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 Division. 
 Section... 
 
THE 
 
 ■ JAN 11 1911 *) 
 
 Philosophy 
 
 OF 
 
 EVANGELICISM. 
 
 / 
 
 W/"V\ 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON : 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, 
 
 1867. 
 
Preface. 
 
 THE point soug-ht to be established in this Essay- 
 is — that Christianity, considered as the doc- 
 trine of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
 world," is a primitive element in the world's moral 
 constitution. 
 
 But in order to maintain that position, Christian 
 Faith must be shown to have the same Intuitive 
 Origix as our other moral ideas ; and this requires 
 a right conception of the Christian sacrifice, for 
 unless the Idea of it be in accord with our other 
 moral conceptions, it cannot be the subject of a 
 moral intuition. Hence, for the purposes of this 
 inquiry, we must extract the Christianity on which 
 we are to experimentalize, not from creeds or 
 crystalised forms of thought, but from the living 
 conscience, from the Christian heart. Such is the 
 Christianity to which, in our title page, we have 
 given the name of Evangelicism. 
 
 It has been too readily taken for granted, that 
 the peculiarities of the evangelical system are out 
 of harmony with natural religion. We believe the 
 reverse to be the fact. And feeling assured that 
 
iv Preface. 
 
 good service would be rendered to the cause of 
 moral and religious progress, could we establish to 
 the general satisfaction the truth of our conviction, 
 we ventured, in the first edition of this work, to 
 solicit for our argument the honour of its perusal. 
 
 Having since carefully revised our first effort, 
 and applied to it a severe censorship, re-arranging 
 the order of thought, and eliminating everything 
 which seemed extraneous, we again offer the argu- 
 ment, reconstructed and amplified, to public con- 
 sideration. 
 
 Placed between two extremes, with neither of 
 which we can entirely sympathise, there is some 
 danger of our sharing the not unusual fate of 
 men of no party. Strict dogmatists, whether so 
 on conviction, or because bound by subscription to 
 ecclesiastical formulas, are apt to turn away with 
 repugnance from a method of investigation which 
 partakes of the nature of free enquiry. And the 
 lovers of free enquiry are not generally disposed 
 to look with complacency on those who maintain 
 evangelical opinions. Hence it is not improbable 
 that we shall be repudiated by both, without either 
 of them taking the trouble to look through our 
 pages with sufficient care to enable them to give 
 reasons for their judgment. 
 
 There lies, however, between these two extremes 
 a large independent and intelligent middle class 
 
Preface. v 
 
 who, alike heedless of ecclesiastical dictation and 
 superior to sceptical querulousness, are earnest 
 enquirers after truth — come from what quarter 
 it may. To such, then, we make our appeal ; 
 and especially to that portion of the religious 
 public which feels itself unsettled by existing con- 
 troversies, and participates with us in the growing 
 persuasion that, if we would escape an irrational 
 Charybdis, we have no alternative but to encounter 
 a rational Scylla. 
 
 Many attempts have been made in this direction, 
 but, so far as we are aware, there has been in all 
 of them a toning down of strict evangelicism to 
 meet the supposed conditions of the question. 
 Now, that is no part of our purpose. On the 
 contrary, the evangel of St. Paul and of the Olden 
 Times has, we think, been already toned down 
 and disfigured by the Lockian transmutation to which 
 scholastic theology has subjected it ; and its restora- 
 tion to its Pauline simplicity and glory is a primary 
 step, essential to the object we contemplate. 
 
 Among the many who may deem our design 
 laudable, it is probable that there will be not a few 
 who, from having been long accustomed so to think, 
 will, in anticipation, pronounce it impracticable. 
 But let not those who concur with us in opinion 
 that success is extremely desirable, be in haste to 
 despair. Even a forlorn hope has chances in its 
 
VI Preface. 
 
 favour ; and upon such a topic nothing" can be won 
 without patient perseverance. Having- taxed our 
 powers to render a subtle argument clear, consecu- 
 tive, and conclusive, whether we have succeeded or 
 failed, its very difficulty will have charms for 
 genuine thinkers, to say nothing of its unquestion- 
 able importance. And should we be fortunate 
 enough to engage the co-operation of minds capable 
 of thoroughly grappling with the subject, it will be 
 a gratification to us, next to having our views con- 
 firmed, to see error detected, if error exist. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 The Nature of the Argument . 
 
 Chapter II, 
 The Conditions of the Argument. — Premisses 
 
 Assumed 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 25 
 
 Chapter III, 
 The Precise Question evolved, and its Answer 
 
 indicated. — The Evangelical Hypothesis . 55 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 The Moral Unity of Humanity, the basis of 
 
 Vicarious Merit and Suffering ... 84 
 
 Chapter V. 
 Our Intuitive Aptitude to appropriate Corporate 
 
 Merit, the Origin of Christian Faith . 1 42 
 
viii Contents. 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 T/ie Law of Justification, as it e??ierges out of the 
 
 preceding Hypothesis 184 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 Proofs from Catholic Concurrence, and from 
 
 Holy Scripture 203 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 The Moral Fruits of Justification. — '''■ Ecce 
 
 Homo" . 232 
 
 Chapter IX. 
 Conclusion • 250 
 
 erratum. 
 
 Page 222 line 7 ; strike out comma, and read — theoretical con- 
 sistency requires, &c. 
 
THE 
 
 Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE NATURE OF THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 UR purpose in the following 
 pages is to evolve from Evangeli- 
 cism, as it lives in the Christian 
 heart, what, for want of a more 
 appropriate word, we must call its Philoso- 
 phy. Although aware that systematic theo- 
 logians object to the word when applied to 
 revealed religion, we nevertheless persist 
 in its use, not because we widely differ 
 from their views, but simply because we 
 cannot find any other term in the English 
 language which would, with any degree of 
 accuracy, convey our meaning. No doubt 
 
 B 
 
2 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 we employ it in a sense different from 
 that in which it was understood by the 
 ancients ; probably in a sense peculiarly 
 English. Accordingly Hegel sarcastically 
 remarks: "The name at least of philoso- 
 phy is honoured in England. The natural 
 sciences are, in England, denominated 
 philosophy. Theories, especially in morals 
 and moral sciences, which are derived 
 from the feelings of the human heart, or 
 from experience, are called philosophy ; 
 also those which contain principles of 
 political economy." Hegel's notions of 
 philosophy were more transcendental, and 
 his sarcasm will glance off without im- 
 pression ; but what he says is nevertheless 
 true. In Anglican parlance, "we speak 
 of the philosophy of the human mind as 
 being of all philosophies that to which the 
 name * philosophy ' is particularly appro- 
 priated; and, when the word is used alone, 
 this is to be understood as the philosophy 
 spoken of. Other philosophies are re- 
 ferred to their several objects by qualify- 
 ing terms : thus we speak of natural phi- 
 losophy, meaning thereby the philosophy 
 of nature or of material objects. We also 
 
The Nature of the Argument. 
 
 speak of the philosophy *of positive law, 
 understanding thereby the philosophy of 
 those binding rules properly called laws. 
 The terms 'philosophy of history,' 'philo- 
 sophy of manufactures,' and other simi- 
 lar terms are used. All objects which can 
 so occupy the mind as to engage it in an 
 effort to classify and arrange them and re- 
 duce its knowledge to ultimate truths or 
 principles, admit of being grouped into a 
 branch of philosophy." 
 
 While, therefore, we readily yield to the 
 science of mind the dignified title of Phi- 
 losophy proper, we claim the license ac- 
 corded to English writers of distinguishing 
 by a time-honoured prefix that theory or 
 hypothesis by which the facts of the Gospel 
 history, the truths evolved from them, 
 their relation to the earnest conscience, 
 and the higher morals of Christianity, are 
 collected for combined consideration, and 
 by which, on being thus aggregately 
 examined, they are made to reflect light 
 upon each other and give forth certain 
 logical results. 
 
 That ritualistic clergymen, who arro- 
 gantly assume themselves to be the 
 
 B 2 
 
4 The Philosophy of Evangclicism. 
 
 only channels through which God com- 
 municates His will and grace to mankind, 
 should repudiate everything that bears the 
 most remote resemblance to a philoso- 
 phical investigation of Divine truth, is 
 what one may naturally expect. But that 
 divines who make no such pretensions 
 should join in the outcry, is nothing better 
 than self-immolation, inasmuch as the fa- 
 bric whose pillars they unwisely bend their 
 strength to prostrate, could not fail in its 
 ruin to overwhelm themselves. 
 
 Others there are who, loving their 
 Bibles (not too well), yet confounding 
 modern methods of inquiry — that of evolv- 
 ing theories from facts — with the *' vain 
 systems " of apostolic times, deem it as 
 wrong to mingle philosophy with revela- 
 tion, as it would be were wx to '' add to 
 the words " of the Book in the sense im- 
 plied in the Apocalyptic curse. Let, how- 
 ever, such objections be carried to their 
 ultimate consequences, and they will ex- 
 clude all collateral sources of information, 
 even though they confirm what the Word 
 of God reveals. In that case, the marble 
 records dug up from the ruins of Nineveh, 
 
The Nature of the Argument. 
 
 and the learned labour spent in decipher- 
 ing eastern inscriptions, whereby Scrip- 
 tural history is corroborated, must be pro- 
 nounced impertinent intrusions upon holy 
 ground. But if so absurd a conclusion be 
 repudiated, what difference, we ask, is there 
 between confirming a Scriptural fact and 
 confirming a Scriptural principle ? If it 
 be right to do the one, is it not equally 
 right to do the other ? Can we be said to 
 depreciate the Bible, when we assert that 
 the doctrines it reveals are confirmed by 
 the cravings of natural conscience and the 
 facts of man's moral history ? If it can be 
 shown that to have the principle of an 
 atonement living in human thought is a 
 moral necessity, do we not thereby add to, 
 rather than detract from, the value of a 
 book in which it is recorded that an atone- 
 ment precisely such as the cravings of 
 man's nature demand, has in fact been 
 offered ? When the French nation, during 
 the fervour of its first revolutionary move- 
 ments, threw ofi" all the restraints of re- 
 ligion and avowed national atheism, the 
 results were such as to alarm the boldest 
 — even Robespierre himself, who, on one 
 
6 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 occasion when this subject was under dis- 
 cussion, repeated approvingly the cele- 
 brated sentiment of the infidel Voltaire, 
 " If God did not exist, it would be neces- 
 sary to invent Him." This may seem a 
 singular and striking thought, but it is in 
 fact no new thought. The conscious moral 
 necessity for the existence of a Supreme 
 Being is that which has from age to age, 
 according to the tastes of different nations, 
 clothed with Divine attributes various 
 imaginary forms. Paganism, in its multi- 
 plied varieties, attests the fact that society 
 cannot exist without an object of worship. 
 Voltaire and Robespierre did but repeat 
 in words what Paganism had ages before 
 declared by its acts ; and the French 
 people, in making the experiment to live 
 without a God, failed only as all such ex- 
 periments before had failed ; the conse- 
 quence being that, like a fabric when its 
 foundations are removed, the whole super- 
 structure of society threatened to crumble 
 into ruins, and to avert such a catastrophe 
 the conventional government of France, 
 on grounds of state expediency, felt itself 
 compelled to re-establish the being of a 
 
The Nature of the A rgument. 7 
 
 God as an article of the national faith ; 
 thereby presenting to the world an argu- 
 ment for the moral necessity of the Deity 
 more demonstrative, perhaps, than ever 
 was urged. Now, are we to be precluded 
 from adducing facts like these, facts which 
 we should not improperly call great philo- 
 sophical truths — are we to be precluded 
 from adducing them, on the shallow pre- 
 tence that the verities of Scripture need 
 no such confirmation ? 
 
 But we are not content with merely 
 making a successful defence of the course 
 of argument proposed to be pursued. We 
 go further, and advisedly affirm that we 
 are but following in the wake of the in- 
 spired writers themselves, and that the 
 method of revelation, from its beginning 
 to its close, has been a successive evolu- 
 tion of principles from facts. And why 
 should it not be so ? If secular history 
 have its philosophy, why not Christian 
 history ? why not that '' hour," empha- 
 tically so designated, which crowded to- 
 gether in a few brief moments events of 
 mightier import than all the events before 
 or since during the thousands of years of 
 
8 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 the earth's duration. The religion of Him 
 whose coming was foretold from the be- 
 ginning, was revealed to the patriarchs, 
 indicated in the peculiarities of Israel's 
 nationality, and typified in the Mosaic 
 ritual ; w^hose glory was the burden of 
 Jewish psalmody, and the grand theme 
 of the magnificent predictions of a long 
 line of prophets ; whose incarnation was 
 proclaimed by angels ; whose life was a 
 series of miracles ; and whose death pro- 
 duced an effect upon the world that has 
 thrilled through every step of its subse- 
 quent progress — the religion of Christ — 
 is eminently an historical religion. To 
 elicit, therefore, the doctrines of Chris- 
 tianitv from its facts is an undertaking- 
 quite consonant with its genius. Not that 
 we could successfully perform such a task 
 unaided by Divine inspiration : ours is not 
 the province of a discoverer, but of an 
 expositor. It took the mind of a Newton 
 to discover gravitation, yet all that New- 
 ton knew on that subject may be easily 
 communicated to the mind of an intelli- 
 gent youth ; so, although nothing short 
 of apostolical illumination could have ori- 
 
The Nature of the Argument. g 
 
 ginally developed the Gospel system, the 
 connection, when once suggested, between 
 the fact and the doctrine is obvious ; the 
 light flung across the desert, to guide the 
 Israelites in their wanderings, shone not 
 more directly from the heaven-held pillar 
 of fire, than do the sublime verities of 
 the Christian faith flow from the facts of 
 its Divine Author's life and death. 
 
 It must be apparent to the most ca- 
 sual reader of the New Testament, that 
 the doctrines of Christianity were not all 
 fully revealed to the minds of the apostles 
 at once, but that they were unfolded to 
 them gradually : it was not the sudden 
 bursting of mid-day splendour on mid- 
 night darkness, but day's gradual dawn- 
 ing. Let us then, for a few moments, 
 review the events of the evangelical nar- 
 rative in the order in which thev occurred, 
 and show, as we proceed, what new sen- 
 timents each new event awoke, and what 
 was the precise process of development. 
 
 It is of the nature of hypothetical 
 schemes to emerge full blown, as bright 
 mental creations, fascinating by their 
 poetic attractiveness, and demanding sub- 
 
10 The Ph ilosophy of E vangelicism . 
 
 mission to an assumed mysterious authority. 
 Practical schemes, on the contrary, rise 
 slowly, like a vast architectural structure, 
 the stately oak of the forest, or the massive 
 muscular frames of animal life. Thus 
 have our modern systems of natural phi- 
 losophy slowly grown and matured, fact 
 being added to fact as discovered, and 
 theories permitted only so far as facts 
 developed them. Nor is it true that 
 Christianity can, in this respect, be cited 
 by way of contrast. Christianity is not a 
 new hypothesis, standing to other reli- 
 gious systems in a relation comparable to 
 that in which the last theory of a new 
 science stands to its exploded prede- 
 cessors, waiting only perhaps till a further 
 discovery of facts explode it also. Chris- 
 tianity is a collection of principles, old as 
 creation, known through all time, and 
 gathered out of the materials of which 
 nature and history are constructed ; prin- 
 ciples without which the universe could 
 not be held together — as essential to the 
 condensation of the moral world as gravi- 
 tation to the physical world. One glorious 
 fact alone which had from the beginning 
 
The Nature of the A rgument. 1 1 
 
 been a foreshadowed "mystery," required 
 to be made manifest ; and the grandeur 
 of the New Testament revelation consists 
 in the circumstance that, as gravitation, 
 when discovered, proved to be the great 
 secret, ignorance of which had kept astro- 
 nomical observers in a state of constant 
 perplexity, but by which now, all the 
 phenomena of the heavens are easily re- 
 solved, so the incarnation, sufferings, and 
 death of the Son of God give to old prin- 
 ciples greater strength and beauty, present 
 them in new relations and aspects, and 
 bind them together into a solid, compact, 
 and massive system of energetic truth. 
 
 The original disciples of Jesus, it must 
 be borne in mind, were Jews, trained from 
 childhood to the diligent reading of the 
 Old Testament Scriptures : their minds 
 were thoroughly imbued, therefore, with 
 those glowing predictions of the Mes- 
 siah's kingdom and glory, in which Isaiah, 
 Daniel, and the other prophets abound. 
 Christ was born at a time when His 
 coming was, by all devout Jews, earnestly 
 looked for. They knew that they lived 
 in the days of the last great terrestrial em- 
 
12 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 pire typified by Nebuchadnezzar's image. 
 The Assyrian, the Persian, and the Greek 
 empires had all vanished ; and now Rome, 
 the fourth and the last, crushed the nations 
 beneath her iron sway. Israel sighed for 
 '' redemption," and believed the time to 
 be *' at hand " when the stone cut out of 
 the mountain without hands should smite 
 the image upon its feet, and break it to 
 pieces ; and that, while the wind carried 
 it away like the chaff of the summer's 
 threshing-floor, the mystic stone, well un- 
 derstood to be emblematic of the "king- 
 dom of God," should become a great 
 mountain and fill the whole earth. " I 
 saw in the night visions," Daniel had 
 written, " and behold one like the Son of 
 Man came with the clouds of heaven, and 
 came to the Ancient of Days, and they 
 brought Him near before Him; and there 
 was given Him dominion and glory and a 
 kingdom, that all people, nations, and lan- 
 guages, should serve Him: His dominion 
 is an everlasting dominion, which shall not 
 pass away, and His kingdom that which 
 shall not be destroyed." These words 
 and the words which follovv^ — " The saints 
 
The Nature of the Argument. 13 
 
 of the Most High shall take the kingdom 
 and possess the kingdom for ever " — fur- 
 nish a key to the right exposition of many 
 important passages in the gospels, and 
 the comparison of the one with the other 
 proves beyond doubt that, in the time of 
 our Lord, the world was authorised to ex- 
 pect a speedy verification of Daniel's pre- 
 dictions. The language of the angel 
 Gabriel, on announcing the approaching 
 advent of the Messiah, is fully in accord- 
 ance with these brilliant hopes : — *' He 
 shall be great, and shall be called the 
 Son of the Highest ; and the Lord God 
 shall give unto Him the throne of His 
 father David, and He shall reign over the 
 house of Jacob for ever, and of His king- 
 dom there shall be no end." It is, many 
 think, an error to suppose that the Old 
 Testament prophecies respecting the Mes- 
 siah are to be understood by us in a 
 sense wholly different from their natural 
 import, as that, instead of Christ coming 
 back to reign among His risen saints upon 
 the *' new earth," He will remove them to 
 some distant locality in God's universe. 
 We are willing to admit, therefore, that 
 
14 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 the disciples were justified in their ex- 
 pectations that the Messiah's kingdom 
 would, on " the restitution of all things," 
 be set up in its glory upon earth ; but they 
 were unquestionably very far wrong as to 
 the time and means of its establishment. 
 There are two classes of prophecies in the 
 Old Testament respecting the Messiah : 
 the one foretelling His sufferings, the other 
 His glory. Wholly losing sight of the 
 former in their anxiety to witness the accom- 
 plishment of the latter, "they," although 
 their Master had, through a long space 
 of time before His betrayal and martyr- 
 dom, warned them again and again of what 
 was about to happen, " understood not," 
 it is written, "what He said to them, and 
 it was hidden from them:" in other w^ords, 
 their minds were so pre-occupied with the 
 thought of their own speedy exaltation to 
 thrones of unrivalled power, that they had 
 no patience to listen to aught of a contrary 
 import. So far, indeed, did they permit 
 themselves to be enslaved by these de- 
 lusive expectations, that Peter, when told 
 by Christ of His approaching crucifixion, 
 peremptorily replied, " This shall not be 
 
The Nature of the Argument. 15 
 
 unto Thee." In display of the vain and 
 ruffled temper which such excited feehngs 
 are apt to produce, they were continually 
 disputing among themselves "which of 
 them should be greatest." Even up to 
 their last journey to Jerusalem, no change 
 had taken place in their views : they " ex- 
 pected the kingdom of God would imme- 
 diately appear." When Christ wasbetrayed 
 and arrested by His enemies, Peter drew 
 his sword, probably anticipating that, like 
 the sword of Gideon, it would strike terror 
 into the foe, and that the armies of heaven 
 would fight for Israel, as when, of old, 
 they had destroyed the hosts of Pharaoh 
 and Sennacherib. His mortification, and 
 that of all the disciples, was apparent in 
 the circumstance that, so soon as they saw 
 Christ in the grasp of his enemies, "they 
 forsook Him and fled." To what but the 
 same mortified feeling, can we attribute 
 Peter's extraordinary asseveration, mut- 
 tered with oaths and curses, " I know not 
 the man ? " The perplexed and sorrowful 
 mien of the travellers to Emmaus, and 
 their desponding words, " We trusted that 
 it had been He which should have re- 
 
1 6 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 deemed Israel," afford further evidence of 
 the extent to which their towering hopes 
 had been prostrated. Our Lord's conver- 
 sation with them on their journey, and 
 His discourses with others of His disciples 
 after His resurrection, were designed to 
 unravel the mystery of His death, and 
 explain the relation between His suffer- 
 ings and His glory; but the question they 
 put to Him on the eve of His ascension, 
 '' Wilt Thou at this time restore again the 
 kingdom to Israel ? " shows that, notwith- 
 standing every corrective, they were still 
 eagerly expecting an immediate accession 
 to personal power. There is, in fact, 
 nothing to indicate that, up to the moment 
 of Christ's ascension, the apostles had any 
 definite notion of His second advent ; on 
 the contrary, from the time they were 
 called to follow Him till He was taken up 
 from them into heaven, the one grand 
 idea which animated them was, that 
 Christ, the Messiah, v/ould then — at His 
 first coming — personally and in the flesh, 
 take His seat upon the throne of His 
 father David, and reigning over the house 
 of Israel, would, immediately and by force. 
 
The Nature of the Argument. 17 
 
 establish on earth that kingdom, whereof 
 it had been promised they were to share 
 the glories, and which, subduing to itself 
 all other kingdoms, should stand for ever. 
 With regard to all the leading doctrines 
 of Christianity, as eventually unfolded, the 
 minds of the personal companions of the 
 Redeemer appear, until the approach of 
 the Day of Pentecost, to have remained 
 in a state of obscurity such as could not 
 fail to have awakened our intense surprise, 
 had it not been sufficiently accounted for 
 by the genius of an historic faith. In 
 analogy with the circumstance that Christ 
 taught the multitude by parables which 
 they understood not till afterwards ex- 
 plained. His mode of instructing His dis- 
 ciples was, not to urge truth upon them 
 dogmatically and authoritatively, but by 
 hints, suggestions, and distant allusions, 
 to prepare them to read the magnificent 
 lessons taught in the occurrences which 
 thereafter took place. Till after the as- 
 cension, these lessons had not been read. 
 Hence, the memorable interval between 
 the ascension and Pentecost, spent by the 
 apostles in earnest prayer and anxious 
 
 c 
 
1 8 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 conference in the upper room at Jerusalem, 
 — during which doubtless they oft dis- 
 cussed the meaning of words that, when 
 uttered, had fallen from their Master un- 
 heeded, but were now joyfully recalled, — 
 became the period of a series of sublime 
 discoveries. Before them stood events, 
 the singularity and magnitude whereof 
 indicated their extraordinary significance. 
 There was the death of a Divine Christ, 
 His resurrection, His ascension to heaven, 
 and His promise to return — there were 
 the completed witnessed sufferings and 
 the incipient anticipated glory ; but how 
 these two were connected with each other, 
 the apostles had not as yet divined. The 
 atonement was perfectly well known to them 
 in its principle ; it was typified in the 
 Mosaic sacrifices, and predicted in the 
 Psalms and the writings of the Prophets ; 
 it had been pointed at by the Baptist, 
 unintentionally foretold by Caiaphas, and 
 remotely referred to by our Lord Jesus 
 Christ Himself; but still, until Pentecost, 
 it does not appear to have suggested itself 
 to the minds of the disciples as the con- 
 necting link between Christ's sufferings 
 
The Nature of the Argument. 19 
 
 and His glory. When suggested, the 
 revelation came not to them in a voice 
 from heaven, in a vision, or as a mental 
 impression to be authoritatively enunciated 
 on their sole uncorroborated testimony ; 
 the facts evolved it. Christian doctrine is, 
 literally, the philosophy of Christ's history 
 deduced by inspired intellect. The Jews 
 had ^' looked for " the "redemption " of 
 their country as the result of the physical 
 destruction of their enemies : now it was 
 seen, from the manner in which they 
 had treated their Messiah, that they were 
 their own greatest foes, and that Israel's 
 national redemption must be preceded 
 by her moral redemption. Thus, the 
 first great truth lay upon the surface — 
 
 MORAL REDEMPTION THROUGH A SUFFERING 
 
 Messiah. Was the world to be subdued 
 to the Messiah's sway? The disciples had 
 thought that this was to be effected by 
 Israel's sword, as the Canaanites were 
 driven out of the promised land by the 
 swords of their ancestors; but soon they 
 perceived that a moral submission could 
 only be brought about by the energy of 
 truth, of which truth the unvarnished tale 
 
 c 2 
 
20 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection must 
 needs be the burden. The vitahty and 
 force of this tale are evinced by the 
 breadth it occupies in the world's history : 
 for we take it to be a proposition needing 
 little argument to demonstrate, that no 
 historic character can long continue famous 
 without substantial cause ; and that, in 
 every instance, there must have been a 
 depth and energy in the spirit of the liv- 
 ing subject, equivalent to the effects His 
 memory has produced. Jesus had died 
 avowedly as a sinner: He had been treated 
 as a sinner by men, arraigned for blas- 
 phemy and condemned for sedition ; He 
 had been treated as a sinner by God — 
 witness His agony in the garden and His 
 dying cry, " My God, my God, why hast 
 Thou forsaken me ? " Yet, He had not 
 deserved thus to die a sinner's death : but 
 was innocent before both God and man, 
 as His divinely spotless life and His 
 resurrection from the dead alike declared. 
 Hence He must have died vicariously, 
 " the just for the unjust : " the principle 
 of sacrifice was written upon His cross as 
 legibly as had been Pilate's superscription. 
 
The Nature of the Argument. 21 
 
 At once, all the oblations of the patriarchal . 
 and Jewish rituals rushed upon the pre- 
 pared memories of the apostles, as sig- 
 nificant types and brilliant illustrations. 
 An echo was heard to the sacrificial and 
 atoning character of Christ's death, in 
 every page of the inspired book : our 
 first parents had received an announce- 
 ment of it immediately after their fall ; 
 Abraham had anticipated it in the virtual 
 sacrifice of his son ; the destroying angel 
 had prefigured it in the slaying of Egypt's 
 first-born ; Moses had had reference to it 
 in the institution of the paschal offering ; 
 the high priest's entrance into the holy 
 place, every year, with the sprinkled blood, 
 had foreshadowed Christ's entrance, with 
 His own blood, into heaven ; Isaiah had 
 written of Him as if with the pen of 
 history, " He was wounded for our trans- 
 gressions, bruised for our iniquities, the 
 chastisement of our peace was upon Him, 
 and by His stripes we are healed ; all we 
 like sheep have gone astray, but the Lord 
 hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us 
 all ; " and innumerable other passages in 
 the Old Testament, enigmatical till ex- 
 
22 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 plained by the event, were now seen, like 
 so many rays of dazzling brightness, to be 
 all concentrating their splendour upon one 
 point — the Cross. Hence the Cross be- 
 came the sole theme of apostolic glorying 
 — their mount of observation — the stand- 
 point from which, as through a telescope 
 of gigantic powers, the moral heavens 
 were explored. 
 
 If we are correct in the view we have 
 just taken of the method by which the 
 truths of revelation were made to assume 
 their ultimate shape, the principle of 
 analogy requires that we apply the same 
 method to the development of religious 
 truth since the book of revelation closed. 
 No one conversant with the writings of 
 the fathers, and with the theology of the 
 present day, can fail to discern a striking 
 difference between the two. There is an 
 indefiniteness about the earlier theology 
 which makes it difficult to ascertain what 
 the opinions of the post-apostolic Church 
 were, on many questions now deemed 
 extremely important. And, on the other 
 hand, the vivid and almost pictorial exhi- 
 bitions of Christian conviction and emotion 
 
The Nature of the A rgument, 23 
 
 thrown off spontaneously by men of no 
 learning other than the learning of the 
 Cross, is a modern phenomenon not to be 
 accounted for except by the circumstance 
 that the Christian heart has unwittingly 
 become an object of analytic study as well 
 as the written revelation, and that there 
 exists a Divine philosophy which, without 
 being formally recognised, reads aloud its 
 advancing lessons to the world. 
 
 Entertaining these opinions as to the 
 growth of revelation in ancient times, and 
 as to modern religious development, we 
 justify the method of thought we propose 
 to pursue in these pages by these, the 
 highest examples. No doubt it is possible 
 to overstep the line. We have an instance 
 of it in rationalism. Free enquiry, if 
 erroneously conducted, may lead many 
 from the truth instead of to it. But that 
 fact, instead of being an argument against 
 free enquiry, affords the strongest argument 
 in its favour. Why allow to an enemy 
 the free use of the best constructed and 
 most formidable weapons, and deny the 
 use of them to ourselves ? Because 
 enquiry is free, must be free, will be free, 
 
24 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 our proper course is in the exercise of a like 
 freedom, to scan the rano^e of universal 
 knowledge and ascertain whether the facts 
 of the moral world are not such as demand 
 revelation for their complement ; and 
 whether especially the Cross of Christ is 
 not an object which the earnest conscience 
 pursues while unknown, and grasps when 
 recognised, as inartificially and tenaciously 
 as the understanding follows and clings to 
 truth. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CONDITIONS OF THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 PREMISSES ASSUMED. 
 
 ^^^^IVERY argument has its agreed 
 % feSjJf conditions, certain facts or prin- 
 ciples assumed to be true, and 
 upon which the fabric of deduc- 
 tion is made to rest. And it is of the 
 utmost importance that these premisses 
 be well settled, both because a perfect 
 knowledge of their import is essential to 
 the understanding of the inferences to be 
 drawn from them, and because also we do 
 not wish to have it thought that our 
 reasoning has failed if we do not demon- 
 strate that which it was never designed to 
 demonstrate, but which has been regarded 
 throughout as mutually admitted. We 
 will therefore state explicitly the truths 
 we take for granted. 
 
26 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 If we in any respect take for granted 
 what an objector does not admit, all we 
 can do is to refer him for proof of our 
 premisses to other sources of information, 
 since any attempt to carry the discussion 
 further back than we propose to carry it, 
 would add bulk and prolixity to our volume 
 without any appreciable increase of its 
 worth. 
 
 I. First, then we wish to have it dis- 
 tinctly understood that we do not deduce 
 our moral ideas from their supposed or 
 proved expediency ; but that man's moral 
 nature has, in our judgment, original facul- 
 ties which give forth their convictions 
 in anticipation of experience, needing only 
 the occasion to invite their expression. 
 We adopt, in a word, the theory known as 
 the Platonic theory,* the results of which 
 
 * " Plato was the founder and chief of the 
 Idealist or Spiritualist school, against the Material- 
 istic or Sensational, which, under the auspices of 
 the Sophists, is asserted to have been generally 
 prevalent; and was the champion of the intuitive or 
 a priori character of moral truth, against what is 
 regarded by most of the Platonic critics, as the 
 low and degrading doctrine of Utility." — Mill on 
 Grote's Plato ; Dissertations, vol. iii., p. 293. 
 
Premisses Assumed. 27 
 
 Dr. Abercrombie thus sums up with ad- 
 mirable brevity and distinctness. '^ There 
 are," says he, " certain first principles of 
 moral truth which arise in the mind by 
 the most simple process of reflection, 
 either as constituting its own primary 
 moral convictions, or as following from its 
 consciousness of those convictions by a 
 plain and obvious chain of relations. 
 These are, chiefly, the following: — 
 
 '* I. A perception of the nature and 
 quality of actions, as just or unjust, right 
 or wrong ; and a conviction of certain 
 duties, as of justice, veracity, and bene- 
 volence, which every man owes to his 
 fellow men. Every man in his own case, 
 again, expects the same offices from 
 others ; and on this reciprocity of feeling 
 is founded the precept, to do to others as 
 we would that they should do to us. 
 
 " 2. From this primary moral impression 
 there arises, by a most natural sequence, 
 a conviction of the existence and superin- 
 tendence of a g;"eat moral Governor of the 
 universe, a Being of infinite perfection 
 and infinite purity. A belief in this Being, 
 as the great First Cause, is derived by a 
 
28 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 simple step of reasoning from a survey of 
 the works of nature, taken in connection 
 with the axiom, that every event must have 
 an adequate cause. Our sense of His moral 
 attributes arises, with a feehng of equal 
 certainty, when from the moral impres- 
 sions of our own minds, we infer the moral 
 attributes of Him who thus formed us. 
 
 '' 3. From these combined impressions 
 there naturally springs a sense of moral 
 responsibility or a conviction that, for the 
 due performance of the duties which are 
 indicated by the conscience or moral con- 
 sciousness, man is responsible to the 
 Governor of the universe ; and, farther, 
 that to this Being he owes, more imme- 
 diately, a certain homage of the moral 
 feelings, entirely distinct from the duties 
 which he owes to his fellow-men. 
 
 ^'4. From this chain of moral convic- 
 tions, it is impossible to separate a deep 
 impression of continual existence, or of a 
 state of being, beyond the present life ; 
 and of that, as a state of moral retribu- 
 tion." 
 
 ''These," continues Dr. A., "are First 
 Truths, or primary articles of moral belief, 
 
Premisses Assumed. 29 
 
 which arise, by a natural and obvious 
 chain of sequence, in the moral conviction 
 of every sound understanding. For the 
 truth of them, we appeal, not to any pro- 
 cess of reasoning properly so called, but 
 to the conviction which forces itself upon 
 every regulated mind. Neither do we go 
 abroad among savage nations, to inquire 
 whether the impression of them be uni- 
 versal ; for this may be obscured in com- 
 munities, as it is in individuals, by a 
 course of moral degradation. We appeal 
 to the casuist himself, whether in the calm 
 moment of reflection, he can divest him- 
 self of their power. We appeal to the 
 feelings of the man who, under the con- 
 sciousness of guilt, shrinks from the dread 
 of a present Deity and the anticipation of 
 a future reckoning. But chiefly, we ap- 
 peal to the conviction of him in whom 
 conscience retains its rightful supremacy, 
 and who habitually cherishes these mo- 
 mentous truths as his guides in this life 
 in its relation to the life that is to come." 
 In unison with the same moral theory 
 is the following quotation from Dr. 
 M'Cosh's " Method of the Divine Govern- 
 
30 The Philosophy of Evangclicism. 
 
 ment," p. 312, which we adduce because 
 of the accurate and precise distinction he 
 therein draws between the reason and the 
 conscience : — 
 
 *' While the reason and its fundamental 
 principles are in many respects analogous 
 to, yet they are at the same time indepen- 
 dent of, each other. The reason does not 
 feel that it is called to justify itself to the 
 conscience, nor is the conscience required 
 to justify itself to the reason. Each has 
 its own assigned province, in w^hich it 
 is sovereign and supreme. A thousand 
 errors have arisen from imagining that the 
 conscience should give account of itself to 
 reason, and that the reason should give 
 account of itself to the conscience. Each 
 in its own sphere is independent, and it 
 cannot in that sphere interfere with or 
 clash with the other." 
 
