation has yet been met
with destitute of belief in any higher beings; and travellers
who have asserted their existence have afterwards been
refuted by the facts. It is legitimate, therefore, to call re-
ligion, in its most general sense, a universal phenomenon
of humanity.” Quatrefages, Spencer, and indeed most others,
now agree in this view.
I have written “love of God.” Mr. Matthew Arnold
would hardly allow that to pass. He would say, instead of
142 THE *RE POSE OF FAITH,
God, “a stream of tendency, a tendency that makes for
righteousness ;” and if he sometimes speaks of the Eternal
not ourselves that loveth righteousness, he is careful to
explain that “loveth” is used only figuratively. He will
not admit that “god” can mean anything more than the
shining one, and he is very scornful of all who attempt
to supplement the defects of the etymology by a fuller state-
ment of the facts. His contempt for metaphysics is very
marked, and the God of metaphysics is no God to him. But,
then, the God of the Bible is no God to him either. Instead
of a God who loves and wills, we have a stream of tendency.
He seems equally hostile to scientific thought on the subject,
and will not listen if one speaks of the First Cause. He
will allow you to “personify” the stream, but you must
always keep in mind it is a stream, of tendency, and, despite
your personification, not a person. If you venture on the
last-named term, you will find yourself in the presence of
a magnified man; and Mr. Arnold prefers a stream of ten-
dency. Let us grant that “magnified man” is figurative,
still it stands for a higher group of qualities than a “ stream,”
which is also figurative; and a magnified man who governs
righteously is a higher, conception than a stream that makes
for righteousness. For, as the righteousness is granted in
either case, we have only the terms “man” and “stream” to
compare; and in this comparison it will not be denied that
man is a higher being than a stream, and that righteousness
is more congruous with the idea of a human being than with
that of running water. Under these circumstances, as we
cannot please the followers of Mr. Arnold, we may at least
please ourselves. As interpreted at the highest point of our
power, God is the Righteous Father. But religion does not
appear to have begun with that conception; we must, there-
fore, for the “Righteous Father” of the highest faith put
THE GENESIS OF RELIGION. 143
the general and indefinite term, “Superhuman Being or
Beings.”
2. Lhe Karly Date of Religion—lIt goes without saying
that religion is earlier than documents. It is not clear how
it came to be. Though on some grounds improbable, perhaps,
I do not see why Professor Fairbairn should so dislike the
idea of a primitive revelation. This is the way he speaks
of it: “Although often advanced in the supposed interests
of religion, the principle it assumes is most ivreligious. If
man is dependent on an outer revelation” (Why outer ?) “ for
his idea of God, then he must have what Schelling happily
termed ‘an original atheism of consciousness.’ Religion
cannot in that case be rooted in the nature of man; it must
be implanted from without. The theory that would derive
man’s religion from a revelation is as bad as the theory that
would derive it from distempered dreams. Revelation may
satisfy or rectify, but cannot create a religious c capacity or
instinct, and we have the highest authority for thinking that
man was created to ‘seek the Lord, if haply he might feel
after and find Him,’ the finding being by no means de-
pendent on a written or traditional word. If there was a
primitive revelation, it must have been—unless the word is
used in an unusual and misleading sense—either written or
oral. If written, it could hardly be primitive, for writing
is an art, a not very early acquired art, and one which does
not allow documents of exceptional value to be lost. If it
was oral, then either the language for it was created, or
it was no more primitive than the written. Then an oral-
revelation becomes a tradition, and a tradition requires either
a special caste for its transmission, becomes therefore its
property, or must be subjected to multitudinous changes and
additions from the popular imagination—becomes therefore
a wild commingling of broken and bewildering lights. But
144 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
neither as documentary nor traditional can any traces of
a primitive revelation be discovered, and to assume it is
only to burden the question with a thesis which renders
a critical or philosophical discussion impossible.”
The temptation to criticize the foregoing statement is
very strong. For example, one might suggest that in the
nature of the case religion must be essentially a question
of intuition, whether our intuitions be the direct vision of
God (which I doubt not), or the principles which consciously
or unconsciously justify the inference that God is. This
seems to me not only the “primitive revelation,’ but a
revelation repeated in the case of every “awakening soul”
of man. I cannot but object, yet diffidently, as one who
ereatly admires Dr. Fairbairn, to identifying revelation with
either oral tradition or written documents. Yet, so far as
the above argument is concerned, I do not see why this
essential, primitive, and continuous internal revelation should
not be acted upon by an external “revelation,” written or
oral.. Ever since the being, thereafter man, became God-
conscious and self-conscious, there must have been some
more vividly conscious of God than others—must have been
“prophets since the world began”—and the words of these,
whether spoken or written, or both, would be an external
revelation to others acting on their intuitions, and so
clearing and brightening the internal revelation. And as to
oral tradition being, or becoming, a “ wild commingling of
broken and bewildering lights,” that is exactly what many
suppose to have happened in the absence of any external
revelation, whether oral or written. But I refrain from
further comment, because I agree with Dr. Fairbairn to
this extent, that it is impossible to prove an external
primitive oral or written “revelation” in the sense—not, I
think, justifiable—to which he apparently limits the word.
THE GENESIS OF RELIGION. 145
Religion of some sort must have existed from the time that
man as man comes upon the scene, and I should think it
infinitely more probable that Christianity, as the influence
upon the spirit of man of Him who in the fulness of time
became God manifest in the flesh, was the one source of all
religion than that there were many sources.
At this point the difficulty will be raised that, according
to the accounts in Genesis, there was an oral external primi-
tive revelation. How we are to regard those accounts must
depend upon our theory of the purpose and function of
“inspiration” and “revelation,” and of the way in which
those accounts came to be incorporated in the Bible. But,
taking them simply as they stand, I do not see that we
are any more committed by them to the idea that there was
no human race before Adam, than we are to the notion of
literal days. ‘The first account, ending with the third verse
of the second chapter, presents hardly any difficulty. If we
regard the second account, beginning with the fourth and
ending with the twenty-fifth verse of the second chapter, as
less authoritative and more parabolic, we may well suppose
a gap of immense duration between the seventh and eighth
verses. We may look on the first account, and even the
second as far as the end of the seventh verse, as a general
statement concerning the human race, and the eighth
verse as the starting-point for the Adamic race. The ascent
of man up to this point of selection may very well be
admitted. Thenceforth the story is mainly concerned with
the offspring of Adam; but it is surely not from Genesis
itself that we have formed the notion that there were no
men in the world except those of Adam’s race. The account
given of Cain seems to imply the exact contrary.
Going back as far as we possibly can, it does not seem
absolutely certain that no animals have a rudimentary
L
146 THEVREPOSEVOP SPALL A,
religion in the sense we have defined it. Perhaps the
wavering conclusion which alone seems possible can hardly
be put better than in the words of Mr. Hill. “The religious
nature has been ascribed even to animals, and certainly
some of the emotions akin to those of religion may be found
in the affection, fear, and devotion of the dog to his master.
But it can hardly be seriously maintained that animals have
a religion in the human sense. And yet it is evident that
the elements of feeling which might be developed into
reverence and worship are not wholly wanting in the dumb
creation. So deeply rooted in sensitive and perceptive life
are those impulses which are exhibited in the act of worship,
that, if self-consciousness, reflection, and imagination were
added to the animal faculties, even animals might become
susceptible of a truly religious experience. It is, of course,
true that under this supposition they would be animals no
longer. But it would be far easier to discern the germs of
faith and adoration in the noblest of the animals than to
deny them to the most primitive representatives of man.
That these are really inherent in his nature, not super-
imposed upon an essentially atheistic basis, seems to be the
more credible as we enter sympathetically into the emotional
life of all sentient creatures.”
3. Lheorves of its Origin: Fetishism—From the same
source I venture to take a remarkably clear and interesting
account of the two most prominent theories as to the origin
of religion. The first is the theory of primitive fetishism.
“Among the lowest races of men a superstitious regard
for ‘fetishes, or, as Andrew Lang has called them, ‘the
odds and ends of things,’ to which indwelling spirits are
ascribed, is very general. This led De Brosses, and after-
wards Auguste Comte, to affirm that all religion had its
origin in fetishism. The idea constituted an essential part
ee ee
Tai GENESIS: OF RELIGION. 147
of Comte’s positive philosophy, which traced the development
of the human mind through three stages—the theological,
the metaphysical, and the positive. This theory of the
development of religion is now generally abandoned as
deficient in a basis of facts.” ‘Made on the strength of
evidence furnished by early travellers, whose contact was
chiefly with races partially advanced and even semi-civilized,”
says Herbert Spencer, “the assertion that fetishism is
primordial gained possession of men’s minds; and _pre-
possession being nine points of belief, it has held its
ground with scarcely a question. I had myself accepted it,
though, as I remember, with some vague dissatisfaction,
probably arising from inability to see how so strange an
interpretation arose. This vague dissatisfaction passed into
scepticism, on becoming better acquainted with the ideas of
savages. Tabulated evidence, presented by the lowest races,
changed scepticism into disbelief. ... As the facts happen
to be exactly the opposite, the statement is conclusively
disproved.”
4, Ancestor- Worship.—The next is the theory of ancestor-
worship. Mr. Spencer’s own theory, shared in substance by
Tylor and others, traces the beginning of religion to the
worship of ancestors. This ingenious hypothesis may be
briefly outlined as follows: The mental type of primitive
man is to be found in the savage of to-day. To him all
dreams are realities, and dreamland is, therefore, the spirit-
land; for in dreams ideas differ from perceptions only in
being more dim and less coherent. The memories of dreams
are accepted by him, and told in good faith as actual ex-
periences of the spirit-land, and thus that shadowy realm
becomes an object of unquestioning belief. In dreams his
buried ancestor appears to him, a ghostly but actual presence,
who can revisit and affect this visible world. The grave is
148 LH EERE POSING Le taad ! Ee
made an object of veneration and of frequent visitation.
There the family goes to receive the commands of the
departed, for he is more likely to appear in this vicinity.
To mark the grave for ready resort and in honour of the dead, —
it is first surrounded with rude stones. As skill and wealth
increase, it 1s more elaborately marked, and finally walled in
and covered. The grave has become a shrine, the shrine a
temple. The dead chief may want his dog and horse in the
spirit-land. An altar is erected, the animal is slain, and
sacrifice is instituted. Perhaps he will wish the company
of his wife, and human sacrifice is added. He is pleased
with these offerings, and will answer requests. These are
made with the sacrifice, and prayer has become a ceremony
of religion. In the migrations of a people the grave is lost,
but what matters this? The spirit can accompany his
people. He leads them in their wanderings and affords
them protection. Religion is now established in the minds
and hearts of men. A skilful priesthood perpetuates it to
their personal profit. The doubter is ostracized, or made the
victim of the next sacrifice. :
There is no need to question: the fact that ancestor-
worship is widespread, though by no means universally.
The question is not whether it exists or has existed, but
whether it is the primordial form of religion. Unfortunately
for this supposition, the facts, as Mr. Hill remarks, do not
appear to be in its favour. Thus Doctor Victor von Strauss
says, “It can be proved that in China ancestor-worship has
enjoyed the highest respect for four thousand years, probably
even for longer. It is practised most conscientiously by the
emperor and by the common people. But it has been, and
has always remained, a concern of the house or clan only,
and even for them the spirit of an ancestor has never become
a god.” We learn from the same author that amongst the
THE GENESIS OF RELIGION. 149
Egyptians, when divine honours were paid to kings during
their lifetime, “even the best and mightiest among them
have never become popular deities.” An examination of
Greek and Roman mythology shows that ancestor-worship
cannot have been the first form of Greek or Roman
religion. Nay, if we turn to Mr. Spencer’s own “ Descriptive
Sociology,’ we find that, of seventeen lowest races there
enumerated, five do not appear to worship their ancestors
at all, and in the remainder ancestor-worship appears in
such a way as to suggest that the idea of a divinity had
in some way originated before it occurred to them to refer
their ancestors to this class. How the category of the divine
originated, this theory leaves unexplained.
5. Comparative Mythology—The fact is, the study of
comparative mythology has yielded results not very easy
to harmonize with any of the theories which have hitherto
held the field. Mr. Hill says that these results may be
summarized into three propositions: 1. The further we
penetrate into the past, the fewer in number are the gods.
2. The oldest theogonies represent the gods as suggested
by the powers of nature. 3. The primary object of
worship discovered by this method of inquiry is the sky-
god, or the shining sky itself. But even when later gods
had been multiplied, whether by fetishism, animism, or
ancestor-worship, the idea of a supreme, such as the bright
visible heaven suggests, never disappears. And it can
scarcely be doubted that Renouf and Max Miller are right
in tracing the ultimate of religion to the “ sensus numinis,”
the immediate perception of the infinite, “an intuition as
irresistible as the impressions of our senses.” ‘To the
Christian, however, the conviction will recur that there was
some perception of the infinite within as well as without.
He will see even in the lowest forms of it more of real
150 LAE REP OSE “OF VRAIT Es
religion than some writers will grant. Just as we get into
the habit of projecting the vices of courts on to the large
canvas of a people’s life, so we have drifted into the way
of darkening and broadening the scepticism of philosophers
into the irreligion of nations. Nay, there have been even
some who have thought to glorify Christ in this way, by
making the contrast between Christians and non-Christians
as startling as possible, forgetting that the nations are His
inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth His posses-
sion. That He selected and set apart in Adam one race
in whom the genius of religion was carried to its greatest
possible height, proves no indifference to the welfare of the
remaining inhabitants of the world. To maintain that He
was would be to dehumanize the Son of God, who had already,
by anticipation and in effect, become the Son of man even
from the very dawn of human life, the Lamb slain before
the foundations of the world. We must, therefore, regard
every nation as having its development in His hands, and
every religion as in this sense Christian; though sub-
Christian as compared with that supreme revelation begin-
ing with the Adamic race, and culminating in His personal
appearance as the Incarnate Saviour. Nor is it to be
forgotten that in the end Israel became, what Israel was
always meant to be, not an exclusive caste, but a royal
priesthood, a peculiar people, in whom all the nations of the
earth were blessed. The progress, then, of man from his
first beginning up to the point of the selection of Adam’s
race, was as truly in the hands of the Son of God as was
the development of that race itself.
6. The Genesis of Religion as Morality.—It is often said
that “conscience” is an unsafe “ guide ”—a statement which
needs to be carefully weighed. Morality, like religion, must
be given and, often and often, as men relapse, new-given.
ee os -.
THE GENESIS OF RELIGION. I51
“ Conscience” is the faculty by which we perceive relations
as right, and “reason” is the faculty by which we perceive
relations as true; or, briefly, conscience is the faculty of right,
reason the faculty of truth. It would be more accurate to-
say that conscience is the mind in relation to right, reason
the mind in relation to truth. For “faculty” is apt to be
regarded in too narrow and too shallow a sense, ignoring
the depth and breadth of feeling, which is itself not only
power, but also knowledge. It is well, perhaps, to carry this
a little further. We have, then, what may be called the
sense of power—that is, mind in relation to force; will which
is mind in relation to purpose; heart which is mind in
relation to love; “taste” which is mind in relation to
beauty; reason which is mind in relation to truth; con-
science which is mind in relation to right; “soul” which is
mind in relation to God. In all these respects, there is a
finite and a not finite, a temporal and not temporal aspect.
In the temporal and finite aspect the best word to use seems
to be mind; in the not finite and not temporal aspect the
best word seems to be “spirit.” . Hence mind ‘seems to be
conditioned spirit; and those who are absolute monists may
add that matter is conditioned mind. But I must not yield
to the temptation of discussing that question. What I want
to call special attention to, is that in these several relations
the spirit or mind must be taken in account, and not simply
a single faculty.
Let us now put our inquiry in this form: is the conscience
considered as mind in relation to right a safe “guide” ?
