i AiTH AND Freedom 
 
 BY 
 
 Stopford A.Brooke 
 
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 https://archive.org/details/faithfreedom00broo_1 
 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF CARLYLE, 
 
 By Edwin D. Mead. 
 
 / vol., ibmo. $/.oo. 
 
 A careful, thorough survey of Carlyle's career as a writer, 
 in order to estimate justly his rank, characteristics, and value 
 as a thinker. It will be read with interest and gratitude by all 
 who admire Carlyle's genius. 
 
 /*'or sale by all booksellers, or sent, postpaid, on receipt of 
 price, by the Publishers, 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO., • BOSTON. 
 
Faith and Freedom. 
 
 BY 
 
 y 
 
 STOPFORD A. BROOKE. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 Geo. H. Ellis, 141 Franklin Street. 
 1881. 
 
Press of Ceo. If. E!!ls, 141 FrankHn Street, Boston. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Introduction, v-xxiii 
 
 II. Faith, 1 
 
 III. God js Spirit. I., 15 
 
 IV. God is Spirit. II., 30 
 
 V. The Childhood of God, 4.5 
 
 VI. The Light of God in Man, 59 
 
 VII. The Grace of Jesus Christ, 74 
 
 VIII. The Intellectual Development of Christ, . . 89 
 
 IX. The Fitness of Christianity for Mankind. I., . 102 
 
 X. The Fitness of Christianity for Mankind. II.,. 117 
 
 XI. The Changed Aspect of Christian Theology, . 130 
 
 xii. Biblical Criticism, 148 
 
 XIII. The Atonement, 166 
 
 XIV. Devotion to the Conventional, 185 
 
 XV. The Religion of Signs, 200 ' 
 
 XVI. The Naturalness op God's Judgments 214 
 
 XVII. Liberty, 227 
 
 XVIII. The Individual Soul and God, 244 
 
 XIX. Immortality. L, 258 
 
 XX. Immortality. II., 272 
 
 XXI. Immortality. III., 290 
 
 XXII. Immortality. IV. 308 
 
 XXIII. Letter to the Congregation of Bedford Chapel, 327 
 
 XXIV. Salt without Savor, 331 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Stopford Brooke * is the greatest preacher that the Church 
 of England "has had since Robertson of Brighton ; and his with- 
 drawal from the Chm-ch is, in many respects, the most signifi- 
 cant recent occurrence in the English religious world. The 
 deep interest which his new movement has awakened in Amer- 
 ica, where, both as a religious thinker and a man of letters, he 
 has almost as many admirers as in England itself, has induced 
 the publisher to present this collection of his sermons, selected 
 chiefly from his later volumes, with a view to exhibit his gen- 
 eral doctrinal position and the prominent characteristics of his 
 preaching. His recent withdrawal from the Church and 
 assumption of an independent position are not to be regarded 
 as involving any very recent radical change in these. His teach- 
 
 * stopford Augustus Brooke was born at Dublin in 1832, and was educated at 
 Trinity College, Dublin, where he gained the Downe prize and the Vice-Chan- 
 cellor's prize for English verse. He graduated B.A. in 185G, and M.A. in 1858. 
 He was curate of St. Matthew's Marylebone, 1857-59 ; curate of Kensington, 1860 
 -G3 ; chaplain to the British Embassy at Berlin. 18G3-G5 ; minister of St. James' 
 Chapel, 18CG-75 ; and became minister of Bedford Chapel in June, 187G. He 
 was appointed a chaplain in ordinary to the Queen in 1872. Mr. Brooke's pub- 
 lished works are as follows : Ltfe and Letters of Frederick W. Robertson ; Ser- 
 mons, First and Second Series ; Freedom in the Church of England; Christ in 
 Modern Life; The Fight of Faith; Theology m the English Poets; A Primer of 
 English Literature; Tlie Life and Works of Milton; and the Life and Work of 
 Maurice, a Memorial Sermon. 
 
 The dates of the several sermons in this volume have been given, as afford- 
 ing some sort of index to Mr. Brooke's doctrinal development, and as explaining, 
 in some instances, words which iie would not use to-day. It is to be hoped that 
 the irap(jrtaiit series of doctrinal sermons which Mr. Brooke has been preaching 
 since his withdrawal from the Church may soon be given to the public. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ing to-day is essentially the same as that of five years ago. 
 The primary significance of his new movement lies in the 
 recognition of the inconsistency of tliese religious views — 
 views long entertained with greater or less distinctness, and 
 shared essentially by all the great Broad Church leaders — 
 with his position as a clergyman of the Church of England. 
 
 It was as the biographer of Robertson that Stopford Brooke 
 first became known to the general public. His Life of Robert- 
 son, one of the mo5t admirable works of its kind in the lan- 
 guage, exhibited him as a firm and independent thinker, 
 already well emancipated from conventionalism, and impatient 
 of much in the Church's system, an enthusiastic admirer of the 
 great Brighton preacher as a man, and in hearty sympathy with 
 his teachings. " As a clergyman," he said in one place, " Rob- 
 ertson brought distinctly forward the duty of fearlessness in 
 speaking. He was not one who held what are called liberal 
 opinions in the study, but would not bring them into the pulpit. 
 He did not waver between truth to himself and success in the 
 world. He was offered advancement in the Church, if he would 
 abate the strength of his expressions with regard to the Sab- 
 bath. He refused the proffer with sternness. Far beyond all 
 the other perils which beset the Church was, he tliought, this 
 peril : that men who were set apart to speak the truth, and to 
 live above the world, should prefer ease and worldly honor to 
 conscience, and substitute conventional opinions for eternal 
 truths." " That men," he said again, " should, within the 
 necessary limits, follow out their own character, and refuse to 
 submit themselves to the common mould, is the foremost need 
 of the age in which we live; and, if the lesson which Robert- 
 son's life teaches in this respect can be received by his brethren, 
 he will neither have acted nor taught in vain. Robertson was 
 himself, and not a fortuitous concurrence of other men. He 
 possessed a true individuality, and retained the freedom of 
 action and the diversity of feeling which men, not only in the 
 Church, but in every pi-ofession and business, so miserably lose, 
 when they dress their minds in the fashion of current opinion, 
 
INTKODUCTION. 
 
 vii 
 
 and look at the world, at Nature, and at God, through the glass 
 whicli custom so assiduously smokes." Brooke was already at 
 this time thoroughly alive to the difficulty of maintaining true 
 individuality under a system like that of the Church of Eng- 
 land. "The great disadvantage," he said, "of a Church like 
 ours, — with fixed traditions, with a fixed system of operation, 
 with a theological education which is exceedingly conservative, 
 with a manner of looking at general subjects from a fixed cler- 
 ical point of view, with a bias to shelter and encourage certain 
 definite modes of thinking, — • is that under its government cler- 
 gymen tend to become all of one pattern." 
 
 Mr. Brooke's first volume of sermons, published in 1868, 
 showed still more plainly than the Life of Robertson that he 
 did not belong to the ordinary London pattern, and that he was 
 able, in spite of the Church's system, to maintain his individu- 
 ality and to si:)eak fearlessly. Four sermons from this earliest 
 volume of Mr. Brooke are included in the present collection, — 
 the sermons upon " The Naturalness of God's Judgments," 
 "The Intellectual Development of Christ," "Devotion to the 
 Conventional," and " The Religion of Signs " ; and these 
 sermons, while by no means showing the maturity and depth 
 of thought which we find in the more important parts of 
 Christ in Modern Life, * and in the sermons of to-day, show 
 the same freshness of feeling, the same unhackneyed method, 
 and the same general intellectual tendencies. The volume at 
 once established Mr. Brooke's reputation as an original and 
 independent thinker, and he became from that time a real 
 power in London. 
 
 Mr. Brooke's second volume, Freedom in the Church of Eng- 
 land, appeared in 1871, and consisted of a series of sermons 
 suggested by the famous Voysey Judgment. The trial of 
 Mr. Voysey involved a discussion of the whole Broad Church 
 position, and the object of Mr. Brooke's work was to determine 
 the nature and extent of the Church's comprehension. The 
 
 • The sermons in the present collection upon "The Fitness of Cliristianity for 
 Mankind" and "Immortality" are taken from Christ in Modern Life. 
 
viii 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 volume contained sermons upon such questions of controversy 
 as Original Sin, the Atonement, and Biblical Criticism, — the 
 sermons in the present collection upon the two latter subjects 
 come from this volume, — and it is especially interesting as 
 showing how radical a man may be and yet find means to 
 reconcile his views with doctrinal standards like those of the 
 Church of England, or at any rate to justify to himself his 
 continuance within the Church. There is, perhaps, no better 
 popular defence of the Broad Church position, and how inad- 
 equate a defence this is Mr. Brooke would now be quick enough 
 to admit. It is to be remembered, however, that, while this 
 volume showed Mr. Brooke to be more or less at variance with 
 the Church's doctrines upon almost every point which he dis- 
 cussed, he had not at this time given up the belief in miracles, 
 which he afterward did, and which was the decisive cause of 
 his final withdrawal from the Church. This volume of ten 
 years ago is not therefore to be regarded altogether as the 
 defence of one holding the views for which Mr. Brooke now 
 stands, although it does oppose and deny beliefs which are as 
 unreservedly demanded by the Church, if they are not as fun- 
 damental to its constitution, as the belief in miracle itself. 
 
 The radical views which Mr. Brooke felt called upon to 
 assert with the greater emphasis, as the Voysey Judgment 
 seemed in some respects to curtail that degree of liberty which 
 had already been allowed in the Church, were expressed at the 
 same time with studied temperance, and respect for opposing 
 opinions. " I trust," he said, " that all will recognize in these 
 sermons the deep desire I possess that in the midst of these 
 manifold differences of opinion, the existence of which I cher- 
 ish as a means of arriving at truth, we may not lose our 
 liberty through fear, nor our reverence for truth through reck- 
 lessness of opinion on the one side, or through a blind devotion 
 to transient forms of thought upon the other." He proceeded 
 to define his conception of a National Church, maintaining 
 that a National Church was impossible and not national at all 
 tmless it permitted within its actual boundaries every phase of 
 
INTKODT7CTION. 
 
 ix 
 
 religious thought possible to Englishmen, within certain limits 
 ■which demand belief in a few cardinal doctrines, — doctrines as 
 general as in the State the articles, for instance, of the Bill of 
 Rights. In a word, the National Church must tolerate and 
 comprehend, on an equal footing, religious views as vai'ious and 
 conflicting as the political views represented in Parliament, 
 being, in its sphere, as true a miniature as Parliament of the 
 national life. The creeds and articles of the Church must 
 be viewed, like the Acts of Parliament, as entirely provisional 
 and fluctuating in their nature, merely regulative and always 
 subject to revision ; and opposition to them must no more be 
 construed as disloyalty than attemjits to reform legislation. 
 "Would the Church allow this freedom? If not, it was not a 
 National Church, and its disestablishment was doomed. Mr. 
 Brooke then proceeded to show what some of the changes were 
 which criticism and science had made necessary in theology, 
 and to defend the views upon the principal questions of contro- 
 versy for which his party demanded tolerance and recognition. 
 If such views could not be recognized by the Church, then 
 there was but one course for the liberal clergy. " They can- 
 not," said Mr. Brooke, " in the interests of truth, abide with her 
 whose features are no longer those of a mother." " And if they 
 leave," he said to his people, " and you agree with their love of 
 liberty, your place is also no longer in the Church. Truth 
 should be as dear to you as it is to your ministers. The lib- 
 eral clergy ought to feel that they have the supjjort of liberally- 
 minded men in their effort to keep the Church open and on a 
 level with the knowledge of the day." For ten years longer, 
 Mr. Brooke kept up the losing fight. Now, he has come to see 
 clearly that his theory of a National Church, fine as it may be 
 in itself, is not the theory upon which the Church of England 
 really works, and that he only stultified himself by continuing 
 to act as though it were. 
 