 Nor are the intuitive origination of our 
 moral ideas and the independence of con- 
 science the only elements in our assumed 
 theory. We crave permission to add as 
 a third, that whenever in regard to any 
 moral or religious truth, in the course of 
 this discussion, we propose an appeal to 
 
Premisses Assumed. 31 
 
 conscience, it is to be understood that we 
 refer exclusively to a conscience which, 
 as Dr. A. well says, "retains its rightful 
 supremacy." It could never be supposed 
 that we would submit any grave moral 
 question to the chance test of every con- 
 science. Some consciences are perverted. 
 Were we to base our argument as to the 
 effect of religious truth, upon its reception 
 by any individual conscience, the result 
 might be as fallacious as the judgment of 
 an enfeebled individual intellect. The 
 conscience selected might happen to be a 
 callous conscience, seared and diseased. 
 To draw general inferences from the effect 
 of moral truth upon a seared conscience, 
 would be as absurd as to estimate the 
 value of reasoning from its effect upon an 
 insane or idiotic understanding. When 
 expression is given to general propositions, 
 we must be understood to speak, not of 
 insane minds, not of hardened consciences, 
 not of diseased moral constitutions, but of 
 the human faculties as existing in the 
 state indicated by their average expression. 
 In the operations of the intellect there is 
 such a thing as common sense, which 
 
32 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 means the average judgment of civilized 
 and intelligent men ; so there is, among 
 that portion of mankind raised above 
 the lowest barbarism and profligacy, an 
 average standard of conscientiousness. 
 Were it otherwise, were there no common 
 sense and no common conscientiousness 
 — no generally recognized standard of 
 what is right and what is wrong — wisdom, 
 folly, vice, and virtue, would all be hud- 
 dled together in one undistinguishable 
 mass, and the hourly demands upon us 
 for judicious action and moral behaviour, 
 in ordinary life, would find our minds in 
 utter bewilderment. Is it not a maxim 
 so well established as to have become pro- 
 verbial, that truth is mighty and must 
 prevail ? Why must truth prevail ? Be- 
 cause, however individuals may err, and 
 even masses and races for a while, there 
 is such an adaptation between truth and 
 the ordinary standard of human intelli- 
 gence, that time and consideration alone 
 are required to secure its eventful triumph. 
 Were there no common notions of truth 
 and no common conscientiousness, the 
 universal practices of sages, moralists and 
 
Premisses Assumed. 33 
 
 divines, including that even of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ Himself, and His inspired 
 apostles, would be condemnable, inas- 
 much as their appeals imply, not that men 
 are wholly ignorant of their duty, but, 
 that having an adequate knowledge of 
 what God required from them, they have 
 notwithstanding wilfully disobeyed. Evi- 
 dently, the remonstrances • and warnings 
 of Scripture imply their aptitude to rouse 
 the conscience, or why else were they 
 uttered ? And does not the fact, that 
 these remonstrances and warnings are 
 addressed to men of all nations and times, 
 prove that the consciences of mankind 
 have kindred aptitudes, and approximate 
 to one standard ? A lie wherever propa- 
 gated carries on its forefront a mark of 
 infamy; murder, robbery, adultery, perjury, 
 dishonesty, hypocrisy, have, in all ages, 
 been abominated ; however fertile these 
 crimes may have been for a while in iso- 
 lated communities, there never has been a 
 period in the world's history in which the 
 voice of the aggregated human conscience 
 has not been lifted up to condemn them. 
 Having reference then to this average 
 
34 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 condition of the faculty of conscience, it 
 may be safely laid down as an indisput- 
 able axiom, that there is, between the 
 human conscience and guilt or innocence, 
 an adaptation which induces results, not 
 vague and uncertain, but, fixed and definite. 
 The effect of guilt to excite, through the 
 conscience, mental disquietude and even 
 anguish, and the effect of innocence to 
 scatter serenity and kindle joy, are scarcely 
 less certain and uniform than the beautiful 
 uniformity of nature's physical laws. 
 
 II. Another truth assumed to be granted 
 to us is, that a rightly constituted and 
 earnest conscience will aspire after perfect 
 rectitude, just as a well ordered intellect 
 will aim at perfect knowledge. And as 
 God is our ideal of perfect rectitude, to 
 pursue it is in effect to strive after con- 
 scious harmony and friendship with God. 
 
 But does not all human experience 
 teach us that the more earnestly we, apart 
 from the reconciling efficacy of evangelic 
 truth, struggle after identity in moral 
 character with the All Perfect One, our 
 distance from Hirn becomes, to our own 
 minds, more apparent ? 
 
Premisses Assumed. 35 
 
 Probably, to this proposition objection 
 will be taken. '' What ! " some will say, 
 *' if a man live a virtuous and holy life, 
 does there not arise in his mind — he 
 knows not how, or why — a pleasing per- 
 suasion that he is accepted of God? Does 
 he not feel conscious that as his character 
 improves he rises in the Divine regards?" 
 
 That he does rise in the Divine regards 
 we freely admit ; but that, irrespective of 
 the work of Christ, he acquires increased 
 confidence before God, we emphatically 
 deny. He cannot for this plain reason — 
 the better any man is in fact, the less has 
 he of self-esteem. No doubt, as between 
 his present self and his former self, or as 
 between himself and others, he has cor- 
 rect notions of relative virtue ; but as 
 between himself and his God, the higher 
 he rises the lower he sinks — as the star 
 highest in the heavens is reflected deepest 
 in the lake's bosom. Nor is this apparent 
 anomaly difficult to understand ; for, in 
 proportion as the character improves, the 
 ideal standard rises higher. Nay, more ! 
 Not only does the ideal standard rise 
 higher in equal degree with the practical 
 
 D 2 
 
36 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 improvement ; it rises beyond. So that 
 although, while judging ourselves by a 
 low ideal, we thought well of ourselves ; 
 judging ourselves now by a lofty ideal — 
 more lofty in proportion than before — we 
 necessarily come to a more severe conclu- 
 sion ; we never deemed ourselves so vile. 
 
 Let us illustrate this by the example of 
 the artist. When young, he showed the 
 natural bent of his genius by his love 
 for sketching and painting. His friends 
 praised his performances, and he was 
 pleased himself — extravagantly pleased. 
 Many years have now passed over his 
 head, during which he has seen, read, and 
 travelled much, and studied all the best 
 works of the best masters. The paintings 
 of his youth, which then afforded him 
 such delight, are now in his estimation 
 nothing better than paltry daubs. But 
 this is not all. He is now an eminent 
 artist. His productions sell at high prices. 
 All the world praises them. Do they 
 afford to his own mind the same amount 
 of satisfaction which they afford to others ? 
 or even the same amount of satisfaction 
 which his early efforts afforded him at the 
 
Premisses Assumed. 37 ' 
 
 commencement of his career ? By no 
 means — nothing he does fully satisfies 
 him. What is the reason of this ? Be- 
 cause — as is always the case with improv- 
 ing minds — his critical powers are ever in 
 advance of his powers of execution : his 
 taste is so pure and refined, that nothing 
 short of absolute perfection can yield him 
 unadulterated pleasure. 
 
 Thus it is with the advanced Christian ; 
 and thus it is that we account for the 
 harsh judgments St. Paul sometimes pro- 
 nounced against himself. ''Unto me," 
 says he, "who am less than the least of 
 all saints, — " Was he really less than 
 the least of all saints ? Unquestionably 
 he was not, nor could he himself have 
 pronounced that judgment had he been 
 deciding between himself and others. But 
 judging himself in the presence of God, 
 his eminent piety awoke in him so lofty an 
 ideal that no language in which he could 
 speak of himself was too humiliating. 
 
 But the objector will reply that, although 
 identity in character may be impossible 
 between an erring mortal and the perfec- 
 tion of Deity, there may still be conscious 
 
38 The Philosophy of Evangclicism, 
 
 friendship. True, there may. But friend- 
 ship requires a basis. What is that basis? 
 Let us try to find it. 
 
 You feel a sense of guilt, and you pre- 
 sent your prayer to Mercy. Now, on what 
 ground is it that you expect Mercy to 
 interpose ? Is it on the ground of your 
 merits or of your necessities ? It cannot 
 be on the ground of your merits, for we 
 have already shown that it is of the very 
 nature of genuine contrition to destroy 
 our self-esteem, and that the better we 
 are in fact, the more unconscious do we 
 become of having any merit on which to 
 rely. The tears of a genuine repentance 
 are like the lenses of a microscope, be- 
 neath whose scrutiny the smooth compla- 
 cencies of the most lauded reformation 
 exhibit a startling ruggedness. Stripped, 
 then, of every plea of merit, you appeal 
 to Mercy solely on the ground of your 
 necessities : " God be merciful to me, a 
 sinner ! " 
 
 Observe that all this while, when you 
 are disclaiming merit and consider your 
 repentance valueless, God does not con- 
 sider it valueless. He would not pardon 
 
Premisses Assumed. 39 
 
 your sins without repentance. And here 
 lies a great truth too often forgotten. 
 Most of scholastic theologians write down 
 the contract on both sides as if it were 
 identical. But the elements of a contract, 
 in which two parties are engaged on 
 opposite sides, are necessarily different in 
 the one mind from what they are in the 
 other. Each looks into the other's mind 
 — the rebel into the mind of his sovereign, 
 the sovereigfn into the mind of the rebel — 
 and that which each sees in the mind of 
 the other contributes to excite counter- 
 working motives of action. God looks 
 into our minds and sees repentance ; there- 
 upon His merc}^ kindles. We are to look 
 — not into our own minds, to reflect upon 
 our repentance ; for any such introvision, 
 like the cold wintry blast, would blight the 
 tender flower — we are to look away from 
 ourselves, exclusively into the mind of 
 God, and see only His mercy. 
 
 Then, mark the result ! We have said 
 that in the proportion in which a man 
 grows better, he becomes more humble ; 
 and we have assigned as the reason, that 
 his ideal of the good increases beyond his 
 
40 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 practical attainments. But we admit that 
 another consequence flows contempora- 
 neously from the same cause. His loftier 
 ideal of the good brings with it, also, a 
 more vivid apprehension of the Divine 
 goodness — God's mercy and paternal love= 
 So that, although he despairs in the pre- 
 sence of the Divine purity, he, in the pre- 
 sence of the Divine love, ventures to hope. 
 
 We are anxious to make clear our 
 admission that these two consequences, 
 flowing from the same cause^ always ac- 
 company each other. They are comple- 
 mentary colours, and will both be either 
 very faint or very vivid. If we have a 
 high conceit of our own virtues, we shall 
 have but a low conception of the Divine 
 mercy. On the other hand, if, through 
 deep penitence and advanced moral purity, 
 we have impressive views of the holiness 
 of God, kindling our fears, we shall have 
 at the same time impressive views of the 
 love of God, bidding our fears be gone ; 
 just as the same drops of rain that form 
 the dark cloud, form also the bow that 
 stretches across it in unparalleled beauty. 
 
 At this point arises the great question 
 
Premisses Assumed. 41 
 
 — the question between Theism on the 
 one hand, and Christianity on the other. 
 Theists contend that an enlarged appre- 
 hension of the love of God is the only 
 thing requisite to give to the conscience 
 peace ; while Christians contend that it is 
 not enough to contemplate the Divine 
 love, unless we can recognize in its exer- 
 cise a co-operation with righteousness. 
 With which party does the truth lie ? 
 Which of these views is correct? — correct, 
 we mean, as a matter of fact and expe- 
 rience. Can the earnest conscience be 
 satisfied with a salvation coming from 
 mercy only, irrespective of whether mercy 
 is or is not exercised in righteousness ? 
 
 One thing is quite obvious. The love 
 of God would afford us no solace, if it 
 were known not to be associated w^ith 
 righteousness. Such a love would be re- 
 garded as the weakness of an over-indul- 
 gent father, and would provoke our con- 
 tempt rather than engage our confidence. 
 So that were we left wholly ignorant of the 
 means through which mercy had been 
 reconciled with justice, we should be 
 bound to presume that it had been so 
 
42 TJie Philosophy of Evangelicisin. 
 
 reconciled, otherwise we should be unable 
 to confide in it. 
 
 But the human mind, in its higher reli- 
 gious exercises, is not prone to take up 
 with assumptions. The question, "Why 
 such love to me ?" rises to the lips in- 
 stinctively. We want to know how God 
 can love, pardon, and save such rebels. 
 It is not sufficiently satisfactory to be told 
 that such is His sovereign pleasure, such 
 the plentitude of His mercy ; it is not the 
 habit of moral agents to conceive of God 
 — the highest of moral agents — acting 
 without a reason. If He love, He must 
 have a reason for loving. Unless He had 
 a reason in His actions. His acts would 
 have no moral character ; but in thinking 
 of the acts of God we cannot conceive of 
 them as without moral character. What- 
 ever God does, must be done righteously. 
 It cannot be otherwise. He cannot act 
 capriciously. It is not enough to say that 
 God wills. To say that God wills to save 
 this man, but refuses to save that man, 
 is to say that which instantly raises a 
 host of objections. You immediately ask, 
 why the preference ? why this man saved, 
 
Premisses Assumed. 43 
 
 and that not saved ? When speaking of 
 others, it is sufficient to reply, "God saves 
 this man because he is a good man, and 
 He does not save that because he is a bad 
 man." But when the question is respecting 
 one's self, hov/ then ? I cannot conceive 
 that God loves me because I am good — 
 for the reasons already repeatedly given. 
 I may be good in fact, but the better I am 
 in fact, the less confidence I have in my 
 own goodness. In this dilemma, I must 
 turn awav from self, and find elsewhere a 
 reason for God's love to me — a righteous 
 
 REASON. 
 
 III. Our third axiom is that the reason 
 thus found wanting is discoverable in the 
 history of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 That there is some moral element in the 
 doctrine of the cross, possessing an adap- 
 tation to give peace to troubled con- 
 sciences, is proved by the testimony of 
 all true Christians of every age, clime, and 
 degree. What so many concur in testify- 
 ing, we are prepared to accept as a demon- 
 strated fact ; and the fact thus proved we 
 shall best express by quoting the familiar 
 words of a quaint old writer, whose name 
 
44 ^^^^ Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 need not be mentioned, so universally is his 
 book read: — "Now I saw in my dream 
 that the highway up which Christian was 
 to go was fenced on either side with a wall, 
 and that wall was called Salvation. Up 
 this way, therefore, did burdened Christian 
 run, but not without great difficulty, be- 
 cause of the load on his back. He ran 
 thus till he came at a place somewhat 
 ascending, and upon that place stood a 
 cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a 
 sepulchre. So I saw in my dream that, 
 just as Christian came up with the cross, 
 his burden loosed from off his shoulders 
 and fell from off his back, and began to 
 tumble, and so continued to do till it came 
 to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it 
 fell in, and I saw it no more. Thereupon 
 was Christian glad and lightsome, and said 
 with a merry heart — ' He hath given me 
 rest by His sorrow and life by His death.' 
 Then he stood still awhile to look and 
 wonder, for it was very surprising to him 
 that the sight of the cross should thus ease 
 him of his burden. This done. Christian 
 
 went on smgmg. 
 
 n 
 
 In thus quoting the words of a man 
 
Premisses Assumed. 45 
 
 whose popularity as a writer on Christian 
 experience exceeds probably that of any 
 other, we adduce in effect a catholic testi- 
 mony in favour of the fact he records — the 
 power of the cross to give the conscience 
 peace. That which renders Bunyan's 
 book so popular, is the circumstance that 
 it narrates, in simple, striking language, 
 what its readers have realized in their 
 own experience. The extract quoted is 
 eminently of this description.' It utters 
 what thousands have felt. And unless we 
 are prepared to treat the general testi- 
 mony of mankind with contempt, we have 
 in this way given to us a most significant 
 moral phenomenon. Account for it as you 
 will, the cross has an aptitude to pour the 
 balm of consolation into distressed con- 
 sciences. 
 
 Unless the anxieties and thanksgivings 
 of the Christian world be resolvable into 
 imagination and fanaticism, — a conclusion 
 to which no candid and truly philosophic 
 mind can come, — the number of successful 
 experiments evidencing the peace-giving 
 power of the atonement upon the con^ 
 science, is not to be reckoned by hundreds 
 
46 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 or thousands merely, but by myriads. 
 Persons of both sexes, of all ages, of every 
 clime, of every grade in society, of mental 
 and moral constitutions as widely different 
 as any two of the human race can be, and 
 of every degree of intellectual and moral 
 condition, have, on their consciences being 
 aroused, by faith sought refuge in the 
 atonement, and all alike have experienced 
 its power. Hence, the imagination has 
 been taxed for metaphors to express the 
 sentiments with which the cross is re- 
 garded. It is that to which the awakened 
 spirit turns instinctively, as the flower to 
 the light ; it is the oak, which the ivy 
 clasps with its tendrils; the bridge thrown 
 across the gulf, whereby we pass over; the 
 city of refuge, where alone we can be safe 
 from the avenger ; the ark, riding high 
 amid the deluge of waters ; the light upon 
 our pathway, flashing as from heaven's 
 opened gates ; the golden streams of the 
 aurora, cheering the darkness of a Green- 
 land winter ; the polar star to the path- 
 less ocean's voyager ; the point whither, 
 like the tremulous needle to the north, 
 " The hope of the spirit turns, trembling ;" 
 
Premisses Assumed, 47 
 
 land-marks, guiding the storm-assailed 
 vessel into port ; bread to the hungry ; 
 water in the desert ; the mystic sympathy, 
 whereby loving spirits beckon their com- 
 rades to the skies ; the rock, whereon, 
 amidst the roaring surge of the tempest^ 
 our fearless hope is founded ; the impreg- 
 nable fortress, that defies, alike, the battle 
 and the gale ; the dawning day, before 
 which the stars fade '' in the light they 
 love." Of all the emotions of the human 
 heart, to none is Tennyson's metaphor so 
 beautifully applicable, as to love kindled 
 at the cross ; no love so spirit-actuating, 
 none so self-sacrificing, as love to Christ : — 
 
 " Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all 
 the chords with might ; 
 Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed 
 in music out of sight." 
 
 And yet, the imagination of Paul was, on 
 this theme, loftier than the Laureate's. 
 Such, according to Paul, is the spiritual- 
 izing effect of Christian love, that its sub- 
 ject dwells no longer upon the earth : 
 translated beyond the ken of mortals, he 
 " sits in heavenly places with Christ Jesus," 
 he has his *' conversation in heaven," his 
 
48 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 *' life is hid with Christ in God." The 
 mystic soHtude in which the Christian is 
 thus made to hide himself, is a metaphor 
 ineffably sublime and awful. Imagine the 
 solitudes of the Alps, the Andes, or the 
 Himalayas — those spots of solitary gran- 
 deur, where human foot never trod, and 
 nought is heard save the occasional ava- 
 lanche, adding, by its sullen roar, inten- 
 sity to the supervening stillness ! Amid 
 such scenery, how man feels his ow^n little- 
 ness ! how vivid our impressions become 
 of the Infinite ! * Yet this imagery is 
 feeble, compared with the apostolic idea 
 of being '^ hid with Christ in God." 
 
 This hiding in God — this absorption of 
 the human in the Divine — this conscious 
 oneness with heaven, with the holy, the 
 pure, the perfect, — is worthy to be, and, 
 with elevated minds, is, the apex of the 
 pyramid of human hopes. But how is 
 this apex to be reached? The contempla- 
 tion of God as infinite love, is clearly 
 insufficient to bring about a mental union, 
 unless accompanied by a conscious friend- 
 ship ; and how can a mind consciously 
 
 * Talfourd. 
 
Premisses Assumed. 49 
 
 unholy sympathise in friendship with the 
 Holy One, otherwise than through the 
 mediate conception of an atonement ? 
 The atoning idea and none other has been 
 found by experience adequate to wake up 
 within us the sense of union with God, 
 An objective atonement really sufficient 
 to satisfy the requirements of God's moral 
 government, and the conception of such 
 atonement living in the human conscience 
 as a counterpart of its grand archetype, 
 constitute the chain which bind God and 
 man together, — the cement, whereby the 
 vast spirit-fabric is reared, and its parts 
 indissolubly united. Thus held in divine 
 contemplation, the devout spirit, like the 
 eagle alighting upon the rock to eye the 
 sun, becomes fascinated, fixed and 
 
 ..." centred there, 
 God only, to behold and know and feel, 
 Till, by exclusive consciousness of God, 
 All self annihilated, it shall make 
 God its Identity." 
 
 But although it is chiefly on the testi- 
 mony of the Christian Church that we 
 would rely for the proof of the fact 
 
 E 
 
50 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 now assumed, there are other evidences 
 strongly confirmatory and exceedingly 
 valuable ; chiefly so because they point 
 to the prevalence of an instinct in uni- 
 versal humanity which, though not de- 
 veloped except in cultivated moral natures, 
 is yet everywhere latent. 
 
 That distinguished biblical scholar, Sir 
 John David Michaelis, for example, begins 
 a discussion on the early notions of sacri- 
 fice with the remark,* " Almost all nations 
 have been unanimous in the idea of bring- 
 ing to the Deity offerings, particularly with 
 the shedding of blood, as a means of ob- 
 taining pardon of sin and a restoration to 
 favour. This awful idea, which is the 
 almost universal impression of the human 
 race, even seems to be a product of what 
 the Romans called sensiis comiminis — a 
 natural dictate of the sound understanding 
 of man." 
 
 For a similar testimony we refer to the 
 celebrated Madame de Stael.f Speaking 
 of Count de Stolberg's History of the Reli- 
 
 * Vide Dr. John Pye Smith's Discourses on the 
 Atonement, p. 221. 
 
 t De L'Allemagne, pt. iv., ch. 4. 
 
Premisses Assumed. 51 
 
 gion of Jesus Christy " The Count," she 
 remarks, '' considers sacrifice as the basis 
 of all religion, and the death of Abel as 
 the first type of that which forms the 
 groundwork of Christianity. Whatever de- 
 cision may be come to upon this opinion," 
 she continues, '' it affords much material 
 for thought. The majority of ancient 
 religions instituted human sacrifices ; but 
 even in this barbarity there is something 
 remarkable : it evidenced the want w^hich 
 the mind felt of a solemn expiation. 
 Nothing, in fact, can obliterate from the 
 soul the conviction that there is a mys- 
 terious efficacy in the blood of the inno- 
 cent, and that heaven and earth are moved 
 by it. . . . There are, in the human race, 
 certain primitive ideas, which appear, with 
 more or less disfigurement, in all times 
 and among all nations. These are the 
 ideas upon which we cannot grow weary 
 of reflecting ; for they assuredly preserve 
 some traces of the lost dignities of our 
 nature." 
 
 It is not easy to say to what extent the 
 words distinguished by italics, in the fol- 
 lowing quotation from Goethe's Wilhclm 
 
 E 2 
 
52 The Philosophy of Evangelicisin. 
 
 Meister,^ express the personal opinions of 
 the author. If they do not belong to him- 
 self and to the philosophical circle of 
 which he was the observant centre, they, 
 at all events, disclose the belief of a por- 
 tion of the German mind. We claim, 
 however, the right to think that the con- 
 cluding sentiment is Goethe's own ; and 
 penned by so accomplished an analyst, 
 only ignorance and presumption will treat 
 it otherwise than with profound attention. 
 ^' Now, gracious Father, grant me faith ! 
 — so prayed I once, in the deepest heavi- 
 ness of my heart. I was leaning on a 
 little table, where I sat ; my tear-stained 
 countenance hidden in my hands. 0, that 
 I could but paint what I felt then ! A 
 sudden force drew my soul to the cross, 
 where Jesus once expired ; such as leads 
 our soul to an absent loved one : and that 
 instant did I know what faith was. When 
 the first rapture was over, I observed that 
 my present condition of mind had for- 
 merly been known to me ; only I had 
 never felt it in such strength ; I had 
 never held it fast, never made it mine. 
 * Vol. ii., p. 133 (1839). 
 
Premisses Assumed. 53 
 
 I believe^ indeed^ every soul at intervals feels 
 something of it.''^ 
 
 Testimonies concurrent with the pre- 
 ceding might be adduced in great num- 
 bers were it necessary. But as we are 
 not at present engaged in discussing the 
 why and the how, but, as prehminary 
 thereto, are only postulating the fact, it 
 appears to us quite enough to have proved 
 historically that humanity, at least a vast 
 portion of it, seeks a refuge from its 
 fears in sacrifice 3.nd finds it in Christ. 
 
 These three, then, we adopt as admitted 
 truths, namely — i. That our primary 
 moral conceptions are intuitive ; 2. That 
 under their influence, when the conscience 
 is aroused to activity, we long for har- 
 mony with moral perfection — conscious 
 reconciliation with God ; 3. That, as a 
 fact in the history and experience of 
 human hearts, faith in Christ inspires this 
 conscious reconciliation. 
 
 We desire to add, in order to prevent 
 misconception, although it is not a truth 
 which can with any consistency be used 
 in argument, that in our view the intui- 
 tions of man's moral nature have their 
 
54 Premisses Assumed. 
 
 origin in the influence of the Holy Spirit ; 
 that as " we Hve and move and have our 
 being in God " physically, so do we live 
 morally in Him ; and that the constant 
 recognition of this idea is essential to 
 prayer, and essential therefore to the 
 growth and vigour of the " life of God 
 in the soul." . 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PRECISE QUESTION EVOLVED, AND ITS 
 
 ANSWER INDICATED. THE EVANGELICAL 
 
 HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 HE preceding chapters have 
 placed before us this state of 
 facts: I. A difficulty — the earnest 
 conscience struggling in vain to 
 reconcile itself with its own moral ideal of 
 the Supreme. 2. The Christian sacrifice 
 interposed. 3. The difficulty thereby 
 practically solved. We have now to ana- 
 lyse this operation — how has the result 
 been brought about ? in what way is it 
 that the conscience, unable to gain quiet 
 from within, has gained it from without ? 
 What is there in the history of Christ 
 crucified to give peace to the troubled 
 conscience ? 
 
56 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 I. The first question we have to settle 
 is, whether the process is intellectual or 
 moral ? So far as regards the Gospel his- 
 tory and the doctrines revealed on the 
 sacred page, the becoming acquainted 
 therewith is, of course, purely intellectual. 
 Whatever moral influences may operate to 
 stimulate the intellect and predispose it to 
 give attention to and believe the Bible, the 
 faith itself is simply a reception by the 
 understanding of truth externally pre- 
 sented. But this is not the faith that 
 gives to the troubled conscience peace. 
 Another element is necessary ; and it is 
 about this other element, the element that 
 transforms speculative faith into saving 
 faith, historical faith into religious faith — 
 it is about this we have to inquire. What 
 about this element ? is it intellectual or 
 moral ? 
 
 That it cannot be merely intellectual is 
 evident from the circumstance that there 
 already exists an intellectual element, 
 which proves insufficient, and which re- 
 quires to have added to it an element of a 
 different kind before it can accomplish the 
 desired end. Besides, the result contem- 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. 57 
 
 plated — namely, peace of conscience — is a 
 moral result, and moral results, it is ob- 
 vious, cannot be arrived at except by moral 
 means. That which gives peace to the 
 conscience must be some consideration 
 acting upon man's moral nature, and pro- 
 ducing upon it the same effect which inno- 
 cence would have produced had innocence 
 existed. 
 
 2. Then, if the element sought after be 
 moral, the next question we have to ask is, 
 whether whatever is moral in the practical 
 operations of the human mind is not of 
 necessity a development of moral cha- 
 racter, an intuitive and spontaneous efflux 
 from the depths of the spirit? We cannot 
 conceive how it is possible for this to 
 admit of the least question. Take, for 
 illustration, any act of justice : the cha- 
 racter of the act is not derived from its 
 external circumstances. The same cir- 
 cumstances might exist, apart from the 
 agent's mental state, and the act performed 
 under them might have no virtue whatever. 
 One man pays to another a sum of money 
 — a just debt — unwillingly and under legal 
 compulsion. There is no virtue in that. 
 
58 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 But, if the payment be made under no pres- 
 sure other than that of a sense of justice, 
 there is at least a modicum of virtue. 
 Whence, then, does the virtue in such a 
 case spring, and how does it reveal itself? 
 Is it not the spontaneous efflux of the 
 mind's moral condition, coming out of the 
 darkness into light, just as the generating 
 seed bursts spontaneously from beneath 
 the soil ? 
 
 Our moral intuitions, like the instincts 
 of animal life, do not, at the moment of 
 spontaneity, exist in the mind as axioms 
 capable of being framed into propositions 
 and categorically expressed. The exercise 
 of our moral functions undoubtedly im- 
 plies an intellectual appreciation of ante- 
 cedent relations; but there is a palpable 
 distinction between the circumstances that 
 awake an instinct and the instinct itself, 
 between the state of facts preliminary to 
 an intuition and the axioms and principles 
 of which, on analysis, the intuition is 
 found to be composed. It is to the latter 
 w^e apply the remark, that, at the moment 
 of spontaneity, they are obscure, and can 
 be discovered only by reflection after the 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. 59 
 
 intuition has realised itself in action. 
 Logical truths may be detected in the 
 mind in the very act of conception, and 
 may be made to express themselves at 
 once; but "our intuitive apperceptions" 
 steal through the mind " in the depths 
 of the consciousness/' too subtile to be 
 arrested in their transit. "The primitive 
 light," says Cousin, " is so pure that it 
 is unperceived ; it is the reflected light 
 which strikes us." The bee builds its cell, 
 the beaver its hut, without first contriving 
 those nice adjustments and entering upon 
 those abstruse calculations which their 
 works yield to a scientific analysis. There 
 was no pre-arranged scheme in the mind 
 of the operator; he went straight to the 
 execution of his appointed task, and per- 
 formed it by instinct; yet, when complete 
 how wonderful the structure, how compli- 
 cated its principles, and how admirably 
 adapted to its end! The mother flies to 
 protect her child. There is no time for 
 thought: the object is accomplished be- 
 fore the mind is conscious of having been 
 called into exercise. Maternal instinct is 
 not resolvable into rapid ratiocination : it 
 
6o The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 bursts from the heart complete : you can- 
 not trace the process of its mental pro- 
 duction : its moral beauty is first seen in 
 the concrete, and any examination into its 
 nature and relations must commence with 
 the contemplation of the instinct in action 
 as a perfected fact. A good man performs 
 an act of justice or benevolence. There 
 may have been much anxious consideration 
 respecting the preliminary circumstances 
 that prompted the action; but its perform- 
 ance specifically as a display of virtue was 
 never the subject of a moment's premedi- 
 tation : the virtue was displayed and its 
 end achieved before its character was 
 pronounced. The external act was the 
 spontaneous product of a virtuous na- 
 ture and the mind sought no reason for 
 doing it beyond the conviction that it 
 was right. 
 
 3. Then, if moral and intuitive, the 
 third question we have to consider is, 
 whether the act of the mind through 
 which an evangelical peace of conscience 
 is obtained does not imply a perception in 
 the external truth of something whereof 
 the mind has already intuitively formed a 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. 6i 
 
 vague image ? " Why is it," asks Socrates, 
 " that when we seek for some thing we do 
 not know, we yet know that Vv'e are seek- 
 ing ? and how comes it that we are able 
 to recognise it when found ?" These, 
 says Mr. Mill,* '' were not quibbles of 
 captious sophists, but difficulties really 
 embarrassing to those who were trying to 
 understand their own mental operations. 
 Why, asks Socrates, does truth (so hard 
 to find), when found, approve itself to us, 
 often instantaneously, as truth ? He can 
 think of no explanation but that we had 
 known it in a former life, and need now 
 only to be reminded of our former know- 
 ledge in order to its instant recognition. 
 Modern thinkers who have stopped short 
 at Plato's point of view, resolve the diffi- 
 culty by pronouncing the knowledge to be 
 intuitive." 
 
 We confess ourselves unable to suo:s:est 
 any mode of solving this very ancient 
 and difficult, yet most important and 
 interesting, question, other than that 
 which is ascribed by Mr. Mill to modern 
 thinkers. 
 
 * Dissertations, vol. iii.. p. 350. 
 
62 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 And yet it is not confined to modern 
 thinkers. St. Augustine uses language 
 which will allow of no interpretation other 
 than that Divine truth is in his judgment 
 self-evident, and faith therein intuitive. 
 Referring to an inspired medium of revela- 
 tion — a prophet or apostle, Augustine 
 says, — " If he were to speak in the Hebrew 
 tongue, it would strike my senses in vain, 
 nor would any of his discourse reach my 
 understanding ; but if he spoke in Latin, 
 I should know what he said. But how 
 should I know "duhether he spoke the truth ? 
 And even if I knew this, should I know it 
 from him? Surely within, inwardly in the 
 home of my thoughts, truth (which is 
 neither Hebrew, nor Greek, nor Latin, 
 nor barbarian) without the organs of 
 mouth or tongue, without the sound of 
 syllables, would say, He speaks the truth ; 
 and 7, rendered certain immediately , should 
 say confidently to that man, Thou speakest 
 truth:' "^ 
 
 * " Intus utique mihi, intus in domicilio cogi- 
 tationis, .... Veritas .... diceret, Verum dicit; et 
 ego statim certus confidenter illi homini dicerem, 
 Verum dicis." — Aug. Confess, xi. iii. T. i. p. 232. 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. 63 
 
 How, except intuitively, can we con- 
 ceive of our moral judgments coalescing 
 with revealed truth ? And, that they do 
 coalesce in all matters relating to the 
 moral law, is most certain. The moral 
 principles of the Bible are not accepted 
 by us purely on the ground of biblical 
 authority. They recommend themselves 
 to our acceptance by their exact con- 
 formity with our loftiest moral conceptions. 
 We have already the imas^e of them in 
 our minds — "the law written on the heart'* 
 — and they accord with that image, draw- 
 ing^ forth our intuitions bv virtue of such 
 accordance, and adding to them definite- 
 ness and strength. 
 
 Now we say that what occurs with 
 regard to legal truth occurs equally with 
 reo^ard to evano:elic truth. When the 
 Enochs and the Abrahams of the patri- 
 archal age kindled the fire upon the sacri- 
 ficial altar and watched its fumes ascending 
 with their prayers, they gave symbolic ex- 
 pression to an intrinsic moral conception. 
 And thus it is in the present day, practi- 
 cally, with true Christians. Prompted by 
 an instinctive perception of the cross as 
 
64 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 adapted to their wants, they flee to Christ 
 and find their refuge in Him first, and the 
 analysis of their faith and the history of 
 its rise and progress is the result of subse- 
 quent reflection. 
 