The use of the word “ guide” in this connection implies that
the mind finds the principles by which it directs its conduct
written on itself. That this is, to some extent, the case
may be granted; but the principles by which conduct is
governed must be taken in from a far wider range than
152 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
that of the individual mind. It cannot be questioned that
what is called the moral law is always regarded as something
“binding” on all men without distinction. Moreover,
though it is in a sense subjective, it is not regarded as
having a subjective origin. In other words, it is, though
these terms be never used, looked upon as an eternal not
ourselves, which makes for righteousness. In any case,
then, it is not the mind itself, but that which the mind
perceives, primarily by intuition, secondarily by inference and
experience, which is the “guide” of conduct. It is, in short,
not self, but divinely given law, which is our “ guide.”
But what is really intended when the question is put by
the religious is not adequately met by this answer. For
one thing, they want to know: Is the mind able, without
the aid of the revelation given in the Lord Jesus Christ, to
read aright the divinely given law? The answer to that
question is not hard to find. Once we are agreed that the
Lord Jesus Christ is the supreme embodiment of the moral
law, we must also agree that without Him we cannot so
much as read that law aright. Only we must remember
that in the evolution of society nations come within reach
of that supreme embodiment gradually and slowly, and that
their responsibility for obedience is determined by their
ability to know what it is they are called upon to obey.
I may add that it is not necessary to discuss here the
dynamic question. It is absolutely incredible that men
should be held guilty anywhere in the world for not being ©
or doing what they had, or had had, no power of being or
doing. It must be taken for granted that the Son of God
always and everywhere gives power enough to be and to
do what He requires men to be and to do, at any given
point in their growth. The standard! laid down for the
1 Matt. xxv. 31-46.
THE GENESIS OF RELIGION. 153
judgement of the “nations” is a standard which is possible
to most men; and if to any it is impossible, then of them
it is not required. The principle that “to whomsoever much
is given, of him shall much be required,’* implies that to
whomsoever little is given, of him little shall be required.
Sometimes the same question is put in the supposed
interest of non-religion. “Is not conscience,” it is asked,
“extremely variable in its deliverances? Is not that which
is considered right in one part of the world considered wrong
in another part? May we not, then, conclude that what is
called conscience is merely the result of circumstances ?
Now, as they who put the matter thus usually attach great
importance to reason, it is worth while to answer thus:
What you allege of “conscience” is equally true of reason,
if true at all. “Reason” is extremely variable in its deliver-
ances. What is considered in one place reasonable, is
considered in another unreasonable. May we not, then,
conclude that reason is simply the result of circumstances ?
But if we adhere to our principle that conscience and reason
are not distinct faculties, that the one is mind in relation
to right, the other mind in relation to truth, we shall have
to ask our opponents whether they intend to say there is no
right and there is no truth. Are you not really confusing
the action of environment on the mind with the mind itself ?
Let it be granted that the influence of circumstances upon
man is very great; why forget that so also is the influence
of man upon circumstances? Moreover, when you make
your comparison of different nations, you ought to take them
at the same stage of their development. You who are
evolutionists cannot legitimately compare the highest culture
of one race with the lowest state of another race. But even
so you will find in every race that germ of faculty which
7 1 Luke xii. 47,
154 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
in its developed state is recognized now as reason, now as
conscience, according as truth or right is its object.
In considering morality as a human phenomenon, Mr.
Hill observes, “We may easily find what are called vices
in all the races of mankind, but these are not so much the
products of distinct purpose as they are merely incidental
to unregulated conduct. They are often nothing more than
survivals of animal habit in the sphere of human action, and
their flagrancy is chiefly owing to their persistence under the
higher conditions of conduct. But what are called virtues—
forms of conduct or dispositions of mind implying some
native resolution and conscious endeavour to maintain a
standard or regard a principle—are not wanting even in the
lowest types of man.” We learn from Mr. Spencer’s “ De-
scriptive Sociology” that Fuegian women are modest in the
presence of strangers, affectionate towards each other, and
very fond of children; and, curiously enough, though the
Fuegians are arrant thieves, they are yet very honourable
in their commercial dealings. The Adamans appear as
having no excellence except that of parental and filial
affection, and that while the ordinary relations of the sexes
are of the loosest character, when the women are chosen or
allotted as wives they are required to be faithful to their
husbands. The Veddahs, too, are extremely indifferent to
sexual virtue in the unmarried, but infidelity on the part of
husband or wife seems to be unknown. Grave crimes are
rarely committed, and they are even proverbially truthful
and honest. Widows are always supported by the com-
munity. “These three races are, with the aboriginal Austra-
lians,” says Mr. Hill, “the lowest in existence, and what is
true of them is true of all the most degraded types of man,
namely, that they exhibit moral phenomena in a degree fully
proportionate to the rank of their intelligence.” This last
THE GENESIS OF RELIGION. | 155
statement is very remarkable, considering that among the
higher races “intelligence” seems much in advance of
“morality.” Perhaps, however, it is only a seeming.
If we turn from these lowest races to the earliest records
of the great nations of the past, we shall find abundant traces
of recognized moral law, and we shall, perhaps, be able to
realize at last that the earlier books of the Bible are far more
cosmopolitan, in the grandeur of their moral breadth, than
we, in our ignorance, had supposed. For example, it is
a splendid tribute to the essential selective inspiration of
Moses that he, who was learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, took from out of that wisdom divine elements that
reappear in the ten commandments. Thus what, in fact, can
be better than the following, said to be taken from early
Egyptian sources ?—1. Thou shalt honour God above all.
2. Thou shalt give Him His offerings in full measure. 3.
Thou shalt not sin. 4. Thou shalt not bear false witness.
5. Thou shalt not murder. 6. Thou shalt not commit
adultery. 7. Thou shalt not covet another’s property. 8.
Thou shalt not injure another’s rights. 9. Thou shalt do
only good to the poor and helpless. 10. Thou shalt keep
thy mind pure. Here, it would seem, the Son of God gave
to the Egyptians what is in some respects a higher code than
the ten commandments, as in the ninth and tenth clauses.
But whatever may be the fact about the lower races of
to-day, it must be conceded that the morality of the Egyptians
was not “fully proportionate to the rank of intelligence ”
which could appreciate in theory so splendid a code as this.
7. Israel and Religion—In estimating the position of
Israel in the world of morals, the question is not one of
theory, but of conduct. A lower law lived is better than
a higher law admired. In considering the “evolution of
conduct” we must go back to its most general characteristic.
156 THE REPOSENOR, FAITE.
It is not, as Mr. Spencer remarks, coextensive with the
ageregate of actions, for its very conception excludes pur-
poseless actions. The definition of conduct is either “acts
adjusted to ends, or else the adjustment of acts to ends;
according as we contemplate the formed body of acts, “or
think of the form alone.” There can evidently be no such
adjustment as conduct is defined to be, says Mr. Hill,
“without structure and environment—structure affording
the means of adjustment, environment the ends in view of
which the adjustment is made. Hence the essentially
biological character of conduct. Given a living organism, it
must adapt itself to the changing conditions of life. Its
primary end is the continuance of its existence. Secondary
to this may emerge the expansion and elevation of its life.
When these ends are apprehended in consciousness, and
intelligence becomes serviceable in the promotion of these
ends, conduct has reached a level which is immediately pre-
paratory to the moral; but morality does not supervene until
the means of accomplishing the ends and the wider relations
of purposive action can be compared with some standard of
rectitude.” It may be that the first beginnings of “ morality ”
must be sought lower down than this; that, in fact, there
1S a Sense in which “matter” is moral, or, at least, organic
matter. But to suppose that would require a new definition
of morality. What we have in view at present is the
essentially moral character of religion. The keynote of
Israel's life is Divine righteousness; it is not “moral”
conduct, but moral conduct based on the Divine will. Hence
the conception of righteousness as Divine completely unifies
morality and religion. The Israelites were not only a people
instructed, but also a people trained, and, as one can see
who follows their actual history, “revelation” was pro-
portionate to attainment. The higher revelation could come
THE GENESIS OF RELIGION. 157
only when they were capable of receiving it. But whether
in its lower or higher forms, righteousness was always Divine.
-“ And so,” says Matthew Arnold, “when we are asked, What
is the object of religion? let us reply, Conduct. And when
we are asked further, What is conduct ? let us answer, Three-
fourths of life. And certainly we need not go far to prove
that conduct, or ‘righteousness,’ which is the object of religion,
is in a special manner the object of Bible religion. The
word ‘righteousness’ is the master-word of the Old Testa-
ment. Keep judgment and do righteousness! Cease to do
evil, learn to do well!—these words being taken in their
plainest sense of conduct. Offer the sacrifice, not of victims
and ceremonies, as the way of the world in religion then
was, but—offer the sacrifice of righteousness! The great
concern of the New Testament is likewise righteousness, but
righteousness reached through particular means, righteousness
by the means of Jesus Christ. A sentence which sums up
the New Testament, and assigns the ground whereon the
Christian Church stands, is, as we have elsewhere said, this:
Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from
iniquity. If we are to take a sentence which in like manner
sums up the Old Testament, such a sentence is this: O ye
that love the Eternal, see that ye hate the thing which is evil!
to him that ordereth his conversation right shall be shown the
salvation of God.
“The Old Testament, nobody will ever deny, is filled
with the word and thought of righteousness. ‘In the way
of righteousness is life, and in the pathway thereof is no
death ;’ ‘Righteousness tendeth to life;’ ‘He that pursueth
evil pursueth it to his own death ;’ ‘The way of transgressors
is hard ;’—nobody will deny that those texts may stand for
the fundamental and ever-recurring idea of the Old Testament.
No people ever felt so strongly as the people of the Old
158 LHE REPOSE OF FAITH.
Testament, the Hebrew people, that conduct is three-fourths
of our life and its largest concern. No people ever felt so
strongly that succeeding, going right, hitting the mark in this
great concern, was the way of peace, the highest possible
satisfaction. ‘He that keepeth the law, happy is he; its
ways are ways of pleasantness, and all its paths are peace:
if thou hadst walked in its ways, thou shouldest have dwelt
in peace for ever!’ Jeshurun, one of the ideal names of their
race, is the upright; Israel, the other and greater, is the
wrestler with God, he who has known the contention and
strain it costs to stand upright. The mysterious personage
by whom their history first touches the hill of Zion, is
Melchisedee, the righteous king. Their holy city, J erusalem,
is the foundation, or vision, or inheritance, of that which
righteousness achieves—peace. The law of righteousness
was such an object of attention to them, that its words were
to be ‘in their heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently
unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest
in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when
thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” That they might
keep them ever in mind, they wore them, went about with
them, made talismans,of them. ‘Bind them upon thy finger,
bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of
thine heart. ‘Take fast hold of her, they said of the
doctrine of conduct, or righteousness, ‘let her not go! Keep
her, for she is thy life” People who thus spoke of righteous-
ness could not but have had their minds long and deeply
engaged with it; much more than the generality of mankind,
who have, nevertheless, got as far as the notion of morals or
conduct. And, if they were so deeply attentive to it, one
thing could not fail to strike them. It is this: the very
great part in righteousness which belongs, we may say, to
not ourselves. In the first place, we did not make ourselves
THE CENESIS "OF CRELIGION. 159
and our nature, or conduct, as the object of three-fourths of
that nature; we did not provide that happiness should follow
conduct, as it undeniably does; that the sense of succeeding,
going right, hitting the mark, in conduct, should give
satisfaction, and a very high satisfaction, just as really as the
sense of doing well in his work gives pleasure to a poet or
a painter, or accomplishing what he tries gives pleasure to
aman who is learning to ride or to shoot; or as satisfying
his hunger, also, gives pleasure to a man who is hungry.
All this we did not make; and, in the next place, our dealing
with it all, when it is made, is not wholly, or even nearly
wholly, in our own power. ... Facilities and felicities—
whence do they come? suggestions and stimulations—where do
they tend? Hardly a day passes but we have some experience
of them. And so Henry More was led to say that ‘there
was something about us that knew better, often, what we
would be at than we ourselves.’ For instance, every one can
understand how wealth and freedom from pain may give
energy for conduct, and how a neuralgia, suppose, may
diminish it. It does not depend on ourselves, indeed,
whether we have the neuralgia or not, but we can understand
its impairing our spirit. But the strange thing is, that with
the same neuralgia we may find ourselves one day without
spirit and energy for conduct, and another day with them,
So that we may most truly say, with the author of the
‘Imitation,’ ‘Left to ourselves, we sink and perish; visited,
we lift up our heads and live.’ And we may well give
ourselves, in grateful and devout self-surrender, to that by
which we are thus visited... . But we are not writing a
history of religion; we are only tracing its effect on the
language of the men from whom we get the Bible. At the
time they produced those documents which give to the Old
Testament its power and its true character, the not ourselves
160 LHE REPOSE OF FAITH.
which weighed upon the mind of Israel, and engaged its awe,
was the not owrselves by which we get the sense of righteous-
ness, and whence we find the help to do right.”
Israel, then, it seems, gave to the world, in its most
perfect form, that identification of religion and morality in
conduct as Divine righteousness, which, in various degrees
of imperfection, might be found in all other religions and
moralities whatever. Righteousness is the ruling idea of the
New Testament also, but righteousness in and through Jesus
Christ our Lord.
CHAPTER II.
THEOLOGY.
1. Lntroduction.—We may now, I think, usefully dwell for
a little on the relations of the religion of righteousness to
dogma. It is, of course, certain that a religious doctrine which
ignores relation to righteousness has ceased to be religious.
But it does seem in the last degree absurd to condemn creeds—
that is to say, the intellectual expression of religious belief—
as if they were necessarily, in their very nature, an evil. On
the other hand, it is so much easier to believe with the head
unto orthodoxy than with the heart unto righteousness, that
it is in the highest degree desirable always to keep in the
field of view, and in the most prominent position, the
relation of creed to conduct. In the first part of the Order
for Holy Communion nothing could be better than to begin
with the Lord’s Prayer, follow with the Laws of Righteous-
ness, continue with the Epistle which expresses the Apostolic
faith, rising from thence to the Gospel of our Lord, the one
supreme authority of Church and men, and, descending to a
lower level, summarize the faith in the words of the Nicene
Creed. In the Order for Morning or Evening Prayer, no one
can say that the space given to the Apostles’ Creed is excessive,
or that the spirit of righteousness does not run through the
whole service. But there are two troubles. One is that the
creeds are nearly always criticized, as if they were perfectly
distinct documents, without relation to anything going before
M
162 UH CREP OSL (OL mM MALY Les
or coming after. So treated, one must confess that their
relation to righteousness is not very apparent. But, then, the
method of treatment is to blame. The other trouble is that
so many forget that creeds are but exceedingly brief sum-
maries of facts and truths, the relations of which to life and
conduct are the constant subject of the lessons read, and,
in most cases, I hope, of the sermons preached. There is
scarcely a clause in the Apostles’ or the Nicene symbol that
has not distinct relation to Christian life and conduct, and
surely they who forget this in the recitation of the creeds
must share the blame. At the same time, I cannot but
reeret that their relation to righteousness of life is not more
directly suggested in the very structure of the creeds them-
selves. As to the symbol associated with the name of St.
Athanasius, it is true it occurs but rarely. It is true that, as
an intellectual and formal statement of the doctrines of the
Trinity and of the Incarnation, there is no ground of objec-
tion on the part of those who accept the other creeds as an
utterance of their faith, except that, in the judgment of
many, it is more definite than Holy Scripture or the nature
of the case warrants. But the chief objection to it is, that
while it no more visibly relates itself to righteousness than
do the other creeds, it contains clauses which no amount of
explaining will ever enable the people to regard as essentially
Christ-like in spirit, or as in harmony with their intuitions
of righteousness. Yet, speaking broadly of the relation of
religion and dogma, one may say that while it is an evil
thing to divorce doctrine from righteousness, it is also an evil
to divorce righteousness from doctrine. Unlimited love of
God in Christ, and proportionate love of our neighbour and
ourselves, we must regard as the essence of Christian right-
eousness; but I do not know a doctrine of theology,
“natural” or “revealed,” that may not be so presented as
THEOLOGY. 163
to tend to deepen and intensify that love. I, of course,
exclude from this statement the “ damnatory clauses” of the
Athanasian Creed .as ordinarily understood, but the creed
itself, if taken as its substance is given in the New Testa-
ment, may be eminently helpful.