 But the jiulpit of St. James' Chapel was no more conspicuous 
 for its liberal theology tiian for its innovations upon the ordi- 
 nary range of pulpit themes and pulpit methods. Perhaps the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 primary endeavor of Stopford Brooke's preaching, tliroughont 
 his whole ministerial career, has been to clear religious life and 
 thought of a false traditionalism, to oppose the tendency to 
 localize and j^igeon-hole religion, looking upon it as a special 
 deiiartnieut of life, and concerned with a particular histoiy and 
 particular institutions, instead of embracing all history and 
 being the informing spirit of all life and all the true elements 
 of society. C/iri.'<l in Modern Life is the fitting title of his 
 principal volume of sermons. He would make 
 
 " Our common daily life divine, 
 And every land a Palestine." 
 
 He would bring religion to bear upon every department of life 
 and thought, and bring every department of thought into the 
 service of religion ; would " claim, as belonging to the province 
 of the Christian ministry, political, historical, scientific, and 
 artistic work in their connection with theology," and " rub out 
 the sharp lines drawn by that false distinction of sacred and 
 profane."* Every .sphere of man's thought and action, he said, 
 is in idea, and ought to be in fact, a channel through which 
 God thinks and acts; and so there is no subject which does not 
 in the end run up into theology, and may not in the end be 
 made religious. A proper recognition of this, he believed, would 
 bring about important changes in the methods and the func- 
 tion of the Church, and greatly increase its usefulness ; and it 
 was in accordance with this that he instituted, at St. James' 
 Chapel, courses of Sunday afternoon lectures, which should 
 
 *When the .Shakspere Memorial was dedicated at Stratford-on-Avon, two 
 years ago. it was Mr, Brooke who was invited to ^o down and iireach the sermon 
 appropriate to the occasion from the pul])it of the old Stratford church. "I sup- 
 port with pleasure." he said. " any movement which hrinss Shakspere more on 
 the st;ige in this country. And, when I say that, I mciui ti) siipiiort all dramatic 
 performances which represent human action and eniotinn with truth, which tell 
 or strive to tell the real tale of human life. The stage ought to be one of the 
 best means of education in a State; and it might be much more so than itlsiu 
 England, if the foolish and sometimes odious stigma laid upon it by religious per- 
 sons were frankly removed, and a cultivated demand made for the production 
 of admirable plays." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xi 
 
 avoid as much as possible the form of sermons, but have some 
 direct bearing on religious tiiought and the conduct of life. 
 He invited well-known and competent men to speak upon such 
 subjects as " The Inner Life of the Romish Church " and " The 
 Relation of Music to Religion " ; and he himself gave the admi- 
 rable lectures upon Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Burns, 
 which have since been published under the title of Tlieolofjy 
 in the English Poets. * The experiment was very successful. 
 It was much criticised, as was to be expected ; " but the blame 
 of many accustomed to hear nothing but sermons from the 
 pulpit," said Mr. Brooke, " has been wholly outweighed in my 
 mind by the fact of the attendance of many persons who were 
 before uninterested in religious subjects at all." He believed 
 that much good might be done, if similar efforts became gen- 
 eral. " It would give variety to clerical work ; and much knowl- 
 edge that now remains only as latent force among the clergy 
 miglit be made dynamic, if I may boi'row a term from science. 
 If rectors of large chm-ches would ask clergymen who know any 
 subject of the day well to lecture on its religious aspect in the 
 afternoon, they would please themselves, enlighten their congre- 
 gations, and fill their churches. And they would assist the 
 cause of religion among that large number of persons who do 
 not go to Church, and who think that Christianity has nothing 
 to do with politics, art, literature, or science." 
 
 It would have been impossible for ]\Ir. Brooke to have 
 chosen a theme better combining those things which he is best 
 qualified to tieat than that of Theolngij in the English Poets. 
 First a leligious thinker, he is next a literary critic; and his 
 various essays upon Engli.^h Literature and its great masters 
 have not been surpassed in their good proportions, their just 
 estimates, and fine appreciation of inner purpose, by anything 
 written in our time. His little Primer of English. Literature 
 is a very miracle of a book, reconciling compression with 
 
 •A second course, on Blake. Shelley, Keats, and Byron, was subsequently de- 
 livered: but this series has not yet been published. It is to be hojied that the 
 larger public may not much longer be Icept from the enjoyment of it. 
 
xii 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 living and breathing in a way almost never done before, and 
 managing in its hundred and fifty pages to set Csedmon and 
 Chaucer and Elizabeth's time and Anne's before us with a 
 freshness and vividness that the big conipendiums have scarcely 
 ever dreamed of. Quite equal, in its way, is Mr. Brooke's 
 larger work — still a very small work — upon Milton. It 
 reveals the profoundest and most sympathetic study of Milton, 
 and the completest understanding of the Puritan movement 
 and the Puritan mind, with which Mr. Brooke himself really 
 has so much in common. He is equally at home in every prov- 
 ince and period of English literature and English histoiy; and 
 Mr. Green, the author of the Hislonj of the English People, has 
 publicly acknowledged the obligations which he is under to 
 him for assistance in the preparation of that great work. 
 
 " The poets of England ever since Cowper," saj-s Mr. Brooke, 
 " have been more and more theological, till we reach such men 
 as Tennyson or Browning, whose poetry is overcrowded with 
 theology." The study of the theology of the poets is especially 
 delightful and helpful, because their theology is the natural 
 growth of their own hearts, free from the claims of dogma and 
 independent of conventional religious thought. In their ordi- 
 nary life, indeed, the poets were subject to the same influences 
 as other men. They may have held a distinct creed or con- 
 formed to a special sect, or they may have expressed the. 
 strongest denial of theological opinions ; but in their poetry 
 their imagination was freed, and they spoke truths which were 
 true because they were felt. " And the fact is that in this 
 realm of emotion, where prejudice dies, the thoughts and feel- 
 ings of their poetry on the subject of God and Man are often 
 wholly different from those expressed in their every-day life. 
 Cowper's theology in his poetry soars beyond the narrow sect to 
 which he belonged into an infinitely wider universe. Shelley's 
 atheism, when the fire of emotion or imagination is burning 
 in him, and when he is floating on his wings he knows not 
 whither, becomes pantheism, and his hatred of Christianity is 
 lost in enthusiastic but unconscious statement of Christian 
 conceptions." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xiii 
 
 Of the sixteen lectures which make up this volume upon 
 Theology in the English Poets, nine are devoted to "Words- 
 worth, who holds as high a place witii IMr. Brooke as he held 
 with Robertson before hini. "In coming to AV^ordsworth," he 
 says, " we come to the greatest of the English poets of this 
 century, greatest not only as a poet, but as a i^hilosopher. It 
 is the mingling of profound thought and of ordered thought 
 with poetic sensibility and power (the power always the master 
 of the sensibilitj') which places him in this high position. He 
 does possess a philosophy, and its range is wide as the universe. 
 He sings of God, of Man, of Nature, and, as the result of these 
 three, of Human Life ; and they are all linked by thought and 
 through feeling one to another, so that the result is a complete 
 whole." From what Mr. Brooke has to say of Wordsworth's 
 poetry of Nature, I quote a single passage, because it is so good 
 an expression of the philosophy which underlies so much in his 
 own jJreaching. Wordsworth he says " sjieaks of 
 
 ' The Being that is in the clouds and air, 
 That is in the green leaves among the groves, 
 Wliose dwelling is the light of setting suns. 
 And the round ocean, and tlie living air. 
 And tlie bhie skj', and in the mind of man 
 A motion and a spirit, that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought. 
 And rolls through all things.' 
 
 This Being, observe, is more than a mere influence. It is a 
 conscious life, which realizes itself as a personality in realizing 
 itself within the sum of all things. In fact, this Being, who is 
 the life of the universe, is the all-moving Spirit of God, the 
 soul which is the eternity of Thought in Nature.* It may be 
 
 *" A few lines in the 'Prelude' express this clearly : — 
 •Hitherto, 
 
 In progress through this Verse, niy mind hath looked 
 
 Upon the speaking fare of eartli and heaven. 
 
 As her prime teacher, intercourse with man 
 
 Established by the Sovereign Intellect, 
 
 Who through that bodily image bath diffused. 
 
 As might appear to the eye of fleeting time, 
 
 A deathless spirit.' " 
 
xiv 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the fashion to call this pantheistic ; but it is the tnie and nec- 
 essary pantheism which affirms God in all, and all by him, but 
 which does not affirm that this All includes the whole of God. 
 Wordsworth's feeling of personality was so strong that he 
 would probably have said that the personality of God in refer- 
 ence to Nature consisted in God's consciousness of himself at 
 every moment of time, in every part as well as in the whole of 
 the universe. But, as this is a metaphysical and not a poetic 
 thought, and as Wordsworth wanted a thought which he could 
 use poetically, he transferred this idea of God realizing his per- 
 sonality in the whole of the universe to an actu^al person, whom 
 he creates, to a Being whom he terms Nature. And hence 
 there grew up in his mind the thought of one personal, spiritual 
 Life, which had infinitely subdivided itself through all the forms 
 of the outward world, which could realize an undivided life at 
 any moment, but which also lived a distinct life in every part. 
 It became possible then for him to have communication with 
 any one manifestation of that Life, in a tree or a rock or a 
 cloud, to separate in thought the characteristics of any one 
 form of it from another, or, omitting the consideration of the 
 parts, to think of or communicate with the whole, to realize the 
 one spiritual life that conditioned itself in all as a Person with 
 whom he could speak, and from whom he could receive impulse 
 or warning or affection. And, when this was done, when 
 Nature seemed one Life, then the necessary spirituality of the 
 thought made him lose consciousness of the material forms 
 under which this Life appeared, and that condition of mind 
 arose in which Nature was luisubstautialized in thought." 
 
 It is chiefly English thought, English poetry and liistoi'y, of 
 ■which Mr. Brooke has written ; and it is from English masters 
 that his culture has apparently been most immediately derived. 
 And yet his philosophy is essentially the German philosophy ; 
 and those very elements in Wordsworth with which his mind 
 has so strong an affinity are the elements which Wordsworth 
 owed chiefly to German influences, or whicli, at least, are of the 
 distinctively German character. Stopford Brooke is a Trau- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XV 
 
 scendentalist, whose English feet are set very firmly on the 
 ground, combining a lofty Idealism with shrewd good sense, in 
 something the same manner which Me see in Emerson. All of 
 the great Broad Churchmen have been deeply influenced by the 
 German thinkers. Robertson, it will be remembered, was the 
 English translator of Lessing's Educalioii of the Human Race. 
 Just what the direction of j\lr. Brooke's studies was during 
 his Berlin days we do not know, but the influence of the great 
 Germans is consi^icuous through all liis later work. Of the 
 philosophers proper, Ficlite affected him most ; and lie has 
 expressly acknowledged his obligations to him. " There is 
 within Fichte's philosophy," he says, "teaching both on life, 
 morality, and religion, which makes him more worth the read- 
 ing of persons troubled by the great spiritual questions than 
 any other of the German philosophers." 
 
 Stopford Brooke is first and foremost a Christian, more 
 pm'ely and strictly and emphatically a Christian than almost 
 any other great religious teacher of our time. The ideas which 
 Christ first made clearly manifest he believes to be capable of 
 endless expansion, and to be the ideas most necessary for the 
 salvation and elevation of humanity. " If we look long and 
 earnestly enough," he says, "we shall find in them (not read 
 into them, as some say) the explanation and solution, not only 
 of our religious, but even of our political and social problems." 
 "I believe, and rest all I say upon the truth, as I think, that in 
 Christ was Life, and that this Life, in the thoughts and acts 
 which flowed from it, was and is and always will be the Light 
 of the race of ]Man." 
 