 Accordingly, Dr. Newman, in his work 
 on Justification J published while he was a 
 clergyman of the Church of England, 
 somewhat quaintly, but very tersely, thus 
 writes : " True faith is what may be called 
 colourless like air or water ; it is but the 
 medium through which the soul sees 
 Christ ; and the soul as little rests upon it 
 and contemplates it as the eye can see the 
 air." To the same effect are the practical 
 exhortations of those earnest preachers 
 and writers whose theology is at the oppo- 
 site pole from Dr. Newman's, and who 
 have, in fact, hardly anything in com.mon 
 with him, except identity of opinion on 
 this one truth. The gist of their appeals 
 is not^ " Here is the proposition which you 
 are required to believe, and the evidences 
 whereby it is sustained: examine and seek 
 to understand them, then believe and be 
 justified." On the contrary, their uniform 
 language is : — " Never heed definitions. 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. 65 
 
 take no thought as to exact logical dis- 
 tinctions : if the house were on fire would 
 you stay to examine the architecture of 
 the building before you escaped from its 
 smouldering walls ? Run, haste, flee I 
 the storm of heaven's avenging wrath is 
 bursting on the city, flee to the mountain 
 lest you be consumed 1" 
 
 4. What, then, is the next step in our 
 analysis ? Accepting the position already 
 taken — that the act of the Christian be- 
 liever when he receives Christ is, in regard 
 to its saving element, a moral and there- 
 fore intuitive act, we recall attention to 
 the difficulty which, in the contemplation 
 of the anxious conscience, the story of 
 the cross appears adapted to solve. The 
 difficulty being felt in the conscience, it 
 is more easy to understand how the con- 
 science may be able to divine a mode 
 of solution. The point to be met is this : 
 " I cannot conceive of my being placed on 
 terms of friendship with God on other 
 than righteous grounds ; and yet I cannot 
 discover any such grounds within myself." 
 Does the conscience under such circum- 
 stances, when in a healthy and active 
 
 F 
 
66 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 state, give up in despair ; or despairing 
 only of relief from within, does it not look 
 abroad for help ? Abandoning the sub- 
 jective, has it not recourse to the ob- 
 jective ? The history of religious exter- 
 nalism, the rites and ceremonies of both 
 true and false religions, and men's apti- 
 tude to place even undue confidence in 
 such rites, evidence the tendency of the 
 mind to go out of itself for consolation. 
 
 It is not through choice, but of necessity, 
 that the conscience seeks repose from an 
 objective source.* Defeated in the at- 
 
 * '' It was a fearful struggle ; until at length, 
 being brought to my wit's end, I relinquished it in 
 despair, saying, It is of no use my trying further, I 
 
 cannot help myself; if I must perish, I must 
 
 Then as I sat, feeling so helpless and undone, the 
 thought occurred to me, ' You are in God's hands, 
 and He loves you with boundless love ; your sins 
 have been put away by the death of Christ, and 
 cannot prevent the exercise of His love towards 
 you. You can do nothing for yourself, but such 
 love will do for you all that you need.' No sooner 
 had this thought occurred than the spell which had 
 bound me was broken. At that moment I passed 
 out of darkness into marvellous light." — The Rev. 
 William Landels' Gospel in Various Aspects 
 (1866), p. 169. 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis, 67 
 
 tempt to find within itself a righteous 
 ground for heaven's approval, it is driven 
 to seek it in something out of itself. After 
 long wandering, like the unclean spirit, 
 through the graveyard of its own per- 
 formances, and after discovering in its 
 imperfect repentance and inadequate obe- 
 dience only the sepulchres of so many 
 holy but unfulfilled vows, it leaves perforce 
 this scene of inward desolation and goes 
 abroad in quest of its spirit-home. And 
 in thus going out of itself in search of 
 repose, what do we see but an imitation, 
 by the conscience, of that which every 
 day's experience teaches us to be neces- 
 sary on the part of the intellect ? When 
 the vagaries of the hypochondriac disclose 
 the introvision which has been the cause 
 of his mental ruin, to what does the skilful 
 physician direct attention as the only pos- 
 sible means of cure ? The mind, too long 
 occupied with its own thoughts, is to be 
 compelled, by disseverance from its old 
 habits, by change of scene and cheerful 
 companionship, to go out upon the ob- 
 jective world and derive thence the re- 
 pose which it to itself denied. So with 
 
 F 2 
 
68 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 moral hypochondria. It cannot be cured 
 by introvision. The guilty conscience 
 can never erect a structure of peace 
 upon a subjective basis, or, in other 
 words, we cannot be self-justified. The 
 basis of peace of conscience, in order to 
 be solid and substantial, must be ob- 
 jective. 
 
 But, to say that the grounds of justifi- 
 cation are necessarily objective, and that 
 justification is necessarily by faith, is 
 merely to adopt two synonymous modes 
 of giving expression to the same axiomatic 
 truth. That which is objective spiritually 
 can be apprehended only by faith, just as 
 that which is objective physically can be 
 apprehended only through the senses. 
 Faith is, in the evangelical scheme, exactly 
 what seeing or feeling is in the philosophy 
 of perception ; the one is the medium of 
 connection between the outward world 
 and our knowledge of it, the other is the 
 medium of connection between an ob- 
 jective atonement and a subjective justi- 
 fication. Faith is spiritual perception. 
 Every theory, therefore, which destroys 
 the objective character of the atonement, 
 
Tlie Evangelical Hypothesis. 69 
 
 is as fatal to the doctrine of justification 
 by faith as was the ideal theory of Berkeley 
 to the reality of perception. Justifica- 
 tion by faith cannot co-exist, as a Chris- 
 tian doctrine, with a non-objective atone- 
 ment. 
 
 In the rite of sacrifice, this element 
 of objectivity is beautifully symbolised. 
 The reeking knife, the streaming blood, 
 the struggling victim, the blazing altar, 
 the smoking sacrifice, the ascending cloud 
 — all direct our thousfhts to a medium of 
 Divine satisfaction away from ourselves, 
 and indicate the existence of a central 
 point of harmony where, midway between 
 ourselves and heaven, God and man may 
 again be at one. 
 
 Hence no scheme of atonement which 
 represents the Christian sacrifice other- 
 wise than as objective, is worthy of the 
 name of a gospel. The assigning of ob- 
 jectivity to the basis of our hopes of salva- 
 tion, gives to orthodox evangelicism its 
 distinguishing feature. All systems which 
 imply that the meritorious cause wherein 
 we are to confide for Divine acceptance is 
 something subjective, resolve themselves 
 
70 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 necessarily into a modification of the anti- 
 Pauline doctrine of salvation by works. 
 The distinction between a subjective and 
 an objective ground of trust, runs parallel 
 with the distinction between justifica- 
 tion by works and justification by faith. 
 He w^ho would be justified by works 
 finds the fancied grounds of his trust 
 within himself, or in the ego; while he 
 who has sought them there in vain, and 
 is driven to the alternative of seeking them 
 beyond himself, or in the non-ego. adopts 
 thereby the principle of justification by 
 faith. 
 
 5. But if an objective basis be neces- 
 sary to the repose of the conscience, 
 equally necessary is it that such objective 
 basis exist within the range of our human 
 sympathies. Though non-subjective, in 
 the sense of its being apart from the in- 
 dividual mind, it must still have in it some 
 element with which our consciousness may 
 so combine as to give us, in view of the 
 atoning act, a sense oi moral identity. To 
 evolve this element it requires that we 
 associate with the atoning act the idea of 
 corporate responsibility. 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. 71 
 
 It is a patent fact, that individuals in 
 this world do not suffer in exact propor- 
 tion to their own personal sins. The 
 vices of parents oft entail their conse- 
 quences less severely on themselves than 
 on their children. The unrighteous acts 
 of persons in power bring down upon 
 a nation or community calamities which 
 fall, sometimes, most fiercely upon the 
 very individuals who were the most 
 earnest in deprecating the acts that occa- 
 sioned them. National punishments are 
 always indiscriminating ; as all history 
 testifies. The upright and the wicked 
 share alike the miseries of mortality : 
 and, not unfrequently, the good are 
 doomed to endure sorrows from which 
 the bad escape. Since, therefore, it is 
 quite manifest that men, in this world, 
 are not dealt with equally, it behoves 
 those who place every individual man in 
 a separate individual relationship to God, 
 and who assert that God deals with men 
 only as isolated individuals^ to apply them- 
 selves to the consideration of the question 
 whether, on this hypothesis of individuality 
 — in responsibility, guilt, and punishment 
 
72 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 — the anomaly of not always visiting equal 
 guilt with equal punishment does not ne- 
 cessarily involve injustice, and whether, 
 therefore, the theory of isolated responsi- 
 bility is not self-destructive. But the 
 topic of corporate responsibility will be 
 dealt with in a subsequent chapter, and 
 we now only refer to it in order to in- 
 timate that it supplies the bond of sym- 
 pathy between man's moral nature and 
 such an objective basis as the conscience, 
 in the absence of a subjective basis, per- 
 force seeks to rest upon. 
 
 6. That it is capable of supplying this 
 bond of sympathy will be apparent, if we 
 examine the connection which subsists 
 between conscious corporate responsibility 
 and self-sacrifice. 
 
 Much has been said and sung in praise 
 of suffering virtue. But simply to say 
 that virtue appears to the greatest advan- 
 tage in circumstances of suffering, is to 
 express but a fragment of the true idea. 
 Nor is it enough to say that virtue shines 
 the most resplendently in acts of self- 
 sacrifice. In order to a full conception, 
 it requires that we exalt the idea of simple 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. 73 
 
 suffering into that of the penitential sus- 
 tenance of judicial suffering, and that we 
 conceive of self-sacrifice as the volun- 
 tary and resigned endurance of individual 
 chastisement for general crime. This 
 voluntary acceptance it is, of the punish- 
 ment due to human guilt, that gives to 
 self-sacrifice its highest moral beauty. 
 
 Take an illustrative example from the 
 records of primitive Christianity: — '*When 
 the Decian persecution and its attendant 
 tumultuary movements had filled Alexan- 
 dria with such slaughter as to breed pesti- 
 lence from the bodies of the dead, the 
 Christians, instead of sullenly permitting 
 the physical calamity to avenge their 
 cause, assumed the duties of public nurses, 
 and performed the loathsome tasks from 
 which Pagan priests and magistrates had 
 fled." Here, the pestilence was the self- 
 inflicted and, we may fairly add, judicial 
 punishment — not the less so because 
 the natural consequence of the acts — of 
 those infuriated priests, magistrates, and 
 people who, by persecuting its disciples to 
 the death, had sought to destroy the 
 Christian cause. Mark then the element, 
 
74 ^h^ Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 which so powerfully kindles our admiration 
 at the lofty virtue of the persecuted ! They 
 returned good for evil ; but that was not 
 all. They became mediators, instead of 
 avengers ; another step in the ascent, but 
 still short of the summit. They volun- 
 tarily subjected themselves to the suffer- 
 ings and dangers which their persecutors 
 had invoked upon their own heads, be- 
 coming, as their substitutes in a fatal 
 social duty, vicarious victims for the sins 
 of their enemies, and themselves enduring 
 the punishment with which heaven had 
 visited their quarrel ! 
 
 How strange that the darkest shades in 
 human history should thus bring out to 
 our admiring gaze the most beautiful 
 touches of virtue's pencil ! The fretted 
 stream murmurs its most soothing me- 
 lodies when dashed by impeding rocks ; 
 *'the willow must be shaken with the 
 wind, before its leaves glitter like plumes 
 of silver ;" the atmosphere requires a 
 dense dark cloud of vapour as a ground- 
 work on which to sketch the matchless 
 glories of the iris ; the ocean must be so 
 enraged by the storm as to fill the palpi- 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. 75 
 
 tating heart with terror, ere it can impress 
 us with its own grandeur: so human virtue 
 is in her highest perfection when we be- 
 hold in her the embodiment of the pro- 
 phet's words of mournful beauty: " Oh 
 that mv head were waters, and mine 
 eyes a fountain of tears, that I might 
 weep day and night for the slain of the 
 daughter of my people !" Such virtue was 
 displayed by Moses when, interceding 
 with God for Israel, he asks that his own 
 name might be '' blotted out," rather than 
 the name of Israel should perish ; and by 
 Paul when, in the bitterness of his grief 
 for Israel's unbelief, he wished to be him- 
 self '' accursed," if he might thereby 
 save them. The truth is, that the bene- 
 volent sympathy through which we be- 
 come identified with others' sorrows is 
 an extended consciousness,* and, when 
 
 * ** It would be a convenient distinction if the 
 term *' self-consciousness " were always employed 
 whenever we wish to express the mind's cogni- 
 zance of its own operations. This would help to 
 remove the false notion that we can appeal to con- 
 sciousness for nothing beyond them." — Morell's 
 Hist, of Mod. Phil., vol. ii., p. 15. 
 
76 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 directed to moral subjects in the spirit of 
 self-sacrifice, is more than a consciousness 
 of woe ; it is the consciousness also of 
 the general guilt ; so that conscience, in 
 these its more refined exercises, out- 
 stretches the ego^ and, comprehending 
 first an inner and then a wider circle, 
 enlarging its sphere as it improves its cul- 
 ture, embraces at last, in its best estate, 
 all the sins of all the world. Thus had 
 our Saviour identified Himself with the 
 guilt of humanity when He suffered, in 
 Gethsemane and upon the cross, beneath 
 the overwhelming weight of our *' curse." 
 ** He who knew no sin was made sin for 
 us," — not a sin-offering only : He be- 
 came *' sin " that He might be a sin- 
 offering. He became '' 5m," in the sense 
 of so thoroughly identifying Himself with 
 human guilt, that He felt, morally and 
 conscientiously, all its judicial bitter- 
 ness. 
 
 ** Is it not the fact," says Maurice, 
 **that if we have the consciousness in 
 however slight a degree of evil in another 
 man, it is, up to the same degree, as if 
 the evil were in ourselves ?" Have we 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. 77 
 
 not a feeling of personal shame ? And 
 " supposing the offender to be a friend, or 
 a brother, or a child, is not this sense 
 of personal shame, of the evil being ours, 
 proportionably stronger and more acute ?" 
 Then, if it be possible for us to have the 
 consciousness of one other man's sins, why 
 not of all men's sins? ''Suppose this 
 carried to its highest point, cannot you 
 apprehend that Christ may have entered 
 into the sin of the whole world, may have 
 had the most inward realisation of it, not 
 because it was like what was in Himself, 
 but because it was utterly and intensely 
 unlike ?" 
 
 Although we have employed the word 
 "sympathy" after the example of the 
 author whose words we quote, it will 
 scarcely convey a correct idea without 
 some explanation. Perhaps it will be 
 understood if thus stated : out of the 
 combination, in a highly cultivated moral 
 state of the mind, of its sympathies and 
 antipathies, a third sentiment is capable 
 of being evolved, called also, for want of a 
 distinctive name, "sympathy," but at once 
 attractive of the individual and repellant 
 
78 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 of his crime. The most famihar examples 
 of this are to be found when persons, 
 standing to each other in endearing re- 
 lationships, have diverse moral characters. 
 The more endearing the personal relation- 
 ship and the more diverse the character, 
 the deeper will be this compound senti- 
 ment. Take, for instance, the case of a 
 child who has suddenly betrayed evidences 
 of a great moral turpitude by the public 
 commission of some shameful crime. To 
 designate the feelings of the anguish- 
 stricken father by the paltry name of 
 *' pity," would be a miserable misnomer. 
 A worthy father identifies himself with 
 his child's crime, and feels as much shame 
 and distress as if the crime had been his 
 own. But the depth of this feeling will 
 depend upon two things, the extent of his 
 love for his child and of his hatred to the 
 crime. If the moral character of the 
 father be no better than that of the 
 offender, his feelings of self-loathing will 
 be no deeper than those of the offender. 
 Exactly in proportion to the superiority 
 of his character, will be the profundity of 
 his woe. 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. yg 
 
 May we not venture to say that a senti- 
 ment so compound is inadequately ex- 
 pressed by the word '' sympathy," and 
 that, instead of saying " sympathy with 
 others' sins," we should more accurately 
 convey the idea by calling it ^^conscious- 
 ness of others^ sins ?" A phraseology this, 
 too, in strict accordance with the most 
 approved psychological nomenclature ! 
 For, as is now generally agreed, con- 
 sciousness is not one specific faculty, but 
 *' the common condition under which our 
 faculties are brought into operation," nor 
 is it limited to the region of " self," but 
 is comprehensive also of '^ not-self." So 
 that it is not more psychologically accurate 
 to say, that we are painfully conscious of 
 our own guiltiness, than to say, of one 
 under the circumstances just described, 
 that he is conscious of, and in his moral 
 feelings suffers for, the guiltiness of 
 another. 
 
 7. Next, there arises this question : 
 Christ having identified Himself with 
 humanity by becoming an element in its 
 constitution, and thus necessarily partici- 
 pating in its conscious condemnation and 
 
8o The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 woe, do we not, by virtue of a law of 
 that same constitution, participate in His 
 merits ? The danger being common, is 
 not the deliverance common also ? And 
 Christ having entered into our conscious- 
 ness of danger, may we not, by virtue 
 of that power of reciprocation which is 
 another law of our moral being, enter 
 with Him into the consciousness of re- 
 demption ? 
 
 But this topic also will have to be en- 
 larged upon in a subsequent chapter. 
 
 8. Thus have we traced, through seven 
 successive stages, the rise and progress of 
 that intuitive conviction by which the 
 work of Christ becomes realised to the 
 conscience and personally appropriated, 
 and whereby guilty fear is made to yield to 
 peace and joy. We have not sought to 
 resolve into articulate propositions the 
 truth, the mind's consciousness whereof 
 produces such results. To give an out- 
 ward form and intellectual exposition of 
 any primary moral principle is most diffi- 
 cult, if not impossible. Who can describe 
 what justice is, and why the consciousness * 
 of being just diffuses inward satisfaction ? ; 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis. 8i 
 
 For the same reason it is impossible to 
 describe, except vaguely and approxi- 
 mately, what it is in the work of Christ 
 that satisfies one's conception of a " ful- 
 filled risfhteousness." Hence we make no 
 attempt to bridge across the abyss that 
 yawns between human guilt and Heaven's 
 justice, as it exists in the Divine govern- 
 ment objectively. The attempt to do so is 
 one of the prevailing errors of systematic 
 theologians, and one of the chief sources 
 of the disfavour with which theology, as a 
 science, is at present regarded. The ob- 
 jective treatment of the Christian sacrifice 
 is impracticable, inasmuch as the relations 
 it involves are such as human reason can- 
 not fathom, and the effort leads to the 
 cr^'stallizing of doctrines which are true 
 only as fluent and living. Christolog}^, 
 like morals, can only be treated suc- 
 cessfully by being approached from the 
 subjective. 
 
 To affirm that God's love and justice 
 were at variance, and that wisdom iilter- 
 posed the expedient of Christ's sacrificial 
 death by way of harmonising jarring attri- 
 butes, may be a pardonable method of 
 
 G 
 
82 TJie Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 suggesting a procedure in the Divine ad- 
 ministration which baffles the intellect, 
 and of which our only notion is the pho- 
 tograph thereof written upon the con- 
 science. But beyond uttering it as a 
 distant suggestion of the inexplicable, 
 theology ought not to venture. Gravely 
 to hazard the theory, that the Almighty 
 Governor of the universe deemed it neces- 
 sary to vindicate the righteousness of His 
 government by requiring the Christian 
 sacrifice as a utilitarian expedient, and as 
 a warning to other intelligences, is to 
 rush where angels fear to tread. It is an 
 attempt to soar beyond the legitimate 
 bounds of religious thought. The most 
 elaborate juridical theories, although 
 couched in the language of forensic rea- 
 soning, are in reality nothing better than 
 metaphorical amplifications of the con- 
 science's intuitive difficulty, and have as 
 little title to rank with the logical opera- 
 tions of the intellect as the significant 
 dream of the South Sea warrior who, 
 when in a state of great mental distress, 
 saw his sins crossing his path in the form 
 of an impassable mountain, upon which, 
 
The Evangelical Hypothesis, 83 
 
 from an outstretched finger, a drop of 
 blood fell, and the mountain was dissolved. 
 To get beyond this, we must penetrate the 
 recesses of the Christ-mind ; and that we 
 cannot do. 
 
 " It needs, to tell the triumph Thou hast wrought, 
 An angel's deathless fire — an angel's reach of 
 thought. 
 
 '' It needs that very angel who, with awe, 
 Amid the garden shade, 
 The great Creator in His sickness saw, 
 
 Soothed by a creature's aid, 
 And agonised, as victim of the law 
 
 Which He Himself had made ; 
 For who can praise Him in His depth and height 
 But he who saw Him reel in that victorious 
 fight ? "* 
 
 * Newman's Dream of Gerontiiis. 
 
 G 2 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE MORAL UNITY OF HUMANITY, THE BASIS 
 OF VICARIOUS MERIT AND SUFFERING. 
 
 .^|HE theory to be developed in 
 the following chapter may be 
 thus briefly stated : — 
 
 I. Some of the evils which 
 afflict humanity might obviously have 
 been averted by moral rectitude, and of 
 these it may be affirmed on the testimony 
 of experience, as also of all on scriptural 
 authority, that they are at once the fruit 
 and punishment of sin. Yet it is equally 
 undeniable that personal wickedness is 
 not always visited upon the head of the 
 particular offender : sometimes, at least 
 in the present life, he escapes altogether ; 
 and oft the sorrow he has invoked falls 
 upon others more heavily than upon him- 
 self. But the inequality thus notoriously 
 existing in the individual relationship does 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity, 85 
 
 not exist in relation to the world at large. 
 As between God and total humanity, em- 
 bracing all time, rewards and punishments 
 are administered with judicial strictness : 
 mankind, as a whole, suffer the fitting 
 punishment of their aggregate guilt ; and 
 are rewarded, as a whole, in exact ac- 
 cordance with their aggregate obedience. 
 The hypothesis justified by these and 
 similar facts is that the race is an or- 
 ganic unit, standing to God in a corporate 
 moral relation ; and that pain and sorrow, 
 although awarded to the race-unit ju- 
 dicially, as the equivalent of its deserts, 
 are thereafter distributed among the mem- 
 bers of the race on other principles, i.e. 
 according to laws shaped out of the con- 
 flict between good and evil, and which 
 have the triumph of good for their ulti- 
 mate end. One of these laws is, that the 
 highest natures suffer the most keenly. 
 We see this daily in the pangs consequent 
 upon refined sensibility and tender affec- 
 tion ; and if the action of the law be more 
 •silent, it is certainly not less real, in the 
 anguish produced by deep moral sym- 
 pathy. To this cause is obviously to be 
 
86 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 attributed the mental agony of the world's 
 Redeemer. Because our Lord Jesus 
 Christ was the highest moral exempli- 
 fication of human nature, He became 
 necessarily, through the operation of the 
 law we have referred to, the Man of Sor- 
 rows. And in the chain of sequences 
 thus subjected to intellectual examination, 
 we have the rationale of the Christian 
 Sacrifice. 
 
 2. Again : because humanity is a unit 
 and stands to God corporately in a rela- 
 tion of merit or demerit, Christ, as one of 
 the brotherhood of humanity, elevated it 
 to His own position in the Divine regards. 
 Standing before God as the King and 
 Representative of the race. He, by virtue 
 of the moral sympathy which pervades the 
 human brotherhood, entered into the con- 
 sciousness of their guilt as if it had been 
 His own; and the sentiments with which 
 it affected Him — the Son of God — in the 
 presence of His loving Father, brought 
 the repentant human into absolute and 
 conscious reconciliation with the Divine. 
 By virtue of the same moral sympathy 
 through which Christ entered into the 
 
Humanity^ s Moral Unity. 87 
 
 consciousness of our guilt, all who seek 
 to imbibe the spirit of Christ enter into 
 the consciousness of His righteousness ; 
 and in this we have the rationale of jus- 
 tification by faith, or peace of consience 
 through trusting in Christ. 
 
 We repeat that our object in this 
 chapter is to develop the idea of man- 
 kind's moral unity. With the questions 
 of the origin and antiquity of the race we 
 do not intermeddle. All we require to 
 have admitted to us is, that ever since the 
 commencement of history mankind have 
 been, and are now, a distinct, well-defined 
 species, possessing, among other distinc- 
 tive features, moral agency and responsi- 
 bility; and that the w^orld is under moral 
 government. Let our readers grant this, 
 and then take issue, if they will, upon the 
 question whether the only kind of moral 
 responsibility existing is that which is per- 
 sonal to each man ; or whether, besides 
 that, there does not also exist, as we affirm 
 there does, a corporate responsibility of 
 entire humanity. 
 
 There are two modes of working out 
 
88 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 this problem. The one is by the inductive 
 process — collecting facts and evolving 
 thereout the principle they embody. The 
 other is to assume the principle, and test 
 its truth by inquiring how far it accords 
 with life's actual phenomena. We will 
 adopt the latter method ; both because it 
 is the approved method of conveying that 
 which induction has already been made 
 use of to discover, and because it allows 
 of greater concentration of thought — a 
 condition which, even if space were no 
 consideration, it is desirable to observe. 
 
 Our hypothesis, then, is, that humanity 
 stands to God in a relation of corporate 
 responsibility, and is capable of corporate 
 merit or demerit, and of its conscientious 
 conviction ; and that the happiness or 
 misery of the world, as a w^hole, is deter- 
 mined by its corporate moral character. 
 The antagonist proposition is, that each 
 human being is responsible for himself 
 only, and that to hold him responsible, in 
 any way, for the voluntary acts of another 
 would be unjust, and at variance with our 
 primary moral convictions. We hope to 
 be able to demonstrate that the latter por- 
 
Humanity^ s Moral Unity. 8g 
 
 tion of this adverse statement is as un- 
 supported as its commencement ; and that 
 mankind's intuitive moral convictions sup- 
 port the view we advocate. 
 
 I. First, then, is it or is it not a law of 
 humanity that virtue and happiness are 
 indissolubly associated ? We assume that 
 it is. That they are not indissolubly 
 associated in individual examples is too 
 clear for argument ; consequently, it is 
 not in the individual example that this 
 law of humanity is exhibited. But although 
 no fact can be more certain than that, in 
 individual cases, virtue and present hap- 
 piness are frequently dissevered ; if the 
 principles we contend for be sound, it will 
 follow from them that, in proportion as we 
 deal with masses, instead of with in- 
 dividuals, we shall approach nearer and 
 nearer to a constancy of relation between 
 happiness and virtue ; until at length, by 
 eliminating disturbing influences, we reach 
 a sufficient aggregate whereby to demon- 
 strate their co-existence as a universal 
 law. 
 
 Let us refer, by way of illustration, to 
 the law which regulates the earth's irriga- 
 
go The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 tion. We know that the earth is as much 
 dependent upon the rain for its vitahty as 
 upon the heat of the sun, and that these 
 must be supphed in proportionate degrees: 
 and we know also that the moisture drawn 
 up by evaporation from our rivers, lakes, 
 and oceans is in proportion to the applica- 
 tion of the solar heat — demand and sup- 
 ply being thus made self-regulative. Yet 
 this general law, which, in its aggregate 
 operation, is strict as any mathematical 
 corollary, becomes in the distribution of 
 its results apparently most capricious — 
 the shower often descending on soil 
 already saturated, while, elsewhere, the 
 parched ground gasps for it in vain. In 
 like manner, while it may be quite true 
 that, as a general law, moral evil is the 
 cause of physical evil, and that the world's 
 miseries, in the aggregate, are in accord- 
 ance with its moral condition, it may be, 
 and is, equally true that heaven's blessings 
 and curses descend upon the just and un- 
 just with as apparently little relation to 
 their individual object, as in the case of the 
 capriciously descending shower. 
 
 This, then, being a state of things war- 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. gi 
 
 ranted by our principle, to what extent 
 does it coincide with actually existing 
 phenomena ? Is there anything to justify 
 the conclusion that, although, as we well 
 know, prosperity does not always follow in 
 the wake of individual moral worth, the 
 companionship of these two is more and 
 more constant in proportion as we deal 
 with increasing aggregates ? 
 
 In order to obtain a satisfactory answer 
 to this question, we have but to ascend 
 from the individual example of suffering 
 virtue to the condition of virtuous men as 
 a class. What is the universal testimony 
 of the civilised world with regard to the 
 relation between happiness and virtue ? 
 Do not all human laws, all religious teach- 
 ing, all our untainted literature — our 
 novels, our dramas, as well as the graver 
 pages of avowed moralists — affirm, with- 
 out a dissentient voice, that, however it 
 may be with individuals, virtue as a rule 
 produces happiness, and vice leads as 
 certainly to woe ? 
 
 Again, is it not the fact that nations 
 have ever become great, powerful, glorious, 
 and free in proportion as they have main- 
 
92 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 tained truth and justice and repressed 
 crime ? It is needless to burden our 
 pages with historic examples; for, unless 
 the world's history have forced this fact 
 upon the attention of every ordinary 
 student, it will be useless to dwell upon it. 
 We want evidences so clear as to be in- 
 disputable; and we apprehend that the 
 one we now adduce is of that description. 
 All history demonstrates that, however 
 virtue may suffer in the cases of indi- 
 viduals and of small communities, or as a 
 temporary exceptional incident, there is an 
 indissoluble conjunction observable be- 
 tween national morality and the national 
 weal. 
 
 But if virtue and happiness be invari- 
 ably combined in aggregates, why not also 
 in individuals ? To this question we have 
 already suggested the answer ; and, in 
 answering it now more fully, we hope to 
 give point to the argument. 
 
 Each individual is not, to the extent 
 commonly supposed, a microcosm — a little 
 world in himself, embodying in his own 
 limited experience all the principles found 
 in operation in the world at large. The 
 
Hummiity' s Moral Unity. 93 
 
 relation between humanity and God, out 
 of which arises the unvarying union of 
 virtue and happiness, is not a relation 
 made up — like a bundle of equal-sized 
 rods — of a number of similar individual 
 relations. Humanity is not an arithmeti- 
 cal addition of integers, but a body con- 
 stituted, after the fashion of the human 
 body, of adapted members. Hence the 
 law applicable to humanity as a whole is 
 true, in its rigid strictness, in relation only 
 to entire humanity, and but partially true 
 when applied to sections ; gradually 
 dwindling into inappropriateness when 
 applied to individuals. As applied to in- 
 dividuals, it is like a shivered mirror 
 sparkling brilliantly in some of its frag- 
 ments on which the light fortuitously falls,, 
 but in others deprived of all reflective 
 power. The consequence of this disse- 
 verance is, that between the parts of the 
 whole in their relation both to God and to 
 each other, new laws come into operation. 
 Let us look, for illustration, to the inci- 
 dents of an Alpine tour. As between the 
 tourist and general laws, the exercise and 
 scenery produce ecstatic enjoyment. But 
 
94 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 this is true only of the man as a whole : 
 how does the case stand in reference to 
 particular parts of him, after a few hard 
 days' toil ? His feet are sore, his joints 
 ache, his face is blistered, his eyes are in- 
 flamed. So, while in relation to humanity 
 as a whole, the law immutably prevails 
 that virtue and joy walk hand in hand, yet, 
 inasmuch as it is to the whole only that 
 this law is applicable, and not to its de- 
 tached parts, it is quite compatible Vvdth 
 our general proposition that, as in the 
 case of the fatigued pedestrian, there co- 
 exists with exalted general joy very much 
 of particular sorrow. 
 
 Remarkable is it that, in the writings of 
 ancient sages, passages oft occur w^hich 
 show extraordinary depth of thought, and 
 make us Vv-onder that these have not ere 
 now become household words, instead of 
 being buried still in musty volumes, un- 
 noticed and but little known. So early as 
 in the fifth century before the commence- 
 ment of the Christian era, Heraclitus 
 taught that " the only way to attain truth 
 was to abjure all separate reason, and to 
 
Hitmanity^s Moral Unity, 95 
 
 follow the common or universal reason."* 
 ** Each man's mind," he said, " must be- 
 come identified and familiar with that 
 common process which directed and trans- 
 formed the whole." 
 
 Again, the speeches of Glaukon and 
 Adeimantus, in the second book of Plato's 
 Republic^ disapprove the unjust life, not 
 because it is a calamity to the evil-doer — 
 a result which they appear anxious to dis- 
 cover and cannot — but because it is an 
 evil to others. "According to them, all 
 mankind, even those who most inculcate 
 justice, inculcate it as self-sacrifice, de- 
 scribing the life of the just man as hard 
 and difficult ; that of the unjust as plea- 
 sant and easy."f At a later date, the 
 Stoic Epictetus wrote what we shall trans- 
 late freely, although doing nothing more 
 than convey the spirit of Stoicism and the 
 purport of the original : — 
 
 " A man," says Epictetus, ''is part of 
 a commonwealth : what, then, doth the 
 character of a good citizen promise ? It 
 promises to hold no private interest ad- 
 
 * Grote's Plato, vol. i. p. 36. 
 
 t Mill's Dissertations, vol, iii., p. 306. 
 
qG The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 verse to the general good; but to do as 
 would the hand or foot, which, if they were 
 possessed of reason, and could compre- 
 hend the constitution of nature, would 
 never act as members of the body except 
 with a reference to the whole. If the 
 members of the body are to be considered 
 as so many unconnected individuals, I will 
 allow it to be natural for the foot to assert 
 its right to be always clean ; but, if you 
 regard it as a foot, and not as an uncon- 
 nected agent, circumstances require that 
 it should walk in the dirt, tread upon the 
 thorns, and sometimes even be cut off, for 
 the good of the whole. So, if you were 
 an unconnected individual, completely 
 severed from human society, it might be 
 natural that you should live to old age, 
 and be ever healthy and happy ; but if 
 you are to be regarded as a component 
 part of social humanity, then it is fit and 
 natural that you should, for the sake of 
 the whole, be at one time sick; at another, 
 take a voyage to sea and encounter the 
 storm ; at another, suffer hunger and 
 thirst, or endure adversity and insult; and 
 probably, at last, die before your time." 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. 97 
 
 Men that could write thus must have 
 had in their minds the entire hypothesis 
 we are now seeking to unfold: so that, 
 instead of being novel, as some might 
 imagine, it may boast an origin antece- 
 dent to and coeval with the dawn of the 
 Christian era. While modern thought 
 looks upon the sufferings of virtue as an 
 anomaly, a mystery, something to be re- 
 conciled with justice only on the supposi- 
 tion of a future recompense, ancient sages, 
 with a wider range of vision, more cor- 
 rectly regarded it as a natural and neces- 
 sary result of man's social and moral unity 
 in a world in which virtue has to do 
 battle with evil. 
 