2. The Test of Experience—But I can see easily enough
that this may not be so to others. And in any case the
mode of access to religion is not so much by doctrine, no
matter how true, as it is by the hunger and thirst for
righteousness. If it be asked, as Mr. Arnold has said, “ How
are we to verify that there rules an enduring Power, not
ourselves, which makes for righteousness.? we may answer
at once: How? Why, as you verify that fire burns,—by
experience! Itisso; try it! You can try it; every case of
conduct, of that which is more than three-fourths of your own
life and of the life of all mankind, will prove it to you!
Disbelieve it, and you will find out your mistake as surely as,
if you disbelieve that fire burns, and put your hand into the
fire, you will find out your mistake! Believe it, and you
will find the benefit of it. This is the first experience. But,
then, the masses may go on to say, ‘Why, however, even if
there is an enduring Power, not ourselves, should we study
the Bible that we may learn to obey Him? Will not other
teachers or books do as well?’1 And here again the answer
is: Why ?—why, because this Power is revealed in Israel and
the Bible, and not by other teachers and books; that is, there
is infinitely more of Him there, He is plainer and easier to
come at, and incomparably more impressive. If you want to
know plastic art, you go to the Greeks ; if you want to know
science, you go to the Aryan genius. And why? Because
they have the speciality for these things ; for making us feel
what they are, and giving us an enthusiasm for them. Well,
+ “Literature and Dogma,” p. 185.
164 THE REPOSL: (OF, FATA.
and so have Israel and the Bible a speciality for righteous-
ness; for making us feel what it is, and giving us an enthu-
siasm for it. And here, again, it is experience that we invoke:
try it. Having convinced yourself that there is an enduring
Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness, set your-
self next to try to learn more about this Power, and to feel
an enthusiasm for it. And to this end, take a course of the
Bible first, and then a course of Benjamin Franklin, Horace
Greeley, Jeremy Bentham, and Mr. Herbert Spencer; see
which has most effect, which satisfies you most, which gives
you most moral force. Why, the Bible is of such avail for
teaching righteousness, that even to those who come to it
with all sorts of false notions about the God of the Bible, it
yet does teach righteousness, and fills them with the love of
it; how much more those who come to it with a ¢rwe notion
about the God of the Bible! And this is the second experi-
ence.” That is very fine and just. But as science generally
is the organization of common experience, why should not
theology be the organization of religious experience? And
as to Biblical theology, why should it not be the organiza-
tion of “experience” of the Bible? Why not, so long as
theology is ¢trwe to experience ?
3. Theology in General.—We have now to consider the
ereat science of theology. In its widest sense it covers the
whole sphere of classified and unified knowledge, but from
the standpoint of its manifestation of God. It regards the
“yniformity of law” as the natural counterpart of its own
doctrine of the unchangeableness of God, and insists that the
unity of the universe is a rational unity. In its general out-
lines it may be regarded as interpreting experience in the
light of intuition; and the supreme test by which it is to be
judged is the fidelity and completeness with which this is
done. As Christian, its concern is with the interpretation of
i i il os —— =
THEOLOGY. | 165
Christ in the light of intuition, and its interpretation of
experience in the light of Christ. The only question which
concerns us here is this: Does theology as developed present
any points in which it comes into collision with our vision of
God, or, at least, with those intuitions by which our faith in
God is justified? In answering this question great care is
needed. One must not confound “ the Faith” with the views
of parties or of individuals, no matter how eminent. The
only doctrines which can be strictly said to be of the Faith
are those which, having survived the fires of criticism, appear
as the great creeds. But it is impossible not to take into
account some other formidable developments of theology.
4. Uncatholicism.—Naturally, Calvinism claims early
attention, and we may as well take it first. It is possible, I
think, to find a form of it which need not offend our vision
of God; though, perhaps, in every form its recognition of
Divine power is more vivid than its recognition of Divine
love. Those who regard predestination as not necessarily
carrying with it the abolition of human freedom, will be
ready to grant that the area within which our power of
human will can act is comparatively small, though, beyond
all comparison, important. But the view which ascribes to
God the election to eternal life of any given number without
regard to the voluntary element in their life, and leaves
all the rest out in the bitter cold, is hard to reconcile with
the intuition of perfect goodness. That God chooses accord-
ing to His pleasure presents no difficulty, since He chooses
according to His own nature, which is perfect. The diffi-
culty is in reconciling with our intuition of that perfection
the characteristics of choosing ascribed to Him. It may be
said that we find the same thing, to all appearance, in what
is called natural selection, and that thus election to eternal
life may be scientifically justified. But, as we have already
166 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
seen, science has no validity as against intuition; and if in
the one case we, illumined by the vision of God, can hold
that the reality is not as the appearance, so may we in the
other. We may not be able to say what the reality is, but
at least we are, on this point, sure what it is not. We must
Judge not according to appearance ; we must judge a righteous
judgment. It may be answered that righteousness is not
here in question, since God has a right, as supreme Owner, to
do as He likes with His own. But that is not the point.
The question, on the contrary, 1s: What will supreme
righteousness like to do with its own? And it hardly seems
possible that we can form any conception of supreme right-
cousness which would lead us to look for election to eternal
life without any respect to that voluntary element in human
life on which, as it seems, the very possibility of righteous-
ness, in any degree, depends. Whether, therefore, we can or
cannot explain the appearance of “selection” in nature or of
“election” in the Bible, we must hold that the reality is not
according to the appearance.
The next difficulty arises in considering the duration of
punishment. Neither righteousness nor love has anything
to say against suffering as the ordained consequence of sin,
beyond the difficulty, which seems insoluble, of the existence
of evil at all. And I am not sure that righteousness, at least,
can make any protest against the endlessness of punishment,
understood as, what I have called elsewhere, the ever-
lasting “extinction of conscious being.” That seems to be
the natural result of sin considered as disease. But if
eternal punishment mean the continuance for ever of con-
scious penal pain, the only ground on which such a view
can be maintained is, I think, that even Omnipotence cannot
rightly terminate the sufferer’s life. Now, it may be granted
at once that we are not in a position to determine, at all
THEOLOGY. 167
points, what is and what is not possible to Omnipotence.
The difficulty comes from another quarter. Judging from
analogy, the unrepentant sinner would bring, at last, his own
existence to an end, by the natural operation of what may be
called the energy of disease, provided Omnipotence did not
interpose to prevent dissolution. And it is not at all clear
that such interposition would be righteous. Consider what it
means. It implies that “moral law” makes such tremendous
demands, that it cannot be vindicated without the unending
punishment of the unrepentant sinner kept alive for the
purpose of punishment. But the moral law is an expression
of the nature of God. How, then, are we to distinguish
between justice and cruelty? Have we any such intuition
of righteousness as would justify us in saying that the per-
fection of the Divine character requires God to keep alive for
endless punishment the impenitent sinner? I think not.
Once more, we may conclude that if either nature or the
Holy Scriptures appear to teach the doctrine of unending
torture, the reality must differ from the appearance.
From another point of view the difficulty is less easy to
meet. Can any one by sin here deserve hereafter punishment
which never ends? We cannot doubt, from the nature of
the case, that while sin lasts, the punishment which sin
naturally brings will last also, and if it be that any man will
sin for ever, then for ever he must suffer. As we have seen,
however, it is scarcely possible to conceive that the suffering
will not put an end to both his sin and himself, unless God
keep him alive; and that it is scarcely credible that God
should do this. But the question now before us is of a
different kind. It is this: Are we justified in regarding man
as being, in this life, in a state of probation in such a sense
as to be able to fix here his unending state hereafter ?
There are doubtless some analogies that seem to point in
168 LHE REPOSE OF FAITH.
this direction. It is said that even the moving of a finger
vibrates throughout the universe, and it is suggested that the
vibration may go on for ever. That, however, does not seem
to be probable. It is more likely that in the end the
universe will reach a state of equilibrium. If so, all move-
ments have but a limited duration; they can but endure till
they are met and balanced by other movements, The law
briefly stated in the form of saying that action and reaction
are opposite and equal, implies that actions are being
balanced, and that, as far as we can see, the process must go
on till the balance is complete. It seems, then, improbable
that any conduct of man will have everlasting effect in the
sense of extending beyond the point thus indicated. It is
true that if we can regard physical energy as all-embracing,
if the omnipresent Power work in no other way than the
science of matter records, scientific analogy suggests the final
extinction of all conscious being—the good as much as the
bad. But if there be other operations of God besides those
registered in physical science, the question which one has to
ask is this: Is there reason to believe that those other opera-
tions will effect the immortality of the bad as well as of the
good? One cannot, perhaps, answer that question from physical
science. But is there any answer from mental science? Can
we say that “natural immortality” is a definite doctrine of
that science? Let us, for a moment, take it for granted that
life after death is rendered a probability by the science of
psychology, that it is made a necessity by the science of
morals—does it follow that such life must continue for ever
and ever; that the pain in the case of the evil, and the bliss
in the case of the good, must be unending ? Very likely one
would say: If life is to be continued after death, there seems
no good reason why it should not continue for ever, though
physical science does not justify this. But that is scarcely
a
THEOLOGY. 169
the point. The point is whether the science of mind and of
morality does of itself suggest more than continuance beyond
death. If not, then’ comes the suggestion of physical science,
that beyond the stage of equilibrium which the energy of the
universe must at last reach, we know and can know nothing.
To this one may respond: Is it, then, so very certain that
equilibrium can be reached in no other way than that of
amorphous matter and motionless force? Does the conserva-
tion of energy imply the impossibility of any individual
existence? Or may this law of equilibration be regarded as
applying only to substances as matter, while substances as
spirits pass under a higher law, a law of continued conscious
existence ? If so, then may not such spiritual beings include
the evil as well as the good? Possibly, supposing the spirit-
energy to be unexhausted. It is not in itself incredible that
substance as spirit may be endowed with an energy which
may endure far beyond the threescore years and ten of mortal
life. But is there reason to believe that God has endowed
it with an energy which must continue in the form of con-
scious existence, whether good or evil, for ever and ever ?
It can hardly be said that the Bible answers that ques-
tion in the affirmative, unless our being made in the image
of God is to be understood in that sense; and unless the
mysterious words with which the twenty-fifth chapter of
St. Matthew closes must be similarly interpreted. One
sometimes feels, I think, that our likeness of nature to God
must include conscious, unending being as well as the
central, quasi-creative power of will. If this be so, then
our hope for the future must be based on the perceived
improbability of man’s continuing for ever to resist the good-
ness of God. So often have men, apparently the most hope-
less, yielded themselves to Christ, we find it difficult to think
that we ought to despair of any. We all, of course, know
170 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
that innumerable multitudes have never had, in this world,
anything like the opportunities that some of us have had, and
we all believe that in the other world the inequalities of
opportunity will be redressed. But the hope I speak of goes
far beyond this. It is that in every case, without exception,
the growing consciousness of the misery of sin may be so
accompanied by the growing consciousness of Love waiting
to forgive and save, as to issue at last in that complete sur-
render which, in losing self, finds God. I fear, however,
that the language of the Bible, as a whole, cannot be thus
interpreted. There are not many passages—I am not sure —
that there is even one absolutely clear—which teach that
man is made “immortal,” either in “nature” or in “ grace.”
It is implied, as to the former, that he will live after death,
not that he will live for ever ; 1t is stated, as to the latter,
that union with the Life secures our life, not that immor-
tality is bestowed as a separate gift. Yet I am not quite
certain that these passages cannot be otherwise interpreted
without straining the text. It is possible, at least, that the
general use of the relevant terms may be as that of St. Paul,
“You hath He made alive who were dead in trespasses and
sin.” Death, then, in this use of the word, implies, as much
as life, conscious existence. It was of men consciously
existing that it was said, “He that hath the Son hath life ;
he that hath not the Son hath not life.” It would seem,
then, that the language of the Bible is not absolutely fatal
to the view that conscious existence may continue for ever.
Nor can we say, with any certainty derived from its language
alone, that such conscious existence will in every case be
purified from evil. We may, I think, say that its spirit
rather than its terms justifies the hope we have already
expressed. 7
But why should we let our hearts be troubled? Difficult
THEOLOGY. 171
as it is to settle the question, we ought not on that account
to suffer ourselves to be disturbed. We walk not by that
lower vision which is called sight, and which insists on
seeing the whole route clearly mapped out, but by that
higher vision which is called faith, which fixes its unfalter-
ing eyes of trust upon the Guide, and is content, if it must
be, to have in clear light but the next step. Under the
influence of Christ, our vision of God becomes pure and full.
We need not be told that no doctrine which is inconsistent
with His perfect goodness can be true. It is blunderingly
said that one of the principal causes of madness is religion.
What utter folly! It is mainly religion that saves from
madness; that is, the religion which is the vision of the
All-Good, not the religion which, not seeing God, fights in
the dark about ideas of Him. With God in sight, and will-
ing His Will, we may study anything wisely ; with God out
of sight, and not willing His Will, we are but on our way to
the madhouse. Theology itself may easily be hell to us if
we find not God there. It ¢s insanity to lose Him in our
perplexities. Life, then, is indeed the gloomiest of mazes
without a clue. At the best, we are but philosophers até sea
—without compass or chart at hand, without sun or star
overhead. But, as to our particular point, let us ask our-
selves, Is there any form of the doctrine of future punish-
ment which is irreconcilable with our intuition of God?
‘Reject it. Is there any form which seems to fit thereto ?
Hold it, yet not with too strong a grasp, lest your fingers
should stiffen, and you could not let it go in favour of a
better when it comes. Are we, after fair trial, unable to
make up our minds? Then let us be content to hold our
judgments not so much in suspense, lest we lose the power
of judging, as in a state of readiness for the true doctrine
when it appears. But whether accepting, or rejecting, or
172 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
simply ready, let us put no trust in any of these things.
Our trust is in the living God. Whether we have solutions
or not, we have Him, or rather He has us.
5. Lhe Catholic Faith—We need not pursue further
specialities of theology apart from the Catholic Faith. Let
us now inquire what that faith is, and whether it contains
anything contrary to our immediate vision of God. Accord-
ing to Whitaker’s “ Almanack,” there are about four hundred
and fifteen millions of persons in the world who are called
Christians, and of these, probably not more than. fifteen
millions formally reject any of the chief doctrines of Chris-
tianity. In other words, about four hundred millions accept
the substance of the Nicene Creed. I am not allegine any-
thing in favour of that creed on the ground of the numbers
who accept it, though, were that my proper subject, much
might be said about the significance of an agreement common
to so many different races living in such dissimilar circum-
stances. But my only object is to find that expression of
Christian belief in which the greatest numbers of Christians
concur. [am quite aware that the word “Catholic” has other
meanings, but no one denies that the Nicene Creed is an
expression of the faith universal among Christians. We need
not wait to discuss whether this creed would be accepted in
every point and as a creed by Christians in general. The
point is that they accept the doctrines and statements of
fact (with some reserve as to the term “Church” and as to
the procession of the Holy Ghost) which this creed sets
forth. Many, I doubt not, will be startled to find such
agreement where differences were looked for. No doubt the
differences are serious enough, and that they are a stumbling-
block to many cannot be doubted. We are told that there
are throughout the world some three hundred Christian
sects—a fact which seems to some inexplicable, and to many
THEOLOGY. 173
shameful. Nevertheless, the agreements are, in most cases,
more profound than the differences, and the differences them-
selves belong to relatively small numbers of adherents. If
we leave out of account the Roman, Greek, and Anglican
Catholics, the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Congrega-
tionalists, all the three hundred sects, in the total number
of their adherents, amount to a very small number, and most
even of these accept the larger part of the Catholic Faith ;
for I do not suppose that there are throughout the world so
many as fifteen millions of professed Unitarians. The four
hundred millions believe in the existence and character of
God, the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son, the
ministry of the Holy Spirit, the fact of the Atonement, the
reality of the Resurrection, the authority of Christ as
Prophet, Priest, and King, the trustworthiness of the Revela-
tion recorded in the Holy Scriptures, the certainty of future
life, the necessity of regeneration and sanctification, and, in
short, the obedience of faith. Their agreement, in fact, goes
beyond the words of the Nicene Creed in some points, but
does not fall short of it, except in the interpretation of the
clauses relating to the Church and to the procession of the
Holy Ghost. We may, then, take this creed as sufficiently
representing for our purpose the Catholic Faith.