 The name of Christ is connected with two religions or sys- 
 tems of thought, — the one the teaching of Christ himself and 
 the religion which every man may have in common with him, 
 the other a scheme of thought about Christ and a religion which 
 assumes that he was something other than man, and worships 
 him. Lessing used to distinguish the two, for lack of exact 
 terms, as " The Religion of Christ" and " The Christian Relig- 
 
xvi 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ion." It is the " Religion of Christ " for which Stopford 
 Brooke stands ; and it is to this, of course, that the terms Chris- 
 tian and Christianity, in a strict and scientific sense, belong. 
 Only the great prestige and power of the opposing system have 
 made possible the miserable controversy which has been 
 waged ujjon this point, and wliich mere reference to our general 
 usage at once makes an end of. Platonism is not a theory 
 about Plato. The true Platonist is he who accepts the philos- 
 opher's cardinal principles as cardinal in the constitution of 
 his own thought. He is not to be tested by what was acci- 
 dental in the philosoj^her's opinion, or merely incidental to the 
 general conditions of his culture, — e.g., the cosmogony of the 
 Pkcedon, — but only by the essential principles of his philoso- 
 phy ; and, in determining what the philosopher himself was, he 
 is only bound not to be inconsistent with these principles. He 
 may not hold, for instance, that Plato himself was simply a for- 
 tuitous concurrence of atoms ; for this were opposed to the first 
 principle of tlie Platonic pliilosophy. And the true Christian 
 may not deny Christ's oneness with God ; for the oneness of 
 humanity, in its idea and essence, with the divine, the fact 
 that God is our Father, that we are the offspring of God, " be- 
 gotten, not made," was the first principle of Christ's philosophy 
 and of his consciousness. So much it is indeed necessary for 
 the true Christian to hold aJiout Christ, in order to consistency 
 with the fundamental principle of Christ's religion,— that he 
 was one with God. 
 
 But this oneness with God is not something peculiar to 
 Christ alone, however superior his consciousness of it may have 
 been, however transcendent the power witli which he illus- 
 trated and enforced the truth in his life and teaching, and how- 
 ever unique his position as the great mediator of the truth to 
 the race. Christ is simply the first-born among many brethren, 
 realizing what is true in essence of every man, and what every 
 man may realize, — lighted by the Light which lighteth every 
 man that cometh into the world. Mr. Bi-ooke has brought out 
 this point very strongly in the sermon upon " The Light of God 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xvii 
 
 in Man," included in the present volume, and in the sermons 
 upon " The Central Truth of Christianity," in Christ in Mod- 
 ern Life. The central truth of Christianity and the distinc- 
 tive doctrine of Christianity is to him the doctrine of a divine 
 humanity. The first important doctrinal sermon which he 
 preached after his withdrawal from the Church was upon the 
 Incarnation. " The whole truth," he said, " contained in tlie 
 doctrine of the Incarnation is becoming less and less a spiritual 
 power in the minds of men, because of the miraculous which 
 the Church has connected with it. The Orthodox lose, in the 
 prominence they give to the miraculous, much of the spiritual 
 power of the doctrine, and certainly the greater part of its uni- 
 versality. Unless the doctrine be freed from the miracle, 
 now linked to it, it will, as the belief in miracle dies out, die 
 out itself, or lose its power. It will, of course, rise again ; for 
 humanity cannot get on without faith in God's incarnation in 
 man. It is at the very root and is tlie life-blood of all religion; 
 but its real foundation is deeper than miracle, and it will rest 
 only the more firmly when the belief in miracle has perished. 
 The spirit within man which thirsts after relationship with 
 God does not need the miracle. The truth of God's union with 
 man is clear to us without it, — clear and more comforting and 
 infinitely more universal. If God be the Father of men, as 
 Christ declared, then it is absolutely natural that he should 
 enter into men and abide with them and in them, and through 
 them reveal himself to other men. Of this continual incarna- 
 tion, Christ is the highest and the purest example, unique as 
 yet upon earth. But from the very beginning, in the first 
 breath that man drew as an intelligent spirit in this world, God 
 has been incarnating himself in man. This truth has been 
 found in all religions. It forms now the foremost truth of 
 Christianity. ' God and man are one,' said Christ. ' The 
 Father lives in me, speaks in me, works in me. I am nothing 
 save by union witla him.' He spoke that, not in a character 
 inlierently unlike ours, but in the name and iu the voice of 
 humanity, to which he belonged. What he was then, we are to 
 
xviii 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 be. It is tlie normal end of human nature to be the dwelling- 
 place of God, to be interwoven with divinity, to have itself 
 taken into God, and God incarnate iu it." 
 
 This religion of Chri.st, viewing man under the forms of eter- 
 nity, and giving hnn the immortality of God, invests his nature 
 and his de.stiny with a dignity and a grandeur which nothing 
 else can do, thereby imposing duties and responsibilities as 
 nothing else can do, and thus having a power and a fitness for 
 mankind which are universal and eternal.* Mv. Brooke 
 opposes the ideas of Christ to the ideas of Conite, to Secularism 
 and whatever attempts to do the work of religion in the world 
 to-day, not as excluding them, or as antagonistic to their real 
 motives, but as genuinely including these as factors in itself*. 
 Of Comte's " Religion of Humanity," he says, " 1 am unable to 
 see how it differs, so far as it asserts a principle, from the great 
 Christian idea. Everything it says about Humanity and our 
 duties to Humanity seems to me to be implicitly contained in 
 Christ's teaching, and to be no more than an expansion of the 
 original Christian idea of a divine Man in whom all the race is 
 contained, and w ho is ideally the race." Mr. Brooke does not 
 join in the cry which has been raised against the religion of 
 Positivism, but commends its careful study, and recognizes the 
 force with ■which it has brought home to us many great concep- 
 tions which the false system of the Church had brought us into 
 danger of forgetting. It would be untrue in a Christian 
 teacher, he says, to abuse a system which has so strongly 
 emphasized the duty of self-sacrifice among men aud among 
 nations; "but it would be equally untrue," he continues, " if I 
 did not say that the refusal to consider the existence of a per- 
 sonal God and the immortality of man will, in the end, make 
 that religion die of starvation." 
 
 " Historical Chri.stianity," says Emerson, " has dwelt with 
 
 ♦"Be ye perfect, even as your Father Avhich is in heaven is perfect " is a 
 command valid only just as it is an assurance that our own nature is divine So 
 far as that is true, are our obligations infinite. Goethe said, -It we would im- 
 prove a man. it were well to kt Inm believe tliat we already think him that 
 which we would have him to be." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xix 
 
 noxious exaggeration about the p('r:<on of Jesus."* And tliis is 
 true, if he means by it, as lie does, that wliich was acci- 
 dental and particular about the person of Jesus, as opposed to 
 the essential truth with which his inner, real personality was 
 identified. In the seu.se intended, it is true, as he says, that the 
 soul knows no persons. But all this is true only to him who is 
 able to see its truth rightly, and that is in seeing also the sig- 
 nificance of that personal element, which is so es.sential in 
 religion and in that whole department of life into which the 
 emotions enter, — in everything, almost, beyond abstract meta- 
 physics. Goethe has taught us that the secret of good art lies 
 in the recognition of proper limitations, in clearly fixing 
 bounds, and not attempting too much. And a similar jirinci- 
 ple of limitation governs much in the emotional life, and can- 
 not be ignored without disaster. We cannot love John Smith's 
 mother as we love our own, even if we admit with our whole 
 head that she is as true a woman ; and we feel toward him 
 who has taught us truth or done us good as w'e cannot feel 
 toward the mediator of equal good to others. Few of us can 
 be stirred by the story of jMorgarten or iMarston Moor as by 
 the story of Lexington or Gettysburg, although we niay be 
 quick to allow that the Swiss patriots and the Puritans were as 
 heroic and as right as our own fathers and brothers. This 
 principle of limitation, truly apprehended and operating natu- 
 rally, does not narrow, but expands the circle of our interests and 
 
 •We are reminded of tlie lines wliicli Lessiiig puts into tim Mulioinetan 
 Sittah's moutli, in his yalliaii : — 
 
 ■' You do not know, yon will not know the Christians. 
 Cliristianity, not manhood, is their i)ri<Ie, 
 E'en that which, from their founder down, hath spiced 
 Their superstition with humanity, 
 "fis not for its humanity lliey love it. 
 No; but because Christ taught, Christ practised it. 
 Happy for tliem he was so good a man ! 
 Happy for tliem that they can trust his virtue! 
 His virtue '.' Not his virtue, but his name. 
 They say, shall spread abroad, and shall devour 
 And put to sliamc the names of all jjood men. 
 The name, the name, is all their pride." 
 
XX 
 
 INTEODUCTIOK. 
 
 our affections, — by which I mean that he who feels intensely 
 the good and true nearest him is only helped by the strong 
 feeling to a genuine interest in things more remote and more 
 comprehensive. New England, perhaps, of all parts of our 
 American Union, has ever been most jealous for State rights, 
 yet she has been the stoutest assertor of national sovereignty; 
 and the great international men who have risen up everywhere 
 since Kant wrote his E:erual Peace — Cobden, Mazzini, Sum- 
 ner — have all been men conspicuous for their fine love of 
 country and of race. The " cosmopolitan " of the Boulevard 
 des Ilaliens is not the international man, — really not a man 
 at all. In general, finally, be it said that, while it is true 
 enough that truth is universal, always and everywhere truth, 
 it is also true that persons alone are the depositaries and me- 
 diators of truth. Left to ourselves, knowing no persons, we 
 should liave a very inconsiderable stock of " universal truths." 
 And the words and work of every great master get no adequate 
 interpretation save through our knowledge of the master's self. 
 To refer to Goethe again, by way of illustration, — who knows 
 Tasxo or Faust or Wilhelm Meister, who does not first know 
 Goethe V 
 
 The relation of all this to religion and to Stopford Brooke's 
 preaching of Christianity is plain enough. If Christianity were 
 no better abstractly than other religions, but only one of many 
 equals, it is the religion identified with the stream of civilization 
 to which we belong, the mother of us all ; and the truths which 
 it utters speak to our hearts with an eloquence and force that 
 no strange lips could give them. For the great masses of men, 
 who rise to abstract ideas slowly, this objectifying of the truth 
 and connecting it with persons is as necessary as the appeal to 
 Lexington instead of Morgarten is expedient and projier. For 
 whom of us, indeed, is this not necessary or helpful ? It is 
 well for a race to have its Bible and to have its Christ, and to 
 take them into its heart, even at the expense of much prejudice 
 and superstition, and even though there were Bibles many and 
 Christs many, of equal rank. The power of common traditions 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 xxi 
 
 and associations, of allusions and appeals understood from the 
 top to the bottom of society, of a religious poetry and prophecy 
 and story which speak to all alike, is a wholesome and an inspir- 
 ing power. It is a power wliich can be sustained only by prop- 
 erly respecting the principle of limitation, whose operation 
 reaches to every spliere of life ; and the man of culture must 
 often find that, through some disjiroportion in his development, 
 the intensity of the feeling which he used to have for this good 
 or that has not freely or satisfyingly transferred itself to the 
 many goods and many truths which his broadening knowledge 
 masters. It is a question whether the man is to be envied who 
 listens with equal emotion «to the Psalms of David and those 
 Vedic Hymns which sing the same truths, or who lumps the 
 apothegms of Confucius and the Sermon on the Mount, any 
 more than the American is to be envied to whom Boston Com- 
 mon and the Mississippi mean no more than the Yang-tse- 
 Kiang and the gardens of Bombay. And it is a question 
 whether the religious teacher to whom all particular religions 
 may have come to have ecj^ual value would, not do well to 
 illustrate and enforce his teaching primarily through that relig- 
 ion which lies nearest to the hearts of the people, so the religion 
 in itself be good and true. 
 