 Nor were Christianity's earliest propa- 
 gators less decidedly of the same opinion. 
 It would require but little effort to prove 
 that the most subtle and sublime doctrines 
 which St Paul enunciates are spontaneous 
 evolutions of his cardinal maxim, that 
 " we are members one of another." We 
 have an example of this in Ephesians iv. 
 25, where, in harmony with the doctrine 
 of the Stoics, who, as we have seen, 
 *' grounded the obligation of morals on 
 
 H 
 
g8 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 the brotherhood of the human race," 
 Paul enforces the virtue of truth-telHng 
 by the argument that lying is socially 
 suicidal. And every reader of his epistles 
 knows how earnestly and frequently he 
 inculcates upon Christians the duty of 
 being personally self-denying and kind one 
 to another, because, like the members of 
 the human body, they are "one in Christ," 
 wdth a common feeling of sympathy, so 
 that no one part of the body ecclesiastic 
 can suffer without the rest suffering with 
 it (i Cor. xii. 26 ; Eph. v. 30, &c.). 
 
 II. Again, were it to be granted that 
 all the events that happen in the world, 
 including the voluntary acts of moral 
 agents, are evolved one out of the other, 
 and so mutually dependent as to become 
 in effect a continuous chain of necessary 
 sequences, the result, of course, would be 
 that a unity would be established which 
 could not fail to render humanity one 
 great responsible whole. But a concession 
 so extensive as this wo, do not require. 
 The acts of voluntary agents, it may be 
 said, introduce new elements into the 
 series — forces which may operate either in 
 
Htimanity^s Moral Unity. gg 
 
 accordance with or adverse to the original 
 direct force. The stream ghdes on, but 
 not between banks that exclude the access 
 of foreign waters : at frequent intervals, 
 quiet streamlets from the neighbouring 
 plains, and, now and then, gurgling moun- 
 tain torrents, pour their liquid treasures 
 into the mighty reservoir ; and on it goes 
 with these additions, rushing, foaming, 
 sometimes between a narrowing deeper 
 channel, then widening into a vast shallow 
 estuary. 
 
 But, notwithstanding all those vicissi- 
 tudes, does not the stream still continue 
 one ? So, humanity is not less one be- 
 cause at every new birth, and on the put- 
 ting forth of every self-determined volition, 
 there is added a new element of strength. 
 However independent the new element 
 may have been in its origin, it no sooner 
 mixes with the flowing tide than its inde- 
 pendence ceases. Thenceforth it is hurried 
 on or retarded, lifted or submerged, ac- 
 cording to the exigencies wherewith it has 
 become conditioned. 
 
 Few are the sins — if, in truth, there are 
 any — which are the exclusive product of 
 
 H 2 
 
loo The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 an individual mind, and which have been 
 in no way contributed to by others. There 
 are, first, in the catalogue of contributory 
 causes, those hereditary tendencies for 
 which parents, and no doubt more remote 
 ancestors, are responsible. Then there 
 are habits formed in early life ; and for 
 these not only parents, but other mem- 
 bers also of the domestic circle, including 
 nurses and governesses, are more or less 
 accountable. Then there is the instruc- 
 tion received in youth ; and here is brought 
 in the mighty power exerted over the 
 youthful mind by schoolmasters and 
 schoolmistresses : to all which are to be 
 added the influence of juvenile associa- 
 tions, and the inducement and pressure 
 of ten thousand varying circumstances, 
 leading onward to the particular act com- 
 plained of, as their all but necessary 
 climax. Hence there is no denying that 
 every man's moral character is modified, 
 if not absolutely formed, by his associa- 
 tions. And as little, therefore, can it be 
 denied that no moral action, good or bad, 
 is the sole product of one mind. But if 
 this be so — if every voluntary act of every 
 
Humanity'' s Moral Unity, loi 
 
 individual be more or less contributed to 
 by others — how can it possibly be main- 
 tained that responsibility is ever individual 
 only, and never corporate? On the con- 
 trary, what action is there that is not cor- 
 porate ? Does the murderer in the dead 
 hour of night steal into the quiet chamber 
 of his sleeping victim, and, prompted by 
 the greed of gain, stab to the heart the 
 unconscious father, and rob his orphan 
 children of their only means of support ? 
 Ask where that villain was born, in what 
 den of infamy he first drew breath, where 
 he was educated, and by what steps he 
 has been matured into the hardened 
 criminal you now witness ? We may find 
 that his grandsire was a clergyman ; that 
 his father, strictly educated in childhood, 
 rushed in youth into the vortex of pro- 
 digality ; that his mother was a ruined 
 beauty ; that, untrained to industry, he 
 began life as a timid pilferer, but that, 
 rendered bold by successful thieving, he 
 dared the law, was caught in its meshes, 
 and was converted by imprisonment among 
 felons into a reckless ruffian. We see thus 
 how many acts of individuals have contri- 
 
102 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 buted to give existence to the character 
 we now contemplate, and, by creating the 
 agent, to produce his crime. It would be 
 mere evasion to say that the crime is only 
 the crime of him who premeditates it, and 
 that the unintentional contributors thereto 
 have no share in its guilt. That may be 
 so for purposes of punitive justice before 
 an earthly tribunal ; but our present in- 
 quiry has reference to the proceedings be- 
 fore a Divine tribunal. Even human laws 
 attribute to offenders the criminality of 
 results in which their conduct necessarily 
 terminates — holding that every man must 
 intend that which is the inevitable conse- 
 quence of his actions. We ask no more 
 than that this well-settled principle be 
 ceded to us. However untraceable for 
 practical ends, there has been in the case 
 supposed a slow but sure progress from 
 act to act through at least three genera- 
 tions of voluntary agents tending directly 
 to terminate as it has done. But are the 
 immediate actors the only culpable parties ? 
 What are we to say respecting the more 
 remote events by which they in their turn 
 were influenced and determined? What 
 
Humanity^ s Moral Unity. 103 
 
 do we see but a series of concentric circles 
 spreading wider and wider over the trou- 
 bled waters — as when a projected stone 
 having disturbed the centre, thence to 
 the far-distant shore not a drop remains 
 unmoved by the eddying wave. 
 
 To make this point clearer, we will 
 again review the case of any great criminal. 
 How has that man been made a criminal? 
 He was born in abject poverty, and his 
 early days were spent in familiarity with 
 scenes of brutal sensuality. Whose fault 
 was that ? Surely not his : he could not 
 help the circumstances of his birth. The 
 associations of his boyhood repressed the 
 misgivings of his moral nature, and he 
 was taught, both by precept and example, 
 that it was a clever thing to steal without 
 detection, and that stealing was some 
 men's legitimate calling. To that example 
 he yielded. We admit that he willingly 
 and sinfully yielded : our object is not to 
 excuse him, but to inculpate others along 
 with him. Then the police were set upon 
 his track. He was put into prison, tried, 
 sentenced, punished. Branded as a crimi- 
 nal, to him reform was next to impossible. 
 
104 ^^^^ Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 He was known as a thief, and could get 
 no industrial employment. Becoming 
 through necessity a thief by profession, 
 he was again caught, transported, and 
 ere long came back a returned convict, 
 hardened in crime, desperate. Does he 
 at length, going from bad to worse, stain 
 his hands in blood ? What wonder if he 
 do ? And whose is the crime ? Not his 
 alone, but that of society together with 
 him — society which predetermined his 
 early circumstances, which neglected him, 
 despised him, would not give him work, 
 and compelled him to steal to support life. 
 And yet, after hounding him on to a felon's 
 death, society hangs up his dead body 
 on the gibbet, and, instead of feeling af- 
 flicted with its own share in the guilt, 
 ostentatiously points him out as a warn- 
 ing, a beacon — a beacon to whom? To 
 men who, like himself, are driven on 
 time's lee-shore by circumstances which 
 not they single-handed, but society alone, 
 can control. 
 
 It has been observed by a scientific 
 writer of eminence, that there is not a 
 single event which takes place in the 
 
Humanity^ s Moral Unity. 105 
 
 world — be it only the flight of a bird 
 through the air, or the tread of a camel 
 across the desert — but leaves behind it 
 permanent results, extending through all 
 time. Thus there are fossil remains that 
 have had impressed upon them the wash 
 of the wave, the raindrops, the footprints 
 of animal life — insignificant events once, 
 when they happened myriads of ages ago, 
 but how significant now in the hands of 
 our geologists ! As in these examples, so 
 in everything, nature treasures up to this 
 hour, imprinted upon her in ineffaceable 
 lines, all the events of her past history. 
 Nothing that ever happened has been 
 obliterated, nor can be. Mundane affairs 
 always record themselves : they write their 
 own tale, photograph their own image, 
 exist still in the altered form they gave to 
 physical nature at the moment they 
 occurred. Now, if this be an allowed 
 scientific truth, how beautifully does it 
 :oincide with and confirm another truth 
 squally indisputable ! As no occurrence 
 in nature is ever effaced, so neither is any 
 luman action. There is not a single 
 A^ord spoken, nor a single work performed 
 
io6 Tlie Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 — nay, not even a single thought enter- 
 tained, nor passion indulged — but it leaves 
 itself indelibly written on the individual 
 man, on humanity as a whole, and oft on 
 physical nature herself, through all suc- 
 ceeding time. 
 
 This truth, though perhaps startling, is 
 so self-evident that it scarcely needs en- 
 largement in order to its more distinct 
 utterance. We have only to ask, What is 
 the effect upon the world's history of any 
 great event — say any great battle, such as 
 Waterloo or Solferino ? Do not such 
 great events manifestly impress their image 
 upon all humanity's future ? But what is 
 a great battle composed of ? Is it not the 
 aggregate of individual movements, so 
 that every individual movement compre- 
 hended in the general idea forms a letter 
 in the inscription engraved thereby on 
 time's tablet ? Or let us select for illus- 
 tration some well-known historical era : 
 let it be the revolutionary struggle in our 
 own country during the latter half of the 
 seventeenth century. Let us mark the 
 successive stages of that struggle, and ob- 
 serve how one begat the other. First, 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity, 107 
 
 there was the despotism, the absolute 
 Church and Divine-right pretentions, and 
 the total want of trustworthiness of the 
 First Charles. That gave rise to the 
 sturdy Puritans — men of the Hampden 
 stamp — to Cromwell and his troop of yeo- 
 men ; stern in principle, religious in their 
 language and feelings, but conventional in 
 their practice and visionary in their hopes. 
 Then came the Civil War. What fol- 
 lowed upon that ? Can the religious cha- 
 racter of a nation be maintained at a high 
 level amid the excitement, storms, and 
 passions of civil warfare ? Impossible! 
 Consequently, when the nation became 
 involved in the wars of the Commonwealth, 
 its high Puritanic tone subsided ; and 
 those who had, at the commencement of 
 their public life, been good and spiritual 
 men, became, in the fierceness of the 
 conflict, unspiritual, formal, hypocritical. 
 Then, out of this backsliding and hypo- 
 crisy sprang a reaction — for \/hat was it 
 but the disgusting hypocrisy of the latter 
 days of the Commonwealth that provoked 
 the reckless licentiousness of the Restora- 
 tion ? That again, in its turn, awakened 
 
io8 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 a reverse reaction ; and the extreme ele- 
 ments were at length tempered down into 
 the revived English moderate and practical 
 spirit of the Revolution of 1688. Thus in 
 each of these great national changes one 
 produced the other; not as mathematically 
 as any physical cause produces its appro- 
 priate effect, but in the strict order of 
 moral causation. And so it has been — 
 although not always so easily to be traced 
 — throughout all preceding and all sub- 
 sequent ages of the world's history, and 
 in all nations. Has not the character 
 of the present generation of mankind been 
 formed elementally by the last? And was 
 not the character of the last generation 
 formed, in many of its leading features, 
 by the generation which preceded it ? 
 and so on in retrogression : and do not 
 we who exist together in the genera- 
 tion that now is, contribute to influence 
 and modify the characters of each other ? 
 If this be so, about which there can 
 be no doubt, we have only to carry out 
 the same idea more in detail, and it 
 must necessarily issue in giving operative 
 force to each individual, however obscure, 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. log 
 
 and to each individual's every act, word, 
 thought. 
 
 What we are in danger of, whenever we 
 thus treat of great pubhc events, is the 
 forgetting that, instead of being simply 
 events, they are really the composite acts 
 of many individual actors ; and that to 
 analyse the act and apportion to each actor 
 his separate part is not only practically 
 impossible, but theoretically inconceivable. 
 This mingling of minds to produce one 
 act gives to every separate link in the 
 chain of events a corporate character; but 
 when, in addition thereto, each stage of 
 progress, instead of continuing a separate 
 link, intermingles with its successor like a 
 dissolving view dying away in that which 
 follows, the character of the final result 
 becomes in a still stronger sense corporate. 
 We call it an event, thus concealing from 
 ourselves its true origin; but, instead of 
 an event, it is a voluntary moral act. 
 Whose act ? A national act. But a na- 
 tion is a section of humanity formed and 
 influenced in its national character and 
 acts by antecedent and contemporary na- 
 tions: everything national is world-wide — 
 
no Tlie PIi ilosophy of E v angel ici sin . 
 
 human — having entire humanity for its 
 base. 
 
 The conclusions to which the preceding 
 reflections have led us would be equally 
 well arrived at by contemplating the his- 
 tory of any great reformer, statesman, or 
 warrior. How are such men created ? 
 Without denying that individual attributes 
 of character place the last stone on the 
 edifice, we are surely safe in asserting that 
 its foundations were laid and the super- 
 structure reared in influences that have 
 probably struggled for centuries against 
 difficulties, and reached at length their 
 full development in the age that gave birth 
 to the master-mind with whose name their 
 triumph is now historically associated. To 
 assert that he was their author is to re- 
 verse the order of causation. As when 
 the argument pursued for some time by 
 one skilled in eloquence prepares his 
 auditory for the last stroke, and the ora- 
 tion, wound up at length by a powerful 
 appeal, falls with resistless force, scatter- 
 ing the difficulties in the way of immediate 
 action and arousing to high resolve; so is it 
 when nations, prepared by all their past 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. iii 
 
 history, are aroused to strike off the fetters 
 that enslaved them — the relation of by- 
 gone centuries to their final uprising being 
 in nothing different from the relation that 
 subsists between the orator's previous 
 arguments and his last appeal. 
 
 And let it be observed, all that we have 
 said is not less applicable to the corporate 
 character of virtuous actions than it is to 
 that of vicious ones. No man has the 
 right to attribute all the merit of his virtue 
 to himself. And it is strongly corrobora- 
 tive of this assertion that no thoroughly 
 good man attempts it; and that, if any one 
 having good points in his character make 
 too strong a claim to be praised for his 
 goodness, this assertion is universally felt 
 to be a weakness. Ask any virtuous man 
 what he considers to have been the origin 
 of his virtue, and he will unhesitatingly 
 enumerate a multitude of influences which 
 have contributed to his character's virtuous 
 formation ; and, after concluding such 
 enumeration, he will be found unwill- 
 ing to appropriate even the residuum of 
 merit to himself : he ascribes it to a source 
 that is Divine. What is the inference to 
 
112 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 be drawn from such facts ? Is it that vir- 
 tue has really no human habitat, and that 
 man is nothing more than a piece of soft 
 clay which unseen powers mould as they 
 will ? — or rather, is it not a more rational 
 conclusion that, the Divine power which 
 creates virtue has a dwelling-place in 
 humanity, and that it is by virtue of this 
 embodied power (which, like vegetable life, 
 has its seat, not in this branch only, nor 
 in that, but in the entire tree), that the 
 branches all retain moral life, and at least 
 the power of production, while here and 
 there the pendent fruit indicates spots 
 where, on particular branches, the power 
 resident in the whole tree has been spe- 
 cially put forth ? 
 
 III. But it may be said, and said with 
 truth, that, wherever there is moral respon- 
 sibility, there will be the intuitive con- 
 sciousness of merit or demerit ; and that 
 if each of us be really implicated in 
 mankind's corporate acts, our consciences 
 ought to give us some intimation thereof. 
 We grant that such should be the case ; 
 and we contend that it is so as an actual 
 fact. But it is not such a fact as will at 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. 113 
 
 once force itself on every one's attention. 
 It lies hid. Even the sense of personal 
 demerit exists only in minds that have 
 some degree of moral culture. Higher 
 culture awakens a keener consciousness of 
 evil ; but it requires a higher culture still 
 to inspire a sense of responsibility for the 
 vice around us. Only the highest culture 
 can make the whole truth unmistakably 
 perceptible. 
 
 If good men suffer for the crimes of the 
 bad, it is tolerably clear that the moral 
 administration under which such things 
 happen sees no injustice in it. And yet 
 there would be injustice were there no 
 other law of humanity but that of personal 
 reward for personal merit, and personal 
 punishment for personal demerit; for that 
 virtue does so suffer is beyond dispute. 
 All suffering that has a human origin, and 
 which any conceivable progress would cor- 
 rect, springs, by the very terms of the 
 supposition, from moral evil ; and yet vir- 
 tue so suffers. To attempt to get over the 
 difficulty by misrepresenting the future 
 state as a scheme for correctins: earth's 
 present errors, is to reduce the moral 
 
 I 
 
114 ^^^^ Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 government of the universe to a level with 
 that blundering procedure from which not 
 even English judicature has been wholly 
 free, but which nevertheless fails not to 
 call forth strong expressions of public con- 
 demnation. To recall a man from trans- 
 portation who has been punished wrong- 
 fully, and to compensate him for the wrong 
 done to him, is felt, however liberal the 
 compensation given him, to be at best but 
 very wretched justice. It is an insult to 
 the Divine government to suppose that 
 such is the kind of justice it administers. 
 In opposition to such a notion, we have 
 contended that the sufferings of virtue 
 happen as a consequence of the law of 
 humanity which attaches reward and 
 punishment to mankind's corporate cha- 
 racter ; yet even this can only be true in 
 combination with its sister-truth, that such 
 a law is a just law, and ought to commend 
 itself to our consciences as just. 
 
 To say that virtue suffers through evil, 
 but not /or it, is to make a distinction with- 
 out a difference, and affords us no help. 
 All moral rewards and punishments are in 
 pursuance of a law that works out its end 
 
Humanity^ s Moral Unity. 115 
 
 in a chain of natural sequences. Whether 
 there be direct visitations from heaven, we 
 neither affirm nor deny: all we say is, that 
 if they happen, they are the exception and 
 not the rule, and that no such direct visita- 
 tion is required for the purposes of our 
 argument. Nor is it necessary that we 
 give in our adhesion to any particular 
 theory in relation to the origin of moral 
 evil, and as to the distinction between it 
 and natural evil. Take even the lowest 
 ground, and assume the only difference 
 between natural evil and moral evil to be, 
 that the latter is a wilful violation of the 
 dictates of nature, and that the former is 
 nature's revenge. Adopt, we say, even 
 this view, and let it be allowed that all 
 punishment of evil is self-inflicted and cor- 
 rective ; it is not deprived by that circum- 
 stance of its character as punishment. 
 We would refer, for example, to those 
 visitations of cholera which we had in this 
 country a few years ago. Is it not notori- 
 ous that in many towns and localities the 
 virulence of the disease was attributable 
 to drunkenness and sensuality, and to the 
 debility and filth consequent thereon ? 
 
 I 2 
 
ii6 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 Who, under these circumstances, would 
 hesitate to pronounce it to have been vice's 
 punishment ? But, although vice might 
 give existence and impetus to the plague, 
 it did not assign bounds to its ravages. 
 Once abroad, the pestilence fell upon the 
 moral equally with the immoral ; upon the 
 thoughtful and frugal equally with the 
 reckless spendthrift ; upon the pious and 
 benevolent equally with the profane. Was 
 that which was, strictly speaking, punish- 
 ment when it fell upon the immediate cul- 
 prits, any less a corrective or a punishment 
 — we may call it which we like — when it 
 fell more widely? If viewed in the light 
 of a corrective, does not its wider exten- 
 sion teach us that the virtuous are as 
 much bound to aid in the work of progress 
 as are the vicious ? And if viewed in the 
 light of a punishment, it but teaches the 
 same lesson — that the virtuous owe a duty 
 to their vicious neighbours for the neglect 
 of which they suffer. Again : do not the 
 calamities of war originate in some act of 
 injustice and wrong ? In such cases, war 
 is crime's punishment ; yet who suffer ? 
 Not always the most criminal, nor gene- 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. 117 
 
 rally so ; it is oft the innocent on whom 
 vengeance falls most terribly. We mean 
 the personally innocent; for, corporately, 
 all may be said to be implicated. Do you 
 ask where is the justice of such a proce- 
 dure ? We answer that, on the principle 
 of national responsibility, there is no in- 
 justice to be complained of. The crime 
 being national, the punishment is also na- 
 tional ; the offence being corporate, the 
 blow is also corporate. The hand steals, 
 the back is smitten : there is unity in the 
 culprit, and so long as the whip falls upon 
 the unit, justice is indifferent as to the pre- 
 cise spot where it cuts most severely. 
 
 Once admit the principle we have just 
 stated, and the consequence follows, that 
 if our consciences are unaffected by cor- 
 porate demerit, it is not because the de- 
 merit does not exist, but because our moral 
 nature is imperfectly cultivated, and is not 
 therefore sufficiently active and sensitive. 
 
 But there is no need for us to leave the 
 argument here. Examples exist of various 
 kinds, illustrating the aptitude of man's 
 moral nature to be affected, both painfully 
 and joyously, by the moral character of 
 
Ii8 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 acts which are not the product of his own 
 mind, and in which he is in no other way 
 interested than through the operation of 
 his human sympathies. To some of these 
 examples we will now advert. 
 
 The earliest combination of two or 
 more individuals is into that of the family: 
 the next is that of the tribe or clan. But, 
 in modern times, the clan has given place 
 to the town, and towns corporate form 
 one of the most expressive forms of social 
 organization. We have in a municipal 
 borough something far beyond the mere 
 dwelling together of a numerous body 
 of inhabitants. Besides propinquity of 
 residence, there are mutual concert and 
 combined action for the general welfare. 
 There is discussion in order to agree- 
 ment ; the minority yields to the majority, 
 to effect unanimity : and so soon as the 
 decision thus come to has been affirmed 
 under the corporate seal, the act is no 
 longer the act of a few, but the act of the 
 many, the corporate act of the w^hole 
 borough. Now, wherever questions of 
 right or wrong, justice or injustice, apply 
 to the acts of individuals, they apply 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. iig 
 
 equally to the acts of corporations ; and, 
 although it is proverbially more difficult 
 where responsibility is divided to bring 
 home charges of injustice, the sense of 
 moral obligation is not less existent and 
 ought not to be less active with regard to 
 corporate acts than with regard to personal 
 acts. 
 
 Again : because corporate life in a muni- 
 cipality illustrates forcibly what we mean 
 when we breathe corporate life into entire 
 humanity, we will on this point invite at- 
 tention to the following extract from the 
 works of Mr. W. E. Gladstone, whose 
 acute mind and varied learning and ex- 
 perience give to his authority, on such a 
 topic, accumulated value: — "Wherever 
 common life," says he, '' in any form is 
 established, then, in the same proportion 
 as it prevails, there must be an actual 
 surrender of the individual will : what is 
 thus sacrificed is thrown into a common 
 fund, and unity of being, instead of diver- 
 sity, is to the same extent established. 
 This joint or common life is what is 
 ordinarily intimated by the phrase — the 
 personality of societies; a phrase appli- 
 
120 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 cable whenever the community of law, 
 sentiment, and interest, belonging to the 
 common life, assumes the determinate 
 form of incorporation. The personality 
 of societies is not a mere metaphysical 
 or theological abstraction, nor a phrase 
 invented for the purpose of discussion, 
 but a reality." Mark these words ! "The 
 personality of societies is not an abstrac- 
 tion, but a reality." " There are," adds 
 Mr. Gladstone, " qualities in a combina- 
 tion which arise out of the union of its 
 parts, and are not to be found in those 
 parts when they have been separated and 
 are singly examined." 
 
 Ascending from the incorporated town, 
 let us see how this "personality of so- 
 cieties," as Mr. Gladstone calls it — or, as 
 we prefer calling it, this organised unity — 
 is exemplified in a nation. A nation is far 
 more than an aggregate of individuals, 
 speaking the same language and dwelling 
 within a certain circumscribed territory ; 
 and patriotism is something more than 
 mere local affection. What is patriotism? 
 Why do we love our country ? The idea 
 of country is not completed by a geogra- 
 
Humanity^ s Moral Unity. 121 
 
 phical description of it. Country is some- 
 thing of which each feels himself to be a 
 living member. It is the land of our 
 fathers ; the land for the liberties of which 
 our fathers fought and bled ; the land 
 whose soil they tilled, whose institutions 
 they contributed to rear: so that its glories 
 are interwoven with their memories. We 
 have, with the land of our birth and of our 
 hereditary and personal dwelling, an inter- 
 mixture of being : it has become part of 
 ourselves : we should not have been what 
 we are but for its modifying power. Hence 
 we cannot be severed from our country 
 without the severance of bonds of strong 
 sympathetic interest. It seems even to 
 have a common national consciousness in 
 which we participate, coincident with our 
 individual consciousness ; so that, when a 
 nation acts throuo^h its dulv-constituted 
 authorities, its national acts so thoroughly 
 implicate all loyal subjects that we are 
 honoured or disgraced, and feel ourselves 
 honoured or disgraced, accordingly as the 
 acts of our rulers are or are not wise, just, 
 and prudent acts. Here we pause to ask, 
 What stronger proof can be required of the 
 
122 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 aptitude of man's moral nature to be 
 affected by corporate good or evil, than 
 is furnished by the existence of so fine 
 a moral sentiment as that of national 
 honour ? 
 
 Bearing in mind that we are still con- 
 sidering how far the cultured conscience 
 of humanity is affected by the general 
 guilt, let us suppose the case of some 
 great public calamity calling forth a na- 
 tion's humiliation. How do good men 
 pray in such times of national penitence ? 
 Although w^ithout any special conscious- 
 ness that the guilt is their own, do they 
 not assume that they are in some way im- 
 plicated in it ? Now upon what principle 
 do they assume this ? Is it not upon the 
 principle that, since they are involved in 
 the national punishment, and, since punish- 
 ment implies guilt, they conclude that they 
 must, in the judgment of heaven, be some- 
 how implicated in the guilt also ; and that 
 therefore penitence and prayer not only 
 befit their lips, but ought to be kindled 
 also in their hearts ? With what contempt 
 should we look on the man who, in the 
 time of national humiliation, laid the sin 
 
Humanity^ s Moral Unity. 123 
 
 wholly at the door of his neighbour, and 
 asked God's mercy for others, but dis- 
 claimed all need of it himself! And yet 
 all this proceeds on the assumption that 
 there are national sins and national punish- 
 ments, and that, if the sin be national, the 
 consciousness of it should be national also 
 — national in the sense that every indi- 
 vidual conscience should share the general 
 burden. 
 
 This tendency in the human mind to 
 appropriate to itself the attributes of those 
 with whom we have common action, shows 
 itself in various other ways. The incum- 
 bent of a large church, comprising many 
 men of great rank, wealth, piety, activity, 
 and benevolence, assumes, and has con- 
 ceded to him, a status derived, not from 
 himself, but from his position and associa- 
 tions. A member of an old-established and 
 wealthvfirm of merchants carries with him 
 throughout all his transactions, the prestige 
 of his house. The youthful heir of a dis- 
 tinguished family is reverenced, not so 
 much for his personal qualities as for the 
 long line of traditionary honours he re- 
 presents ; and it is thence, rather than 
 
124 ^^-^^ Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 from his individual resources, that he de- 
 rives the air of reticent self-respect and 
 easy confidence which gives character to 
 his demeanour, both in public and private 
 life. But here we would introduce another 
 thought. In all cases there must be, on 
 the part of the individual who appropriates 
 the attributes of others, a corresponding 
 spirit. The clergyman over an influential 
 congregation, should he conduct himself 
 personally in a manner unbefitting his 
 high position, would be even more dis- 
 honoured than one more culpable but less 
 prominent. The active partner in the 
 well-known firm must be himself superior 
 to everything mean and suspicious; other- 
 wise his representation of the old name 
 will expose him to reproach, instead of 
 yielding him honour. The youthful heir 
 must needs conduct himself wisely and 
 well, or his family honours will redound to 
 his personal disgrace. In each of these 
 cases the individual acting must breathe 
 the spirit of those whom he represents, as 
 the zephyr breathes the fragrance of the 
 fields over which it has passed on its way 
 to us. Hence two things are to be ob- 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. 125 
 
 served. There is in the human mind an 
 aptitude to appropriate the meritorious 
 claims of those with whom we are in any 
 way identified ; and yet this appropriation 
 can never be made successfully unless we 
 aspire personally to share the same attri- 
 butes. 
 
 To make this plainer: — The facility 
 men have in combining for a common ob- 
 ject, and in appropriating to themselves 
 personally the honour or disgrace of their 
 combined success or failure, is so familiar 
 to every mind that our difficulty will be, 
 not to prove its existence, but to prove 
 that sentiments so ordinary can be made 
 illustrative of so weighty a theme. In the 
 g3'mnastic exercises of youth — for instance, 
 the cricket-match or the boat-race — how 
 thoroughly each member identifies himself 
 with the traditionary honours of the club 
 and with its last hard-earned victory ! and 
 if, peradventure, ill-luck betide them, it is 
 not those only whose blunders have caused 
 the misfortune that are annoyed at the 
 disgrace — the disgrace is felt by the whole 
 club, and not least by those who outdid all 
 their former efforts in striving to prevent 
 
126 Tlie Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 it. And again, do not our military officers 
 foster an honest pride in having their 
 names associated with a regiment that has 
 fought many battles and gained high dis- 
 tinction ? Possibly not a man now sur- 
 vives who was present at the corps' earlier 
 conflicts, yet that does not prevent the 
 appropriation to the existing body of all 
 the regiment's historic feats of valour. 
 And should the body at any time tarnish 
 its fame, who are they that will feel the 
 dishonour most acutely ? Not the cowards 
 that turned their backs on the foe, but the 
 men that fought most bravely. Now the 
 correct analysis of this complexity of sen- 
 timent depends upon our distinguishing 
 between a man's individual consciousness 
 and the common consciousness which 
 centres in the unity whereof he is a mem- 
 ber. In his common consciousness he is 
 overwhelmed with disgrace at the failure 
 of the united effort, while in his individual 
 consciousness he is satisfied that he per- 
 sonally did his own separate duty. Or 
 vice versaj in his individual consciousness, 
 he feels ashamed that he did his own part 
 of the work so ill, and did not contribute, 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity, 127 
 
 as he ought to have done, to the victory 
 that has been achieved, but rather hindered 
 than promoted it ; while, with all this 
 ground for self-reproach, he enters so tho- 
 roughly into the spirit and common con- 
 sciousness of the united body, that he 
 shares fully the general joy at their com- 
 bined success ; participating in the benefit, 
 but giving all the honour to those to whom 
 it is due. 
 
 Out of this combination of the individual 
 with the common consciousness arises, we 
 submit, the right to express, and the true 
 force of, public opinion. What right have 
 individuals to pass judgment on the acts 
 of their fellows, if it be not that all such 
 acts have a public, a world-wide signifi- 
 cance ? It is because they are allowed to 
 have such a significance that the right to 
 judge them is on the one side upheld and 
 on the other side yielded to. And, when 
 exercised widely, how powerful ! Few are 
 the individuals that can resist long the 
 force of public opinion persistently ex- 
 pressed. Even nations are compelled to 
 yield. But why is this ? The force of 
 public opinion is not derived from its 
 
128 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 involving any threats of coercion, but 
 solely from its coincidence with truth and 
 justice. If not so coincident, it will prove 
 but a passing breath, idle and inoperative; 
 if coincident, resistless. Then whence its 
 power ? Is it not because public opinion, 
 rationally vindicated and persistently ex- 
 pressed, is felt to indicate the doing of 
 that which the public welfare demands, 
 and because no individual conscience can 
 long resist the obligations of the one to 
 consult the safety of the many, the duty of 
 a part to promote the welfare of the whole ? 
 It is a common consciousness of the right, 
 into which, although resisted for a while, 
 we at length imperceptibly glide. 
 
 Leaving this class of cases, we next 
 pass on to others still more significant. 
 Suppose a parent to have flagrantly ne- 
 glected the moral education of his child, 
 and that, in consequence of such neglect, 
 the child has grown up in infamous profli- 
 gacy, and is at last condemned to an igno- 
 minious death for some horrible crime : 
 ought not such a parent to be distressed in 
 his conscience by his child's guilt ? ought 
 he not to enter into the guilty one's moral 
 
Humanity'' s Moral Unity. 129 
 
 state, and feel his child's guilt as if it were 
 his own guilt ? Nay, if the parent be not 
 wholly insensible to his moral obligations, 
 is it not probable that his conscience will 
 be affected even more painfully? Although 
 only contributing by a neglect of paternal 
 duty, he cannot but identify himself with 
 the criminal through his whole career ; 
 and we are but speaking the language of 
 every day's experience when we say that, 
 all things else being equal and both con- 
 sciences being alike aroused to healthy 
 action, the parent's anguish of conscience 
 will, in such a case, exceed that of the 
 child. 
 
 But in this case, it may be said, the 
 parent himself personally contributed to 
 the crimes of which the remembrance 
 afflicts him. Take, then, another example, 
 one in which there is no obvious contribu- 
 tion — that of a child strictly and judiciously 
 educated. Assume that such a child, like 
 too many, forgetting the lessons of child- 
 hood, has, in after life, wandered from the 
 right path, and buried himself in reckless 
 debauchery. At length, having advanced 
 step by step in crime, a crisis is reached. 
 
 K 
 
130 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 Some base action exposes him to the ven- 
 geance of the law, and then follow dis- 
 grace, too late repentance, utter ruin. 
 Does the agony of the father in such a 
 state of circumstances amount to nothing 
 more than affectionate sympathy — mere 
 pity ? Is there not a burning sense of 
 personal shame, a hanging down of the 
 head, a hiding from the world — the same 
 consciousness of evil committed as if he, 
 the father himself, had been the criminal? 
 A less reputable father would probably re- 
 pudiate his child in the hour of his woe, 
 would even attempt to disown him, and 
 join ostentatiously in the outcry against 
 his atrocious wickedness : but in propor- 
 tion as the parent's principles are high 
 and stern, and his parental love deep, he 
 will bleed in silence. 
 
 In all instances of this kind two ele- 
 ments exist which, though both in the ab- 
 stract good and joyous, become in their 
 concrete combination the source of deepest 
 anguish. The one is love to the object ; 
 the other, horror at his crime. Reduce 
 either of these, and you mitigate the sym- 
 pathetic distress : intensify both, and you 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. 131 
 
 create at once the highest form of virtue and 
 the most excruciating mental agony. 
 