“T believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of
heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible.”
Probably we shall give to the word “heaven” a far wider
meaning than that the council of Nice or its successor
thought of, but that will not affect the value of the words
for us. “And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten
Son of God.” It is not easy to accept these words without
explanation. Is it certain that man is not begotten of God,
or that he is not the son of God? Did not St. Paul agree
with the Greek poet that we are the offspring of God? But
174 THE REPOSE: Of. FAITH.
if the phrase refer to the miraculous conception, and if that
be accepted as a fact, then Christ was, indeed, we may well
believe, the only begotten of God in that sense. “ Begotten
of the Father before all worlds.” This appears to mean
eternal generation, as if the Son has been and is for ever
coming forth from the Father; which may be true for any-
thing one knows to the contrary, but which is, one would
have thought, a conception too profoundly metaphysical, not
to say too Hegelian, for common acceptance. It is not, how-
ever, usually disputed among Christians, and it is difficult to
see what either science or intuition can find to say against it.
“God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God,
Begotten, not made, Being of one substance with the
Father.” Here, again, science is silent, and intuition has
nothing to say. “By whom all things were made: who for
us men, and our salvation, came down from heaven, And
was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And
was made man, And was crucified also for us under Pontius
Pilate: He suffered and was buried, And the third day He
rose again according to the Scriptures, And ascended into
heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of the Father: And
He shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and
the dead; Whose kingdom shall have no end.” We are,
in this second division of the creed, at once plunged into
perplexities. Who was it “came down” from heaven ?
Literally, no one. Not Christ the man, for He is not sup-
posed to have existed as man before He was conceived by
the Holy Ghost. Not God the Son, for He who is every-
where cannot be spoken of as literally coming from anywhere.
If, however, we take the words figuratively, they may mean
that He whose manifestation is general throughout the
universe, by particular action became specially manifest in
a special way. The Son, who is the eternal efflux of the
THEOLOGY. 175
Father, united Himself with Jesus, conceived by the Holy
Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and in such a way that the perfect
Divine nature of the God and the sinless human nature
of the man became One Person as the Lord Jesus Christ.
It is very wonderful, and, indeed, passes all understanding,
but it does violence to no intuition, and all that science
has to say on the subject is that the evidence for an event
so extraordinary ought to be extraordinarily strong. The
other points in the second division of the creed are partly
questions of historic fact, and partly questions of the reality
of the alleged revelation. Scientific men are giving up the
ery that miracles are impossible, though for this very reason
they insist on the strongest proof that they occurred. So far
forth, if one believes that the story is true, he may rest
assured that neither science nor intuition has anything to
allege against his belief.
“ And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver
of Life; Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; Who
with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and
glorified, Who spake by the prophets. And I believe one
Catholic and Apostolic Church; I acknowledge one Baptism
for the remission of sins; And I look for the resurrection
of the dead, And the life of the world to come. Amen.”
Our first difficulty here is that as the doctrine of the “double
procession” is not held by the Greek Church, it cannot be
called Catholic in the sense in which I have used the word.
It may, nevertheless, be true. This, however, must be settled
by appeal to the Holy Scriptures, which we are not at
present considering. The next difficulty, that touching the
term “Catholic and Apostolic Church,” must be settled in
the same way. What we have to say touching the resurrec-
tion of the dead affects more directly both intuition and
science. It seems, as to the first, an unnatural idea that the
176 - THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
spirit should leave the world unclothed, not clothed upon
that mortality might be swallowed up of life. And the
conception of a spiritual body, clothed in which the spirit
disappears from view, appears to be scientifically more credible
than that of an unclothed soul waiting till the resurrection
for its body. But our comfort is not in settling questions
like these. Our comfort is that we are in the loving care of
God, and that He will do whatever is best to be done.
Postponing for a time the consideration of the Holy
Scriptures, we may now dwell for a little on the general
theology of the Catholic Faith. We have already incidentally
seen that that Faith does not commit us to any specific theory
of inspiration or of future punishment. On the latter we
have already dwelt; of the former I shall speak later.
Perhaps the first important question that rises may be put
thus: In what way does the Trinitarian conception of God
transcend the Unitarian? Let us set out by recalling the faet
that, if the Catholic doctrine is true, God acts on the
Unitarian, up to a certain point, just as He acts on the
Trinitarian. All men live and move and have their being
in God, the Three in One. All alike owe their ultimate
origin to the Father, their creation to the Son, their life to
the Holy Ghost. It is probable that we should find in
hymns, prayers, and books of devotion of Unitarians some
traces of their feeling after the triune God, though such
recognition may be conscientiously excluded from their formal
works. Now, it is not maintained that we are, in our
present state, able to discern Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
each from the other, by direct vision. It is not unlikely that
we have the feeling of each, but not in such a way as to be
able yet to put the distinction into words or even into
thoughts. Nevertheless, the doctrine given in the Holy
Scriptures seems the best interpretation of the feeling of God
THEOLOGY. 177
which we actually have. The way in which the Bible
describes the conscious love of the Father for the Son and
by implication for the Holy Spirit, of the Son for the Father
and the Holy Spirit, of the Holy Spirit for the Father and
the Son, answers best to our intuitive conceptions of the
social perfection of God, as it does also to all we know of
the nature of consciousness.
If, however, one cannot as yet put his feeling and thought
of God into the form of the Catholic Faith, let him see well
to it that his feeling and thought transcend—that they do
not fall short of—that Faith. For not otherwise can he
appeal to intuition as justifying his state of mind. The
truth may be higher than the Catholic Faith, it cannot be
less. If he is convinced of the truth of the Bible teaching,
but not of the forms in which that teaching is reproduced by
the Church, let him confine himself to the language of the
Bible, assured in his heart that he is then nearer to the mind
of God than he can ever be in the language of the Church
alone. Yet let him also remember that if men had always
been true to the whole counsel of God as given in the Bible,
there would have been little need of the definitions of the
Church. For these definitions have been given to guard
against those representations which fell below or went beyond
the teaching of the Bible, as well as to correct errors
touching the authority and interpretation of the Holy
Scriptures themselves. Let him also consider, if he is in
doubt concerning the truth of Christianity, whether without
Christianity he could ever have been in a position to judge
of its truth. Especially let him ask whether any one ever
had such perfect intuitions of God as Christ had—whether,
therefore, any one’s teaching is to be trusted in com-
' parison with Christ’s. If we keep in mind these salutary
counsels, we need not distress ourselves about the Trinitarian
N
178 THE REPOSEGOPGPATLL A.
controversies. We are as certain as we exist that He whom
we know is the absolute Truth, and Righteousness, and Beauty,
and Goodness, and Power; and we judge of every doctrine by
its fitness to express with greatest fulness the love of Him
that passeth knowledge in the infinite of His consciousness
and will. It is possible, however, for “Unitarians” to hold
a conception of the Divine character which, without Trini-
tarianism, they could never have reached, and could never
justify. Nevertheless, he who cannot yet arrive at any
definite conclusion ought not on that account to allow his
soul to be troubled. Salvation is by God, not by definite
conclusions. And whosoever is true to God is being saved,
whatever his present standpoint may be.
If we bear in mind the way in which the Thirty-nine
Articles came into existence, the circumstances out of which
they arose, the object which they were intended to serve, we
shall not be surprised to find in them some forms of state- —
ment difficult or even impossible to accept to-day. It
seems to be almost one of the necessities of history that
certain aspects of doctrine should at a given time be so
emphasized as to give them all the appearance of gross
exaggeration when the circumstances that called for the
emphasis have passed away. These articles cannot be taken,
therefore, as an adequate expression of the Faith already —
given, in due proportion, in the ancient creeds of the Church
universal, but only as aspects of the Faith which it seemed
desirable, at a particular crisis in the history of a particular
Church, to bring into the foreground. Thus understood, they
have very considerable historical value, and it is, | suppose,
as marking an important stage in the evolution of the
Church, and as a statement of doctrine in a form useful for ~
that time, that the clergy say, “I assent to the Thirty-nine
Articles.” And, considering what led to the alteration of the
THEOLOGY. 179
terms of subscription, “I assent” must be understood in a
general sense, and not as agreeing to “all and every” con-
tained in the Articles. Indeed, he would be a critic beyond
justice who would dispute the honesty of even those who
signed the old terms of subscription, for it passes the wit of
man to devise at any length, in cases like these, terminology
that can always, and at every distance of time, be taken
literally. The most carefully drawn contracts cannot escape
the possibility of having to come before the courts to have
their meaning determined, and as long as the position of
those who signed in the old terms was allowed to be legal
by the proper authorities, it was cruelly absurd to impugn
the good faith of the subscribers. And, of course, @ fortiore,
the same remark may be made of those who sign in the new
terms. Neither the courts nor the bishops would be disposed
to condemn any clergyman who was loyal to the Nicene
Creed simply because he dissented from expressions in the
Articles which that creed does not require him to believe.
It is true that the Articles are not directly binding on
the laity of the Church of England, and it may be thought
that in a work of this kind, which is not concerned with
distinctly ecclesiastical questions, all reference to the subject
might have been wisely omitted. But there are two reasons
’ why I have touched on the subject. It is of great importance
that the laity in general should have no ground to suspect
the good faith of the ministers of religion, and it cannot, I
think, be denied that it is often difficult for those who are
not familiar with the facts to reconcile the teaching of the
clergy of the Church of England with the declaration of faith
they have signed. It matters little whether the clergy in
question belong to the High, or Low, or Broad, or Moderate
schools. There is no one who agrees with absolutely every-
thing contained in the Prayer-book to which we have
180 THE REROSE\ OF FAITH.
assented, and it is therefore possible to charge every one of
us with inconsistency, or even dishonesty, if the facts I have
named be left out of account. But if the laity once become
familiar with even the outlines of the history of the Church,
and with the necessity of recognizing and applying the
genetic method to whatever has a history—and that, in fact,
is everything—all such charges will be put down to the
ignorance, or, as that word has somewhat too strong a flavour,
let us say to the non-knowledge, of those who make them.
The other reason is, that though the Thirty-nine Articles are
not directly binding on laymen, still they are in their Book
of Prayer, and it is well that they themselves and their non-
conforming fellow-Churchmen—for, at least, all the properly
baptized are Churchmen—should understand in what sense
and with what limitations those Articles may be understood,
and see clearly that they have not at all the same authorita-
tive character as the Nicene Creed.
In determining, however, what one is to believe, there
can be no real repose of faith to the thinker until he brings
the “creed” that demands assent into the court of intuition.
There are, of course, myriads of questions—questions of
inference and logical coherence—which must be reduced to
their simplest forms before the verdict of intuition can be
given. And, speaking generally, the whole range of facts
that are the objects of sense-intuition are only indirectly
concerned with those other facts which are the objects of
spirit-intuition. We have also to remember that the greater
part of all our scientific knowledge, and nearly the whole of
our historic knowledge, is really knowledge of what other
men say—is, in fact, the knowledge of things and events and
their relations as presented by observers other than ourselves,
and, therefore, the accuracy of their reports must be deter-
mined by such appropriate modifications of the universal
THEOLOGY. 181
method of science as the special subject requires. Nothing
could be more absurd than to make intuition by itself the
judge as to whether certain alleged events really took place
or not. No amount of spirit-experience can be a substitute
for intellect-experience or sense-experience. Our communion
‘with God does not of itself enable us to understand Hebrew
or Greek or Latin, or the methods or the results of scholar-
ship. Though it is, I am certain, true that the non-spiritual
scholar would fail, if his subject were the Bible, far more
profoundly than would the non-scholarly saint, yet it is
wholly unreasonable to set the one over against the other.
That the “saint” should interpret the larger part of the Bible
better than the “scholar,” is only what one would expect in
the case of a book which constantly appeals to intuition.
But in those aspects and departments of it which are
questions of fact, let the “scholar” rather than the “saint”
be heard. Yet, as there are many questions of fact, the
determination of which requires spiritual insight, it is best
that saint and scholar should be one person. But though, in
cases where intuition is not directly concerned, the method
of science pursues its way undisturbed, it is perilous in the
highest degree to ignore intuition in cases where it is directly
concerned, or to forget that the method of science itself
depends on intuition.
6. Lhe Inspiration of the Bible—Some time since, in the
course of a series of lectures intended only for the clergy, I
ventured to raise the questions: How far ought we to take
our people into our confidence as to facts known to scholars ?
and: Is it possible to formulate a working theory of inspira-
tion? On seeing the titles of the addresses, a clergyman
of repute remonstrated angrily with my friend who had
allowed me the use of his church. “There are no facts
known to scholars and not known to our people!” he
182 THE REPOSEW OF FAITH.
exclaimed. “And as to the second title, we want no theory.
Every word of the Bible is inspired!”—not seeing that the
last statement is itself a theory. Now, next to one’s
reverence for God, comes, I suppose, one’s reverence for
facts, and I should think it is of the essence of Christian
morality to state facts truly as far as we are able; and it
is not true to say that there are no facts known to scholars
and not known to our people. As to whether every word of
the Bible is inspired, I will not undertake to determine, until
I know better what “inspired” means; but that there is much
included in the Bible of whose inspiration by God there is
no evidence, seems as certain as anything can be. We can
hardly, for example, attribute to God the words which the
Book of Job attributes to Satan; nor to the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit Peter’s denial of his Lord. It seems some-
what incongruous to affirm that the words of the tempter,
as recorded in Genesis and Matthew, are Divine words; or
that the Holy Spirit moved the Jews to the savage cry,
“Crucify Him! Crucify Him!”
The theory of inspiration called verbal presents an
appearance of easy completeness until one examines it, when
it becomes, perhaps, the most “impossible” of all theories.
If verbal inspiration be taken verbally, then we are com-
mitted to the position that every word attributed in the
Bible to man was really the Word of God. Now, I grant
that the idea thus suggested may have meaning if man be
but God, in which case our sense of personal identity is
illusive. It may, also, have meaning if man be an auto-
maton, which responds to the fingers of God as the organ to
the fingers of its player, in which case consciousness seems
an impertinence. It may, further, have meaning if man,
though wishing to say something else, was compelled to say
What he did, in which case the Divine model of government
THEOLOGY. 183 |
is a despotism more thoroughgoing than any known in
political history, and the existence of will at all is an
absurd anomaly. It may, again, have meaning if we sup-
pose every word attributed to men in the Bible to be good
—as, for example, when Abraham lied—in which case un-
truth becomes a virtue. It is clearly impossible to construe
the verbal theory verbally.
How, then, must it be construed? That is a question
which neither its advocates nor its opponents seem able to
answer. It is much easier to find fault with it than to
defend it. Yet I would fain see if I could what there is
of good init. Let it be granted that the Bible contains
examples of verbal inspiration. Two questions immediately
arise: Is there no example of inspiration in the Bible except
the verbal? Is there no document in the Bible the writer
of which was not inspired to write it? As to the first,
Would not the psalms largely lose their value as glorious
examples of human emotion towards God if their inspiration
was mechanical? and, Would not the so-called cursing
psalms present new difficulties if their words, instead of
being the expression of natural feeling, must be taken as
dictated by the perfect God? As to the second, Surely it
must be on account only of the exigencies of a theory that
more inspiration is ascribed to historical documents quoted
in the Bible than to the histories of Herodotus and
Thucydides! But when all is said, the idea that underlay
the theory of verbal inspiration was essentially right. Put
in the following form, it is I think justifiable: Zhere 1s
nothing in the Bible, good or bad, true or false, that is not
there recorded by the will of God. |
The facts known to scholars render it necessary to
emphasize “selection.” The documents incorporated appear
to be of two sorts: one, relevant fragments of history which
184 THE REPOSEH OF ~ FAITH.
there is no reason to suppose inspired at the time of their
composition, but which become important by their selection.