 But this would be at best but temporary and a makeshift. 
 The Bible once really ranked with the Yedas and the Koran, 
 and Christ viewed as not inherently superior to Confucius, and 
 Christianity as a religion would decay, or rather be subsumed 
 under something larger. The patronage of the cultured teacher 
 and his consideration for the necessities or weaknesses of the 
 masses would not long count for much ; and, large as the com- 
 mendable element in it might be, it would have from the start, 
 like all patronage, a certain taint of insincerity. Mr. Karl 
 Hillebrand, whose recognition of the important functions of 
 the principle of limitation is so strong, in the midst of his own 
 large culture, as to lead him to put in a word even in behalf of 
 prejudices, — "good, solid prejudices," he calls them, — shows 
 how the German patriotism of the last dozen years has had 
 
xxii 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 little robust vigor, because it was not born naturally, but was 
 the fruit of reflection, and is conscious and intentional. " It 
 has a tincture of jiedantry," he says, "because it has been made 
 by scholars and literary men. It has sprung up from a feeling 
 of want of patriotism, and resembles the i-eligion of the German 
 romanticists, who had all been free-thinkers, and resolved one 
 fine day to become believers, because belief was a necessary 
 basis of all poetical excellence." 
 
 Stopford Brooke's Christianity is not of this manufactured 
 or prudent sort. Here is a genuine man, a man who thinks 
 and is no Athanasian parrot, whose religion is no indifferent 
 eclecticism, but who does believe w'^th all his heart that Christ 
 stands so far above other masters that he stands alone ; that 
 his religion, like Homer's poetry, and in a sense far deeper, is 
 as fresh to-day as at the beginning ; and that in the spread of 
 his spirit and the appropriation of his ideas in their true i^ur- 
 port, the liberal ajiplication of his mind to the shifting condi- 
 tions of society, lie the surest progress, the highest happiness, 
 and the best hope of mankind. It is no thing of names with 
 him. He will call Christian Christian only as he calls Homer 
 Homer, — simply insisting that the greatest of all masters shall 
 not be precisely the one to whom men may refuse to pay the 
 grateful tribute which the Kantian or the Wesleyan pays to his 
 secondary master naturally and unchallenged. But the truth, 
 not the name, is the thing with Stopford Brooke. Quick to 
 recognize the good in every system of thought and every ideal 
 of life, he criticises them only when and in so far as they would 
 drive out or obscure what seem to him the larger truth and 
 better life. The largest truth and the best life seem to him the 
 truth which Christ taught and the life Chri.st lived. He would 
 not deny the abstract jiossibility of the coming of a teacher who 
 should teach Christ's truth in a still loftier form than Christ 
 taught it; the truth itself, — that man is one with God, — than 
 this there cannot be any loftier truth. He would not deny that 
 one might come whose life should be as true as Christ's to the 
 divine Idea, and be, perchance, in some sort, a larger life ; but 
 
INTEODUCTION. 
 
 xxiii 
 
 he would say that speculation on the point were altogether vain 
 and profitless, a waste of time. If that teacher and tliat life 
 come, if indeed the forms of Christ's teaching grow obsolete, it 
 will be onlj" as the "Santa ]Maria"has grown obsolete, whicli 
 still carried Columbus; and it would still be true tluit the com- 
 ing of Christ is, as Carlyle has said so strongly, " tiie most im- 
 portant event that has occurred or can occur in the annals of 
 mankind." Christ's words, however, have not yet grown ob- 
 solete. They are the freshest things, to-day, in this old world ; 
 the fullest of life and of power. Surely, no work is nobler than 
 a work like Stopford Brooke's, of so bringing the ideas and 
 ideals of Christ, freed from the superstitions of the Church 
 system, — "immaculate conception," post mortem materializa- 
 tion, and what not, — which, at some stage or other in the 
 process, protective doubtless and sustaining, now only hide 
 and choke and falsify, — so bringing them to bear upon our 
 modern life as to turn the world, the flesh and the devil of us, 
 the ennui and cynicism and greed and calculation, to shame 
 and honest w.ork, to reverence and vision, compassion and a 
 rational socialism. 
 
 E. D. M. 
 
FAITH. 
 
 1870. 
 
 "And the disciples said unto him, Lord, increase our faith." — 
 Luke xvii., 5. 
 
 Every one has said how unintelligible the world is, 
 and how heavy and M eary is the burden of this unintelli- 
 gibility. But its weariness and its weight are the spurs 
 of our curiosity, and our curiosity is the parent of our 
 activity. . Were not the world unintelligible, we should 
 not have been intelligent. It is the ceaseless array of 
 physical problems, needing solution, which has trained 
 the scientific intellect of mankind. It is the ceaseless 
 array of mental and moral problems which has devel- 
 oped the thoughtfulness of the race. It is the ceaseless 
 array of problems about God and his relation to mankind 
 which has trained the S])iritual life of men ; and it is 
 these last that come more home to us than all the others. 
 We hand over the solution of physical and metaphysical 
 difficulties to special bands of scholars ; and, on the 
 whole, we accejit the answers they give, where sufficient 
 proof has been alleged, or we take no trouble about 
 them. But the spiritual difficulties touch the heart and 
 life of almost every man or woman. They claim that 
 each one of us should look into them for ourselves, and 
 
2 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 find each of us our own answer. The great problem is 
 presented to us, and we hear a voice which says, Find 
 my answer, or be devoured by me. 
 
 It is the old story -of the Sphinx. The Greek, in 
 his grave, sad way of looking upon life, beheld it as a 
 strufjjrle against the unintelligible. Something was to 
 be discovered ; and, if discovered, the fortunate one was 
 master for a time of Life. But, if nothing were discov- 
 ered, Life, as it went on inexorably, slew him ; and he 
 died, and the Greek had no certainty that he should live 
 in the future by the mastery of the prolilem. Even he 
 who found a portion of the answer, and could make his 
 will the victor and not the victini of Life, was doomed 
 to be overcome in the end by the undiscovered secret, 
 and CEdipus falls into hideous ruin. Fate has its own 
 way with him. Yet even in that story w^e catch a glimpse 
 of a higher truth, when the tale is finished by an inspired 
 poet. The blind, old man finds at last relief. The Furies 
 change their countenance to him, for he understands at 
 last the meaning of their inexorable pursuit. He under- 
 stands, and dies in peace. We too, I believe, one and 
 all of us, are fated to understand all things at last. We 
 shall see face to face, knowing God as we are known by 
 him. But it W'ill be a far longer business for some of us 
 than we think or than we shall like. 
 
 There are some for whom it is not long. It is plain 
 that as the genius of some philosophers is almost intui- 
 tive with regard to tlie secrets of nature, so there are 
 other men whose feeling is intuitive with regard to tlie 
 secrets of spiritual life. They know W'ithout proof : they 
 need no authority and no evidence. They have no 
 trouble of heart, but walk with God as friend with 
 
FAITH. 
 
 3 
 
 friend. But no one can tell how far previous education 
 before they were born into this world may have given 
 them that power. 
 
 On the other hand, just as children, and afterwards 
 men, learn the sanctions of j^hysical laws through the 
 commission of a series of mistakes, for each of which 
 they suffer punishment, — pursued relentlessly by the 
 Furies till, their secret being found, they become the 
 Eunienides, — so in the spiritual world also there are 
 many who can only reach good through having known 
 evil and overcome it, can only attain to the knowledge 
 of truths through having found out by sad experience 
 the uselessness and harm of false knowledge of them. 
 We are pursued, as long as we are wrong in our ideas 
 of God, by the scourge of restlessness, or despair, or 
 anger. Not till we find the secret is there any pause. 
 To discover a portion of it is not enough. We must 
 pay the glorious penalty of our immortality ; and that 
 penalty is often renewed doubt and spiritual darkness. 
 Often, we think we know all we need to know : Ave say 
 we have reached the goal, our faith is secure, we have 
 nothing more to conquer. It is the very moment when 
 we are surprised by a new aspect of a truth and feel 
 ourselves ignorant, only half-way, with faith and courage 
 tottering and troubled. God, in what seems to our wea- 
 ried eyes cruelty, drives us from our rest. A new diffi- 
 culty rises before us, which Ave mi^st soh-e or die, till at 
 last, step by step, it may be here, it may be long here- 
 after, we enter the A^enerable grove, and knoAV all ; and 
 our rest is perfect, for our comprehension is perfect. 
 
 It is the common objection that this is a long and 
 needlessly harsh way of making us know him, when 
 
4 
 
 TAITH AXD FREEDOM. 
 
 God might do it so much sooner, if he woiUd ; and the 
 greater part of our Avork this morning ^y\ll centre round 
 that objection. 
 
 In answer to it, there is first this, — • that a good deal 
 has been found out ah-eady, if people woukl take the 
 trouble of looking at it. The scientific man enters into 
 the knowledge of the past, and finds a certain number 
 of things which have been already discoA-ered. He has 
 not to rediscover these things. And the sjjirit newly 
 born into a s^jiritual life enters into the possession of the 
 spiritual exjterience of the past. There are a certain 
 number of statements about God and his relation to 
 men which have slowly, during the spiritual history 
 of the world, taken their places as foundation-stones. 
 All sorts of buildings have been raised on these founda- 
 tions, — creeds, schemes of redemption, a multitude of 
 sects and churches ; but, however various the buildings, 
 there are a few foundation-stones always identical, and 
 which one may now accept as axioms. Some insist on 
 proving their existence ; and, if they must, they must ; 
 but they lose a good deal of time, and it is not God's 
 fault if men are fantastic. 
 
 Secondly, I do not know if, as the objection says, God 
 could make us know all truth at once, being such as we 
 are. It is more than probable that tlie sudden revelation 
 of truth, for which Ave Avere not jirepared, Avould either 
 throAV us into despair, or the truth itself Avould seem to 
 us a lie. ReA^elation must be ])roportioned to the capac- 
 ity of the organ that receives it. Trutli is, in full, before 
 Man ; but only that part of it reaches him AA^hich his spir- 
 itual eye can take in. The rest, at present, Avould strike 
 him blind. Your present ideas of God seem to you true ; 
 
FAITH. 
 
 5 
 
 but what would you have thouglit of them years ago, 
 and Avhat will you think of them ten years hence? 
 
 But you reply, Why were we not made capable of 
 receiving the truth at once ? Why are we so imperfect 
 as to need all this slow training and all this suffering? 
 A loving God ought to have saved us that. Well, that 
 is pushing remonstrance pretty far. And I cannot feel 
 at all with that remonstrance ; for it demands of course, 
 as I have often said, that we should cease to be men and 
 women, and be other beings altogether, who have no 
 trouble, no doubt, no struggle, no pain, no knowledge of 
 evil, no progress of the kind we know, nothing of all 
 that mingled success and failure, and all the feelings 
 connected with it, which makes life so distressing, so 
 dramatic, and often so delightful. I confess I should 
 regret if that which we call human nature were taken 
 out of the universe, and were replaced by what is sup- 
 ])Osed to be the angelic nature. The interest of the 
 whole thing is so enchaining that I do not think one 
 would care to be immortal, if everybody were good all 
 in a moment, and knew everything at once ; and I do 
 not think the goodness would be worth much, or the 
 knowledge either. Who cares for things purchased by 
 no trouble? And what use are things, unless we care 
 for them? I do not want to get rid of difficulties or 
 mysteries, if the price be, as it must be, the destruction 
 of the element of humanity in the universe. 
 