 In order the more prominently to exhibit 
 this remarkable phenomenon, let us imagine 
 a case in which a love transcending all 
 human love embraces, not kindred and 
 friends merely, but the entire race, and in 
 v^hich the hatred of evil is such as can exist 
 only in a moral nature absolutely perfect. 
 Let such an one be an embodied element 
 of humanity, thoroughly human in all his 
 relations and sympathies, and there will 
 stand before you a being who, although a 
 faultless model of virtue, is at the same 
 time the victim of immeasurable sorrow. 
 Such is the picture presented to us in the 
 Christian sacred books of the world's Re- 
 deemer. How much more natural and 
 real than modern portraits ! 
 
 Referring to the example of the father 
 suffering through the crimes of his son, it 
 would be contrary to ordinary modes of 
 thought to represent the good father as 
 being punished for the vicious son's crimes. 
 But we must not conceal from ourselves 
 that such is the conclusion to which our 
 argument tends. To put it abruptly thus, 
 
 K 2 
 
132 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 however, without explanation, would be 
 suggestive of error. It is not that the 
 father, as an individual, is punished for 
 the son's individual offences ; but that the 
 son's vice and criminality are corporate, 
 and their punishment corporate; and that, 
 in the harmonious operation of the prin- 
 ciple which visits corporate offences with 
 corporate punishment, suffering falls most 
 heavily on those whose moral characters 
 are most exalted, and whose sympathetic 
 apprehension of human evil is in conse- 
 quence thereof most acute and afflictive. 
 
 IV. We are precluded, by the condi- 
 tions of this discussion, from calling 
 to our aid authoritatively any facts of 
 which the evidence is dependent upon 
 religious beliefs ; yet the fact of the 
 existence of such beliefs ought not to 
 be excluded from an inquiry in which 
 generally-received opinions may be ad- 
 duced as indicating mental tendencies. If 
 large portions of mankind, of various reli- 
 gious creeds, concur in the belief that com- 
 munities and nations are blessed or accursed 
 because of the merit or demerit of indi- 
 viduals, does not that fact indicate that the 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. 133 
 
 moral system which permits such a result 
 offers no shock to mankind's moral senti- 
 ments? 
 
 To begin with the oldest instance — that 
 of the Old Testament Adam: his moral 
 turpitude, it is said, involved in ruin the 
 whole race. Whether this be the record 
 of a fall from a higher moral state, or of 
 humanity's first emergence from the inno- 
 cence of indifference into moral conscious- 
 ness, the adoption, as an article of faith, of 
 the idea that Adam's guilt was the world's 
 guilt, and that too by nations advanced 
 in civilisation and moral worth, tends to 
 prove that it involves nothing revolting to 
 the general conscience. The same may 
 be said of the second command in the De- 
 calogue — " Visiting the iniquity of the 
 fathers upon the children unto the third 
 and fourth generation." 
 
 Of a similar description was the Jewish 
 persuasion, that the Jews inherited the 
 land of Canaan as a reward bestowed 
 upon them by heaven for the righteous- 
 ness of their father Abraham ; and that 
 Sodom would have been saved from de- 
 struction had there been but ten righteous 
 
134 ^^^^ Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 men within its walls. Nor are these 
 solitary instances of moral judgment. 
 They are types of two classes of thought 
 common in all ages. Children inheriting 
 from pious fathers the gifts of Providence, 
 instinctively attribute their well-to-do con- 
 dition to God's regard for those whose 
 memories they revere, and thus do homage 
 to the principle that they are themselves 
 blessed for their fathers' sakes. Nor could 
 many men of modern times, crossing the 
 Atlantic in a passenger-vessel, and ex- 
 posed to imminent danger in a hurricane, 
 repress the hope that the presence of ten 
 righteous persons in the vessel, bound on 
 some mission of mercy, might avail with 
 heaven on behalf of all. 
 
 Again, to turn to other examples, showing 
 the prevalence of similar views among the 
 cultivated heathen. The Phenician sailors, 
 of whom we read in the book of Jonah, 
 made no complaint against the justice of 
 heaven because the storm sent after Jonah 
 threatened their destruction. If natural 
 conscience had rebelled against such a 
 visitation, we should have expected them 
 to blame the gods, instead of supplicating 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. 135 
 
 their clemency. Homer records it as a 
 fact that the Greeks, on their voyage to 
 Troy, were visited with a plague by way 
 of punishment for the crime of Agamem- 
 non ; and he does not complain of it as 
 an act of injustice : quite the contrary. 
 The piety of Chryses, he tells us, undid 
 the evil caused by Agamemnon, and made 
 the gods propitious. The self-sacrifice of 
 Curtius was to the Roman mind an ade- 
 quate reason for averting a great public 
 calamity. And examples of the like kind 
 might be added without number, justifying 
 the conclusion that the human conscience 
 in its free exercise does not narrow its re- 
 gards to its own individual acts, but looks 
 abroad upon humanity. 
 
 V. We have now, we trust, said enough 
 to vindicate our theme. There is, we say, 
 a moral unity of the race — a corporate 
 responsibility of entire humanity, as well 
 as a personal responsibility of each indi- 
 vidual. As the human body is one, though 
 consisting of many parts, so is humanity. 
 The mischievous tongue offends, the whole 
 man suffers the punishment ; the hand 
 labours, the whole body participates in the 
 
136 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 reward. Hence flow, among others, the 
 following corollaries : — 
 
 (i.) Philanthropy is too often repre- 
 sented as disinterested condescension; and 
 many a kid-gloved pedant, simpering pla- 
 titudes, fancies himself a superior order of 
 being whom the vicious should look upon 
 at a distance and admiringly obey, while 
 he deigns to favour them with his pity and 
 precepts. Worse than useless are all such 
 labourers in the cause of moral progress. 
 He only is worthy of the name of a philan- 
 thropist who, identifying himself with de- 
 graded and endangered humanity, becomes 
 one of the crew of the tempest-driven 
 barque, labouring as such for the rescue 
 of himself and all on board. Feeling the 
 danger to be a common danger, he throws 
 his whole soul into the struggle, losing all 
 thought of superiority otherwise than as it 
 imposes the duty of more earnest effort ; 
 and, instead of wasting his energies in 
 sentimental pity, reserves them for a toil, 
 which, while it has others for its direct 
 object, is felt by him to be not the less 
 necessary to his own deliverance. " Woe 
 unto me if I preach not the Gospel!" 
 
Hiimanity^s Moral Unity. 137 
 
 (2.) The redeeming principle, through 
 the operation of which the world is to be 
 morally renewed, is inadequately described 
 as the surrender of the personal will to 
 God. Something more is demanded from 
 us than personal rectitude. Were isolated 
 responsibility the law of humanity, per- 
 sonal rectitude might be enough; but that, 
 we have seen, is not the case. We have 
 not fulfilled our obligations by being per- 
 sonally holy. Nor can we, indeed, be 
 personally holy unless engaged in efforts 
 to regenerate the world. And, in order to 
 that, there must be enthusiasm — ^the en- 
 thusiastic denunciation of sin, enthusiastic 
 efforts to reclaim. But why enthusiasm ? 
 Simply, because without enthusiasm the 
 world cannot be aroused from its slumber. 
 
 (3.) We learn also from the preceding 
 course of argument how it is that virtue, 
 in its relations to the world, is often called 
 to suffer. Between a great living unit and 
 the living elements of which it is composed 
 there are sure to exist points of resem- 
 blance : one of these offers a solution of 
 the question. To what end does virtue 
 suffer ? Why, we ask, in reply, is the in- 
 
138 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 dividual man so constituted that any dis- 
 turbance in the harmony of his physical 
 system causes pain ; and that his moral 
 nature is affected painfully by the con- 
 sciousness of the existence within him of 
 moral evil ? Is it not that he may struggle 
 against the evil, and eject that which 
 occasions pain ? Suffering virtue, then, 
 stands in the same relation to the entire 
 race as that in which our painful conscious- 
 ness of evil stands to the individual. It is 
 the better part of mankind's corporate 
 moral nature, urged by the lash and the spur 
 to a more earnest striving against wrong: 
 it is a pledge of the existence in humanity 
 of a power of self-renovation, and the ap- 
 plication of a stimulus to its more active 
 exercise. Should virtue ever cease to 
 suffer in a world in which it is mixed with 
 vice it will be because the moral life of the 
 world is low, and its vital powers paralysed 
 and morbid. Enthusiasm and martyrdom 
 are co-relative : enthusiasm begets mar- 
 tyrdom and martyrdom rekindles enthu- 
 siasm. The more vigorous humanity's 
 moral life, the more acute will be its 
 martyr-sufferings, until they terminate in 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. 139 
 
 the accomplishment of the purpose for 
 which their existence is designed — earth's 
 purification from evil. 
 
 (4.) Further : it is a question much 
 agitated whether religion must not have a 
 purely moral origin^ and whether it does 
 not introduce an incompatible element 
 when the historical and political element 
 is added to the moral. This supposition 
 of incompatibility arises out of the error 
 we have been combating — that of looking 
 upon mankind as nothing more than a 
 congeries', of independent personalities, 
 having no other relations than between 
 the soul and its God. If, however, hu- 
 manity be regarded as an organic unit, each 
 part having moral relations with every 
 other part, the political element must 
 necessarily be introduced as that by which 
 alone the moral can become intercom- 
 municable, and thus made to permeate 
 the mass. In ordinary life the intuitions 
 of one conscience, any more than the 
 judgments of one intellect, have not 
 enough of authority to command the atten- 
 tion essential to public culture. They 
 must first be catholicized and made vener- 
 
140 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 able and authoritative, by historic evidence 
 of their power to advance the general 
 weal. Hereupon rest the foundations of 
 that divinely established common-wealth 
 — the Church or '^ kingdom of God." 
 
 (5.) We have only to add in conclusion, 
 as our last and principal corollary, a 
 repetition of the propositions enunciated 
 at the commencement of this chapter and 
 toward the elucidation and proof of which 
 our whole argument has tended, viz : — 
 that out of the principles we have enume- 
 rated there naturally arises a theory which, 
 embracing the facts of the Gospel history, 
 gives to them a significance in accord 
 with all surrounding social and moral 
 phenomena. Our Lord Jesus Christ, as 
 one of the brotherhood of humanity, 
 suffered in accordance with the law which 
 so distributes the punishment of the 
 world's guilt that it falls heaviest upon 
 the holiest. That is one feature of the 
 scheme. Another is — that the perfect 
 righteousness of Christ became, by virtue 
 of His human brotherhood, mankind's 
 rightful heritage. Through Christ, the 
 world, corporately, stands reconciled to 
 
Humanity's Moral Unity. 141 
 
 God : and the righteousness of Christ, 
 which, in that sense, is already ours, 
 becomes ours distributively and con- 
 sciously, when, so far as, and so long as, 
 we seek to imbibe His spirit and tread in 
 His steps. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 OUR INTUITIVE APTITUDE TO APPROPRIATE 
 CORPORATE MERIT, THE ORIGIN OF 
 CHRISTIAN FAITH. 
 
 [RAVING arrived in our last chapter 
 at the conclusion that it is in 
 harmony with the world's moral 
 constitution for mankind to have 
 each a corporate interest in the virtues and 
 merits of other members of the race, the 
 question next arises — How are the fruits 
 of that merit to be individualised and ap- 
 propriated ? 
 
 The answer to this question has been 
 already indicated. Our analysis of the 
 process whereby a guilty conscience arrives 
 at a state of peace pointed to the existence 
 in the human mind of an intuitive aptitude 
 to conceive of and appropriate human 
 merit whenever common, as a personal 
 
Faith Intuitive. 143 
 
 right. This thoughtwe are now to amplify 
 and make more distinct. 
 
 It will of course be understood that it is 
 not every appropriation of merit which 
 will quiet a guilty conscience. As a 
 matter of fact and experience, nothing, 
 \Ve know, can bring about this result ex- 
 cept such an appropriation as fills up our 
 ideal of the righteousness which a per- 
 fectly holy God demands, in order to our 
 acceptance with Him on righteous and 
 meritorious grounds. That nothing short 
 of absolutely perfect obedience can per- 
 form this condition, is self-evident ; and that 
 no such perfect obedience can be rendered 
 by any human being who is not Divine 
 as well human, must be equally obvious. 
 These are not positions artificially framed 
 to suit revealed facts, but corollaries im- 
 peratively drawn from the conscience's 
 axiomatic requirements. Unless so drawn, 
 we admit them to be valueless. 
 
 I. History records the existence among 
 mankind of a continual struggle to find 
 among the race persons v/hose lofty virtues 
 might be pleaded with heaven as having 
 a representative value. Hence every na- 
 
144 ^^^^ Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 tion has its adopted patron saints, whose 
 virtuous mediation is popularly regarded 
 as having had an extraordinary — yea, even 
 a superhuman efficacy. Men of eminent 
 piety and virtue, and especially those who 
 are known to have sighed over the sins of 
 the world and to have painfully devoted 
 themselves to its amelioration, have ever 
 been put forward by mankind as occupy- 
 ing a midway position between themselves 
 and heaven — the world's mediators. 
 
 Now, why do we give utterance to these 
 thoughts ? Certainly not with the design 
 of ascribing an effective atoning value to 
 imperfect human virtues. We express 
 them simply to show that, even if the 
 Scriptures did not reveal the fact of a 
 Divine incarnation, there is in human na- 
 ture a predisposition to expect it; and 
 that it is not in their personal deservings 
 mankind naturally trust for reconciliation 
 with God, but in the merits of a represen- 
 tative mediatorship which, for the pur- 
 pose of enabling them to conceive it suc- 
 cessful, they invest in their imaginations 
 with superhuman attributes. In these 
 human hopes and aspirations, we per- 
 
Faith Intuitive. 145 
 
 ceive the significant shaking of the leaves 
 at the tops of the mulberry trees — the 
 rustling of a Divine activity. Why do 
 men thus grope out of themselves in search 
 of an objective basis of rest ? Because 
 the impossibility of finding peace within 
 themselves impels them to do so. And 
 vi^hence the notion that a superhuman 
 mediation is necessary ? It is a dictate 
 of our moral nature, the oscillation of 
 the needle, when freed from constraint it 
 tremulously seeks repose. 
 
 This groping after an unknown, or an 
 imperfectly known Christ, is, in reality, the 
 germ of the doctrine of justification by 
 faith ; so that we may say without exag- 
 geration, there is no true peace of con- 
 science in the world except that which is 
 derived upon principles of which justifica- 
 tion by faith is the Christian formula. The 
 relations between man and Heaven alter 
 not with times and climes. Man stands 
 to God in the relationship of a redeemed 
 sinner, whether born in the first century of 
 the world's age or its sixtieth, whether in 
 the unknown regions of Central Africa or 
 in Britain. Sincere religion, wherever it 
 
 L 
 
146 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 exists, must, of necessity, consist of the 
 same elements ; the only difference being 
 that thoughts and feelings which, in 
 gloomier lands, have but a stunted growth, 
 yield, under a sunny evangelical sky, a 
 luxuriant frondescence, and clothe the 
 landscape with joyous beauty. Hence, it 
 would be a mistake to describe experi- 
 mental Christianity as peculiar phenomena 
 of the human mind, never exhibited except 
 under one phase of religious truth: its 
 true character is that of a bolder develop- 
 ment of phenomena, which are always, to 
 some extent, exhibited whenever and 
 wherever religious truth, natural or re- 
 vealed, exerts its power. 
 
 A passage from the writings of the Rev. 
 Robert Hall* will give fuller expression to 
 our views upon this point, and, at the 
 same time, supply the weight of his autho- 
 rity in favour of their truth : — " It is," says 
 he, *' expedient to distinguish between the 
 fact and the doctrine of the atonement. 
 The aspect of the atonement, considered 
 as a transaction, is towards God ; con- 
 sidered as a doctrine, towards man. 
 
 * Works (1839), vol. iii. p. 147. 
 
Faith Intuitive, 147 
 
 Viewed in the former light, its operation 
 is essential, unchangeable, eternal — ' He 
 was the Lamb slain from the foundation 
 of the world.' Considered in the latter, 
 its operation is moral, and therefore sub- 
 ject to all the varieties incident to human 
 nature. The cross, considered as the 
 meritorious basis of acceptance, the only 
 real satisfaction for sin, is the centre 
 around which all the purposes of mercy to 
 fallen man have continued to revolve : 
 fixed and determined in the council of 
 God, it operated as the grand considera- 
 tion in the Divine mind, on which salva- 
 tion was awarded to penitent believers in 
 the earliest ages, as it will continue to 
 operate in the same manner to the latest 
 boundaries of time. Hence it is manifest 
 that this great transaction could admit of 
 no substitute. But that discovery of it, 
 which constitutes the doctrine of the atone- 
 ment, though highly important, is not of 
 equal necessity. Its moral impression, its 
 beneficial effects on the mind, were ca- 
 pable of being secured by the institution 
 of sacrifice, though in an inferior degree, 
 while the offender, by confessing his sins 
 
 L 2 
 
148 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 over the head of the victim, which he after- 
 wards slew, distinctly recognised his guilt, 
 his just exposure to destruction, and his 
 exclusive reliance on Divine mercy." 
 
 2. It is very clear, however, that, what- 
 ever may be humanity's longings, and 
 however strong its incentive to go forth in 
 pursuit of an ideal Christ, no idealism can 
 supply the place of the Christ of history. 
 The time and place may not be essen- 
 tial. The event may be equally available 
 whether it occur at the beginning, middle, 
 or end of the world's duration, and 
 whether at Jerusalem or elsewhere, 'but it 
 must happen as an event in man's history 
 at some specific time and place. It would 
 be an anomaly were it otherwise. Every 
 appetite and tendency of human nature 
 has an appropriate external object in 
 which it finds its satisfaction. Dualism is 
 the rule of humanitv. It is observable in 
 man's physical construction ; and this 
 balance of even powers which we discover 
 in the human framework is carried through 
 his entire natural, intellectual, and moral 
 being. What animal appetite is there 
 that we do not find balanced by an ex- 
 
Faith hitintive. 149 
 
 ternal source of gratification? Then ascend 
 from the animal to the intellectual : every 
 avenue of knowledge exhibits an internal 
 aptitude and a fitting external appeal. The 
 eye is adapted to seeing, the ear to hear- 
 ing, and the other senses to their appro- 
 priate objects. The perceptive power 
 must have an external object to exercise 
 itself upon, and not only does it perceive 
 the object, but, according to the best 
 psychological theories, it assures itself of 
 the existence of what it perceives. Now, 
 as in all these instances the mind's powers 
 exist only in apposition to something out 
 of the mind, so it is with our moral intui- 
 tions. They are never developed except 
 by some concrete object — never in the ab- 
 stract. Our sense of justice is never 
 called out except by the observance of 
 some act of justice or injustice. If there 
 were no just or unjust actions in the world 
 to call it forth, our sense of justice would 
 lie dormant. So of our other moral judg- 
 ments. Hence, we repeat, an ideal Christ 
 without a historic Christ would be an 
 anomaly. 
 
 3. The first glimpse we get of this 
 
150 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 wondrous theme in the holy Scriptures is 
 as existing in the Divine mind ''before 
 the foundation of the world." It is spoken 
 of as being then "a mystery" — neces- 
 sarily a mystery, since how can a finite 
 mind, which by its very nature can con- 
 ceive of nothing except as circumstanced 
 in space and time, apprehend the thoughts 
 of the Infinite in eternity? Such thoughts 
 are incapable even of revelation, for, if the 
 human mind cannot comprehend them, 
 human language cannot of course express 
 them. Vast as are the powers of man's 
 intellect, it can no more transcend its finite 
 conditions of thought, than can " the 
 eagle outsoar the atmosphere in which 
 he floats, and by which alone he is sup- 
 ported." We can conceive of finite ex- 
 tension in space, and to this one finite idea 
 of extension we can add another finite 
 idea, and yet another, and we can go on 
 adding extension to extension indefinitely; 
 but, however oft this operation be re- 
 peated, we shall never compass the infinite. 
 We can conceive of time, and we can add 
 one period of time to another period of 
 time, tracing it both backwards and for- 
 
Faith Intuitive. 151 
 
 wards ; but, however lengthened may be 
 the period through which our thoughts 
 traverse, it is still time, and the idea of 
 eternity is as far distant from us as ever. 
 Now, since we cannot conceive of existence 
 out of time and vSpace, it follows that 
 thoughts in the mind of God before time 
 and space began are to us necessarily '' a 
 mystery" — "a mystery hid in God^^ 
 (Ephes. iii. g). 
 
 But, although the mystery was unex- 
 plained and inexplicable, the fact that it 
 existed in the mind of God '' before the 
 foundation of the world," just as a plan 
 exists in the mind of the architect before 
 being committed to paper and before a 
 stone of the building is laid, is of the 
 greatest possible significance. If the 
 scheme of redemption were in the Divine 
 mind in embryo before the world's moral 
 constitution was settled, how are we to 
 resist the conclusion that the redeeming 
 scheme would therefore necessarily form 
 part of the world's moral constitution 
 when brought out into actual operation. 
 This conclusion seems to us so inevitable, 
 and the apostolic language is so free from 
 
152 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 ambiguity, that we should be justified in 
 expressing our surprise should any one 
 professing reverence for holy writ take 
 issue with us on the great truth that lies 
 at the basis of our argument. For, even 
 admitting that Paul's conception has a 
 Platonic tinge, how can that, in the case 
 of an inspired apostle, affect the question 
 of its truth ? 
 
 When the '' mystery" hid from eternity 
 in the mind of God began to be revealed 
 in timej it is associated with the record of 
 God '' begetting His Only Son," saying, 
 as time dawned and the Infinite unveiled 
 His glory, " Thou — the brightness of the 
 Father's glory and the express image of 
 His Person — art My Son, this day have I 
 begotten Thee." Our thoughts are thus 
 carried back to the period, when the Ab- 
 solute first revealed Himself in the condi- 
 tioned ; and under the plural name Elohim, 
 manifested Himself in space and time, 
 speaking the finite universe into being 
 as the theatre of His future operations, 
 and striking the hour of its birth. To 
 this plurality in unity, the Evangelist John 
 thus refers : — '' The Word was with God, 
 
Faith Intuitive. 153 
 
 and the Word was God." And the form of 
 the fiat, '' Let us make man in our image, 
 after our Hkeness," indicates the Hke in- 
 effable co-existence. The nearest approach 
 we can make to its conception, is that of 
 eternity dawning into time, the Infinite 
 reveahng Himself in the finite, the In- 
 conceivable making Himself conceivable, 
 " God passing into activity." Such are 
 the ideas associated historically with the 
 relation of the Son to the Father ; and 
 this prefatory explanation may possibly 
 .enable us to understand better the mean- 
 ing of words sometimes unduly limited to 
 the period of the incarnation, '' No man 
 hath seen," perceived, or comprehended, 
 the Infinite, Eternal, and Absolute " God, 
 at any time : the only begotten Son, which 
 is in the bosom of the Father, He hath 
 declared Him." All wt know objectively 
 of God, is through our intellectual appre- 
 hension of God manifested in His Son. 
 
 When we begin to think of God the 
 Father, we project our thoughts at once 
 into infinity, and are absorbed in a 
 fathomless abyss. When we begin to 
 think of God the Son, we see Him with us 
 
154 ^^^^ Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 in all the amplitude of His Godhead in the 
 space and objects immediately around us ; 
 and, scanning each widening circle, above 
 and beyond, we lose sight of Him, at last, 
 in stars and space and distance inconceiv- 
 able. Our knowledge of God the Holy 
 Spirit, is acquired wholly through our 
 moral intuitions. God the Son is the 
 Divinity without us ; God the Holy Ghost 
 the Divinity within. The Father tran- 
 scends human thought ; and consequently, 
 the Son, the Logos, or Divine Word, is 
 that Person in the Godhead to whom, as 
 immanent in whatever is objective, our 
 rational faculties exclusively apply them- 
 selves. In Him, the inconceivable in- 
 finite, without parts or extension, is trans- 
 formed into parts extended ad infinitum^ 
 so that every indivisible atom of matter 
 and every indivisible point of space be- 
 comes the concentrated home of the "ful- 
 ness of the Godhead," radiant with God's 
 glory. In Him, the inconceivable eternal 
 Now becomes resolved into an endless 
 succession of Nows, and every indivisible 
 moment of time presents to a wondering 
 universe, a new and, in itself, complete dis- 
 
Faith Intuitive. 155 
 
 play of an ever-changing, changeless God. 
 We see Him, in the revived vegetation of 
 spring, in the picturesque beauties of sum- 
 mer, in the gathered fruits of autumn, in 
 the mantling snows of winter. We hear 
 Him, in the low of the cattle, in the 
 warbling of the birds, in the chirping 
 grasshopper, in the rustling leaves of 
 the breeze-shaken elm, in the murmur- 
 ing of the stream, the stillness of the 
 mountain, the distant roar of the ocean. 
 Hence, any conception of the Son of God 
 would be scripturally and philosophically 
 incomplete, which did not contemplate 
 Him as, not only making and superin- 
 tending all things, but as being personally 
 domiciled, in all His life-giving energy, in 
 every microscopic corpuscle of the uni- 
 verse, making each a 'radiating centre 
 whence He manifests Himself — twinkling 
 in every star, smiling in every flower, 
 breathing in every zephyr. '' There is no 
 speech nor language where His* voice is 
 not heard : it has gone out through all the 
 earth, and His words to the end of the 
 world." Madame Guyon did but trans- 
 * Comp. Psalm xix. 3 and 4, and Rom. x. 18. 
 
156 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 late these sentiments into the language of 
 devotion, when she sang : — 
 
 *' To me, remains nor space nor time ; * 
 My country is in every clime : 
 I can be calm, and free from care, 
 On any shore, for God is there ! " 
 
 According to the explicit declaration of 
 the sacred Scriptures, the '* Lamb was 
 slain," and therefore, the Atonement made, 
 *' from the foundation of the world." If 
 the Atonement had been a remedial ex- 
 pedient, provided to meet some sudden 
 and unexpected emergency, not contem- 
 plated until after Adam's fall, this ante- 
 cedent preparation for the event would 
 require explanation. The facts appear to 
 be more consonant with the notion, that 
 the original constitution of the human 
 race, being that of innocent indifference, 
 contemplated the possibility of an emer- 
 gence into a state of condemnatory moral 
 consciousness, and a constitutional ne- 
 cessity, therefore, for a Divine Mediator. 
 The Sacrificial Institute is, accordingly, to 
 be regarded as the first embodiment of 
 a principle indigenous to humanity, and 
 animal sacrifices as something more than 
 
Faith Intuitive. 157 
 
 mere types and symbols. They were the 
 material bonds of connection between an 
 objective principle and its intuitional re- 
 cognition. 
 
 In whatever way the sacrificial institute 
 ' originated, whether as the spontaneous 
 expression of an intuitive impulse, or 
 through an external oracular ordination, 
 it is equally entitled to be regarded as the 
 outward portraiture of the inward senti- 
 ment. The duty was enjoined of offering 
 to God, in sacrifice, the firstborn of man 
 and beast, the firstborn of man being 
 redeemed by animal substitution ; and 
 this selection of the firstborn was obvi- 
 ously representative. Indeed, the ideas of 
 corporate responsibility and representa- 
 tion strongly characterize the whole of 
 sacrificial symbolism. The paschal lamb 
 was slain in sacrifice by the families of 
 Israel, a lamb for every house : and, on 
 the great day of atonement the victim was 
 national : when the goat was sent " by a 
 fit man into the wilderness," it bore away 
 a nation's sins. Add to this the signifi- 
 cant circumstance, that the animal selected 
 for sacrifice was an animal in which man 
 
158 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 has a social and sympathetic interest, and 
 whose traits are most emblematic of inno- 
 cence ; and then, the idea of sacrifice, so 
 far as it is to be gathered from ancient 
 religious rites, would seem to be, that the 
 sins of repentant humanity are atoned for 
 by something which combines the ele- 
 ments of representation, innocence, suffer- 
 ing, and social sympathy. 
 
 But, although the principle was em- 
 bodied in the sacrificial institute, and every 
 devout offerer of a sacrifice declared 
 thereby his confidence in the existence of 
 an actual reconcilement between heaven 
 and earth, there was nothing in the typical 
 sacrifices themselves tending to accom- 
 plish such reconciliation. Between the 
 ante-Christian sacrifices and the sacrifice 
 of Christ, intervened a broad line of demar- 
 cation. The one was but a record, the 
 other a transaction ; the one but the sym- 
 bolic expression of a subjective sentiment, 
 the other an objective reality ; the one re- 
 presented only the offerer's personal con- 
 viction that, for reasons in which his 
 individual virtue had no meritorious opera- 
 tion. Heaven was disposed to be at one 
 
Faith Intuitive. 159 
 
 with him, the other gave a real historic 
 existence to the grounds upon and by 
 virtue of which such atonement was 
 achieved. We say advisedly that the 
 ante- Christian sacrifices were a record of 
 the '^ Lamb slain from the foundation of 
 the world," not a mere anticipation of the 
 Lamb to be slain. For, to the mind of 
 God, the history of the race from begin- 
 ning to end is a unit, and Christ's sacri- 
 fice was ever before God an accomplished 
 fact, though with an undeveloped rationale 
 which '^ prophets and righteous men de- 
 sired to scan," but which only could be 
 scanned by human minds through its 
 evolution in time. 
 
 Nearly all the apostolic illustrations of 
 the sacrifice of Christ are gathered from 
 typical analogies. Christ was the "first- 
 born among many brethren," and His 
 death was that of ''the one for the many," 
 that of the representative first-born of 
 humanity for the entire race. As Israel's 
 national victim bore away a nation's sins, 
 Christ *' bore away the sins of the world ;" 
 He " died for our sins " just as the sacri- 
 ficial victim died — becoming '* a curse " for 
 
i6o The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 us, and sustaining our condemnation. 
 And having thus died, ''He rose again for 
 our justification," coming forth from within 
 the veil to bless us, as did the high-priest 
 after he had sprinkled the blood upon the 
 mercy-seat. His shed blood was '' pre- 
 cious " as a '' redemption," a buying off, 
 a '' price " paid by way of " ransom," in 
 order that the race, whose liberty and lives 
 were forfeited, might be set free. 
 
 Beyond illustrative exhibitions, the 
 Scriptures contain but little formal ex- 
 planation. They point to the fact : — He 
 who from the beginning of time had been 
 immanent throughout the objective uni- 
 verse had entered without aught of self- 
 contraction, without abandoning one spot 
 that He had before occupied, upon the 
 tenancy of humanity. The Godhead, which 
 had ever dwelt concentratively in every 
 atom of man's framework, had taken up 
 His dwelling in man himself. The moral 
 nature and Consciousness of humanity 
 had become God's home. In the incarna- 
 tion, perfect obedience, sufferings, agony, 
 death, resurrection, ascension, and con- 
 tinuous intercession of the Son of God, 
 
Faith Intuitive. i6i 
 
 that which existed before time as a " mys- 
 tery " is revealed. It is a mystery no 
 longer, but a constellation of incidents 
 having a palpable moral import; needing 
 no verbal criticism, no skill in logic, no 
 tongue of eloquence, to unfold and apply 
 them, but conveying at once their own 
 heaven-taught lesson, to every prepared 
 conscience, and every sincere heart. 
 
 4. Now it is this fact, that the eternal 
 Son of God entered into and dwelt in the 
 consciousness of humanity, w^hich consti- 
 tutes the central idea of the Christian 
 sacrifice. And the question we are con- 
 sidering is, whether the Christ-conscious- 
 ness and the human consciousness are 
 not thereby made reciprocal ; or, in other 
 words, whether the conscience is not in 
 this way freed from the difficulty it felt 
 in appropriating the Divine mercy till as- 
 sured that it was mercy exercised in right- 
 eousness. 
 
 Our contention is, that when humbled 
 with Him into the dust of humiliation, 
 we become capable, by the very constitu- 
 tion of our moral nature, of entering into 
 and becoming conscious of His righteous- 
 
 M 
 
1 62 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 ness. For if, as a consequence of our 
 corporate responsibility, there be, in holy 
 minds, this painful consciousness of others' 
 sins, may there not be, in penitent minds, 
 a corresponding pleasurable consciousness 
 of another's perfect righteousness ? If 
 there be a ladder by means of Vvhich the 
 purest natures can descend to the lowest 
 depths of human guilt so as to become 
 identified with its shame and grief, may 
 not that guilt, when its heavenward ten- 
 dencies are awakened, climb, by the same 
 road, to the loftiest heights of conscien- 
 tious peace ? If Christ can, by means of 
 this general bond of sympathy and com- 
 mon consciousness of humanity, become 
 conscious of human guilt and suffer and 
 atone for it, what is to prevent us from 
 becoming, in the same way, conscious of 
 His perfect righteousness, and being 
 thereby (consciously) justified ? Such is 
 the momentous conclusion St. Paul af- 
 firms (2 Cor. V. 21) in those pregnant 
 words, already quoted — " He hath made 
 Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin ; 
 that we might be made the righteousness 
 of God in Him." You will observe here 
 
Faith Intuitive. 16^ 
 
 a double antithesis. He who had no con- 
 sciousness of sin personally, felt it vicari- 
 ously ; we who have no consciousness of 
 meritorious righteousness in ourselves, 
 have it in Christ. The doctrines of 
 atonement and justification become, thus, 
 two sides of one tablet. On one side we 
 read the story of Christ's humiliation : on 
 the other, the story of man's exaltation. 
 On the one, that Christ entered into the 
 brotherhood of humanity : on the other, 
 that through the same brotherhood of 
 humanity we become, not as a legal fiction^ 
 but really and truly one with Christ. On 
 the one side we read that Christ was 
 **made sin for us:" on the other, that 
 *'we are made the righteousness of God 
 in Him." 
 
 5. But although we may be content to 
 rest the fact upon apostolic authority, our 
 readers will hardly be satisfied unless we 
 deal more explicitly with the 7nodus ope- 
 randi. How, it will be asked, can these 
 things be ? In what way can the Christ- 
 consciousness become our consciousness ? 
 By way of answer to this question, we 
 will first adduce two or three familiar 
 
 M 2 
 
164 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 instances of sympathetic consciousness 
 occurring in every-day life. 
 
 Allow that you are one of an extensive 
 partnership, who owe a joint debt, and 
 that there is only one individual of the 
 many hundreds constituting the partner- 
 ship that has money enough to pay the 
 debt. All the rest are beggars. The 
 creditor wants payment, and as you are 
 one of those who have been actively con- 
 cerned in contracting the debt, you are 
 sued for it, and about to be dragged to 
 prison. At that moment the wealthy 
 partner steps forward. He was not per- 
 sonally concerned in contracting the debt, 
 but in consequence of his having volun- 
 tarily become one of the firm — as Christ 
 took upon Him our humanity — the debt is 
 laid upon him, not tmjustly, and he pays it. 
 What is the effect produced upon your 
 mind by this fact ? You are no longer in 
 fear of prison ; and so far as regards the 
 relation in which you stand to the creditor, 
 your sense of justice is satisfied. Obliga- 
 tions of gratitude are contracted to him 
 who has paid the debt for yourself and for 
 others ; but the creditor you can now look 
 
Faith Intuitive, 165 
 
 in the face with confidence, and say, 
 " My debt is paid." Is there any psycho- 
 logical difficulty here ? Yet you enter 
 into another man's consciousness — that 
 of the partner by whom the debt has 
 been paid. 
 