As far as can be at present judged, these documents, so far
as they were simply historical, were not entirely purified
from any errors they might contain in their original state;
and, so far as they were something more than historical, they
appear to have been the works of some of those prophets
who have been since the world began, and whose inspiration
seems to have been directed to the purification of early
beliefs from the taint of idolatry, and to the establishment
of the people in righteousness. The work of incorporation
does not appear to have been so well done as to secure in
every case the right order, or as to enable us to see at once
where one account ends and another begins. The more we
learn to distinguish these documents, the more we shall over-
come certain difficulties inseparable from the view that
every book is the product of a single author. This, however,
does not lessen the value of the Bible. It simply means
that the writings of a greater number of inspired men than
we had thought go to make up the Bible. These writings
themselves were given to the world at great intervals of »
time, by successive writers in different places, and manifestly
without a thought as to whether or not their productions
would go to make up one volume. Yet that one volume
constitutes a wonderful organic whole; I will not say a
perfect, for in the Bible, as in the aroan body, there is
apparently some “scaffolding” left. It is nevertheless more
than a library, more than a collection of inspired writings.
It is a book, the several related parts of which it took
centuries to complete by a considerable number of writers,
but a book that had really but one Author, Prophet
and evangelist and apostle were willing, though often but
half-conscious agents; the One governing and directing
THEOLOGY. 135
intelligence of the’ book was the Holy Spirit. And in all our
reading our dominant interest ought to be not what Moses,
Isaiah, Paul, or Peter means, but what God means. It is
not clear that God waited until His agents were perfect; it
is clear, rather, that’ He inspired men who were capable of
making mistakes, and though God permitted no mistake that
mattered much, He did not force them to be always accurate.
Hence the supreme question in the study of the Bible is not,
What do its writers mean ? but, What does its Author mean 2
In answering the last question we must not confound
error with falsehood. Falsehood is the direct negation’; error
is the partially true, as well as the partially not true. Now,
there is no denying that revelation was progressive, and we
have to face the question whether this does not involve a
certain amount of error as incidental to inspiration. In
maintaining the negative view, a friend wrote me, “ Algebra
is an advance on arithmetic; it does not follow that
arithmetic must be erroneous.” But this is a misstatement
of the case. The inspiration is never erroneous; but does
it not in the very leading up to higher truth involve at times
some misconception of what that higher truth means—does
it not even necessitate the neglect of errors of relatively
small importance, the correction of which would delay the
ascent? ‘To return to the illustration. It is not a question
of the arithmetic but of the arithmetician ; and it is tolerably
certain that no one ever yet went through arithmetic itself,
or rose into algebra, without making a mistake. Without
going into details, I think we may lay down this general
principle: If anywhere in the Bible anything is attributed to
God which is not in harmony with the revelation of Him in
the Lord Jesus Christ, or with anything we know to be true,
there an incidental mistake has been made; but this gives us no
title to question the reality or purity of the inspiration itself.
186 THE REPOSE (OP FATTA.
There does not appear to be much need to be alarmed
by the work of the new criticism. On the contrary, I should
think its result is sure to be a profound deepening of our
faith in the God of the Bible. Some of the critics certainly
appear to be somewhat capricious, and it is occasionally
difficult to discover on what principle their judgment is
given, or to approve the principle when discovered. But
as to their general competence and unstained honour, there
is no question. One of the most trusted, in the English
contingent, is Dr. Sanday; somewhat less trusted is Dr.
Cheyne; between the two most people would place Dr.
Driver and Dr. Ryle, and Mr. R. F. Horton, and even
Dr. Sayce, though he does not profess to be a higher critic
at all; but they are all men of God, and all striving to
make the Bible more valued, not less. My own criticism
on the critics would be this: I will not say they are too
much taken up with the human side of the Bible, but they
are too little taken up with its Divine side. For, after all,
the main question is, What does God mean by the human
side of His book # and this needs to be constantly kept in
mind in studying the book as a literary composition ; for
otherwise, even in the Bible, we may miss God in examin-
ing the style and characteristics of the men of God.
It may, however, be well to give from one of their
number their own idea of their work. Thus Dr. Driver
remarks, in the preface to his “ Introduction to the Literature
of the Old Testament:” “In the critical study of the Old
Testament there is an important distinction, which should
be kept in mind. It is that of degree of probability. The
probability of a conclusion depends upon the nature of the
grounds on which it rests; and some conclusions reached
by critics of the Old Testament are for this reason more
probable than others, the facts at our disposal being in the
THEOLOGY. 187
former case more numerous and decisive than in the latter.
It is necessary to call attention to this difference, because
writers who seek to maintain the traditional view of the
structure of the Old Testament sometimes point to conclu-
sions which, from the nature of the case, are uncertain, or
are propounded, avowedly as provisional, with a view of
discrediting all, as though they rested on a similar founda-
tion. But this is very far from being the case. It has
been no part of my object to represent conclusions as more
certain than is authorized by the facts on which they depend ;
and I have striven (as I hope successfully) to convey to the
reader the differences in this respect of which I am sensible
myself. Where the premises satisfy me, I have expressed
myself without hesitation or doubt; where the data do not
justify (so far as I can judge) a confident conclusion, I have
indicated this by some qualifying phrase. I desire what
I have just said to be applied in particular to the analysis
of the Hexateuch. That the ‘Priest’s Code’ formed a
clearly defined document, distinct from the rest of the
Hexateuch, appears to me more than sufficiently established
by a multitude of convergent indications; and I have
nowhere signified any doubt on this conclusion. On the
other hand, in the remainder of the narrative of Genesis,
Numbers, and of Joshua, though there are facts which
satisfy me that this also is not homogeneous, I believe that
the analysis (from the nature of the criteria on which it
depends) is frequently uncertain, and will, perhaps, always
continue so.”
As to the general effect, he speaks as follows: “It is
not the case that critical conclusions, such as those expressed
in the present volume, are in conflict either with the Christian
creeds or with the articles of the Christian faith. These
conclusions affect not the fact of revelation, but only its
188 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
form. They help to determine the stages through which
it passed, the different phases which it assumed, and the
process by which the record of it was built up. They do
not touch either the authority or the inspiration of the
Scriptures of the Old Testament. They imply no change
in respect to the Divine attributes revealed in the Old
Testament, no change in the lessons of human duty to be
derived from it, no change as to the general position (apart
from the interpretation of particular passages) that the Old
Testament points forward prophetically to Christ. That
both the religion of Israel itself, and the record of its history
ernbodied in the Old Testament, are the work of men whose
hearts have been touched, and minds illumined, in different
degrees, by the Spirit of God, is manifest: but the recognition
of this truth does not decide the question of the author by
whom, or the date at which, particular parts of the Old
Testament were committed to writing; nor does it determine
the precise literary character of a given narrative or book.
No part of the Bible, nor even the Bible as a whole, is a
logically articulated system of theology; the Bible is a
‘library,’ showing how men variously gifted by the Spirit
of God cast the truth which they received into many different
literary forms as genius permitted or occasion demanded—
into poetry of various kinds, sometimes national, sometimes
individual, sometimes even developing a truth in a form
approaching that of the drama; into prophetical discourses,
suggested mostly by some incident of the national life; into
proverbs, prompted by the observation of life and manners ;
into laws prescribing rules for the civil and religious govern-
ment of the nation; into narratives, sometimes relating to
a distant or a nearer past, sometimes autobiographical; and
(to include the New Testament) into letters, designed, in
the first instance, to meet the needs of particular Churches
THEOLOGY. 189
or individuals. It is probable that every form of literary
composition known to the ancient Hebrews was utilized as
a vehicle of Divine truth, and is represented in the Old
Testament. Hence the character of a particular part of the
Old Testament cannot be decided by an @ priori argument
as regards what it must be; it can only be determined by
an application of the canons of evidence and probability
universally employed in historical or literary investigation.
None of the historians of the Bible claim supernatural
enlightenment for the materials of their narrative se ltieis
reasonable, therefore, to conclude that these were derived
by them from such human sources as were at the disposal
of each particular writer; in some cases from a writer’s own
personal knowledge; in others from earlier documentary
sources ; in others, especially those relating to a distant past,
from popular tradition. It was the function of inspiration
to guide the individual writer in the choice and disposition
of his material, and in his use of it for the inculeation of
special lessons. And in the production of some parts of the
Old Testament different hands co-operated, and have left
traces of their work more or legs clearly discernible. The
whole is subordinated to the controlling agency of the Spirit
of God, causing the Scriptures of the Old Testament to be
profitable for ‘teaching, for reproof, for correction, for in-
struction, which is in righteousness ;’ but under this presiding
influence scope is left for the exercise, in different modes
and ways, of the faculties ordinarily employed in literary
composition. There is a human factor in the Bible, which,
though quickened and sustained by the informing Spirit, is
never wholly absorbed or neutralized by it; and the limits
of its operation cannot be ascertained by an arbitrary d@ priori
determination of the methods of inspiration: the only means
by which they can be ascertained is by an assiduous and
190 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
comprehensive study of the facts presented by the Old
Testament itself.”
In a footnote Canon Driver gives a statement of great
importance in the effort to appreciate justly the new
criticism : “Two principles, once recognized, will be found to
solve nearly all the difficulties which, upon the traditional
view of the historical books of the Old Testament, are in-
superable, viz.: (1) That in many parts of these books we
have before us traditions, in which the original representa-
tion has been insensibly modified, and sometimes (especially
in the later books) coloured by the associations of the age in
which the author recording it lived; (2) that some freedom
was used by ancient historians in placing speeches or dis-
courses in the mouths of historical characters. In some
cases, no doubt, such speeches agreed substantially with
what was actually said; but often they merely develop
at length, in the style and manner of the narrator, what
was handed down only as a compendious report, or what
was deemed to be consonant with the temper and aim
of a given character on a particular occasion. No satis-
factory conclusions with respect to the Old Testament will
be arrived at without due account being taken of these
two principles.”
To this Professor Driver adds the significant and weighty
statement: “Should it be feared that the first of these prin-
ciples, if admitted, might imperil the foundations of the
Christian faith, it is to be pointed out that the records of the
New Testament were produced under very different historical
conditions; that while in the Old Testament, for example,
there are instances in which we can have no assurance that
an event was recorded until many centuries after its oc-
currence, in the New Testament the interval at most is not
more than thirty to fifty-five years. Viewed in the light of
THEOLOGY. 191
the unique personality of Christ, as depicted both in the
common tradition embodied in the synoptic Gospels and
in the personal reminiscences underlying the fourth Gospel,
and also as presupposed by the united testimony of the
apostolic writers belonging almost to the same generation,
the circumstances are such as to forbid the supposition
that the facts of our Lord’s life on which the funda-
mental truths of Christianity depend can have been the
srowth of mere tradition, or anything else than strictly
historical. The same canon of historical criticism which
authorizes the assumption of tradition in the Old Testament,
forbids it—except within the narrowest limits, as in some of
the divergences apparent between the parallel narratives of
the Gospels—in the case of the New Testament.”
Those who have read Dr. Sayce on the “ Higher Criticism
and the Monuments.” will appreciate the following note by
Dr. Driver: “It is an error to suppose, as seems sometimes
to be done, that topographical exploration, or the testimony
of inscriptions, supplies a refutation of critical conclusions
respecting the books of the Old Testament. The Biblical
records possess exactly that degree of historical and topo-
graphical accuracy which would be expected from the cir-
cumstances under which all reasonable critics hold that they
were composed. The original sources of Samuel and Kings,
for instance, being the work of men familiar with Palestine ,
describe localities there with precision ; the chronology, being
(in many cases) added subsequently, is in several respects in
irreconcilable conflict with contemporary inscriptions.”
In order to complete our idea of the standpoint of the
higher critics, we must have before us the answer of Dr. Driver
to a very common objection, the removal of which would do
more than anything else to enable us to approach the new
criticism without bias. “It is objected, however, that some
192 THE REROSEVOR FAITH.
of the conclusions of critics respecting the Old Testament are
incompatible with the authority of our blessed Lord, and that
in loyalty to Him we are precluded from accepting them.
That our Lord appealed to the Old Testament as the record
of a revelation in the past, and as pointing forward to Him-
self, is undoubted; but these aspects of the Old Testament
are perfectly consistent with a critical view of its structure
and growth. That our Lord in so appealing to it designed
to pronounce a verdict on the authorship and age of its
different parts, and to foreclose all future inquiry into these
subjects, is an assumption for which no sufficient grounds
can be alleged. Had such been His aim, it would have
been out of harmony with the entire method and tenor
of His teaching. In no single instance, so far as we are
aware, did He anticipate the results of scientific imquiry
or historical research. The aim of His teaching was a
religious one; it was to set before men the pattern of a
perfect life, to move them to imitate it, to bring them to
Himself. He accepted, as the basis of His teaching, the
opinions of the Old Testament current around Him; He
assumed, in His allusions to it, the premises which His
opponents recognized, and which could not have been
questioned (even had it been necessary to question them)
without raising issues for which the time was not yet ripe,
and which, had they been raised, would have interfered
seriously with the paramount purpose of His life.” Ina
footnote Dr. Driver adds, with particular reference to the
hundred and tenth psalm, “It does not seem requisite for the
present purpose, as, indeed, within the limits of a preface it
would not be possible, to consider whether our Lord, as man,
possessed all: knowledge, or whether a limitation in this, as
in other respects—though not, of course, of such a kind as
to render Him fallible as a Teacher—was involved in that
THEOLOGY. 193
gracious act of condescension, in virtue of which He was
willing ‘in all things to be made like unto His brethren.’ ”
It is certainly open to us to take the latter view as more
consistent with the essential idea of the Incarnation. In
no case does it seem necessary to suppose—if the supposition
be possible—that He was, as man, omniscient. But that,
as the Lord Jesus Christ, He did not know who was the
writer of the hundred and tenth psalm, though not an
impossible conception, is a difficult one. It is said that
to Him was given the Spirit without measure. Are we
to suppose that the Incarnate Son limited Himself to what
the Holy Spirit should give Him to say? In that case, we
can imagine that it was not given Him to know who the
writer of the hundred and tenth psalm was. But, speaking
generally, the indications point rather to intentional reserve
than to absence of knowledge. For instance, the fact that
He did not anticipate the results of scientific inquiry or
historical research is very significant. For His non-antici-
pation must be attributed either to His personal knowledge
reserved, or to the influence on Him of the Holy Spirit by
way of guidance. For the fact that He does not “anticipate”
them at all, either favourably or unfavourably, implies know-
ledge, which He would not use, on His own part, or on that
of the Divine Spirit to whom He submitted Himself. The
very fact that Christianity is wedded to no system, does not
“anticipate” results of scientific and historical research, in
the sense of opposing them, is a fact so astounding that I
know not how to account for it except on the supposition
that our Lord kept Himself, or was kept by the Divine
Spirit, from saying anything that should stand in the way
of free inquiry. Except on the hypothesis that the results
were foreseen, I cannot see how it would have been possible to
avoid saying something that could be construed into opposition.
O
194 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
But whether our Lord’s reserve was a conscious and deliberate
act of His own, or the effect of the Holy Spirit’s action on
Him, we must decide—if we decide at all—according to
our view of the Incarnation in relation to the Holy Spirit.