 And now, supposing you allow that that would be a 
 misfortune, in what other way — human nature being as 
 it is — is it possible that God should act toward it ? Is 
 there any other process conceivable of making a weak 
 thing individually strong than by exercising what is 
 
6 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 feeble in it against a difficulty? Is it possible to get 
 wiser in any other way than by training the faculties, 
 mental or spiritual, in the investigation of that which is 
 doubtful and hidden ? 
 
 In this matter, there is only one rule for all the spheres 
 of human thought and action, for tlie life of animals and 
 plants. All their progress is born out of antagonism: 
 all their force, and therefore their amount of life, may 
 be expressed in terms of the resistance they encounter. 
 Therefore, considering the universality and inexorable- 
 ness of this law, it is somewhat j)itiable to hear the moan 
 which so many persons make when doubt begins to dis- 
 tress and darkness falls upon their sjairitual life. 
 
 When a long series of experiments made by a natural 
 philosopher entirel}' fails, or when an unlooked-for result 
 turns in the course of the experiments, and seems to 
 reverse all the theories he has held to before, he does not 
 wail and cry on account of the failure. He begins again. 
 Nor is he in despair at having to reconsider everything. 
 On the contrary, he is excited to the highest pitch. 
 Something new, some wide 2)rinciple, is hidden in the 
 failure or in the new result ; and he cannot rest till he 
 has unearthed it. For he has faith in nature answering 
 his call and rewarding his toil. He does not sufl'ei-, for 
 he knows that he is on tlie way to higher knowledge. 
 It is true that the disappointment which tlie intellect 
 suffers is not so ])ainful as that of the spirit, nor does the 
 overthroAV of a scientific theory upturn and convidse life 
 in the same way as the overthrow of a long-clierislied 
 method of faith. But the reason of this is that we are 
 still subject to the bondage of tliinking that God is angry 
 with us on account of doubt, and that he will condemn 
 
FAITH. 
 
 7 
 
 us because we are forced to reconsider our old system 
 of belief. We do not believe in God as the i)liiloso]iher 
 believes in nature. We look upon liim as capricious, 
 passionate, and unfair. We have no conception as yet 
 of him as a Father who often deliberately places us face 
 to face with the unintelligil)le. We think we have lost 
 him, when we have lost our past conception of him, 
 when our spiritual rest is gone, and our light. But, if 
 "we trusted in tliis Fatherhood, and understood that our 
 education is his care, and that it ^^'ill take centuries to 
 complete it, we should say to ourselves, when darkness 
 falls on our soul and all our old views become vague and 
 difficulties rise on every hand, exactly what the ])hiloso- 
 pher says to himself: "I have found out Avhere my 
 theory was either wrong or inadequate, and I have now 
 a new interest in life. Let me, taking my past error 
 itself as my starting-point, discoA'er what is true. God 
 will answer me, if I work, as nature answei's the philoso- 
 jiher." And the moment the mystery comes, and doubt 
 invades the heart, we shall say to ourselves : " Now I 
 see that God my Father is plainly at work upon me. He 
 is going to give me more to find out. I am again con- 
 sciously under his training; and, if I am true and faith- 
 ful, and do not tire of patient investigation, and keep 
 my heart open by prayer, and my intellect clear from 
 exaggeration, I shall step out of this darkness into clearer 
 light, know more of him tliau I have kno«'n before, and 
 suffer the ennobling pain and the ennobling pleasure of a 
 new revelation." 
 
 But you say that it is of God himself that you doubt. 
 He seems to you to be at variance with the moral feeling 
 of your own soul. That is because your idea of God is 
 
8 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 now lower and more inadequate than you need have. 
 You have accepted certain theological accounts of his 
 nature in the past, and they still cling to you, or, having 
 lost them, you have not replaced them by others. "And 
 this is God," you say. " I cannot believe in him." Well, 
 that is God telling you that t/ntt is not himself as he 
 is to you. Others are satisfied with that past concep- 
 tion: they can live on it spiritually, and it will not do to 
 give them a higher view yet. But, now that you have 
 been told that there is a higher aspect in which he may 
 be seen, why are you angry with him, Avhy are you 
 despairing? Why do you not try to find out if there 
 be no other view of him which will harmonize the belief 
 of the soul with the reason of the man ? As plainly as 
 one spirit can speak to another, he is telling you that 
 there is a higher knowledge of him that you have as yet 
 to gain. 
 
 Dimly, it dawns upon you that this very distress and 
 darkness is his work ; and, if so, that there is only one 
 explanation of it : that there is a Father who is educating 
 you from point to point, and that he has put you into 
 darkness, because the liglit you had was not enough for 
 your spiritual growth ; because, having done all it could 
 for your education, the time has now come when you 
 need a brighter light, a nobler idea of God and life. 
 
 You think you are to get that at once. That would 
 break the law of the iiniverse. New light can only be 
 got by a fight against darkness. The soul cannot be 
 revolutionized except through battle. The elements of 
 a new life can only be assimilated through resistance. 
 Otherwise, they would not be your own. They are 
 woven with the fibres of the soul by daily struggle. 
 
FAITH. 
 
 9 
 
 Without stnig'glo, they "would be mere surface things, 
 which a breath of temptation woukl blow away. 
 
 The darkness does not vanish all at once, nor the light 
 flash upon us : God understands our nature better than 
 to make that error. But, when in our contest with the 
 gloom and in our patient feeling after God, there comes 
 first a faint glimmering of the truth which we shall j)os- 
 sess, we rejoice and make it our owm, and go on in its 
 strength. Then a faint thread of rays steals in, then 
 there is the morning star, then the cold flush of dawn, 
 then warmer and warmer hues, — the heaven of our life, 
 as we force our way onward, lighting up Avith new 
 colors, — and then, suddenly, the new revelation leaps 
 like the sun into the air, and our whole being is trans- 
 figured. The struggle has made us understand the light, 
 step by stej) we hnve appropriated it, and that darkness 
 is done with forever. Other doubt, other darkness, wnll 
 succeed ; but so far the curse of life has been conquered, 
 and turned into a blessing. The Lord God has made 
 our darkness to be light. 
 
 Now, I say that on the hyjjothesis that we have a 
 Father who cares for our spirit, and wlio is educating 
 it to perfection, all this process is ex2)li('able, and exj^li- 
 cable in such a way that it confirms the love of God. 
 And, if the theory explain the facts, is it not probable 
 that the theory is true? And if such a probabilitv 
 exist, and stir us to higher life, and give us strength, 
 what should be our prayer, — what but this? Lord, 
 increase our faith. 
 
 The last answer I have to make to the objection that 
 God's way of dealing with us is unfair and unloving is 
 that it is plain that the process, if we go through it in 
 
10 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 a reasonably iioblo manner, ennobles u;^. And all that 
 is required from us is no vague feeling, no exalted spir- 
 itual passion, but just that ■which is required from every 
 man in contact with any difficulty. 
 
 A jihilosophcr meets with a new fact for which he can 
 give no reason. It strikes at the very root of his systein, 
 or it is irreconcilable with it at jjresent. It tells him to 
 go back and begin again, or at least it opens out before 
 him a A ista of work to which he sees no end. Suppose 
 bis disaiipointment o-\'erwhelms hhn, su]ii)ose the shock 
 makes him desjiair, and, falling away from his faith that 
 everything is resolvable into the order of things, he 
 strikes work, what follows ? Idleness and its curse, the 
 sense of intellectual degradation, a wasted life. His trial 
 has not ennobled him ; but every one knows that, had he 
 had faith in liimself and in nature, his work upon the 
 difficulty would have personally ennobled him ; that, had 
 he said to himself, when suddenly this mysterious fact 
 emerged in the midst of the known, when this inexpli- 
 cable thing traversed the very tlieory which all the world 
 accepted, " This means not so nuich that we are all 
 Avrong, but that there is a higher right to be found out : 
 this inexplicable thing tells me — joyful me, counted 
 worthy to find it! — that I am on the track of a new dis- 
 covery," he would either have made the discovery, or 
 at least hewn out the way partly to it, shown the point 
 m the distance where the new star among the truths of 
 science would be found, when the work had all l)een 
 done. 
 
 He may be thus disgraced or ennobled according as lie 
 meets his difficulties. It is the same in common human 
 life. We liave it in our i)Ower, for a time, to ruin life, 
 
FAITH. 
 
 11 
 
 to turn its greatest ])Ossibilities into curses. When, op- 
 posed by difficulties, we gi\e ourselves up into the hands 
 of unmanliness, fear, and hiziness, it is indeed a miser- 
 able jjiece of "work we make of life. We have it also in 
 our jjower, Avhen we are faithful, active, joyous, and 
 courageous, to live one after another half a dozen lives 
 in our space of sixty years, and to grow more Avise and 
 more penetrative and more self-commanding every year. 
 
 It is i)rccisely the same in the difficulties and darkness 
 of that which we call the spiritual life. They are to 
 show us where Ave are weak, they are to suggest to us 
 new discoveries on the nature of God, they are to give 
 the soul something to do, to Avake it up from lethargy, to 
 develop its peculiar j^owers, to make it feel that God is 
 inexhaustible, and that, let it dive into the ocean of his 
 nature deeper than eA^er plummet sounded, it never can 
 learn satiety nor know content. And are Ave to be in- 
 dignant Avith the process which leads us to these things 
 because it gives us pain, and to deny God's love because 
 he Avill not let us rest in half-educated imperfection? 
 That is a thought unAvorthy of our high destiny. A 
 Greek Avould have been ashamed of it: a Christian Eng- 
 lishman should liate it as descradins:. 
 
 In the struggle mentioned above as the struggle of the 
 Thinker, the intellect of man is rendered noble and its 
 poAvers strengthened. In the spiritual struggles of life, 
 the spirit of man is rendered noble and its jjOAvers devel- 
 oped. The strenLi'tliciiiiig of spiritual poM'ors l)y exer- 
 cise has been often <l\\ (_'Iton; but this strife with doubt 
 and darkness is especially ennobling, because it gives 
 us slowly the possession of the nol)lest ideas. In our 
 darkest moments, Ave never lose the conviction that the 
 
12 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 idea of God is inexpressibly noble, and, as revealed in 
 Christ, inexpressibly tender as well as noble, even a\ hen 
 we liave ceased for tlie time to believe in him. Is it 
 really ])Ossible that any one can compare it, as an idea 
 alone, to that of the rigid circle of constant force, or to 
 that of humanity as an organism? It alone touches all 
 that is in us, and develops all, — intellect, heart, con- 
 science, imagination, and spirit. Pure thought, juirc 
 love, perfect righteousness, infinite beauty, producing in- 
 finite varieties of itself in thought and feeling and form; 
 the all-wise, all-sustaining, educating Father of all the 
 spirits who have flowed from him, clothed even in the 
 weakest words, — this idea makes one's being thrill witli 
 a strange, exalting jtower. "And I heard as it were the 
 voice of a trum])et speaking to me, and saying. Come 
 up hither." That saying expresses its impulse on our 
 life. Linked Avith it are other thoughts, — -the immor- 
 tality of Man in God, the salvation from evil of all 
 mankind in him, the redemption of htiman nature com- 
 pleted, self-sacrifice as the central principle of all life in 
 God and in Man. These are but a few: but, as they 
 grow in us, they ennoble existence ; they make of this 
 earth an august tem])le ; they burn in us like fire, con- 
 smning evil, kindling good ; and any process, however 
 long, which leads us to their lofty mountain range, is 
 worth going through Avith faithfid j^^itience. Let us 
 therefore pray : O Lord our God, guide us ! Deepen 
 our jifitience, warm our aspiration. Above all, increase 
 our faith. 
 