 Again. You remember the history of 
 Joseph ; how his brethren were sent by 
 Jacob their father to Egypt to buy corn, 
 because the famine was sore in the land ; 
 that Benjamin was not with them on their 
 first journey, but that, on the second, they 
 were compelled to take Benjamin ; that 
 their wants were supplied, and they were 
 dismissed to return home to their father, 
 but that a messenger was sent after them 
 complaining that one of them had stolen 
 Joseph's divining-cup ; that the cup was 
 found in Benjamin's sack, and that they 
 were all thereupon carried back prisoners 
 before Joseph. You remember Judah's 
 eloquent appeal : — " Thy servant became 
 surety for the lad unto my father, saying. 
 If I bring him not unto thee, then I shall 
 bear the blame to my father for ever. 
 Now therefore, I pray thee, let thy ser- 
 vant abide instead of the lad a bondman 
 
1 66 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 to my lord ; and let the lad go up with 
 his brethren." Let us pause at this point 
 of the narrative, and assume that Joseph 
 had accepted Judah's offer. A crime has 
 been charged in which they are all im- 
 plicated — a corporate crime — but Judah 
 takes upon himself the whole punishment, 
 and in consideration thereof the rest are 
 permitted to proceed on their journey. 
 Would they not proceed without fear, 
 feeling that the demands of law and 
 justice had been fully satisfied ? Would 
 not Judah's consciousness become theirs ? 
 
 We do not say that these are cases 
 strictly parallel to the doctrine of salva- 
 tion through Christ ; but we say that they 
 are illustrative moral problems ; and that 
 as in them the sense of justice was satis- 
 fied, not only in the mind of the chief 
 actor, but in all with whom he was in 
 common, so it is when the contrite con- 
 science comes face to face with the 
 cross of Christ. It enters into the Christ- 
 consciousness and is at peace. 
 
 To illustrate our meaning still further, 
 let us suppose that twenty individuals 
 combine together to effect some hazardous 
 
Faith Intuitive. 167 
 
 and noble enterprise — the scaling, say, of 
 the rampart which alone can give success 
 in the day of battle. Suppose that nine- 
 teen out of the twenty are driven back de- 
 feated, but that the twentieth stands his 
 ground, advances, puts the enemy to flight 
 single-handed, gains the rampart, rears on 
 it the national standard, and then — 
 although too late to share the merit of 
 the conquest, not too late to reap its 
 fruits — the other nineteen again advance, 
 pursue the routed foe, gather around the 
 uplifted emblem of victory, and unite in 
 the shout of triumph. Mark the co-exist- 
 ence here of an individual defeat and a 
 common success, and tell us whether, 
 though individually defeated, the bravery 
 of their chieftain does not redound to the 
 honour of the whole. Willingly do the 
 nineteen award to their meritorious com- 
 rade all the praise ; but the battle was a 
 common battle, and the success, therefore, 
 is a common success ; and when they re- 
 turn home to receive their reward, although 
 all eyes are turned to the great conqueror, 
 still his companions in arms consciously 
 share his honours. They are hailed as 
 
1 68 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 the great conqueror's comrades ; and it is 
 enough for them that he pubHcly recog- 
 nises them as his comrades — his glory is 
 their glory, his joy theirs. 
 
 Now, as in this illustration the nineteen 
 enter into the fruits of their chieftain's 
 labours and into the consciousness of his 
 joy, so do all true Christians share con- 
 sciously the righteousness and joy of their 
 Lord; and this by virtue of an operation 
 which is in strict conformity with familiar 
 psychological laws. 
 
 In the absence, then, of any psycholo- 
 gical difficulty, we conclude that the mind 
 of one whose conscience is awake and in 
 earnest has within it a latent ability, when 
 the historic Christ is presented, of at once 
 perceiving His aptitude and power to do 
 that which the conscience requires to have 
 done. To repeat again, in relation to 
 this subject, the Socratic question already 
 quoted: — "Why does truth (so hard to 
 find) when found approve itself to us, often 
 instantaneously, as truth ?" Can any 
 doubt remain as to the answer to be given 
 to this question ? It " approves itself to 
 our minds as truth " in the same way as 
 
Faith Intuitive. i6g 
 
 it approves itself to the Christ-mind — in- 
 tuitively. And does not this question of 
 the philosophic heathen suggest also the 
 solution of what many Christians have 
 been puzzled about — the possible instan- 
 taneoiisness of the mental change ? A mind 
 overwhelmed with doubt and despondency 
 has its intuition suddenly evoked. The 
 Christ of history, well known to the in- 
 tellect but unknown to the conscience, be- 
 comes suddenly unveiled ; and, as when a 
 magnificent picture or statue is suddenly 
 unveiled to the eye, a crowd of exciting 
 ideas simultaneously rush in, so there 
 enter with the unveiled Christ the joys of 
 the Christ mind; we become partakers of 
 His consciousness, or, in apostolic words 
 expressing the same meaning, ^^ He dwells 
 in our hearts by faith." 
 
 6. As this topic is somewhat abstruse, 
 and we are desirous of making every point 
 as transparent as is practicable, we will, 
 before leaving it, approach it by a different 
 route, and present it in a slightly different 
 aspect. 
 
 But before doing so we will avail our- 
 selves of the authority of two or three 
 
170 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 names of note in support of our view as to 
 the possibility of reducing Christian faith 
 and experience into harmony with mental 
 science. 
 
 One of these is the late eminent Dr. 
 Chalmers, who, in his Institutes^^ observes : 
 *' The scheme of salvation in the Gospel 
 seems the only one by which to meet and 
 appease the demands of our moral nature; 
 and the more profoundly it is reflected on, 
 the more we are persuaded will it be found 
 to tally with the conscience and the consti- 
 tution which God hath given to us." It is 
 to be regretted that a divine so thoroughly 
 orthodox and so eminently gifted did not 
 attempt more than simply to intimate his 
 personal conviction that a harmony sub- 
 sisted between the Gospel scheme of salva- 
 tion and the world's moral constitution. 
 But even this personal conviction in a 
 mind so endowed, is an argument of great 
 value. 
 
 " It is our deep conviction," says the 
 reviewer, in the Dublin University Maga- 
 zine, of Whewell's History of Moral Philo- 
 sophy in England, '' that moral philosophy 
 * Part iii. ch. iv. s. 9. 
 
Faith Intuitive. 171 
 
 points us both to the character and to the 
 work of our Saviour. It seems to us that 
 morahsts in general have been much too 
 feeble in their assertions of this.'' Other re- 
 viewers have, on several occasions, ex- 
 pressed the same opinion, and the vene- 
 rable Dr. Vaughan, while editor of the 
 British Quarterly^ gave utterance to his 
 own anticipations in the following words: 
 *' On more than one occasion we have 
 ventured to suggest that the great want of 
 the coming age would prove to be a theo- 
 logy possessing such aptitude and freedom 
 as to admit of being brought into healthy 
 relationship with the best forms of ethical and 
 mental science. '' 
 
 Pray what are the '' demands of our 
 moral nature " to which these several 
 writers refer, and how are their anticipa- 
 tions to be realised ? Has any method yet 
 been devised, or can one be imagined, by 
 which the peculiarities of the evangelical 
 system may be "brought into AmZ/Aj/ rela- 
 tionship with the best forms of ethical and 
 mental science," other than the method 
 we are now propounding? 
 
 But to proceed : the adaptation of the 
 
172 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 biblical revelation to our inward intuitions 
 has been compared with that of a remedy 
 for a disease, or of satisfaction to an appe- 
 tite. As these illustrations indicate adapta- 
 tions of two different kinds, the question 
 arises, to which kind does the adaptation 
 of the Christian atonement to the enquiring 
 conscience properly belong ? A disease 
 demands a remedy, and the remedy is 
 adapted to the disease ; but, in that case, 
 the discovery of the adaptation is the re- 
 sult of medical empiricism. Is, then, the 
 adaptation of the Christian atonement to 
 man's moral conceptions of this class — 
 simply a remedy for a disease, of which it 
 is known but empirically to be curative ? 
 Independent of external experience, does 
 man's moral nature express nothing more 
 than the want, without being able to sug- 
 gest any hint as to the manner in which 
 the want is to be relieved ? To the extent 
 of expressing a want, there are but few of 
 our readers who would not go along with 
 us. We, however, go much further. 
 
 We say that, as every appetite gives 
 some vague indication of the means by 
 which it is to be satisfied, as the thirsty 
 
Faith Intuitive. 173 
 
 camel snuffs the distant spring, as hunger 
 craves for food, and the longings of the 
 lone heart for sweet companionship, so 
 man's moral instincts do more than give 
 him an oppressive sense of want. Even 
 without revelation, we have within us, if 
 stimulated by moral earnestness, an in- 
 ternal aptitude to work out some form of 
 the sacrificial idea. The organ of vision 
 has the aptitude to see, before light reveals 
 the glories of the landscape; and, deprived 
 of the greater luminaries, star-light is 
 enough to guide the sagacious traveller. 
 Besides, every faculty called urgently into 
 exercise improves. The Indian in his 
 forest can rapidly track a trail which an 
 European eye can scarcely detect on the 
 closest examination, and can hear a distant 
 sound from an approaching foe, which 
 falls on an unpractised organ as but the 
 lull of the breeze. So earnest consciences, 
 even when unappealed to by the Christian 
 revelation, put forth powers, the extent 
 whereof we may surmise from the recorded ^ 
 instances of Abraham, David, Isaiah, 
 Simeon, and Cornelius, and many of a 
 similar description to be found in the 
 
174 ^^^^ Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 annals of modern missions. Such wor- 
 shippers may not be able, without the 
 Christian scriptures, to pass into the inner 
 sanctuary, but the glory of the Shechinahis 
 seen through the veil, awakening a longing 
 for a fuller revelation. As the nepenthes 
 lifts the lid of its pitcher to catch the 
 descending shower, as the vulture kens 
 afar his needed prey, as the parched tra- 
 veller rushes impulsively to the spot 
 marked by yon distant verdure, so the 
 earnest suppliant, unable to find peace 
 within himself, but having the intuitive 
 conviction that there exists in man's cor- 
 porate relation to God an adequate basis 
 of peace remote from his own personal 
 deservings, if perchance, like the Ethiopian 
 eunuch, he come within the sound of 
 Christian instruction, his cultivated con- 
 science, as the iron to the loadstone, at 
 once attaches itself to the objective realisa- 
 tion of his ideal. As when the eyes of the 
 aged read the lettered page they receive a 
 general impression of its import, but not 
 until the glass has rendered the desired 
 help is its full meaning distinctly visible ; 
 or, as when we trace the blue outline of 
 
Faith Intuitive. 175 
 
 the distant mountain-range, our minds 
 begin to feel the excitement of its subhmity 
 and grandeur, but not until the telescope 
 has enabled us to see distinctly every ob- 
 ject of beauty do we revel amidst their 
 accumulated glories : so is it when the 
 earnest conscience; long looking in hope, 
 perceives at last distinctly what had before 
 but glimmered in the vision, and, advancing 
 beyond hope, believes. 
 
 Again: the written revelation from God 
 contained in the holy Scriptures is partly 
 moral and partly historic. So far as it is 
 moral, it is the record of human intuitions 
 poured spontaneously forth from eminently 
 holy minds: for even though Christ-spoken 
 or plenarily inspired, the medium of trans- 
 mission is human. Hence our individual 
 intuitions stand related to revealed moral 
 truth in the same way as the undeveloped 
 germ to the matured plant. Their rela- 
 tion is that of the acorn to the oak, the 
 ^gg to the eagle, the foetus to the full- 
 grown lion, the first infant thought to the 
 accomplishedphilosopher. Hence, between 
 revelation and our individual intuitions, 
 there is the bond of a kindred origin. 
 
176 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 They are sprung from the same lineage, 
 the same blood runs in their veins, they 
 have the same contour of countenance, 
 are one in thought and feeling, and have 
 but to meet in order to mutual recognition. 
 Does revelation utter its voice ? Intuition 
 instantly kindles with connubial love. 
 Does light travel millions of millions of 
 miles from the most distant visible star ? 
 An examination of its properties proves it 
 to be the same with the light of earth's 
 feeblest taper : the light of revelation and 
 the light of moral intuition are one ; and, 
 being thus one in essence, when they meet, 
 proceeding from opposite poles, their 
 meeting is that of mutual concert and 
 harmony. That harmony occurs when 
 the light without and the light within 
 blend, when the objective and subjective 
 meet in accord, when our moral intuitions 
 respond to the revealed exposition of the 
 fact, and when these two forms of Divine 
 minstrelsy strike together the harp, from 
 the willow, attuned to the music of the 
 cross. 
 
 7. Further : an argument is to be de- 
 rived from a comparison between our 
 
Faith Intuitive. 177 
 
 ordinary moral judgments and that for 
 which we are contending. Between our 
 intuitive judgments on moral duty and our 
 intuitive confidence in God's mercy, there 
 are several points of analogy. Both in- 
 volve the ideas of obligation, of responsi- 
 bility, of securing the Divine approval, 
 and of obtaining peace to the conscience. 
 Both are theoretically assumed to embrace 
 a complete comprehension of the grounds 
 of God's moral government, as the logical 
 basis of action ; yet, neither of them does, 
 in fact, at the moment of spontaneity, com- 
 prehend or even look at those grounds. 
 The virtuous act and the saving trust are 
 alike the immediate product of a moral 
 impulse, the correct analysis of which, 
 in the first example, develops the whole 
 science of Morals, and in the second, the 
 whole science of Redemption : but each 
 science is the result of a reflex analysis, 
 and not the recalling to remembrance of 
 an intellectual pre-consideration. They 
 are alike, in the simplicity of the first 
 spontaneous impulse ; and alike, in the com- 
 plexity of the principles afterwards found 
 involved therein. If in our attempt to de- 
 
 N 
 
178 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 velop the moral idea of the atonement, we 
 have seemed to compHcate rather than 
 simpHfy the subject, we refer, in self- 
 vindication, to the voluminous treatises 
 that have been written on the nature 
 and grounds of virtue, in which, though 
 starting from the principle of its intuitive 
 origin as a practical rule of conduct, the 
 most abstruse theories have been evolved 
 with regard to the rationale of the rule. 
 
 Reviewing then that which we have pro- 
 pounded as the rationale and moral idea 
 of sacrifice, is there, we repeat, any phi- 
 losophic difficulty in the way of its spon- 
 taneous mental emanation ? We want no 
 aid from mysticism. Let us not, for one 
 moment, be confounded with those who 
 advocate a special faith-faculty, whereby 
 the pure reason, in its theoretical exer- 
 cises, is supposed to learn, through a 
 direct looking at truth, what is necessary 
 and real in existence, in the same way as 
 the practical reason tells us what is in- 
 cumbent upon us as moral agents. We 
 are strict disciples of the school of com- 
 mon-sense, and wish nothing granted ex- 
 cept as a fair induction from the facts of 
 
Faith Intuitive. 179 
 
 consciousness. But, with those facts be- 
 fore us, if the moral faculty can spontane- 
 ously throw out germs of thought capable 
 of being amplified and constructed into 
 the science of Morals, why, we ask, may 
 it not, in like manner, throw out germs of 
 thought capable of being amplified and con- 
 structed into the science of Redemption ? 
 
 In order, however, to place beyond 
 doubt the identity in principle of these 
 two kinds of intuition, we must pursue 
 our investigation into the region of the 
 conscience a step further. 
 
 i. The judgments of conscience are 
 of two classes, (i) those which contem- 
 plate moral acts that have become matters 
 of painful or pleasurable consciousness ; 
 (2) those which contemplate moral actions 
 and problems objectively only and criti- 
 cally, but without sympathy and quite apart 
 from any connection they may have with 
 ourselves : 
 
 ii. The judgments of conscience of 
 the first class — which become incorpo- 
 rated with consciousness — may again be 
 divided into (i) those that are purely 
 matters for self-consciousness, being such 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 judgments upon our own acts as induce 
 self-approval or self-condemnation ; and 
 (2) those which excite the moral feelings, 
 but of which we become the conscious sub- 
 jects only through sympathy with others. 
 
 Now, if there be approximate truth in 
 this analysis, what philosophical difficulty 
 can there be, on the part of those who re- 
 cognise the intuitional origin of such of 
 our moral judgments as affect our self- 
 consciousness, in allowing a similar origin 
 to those which affect our sympathetic 
 consciousness ? 
 
 8. In Dr. Adam Smith's Theory of 
 Moral Sentiments^ an attempt is made to 
 construct a system of morals by setting 
 up, as to its criterion, the judgment we 
 should pronounce respecting our own 
 conduct, were we to examine it from 
 the stand-point of another person's mind. 
 " The principle," says he, *' by which we 
 naturally either approve or disapprove of 
 our own conduct, seems to be altogether 
 the same with that by which we exercise 
 the like judgments concerning the conduct 
 of other people. We either approve or 
 disapprove of the conduct of another man 
 
Faith Intuitive. i8i 
 
 according as we feel that, when we bring 
 his case home to ourselves, we either 
 can or cannot entirely sympathise with 
 the sentiments and motives which directed 
 it. And, in the same manner, we either 
 approve or disapprove of our ow^n con- 
 duct, according as we feel that, when we 
 place ourselves in the situation of another 
 man and view it, as it were, w^ith his eyes 
 and from his station, we either can or 
 cannot entirely enter into and sympathise 
 with the sentiments and motives which 
 influenced it."* But in order to enable 
 us to examine ourselves with another per- 
 son's '' eyes and from his station," it is 
 clear that we must have the capability of 
 infusing our minds into his mind, and 
 making ourselves objective to ourselves. 
 The operation assumes the existence of 
 a common consciousness, into which we 
 may enter and look at ourselves therefrom. 
 Nor is this impracticable. We are not 
 aware that any critics of the theory ever 
 deemed it so. Adam Smith's moral 
 theory has been abandoned, not because 
 he assumes that to be possible which is 
 * Vol. i. (gth Edit.), p. 226. 
 
1 82 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 physchologically impossible, but because 
 it is unnecessary to have recourse to so 
 roundabout a process ; conscience, when 
 its supremacy is estabhshed, having suffi- 
 cient disinterestedness and discrimination 
 to pass upon itself a correct judgment. 
 
 g. Any apparent difficulty arises from 
 the magnitude of the question. The joy 
 of the Redeemer, with which we are called 
 to sympathise, arises out of the fact that 
 the world in its unity stands accepted be- 
 fore God, because of Christ's righteous- 
 ness. If, instead of a world, it were a 
 family reduced to poverty and misery, 
 having at its head an elder brother, 
 whose good conduct, entitling him to 
 the favour of a kind master, had re- 
 trieved their fortunes, one can easily 
 imao-ine how each member of the familv, 
 takins: the character of their elder brother 
 as a model, and imitating it however dis- 
 tantly, might be able so to confide in his 
 good deserts and his influence with their 
 common master as to identify themselves 
 with him in feeling, and share his joy. 
 No difficulty would be felt in such a 
 case. The loving sympathy between the 
 
Faith httuitive. 183 
 
 helper and the helped, the rescuer and 
 rescued, the redeemer and the redeemed, 
 would flow from one to the other, first in 
 streams of mutual anxiety while the strug- 
 gle was pending, afterwards in streams of 
 mutual joy. Now, why should the trans- 
 fer of the operation from a family to a 
 world alter its character ? Is not gravi- 
 tation the same in the case of a feather 
 falling to the ground, and a planet falling 
 toward the sun ? To imasfine a difficulty 
 because the bodies are lars^er and the 
 spaces immeasurable, would be very un- 
 philosophical. Science knows no differ- 
 ence between objects just perceptible by 
 the aid of the most powerful microscope, 
 and those descried by the most powerful 
 telescope, but applies its rules equally to 
 both. So, whatever is psychologically 
 practicable in the case of the family is 
 equally so on the larger scale. A re- 
 deemed sinner, reflecting on Gethsemane's 
 conflict, may taste his Lord's bitter cup 
 in the anguish of a stricken conscience ; 
 and not less may he share his Lord's joy, 
 when the battle is fought and the victory 
 won. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE LAW OF JUSTIFICATION, AS IT EMERGES 
 OUT OF THE PRECEDING HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 HE scheme we have propounded 
 leads US to the adoption of what 
 we must, for the sake of brevity, 
 call by the name of Subjective 
 Justification, meaning thereby justification 
 in f 070 conscienticEy with which justification 
 in for Divino is ever combined. We give 
 it this name solely because of the neces- 
 sity there exists for distinguishing it from 
 justification in foro Divino alone, which 
 for this purpose we call Objective justifi- 
 cation. By justification m/oro Z)zz;z;^(9, or 
 objective justification, is meant the for- 
 giveness of sins through faith in Christ, 
 irrespective of our knowledge of forgive- 
 ness — a pardon without peace. 
 
 Now, the capital error in modern evan- 
 
The Law of Justification, 185 
 
 gelical teaching consists, we submit, in 
 making subjective justification depend 
 upon and follow a previous objective justi- 
 fication, instead of making both the sub- 
 jective and objective the equally direct and 
 immediate results of the atonement of 
 Christ and of faith therein. What is 
 really one operation is by means of this 
 misconception divided, in thought, into 
 two operations. First, God, it is said, in 
 consideration of the atonement, justifies ; 
 and, secondly, this objective justification — 
 freely bestowed by God, for Christ's sake, 
 on our repenting and believing — is, either 
 by a direct or indirect communication, 
 made known to the individual conscience. 
 In this way the justifying act is trans- 
 ferred to a tribunal remote from the 
 sphere of our consciousness, and we know 
 nothing of its occurrence except by a sub- 
 sequent communication. Then, after the 
 communication has been made, the per- 
 suasion it induces — not faith in the atone- 
 ment — becomes the immediate basis of 
 our peace of conscience. This error we 
 deem fatal to the hypothesis, and wholly 
 destructive of its evangelical character. It 
 
1 86 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 teaches the conscience to rely for its peace, 
 not directly and immediately upon the re- 
 deeming work of Christ, but upon the 
 beHef of a consequent pardon. Whatever 
 removes the work of Christ from the 
 sphere of immediate consciousness annihi- 
 lates the doctrine of justification by faith, 
 and thus annihilates the Gospel. 
 
 The Maurice and Bushnell schools de- 
 part still further "from the simplicity of 
 the Gospel " by depriving the atonement 
 of its objective character, which, as we 
 have before shown, is one of its essential 
 features. Hence we stand equally opposed 
 to the modern scholastic system, and to 
 the recent attempts made ostensibly to 
 improve it, but which, in our judgment, 
 have the directly contrary effect. 
 
 According to the theory which naturally 
 emerges out of this discussion, the atone- 
 ment being ever available for all who have 
 the moral power conscientiously to appro- 
 priate it, the contrite soul clothes itself 
 with Christ's merits by an instinctive act. 
 We, in apostolic diction, "put on Christ" 
 and, as the old writers were wont to ex- 
 press it, become " arrayed in the robes of 
 
The Law of Justification. 187 
 
 Christ's righteousness." As in exercising 
 the faculty of perception the perceiving 
 mind, out of its own intrinsic stores, adds 
 to its sensations a beHef in the outward 
 reaHty of the perceived object, so the con- 
 trite conscience, out of its own aroused 
 energies, adds to our conception of Christ's 
 work elements of intuitive certainty and 
 personal appropriation. This done, sub- 
 jective justification is at that moment 
 realised, and with it objective justification 
 also, inasmuch as we cannot conceive of a 
 judgment being pronounced in foro con- 
 scienticB which is not contemporaneously 
 pronounced in foro Divino — '' If our heart 
 condemn us not, then have we confidence 
 toward God " (i John iii. 21). 
 
 In using terms which imply that we ap- 
 propriate to ourselves Christ's righteous- 
 ness *^ by an instinctive act" or by moral 
 intuition, we must however a second time 
 guard ourselves against misconception, 
 lest any should ignorantly suppose that, in 
 reducing the operations of the Christian 
 heart to a series of natural sequences, we 
 are excluding the influence of the Holy 
 Spirit. At the same time it is to be ob- 
 
1 88 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 ■■ e 
 
 served that the Hght of the Holy One is 
 not a mystic ingress, but a Divine egress; 
 His influences do not saturate the surface 
 like the descended dew, but spring up 
 from the inner life as a bubbling fountain: 
 they do not play upon the intellect like a 
 moonbeam on the waters, but break forth 
 from the conscience as latent fire bursting 
 into flame. In a word, the operations of 
 the Holy Spirit are not merely analogous 
 to, but are in point of fact the moving 
 cause of, our spontaneous moral intui- 
 tions. 
 
 We will now endeavour to place before 
 our readers distinctly the points of dif- 
 ference between the theory we advocate — 
 which we maintain to be the old evange- 
 lical theory — and its modern empirical 
 decadence, by subjecting the latter to a 
 few words of criticism. 
 
 I. Put to any intelligent and spiritually- 
 minded Christian man this question, "On 
 what do you base your hopes of heaven?" 
 and he will immediately answer, " On the 
 merits of Christ." Any cross-examination 
 of the Christian consciousness would pro- 
 bably fail to elicit any answer more in de- 
 
The Law of Justification. i8g 
 
 tail. Whatever might be the prelusive 
 flourishes of youth, the experienced Chris- 
 tian, like a wary sage, contents himself 
 with giving expression to all he stirely 
 knows — namely, the simple fact that his 
 conscience, like Noah's dove, can find no 
 rest for the sole of her foot except in the 
 ark, Christ. He does not say that he ap- 
 propriates to himself the general doctrine 
 of atonement because he has the conscious- 
 ness of having repented and believed ; or 
 because he has, through the rites of baptism 
 and of the Eucharist, become a member 
 of Christ's mystical body ; or because he 
 once, in prayer, had a special impression 
 made upon his mind assuring him of his 
 good estate ; or because the Church, 
 through her official representative, has 
 pronounced absolution. All reasoning 
 upon incomplex truths tends only to com- 
 plicate them, and to render difficult that 
 which is in itself easy. And such would 
 be the effect of the explanations we have 
 quoted : they would tend to mystification 
 and doubt, by interposing between the 
 conscience and the atonement a question- 
 able middle term. 
 
I go The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 2. Again : every scheme of justification 
 which deals with faith as intellectual only, 
 and not moral, proceeds upon the assump- 
 tion that revealed truth is readily capable 
 of reduction into propositions, and must 
 exist in that form before it can be under- 
 stood and believed. What, then, is the 
 proposition which, on being satisfied with 
 the evidence of its revealed origin, our 
 faith is to embrace ? Has it ever been 
 categorically stated? Or can it be? Have 
 not all the most, judicious divines aban- 
 doned the attempt, and declared faith in- 
 definable — meaning thereby to confess 
 their inability to state a proposition, the 
 simple intellectual belief of which justifies? 
 
 Now, this indefinable character of jus- 
 tifying faith, though utterly inconsistent 
 with the notion of its being the purely in- 
 tellectual reception of revealed truth, is 
 quite in accordance with the hvpothesis of 
 its moral spontaneity. We have already 
 shown that it is of the nature of our moral 
 instincts to realise themselves in the con- 
 crete, under the impulse of a silently 
 operative law; and that the truths involved 
 in the instinct are not pre-conceived, but 
 
The Law of Justification. igi 
 
 become soluble on reflection. " The 
 spider," says Bunsen, " discovers, by its 
 peculiar sense, the state of the atmos- 
 phere, and, by its impulse, regulates ac- 
 cordingly its mathematical work of self- 
 preservation — the web." Here, we have 
 the web as the product, whence to infer 
 the dictates of the ''sense " which impelled 
 its construction, and the ''mathematical" 
 truths its form exhibits. So, conscience, 
 alarmed by the absence of that personal 
 righteousness which our moral nature tells 
 us to be essential to Heaven's approval, 
 seeks refuge in the righteousness of Christ. 
 There is an intuitive perception of the 
 aptness and sufficiency of the work of 
 Christ to afford the desired refuge, but it 
 is not until after the object of faith has 
 been attained and justification is enjoyed, 
 that we can reduce the subject matter of 
 this intuitive moral judgment into a written 
 form, and even then we fall short of arti- 
 culate propositions. 
 
 3. Again : every moral truth admits of 
 two kinds of knowledge — a speculative 
 knowledge and a practical knowledge ; the 
 one dependent on philosophical analysis, 
 
1 92 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 the other upon moral culture. It is this 
 circumstance that creates the distinction 
 between the moralist and the moral, be- 
 tween the professed Christian and the real 
 Christian : a man may be no ethical phi- 
 losopher and yet virtuous, a skilful theolo- 
 gical disputant and yet not a "believer." 
 
 Now, we venture to affirm that, upon 
 empirical grounds, this distinction cannot, 
 by any possibility, be made cognoscible. 
 In what, we ask, is the faith that justifies 
 different from the faith of the speculative 
 theologian ? We are not, of course, en- 
 quiring into the practical difference : that 
 every one knows. What we want to be 
 informed about is the scientific difference ; 
 for, two faiths with such diverse practical 
 tendencies cannot fail to be scientifically 
 distinguishable. Are they of the same 
 origin ? The empiricist says that they 
 are. He asserts that the distinction be- 
 tween them is one of degree only, and 
 that, although up to a certain point our 
 apprehensions of truth amount only to a 
 speculative faith, yet as soon as they go 
 beyond that point, and become more com- 
 prehensive and more vivid, the faith con- 
 
The Law of Justification. 193 
 
 sequent thereon becomes regenerating and 
 practicaL Then (to say nothing of the 
 unsatisfactoriness of resolving a palpable 
 difference in principle into one merely of 
 degree) the empiricist, when required to 
 account for this increased comprehensive- 
 ness and vividness of intellectual belief, 
 refers it to the co-operation of the will ; 
 such change of the will he refers to the 
 power of motives ; and the efficacy of 
 motives, not wholly to their logical value, 
 but— to " the state of the heart." This 
 seems to us very like arguing in a circle. 
 It is proposed to explain why one kind of 
 faith affects the heart with religious emo- 
 tions and the other has no such effect ; 
 and the answer given is, that true faith 
 affects the heart because it has its origin 
 in the " state of the heart !" We should 
 be sorry to misrepresent an adverse argu- 
 ment, but so obviously is this the necessary 
 result of the empirical theory, that we 
 challenge the advocates of the system to 
 put their explanation into any shape that 
 will not necessitate a similar conclusion, 
 if speculative faith and saving faith he 
 
 identical intellectuallv, but diverse in their 
 
 o 
 
194 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 moral tendencies, it is obvious that they 
 iniist be diverse in their origin : and if 
 they be no/ identical intellectually, in what 
 else can the difference between them be 
 conceived to consist, unless herein — that 
 the former is governed by the laws of man's 
 intellectual nature, the latter by those of 
 his moral nature ? 
 
 We adopt this, then, as the only con- 
 ceivable principle of the distinction, and 
 thence derive the fact upon which the 
 present argument is based — viz., that the 
 faith which makes a man a true Christian 
 is dependent for its origin and growth 
 upon contrition and moral culture. Does 
 any one doubt the fact ? The ease with 
 which the young, the ignorant, the un- 
 civilised, the least intellectual of Eve's 
 sons and daughters, are made to under- 
 stand the Gospel, when their consciences 
 are awake, and the difficulty there exists 
 in making it intelligible to the most cul- 
 tivated minds when the moral nature is 
 dormant, have been demonstrated by so 
 many examples, as to place an insuperable 
 difficulty in the way of any one who should 
 contend that moral culture and the growth 
 
The Law of Justification. 195 
 
 of Christian faith have no mutual depend- 
 ence. And equally stubborn is the scrip- 
 tural doctrine that there can be no true 
 saving faith in Christ without previous re- 
 pentance. 
 
 Among many examples illustrating the 
 effect of moral culture in developing the 
 germ of Christian faith and facilitating its 
 exercises none perhaps is more eligible 
 than that of the late Dr. Gordon, to whose 
 m.emory so graceful a tribute has been 
 paid by the Rev. Newman Hall. *' His," 
 says his biographer, "was not a life of in- 
 difference to religion, closed by a sudden 
 conversion and a few days of enthusiastic 
 excitement. But after many years of 
 earnest and anxious enquiry, with secret 
 and constant prayer for the enlightening 
 influences of the Holy Spirit, together with 
 a conscientious discharge of every duty " — 
 but without any Christian profession — "he 
 was favoured towards the close with such 
 a view of the all-sufficiency of Christ to 
 meet the sinner's wants, and was enabled 
 by faith so fully to rely on his merits 
 for acceptance with God, without one 
 doubt or misgiving, that rising above the 
 
 o 2 
 
196 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 vaporous atmosphere through which he 
 had long been chmbing up the craggy 
 cHffs of the ' hill Difficulty,' he basked in 
 a cloudless sunshine, at a higher elevation 
 than Christians ordinarily attain."* Dr. 
 Gordon's mental training was not to- 
 ward the cross, although, as this quota- 
 tion shows, his moral training led him 
 thither. 
 
 4. Another argument is deducible from 
 the necessity there exists of the relation 
 between the atonement and the pardoned 
 conscience being such as to associate with 
 it a holy life. Every system is false which 
 does not so connect a holy life with peace 
 of conscience, that the one cannot pos- 
 sibly exist without the other. To connect 
 them adventitiously is not enough, they 
 must be blended morally and impera- 
 tively. 
 
 Many perplexing theories have been 
 propounded to overcome this difficulty. 
 According to the theory of Bishop Bull, 
 faith does not justify except as producing 
 works : but how is this reconcilable with 
 the Pauline doctrine, that faith does not 
 
 * Page 62. 
 
The Law of Justification. 197 
 
 justify except as renouncing works ? Faith, 
 according to others, is the only thing 
 which God looks at in justifying — repent- 
 ance and conversion He takes no more 
 account of than was taken of silver in 
 the golden days of Solomon: and yet 
 the same persons insist, with the same 
 breath, that repentance and conversion 
 are nevertheless necessary to justifica- 
 tion. Are not these palpable contradic- 
 tions? 
 