Enough, I trust, has been said to allay the anxieties and
soften the doubts of the classes for whom I have ventured to
write. I have sought to indicate the sources of strength and
comfort. Again and again I have recalled attention to those
deep intuitions to which our Lord constantly appeals, and
shown how the supreme question of God in Christ must be
answered by them. Only, let it not be forgotten that no
argument about intuition can be a substitute for the exercise
of the intuitions themselves. The method of safety and of
peace—the method that alone is greater and more com-
manding than that’ of science itself—is the way of intuition.
But it must be intuitional experience. We must try the
Bible for ourselves. Especially, we must obey Christ in
order to know Christ. We can at least trust Him so far
as to try Him. Even the reading of the Gospels once or
twice through has settled the supreme question for thousands
of men by leading them to test the result of obedience to
Christ. He invites us to test Him thus: “Come unto Me,
all ye that labour and are heavy laden. Take My yoke upon
you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly: and ye shall
find rest unto your souls.” In the last result there is no
way but this of intuitional experrence. Only thus can we
know that His yoke is easy and His burden light. When
we have thus tested Him, we shall be in the right position
for testing doctrines concerning Him—-so far as we are called
upon to test them. Only remember—Christ first! If then
we go into doctrines, our conclusion will be—Christ last also.
Even in them, we must have Christ with us. And thus the
First and the Last will be found to embrace the whole.
THEOLOGY. gE
7. Christianity and Contemporary Feeling.—One of the
most grievous hindrances to the repose of faith is found
partly in the contrast between. the lives and supposed pro-
fessions of Christian men, and partly in their failure to live
up to the requirements of Christianity, and after the example
of its Founder. But though this “inconsistency ” may rightly
cause us profound sorrow, it ought not to disturb our faith.
To be strictly accurate, there is far less “ inconsistency ” than
is commonly supposed. It is, in fact, absurd to take it for
granted that going to church is a profession of faith, or a
confession of obligation. Were that so, it would be the
veriest folly to invite the worldly or the indifferent or the
disbelieving to enter a church, since, by the assumption, they
cannot belong to any of these classes if they accept our
invitation. I do not doubt, however, from my own expe-
rience of working men, that the dislike of being supposed to
make thereby a “profession of religion” is one reason why
they stay outside. It is a pity, for this outsidedness hinders
them from judging for themselves. Their notion, moreover,
that going to church is in itself a profession of anything is
wrong. JI am not sure that we preachers are not largely
responsible for this erroneous impression. We have so often
criticized from the pulpit the motives of congregations in
assembling, have so often blamed men for not being moved
only by what we considered the highest inducements, that
many of those who were conscious of no such exalted springs
of action have taken us at our word and stayed away. If,
as some appear to think, the only reason for going to church
is to worship Almighty God, then we shall have to reserve
that sacred building for those who are already holy, or at
least devout, believers, and we shall have to erect halls or
mission-rooms everywhere, in great abundance, for those
who are not expected to make a profession before they have
106 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
anything to profess. But as the church is, also, intended
for people whom we hope to see “ converted,” there is no
inconsistency in going to church before “conversion ” takes
place. For if only the converted go, there will be none to
be converted. The mere going to church is not, then, a
profession, and is not inconsistent with anything that I
know of. The inconsistency arises only when by habitual
going, or in some other way, as by participation in Holy
Communion, one “makes profession of religion.” Then,
indeed, the contrast of Sunday goodness and week-day bad-
ness is, or rather would be, were it not so frequent, startlingly
painful. Yet that others are unfaithful 1s no reason for our
becoming like them, and none for our own faith being in
any degree shaken. Our faith in Christ is faith for Christ,
and is not dependent on whether others are true to Him
or not.
At the same time, we must not forget the time- and will-
conditions to which the work of Christ in the world is
subject. One often hears it said, “ Christianity is a failure. It
has been eighteen centuries in the world, and see how little it
has accomplished!” Let us for a little distinguish between
Christianity and Christ. He, at all events, is no failure.
Whatever of good there is in the world, in any part of it, in
all the sub-Christian religions of men, is owing to the Son of
God—to the Spirit: whom He sends, who “lighteth every
man.” And as there was a fulness of time for His appear-
ance in the flesh, so will there be a fulness of time for His
manifestation as the Unifier of all religions into Himself.
Meanwhile, as we would do well to remember, Christianity—
or, to put it more definitely, the work of Christ in the world
—requires time and will. It is in the nature of the case
that men are to be persuaded and not forced, and persuasion
over so vast an area is a slow process. When people talk
Met EOLOG LY. 197
about Christianity having been so long in the world, and yet
having failed to win the world, they seem to imagine that it
started on its present enormous scale, forgetting altogether,
one would think, that it began with a group of twelve, and
had again and again to meet and overcome successive bar-
barisms—growing in extent, but losing, for long, much of its
depth and purity. They forget, too, that it is nowhere
recorded that Christianity undertook to convert the world at
once or within any stated time, and that if men will not try
to rise to its standard, that is their fault, and not its. More-
over, the objection is in singularly bad taste when it comes
from those who give no earnest support, or no support at all,
to missionary societies, or other means of spreading know-
ledge of and encouraging life in Christ. They ignore the
fact that Christ works through men to win men. They do
not seek to win others to Him, they do not give themselves
to Him, and then they call Him a failure because they and
others choose to stand coldly and idly aloof. If Christianity
is in any sense a failure, it is because it has more bread
than it has hands to carry it to the needy. Let us, at least,
put the blame on the right shoulders. It is you, my careless
or indifferent brother, you and such as you, who must bear
the burden of blame. If Christianity has failed to reach all,
it has not failed to reach millions. In the sense in which it
has failed, nothing has succeeded. Compared with all its
rivals, it is the greatest success, qualitatively and quantita-
tively together, of all time.
But what would you have? Because it has not yet
reached every one, do you want Christianity abolished ?
Yes? Then that would be to abolish cleanliness because
there are so many dirty, to reject food and drink because
there are so many hungry and thirsty, to fling away clothes
because there are so many half-clad, to pull down houses
198 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
because there are so many with scarcely a shelter, to destroy
gladness because there are so many sad, to thrust aside
knowledge because there are so many ignorant, to become
selfish because there are so many loveless, to suppress virtue
because there are so many vicious—in a word, to put down
goodness because there are so many bad. Let me show you
a more excellent way. Gather to the aid of those whom even
you must confess to be presenting a pure Christianity to the
world. Instead of standing aloof, set yourself to work. Try
to get everybody clean, with sufficient food and drink and
clothes and house-room, increase gladness and knowledge
and love, give your whole heart to virtue and goodness—in
short, do what you may to lessen the force of your own
objection by obeying Christ yourself and getting others to
obey Him. See well to this. It is the right way, and if you
are the right sort you will be glad to take it.
I think it is not very wonderful that so many fine
earnest fellows should revolt against what is called popular
Christianity—the care of Christians for the poor so often
looks as if they were compounding with their consciences.
Christians are not exactly wanting in pity, but they do not
always see that pity is just what excites hot rebellion. It is
true that the ideal Church presents the noblest form of society,
where the socialism of the state becomes the communion of
the saints. It would, too, be something like madness not to
keep that great aim steadily in view. Meanwhile the quarrel
of “Socialists” is with the “Church” as it is. They do not
mean the clergy, though they are “bad enough.” They
mean the overwhelming majority of “Christian” people
throughout the world. Many of them would dechristianize
the world, not seeing that they would thus destroy all social
hopes; for if the world is so bad with Christianity, it would
be infinitely worse without, But the persistent survival of
THEOLOGY. 199
selfishness in men who “ profess” the religion of love is a
remarkable phenomenon. It is strange that, comparatively,
so few statesmen should give themselves to “ social problems,”
and stranger still that the masses of the people do not seem
to care very much whether they do or not. But, for those
Christians whose minds have been disturbed on the subject,
there will be no rest except in the faith that is made perfect
by works. You may put the question away from you, but
you will be in that shutting up a part of your best nature,
and repose—unless it be that of partial death—will not be
the result of that process. On the other hand, if you address
yourself to social work without Christ, you will break your
heart, if you have a heart to break; and the good you do,
though it may be real enough, will fail in largeness and
depth. The worst of the present agitation is, that, frightened
by extreme demands, you do nothing, and therefore you
are, according to your temperament and moral sensibility,
more or less miserable sinners. You may not see your way
to be a Fabian or a social democrat. Then there is the
Christian Social Union. If that will not suit, you can, at
least, give your influence and your vote to men who believe
that extreme poverty is not a decree of the Almighty, and
that the belief that many are willing to work, but can find
none, is not an illusion. You will at least consider the
eight hours’ and the old-age pension questions, and whether
it may be the will of Christ that you and I and all others
who have work or “means” should support those who have
neither. Anyway, satisfy yourself that in social matters
you are honestly trying to walk in the way that Christ
would have you walk in. Find out by doing the way to do.
You will never settle that, nor your own heart, by merely
thinking about it. We must all of us be in the kingdom
here if we are to get into the greater kingdom hereafter, and
200 THE REPOS OFA PAITA.
you know children learn to walk by walking. The instinct
of the child is for the practical, and we must be practical too.
Never fear a fall, or you cannot learn to walk. We are sure
to blunder, but we can learn by blundering not to blunder.
It is a pitiable thing to give up noble effort, because we do
not succeed as soon or as well as we like.
Only, let all your social endeavours have the spirit of
Christ in them. After all, pressing as the temporal need is,
the need of the eternal is more pressing still. Whether
statesman or Churchman, you are still Christ’s. He is Lord
of the state and the Church; but do not sink your Church-
manship in your statesmanship. Churches and schools, and
wise parochial, and diocesan, and national, and international
organizations for bringing the people to the Christ of the
Church ought not to be allowed to suffer because you happen
to be thinking much of the Christ of the state. The one
thing should ye do, and not leave the other undone. Yet,
just at present, there is special need of all the knowledge
and intelligence and wisdom—very specially the last—
which social questions can call to their aid. Do not have
the low wisdom which seeks to justify doing nothing, but the
high wisdom that seeks to guide effort aright. But in and
through it all keep the eternalness of life before you, and the
way by which men can enter into and share the life of the
eternal. Always remember that He who has done most—
and is still doing it through doctors and workers and teachers
—for the bodies and minds of men, has done most of all, and
is still doing it through His Church, for their souls.
8. Repose in Duty—What we have been studying in
these pages is, in fact, the Divine way of peace—rest in the
God of our intuitions and of the beliefs which our intuitions
justify. It is true that He is the God of the tiger as well as
of Jesus, who is the Son Incarnate; of the vulture as well as
THEOLOGY. 201
the dove, which is the symbol of the Holy Ghost. It is true
that neither in plant, animal, nor man does God recognize
any absolute right to live at all, still less the right to live
comfortably. Plants and animals are to live as they can;
man is to live also as he ought. But we are plants and
animals as well as men; as plants and animals we must still
live as we can, save as plant and animal come under the
higher law of the man. God recognizes no right as against
earthquake or sunstroke, as against fire or lightning, as
against gravitation or chemical action, as against drought or
flood, as against wreck or collision, except the right, subject
to the duty to live as we ought, to do the best we can for
ourselves. What right, then, beyond this, does God recognize?
Well, He recognizes our right to duty and blessedness. And
my contention is, that to man, not as matter, or as plant, or
as animal, but as man, there is a law—by which I mean
a rule that has no exception—that so far as he does his duty
he has blessedness. Many will say that blessedness comes
from love and trust rather than from doing one’s duty. In
one way they are right enough. But, then, their notion of
love in relation to duty is rather crude. It is something
they foolishly set over against duty; whereas nothing
ought to be set against that. It is our duty to love and
trust. “Thou shalé love the Lord thy God,” “Have faith in
God,” are surely examples of the “ categorical imperative,” if
anything is. Moreover, many have let themselves slide into
the way of looking at duty as something external, as a round
to be trodden like a policeman’s beat; and fancy that, like
the policeman, they can be sometimes “off duty.” But if
psychology has taught us anything, it has taught us that
“doing” is internal as well as external—includes feeling,
thinking, wishing, as well as willing, and outward acts.
And if the “ethics” of Christ has taught anything, it has
202 THE REPOSE. OF. FAITH.
taught us that whatsoever has to do, inwardly or outwardly,
with our wills, has to that extent to do with duty. The law
in scientific form is, Blessedness is proportionate to duty
done. In ethical and religious form it is, “Take My yoke
upon you, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”
Man has, then, this claim upon God, has a right to this
thing from God, that blessedness shall be proportionate to
duty ; not happiness, remember, not ease, comfort, exemption
from sickness or pain or death, or from anything. ‘This
certainly implies the immortality of the good, 2. the
immortality of the soul that does its duty; unless there be
a point at which duty ceases. Is death such a point? Take
the case of a man suddenly killed while doing his duty. Hf
that man’s soul—if the soul-man, rather—is killed too,
blessedness does not follow duty; and God does not do His
duty. For it is His duty to keep faith, and it 1s not keeping
faith to let the good perish. Even if we had no right to
immortality, yet if God has led us to expect it, as in “natural
religion,” or promised it, as in “revealed religion,” He is
bound to keep His word. If men have any right to
immortality at all, I am not sure that there are, compara-
tively, many who forfeit it. I grant that in any case the
“)lessedness” must become less and less as it sinks in the
level of duty done, and that the “cursedness” rises and rises
in proportion to duty undone, misdone, and done against.
But the study of the moral state of savage races renders it
difficult to believe that there are many who altogether cease
from duty, and the law of duty and blessedness requires us
to believe that the man shall yet live so long as any duty
as such is done. The blessedness, where duty done is little,
must be little also; but so long as it is done at all there
must be some “blessedness,” though accompanied by more
“cursedness.” Now, to be “blessed” or “cursed,” in
LZEOLOG SY. 203
however little a degree as to the first, or in however great
a degree as to the second, a man must live; and if it be that
the final “curse” comes to the wholly bad as the complete
extinction of conscious being, yet a man must live while
there is any good in him at all.
Whether the doctrine of “natural immortality” be the
true one, I am not disposed to discuss; but if it be true, there
are some relevant considerations we should do well to note.
The “popular” doctrine of punishment—apart from the
question of its everlastingness, which I have said my say
upon elsewhere—is or was that all who reject Christ are
turned, apparently indiscriminately, into the same hell, very
much as criminals of very varied degrees of criminality are
or were herded together in the same prison. Now, that
conception cannot be right. If it be thought that God
cannot, or will not, bring to an abrupt conclusion their
“natural immortality,’ and so end them and their misery
together, yet He must make a distinction. It may be
unusual to think that a murderer has any rights at all; but
it is certain that there are varying degrees of criminality
even in murder, and it is not clear that a less criminal
murderer has not the right to say to the Judge of all the
earth, “I know I am guilty, and deserve to be punished;
but if you place me among murderers of a far deeper guilt
than mine, and punish me exactly as they are punished, my
punishment is excessive, and so far unjust.” It seems to me
the claim is sound, and would be recognized. Now, if this
be true of even so extreme a case, what shall we say of the
“moral” man who is sent to hell? Has he not the right to
protest against being placed at all amongst the “immoral” ?
I think he has, and that the claim would be recognized.
Some of my readers will say that I have, in putting it thus,
used quite unnecessary plainness. Well, I must ask you to
204 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
trust me. I am not writing for you alone. But, believe me,
there are yet many thousands who will never be brought to
recognize the crude unethicalness of some of their “ religious ”
ideas unless great plainness of speech is used. The law
already given has for its necessary counterpart this: Punish-
ment is proportionate to duty not done, misdone, or done
against.
There are some misunderstandings which must be noticed.