 Ah me ! you reply, I may be becoming nobler as I go 
 through life, though it be by doubt and darkness; but 
 I am in exquisite pain, and I want happiness. I want 
 peace, ease. I do not want to be tortured. 
 
FAITH. 
 
 13 
 
 "VVell, then, you had better surrender and sink down 
 into your happiness. Only beware, for it will become a 
 worse pain than tliat you suffer now. The only way in 
 this world to get peace is to make it out of pain. And, 
 after all, did you come into this world to find happiness? 
 Was it for your own sake alone that you were created 
 into the midst of this vast humanity? What are you 
 tliat you should pay so much attention to yourself, and 
 lose in that attention the thought of others? 
 
 You are not here to find happiness directly as tlie first 
 thing. You are here to discover truth ; and tlie way is 
 dark, and leads to the Cross before it finds the Resurrec- 
 tion. You are here to consecrate your life to the discov- 
 ery of a portion of the Divine Law, to practise it, and to 
 diffuse the knowledge and love of it among your breth- 
 ren ; and it is a work which will call upon you to go 
 through much darkness, and to make sacrifices which 
 will seem at first to rend your heart in sunder. You are 
 here to help to build up the Temple of Humanity, to give 
 your life for the welfare of the race ; and it is not jiossi- 
 blc to do that work and at first to have an easy life of it. 
 
 Ilajijiiness, indeed ! What business ha-\ e we yet with 
 hapjiiness ? We must win it before we wear it. Only 
 toil can give us the 2:)Ower of enjoying. And God knows 
 this, and he jnits us through this long and painful })roc- 
 ess. He saves us ; but we must work out our own salva^ 
 tion. He gives light ; but we must conquer darkness. 
 And, if we want the lazy sweets of life, the ease undig- 
 nified by any thought, the life untroubled by any dis- 
 turbijig doubt, why, we may have it by throwing our- 
 selves out of the sj^here of God's training, and siiiking 
 down into our native mud. The ha])piness of Circe's 
 sty, the happiness of being unconscious of our own deg- 
 
14 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 radation, and loving it, — " Upon thy hvWy slialt tlion go, 
 and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life," ■ — that 
 is not the glorious end a child of God desires. God will 
 not permit that "vve have happiness at the expense of 
 spiritual greatness. 
 
 But, if ^ye will have something better far, — a grave 
 nobility of spirit ; a life thrilled through and through 
 with august ideas bravely won ; a vast and 2>ractical love 
 for man, iu which self will be forgotten; an aspiration 
 toward truth untirin<x as tlie eaoie's flight, and with his 
 sun-fixed eye ; the enthusiasm of one who loves with 
 j^assion God and man ; the temperate reasonableness 
 which rules enthusiasm, so as to direct it to its work 
 with wisdom, — then there is something higher than our 
 miserable happiness. It is tlic awful blessedness of life 
 with God, the knowledge tlint Ave are growing up into 
 better things, the certain ho])e of a life of eternal right- 
 eousness and love and joy, the stern delight of duty 
 done. 
 
 Steru lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
 The Godhead's most l)eniguaiit grace; 
 
 Nor know we any thing more fair 
 Thau is tlie smile upou tliy face. 
 
 Flowers laugh before thee ou their beds, 
 
 And fragrance in thy footing treads : 
 
 Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, 
 And tlie immortal Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. 
 
 They are lines whose very sound rings with the trium- 
 phant strength of the life which we shall possess at last, 
 the sti-ength of conquest over all darkness, sin, and death, 
 — the life which never fails in energy and joy, for it 
 never fails in love. To win it and to wear it well, there 
 is but one prayer: it is the prayer of the disciisles, — 
 " Lord, increase our faith." 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT.-I. 
 
 1873. 
 
 "God is a spirit; and thej^ that worship him must worship liim in 
 spirit and in truth." — John iv., 24. 
 
 The summer months had gone by, and autumn liad 
 advanced to seed-time, wlien Jesus, journeying to Gali- 
 lee, stayed to rest near Samaria, in the plain of Sichem. 
 It was about mid-day, and he sat by the well of Jacob. 
 While he waited for his disciples, whom he had sent 
 away to buy bread, a woman came from the neighboring 
 city of Samaria to draw water. He asked her to give 
 him drink, and began to talk with her about the well 
 and the water. It was one of those opportunities that 
 he never neglected of awaking spiritiial curiosity, of 
 stirring into life the seeds of God that he believed were 
 in every human soul. Seizing, as was his custom, on 
 that Avhich lay before their eyes as the means of teach- 
 ing, he spoke of a water of which whosoever drank 
 should never thirst again. It was the water of the 
 divine Life which he had come to give: it would 
 quench the thirst of the soul, and it Avould become, in 
 all wlio received it, a living well, springing up for ever 
 from one life to another throughout eternity. 
 
 On that portion of the conversation I do not speak, 
 
16 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 but on tlie other portion into wliich it divided itself. 
 "How is it," said the Avoman, "that thou, being a Jew, 
 askest drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria?" She 
 expressed in tliat ])]n-ase a real wonder, a wonder shared 
 in afterward by the disciples; and, if we conceive what 
 some time ago would have been thought if any well- 
 knoAvn religious leader was seen in earnest conversation 
 with a strong partisan of Atheism, m'c should have an 
 idea of the w;iy in which the woman and the disciples 
 marvelled. 
 
 It was a strange scene on which the sun looked down : 
 a Jewish prophet of the lineage of David, for whom a 
 poor Samaritan woman M'as drawing water; and between 
 them that r.'ipid interchange of thought that belongs, one 
 might say, to equals and to friends. It was as if there 
 was nothing to divide them, as if the jirejudices of ages 
 had in a moment rolled aAvay : it was the overthrow of an 
 exclusive caste, it was the prophecy of a new era of relig- 
 ious breadth and charity. The scene itself was a j^ara- 
 ble of the idea of the si)eech that closed it. "Woman, 
 I say to you, the hour cometh," etc. The scene that 
 followed it when the disci})les came back and stood in an 
 astonishment tliat had l)oth doubt and blame in it is a 
 parable of that whicli has ever hajjpened since, though 
 less and less as Christian charity has influenced the 
 world, when any man has dared to exiiress, either in 
 act or speech, the moaning of my text. 
 
 It is that meaning that we have to discuss to-day. 
 
 The woman laid down the question fairly: "You say 
 Jerusalem is right, we Gerizim. Our fathers worshipped 
 in this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem men 
 ouglit to worship." We have both ancestral usage to 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 17 
 
 hiillow and coiifinn our faith, and ■who shall decide tliat 
 I am wrong or you right? No conclusion can be come 
 to: our sej)aration is undying. 
 
 It is more or less the condition of the -world no-^v on 
 the subject of religion. Jerusalem condemns Gerizim, 
 and Gerizim mocks at Jerusalem, and the bigotry and 
 uncharitableness of both are about equal. There is 
 nothing to choose between the Cliurch or the Tliei.sts or 
 the Moralists who deny all religion. A holy horror is 
 met by bitter scorn ; and one and all are equally inca- 
 pable of putting themselves into the jjlace of the others, 
 of any of that imaginative power which realizes the 
 difficulties, the tempt.ations, the long-established circum- 
 stances, the traditional emotions and ideas of the others 
 — or of any of that loving-kindness whicli would say, 
 " There must be good in my opjjonents' opinions, or they 
 would not care to go on contending for them: there 
 must be earnestness for truth, or they would not fight 
 so steadily." On the contrary, it is quite common for 
 all parties to assume that their opponents are hypocrites 
 or liars, or, at the best, foolish and blind. Those who 
 profess a lofty tolerance and liberty, Avhose one attack 
 is an attack on bigotry, are often the most bigoted of all. 
 Listen to one who professes morality as against religion: 
 it is Samaritan against Jew over again. Listen to the 
 Atheist as against the believer: it is Sadducee as against 
 Pharisee over again. 
 
 The whole thing is childish, like two boys in the 
 streets calling one another names. And it is inexpres- 
 sibly distressing. How can the world move rapidly on- 
 ward, as long as we indulge in a sjjirit of hating one 
 another, which makes ourselves hateful, as long as we 
 
18 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 have none of that h)ving-khi(ln('ss to oacli other which 
 "will render it possible for us to unite in action for the 
 good of all and the discovery of truth ? There is but 
 little liojte of any swift progress, till we can all say: 
 "The time now is that neither in this mountain, nor 
 yet at Jerusalem, shall men worsliip the Father. God is 
 spirit; and they that Avorship him must worship him in 
 spirit and in truth." 
 
 NeA'erthelcss, it is impossible not to see that a good 
 deal of this contention is unavoidable, and that it has 
 its good side. In this world, we cannot yet have 
 peace, Avithout previous war in matters pertaining to 
 truth. Every truth or form of truth calls up its oppo- 
 nent falsehood. Every good insisted on evokes its own 
 special adversary, and war is inevitable. I came not, 
 said Christ, to send ]»eace on earth, but a sword. Sec- 
 ondly, truth is seldom, if ever, unmixed. Those who 
 declare it best hold along with it the elements of 
 imtruth, — evil in the midst of their good. And it is 
 not unfrequently the case that those who are for the 
 most Y>avt in the Avrong, and Avho fight against the 
 truth, have with them the very elements of truth that 
 are wanting in the other side, — the good which will, 
 when it is added to the better side, make its revelation 
 entirely good. 
 
 You may be pretty sure tliat is really the case, when 
 the worst side lasts a long time. Jf vill last, till its 
 share of truth is assimilated. And the really wise thing 
 for any one to do who knows that on the whole he is 
 on the right side in any great controversy of truth, and 
 who finds that the other side still hold their own fairly, 
 is to say to himself : " It is impossible (since God is true, 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 19 
 
 and directing tlic course of the world) that my oppo- 
 nents should last so long, unless they have some truth 
 in their error; and it is my business to find that out. 
 When I do, I shall not only complete my own side, but 
 I shall also overcome their error, and probably in such a 
 way as to bring them over to the wliole truth. It is 
 perhaps not tlieir love of error that keejis them my 
 enemies, l)ut, first, the natural clinging tliey have to the 
 truth in their error, and, secondly, the incompleteness 
 of my trutli, because I do not as yet j^ossess the portion 
 of truth they hold." 
 
 In both cases, it is jdain that war is necessary, the 
 world lieing such as it is. False things have to be 
 proved to be false, evil things have to be gone through 
 and exhausted, and the battle must be set in array. 
 But it is also plain that a higher ground is possible to 
 some persons, where the only thing that is im])ortant is 
 the truth, where ' all the minor things involved in the 
 battle, — questions of place, such as Jerusidem and Gcri- 
 zim, of the church or the meeting-house, questions of 
 mere opinion, of form, of symbols, of one religion as 
 against another, — things which give all its violence to 
 the battle because they involve personal questions, — are 
 neither seen nor felt as of any vital importance. 
 