 Others, again, in order to avoid those 
 difBculties, say that God receives men 
 into His favour previous to their becom- 
 ing the subjects of any moral change, and 
 that, being first justified by faith without 
 works, they are regenerated afterwards. 
 If by this be meant that God receives men 
 into, and retains them in. His favour 
 wholly irrespective of their moral cha- 
 racter, past, present, or future, the senti- 
 ment is too gross to be worthy of a reply. 
 But if all that is meant be that God heaps 
 favours upon men that He may thereby 
 soften their obduracy, and that He adopts 
 them as His children in order that He 
 may, by the regenerating power of paternal 
 
ig8 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 love, induce dispositions befitting their 
 new relationship, we can see nothing in 
 this view that in the slightest degree tends 
 to remove the difficult3^ Whether we be- 
 come the children of God in name and by 
 Divine recognition before or after we be- 
 come His children in moral resemblance, 
 the sequence is but nominal, it being in- 
 conceivable that the filial relation should 
 be separated from filial moral resemblance 
 by any perceptible interval of time. And, 
 at all events, they are inseparable in the 
 Divine contemplation. Whether men are 
 morally changed in order that they m.ay 
 become thereby reconciled to God, or are 
 reconciled to God in order that they may 
 be thereby morally changed, the change of 
 relation and the change of character are 
 mutually dependent upon each other, and 
 the circumstance of the dependence being 
 prospective or retrospective in no way 
 affects the question at issue, inasmuch as 
 a contemplated result is, in this case, 
 quite as prolific of objection as a performed 
 condition. 
 
 From these perplexities there is no 
 possible escape, except by admitting the 
 
The Law of Justification. igg 
 
 Scriptural distinction between objective 
 justification and subjective justification, 
 and by applying the Pauline proposition 
 to the latter. Thereupon, all difiiculty 
 vanishes. God receives into His favour, 
 for Christ's sake, all who repent of their 
 sins, turn from them, and lead a new, 
 virtuous, and holy life : but, conscience 
 cannot be appeased by the consciousness 
 of such change. Nothing can satisfy the 
 conscience but faith in an objective atone- 
 ment. This faith, however, while it 
 totally disclaims and renounces all kinds 
 of works, including even the work of faith 
 itself, from directly contributing to peace 
 of conscience, is so connected with works 
 as to be unable to exist without them. 
 In fact, the moral state out of which works 
 spring is also the source out of which faith 
 springs. Thus the union of faith and 
 works becomes, according to the theory 
 we are advocating, easy and natural ; on 
 any other theory it is, as we would with all 
 deference suggest, perplexing and imprac- 
 ticable. 
 
 We have now, we trust, said enough to 
 make clear the distinction between the old 
 
200 The Philosophy of Evangelicisin. 
 
 intuitive theory of justification and the 
 modern empirical theory, and to prove 
 that the latter is exposed to difficulties 
 which must condemn it in the esteem of 
 all sound and consistent thinkers. 
 
 The process described as intuitive we 
 call ''the law" of justification, adopting 
 the phraseolog}^ of St. Paul, who makes 
 use of it in the following passages : — 
 Rom. iii. 27., ^' The law of faith," as op- 
 posed to the law of works; Rom. viii. 2., 
 " The law of the Spirit of life in Christ 
 Jesus," as opposed to the law of sin 
 and death ; Rom. ix. 31., " The law 
 of righteousness or justification" (vofiov 
 
 SlKaLoavv7]s:) , 
 
 A law, in the sense in which it is here 
 used by the apostle, has been defined to 
 be "an arrangement of consecutive data 
 leading always to one unvarying result." 
 In order to constitute a law, it is not 
 necessary that we should know the secret 
 forces by which each member of the series 
 acts upon its successor. It is enough that 
 the sequence be found unvarying. Thus 
 we are entitled to assert the existence of a 
 law of gravitation, although we have not 
 
The Law of Justification. 201 
 
 the least idea as to what the force we call 
 gravitation really is. No chemist has yet 
 been able to explain the nature of the 
 forces by which bodies are made to com- 
 bine, but the fact of their combination in 
 certain definite and unvarying proportions 
 constitutes itself into a law simply by the 
 invariableness of the sequence. So it 
 is a law of our moral nature that con- 
 science condemns the guilty, the follow- 
 ing series being found in invariable se- 
 quence : — I, a sense of duty ; 2, duty 
 violated ; 3, a guilty conscience. In 
 like manner the following series is found 
 in constant sequence: — i, a contrite 
 conscience ; 2, a consciousness of the 
 Christian sacrifice; 3, the conscience set 
 at rest. 
 
 With the heart at rest in conscious 
 friendship with God, the Christian stands 
 upon a higher moral platform, and hence 
 arise those higher morals which are dis- 
 tinctively Christian, and of which no 
 other religious system has ever produced 
 the like. To these it will be right for 
 us to make fuller reference; but before 
 doing so, the natural order of thought 
 
202 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 seems to require that the arguments 
 we have adduced against our opponents' 
 theory should be followed by such affir- 
 mative arguments in support of our own 
 theory as the subject will admit of; and 
 these we propose to adduce in the next 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PROOFS FROM CATHOLIC CONCURRENCE, AND 
 FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE. 
 
 WHATEVER may be the worth of 
 an individual judgment, there is 
 no doubt that deference is due to 
 CathoHc concurrence. We ac- 
 cordingly turn with great interest to in- 
 quire to what extent the idea of sacrifice 
 having a natural adaptation to the con- 
 science is sustained by authority. To 
 those conversant with theological litera- 
 ture we need scarcely say that it is far 
 from being a novel notion, even in its 
 formal statement ; while, as a principle 
 hidden in the depths of theological rea- 
 soning, it is familiarly old. Yet we must 
 not be supposed to commit ourselves to 
 the assertion that it is to be everywhere 
 
204 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 found shaped scientifically into a theory. 
 What we mean is, that the foundation 
 truths upon which the theory is built are 
 laid deeply in the Christian mind and 
 heart, and have, from time to time, been 
 put forward with different objects and in 
 different modes of expression, so as, when 
 combined, to constitute a series of unpre- 
 meditated coincidences, and therefore the 
 strongest possible evidence of Catholic 
 concurrence. 
 
 Basil, one of the fathers of the Church, 
 who flourished in the fourth century, 
 wrote : — " Faith is that which draws the 
 soul to assent by a force transcending the 
 methods of logic : faith is that produced, 
 not by the necessary demonstrations of 
 geometry, but by the energy of the Holy 
 Spirit." 
 
 Whitaker,* an eminent Church of Eng- 
 land divine of the sixteenth century, in the 
 course of an argument designed to prove 
 that the Church cannot empirically incul- 
 cate faith, quotes the preceding among 
 many other authorities of a similar kind, 
 
 * Whitaker's Disputation on Scriptiire (Parker 
 Society's edit.), pp. 356, 7 ; 448. 
 
Catholic Concurrence. 205 
 
 and thus records his own views : — " It is 
 only the Holy Ghost that can infuse into 
 our hearts that saving faith which is 
 therefore called by the schoolmen Fides 
 infusa. The Church cannot infuse this 
 faith ; for that faith which we obtain from 
 the Church is not called infused, but ac- 
 quired ; and it is not sufficient to a full 
 assurance or certain persuasion." 
 
 ** Nor was it altogether without 
 grounds," says Coleridge,* ''that several 
 of the Fathers ventured to believe that 
 Plato had some dim conception of the 
 necessity of a Divine Mediator ; whether 
 through some indistinct echo of the pa- 
 triarchal faith, or some rays of light re- 
 fracted from the Hebrew prophets, or by 
 his own sense of the mysterious contradic- 
 tion in human nature between the will 
 and the reason, the natural appetences and 
 the not less innate law of conscience^ we shall 
 in vain attempt to determine. It is not 
 impossible that all three may have co- 
 operated." 
 
 The distinguished Bishop Butlerf re- 
 
 * Aids to Reflection (5th edit.), vol. i. p. 23. 
 t Analogy, part ii. ch. v. s. 4. 
 
2o6 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 marks, '' From the general prevalence of 
 propitiatory sacrifices over the heathen 
 v^orld, the notion of reoentance alone 
 being sufficient to expiate guilt appears to 
 be contrary to the general sense of man- 
 kind." Bunsen* also attributes sacrifice 
 as well as prayer to "the religious impulse 
 — the highest instinct of humanity." And 
 Maurice, f discussing the character of 
 Noah's sacrifice, thus proceeds : — "Here, 
 under the same inward guidance, the 
 mound of turf gives place to the altar 
 which is built ; an order is discovered 
 in the dignity of the inferior creatures ; 
 the worthiest are selected for an oblation 
 to God ; the fire which consumes, the 
 flame which ascends, are used to ex- 
 press the intention of him who pre- 
 sents the victim. If you asked him to 
 tell you what these visible things sig- 
 nified to him, he could have given you 
 no answer. At a later time men might 
 have muttered one which would have 
 a certain sense, but not a very clear 
 sense ; now they would simply act on 
 
 * Philosophy of Universal History, vol. ii. p. 167. 
 •\ The Doctrine of Sacrifice, p. 23. 
 
Catholic Concurrence. 207 
 
 their intuition, and let it justify itself as 
 it could." 
 
 An incident in the life of the great 
 German reformer, records both his own 
 views and the views of those who were 
 the honoured instruments of his conver- 
 sion. " Leading him back to the Apostles' 
 Creed which Luther had learnt in early 
 childhood, at the school of Mansfeldt, the 
 aged monk repeated this article with kind 
 good-nature : — ' I believe in the forgive- 
 ness of sins.' These simple words, which 
 the pious brother pronounced w4th sin- 
 cerity, in that decisive moment, diffused 
 great consolation in Luther's heart. ' I 
 believe,' he repeated to himself erelong, 
 lying on his bed of sickness, — ' I believe 
 in the forgiveness of sins.' ' Ah ! ' said 
 the monk, ' you must believe not only in 
 the forgiveness of David's and of Peter's 
 sins — it is God's command that we believe 
 our own sins are forgiven.'* How delight- 
 ful did this command seem to poor Luther! 
 ' Hear what St. Bernard says, in his dis- 
 
 *"' Davidi aut Petro. . . Sed mandatum Dei esse, 
 ut singuli homines nobis remitti peccata credamus. 
 — Melajichth. Vita. Luth. 
 
2o8 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 course on the Annunciation/ added the 
 aged brother : — ' The testimony of the 
 Holy Ghost is this, 'Thy sins are for- 
 given thee.' From this moment,' adds 
 D'Aubigne, *' hght sprung up in the heart 
 of the young monk of Erfurth." 
 
 Many of the Puritans taught that ''Justi- 
 fying faith is the receiving of God's justi- 
 fying sentence in our own consciences." 
 And with this agrees the doctrine of the 
 Homihes : — " By this you may well per- 
 ceive that the only mean and instrument 
 of salvation required on our part is faith ; 
 that is to say, a sure trust and confidence 
 in the mercies of God, whereby we per- 
 suade ourselves that God both hath and 
 will forgive our sins, that He hath accepted 
 us again into His favour, that He hath re- 
 leased us from the bonds of damination, 
 and received us again into the number of 
 His elect people, not for our merits or 
 deserts, but only and solely for the merits 
 of Christ's death and passion." 
 
 "Faith," say the authors of the Synopsis 
 Purioris TheologicB "is a firm assent by 
 which every believer, with a certain trust 
 resting in God, is persuaded not only that 
 
Catholic Concurrence. 2og 
 
 remission of sins is in general promised 
 to them who beheve, but is granted to 
 himself particularly, and eternal righte- 
 ousness and from it life, by the mercy of 
 God." And this is the doctrine also of 
 the Augsburg confession. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton* alleges as fol- 
 lows : — '^ Assurance, personal assurance 
 (the feeling of certainty that God is pro- 
 pitious to me^ — that my sins are forgiven, 
 fidticia, plerophoria fidei)^ was long univer- 
 sally held in the Protestant communities 
 to be the criterion and condition of a true 
 or saving faith. Luther declares, that 
 he who hath not assurance spews faith 
 out ; and Melancthon makes assurance 
 the discriminating line of Christianity 
 from heathenism. It was maintained by 
 Calvin, nay even by Arminius ; and it is 
 part and parcel of all the Confessions 
 of all the Churches of the Reformation 
 down to the Westminster Assembly." 
 The British and Foreign Evangelical Re- 
 view^ disputes the accuracy of this state- 
 ment, but admits thus far : — " With re- 
 spect to the nature of saving faith, the 
 
 "'•' Discussions, p. 493. f Vol. v. p. 938. 
 
210 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 Reformers in general maintained that it 
 had its seat in the Will, and was properly 
 and essentially trust (fidiicia). The great 
 majority of eminent Protestant divines 
 have adhered to the views of the Re- 
 formers upon this point, though some 
 have taken the opposite side, and have 
 held faith, properly so called, to be the 
 mere assent (assensns) of the understand- 
 ing to the truth propounded by God in 
 His Word ; while they represent trust 
 and other graces as the fruits or conse- 
 quences, and not as constituent parts and 
 elements, of faith." 
 
 Now it is clear that if faith have " its 
 seat in the ' Will,' " it must be moral ; 
 which is our chief point of contention. 
 That being ceded, we are at a loss to 
 know how a theory can be constructed, 
 recognising the moral character and origin 
 of faith, that can consistently maintain 
 the Pauline doctrine of justification by 
 faith without works, unless the justifica- 
 tion in which it issues be a subjective justi- 
 fication. The Reviewer is obviously upon 
 the horns of a dilemma. Retaining his 
 position that faith has "its seat in the 
 
Catholic Concurrence. 211 
 
 Will," he must either, against Paul and 
 the Reformers, maintain that justification 
 is by works or, which is the same thing, 
 by a faith whose essential element it is 
 to be the root of obedience ; or he must 
 maintain, with Paul and the Reformers, 
 that the justification which is by faith 
 without works, is a subjective justification. 
 There is no alternative. To Sir William's 
 capacious and logical mind, this whole con- 
 nection of thought was present ; and his 
 representation of the opinions of the 
 Reformers was doubtless correct. Their 
 hypothesis was precisely that to which 
 Sir William recalls the attention of their 
 lapsed disciples who, by depriving justifi- 
 cation of its subjective element have — and 
 mark ! we again quote the words of Scot- 
 land's greatest philosopher — '' eviscerated 
 the Protestant symbol (Fides sola jiistificat^ 
 Faith alone justifies ) of its real import." 
 
 In strict accordance herewith is D'Au- 
 bigne's* admirable definition : — '' Faith, 
 says the theologian in order to express 
 his ideas, is the subjective appropriation 
 of the objective work of Christ." 
 
 * History of the Reformation, vol. i. p. 51. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 The language of President Edwards is 
 peculiarly explicit : — " It is evident,"* 
 says he, "that there is such a thing as 
 a spiritual belief or conviction of the truth 
 of the things of the Gospel, peculiar to 
 those who are regenerated ; so that the 
 conviction they have does not only differ 
 from that which natural men have, in its 
 concomitants, in that it is accompanied 
 with good works, but the belief itself is 
 diverse. He that truly sees the divine, 
 transcendent, supreme glory of those 
 things which are divine does, as it were, 
 know their divinity intuitively : he not only 
 argues that they are divine, but he sees 
 that they are divine." 
 
 John Wesley, f too, the Apostle of Me- 
 thodism, is equally clear and decisive : — 
 '^ Faith is a divine evidence and conviction, 
 not only that * God was in Christ recon- 
 ciling the world unto Himself,' but also 
 that Christ loved me and gave Himself 
 for me. It is by this faith that we receive 
 Christ." 
 
 '^ The sense of moral deficiency," says 
 
 *'' Religious Affections, part iii. ch. 5. 
 y Sermon xliii. 
 
Catholic Concurrence. 213 
 
 Chalmers,* '' the unfaiHng sense of every 
 earnest spirit, will, without any nice argu- 
 mentative computation, suggest the in- 
 stant feeling of at least a probable guilt, 
 a probable God, and a probable vengeance 
 at His hands, — enough to set the whole 
 machinery of human interests, and fears, 
 and disquietudes, into busy operation. It 
 is in the midst of such agitations and 
 doings that Christianity offers itself to 
 the notice of an inquirer ; and for the 
 tens or twenties who may seek after its 
 literary and historical evidence, there will 
 at least be thousands who fasten their 
 intent regards upon its subject matter ; 
 and who, as the fruit of their moral ear- 
 nestness and prayers, will be made to 
 behold its divine adaptation to the exi- 
 gencies of their state, and so to close 
 with it on the strength of those creden- 
 tials which are properly and independently 
 its own." 
 
 Authorities like these might be in- 
 definitely multiplied, but we forbear, 
 and merely adduce these few by way of 
 example, in order to show that the idea 
 o ]\Jorth British Review, vol. vi. p. 320. 
 
214 'The Philosophy of Evaitgelicism. 
 
 of Christian faith being intuitive is not 
 novel. 
 
 Before ascending from human authority 
 to the Divine, we wish to premise that, 
 while we distinctly and emphatically re- 
 pudiate the slightest sympathy with any 
 of those "hybrid products of Greek and 
 Oriental speculation," which have been so 
 fruitful of heresy, we nevertheless recog- 
 nise and appreciate the Platonic mould 
 given to Christian thought in Scripture, and 
 by the best of the early Christian thinkers. 
 No one cognizant of its grandeur will 
 deem us wanting in reverence for the 
 New Testament writings, if we ascribe 
 to some portions of them the gleamings of 
 a true Hellenic fire, irrespective of their 
 loftier and holier inspiration. And would 
 it not have afforded cause for wonder if 
 modes of thought which still so largely 
 influence the civilised world had, after 
 centuries of intellectual neighbourhood, 
 failed to influence the cultivated Hebrew 
 mind? 
 
 First, then, we ask, on what ground 
 did the Redeemer claim that His words 
 
Scriptural Proofs. 215 
 
 should be received as truth ? Was it not 
 on the ground that the truth of His teach- 
 ing was self-evident to every sincere, con- 
 trite, earnest spirit ? Can language be 
 plainer than this (Luke xii. 56), ''Ye can 
 discern the face of the sky and of the 
 earth [these facts are self-evident to 
 you] how is it that ye do not discern 
 this time? Yea, and why even of your- 
 selves [ac/)' eavTcov* out of your own minds, 
 and without being taught by me], judge ye 
 not what is right?" Nor is His language 
 on other occasions less explicit : — " He 
 whom God hath sent speaketh the words 
 of God,"t and " He that is of God heareth 
 God's words,"! consequently, every one 
 "that is of God" will recognise in my 
 doctrines "the words of God," "every 
 one that is of the truth heareth my voice, "§ 
 and " if any man hear My words and be- 
 lieve not, I judge him not, . . . the word 
 
 ^' " 'Atto, governing the genitive, expresses what 
 is strictly the idea of the genitive case itself (Butt- 
 man, § 132, 2) viz., the going forth or proceeding of 
 one object from another." 
 
 f John iii. 34. J John viii. 47. 
 
 § John xviii. 37. 
 
2i6 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 that I have spoken, the same shall judge 
 him in the last day"* — however he may 
 disregard My words now, they will then 
 wake up in his conscience to condemn 
 him. 
 
 Accordingly, when Nicodemus expressed 
 confidence in Him as " a teacher come 
 from God," on the ground that no man 
 could do such miracles except God were 
 with him,f our Lord at once directed the 
 mind of the Jewish ruler to that higher 
 faith which flows spontaneously from a 
 regenerated nature. As though he had 
 said, a faith based on miracles is not 
 enough, such a faith '' cannot see " — has 
 no spiritual discernment of- — ''the king- 
 dom of God ;" all true faith originates in 
 the heart, hence "if any man will do the 
 will of God he shall " — but no one else can 
 — " know of the doctrine whether it be of 
 God ;"J faith springs up in the earnest 
 soul intuitively, stealthily as "the wind."§ 
 That this reference by Jesus to the wind 
 was designed by Him to illustrate the in- 
 tuitive as distinguished from the empirical, 
 
 ^' John xii. 47, 48. f John iii. 2. 
 
 J John vii. 17. § John iii. 8. 
 
Scriptural Proofs. 217 
 
 the moral as distinguished from the intel- 
 lectual, origin of faith, a candid exami- 
 nation of the context will place beyond 
 all reasonable doubt. The metaphor was 
 employed to show why^ for what end, we 
 *' must be born again." Our Lord had 
 asserted* the necessity of the new birth, 
 as a pre-requisite to our being able to 
 "see" or spiritually discern ''the kingdom 
 of God : " He now repeats that assertion, 
 and adds that there is nothing so very 
 marvellousf in this dependence of moral 
 perspicacity on moral character — " Art 
 thou a master of Israel, and knowest not 
 these things ?" How faith springs up in 
 the mind, whence its source, what are its 
 causal antecedents, it may be difficult to 
 explain ; but this is a difficulty we have to 
 encounter in the natural, as w^ell as in the 
 moral, world — " The wind bloweth where 
 it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
 thereof, but canst not tell whence it 
 Cometh and whither it goeth ;" so faith 
 arises imperceptibly in " every one that is 
 born of the Spirit." That this is the true 
 interpretation of the passage appears also 
 * John iii. 3. f Ibid. v. 7. 
 
2i8 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 from the sequel, in which, still keeping up 
 the same train of thought, Christ attri- 
 butes unbelief not to mental but moral 
 causes : — " light is come into the world," 
 but men love ^'darkness rather than light, 
 because their deeds" are ''evil." 
 
 The words of the Saviour to Peter, 
 which have formed so fruitful a subject of 
 controversy, are, if possible, even more ex- 
 plicit than His conversation with Nico- 
 demus. " Whom do men say that I the 
 Son of Man am?" — such was the question 
 first put to the disciples, and whereto they 
 suitably replied. He then asked, " But 
 whom say j^ that I am ?" Peter answered, 
 " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the 
 living God."* How did Peter come by 
 the faith he thus avowed ? Was it the 
 result of an intellectual appreciation of 
 objective evidence — something taught by 
 man ? Our Lord expressly affirms the 
 contrary : " Flesh and blood hath not re- 
 vealed it unto thee." If then the truth 
 entered not into Peter's mind from an 
 objective source, how otherwise could 
 it enter, except either by special reve- 
 
 «- Matt. xvi. 1 6. 
 
Scriptural Proofs. 2ig 
 
 lation or by intuition ? In either case 
 it was from God. That which is in- 
 tuitive is not less Divine than that which 
 is inspired. 
 
 The fact which has been urged as ad- 
 verse to the intuitive origin of Peter's 
 faith, forms in our view the strongest 
 argument in its favour — viz., '' that when 
 the Lord referred to His own sacrifice of 
 Himself as essential to His kingdom, all 
 Simon's intuitions were at fault." And 
 why were they at fault ? For the same 
 reason, doubtless, that Peter denied his 
 Master. Had his faith been dependent 
 wholly upon the testimony of his senses, 
 upon the miracles he witnessed, upon 
 the oracular truths that were announced 
 to him and the intellectual import and 
 objective evidence of those truths, its 
 vacillant character would have been in 
 explicable. But, based upon his moral 
 intuitions, it was of course necessarily 
 regulated by the variances in his moral 
 state — the very point we are labouring 
 to substantiate. 
 
 Turning from the Master to the dis- 
 ciple, we discover in Paul's writings the 
 
220 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 same under-current of '' spiritual discern- 
 ment," the necessity for which he thus 
 enforced: — "The natural man receiveth 
 not the things of the Spirit of God, for 
 they are foolishness unto him; neither 
 can he know them, because they are 
 spiritually discerned" (i Cor. ii. 14). By 
 the phrase "spiritually discerned," we 
 understand a mode of discerning Divine 
 realities other than that of receiving 
 them through objective sources — an inner 
 vision dependent for its clearness upon 
 the moral state, and in the exercise of 
 which, things previously incognoscible 
 become self-evident. 
 
 That St. Paul used the word "justifica- 
 tion " in a subjective sense is manifest 
 from his argument in Rom. iii. ig, 20. 
 " By the law," says he, "is the knowledge 
 of sin " — meaning that the effect of the 
 law is to sting the conscience with the 
 conviction of personal guilt. To awaken 
 the conscience is the very design of its 
 promulgation — "What things soever the 
 law saith it saith to them who are under 
 the law, that every mouth may be stopped " 
 — unable to utter an excuse — " and all the 
 
Scriptural Proofs. 221 
 
 world may become guilty* before God" — 
 not be made guilty in fact, for that they 
 are already, but may be smitten with the 
 overwhelming consciousness of existing 
 guilt. '' Therefore, by the deeds of the 
 law, there shall no flesh be justified in his 
 sight." — If, on examining ourselves in the 
 conscious presence of God, the recollec- 
 tions of our past life, compared with the 
 standard of the 'Maw," bring to us only 
 the '^ knowledge " or conviction " of sin," 
 how can that which convinces of sin re- 
 move such conviction ? how can that 
 which troubles the conscience give it 
 peace ? Such is the Apostle's argument. 
 And, since all its force turns upon the 
 '^ knowledge of sin" and "justification" 
 being opposed to each other, we must so 
 construe the meaning of those terms as 
 that they may be, in our conception of 
 them, really opposed. Consequently, the 
 
 * virodiKor — " Ut omne OS obturefur, et ohnoxius 
 fiat totus mtcndiis condemnationi Dei, i.e., Utomnes 
 homines agnoscant, se obnoxios esse reatui, irse ac 
 condemnationi Dei. Verba enim quae esse, fieri 
 vel agere significant, quandoque pro rei cognitione 
 poni Solent." — Christ. Stockii Clavis. 
 
222 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 " knowledge of sin " being subjective — 
 implying a guilty conscience — ''justifica- 
 tion " must be also understood as sub- 
 jective — implying a justified and peaceful 
 conscience. 
 
 But once admit justification to be sub- 
 jective and theoretical, consistency requires 
 that our hypothesis be received in all its 
 integrity. 
 
 That St. Paul used the word ''justified" 
 subjectively, will be further seen from a 
 comparison of Acts xiii. 39 with Heb. 
 ix. g. In what sense are we to under- 
 stand the alleged impotence of the "law 
 of Moses " to "justify"? To this ques- 
 tion, arising out of the first of the cited 
 passages, the second gives an explicit 
 answer : The " law of Moses " could not 
 "justify," because it " could not make 
 him that did the service perfect as per- 
 taining to the conscience.^'' It could not 
 give him the consciousness of a perfect 
 righteousness. 
 
 Again, to the words, "Being justified 
 by faith, we have peace with God" (Rom. 
 v. i), there is ordinarily attached the loose 
 and general idea that we are first "justi- 
 
Scriptural Proofs. 223 
 
 fied " in heaven ; then informed that we 
 have been justified ; and then have peace 
 of conscience as the final result. But a 
 closer examination does not support this 
 view. The three steps into which modern 
 empiricism has thus divided the peace- 
 giving act is, in the nervous diction of the 
 Apostle, concentrated in one. If it is by 
 faith that we are justified, it is by faith 
 also (tt) irlarei) that we are made, with the 
 same immediatecy^ to "rejoice in hope of 
 the glory of God." . 
 
 The phrase " God justifieth the un- 
 godly " (Rom. iv. 5) is another phrase of 
 pregnant import. Are we to understand 
 the word '^ ungodly" here in an objective 
 or in a subjective sense ? — does it mean 
 outward ungodliness ? or rather does it 
 not obviously refer to that sense of ungod- 
 liness which every one has who knows 
 himself and is thoroughly contrite ? That 
 such a one being penitent, is ''justified " 
 in Christ, it is not difficult to understand, 
 in whichever sense you employ that word ; 
 but that St. Paul used it here, as else- 
 where, in the subjective sense, we infer 
 from the obvious intention he had to sug- 
 
224 ^^^ ^ P^^ Uosophy of E vangelicism . 
 
 gest a contrast ; and he will not have suc- 
 ceeded in doing that, unless the terms of 
 the proposition be made to admit of con- 
 trast, by referring both to the outward 
 character, or both to the mental state. 
 They cannot both relate to the outward 
 character, for to say that God pardons 
 and retains in His favour men who con- 
 tinue ungodly, would be absurd in thought, 
 and a blasphemous imputation upon the 
 Divine holiness. They must both there- 
 fore have relation jto the mental state, 
 and then this meaning comes out of them 
 — " God causes truly contrite souls, who 
 have in themselves no other conscious- 
 ness than that of personal ungodliness, 
 to stand before Him consciously justified 
 in Christ." 
 
 But the argument in favour of this 
 meaning being given to the passage does 
 not end here. The context also requires 
 it. The Apostle is contrasting the impu- 
 tation to us of our works with the imputa- 
 tion to us of the righteousness of Christ; 
 and he is educing their different moral 
 influences. The one inspires the pride 
 of " debt ;" the other, the humility of 
 
Scriptural Proofs, 225 
 
 " grace." But in order to this, the be- 
 liever must know that Christ's righteous- 
 ness is ''imputed" to him, in the same 
 way as, had he been the innocent possessor 
 of perfect personal righteousness, he would 
 have known that that was imputed to 
 him? Althousfh in the one case "the 
 
 o 
 
 reward would have been reckoned of 
 debt, and in the other *' of grace " (Rom. 
 iv. 4), yet, in other respects the mode 
 of reckoning is the same. Personal sin 
 is intuitively and consciously reckoned 
 (Rom. V. 12 — 14). This must have been 
 so, argues the Apostle, before the written 
 law was promulgated, for there can be 
 no sin without law, and there ivas sin 
 without a positive written law. conse- 
 quently the law that then was must have 
 been " written in the heart " (Rom. ii. 15) : 
 but the knowledge of the law and of sin 
 being intuitive, the imputation of sin is 
 necessarily a conscious imputation ; must 
 not then the imputation of righteousness 
 be conscious also ? Upon the consciousness 
 thus induced, the Apostle builds the follow- 
 ing reasoning (Rom. v. 8 — 10) : If, while we 
 were impenitent sinners, Christ died for us, 
 
 Q 
 
226 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 and thus demonstrated God's unbounded 
 love toward us, can we doubt that, as a 
 fruit of the same love, now when we are 
 consciously reconciled, we shall be saved 
 from future wrath ? if we have been 
 broue:ht into this state of conscious re- 
 conciliation by the " blood " or suffering 
 life of Christ, what may we not confi- 
 dently expect from His victorious and 
 triumphant life ? Mark ! St. Paul starts 
 from a basis of consciousness, and his 
 reasoning has thus a solid foundation ; 
 which otherwise it could not have. 
 
 That we have accurately recorded the 
 ideas present to the Apostle's mind, is 
 further shown by the practical question 
 which he mixes up with the doctrinal dis- 
 cussion (Rom. iii. 27) — a question that 
 deals wholly with the subjective, " Where 
 is boasting then ? " If a man hope to gain 
 the esteem of Heaven because he beheves 
 well, how can that "exclude boasting" 
 any more than if he were to be esteemed 
 for working well? The "law" that ex- 
 cludes boasting must bring faith and justi- 
 fication into immediate contact, excluding 
 everything that would interpose between 
 
Scriptural Proofs. 227 
 
 them, whether in the shape of a reward- 
 able act or a conditional act. The latter 
 would be quite as fatal to the Apostle's 
 arguments as the former. A beggar who 
 receives a benevolence promised to him 
 on condition that he ask for it, has as 
 much ground to congratulate himself on 
 his effective asking, as he who receives 
 his well-earned wages has to congratulate 
 himself on his effective working. The 
 claim of the former, when the stipulated 
 condition is performed, rests on as firm a 
 moral basis as the claim of the latter : 
 they are then equally " debts," inasmuch 
 as the benevolent promiser is as much 
 bound to perform his promise, as the just 
 master is to pay fair and equal wages. 
 The gist of the Apostle's argument, there- 
 fore, as well as the words he employs, 
 necessitates the conclusion, that nothing 
 can be interposed between faith and justi- 
 fication ; consequently that they must be 
 spontaneised ; and that, in the act of justi- 
 fying, the personal consciousness and the 
 Christ-consciousness Z?^cow^, by moral spon- 
 taneity identified in the '' law'' which excludes 
 boasting. 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 The Philosophy of Evangelicism.' 
 
 Again. '' There is now," says Paul 
 (Rom. viii. i — 4), '' no condemnation to 
 them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk, 
 not after the flesh, but after the spirit. 
 For the law of the spirit of life in Christ 
 Jesus hath made me free from the law of 
 sin and death. For what the law could 
 not do, in that it was weak through the 
 flesh, God sending His own Son, in the 
 likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, con- 
 demned sin in the flesh ; that the righte- 
 ousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, 
 who walk not after the flesh, but after the 
 spirit." In this passage, there are three 
 antitheses: i. Between the flesh and the 
 spirit ; 2, Between the law of sin and 
 death, and the law of the. spirit of life ; 
 3, Between the condemnation of our per- 
 sons, and the freedom therefrom conse- 
 quent upon the condemnation of our sin. 
 With regard to the first term of the first 
 antithesis, all who walk after the flesh are 
 aflirmed to be condemxned by both laws. 
 With regard to the second term, they who 
 walk after the spirit, although condemned 
 by the law of sin and death, are freed from 
 condemnation by the law of the spirit of 
 
Scriptural Proofs, 229 
 
 life. A law implies its own recognition 
 by a discriminating faculty, and the moral 
 law could not with propriety be called here 
 *' a law of ' sin,' " except that, in its action 
 upon the conscience, it induces the con- 
 sciousness of sin. If then the first term 
 of the second antithesis refer to a truth 
 operating upon the conscience, so also 
 must the second term ; and then it will 
 follow that the third antithesis includes, 
 in the import of its first term, a guilty 
 conscience, and of the second term, a 
 peaceful conscience. The Apostle, in 
 afiirming the impotence of the law, must 
 consequently be understood to declare 
 that, because of our inability to perform 
 perfect obedience, the law thus made 
 " weak through the flesh " cannot give 
 to us conscientious quiet — cannot sub- 
 jectively justify ; but that what the law 
 could not do Christ has done. The law 
 condemned the sinner ; Christ has con- 
 demned that which was the cause of our 
 condemnation — sin. Sin, atoned for, no 
 longer exists ; it is " condemned," de- 
 stroyed, annihilated. Contemplated in 
 the person of Christ it becomes non- 
 
230 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 existent — lost in His perfect righteous- 
 ness. 
 
 We have already intimated that in 2 Cor. 
 V. 21, where the Apostle uses the expres- 
 sion, " made Him to be sin (d/iapTLav) for 
 us," there is a much deeper meaning con- 
 veyed than simply " He became a sin-offer- 
 ing." The most cursory examination of 
 the passage must place this beyond doubt. 
 " He who knew no sin [who had no con- 
 sciousness of personal sin] was made sin 
 for us ; that we [who have no conscious- 
 ness of personal righteousness] might be 
 made the righteousness of God in Him." 
 Several points of contrast are here dis- 
 tinctly noted. I, The non-conscious- 
 ness of personal sin on Christ's part, is 
 contrasted with our non-consciousness 
 of personal righteousness. 2, His being 
 made sin, is contrasted with our being 
 made righteousness. 3, The '' for us " 
 is, in like manner, contrasted with the 
 " in Him," suggestive of interchange, 
 reciprocation, mutuality. 4, '' Knew no 
 sin," is contrasted with '^ was made sin;" 
 and since the former has reference to the 
 consciousness of sin, so must the latter : 
 
Scriptural Proofs, 231 
 
 the idea being that although our Saviour 
 had no consciousness of personal sin, He 
 so entered into our relations with God 
 that He felt all the shame, remorse, and 
 anguish on account of our sins which we 
 ought to have felt. 5, But if the words 
 *'made sin" include the consciousness of 
 sin, the words *' made righteousness " 
 must include the consciousness of righte- 
 ousness ; and the phrase "made the 
 righteousness of God in Him," must 
 be construed to mean that, as Christ 
 identified Himself with our sin, and en- 
 dured its guilty consciousness, we become 
 identified with His righteousness and en- 
 joy its peace-giving consciousness. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE MORAL FRUITS OF JUSTIFICATION.— 
 
 *' ECCE HOMO." 
 