Thus, against the idea that comparatively few are bad enough
to exclude themselves from life beyond, some would quote
the words of our Lord about the way of life and few there be
that find it, and conversely about the way to destruction and
the many that find that. Of course, if the word “life” is
always used in one and the same sense, then, indeed, I have
no adequate answer ready. But I think in Christ’s use “life”
means His own life and God’s life. “In Him was life, and
the life was the light of men;” “Because I live, ye shall
live also”—meaning, I take it, not that there was no other
life of any kind, but no other of the highest kind, that 1s, of
the kind inherent in Himself. “This is life eternal, to know
Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast
sent.” The eternal life, then, is the life of the Eternal, the
life of God and His Son, and into this life that of the believer
is taken up, just as it is elsewhere said that we become
partakers of the Divine nature. When it is said that the
believer has passed from death to life, it manifestly cannot
mean that he was literally dead before, but that his previous
life was, by comparison, death—just as St. Paul says, “ You
hath He made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins.”
It would appear, therefore, that as to the many or few our
Lord was not at all speaking of life in the sense in which
the word has been used by the present writer, but of that life
which He and the Father live, and which the believer alone
THEOLOGY. 205
could share. But I recall other words of His in which He
seems to recognize that other meaning of the term, in which
there is life in man after death other than that of which He
spake in the passages quoted. “God is not the God of the
dead, but of the living ;” “ For all live unto Him.”
Then, from the standpoint of grace, many will feel
difficulty in recognizing duty done as giving us any claim
upon God. Before going into this, a word about regarding
ourselves as “unprofitable servants.” That, I may say in
passing, in a just humility, we ought thus to regard ourselves,
Is no proof that God so regards us; for we have also to bear
in mind the “Well done, good and faithful servant.’ Yet
we certainly are servants from whom no profit could be made.
We have all sinned, and come short of the glory of God. And
there is no way I can imagine in which we can outstrip our
duty as regards God, though we can, I think, as regards nian,
by loving our neighbour more than ourselves. It is thus true
that in any sense of profit “merit lives from man to man, but
not from man, O God, to Thee.” But to come now to the
great doctrine of grace. There, it is said, blessedness does
not grow out of duty done; it is the free gift of God. But I
have not alleged that blessedness grows out of duty done; I
have said that it is proportionate to duty done. In any case,
it is not the duty, but God, that gives the blessedness. Never-
theless, the fact remains that in grace itself the blessedness is
proportionate to the duty done. For we are blessed exactly
in the measure in which we fulfil the duty of believing,
trusting, loving, obeying, living, the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ. There is, of course, no merit in the sense of
deserving that special aspect of the love of God which is
called grace; but it is assuredly meritorious in the sense
that the believer deserves to be praised to the extent of
having the fact recognized that he has so far done his duty.
206 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
It may be granted at once that he cannot perform this duty
without Divine aid, and that so far forth the praise is all to
God, and not to him. That is quite true, but it is equally
true that so far as he voluntarily does his duty in embracing
the offered aid to enable him to believe and obey, so far he
deserves praise. If a man does not deserve praise for accept-
ing, how can he deserve blame for rejecting, Christ ?
But all this is not in the least opposed to the teaching of
St. Paul, that no man is justified by doing the works of the
law, because, whether the works if done would justify or not,
no one, as a matter of fact, has done them in that fulness
which alone could justify. Nevertheless, duty done gives
man some claim upon God. Suppose the believer and the
unbeliever to “ start fair”—that the one voluntarily embraces
the gospel, and the other equally voluntarily rejects it: the
first has so far forth a claim upon God which the other has
not. To deny this is to throw the doctrines of grace into
confusion, and undermine the basis of all morality. The
claim may turn out to be smaller than supposed; but how-
ever little, it is real. To assume that there is no obligation
whatever on God’s part to His creation, is, at a breath, to
blow morality out of existence. If He is under no obligation
to acknowledge the good, He can be under none to disown
the bad, and “grace” is no longer distinguishable from
caprice. Once again, it may be thought my language is
over-strong. But once again I must answer, it needs great
plainness of speech to rouse some people to think. In any
case the law remains. We do not deserve the love of God,
because we have miserably failed—nay, I cannot imagine,
had we not failed at all, that we could ever have deserved
such love as God has shown in Christ. But God is a God of
truth and facts, and He will not refuse to recognize the essential —
distinction between the man who wills and the man who
THEOLOGY. . 207
does not will—justly allowing always for any hindrances to
will in the second case—to fulfil his duty. And nothing
can alter the law that blessedness is proportionate to duty
done, whether it be the duty of believing, trusting, loving,
and obeying Jesus Christ, or any other.
Nevertheless, it would not be just to leave the matter
here. While looking on the intuition of right—under the
aspect of duty—as penetrating every fibre of our volitional
being, just as law in its scientific sense penetrates every
atom of our non-volitional being, I do not forget that life in
grace is no more presented under the supreme aspect of duty
than life in nature is presented under the supreme aspect of
law. The duty, as the law, is there always; but it is there
for the mind, not for the eye. It is not easy to put the dis-
tinction into concrete terms; for even life, movement, which
come nearest, are abstract terms. Let us take it this way.
God has not put before our eyes motion and life; He has put
before our eyes moving and living things. He does not put
us In the midst of an environment. He puts us on the earth,
where are seas and rivers and streamlets ; where are mountains,
rocks, and stones; where are forests, woods, and thickets;
where are moors and plains, valleys and hills, isles and
lakes; where are fishes, birds, beasts, which we can see with-
out looking for, and many more we must look for to see;
where there are men of many races, whose coming is marked
by the change made in the face of nature—caves hollowed,
huts raised, farms marked off, cattle reared, houses erected,
towns built, oxen and horses tamed and bound to plough,
pack-saddle, cart, and carriage, boat and ship on river and sea,
shops and mills in the street, wheat in the fields, flowers in the
garden, the steady push of the ocean steamer, the whirr of the
rushing train, the rattle of machinery, the tread of soldiers,
the laughter of children, the fun of boys, the amusements
208 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
of men, and the joy and weariness of work. And all set
in a viewless ocean of air, where breezes play and tempests
roar; through which flashes the sun, shines the moon, and
gleams the star; in which floats the cloud, and pours the
rain, and falls the dew. It is thus God puts things before us ;
but in and through each and all, up and down, in and out,
runs the law of their being. So also is it touching duty.
Morality, virtue, righteousness, are not seen; but we do see
moral, virtuous, righteous men and women. They feel, like,
love; they wish, trust, hope; they think, reason, judge; they
plan, will, execute. Their visible life has a deeper and larger
basis of invisible life; but it is by their visible conduct,
judged by our own interior experience, that we learn their
invisible character. They are knit in family and social
bonds. We see the father, the brother, the neighbour, the
friend, the citizen. We do not see goodness; but we see the
good father, the good brother, the good friend, the good
neighbour, the good citizen. They meet in home, in council-
chamber, in Parliament House; they deliberate, vote, pass
bills. We do not see their minds, their wills; we see the
printed acts; we see such visible things as the acts, carried
out, involve, in courts, magistrates, judges, police,army. We
form our opinions from what we note of results and, perhaps,
still more, infer from principles. It is as men and women
and children, seeing their faces, hearing their voices, noting
their deeds, that society comes before us; men, women, and
children, strong or weak, feeble or masterful, beautiful or
unbeautiful, truthful or untruthful, righteous or unrighteous,
loving or unloving. We are not thinking of abstract quali-
ties. We are thinking of strong, beautiful, true, righteous,
loving persons ; or, 1t may be, of persons with lower or opposite
qualities, but still persons. We do not think of duty, but
of something due, rendered or unrendered by this man or
THEOLOGY. 209
that, this or that woman, this or that child. But we know,
nevertheless, that though it does not come out as a separate
_ thing, it is there ; that through all life runs law, and through
all voluntary life, duty. That truth is due, does not take
away from its truthfulness; that right is due, does not
diminish its rightness; that love is due, does not lessen
its lovingness. The love that is true and right is the
only love to which we can give our hearts with abandon,
_ just as the beauty that is true and right is the only beauty to
rejoice in without reserve. Yielding ourselves to the “Thou
shalt,” we thenceforth have the boundless joy of loving—
loving God with all our hearts, and our neighbours as our-
selves, Duty in the background, love in the foreground, and
joy for our atmosphere,—that, I think, is God’s way of
putting our true life.
9. Knowledge and Belief—I remonstrated one day with a
lady—I mean the word in its noblest meaning—for the way
in which she reproached the weather. I said, “Does it ever
occur to you that you are really reproaching God?” Her
answer was, “ Well, of course, there is not much sense in
abusing the weather; but really I don’t think God has any-
thing to do with it.” I replied, “A sick man whom I
visited the other day told me he had read somewhere that in
man the heart was the seat of God, and the liver the seat
of the devil. Is it your opinion that the weather is under
the direction of the devil?”! “No, I don’t think that; but
I have got into the way of regarding nature as something
which must run its course, something with which God has
nothing directly to do.” “Still,” I said, “as He is the
Author of nature, He must have known He had set agoing
Mr. Strong, by the way, rather hints that the convulsions not only of
the moral world, but those also of the physical world, so far as evil, have
Satanic origin.
P
210 THE REPOSE (OF: FAITH,
forces that would produce very disagreeable weather—that is,
disagreeable to us.” “Well, yes,” she replied, “I suppose
that must be granted. Butit does not seem the same thing as
doing it directly.” “You have given me something to think
about,” I remarked, and the conversation took another turn.
I have thought about it a good deal. I wish much we
eould attach a clearer idea to God’s immanence in nature. I
do not like the view that He has ceased to act so far as our
visible universe is concerned. I have spoken about the sum-
total of force in our system as standing for, so to speak, a
detached volition of God, running its course through the birth,
development, and death of the universe. But, then, we can-
not stop there or anywhere. That one volition seems enough
to account for the new universe also, and even to suggest
that if the Divine Originator never willed again, the force
He had once set agoing must go on for ever. I do not like
this, but it is difficult to explain or to grasp the idea of
immanence unless we abandon this notion of detached voli-
tion; abandon, too, it may be, in principle the law of inertia,
by which we declare that unless acted upon by something
not itself, any body in motion or at rest must so continue for
ever. Perhaps we may translate immanence as meaning that
the universe runs its course not in virtue of original impulse,
but as the outcome of the continuous unresting force of God. —
In which case, all the laws of science would be literally the
ways of God, except as modified in the small area of their
action by the free wills of voluntary creatures. But whether
immanence can be so translated or not, God is transcendent as
well as immanent. To many the idea of transcendence is no
more clear than that of immanence. My own notion of it is,
partly that God is more than He has done, is doing, or ever
will do; partly that we may and do know more of Him than
nature, in any of its heretofore usual senses, declares, My
.
|
THEOLOGY. 211
idea is slightly set forth in this way: Suppose there is a
great and most. wonderful painter who has condescended to
give me his deep friendship, and allowed me to be his con-
stant companion. He has permitted me far higher privileges
than free entry into his studio; he has allowed me to see
many of his paintings in their various stages; he has not, of
course, changed anything in them because of my presence,
but where I have been puzzled has given me hints of his
great purpose, and gently told me to await their fulfilment.
Meanwhile, though often perplexed, I have great joy in the
painter’s work. But though this is very great, it is but one
part of my joy. The other and larger part is the gladness
of knowing the painter himself, and the delight of his friend-
ship. If I add the supposition that I am the painter’s son,
my parallel is complete. And that is how I understand
transcendence—with this difference, that while in a sense the
painter may withdraw himself from his works, God does not -
withdraw Himself from His. I take immanence as science
in its widest and yet closest meaning, seeing God in His
works. I take transcendence as religion coextensive and
higher, looking up into God’s face while He shows His works
to His children, who are yet also a part of His works; as
more than coextensive, embracing other works—the works of
grace, as they are called, with which science, as such, has
only partial concern ; and higher and more extensive still, as
immediate contact and union with God Himself. I think,
then, of man, in all but His spiritual being, as part of nature
and subject to nature’s laws; in other words, part of God’s
works, and subject to God’s laws therein—the laws of God
the immanent. But I look on man in his spiritual nature as
resting in and blending with, but not as losing consciousness
of, God Himself—God as Spirit transcendent. And hence
the tranquil love with which one regards the future. For
212 THE BEPOSLOOK FALL Hd.
though man be evolved, it is given to his spirit to nestle in
the heart of the Evolver.
But though I think this is true, it is truth that in this
form not every one can reach. And though I do not believe
that the case I am about to suppose could possibly exist, I
will yet state it as the extreme limit within which it is
possible for religion to exist at all, and also a form of thought
more common than many suppose. Let us assume, then,
that we do not directly know God at all, but only His works.
We will take it for granted that our intuitions are not
intuitions of God ; that they are principles which justify belief
in Him, but do not constitute knowledge. We will further
suppose that we have no real acquaintance with Christ at
all, but only with what the New Testament says of Him.
Let no one imagine that on these conditions religion is
impossible. Is not the man profoundly religious who
believes in God, though he knows Him not, and so believes
that he is willing to do and to be whatsoever that unknown
Being wills? Is not he profoundly religious who believes
in Christ, though he knows Him not, and so believes that
he prays to the Unknown for repentance, and repents; for
trust, and trusts; for love, and loves; for obedience, and
obeys; for sanctification, and is sanctified; for hope, and
hopes; for comfort, and is comforted; for holiness, and is ©
holy? Can it be doubted that there is an agnosticism which
is consistent with religion? May not a man say quite truly,
“T grant all you allege, not as to possibility or impossibility
of knowledge, for of that I know nothing, but as to the
actual absence of knowledge. I do not know that God is all
that Christ says He is, I do not know that Christ ever lived,
I do not know that there will be life after death; never-
theless, all this I steadfastly believe. Whether knowledge be
possible I will not discuss, for I cannot postpone belief until
THEOLOGY, 213
belief has become knowledge. I can wait, believing, till
knowledge comes. And it seems to me enough that I have
sufficient evidence to justify belief, and conduct based on
belief. That you would interpret the facts in another way
is probable, but for myself I can say that my experience has
taught me nothing against belief. I have not, indeed, tested
the words of Christ and His apostles at all points—I grant
that some of them seem not open to any test I can apply—
but, so far as I have tested them, my own experience says
nothing against and a great deal for, while the vast body
of the Christian experience, past and present, wholly agrees
with mine on those points that chiefly concern conduct, ie.
grace, repentance, faith, love, obedience, hope, and joy. I
am not clear that men can know, but I am sure they can
believe unto righteousness” ? It seems to me there is noble-
ness in the faith that waits; that speaks into darkness,
believing God is there; that trusts the Christ who is nowhere
to be seen; that depends on statements that cannot be fully
tested till death becomes the open door; that lives in the
confidence that the Lord gives grace, though the Lord is
invisible and the grace cannot be distinguished; that under-
goes suffering, makes sacrifice of self, rejoices with joy
unspeakable and full of glory; that walks by faith, not sight.
Butler’s calm utterance of the statement that probability
is the guide of life, may irritate ardent tempers and seem
shallow to spiritual minds, but the principle implied is
nevertheless true. Pile up objections mountains high if
you will, yet so long as the balance of the best evidence is
in favour of Christianity, we have a rule of conduct which
it is sin to violate. Or, to put it in other words, whatever
the reasons given for this course of conduct or that, we are
bound to take that which we believe to be best. We are
under no obligation to deny that there is much to be said
214 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
for other ways; we hold there is more to be said for this.
We ought to take the course we believe to be best. It is true
that if we know one course, and only believe another to be
good, then, if the knowledge and belief are on the same level,
we ought, I think, to follow knowledge, not belief. But,
not now to insist that within certain areas of consciousness
belief and knowledge are one, a higher belief is far more
authoritative than a lower knowledge. And belief in Christ
is higher than any knowledge, if it exclude belief, which can
be presented as its rival. And, therefore, even if one cannot
take the view that our intuitions, our profoundest knowledge,
have God and Christ as their direct Object, yet let him
remember that his belief in God and Christ transcends all
other beliefs, as much as the intuitions, on which that belief
is based, transcend all other knowledge. The Repose of
Faith is his also.