 There are those who, partly by nature and partly 
 through experience, stand on this higher ground. It 
 is the ground on wliich Christ stood, when he said, 
 " Woman, the time coincth when neither in this moun- 
 tain nor yet at Jerusalem will ye Avorship tlie Father." 
 And the duty of those who stand with him, and by his 
 strength ujton it, is not to blame too severely the intol- 
 erance of the warriors wlio fight on the lower ground, 
 
20 
 
 FAITH AN"D FREEDOM. 
 
 as is too much tlie custom. Harsh bLunc only rivets 
 them in their intolerance. Kor should you forget that 
 you need gi-cat tact in dealuig -witli others, if you stand 
 on this higher ground. To live on it destroys a part 
 of your influence. Your freedom seems indifference to 
 truth to the j^eople LeloM'. They turn on you, and say : 
 " You blame our impetuosity. It is because you do not 
 care for truth as much as we do." For their intoler- 
 ance, till they can rise out of it, will seem to them to 
 be zeal for truth. Your duty, on the contrary, is to 
 search out the truth, wherever it may be, on every side, 
 to praise it, to dwell on it again and again, till you 
 isolate it, as it were, from its surromiding error, and 
 make men conscious of it, — to reiterate, There you 
 are right," till men's minds are fixed on the points of 
 truth. Once that is done, the error will drop away 
 from them slowly, but certainly ; and the contest itself 
 will also slowly change its spirit. It will, since the 
 truths contended for are now more clearly seen, become 
 less selfish, less mixed up with desire for personal vic- 
 tory, less eager for worldly honor and reward, and more 
 eager for the victory of truth itself. And, wlien that 
 takes i^lace, it will soon become more courteous, less 
 one-sided, less intolerant ; and it cannot help becoming 
 so. That ought to be your Avork. Tliat is the true way 
 to reduce bigotry. Al)ove all, if you have been lifted 
 into the calmer region, and feel that this or that out- 
 ward ojiinion or transient form matters little, if only 
 God and man be loved, it is your duty ncA-er to let any 
 tem])tation hurry you into the evils you see in those 
 below your region. Sliame, shame, on any one who, 
 living with Christ in the S2>here of jiermanent and invio- 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 21 
 
 lable tmith, sliall allow liiiiiself, through any tcmjicr, to 
 be betrayed into violent or scornful condemnation! 
 
 Yet, for all that, there must be on your part no iml- 
 teriiig with triith, no indifference to it. Looking down 
 on the two sides that contend against one another on 
 any one subject that involves a trutli, you must be able 
 — however nuu h you may see true things in both par- 
 ties — to say which side has the most right, which side 
 it is right to join, Avhich side the progress of the world 
 demands should be supported. One must be preferable 
 to the other, — Jerusalem or Samaria, — though there 
 may be a higher and noliler side than either. It is here 
 that 23<irt of Christ's answer to the woman comes in: 
 "Ye worship ye know not what. We know what we 
 worship, for salvation is of the Jews." 
 
 The answer was given with regard to the existing 
 state of things. It conveyed no absolute truth, but 
 only a relative truth. It did not intend to say that the 
 existing -worship at Jerusalem was the best possible, or 
 that it was even specially good. It only said that it 
 was distinctly better than the worship of Samaria. 
 
 It is well to observe in this the delightful reverence 
 of Clirist for Truth. He lived in another region than 
 that of religious quarrel. To him, botli Judaism and 
 Samaritanism were worn-out forms of truth ; and he 
 came to put them both aside, and to lead men into a 
 new world. But had he been like some of our modern 
 prophets, who place themselves above religious disputes, 
 he M-ould not have thought it worth while to decide 
 which of them had the most truth, which of them then 
 was worthiest. " Both are nothing to me," he would 
 then have said to the woman. " Leave them both alone, 
 
22 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 and come i;p and sit with me." And tlie M'oman could 
 not have understood him, and would have thought him 
 careless of truth. Two things wliich you know avcU 
 enough are tlie case Avith regard to some of our prophets. 
 They are not luiderstood, and they are thought to be 
 indifferent to truth ; and both these imputations (of 
 which sometimes some of them are proud, since they 
 isolate them from men in lonely dignity) — though it is 
 odd to be jsroud of not being understood, odder still 
 of being separated from man — hinder their work, and 
 sjioil the good they might do to men. But Christ did 
 not take that position. Tliough he lived in tlie loftiest 
 region, at home with absohite truth, he could come 
 down among tlie strifes of men about relative truth, and 
 see on Avhich side in the lower region tlie greatest amount 
 of trutii lay. He was not thinking of himself, nor of 
 what the Avorld Avould think of him, nor whether his 
 Avay of putting truth would Avin the day. He thought 
 only of the cause of truth itself and of the adA antage 
 of mankind. 
 
 He thought of the cause of truth, and he felt that 
 it Avas of high imi)ortance that he should j^lainly say 
 Avhetlier Jerusalem or Samaria Avere tlie nearest to truth. 
 And if Ave li\e Avitli him in a world above forms and 
 opinions, churches and sects, Ave shall often have, if we 
 Avish to do any good, to folloAv him in this. It is a great 
 difficulty sometimes to descend and take the trouble of 
 Aveighing opposite A'ieAvs, to decide betAveen this sect and 
 that, Avhen Ave do not 2:)ersonally care about either. It 
 is our temjitation, liA ing in the region of ideas, to despise 
 the region of forms Avhere the battle is going on, to use 
 the language of the Latitudinarian, though we do not 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 23 
 
 belong- to tliat meteoric party. Eut it is a difficulty we 
 should overcome and a temptation we should resist. 
 For, though it is of no importance to us personally, it is 
 of the greatest importance to the progress of the -world 
 tliat no indifference to tnith, even to comparative truth, 
 sliould be shown. We must take trouble and say, Jeru- 
 salem is better than Samaria. 
 
 And the grounds of our decision shoiUd be the same 
 as Christ's. "Salvation is of the Jews": it is best for 
 mankind that they should prcA ail over tlie Samaritans. 
 That is the question we should ask ourselves, laying 
 aside all prejudice, stopping down out of our position 
 in the future, into tlic midst of the existing state of 
 things, — From which of these contending jiarties will go 
 forth most good, which possesses elements most capable 
 of being naturally dcveloi)ed into a higher religious 
 form, which has most useful truth for man ? And, when 
 you have answered that, decide on supporting the jsarty 
 you think fulfils best the conditions for the present, not 
 for its own sake, but as against the other, always liow- 
 CA-er declaring that there is a higher view, -\\ liich if men 
 could once grasp, both would fade away. Jerusalem is 
 better than Samaria, and to be supported as against 
 Samaria at j^r^sent ; but before long, -when men are 
 ready, Jerusalem will be set aside by a higher Law of 
 Life, s Neither here nor yet at Jerusalem shall ye wor- 
 shij) the Father. 
 
 Another ground of decision is contained in Christ's 
 rejily : " Ye worship }-e knoAV not what. "VYe know what 
 we worship." The Samaritans had cast aside the Proph- 
 ets, and gone back to the revelation of Moses. They 
 had left out the last and the most important link in the 
 
24 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 long chain of tlic dcA'clopment of religious trntli, and 
 naturally their idea of God was grossly inadequate to 
 the time in which they lived. They Avere like that party 
 in our Church, who, putting aside all the later develop- 
 ments of Christianity, go liack to the early Church to 
 find the form of their religious thought. And so inade- 
 quate, so behindhand was their idea of God, in compari- 
 son to tliat Avhich it ought to be, that they might l)e said 
 to worsliip they knew not Avliat, — it might be God, it 
 might be an Id(j], but at least it had no living growth, 
 no connected development. It was a stunted shrub in 
 comparison witli the Jewish idea of God. 
 
 When you want then to know, among all the religions or 
 foriiis presented to you, which to snpi)ort in the present, 
 ask yourself which can knit itself in the most unbroken 
 descent to the longest past ; which has grown most 
 like a tree, 3'ear by year, century by century, extend- 
 ing its branches wider, lifting its head higher; which has 
 taken into itself most constantly, most consistently, and 
 most progressively all human efforts after truth; which 
 has, in its highest and best form — fur of course, in 
 judging, we look for that — conceived God most nobly 
 and most in accordance with the wants and aspirations 
 of mankind ; that is, in wliich has the idea of God been 
 continually expanding, in equal step with the growth of 
 the world. In that, men will best know what they Avor- 
 ship; and that (hoAvever you may personally have out- 
 groAvn its present form) is the one worthy of your pres- 
 ent support. And I think, of course, or I should not be 
 here, that Christianity answers best to tliat test, and that 
 any form of it, even one as far beloAV your higher A'iew 
 of it as Judaism Avas beloAV the idea of Christ's Avorship, 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 26 
 
 is more worthy of the comj^arative support of Avhich I 
 speak than an unchristian rehgion. Lofty as are the 
 aims of Positivism, and unselfish as are the motives of 
 unchristian Moralism, I should have no hesitation in 
 giving tliat coiii])aratiAe support to a form of Chris- 
 tianity with which I did not personally sympathize, as 
 against these other forms of religion, because I should 
 feel that truths more useful to man were contained in a 
 form of Christianity, however inadequate, than in the 
 very highest form of mere Moralism, because I should 
 feel that the one was capalile of development and the 
 other not. At the same time, I sliould try to clearly 
 mark the truths held by Positivist or Moralist, and show 
 wherein they were better and more advanced than the 
 Christian forms they 0])posed. And with regard to 
 those forms of Christianity, if they were behind that 
 Avhich they ought to be, I should not say that they were 
 absolutely good, but only better relatively than the 
 others; and that, being inadequate forms, they were 
 bound to perish to make room for higher forms which 
 should assimilate the truths proclaimed by the other side, 
 and complete themselves by doing so. That would be 
 my view ; but each man must judge for himself, and take 
 the consequences of his judgment. 
 
 Leaving, however, this special application on one side, 
 the method remains, and the teaching on the whole 
 question is plain, whatever may be your higher ground. 
 You must not be intolerant of the battle waged in the 
 world between forms and opinions about truth ; and you 
 must, T)y forming a judgment as to which is relatively 
 best and declaring it, show that you are not indifferent 
 to truth, even to comparative truth. That is what we 
 learn from Clirist's answer. 
 
26 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 But tliere -^tis a farther answer. The woman had 
 stated the whole question of religious strife, and we 
 have discussed that part of Christ's reply which had to 
 do witli existing circumstances. Jerusalem was better 
 than Samaria. But there was something better still, the 
 higher spiritual life in which the questions in dispute 
 between Jerusalem and Samaria Avould wholly cease ; 
 the life in the spirit and in truth which should 2)ass 
 beyond Jerusalem as a place of worship, and everywhere 
 worshi]:) God ; in which the temj)le and altar Avere 
 neither on Mount Moriah nor Mount Gerizim, but set up 
 in every faithful heart; in which all contest should die, 
 for all, however different the form of their creed, should 
 worship God in unity, because beneath all forms the spirit 
 should be one, — in which all division of heart should 
 be merged in that unity of love where there shoidd be 
 neither Jew nor Samaritan, but only two brothers who 
 should realize their brotherhood beneath all outward 
 differences, because they would both feel themselves 
 children of one Father. ""Woman, believe me, the hour 
 Cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet 
 at Jerusalem, worshiji the Father." 
 
 Wh.at a rush of light conies Avitli the words ! It is like 
 the sun dispersing night. What a flood of peace ! It is 
 as if into the midst of a battlefield Love and sacred 
 Quiet had stepped in hand in hand, till the arms dropi)ed 
 from the warriors' hands, and they knew and embraced 
 as brothers one another. It is with an awful reverence 
 mingled with the worship of delight, Avitli admiration 
 rushing into love, that Ave listen to Avords so beautiful 
 that it Avere Avorth any suffering in life to get into their 
 atmosphere or to share in the spirit that prompted them. 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 27 
 
 The hour was coming, the hour was now, — for the new 
 Revelation was already contained in him who spoke, — 
 when all limits of time and space, of forms and cere- 
 monies, should be removed between Man and God, and 
 men should worship in spirit — the sj^irit of God, in 
 truth — the absolute Truth. Now, even now, to Christ, 
 all controversies abont Jerusalem or Samaria were idle : 
 he dwelt far off from strife upon the spiritual hills of 
 truth. 
 