 HE charm In Ecce Homo which 
 has secured for that work so ex- 
 tensive a circulation, is the excel- 
 lence of the moral code it ascribes 
 to Christianity and its Author, and the 
 beauty of thought and expression in which 
 the claims of Christ's religion on the 
 world's attention are, on this ground, 
 maintained. Whatever may be its other 
 merits or its defects, it does not lie in our 
 way at present to advert to them. We 
 shall merely notice the views it puts forth 
 on Christian morals, so far as is necessary 
 to enable us to use its utterances as a foil, 
 whereby we may be able more easily and, 
 with greater effect, to exhibit the points on 
 
'' Ecce Homo.''' 233 
 
 which, as we think, Ecce Homo fails to 
 render to the Christian moral system 
 adequate justice. 
 
 " It is a mistake," says that writer, "to 
 regard Christianity as a rudimentary or 
 imperfect moral philosophy." No doubt 
 it is — a very great mistake. The error, 
 however, would be less if the proposition 
 were reversed. It would be much less 
 inaccurate to say that moral philosophy is 
 a rudimentary and imperfect form of 
 Christianity. We can, therefore, hardly 
 agree in our author's next proposition : — 
 ** Philosophy is one thing, and Christianity 
 quite another." And the reason why we 
 differ from him in this conclusion is that 
 we altogether dissent from his premises. 
 "The difference," says he, "between them 
 lies here — philosophy hopes to cure the 
 vices of human nature by working upon 
 the head, and Christianity by educating 
 the heart." Now, we do not believe that 
 any system of moral philosophy worthy of 
 the name ever attempted so futile a thing 
 as to cure the vices of human nature 
 otherwise than by educating the heart. 
 Nor can we conceive it possible for Chris- 
 
234 ^^^^ Philosophy of Evmigelicism. 
 
 tianity itself ever to educate the heart 
 without also working upon the head. The 
 distinction here attempted is a false dis- 
 tinction, and does Christianity injustice 
 by slighting its appeals to humanity's 
 highest intellect. 
 
 The primary difference between moral 
 philosophy and Christianity is, we submit, 
 a difference of ideal standard. The moral 
 standard of every earth-born system is con- 
 ventional — the average attainment of the 
 best people in the city, nation, or continent 
 whereof the collective sentiments consti- 
 tute, for the time, popular opinion. Hence, 
 in ancient times and in heathen countries, 
 where the conventional moral standard 
 was low, the character of the gods was made 
 to conform to that standard and was re- 
 duced to the level of those who worshipped 
 them. And in modern times, to the extent 
 to which the authority of Christianity is 
 paralysed, the same degradation follows ; 
 so that even religious systems, professedly 
 Christian, share in the demoralisation, and 
 become so far corrupted as to conform to 
 the prevailing conventional standard. 
 
 But what, in the meantime, is the true 
 
'^Ecce Homo,''' 235 
 
 standard ? What is the standard which 
 Christianity's Divine Author proclaimed in 
 His Sermon on the Mount, and which 
 Ecce Homo omits to cite, although other 
 parts of the same discourse are long and 
 lovingly dwelt upon? It is this — '' Be ye 
 perfect even as your Father which is in 
 heaven is perfect." So then the true 
 standard of morals is our ideal of the Per- 
 fect One. Even the lowest moral natures, 
 conceiving this ideal, would place the 
 standard far above their practice ; but in 
 cultured natures the ideal standard rises 
 higher, and is not only never reached even 
 by the very^ best of men, but seems, to 
 their exalted conceptions, to rise higher 
 and higher as they advance toward it, so 
 as to become more and more distant. 
 This peculiarity in our moral nature is 
 wholly lost sight of by Ecce Homo, and 
 yet the recognition of it is by no means 
 unfamiliar. Opening, as we write, the 
 pages of Longfellow's Dante, the eye rests 
 upon a passage in which the very same 
 thought is expressed. Referring to the 
 hero's celestial conductor through the 
 realms of purgatory, the effect upon his 
 
236 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 cultured conscience of a slight error is 
 thus marked : — 
 
 " He seemed to me within himself remorseful. 
 O noble conscience, and without a stain, 
 How sharp a sting is trivial fault to thee !"^"' 
 
 And in the Dream of Gerontius, the con- 
 voying angel gives the following striking 
 description of the effect to be produced 
 upon a holy disembodied spirit by the 
 first sight of Christ : — 
 
 " There is a pleading in His pensive eyes 
 
 Will pierce thee to the quick, and trouble thee. 
 And thou wilt hate and loathe thyself ; for 
 
 though 
 Now sinless, thou wilt feel that thou hast 
 
 sinned 
 As never thou didst feel ; and wilt desire 
 To slink away, and hide thee from His sight ; 
 And yet wilt have a longing aye to dwell 
 Within the beauty of His countenance. 
 And these two pains, so counter and so keen — 
 Thy longing for Him when thou seest Him 
 
 not; 
 The shame of self at thought of seeing Him — 
 Will be thy veriest, sharpest purgatory." 
 
 In this refined conception of purgatory, 
 
 *> Piirgatorio, canto iii. 
 
^^ Ecce Homo.^' 237 
 
 Dr. Newman gives a vivid portraiture of 
 the conflict between two opposing moral 
 feelings ; and, were it not for the har- 
 monising effect of the appropriated sacrifice^ 
 which Dr. Newman fails to bring: into the 
 account, this conflict of feeling would, we 
 opine, increase with increased holiness, 
 whether on earth or in heaven. Hence the 
 Apocalyptic song, ''Worthy the Lamb," 
 will be eternally fitting, eternally new. 
 
 What then, on earth, is the consequence 
 of this conflict ? What efl'ect is produced 
 upon our minds by the consciousness of 
 the disproportion — the ever increasing 
 disproportion — between our ideal of what 
 we ought to be and our consciousness of 
 what we are ? It is that which Chris- 
 tianity announces at the offset as man's 
 natural state, but of which Ecce Homo 
 singularly enough takes no notice — a state 
 of guilt and condemnation. How to rise 
 out of this state is the first and greatest 
 of moral problems; but it is a problem 
 which Ecce Homo in no way assists us to 
 solve. 
 
 Having emerged from this state, the 
 
 Christian's first poean is one of praise to 
 
238 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 his Deliverer — the first stirrings of his 
 enthusiasm are to Christ and His honour. 
 What next ? We quote from Ecce Homo 
 the following passages with great plea- 
 sure : — 
 
 '' Our investigation has led us to three 
 conclusions respecting Christ's legislation : 
 I, that He does not direct us to adopt 
 a private or isolated rule of life, but to 
 occupy ourselves with the affairs of the 
 society: 2, that He expects us to merge 
 our private interests absolutely in those of 
 this society ; 3, that this society is not 
 exclusive, but catholic or universal — that 
 is, that all mankind have a right to ad- 
 mission to it. . . . It is a society of men 
 who meet together for common objects, 
 resembling those societies which we call 
 states in this respect, that it claims un- 
 limited self-sacrifice on the part of its 
 members, and demands that the interest 
 and safety of the whole shall be set up by 
 each member above his own interest and 
 above all private interests whatever." 
 Hence the significance of the phrases, 
 *' the kingdom of God," ''the kingdom of 
 Heaven." 
 
" Ecce Homo.'' 239 
 
 Instead of laying down a written code 
 of laws for His kingdom, after the manner 
 of earthly kingdoms, and making obedience 
 to consist in external conformity to the 
 strict letter of the law, Christ, continues 
 Ecce Homo J '' would give to every member 
 of it a power of making laws for himself. 
 He frequently repeated that to make the 
 fruit of a tree good you must put the tree 
 into a healthy state, and, slightly altering 
 the illustration, that fruit can only be ex- 
 pected from a fruit-tree, not from a thistle 
 or a thorn." This law-making power 
 consists in the infusion of a Divine enthu- 
 siasm. " The earliest Christians, like the 
 Christians of later times, felt a natural 
 repugnance to describe the ardent enthu- 
 siastic goodness at which they aimed by the 
 name of virtue. This name suited exactly 
 the kind of goodness which Christ expressly 
 commanded them to rise above. They 
 therefore adopted another. Regarding 
 the ardour they felt as an express inspira- 
 tion or spiritual presence of God within 
 them, they borrowed from the language of 
 religious worship a word for which our 
 equivalent is ' holy ;' and the inspiring 
 
240 TJie Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 power they consistently called the Spirit 
 of Holiness or the Holy Spirit. Accord- 
 ingly, while a virtuous man is one who 
 controls and coerces the anarchic passions 
 within him, so as to conform his actions to 
 law, a holy man is one in whom a pas- 
 sionate enthusiasm absorbs and annuls the 
 anarchic passions altogether." 
 
 ^' But now of what nature is the enthu- 
 siasm Christ requires ?" Here we must 
 part company from our author. We will 
 not stay to take exception to the phrase- 
 olog}' just quoted, in so far as it attributes 
 the inspiring power to a seeming, rather 
 than to a real. Divine indwelling : for it 
 is clear that if all good comes from God, 
 the enthusiasm now spoken of must be a 
 real Divine inspiration. But Divine influ- 
 ence operates in harmony with, and not 
 in substitution of, psychological forces ; 
 and the question to be considered there- 
 fore is — how, psychologically ^ is this law- 
 making enthusiasm induced ? 
 
 Our author calls it '' the enthusiasm of 
 humanity," and defines it as ''the love 
 not of the race nor of the individual, but 
 of the race in the individual ; it is the 
 
*' Ecce Homo.^^ 241 
 
 love not of all men nor yet of every man, 
 but of the man in every man." " There 
 is a fellow-feeling, a yearning of kindness 
 towards a human being as such, which is 
 not dependent upon the character of the 
 particular human being who excites it, 
 but rises before that character displays 
 itself, and does not at once or altogether 
 subside when it exhibits itself as unami- 
 able. We save a man from drowning 
 whether he is amiable or the contrary, 
 and we should consider it right to do so, 
 even though we knew him to be a very 
 great criminal, simply because he is a 
 man. By examples like this we may dis- 
 cover that a love for humanity as such 
 exists, and that it is a natural passion " — 
 a constituent element, we would add, of 
 that unity of humanity which we have 
 treated of in a former chapter. '' Now 
 this was the passion upon which Christ 
 seized ; and treating it as the law-making 
 power, or root of morality, in human na- 
 ture, He trained and developed it into that 
 Christian spirit which received the new 
 
 name of ar/dirr)'' 
 
 All this is exceedingly good, and we 
 
 R 
 
242 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 admit its truth if we be allowed to reckon 
 the enthusiasm of humanity, not as a 
 primary, but as a secondary and sub- 
 ordinate, principle of action. We cannot 
 understand, however, what our author 
 means when he speaks of Christ " seizing 
 upon a passion and training and develop- 
 ing it." How is this effected in our 
 modern daily life ? In what way does 
 Christ seize upon our humane passion ? 
 No pyschological connection is shown 
 between our knowledge of any thing Christ 
 did and the kindling of the dydTrrj ; and 
 in the absence of such psychological con- 
 nection, Ecce Homo's entire argument falls 
 to the ground. 
 
 It is no sufficient reply to our objection 
 to say, that "since Christ showed this 
 enthusiasm to men, it has been found pos- 
 sible for them to imitate it, and that every 
 new imitation, by bringing the marvel visi- 
 bly before us, revives the power of the 
 original " — and that thus " it is handed 
 on like the torch from runner to runner 
 in the race of life." Such reasoning con- 
 fesses the difficulty without removing it. 
 No intelligent and self-sustained enthu- 
 
■' Ecce Homo.'" 243 
 
 siasm can be kindled by simple imitation 
 — the enthusiasm of imitation is facti- 
 tious. There must, in order to the pro- 
 duction of a genuine feeling, be in every 
 individual instance a new application of the 
 exciting motive. And this exciting motive, 
 Ecce Homo^s argument does not supply. 
 
 True, it is attempted, but see how 
 feebly ! "■ The first method of training 
 this passion, which Christ employed, was 
 the direct one of making it a point of duty 
 to feel it. To love one's neighbour as one's 
 self, was He said, the first and greatest 
 law. And in the Sermon on the Mount 
 He requires the passion to be felt in such 
 strength as to include those whom we 
 have most reason to hate — our enemies 
 and those who maliciously injure us — and 
 delivers an imperative precept, Love your 
 enemies. 
 
 *' It has been shown that to do this is 
 not, as might at first appear, in the nature 
 of things impossible, but the further ques- 
 tion suggests itself. Can it be done to 
 order ? Has the verb to love really an 
 imperative mood ? " After a brief dis- 
 cussion of this question our author pro- 
 
 R 2 
 
244 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 ceeds : — '' But we shall soon be convinced 
 that Christ could not design by a mere 
 edict, however authoritative, to give this 
 passion of humanity strength enough to 
 make it a living and infallible principle of 
 morality in every man, when we consider, 
 first, what an ardent enthusiasm He de- 
 m^anded from His followers, and secondly, 
 how frail and tender a germ this passion 
 naturally is in human nature." To draw 
 forth the latent feeling, there must be the 
 sight of excellence. It is not, however, 
 " absolutely necessary that a man shall 
 have seen many men whom he can respect. 
 The most lost cynic will get a new heart 
 by learning thoroughly to believe in the 
 virtue of one man. Our estimate of 
 human nature is in proportion to the 
 best specimen of it we have witnessed. 
 This then it is which is wanted to raise 
 the feeling of humanity into an enthu- 
 siasm ; when the precept of love has been 
 given, an image must be set before the 
 eyes of those who are called upon to obey 
 it, an ideal or type of man which may 
 be noble and amiable enough to raise 
 the whole race and make the meanest 
 
■' Ecce Homo.'' 245 
 
 member of it sacred with reflected glory." 
 *'Did not Christ do this?" To this 
 question we answer unhesitatingly — He 
 did. But we very much doubt whether 
 the mere contemplation of moral excel- 
 lence will kindle enthusiasm, until there 
 has been preparatory moral culture. In 
 cultivated moral natures the effects might 
 follow which Ecce Homo anticipates. We 
 have not, however, as yet, advanced so 
 far on our journey. The question has 
 first to be considered, how are we to get 
 at the hearts of the degenerate ? 
 
 There is no doubt force in what follows : 
 *' If some human beings are abject and 
 contemptible, if it be incredible to us that 
 they can have any high dignity or destiny, 
 do we regard them from so great a height 
 as Christ ? Are we likely to be more 
 pained by their faults and deficiencies 
 than He was ? Is our standard higher 
 than His ? And yet He associated by 
 preference with these meanest of the race ; 
 no contempt for them did He ever express, 
 no suspicion that they might be less dear 
 than the best and wisest to the common 
 Father, no doubt that they were naturally 
 
246 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 capable of rising to a moral elevation like 
 
 His own. There is nothing of which a 
 
 man may be prouder than of this ; it is the 
 
 most hopeful and redeeming fact in history ; 
 
 it is precisely what was wanting to raise the 
 
 love of man, as man, to enthusiasm. An 
 
 eternal glory has been shed upon the 
 
 human race by the love Christ bore to it. 
 
 And it was because the edict of universal 
 
 love went forth to men whose hearts were 
 
 in no cynical mood, but possessed with a 
 
 spirit of devotion to a man, that words 
 
 vv^hich, at any other time, however grandly 
 
 they might sound, would have been but 
 
 words, penetrated so deeply, and along 
 
 with the law of love the power of love was 
 
 given. Therefore also the first Christians 
 
 w^ere enabled to dispense with philosophical 
 
 phrases, and, instead of saying that they 
 
 loved the ideal of man in man, could 
 
 simply say and feel that they loved Christ 
 
 in every man." 
 
 We cannot deny that the point to be 
 finally determined is now at length fairly 
 put. *' The kernel of the Christian moral 
 scheme " is personal devotion to Christ. 
 How, then, is this passionate personal de- 
 
" Ecce Homo.'' 247 
 
 votion to be awakened and sustained ? 
 Mark with what a trembhng hand Ecce 
 Homo writes the answer to this clinching 
 question ! ** As love provokes love, many 
 have found it possible to conceive for 
 Christ an attachment, the closeness of 
 which no words can describe — a venera- 
 tion so possessing and absorbing the man 
 within them that they have said, ' I live 
 no more, but Christ lives in me.' " 
 
 We have said that the point has been 
 fairly put, but we dare not venture to say 
 that it has been fairly met. Ecce Homo 
 seeks to get out of the difficulty which he 
 evidently feels pressing upon him by citing 
 examples of personal devotion to Christ, in 
 which he knows perfectly well the passion 
 was kindled on a theory very different 
 from his theory. It was not the contem- 
 plation of Christ's general love to humanity 
 merely that aroused the heart in the ex- 
 amples referred to, but the appropriation 
 of Christ's love and work to the indivi- 
 dual conscience, first removing guilt and 
 the fear of its consequences, and then 
 kindling ardent love and passionate de- 
 votedness to the person and purposes 
 
248 The Philosophy of Evangelicism, 
 
 of Him by whom the redemption was 
 achieved. 
 
 Hence every Christian hymnal abounds 
 with such passages as — 
 
 " I sing the cross ! stupendous theme ! 
 Glow my heart, glow !" 
 
 And body, soul, time, talents, property, 
 life, are all, in glowing song, consecrated 
 to the service of Christ, to be employed in 
 telHng others what He has done for our- 
 selves, and urging them to share with us 
 our new-born joys. 
 
 Thus the life of the disciple becomes 
 like that of the Master — a life of self- 
 sacrificing toil to promote the world's 
 weal. So sang the gentle Keble: — 
 
 " Think not of rest ; though dreams be sweet, 
 Start up, and ply your heavenward feet. 
 Is not God's oath upon your head, 
 Ne'er to sink back on slothful bed ? 
 Never again your loins untie. 
 Nor let your torches waste and die. 
 Till, when the shadows thickest fall. 
 Ye hear your Master's midnight call!" 
 
 If to this we append a stanza from 
 Charles Wesley's more impassioned strains, 
 the two examples, breathing the spirit of 
 
^^ Ecce Homo.'^ 249 
 
 the Universal Church, will show the ardour 
 of the enthusiasm which, not on Eccc 
 Homo's but on the evangelical scheme, is 
 kindled at the cross: — 
 
 *' Were the whole realm of nature mine, 
 That were a present far too small ; 
 Love so amazing, so Divine, 
 
 Demands my soul, my life, my all 1" 
 
 Now that personal devotedness to 
 Christ, more ardent than even poetry 
 can express, inflames many Christian 
 hearts is a fact which Ecce Homo frankly 
 admits. But that his theory accounts for 
 the fact, none but the most credulous 
 can believe. If the evangelical theory of 
 Christian morals be not more rational 
 than that of Ecce Homo, reason had better 
 descend from her throne and abandon all 
 attempt to solve the problems of human 
 thought. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 ND now, with a few parting words, 
 we bid our theme, Farewell ! 
 
 The chief thing we fear from 
 criticism is, lest undue attention 
 be given to the mere incidents of the dis- 
 cussion, instead of striking home at once 
 to its innermost principle. That principle 
 we here again record. In brief, it is 
 simply that all true and saving faith in 
 the Christian Atonement is intuitional. 
 More at large, it is as follows, viz. : — 
 Humanity is constituted so as to impli- 
 cate us not only in our own personal 
 moral acts, but also in the moral acts of 
 each other ; and iii consequence thereof, 
 conscience, in its higher exercises extends 
 beyond the sphere of our individual con- 
 duct, and is sympathetically affected by 
 
Conclusion. 251 
 
 others' conduct. The extension of these 
 principles to their utmost degree unfolds 
 the true theory of the sufferings of Christ 
 for our guilt, and of our participation in His 
 perfect righteousness. By virtue of His 
 UNION with us in moral consciousness^ a clear 
 avenue is opened between the Christ con- 
 sciousness and the human consciousness, 
 and we detect, in their inter-communion, 
 the accord of the atoning act and the 
 believing act. Our Saviour, conscious of 
 our sins, has taken them upon Himself 
 and atoned for them ; we, conscious of 
 His righteousness, appear with it in the 
 sight of God and are justified : our sins 
 are His sins ; His righteousness, our 
 righteousness : and this tmion of Christ 
 and His people in moral consciousness, is 
 the Central Idea of the Gospel.* 
 
 But let it be distinctly understood, that 
 
 ^ St. Augustuie held the doctrine of Imputation 
 in what Faber designates " its highest form," in- 
 sisting " upon the reality of a reciprocating or 
 interchanging imputation, so that our sins become 
 the sins of Christ, whilst conversely Christ's righte- 
 ousness becomes our rigteousness." — Faber' s Prun. 
 Doc. of Just. p. 197. 
 
252 The Philosophy of E vaitge licism . 
 
 in thus recordins: the result of our inves- 
 tigation, we are not attempting to account 
 for the facts here recorded, or to explain 
 why man's relation to God is what we 
 affirm it to be. The astronomer, in 
 ascribing certain celestial phenomena to 
 gravitation, does not account for them, 
 he merely states a principle of generalisa- 
 tion — a law evolved from the phenomena 
 themselves, by the application of which, 
 facts before apparently unconnected be- 
 come reducible to a system. The meta- 
 phenomenal is far beyond our reach. As 
 well might you ask us to explain, why 
 God made man ? as to ask, why the rela- 
 tions between heaven and earth are such 
 as we find them to be ? The utmost we 
 can do is to evolve from ascertained phe- 
 nomena the principle of their generalisa- 
 tion, and this is all we have attempted 
 to do. Aught beyond would involve the 
 hazards of an Icarian flight. 
 
 To prevent the possibility of mistake as 
 to the character of the intuition contended 
 for, we here again record our conviction, 
 that the intuitions of our moral nature are 
 the only religious intuitions spontaneized, 
 
Conclusion. 253 
 
 and that the intellectual intuitions, mis- 
 called faith, which some have proposed to 
 elevate into original principles of belief, 
 are excluded by the law of parsimony, as 
 being wholly unnecessary to account for 
 what our ordinary moral intuitions, re- 
 sponding to external facts, sufficiently 
 account for already. 
 
 Respecting these also it may be ob- 
 served, that it is of the nature of our moral 
 intuitions to be dependent for their accu- 
 racy and vigour upon the extent of our 
 moral culture ; so that, practically, faith 
 in its inception is the product of contrition, 
 and, in its permanence and increase, the 
 product of a holy life. Hence, the true 
 and only way to acquire and retain a 
 peace-giving faith in the Christian sacri- 
 fice is to seek it in the path of prayer 
 and obedience, the state of mind thus in- 
 duced requiring nothing more than the 
 objective suggestion of the phenomenal 
 fact as the occasion of our spontaneously 
 putting forth a believing activity. So 
 Wordsworth wisely taught, although, like 
 other lessons of wisdom, his words are 
 not always received in their true intent: — 
 
254 ^^^ Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 "The victory is most sure 
 For him, who, seeking faith by virtue, strives 
 To yield entire submission to the law 
 Of conscience; conscience reverenced and obeyed, 
 As God's most intimate presence in the soul, 
 And His most perfect image in the world." 
 
 Of all subjects of human investigation, 
 none is so greatly glorious as the world's 
 atonement. It is the bow in the cloud 
 inviting our thoughts from the storms of 
 earth by its peerless beauty — heaven's an- 
 gelic messenger winging radiance through 
 the gloom. If we have paused awhile in 
 our earthly wanderings to gaze at the 
 cross, far from our hearts have been the 
 feelings of those who wagged their heads 
 in sceptic raillery ; very different have 
 been the sentiments prompting us to 
 speculate upon the mysteries of " that 
 hour " from those of unbelief. We indulge 
 the persuasion that, old as the theme is, 
 it is still fraught with novelty ; and that, 
 if darkness continue to shroud its glory, 
 it is a darkness which will yield to free 
 rational investigation, and prove transient 
 as the three hours' gloom which, when 
 Calvary bore the Crucified, gathered round 
 the sacred hill. 
 
Conclusion, 255 
 
 It is one of the noblest attributes of 
 truth to court inquiry. Because the doc- 
 trine of the Christian sacrifice is the most 
 sublime of truths, we cannot act more con- 
 trariwise to its genius than to attempt to 
 repress the spirit which, in a matter of such 
 concernment, is prone to demand the most 
 searching investigation. In the name, 
 then, of the magnitude of our subject, we 
 ask free discussion ; for certain it is that 
 the deeper our thinkings the richer will be 
 the discovered treasure, the wider our ex- 
 plorations the more magnificent will be 
 the world's mine of sacred wealth. Such is 
 the unity of truth, that a new discovery in 
 one direction can scarcely fail to excite 
 and facilitate inquiry in another. Every 
 pulsation in the heart of truth throbs to 
 the utmost extremity of finite being ; every 
 pebble cast upon its waters spreads its 
 circling undulations to the most distant 
 shores of time. The wondrous advance- 
 ment that has been made within the last 
 few years in almost every branch of human 
 knowledge, demands from theology that, 
 if it would still ride triumphant upon the 
 stream of thought, it must keep pace with 
 
256 The Philosophy of Evangelicisni, 
 
 its rapid progress. Professional caution 
 is proverbially Sipsetido caution: and hence 
 every science under professional control 
 requires the occasional admixture of the 
 controversial and lay elements, to irritate 
 it to healthy activity. 
 
 One thing, at all events, is quite clear 
 — that just in proportion as science has 
 extended its domain and acquired system 
 and certainty, it has become more simple, 
 and better adapted to the popular mind : 
 and similar is the result we should augur, 
 from an application to our theology of a 
 more exact philosophy. However prolix 
 the process of discovery, truth when dis- 
 covered is always, like the pure diamond, 
 eminently simple ; and, in its simplicity, 
 exquisitely beautiful. Its chaste brilliance 
 is that of heaven's own gem. Simplicity 
 is energy : while mystery is powerless, 
 simple truth is omnipotent. Truth strung 
 with nature and revelation, philosophy 
 and theology, science and the Bible, 
 flings from its immortal lyre enraptur- 
 ing harmony ; and the more perfect the 
 harmony and simplicity of truth, the more 
 thrilling its power. Simplify the truth. 
 
Conclusion. 257 
 
 and you sharpen the edge of its weapon ; 
 divest it of obscurity, and you add mass 
 and velocity to its projectile force. 
 
 The hypothesis we have sought to esta- 
 blish commends itself, we venture to think, 
 as peculiarly characterised by the attri- 
 butes of simplicity and power. In those 
 few words, "God is, in Christ, righteously 
 reconciled : believe it, and accept Him as 
 your loving Father" — is concentrated the 
 entire Gospel. To proclaim this with be- 
 fitting zeal, using every law^ful expedient 
 to arouse the conscience and command 
 attention, is the Church's sole mission. 
 All beside is mere fringe and garniture. 
 Once let this truth arrest the heart, 
 whether won by a rude and rugged elo- 
 quence, searching logic, or a devout choral 
 service, by the stern tones of rebuke or the 
 seductions of holy song, that moment be- 
 comes the turning-point in a man's history. 
 The first thought heavenward opens out 
 before us the whole vista of the Christian 
 salvation : the first step is across the 
 Rubicon, on the path of glory, to the city 
 of God. The earliest dawn of that moral 
 state which indicates that conscience is 
 
 s 
 
258 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 now the sovereign mistress of the soul, 
 introduces us into relations of sympathy 
 with the Christ-mind, and from that mo- 
 ment His righteousness only awaits our 
 appropriation to become consciously ourSo 
 How to gain access to the conscience 
 SO as to introduce the evangelical lever, 
 becomes thus, it will be seen, a mighty 
 problem. Till the conscience is aroused, 
 the Gospel is inoperative — it is offering 
 food to a gorged appetite, water to one 
 who feels no thirst. If aroused and there 
 is at hand no Gospel, the conscience seeks 
 refuge in unhealthy stimulants and drowns 
 its anxiety in scepticism, superstition, or 
 the excitement of worldly pleasure. Hence 
 the importance of accompanying every 
 appeal to the conscience with an offered 
 Christ, neither concealing His presence 
 under an overdone ritualism nor under a 
 weak common-place sermonism. Thanks 
 are due for the revival and defence of a 
 word whereof our most evangelical reli- 
 gionists were beginning to be ashamed : 
 whether it be called enthusiasm, or the 
 inspiration of the Holy One, or a baptism 
 of fire, its presence is essential to the 
 
Conclusion. 259 
 
 effectiveness of utterances offering Christ. 
 The method of conversion by human in- 
 strumentahty is not by high and dry intel- 
 lectuahsm, but through the communion of 
 moral natures — conscience in attrition with 
 conscience. Flashed from the one earnest 
 conscience, truth arouses the careless 
 consciences of the many, partly by direct 
 mental sympathy, partly through the sug- 
 gestiveness there is in the very aspect of 
 ardent zeal, whence steals a force of per- 
 suasion far beyond skilful logic or the most 
 thrilling eloquence of words, but chiefly 
 by virtue of the adapted power which, ac- 
 cording to our natural constitution, exists 
 in moral truth thus coming living from the 
 lips to compel a response. 
 
 " As the ample moon 
 In the deep stillness of a summer even 
 Rising behind a thick and lofty grove, 
 Burns like an unconsuming fire of light 
 In the green trees, and, kindling on all sides 
 Their leafy umbrage, turns the dusky veil 
 Into a substance glorious as her own, 
 
 • •••••• 
 
 like power abides 
 In man's celestial spirit.'' 
 
 The trust that a secret influence may ac- 
 
 s 2 
 
26o The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 company preaching which has in it no 
 perceptible moral force^ is only another 
 form of the equally fetish notion that a 
 miraculous energy permeates unintelligible 
 symbolic rites ; both errors exerting a 
 most baneful effect, by lulling to sleep 
 ministerial energy and by weakening the 
 conviction which cannot be too strongly 
 held, that in religious, as in commercial 
 and scientific progress, there is a strict re- 
 lation between labour and success. 
 
 Then, wherever there is simplicity and 
 its associated power there will be union. 
 What ! is the union of Christendom within 
 the range of possibility, or is it not the 
 dream of a fanatical fancy ? Only in one 
 way is it possible. Until hearts are united 
 in the common experience of the cross's 
 peace-giving power, we shall look for 
 union in vain. The cry for union is heard 
 everywhere ; but w^hat is the kind of union 
 contemplated ? Is it to be an artificial 
 union, a union which has nothing to sus- 
 tain it but the compacts of councils and 
 synods ? In all such artificial unions 
 there is the germ of oppression, and, con- 
 sequently, the foe of social progress. 
 
Conclusion. 261 
 
 Union to be free, permanent, and pro- 
 gressive, must be natural, the spontaneous 
 efflux of products variable as the vernal 
 verdure but bursting like it spontaneously 
 from a common soil. 
 
 Let the principle of intuitional faith 
 once permeate our theology, and it will 
 but need to be worked carefully out to its 
 legitimate conclusions, in order to anni- 
 hilate polemic strife. Unite Christians, 
 if only in the same degree in which men 
 of science are united ; let them recognise 
 a central idea expanding outwards, instead 
 of beginning at divers points of the circum- 
 ference discursively to reason inwards ; 
 assimilate their difference of opinion and 
 interchanges of thought to those common 
 with the enquirers into other branches of 
 human knowledge — and theology would 
 cease to be, what it has been too long, a 
 system of distasteful and repulsive logo- 
 machy, it would have intellectual as well 
 as spiritual attractions and, assuming its 
 rightful supremacy among the sciences, 
 would concentrate the mental and moral 
 energies of the churches in promoting a 
 method of Divine teaching adapted alike for 
 
262 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 the pulpit and the lecture-room, the cathe- 
 dral and the conventicle, the select assembly 
 of the elite and the promiscuous multitude ; 
 a method which, sweeping aside petty party 
 strifes, would proffer a theme whereon 
 the most profound in thought and eloquent 
 in diction, might worthily dilate, either in 
 unadorned simplicity or (if it unfold to the 
 conscience what it exposes to the eye), 
 amid the pomp of ritual, or wherewith 
 the natural oratory that can attract and 
 hold the attention of a street crowd 
 might, without encountering the super- 
 cilious scowl of pedantic respectability, 
 wield a power like that which the Master 
 wielded of old. 
 
 To revive this bond of sympathy with 
 ^'the common people," as when Jesus 
 taught and they " heard Him gladly," 
 is universally admitted to be the want 
 of the age. Not a subservient homage 
 through alms-giving, but a frank inter- 
 change of thought, and thorough moral 
 intercommunion between the spiritual life 
 of the Church and the untaught masses 
 which crowd the lanes and alleys of our 
 populous towns. Among these Christian- 
 
Conclusion. 263 
 
 ity has won, in all ages, its most splendid 
 triumphs. Under its chisel, the hardest 
 granite has assumed forms of surpassing 
 beauty. To its voice, nature's sternest 
 rocks oft give back the sweetest echoes. 
 The lessons of a merely expedient or 
 prudential morality, decked though they 
 be with the tinsel of the philanthropic 
 novelist, are as child's play, compared 
 with the manly power of a well-applied 
 Gospel — but the feeble tinklings of the 
 sheep bell, lost in the mighty sound that 
 sends forth from the cathedral tower, far 
 away o'er the surrounding landscape, the 
 summons to prayer. 
 
 Quite possible is it to exaggerate pro- 
 bable results ; yet we cannot forbear think- 
 ing that were the hypothesis we have con- 
 tended for generally accepted and acted 
 on, much of the prejudice against the 
 Church's teaching, as a clumsy system of 
 creeds and artifices, would give way ; and 
 the religion of the Cross 
 
 " Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves 
 Of tempest," 
 
 would be hailed more generally by earth's 
 
264 The Philosophy of Evangelicism. 
 
 storm-tost mariners as a true light, guid- 
 ing to safety. A harmony would become 
 established between faith and obedience, 
 between theology and philosophy, between 
 conscience and the Bible, such as to 
 enable us boldly to rest the popular recep- 
 tion of revealed truth on a self-evident, and 
 therefore impregnable, basis ; and with their 
 spiritual artillery thus planted, the Church's 
 embattled legions attacking with greater 
 confidence, would publish the Gospel as 
 the natural, the only efficient, and there- 
 fore the Divinely appointed instrument for 
 arousing to action man's moral nature, and 
 for carrying to the homes and hearths of 
 the most degraded of our population, the 
 fairest forms of virtue and the brightest 
 hopes of heaven. 
 
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