In concluding this chapter, let me remind you that life
is many-sided, and that on not one of its sides can we
rightly ignore our relation to God and one another. Religious
sickness comes, like much other sickness, from want of
varied and continued exercise. We try too much to settle
things by thought, which can be settled only by action, and
action whose end is not self. If a man surrender not only
his choosing, but also his executive will to God, the will that
wills and acts as well as the will that wishes and hopes, he
will have the peace of God. Whoso is filled with Christ's
Spirit will have Christ’s repose.
CHAPTER III.
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY.
1. Introduction—I venture with great diffidence to address
my closing words specially to you. You have immeasurably
more to do with the repose of faith than has any other class
in the community. It is very largely in your hands to
determine whether faith shall be brave, bright, resolute,
reposeful, or whether it shall be timid, clouded, hesitating
disturbed. And I make this appeal because it has probably
been given to few men to see so much of your patient, cheer-
ful, self-denying labours, and of your eager willingness to
learn anything you can to make those labours more pro-
ductive. It is for this reason that I venture to point out
certain things which many of you have already dimly felt,
but on which your attention has not yet been adequately
concentrated. What I have to say has no party bearings ;
or, at least, it is as important to one party as to another. It
concerns your own repose of faith very seriously, for it deals
with your personal relations to others as affecting their belief
or unbelief in Christ.
2. Proportion of Faith and Love—I plead with you, then,
my brethren, first of all, that you should hold your own faith
with reasonable and proportionate emphasis, not only on its
several parts, but also on the love by which alone it sweetly
works. I have heard of a clergyman who appealed for help
on the ground that his Church was “an oasis of Catholicism
216 THE REPOSE (OP FAITH.
in a desert of Protestantism,” and of another who told his
people that to “become a Puseyite was to advance far on the
way to hell.” Now, I have nothing at present to say for or
against Catholicism, Puseyism, or Protestantism, but I ask
you to consider what effect statements like these must
produce on the minds of those who are without. If the
maintenance of Puseyism or Protestantism be more im-
portant than the winning of souls to the obedience of Christ,
or if one cannot be a member of Christ without being a
conscious Puseyite or Protestant, then there is no more to
be said. Christianity becomes identical with Puseyism or
Protestantism, and the exasperated outsider can but cry,
“ A plague on both your houses!”
But I have not found that the clergy generally take go
extreme a position. They do not usually say there is no
Christianity outside their party. Yet there is often a want
of frank whole-heartedness in their mutual recognition. It
is difficult to one to believe that a man can be a Christian
unless he has been converted; to another the doctrine of
conversion seems to involve a dangerous dependence on
excited emotion; and each has a feeling towards the other
that is not altogether brotherly. One regards belief in
plenary inspiration as necessary to orthodoxy, and more
than half implies that orthodoxy is necessary to salvation ;
another, while holding strongly the fact, maintains that
“the Church” has not defined the doctrine of inspiration,
and half suggests that every attempt at definition is a some-
what impious impertinence; and each feels towards the
other—well, let me say, a little constriction of the heart.
One feels bound to proclaim election to eternal life of the
few, and possibly reprobation to eternal death of the many ;
another regards this kind of Calvinism as essentially anti-
Catholic and evil; and each looks on the other with
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY. 217
half-averted face, not without a touch of horror. Now, it is
possible to warmly love a man whose views we do not like,
and it is for this love I plead. A warm personal friend of
Lowder’s used to say to him, “I would turn you out of the
Church of England to-morrow if I could” (curious that in
cases of this kind one nearly always gives aday’s grace) ; and
he loved Lowder, and Lowder loved him none the less for
this. Our differences would do far less harm were they
loving differences. It was said to me of a clergyman, “If
you want to make him your friend, you have only to
become His enemy.” I cannot conscientiously commend this
way of securing friendship; but the trait of character which
makes it possible is surely beautiful. A well-known clergy-
man is famous among his acquaintances for the extraordinary
generosity—I should prefer to call it loving justness—with
which he invariably speaks of his opponents. But even
very saintly men are sometimes wanting in this power of
speaking the truth in love. The painfully laboured way in
which they try to make excuses for the errors, as they deem
them, of men whose holiness is as unquestionable as their
own, is suggestive of a desire not to appear or not to be
uncharitable, rather than of hearty and honest love. Some-
times one is tempted to think that straightforward outspoken
hate would be more endurable. In most cases, however, the
“evil is wrought from want of thought,’ and not from “want
of heart.” Men drift into partisan ways of talking of each
other. They simply chatter unthinkingly at dinner-tables and
evening parties without the slightest note of the effect they
produce on the laity. The effect is a lowering of respect for
our character, or even a half good-natured, half contemptuous
indifference to our opinions. Unhappily, the evil does not
stop here. Men who lightly esteem ourselves in private are
unlikely to listen with much respect to our teaching in
218 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
public. Unbelief in the parson has often for its sequel
unbelief in religion. But, apart from this effect, careless
speaking about others is distinctly an evil in itself, and
ought on that ground alone to be guarded against. When
one adds that all uncharitableness—all failure to put our
verities in a setting of simple and honest affection—is a real
hindrance and harm to the kingdom of Christ, surely we
shall have motive enough to seek His grace, by which alone
we can have enough power over our own likes and dislikes
to be always lovingly just to others.
Another hindrance to belief is the way those ministers of
Christ who have been episcopally ordained, and those other
ministers of Christ who have not been episcopally ordained,
treat each other. I suppose we are only too familiar with
what is said about us, and I do not need to give specimens
of these sweetly pretty things. What I am anxious about is
our own faults, both of feeling and expression. I was lately
present at a ruri-decanal conference, presided over by the
bishop of the diocese, who in one of his addresses expressed
the opinion that Dissenters had a real grievance, in that their
ministers were not allowed to enter our schools to give
religious instruction to the children of Nonconformists.
Whereupon a clergyman rose and caustically remarked, “I
agree with his lordship that the Dissenters have a grievance.
Who ever heard of a Dissenter that had not? If there be
one who has no grievance, what in the world is he a Dissenter
for?” The audience laughed, I am afraid more than half
assentingly, but some were grieved, and some were harmed.
Every one is familiar with the distinction between “ political
Dissenters” and other Nonconformists. So far as the term
is really a distinction of fact, it may stand. But when it is
used as a term of contempt, do the users ever reflect that
it is felt as a cruel insult by those whose political dissent is
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY. 219
profoundly religious? Doubtless there are “political Dis-
senters.” But there are also “ political Churchmen.” sure
that any particular strain of thought, or flow of feeling, or
series of acts originate in the direct will of God revealed to
their minds. They are still unable to say they “see” Him,
or that they “hear” His voice, or that they “feel” His
presence. Nor can they honestly affirm, for the most part,
that Christ is a living Christ to them, in the sense of con-
sciousness of Him. He is not to us a palpable reality as He
was to those who could speak thus: “That which was from
the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we
have seen with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands
handled, concerning the Word of life (and the life was
ANGARPE ATS TOVTHE) CLERGY, 237
manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare
unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father,
and was manifested unto us); that which we have seen and
heard, declare we unto you also.” We pray to God for this
or that thing, and not only is it not given, but God does not
even say He will not give it. As far as perceptible response
is concerned, the silence could not be more complete if our
petitions were addressed to space or time. We are often
perplexed as to which way duty lies, but not even the faintest
hint that we can trace directly to God—in the case of most
men, at least—ever comes in response to our petitions. It is
the same with our affections. Wife or child, for example,
lies dying, but God makes no sign that He cares. If wife or
child recover, there is no knowing whether the recovery is
in any way due to the prayer. It is true that some men say
they directly know that their prayers are answered, but, if
this be true, it is hard still to believe that God is no respecter
of persons. It seems more likely that they are mistaken than
that God is partial.
When all this is set in contrast with the deeds attributed
to Christ, it would seem extremely difficult to justify the
way in which doubt is often denounced. I am to believe,
under certain penalties, that Christ once did certain mighty
works of a specified kind. If He did, He had thereby a
powerful claim on the loving gratitude of those whom He
saved; but how does that give Him any claim on the
eratitude of those whom He did not save? Grant that it
was admirable that He should open deaf ears and blind eyes;
that He should restore strength to palsied limbs, drive fever
from its lair, and stop the issue of blood; that He should
feed the hungry, raise the dead, and still the waves. But
why should we, the immense millions of humanity, be called
upon to be grateful for kindness shown to a mere handful
238 THE REPOSE OF FAITH.
of men nearly nineteen hundred years ago? Let it be
granted that all the Gospels say of these mighty works is
true, what then? Who can say, and expect to be believed,
that Christ has opened his ears or eyes, driven palsy from his
limbs, or fever from his blood, or closed his wounds with a
word? Who can say that Christ ever fed him hungering ?
Who can say that Christ ever gave back to him his dead 2
Who can say that Christ ever stilled the seas to save his life 2
And who, for that matter, can say He did not? Thousands
without number will say that, in a figurative and higher
sense, Christ has done all this for them; that He has, indeed,
opened the eyes and ears of their souls; that He has restored
to power the palsied will, taken away the fever of passion
from the blood, and closed the wounds that sin had made :
that He has satisfied the hunger of their hearts, given them
back their loved ones who were dead in trespasses and sin,
and stilled the storm that beat against an awakened conscience,
and filled their nature with the peace of God. But whether
this be true or not, it leaves the question untouched. For
the Gospels distinctly assert that He Himself did works of
a certain specified kind; and the question is, Who dares to
say that Christ Himself does these works to-day 2 i
If the question of doubt were only one of attitude towards
the historical question, Did Christ perform the mighty
works attributed to Him? the matter would become much
more simple and much less important. For whether He
did or did not, would have little present-day interest, so
long as there is no evidence that He is doing the works now.
It may be urged that it is still He whom we must thank,
even if now He but works through others. It is a little
difficult to focus gratitude on a name, when he who bears
the name has never been seen. Yet I admit the gratitude
might exist, and even become a powerful motive, But what
ANP ADEE AE TOO THE CLERGY. 239
evidence is there that He does these works through others ?
The “ others” are usually supposed to be the Church. Well,
whose eyes or ears does the Church open? When and where
has the Church spoken and sickness has fled, and the dead
leaped back to life? When and where has the Church
expanded a few loaves and fishes into food for thousands, or
changed water into wine for a wedding-feast, or even stilled
a tempest to save the ships that carried her own missionaries ?
If, then, neither personally, nor by His Church, Christ con-
tinues to do His mighty works, is it any wonder that the
question of whether He ever did them seems to have
scarcely any interest now? Iam very far from saying that
Christ does not to-day, and by His Church, perform mightier
works than these. But if these are no longer performed,
is it so very wicked to doubt if they were ever performed at
all? But the main point is, not whether we shall believe
that God was once so manifest in the flesh that men really
could behold their God; the point is that He is not so
manifested to-day, and therefore the difficulty I have named —
returns and remains.
The teaching of Christ, except in so far as it is based on
or requires belief in His works, is not to an equal extent
beset by the same difficulties. Though the healing of a sick
man in the first century is little comfort to a sick man of
nineteen centuries later, the enlightening of a dark mind
then may prove the enlightening of a dark mind to-day.
But still His teaching concerning God is not easily justified
by experience. Our greater knowledge may not essentially
alter the character of old problems, but it assuredly intensifies
their importance, and gives a keener edge to their meaning.
The problem of God and law is not in its essence different
from what it was when Christ calmly but indignantly set
His face against the idea which still lingers in the world,
240 Ld POMEL OSL: Lard PLT
that they who are killed by such incidents as the fall of a
tower are to be regarded as special objects of Divine dis-
pleasure. Yet, if there be no way in which we can discern
what are called special providences, it would seem that
everything is determined by law, and this to many excludes
the idea of its being determined by God. Then the ascent
of science from things physical to things mental suggests
the probability of things “spiritual” being also brought
within the net of law, whose meshes are too close to allow
even a solitary fact to escape. Now to say that, notwith-
standing, the one motive of God is righteous love, or loving
righteousness, is to make a statement to which our experience
of the world does not respond. Unless righteous love, or
loving righteousness, means something essentially different
from what Christ’s teaching would lead us to believe, it is
difficult to see in the universality of law, as ordinarily
understood, much evidence of either. While, then, belief in
what may be called Divine law is advancing by leaps and
bounds, belief in Divine love is certainly not increasing with
equal step. In multitudes it is, at the best, but a sleeping
belief; in others it is slowly fading; in some it is already
dead. You know as well as I do how this difficulty is to be
met; you know as well as I that you must seek to act on the
spiritual side of the sceptic’s reason, and help him to see that
if doubts are suggested by inquiry, faith is justified by in-
tuition. But my wish is that you should feel more deeply
how real the difficulty is.
6. The Faith of Christ.—It is true that Christians are united
to Christ by a common faith. The union is, indeed, more
than this, for it is one of life: “ Because I live, ye live also.”
But it is this. The doubter, nevertheless, is not to be
blamed for refusing to take it for granted that our Lord
believed everything which Christians now believe, or that
AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY. 241
Christians commonly believe all that Christ believed. Nor
are we to assume that the faith of to-day is the faith of
Christ in its way of believing. It is, nevertheless, true of
the nineteenth century as of the first that Christ says to us,
“My God and your God, My Father and your Father.”
At the same time, it may be doubted whether the emphasis
of Christian faith is placed where Christ would have it
placed. It was to be expected that Christ Himself should
become the centre of Christian thought and worship; but I
cannot be altogether sure that this was or is Christ’s will.
I do not mean, what is nevertheless true, that we have been
far too neglectful of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. What
I mean is, that we have not yet learned to worship the Father
as Christ would have us worship. We have, in our love of
Himself, failed to follow His example. The due order is set
forth in our creeds, but the actual order is rather that of the
Litany. It is true that even here we begin with the Father,
but it can hardly be questioned that the most intense and
prolonged prayer is addressed to the Son, while the Holy
Spirit is not much more than barely noticed. I am not
prepared to say that this is wrong; I only say I am unable
to feel sure that it is altogether right. It is, at least, per-
missible to ask whether prayer ought not always to be
addressed to the Father, even when what we desire is union
with the Son, or possession by the Spirit. But, it may be
gaid, would not this be to withhold honour due to Son and
Spirit? Surely not! Surely to follow the example set us
by Christ and the Holy Spirit is not to lessen the honour
due to either! Surely it is true that we most feel our
dependence on the Holy Spirit when we are most able to
realize that He proceeds from the Father and the Son;
and that we, being thus led, most strongly feel that it is
Christ who has reconciled us to the Father when we most
R
242 We ORES OE NERY AS LONE SVE eB
profoundly recognize that this reconciliation is the very
object of the ministry of Son and Spirit! The Litany is to
me a holy thing, and beautiful beyond all praise, and to say
one word against it is to myself a kind of profanation. Never-
theless, I dare not say that it reaches the level, or follows
the example, of the Holy Scriptures. There ought to be far
more prayer, not to, but for, the Holy Spirit, who reveals the
things of the Father and of the Son; and there ought to be
far more recognition of the dependence of the Son upon the
Father. Of this, at least, I cannot but be certain, even if I
hesitate to add more than that the balance of scriptural
example seems to be against the practice of praying directly
to the Son or the Holy Spirit.
It is not wonderful that the faith of Christ has been
somewhat supplanted by faith in Christ, or that to many
multitudes of believers the Epistles have become of so much
more importance than the Gospels. There has been from
time to time a revolt of the few against this; but unhappily,
as so often, the revolt has gone to the other extreme, forgetting
that the Epistles, as truly as the Gospels, were the outcome
of the Spirit of Christ. I do not think it possible to over-
estimate the importance of the apostolic teaching touching
the work of Christ in our redemption, and of the joy and
trust and love and boundless adoration of which He becomes
the Object. Nevertheless, we fail to please Christ unless His
faith be ours; and what His faith was we cannot learn from
the Epistles alone. Multitudes of Christians are, I fear,
much more willing to delight themselves in Christ than to
follow His example; and, indeed, comparatively few seem to
know what following His example means.
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