 And ^\-e, taking this new conception of his into our 
 hearts, rise with him into the higher region where the 
 woman's question seemed to have no meaning, where 
 religious strife is dead because God is worshipped as 
 Spirit and known as Truth. Neither in the Church of 
 England nor in the Church of Rome, neither in Theism 
 nor Evanselicalism, neither in Hisfh Church nor Broad 
 Church, do we now worship the Father. We take up 
 for the outward A-ehicle of a life that worships in spirit 
 and truth whatever form of creed suits us best, what- 
 ever seems to our careful judgment to be the truest, and 
 to hold, on the Avhole, truths in the best way for the 
 world. And we never dream of considering the form 
 of creed we hold as final, or as containing the whole of 
 truth. It is, for the time, relatively truer to us than 
 others; and we make use of it. But to us God is every- 
 where; and we worship the Father most truly when we 
 enter the reahn of Infinite Love, where he abides, beyond 
 the strife of men. And, when we have so knelt, and 
 prayed in spirit and in truth, and return to mix with the 
 religious turmoil, we cannot now specialize our God in 
 any outward form. "We cannot bind his Presence down 
 within any limited form of confession or creed. We can 
 
28 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 only smile when any Church claims to possess the whole 
 of trnth. And we think to ourselves : " In every religion, 
 in every sect, in every superstition even, must I find — 
 since he is Father of all men, and hath not left himself 
 without witness in any single heart — some portion of 
 that One Truth which is so manifold in expression. And 
 life is too short, when I have so much truth to find out, 
 for me to have any time to look after and abuse the 
 falsehoods. Therefore, I will love men, in order to get 
 at the best of them ; and, when I get at that, I shall find 
 some new jahase of truth in them, and tliere I shall con- 
 fess the presence of God and worship him in s])irit and in 
 truth. So shall the whole world of religious thought, 
 and, had I time, every human soul, become a temple 
 where I can praise and pray, and have the profoundest 
 joy." For is there any joy in the world equal to that 
 we feel when we are able to worship, in truth, that 
 which we confess the noblest ? There is no delight to 
 equal adoration, when one loves, and rightly loves, the 
 Person one adores. 
 
 And now, that being the spirit of your life, do you 
 not plainly see that the Avomau's question, so far as you 
 are concerned, is answered? For your inward life, reUg- 
 ious disputes do not exist. You only take a part in them 
 when you have to form a judgiuent, for the sake of the 
 existing world, as to the comparative value of forms of 
 truth. And, when you take part in them in this way, 
 you cannot do it Avith violence or scorn, with intolerance 
 or bigotry. These things ai-e now impossible to you. 
 They cannot exist in the atmosphere you breathe, nor 
 have they any place in the work your life is devoted to, 
 — the discovery of truth in eveiy man and in every 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 29 
 
 religious work of man, and tlie worship of God in every 
 phase of truth that you discover. Your life flows on a 
 stream of love; and your companion, as you descend the 
 river, to find at last the ocean of God's love and truth, 
 is Truth itself. This is the Spirit in which you live, 
 and the Spirit is God himself. Such a life is one long 
 worship, and he whom you worship is a Father. 
 
GOD IS SPIEIT.-II. 
 
 1873. 
 
 " God is a spirit ; and they that worsliip him must worship him in 
 spirit and in truth." — John iv., 24. 
 
 It was not an ntterance unknown to the heathen 
 world before the coming of Christ, that God was Spirit. 
 The Greeks, the jihilosophic Hindus, the hiter Platonists 
 of Alexandria, and many others in many nations, had 
 said it, and said it well. Then what was there new in 
 it on the lips of Christ ? How was he more remarkal)le 
 when he said it than the teachers who had gone before 
 him? It is a question often on the li2:)s of the opponents 
 of Christianity, and it arises from their ignorance of 
 that Avhich they oppose. For where do they find that 
 Christ put himself forward as giving especially new 
 truths ? xV new method he did give ; new command- 
 ments, new inferences from ancient truths, he did supply; 
 a new harmony of truths, a new centre for them, he 
 did give; but he was far too profoundly convinced of 
 the consistent and continuous development of religious 
 truth to dream of creating anything absolutely new 
 in Truth. His work was linked to the first dawn of 
 religious truth in the Avorld, and was the farther devel- 
 oijmeut and collection and completion of all the truth 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 31 
 
 that had been hcfore his time. He used Tip all the 
 existing materials of truth. What more he did is not 
 my business here. I am only concerned to say that 
 the present objection has absolutely no meaning at all as 
 against Christ, and has none in this case. In many 
 points, the quality of the spiritual doctrine of God as 
 jiroclaimed by the Greek ])liilosophers was as high as 
 that of Christ. It was not, then, in its novelty alto- 
 gether that it was superior. It was in this : that he for 
 the first time made it common property. lie brought it 
 and other truths which philosophers and men of culture 
 had kept to themselves • — -for they did not believe that 
 the uncultivated could understand them — down to the 
 ranks of the ignorant and the poor, to children and to 
 women. He believed not only in the divine capacity 
 of the soul of every man to receive truth; but he be- 
 lieved also, and it was a harder thing, in the intellectual 
 power of all men, women, and children to comprehend 
 truths, once the soul was awakened. Noble emotion 
 would kindle the intellect. It was that idea that the 
 philosojihers had never seized, and it was by that idea 
 that Christ far excelled them. 
 
 ^Vnother than he had done the same before his time. 
 That was the Indian Prince who gained the name of 
 Buddha. lie, too, laid his truths before the common 
 peojile as property Avhich ought to be common and could 
 1)6 common. In 'that ])oint of the manner of teaching, 
 he Avas at one with Clirist. The contest, then, as to the 
 superiority of Christianity and Buddhism does not rest 
 on the manner of teaching, but on the quality of the 
 doctrine taught ; and I do not think any one can ration- 
 ally doubt as to the j^hice to be given to the doctrines of 
 
32 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 Buddha and Christ with regard to the nature of God, — 
 the point in question to-day. 
 
 So far tlien, Ave come to this conchision. Christ taught 
 a doctrine about God as spirit as high as the Greek, in 
 a manner as noble as Buddha. He told a truth "which 
 the Buddhist excludes as untrue, in a way which the 
 Greek philosoj^hers would have thought absurd. That 
 makes him sufficiently unique as a teacher. 
 
 Tliink what it was that he did here ! He spoke the 
 divinest, the central truth of all the loftiest Aiyan phi- 
 losophers to a poor, ignorant, and heretic woman, — even 
 in speaking it to a tcomaa transcending at once all the 
 customs and ideas of the philosojjhers. In itself, that 
 was a revolution, — the admission of Avomen into the 
 highest spheres of thought. But it is even more aston- 
 ishing, when Ave think that he Avho claimed to be the 
 A^ery Son of God jdaced this ignorant peasant so far on 
 an intellectual and s])iritual equality Avith himself as to 
 belicA'e her callable of comprehending and feelmg the 
 deejjest truth of all. Do you appreciate the daring and 
 splendor of that '? "What does it not say of his insight 
 into the human heart, of his infinite trust in goodness, 
 of his belief in the capacity of the soul, of his rcA'erence 
 for the jiOAver of the human intellect ! 
 
 Theologians tell us that Christ did not honor human 
 nature as it Avas, and they have avoa'cu theories about its 
 utter fall. But the life of Christ in viA-id act and speech 
 is one long contradiction of the lie Avhich says that we 
 are by nature not only far gone from righteousness 
 (that is plain enough), but utterly separated from God. 
 Neither from his light of Avisdom nor from his loA'e of 
 righteoHsness are Ave ajjart. Xeither in brain nor heart 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 33 
 
 are we divided from liiiu. Wc are his children on all 
 sides of our nature. And it is our -work to go through 
 the world believing in these divine capabilities of heart 
 and brain, feeling that when we speak of divine truths 
 there is a divinity in man that will answer to them, 
 and bringing to all alike, encouraged by this lofty faith, 
 the truths which jjhilosophers claim as only theirs, be- 
 cause only to be grasped after long and special culture. 
 
 We take our stand with Christ, and say: "Awaken 
 love, and men will comprehend anything. Quicken the 
 action of the bi-ain by stirring high emotion, and all its 
 2:»owers are illuminated. Sow truth, and there is a vital 
 power in the dullest, most barbarous soul, which will 
 sooner or later^ here or hereafter, assimilate it." And 
 why? It is the natural food of man. It was curious 
 that philosophy could not see that fact, nor that it Avas 
 true of all men. 
 
 The ancient philosophers failed because they could 
 neither understand nor believe in that. They kept their 
 truths within their own circle, and in doing so they not 
 only failed to influence men widely, but they lost the 
 truths also that they held. And they lost them for 
 precisely the same reason they had for not giving them, 
 because they would not believe enough in men to cast 
 them forth over the soil of the popular heart. To keep 
 any truth within an exclusive circle is to insure its decay 
 within that circle. It will take meaner and meaner 
 forms, because more and more oljscure ones. Its early 
 vigor will be exhausted by confinement to a few minds, 
 who will tend more and more to routine. It will grow 
 gradually decrepit, and cease to have the youth Avhich 
 kindles others, and will end by either slow consum^jtiou 
 
34 
 
 FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 
 
 or sudden death. For it will suffer morally under these 
 conditions, as a family suffers physically that only inter- 
 marries within itself. It Avill suffer from protection, as 
 an article of commerce suffers. Truth must intermarry 
 with all types of mind, in order to preserve its moral 
 and intellectual vigor. There must be free trade in 
 truth, if it is to be healthy. 
 
 Moreover, to confine any truth within a limited 
 sphere is not only to bring about its decay, but also to 
 delay its recognition by the worM. Tlie main object of 
 those who knoAV truth is not to boast themselves of 
 having it while others have it not, — and that there 
 shoidd be some who do this l)ut sIiom s the radical vice in 
 these exclusive sects of culture, — luit to ;\vork, that man- 
 kind may share in it, and be blest by its possession. 
 Now, the only way to get mankind to take it in is to 
 send it forth everywhere. It will then be taken up by 
 men, mistaken, and thrown into forms which will partly 
 contradict its meaning. Tliis will irritate its original 
 teachers, and natur:dly so. But they ought not only to 
 have the moral patience to endure that, but the intelli- 
 gence to see that it is a necessary stej? toward the recep- 
 tion of a truth that it should go through a number of 
 inadequate rej^resentations of its meaning. Sooner or 
 later, that process Avill have to be gone through ; and 
 the longer, through dislike of it, men keep back their 
 truths fi-om the common peojile, the more do they imt 
 off the day when they will be clearly understood and 
 fully received. But the Nemesis of an aristocracy of 
 culture is that it loses intelligence and the sense that 
 handles daily life. 
 
 Do not think when I say this that I depreciate culture 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 35 
 
 in itself, or the forms which advanced knowledge and 
 thought give to truth. On the contrary, they are as 
 useful as necessary. Culture, seeing further than the 
 world in which it lives, prophesies the forms which 
 Truth will possess in the future, sows seeds which will 
 germinate into forests, and prepares the mind of the 
 world for farther revelations. It has its place, and its 
 work is a noble one. But it is false to its work and its 
 l)lace. It ruins its own use, and becomes a retarding 
 element, when it isolates its truths through contempt for 
 the ig-norant, when it refuses to believe in the cajiabili- 
 ties of man. 
 
 Therefore, let any truth you possess go about freely, 
 so that it may be produced in various forms in various 
 minds, and assimilate new elements from new soils. 
 Let it not only get into learned men who are partly 
 conventionalized by the traditions of a school, but into 
 the natural and untaught minds of tlie uneducated, 
 where it will find original, if strange, forms, — forms 
 not too liigh for the existing world to adoj>t, such as 
 exclusive culture gives it for its own exclusive worship ; 
 forms which can be used and worked by ordinary men, 
 however much they may dismay the cultivated. Do not 
 be too afraid or too squeamish. Put Truth forth into 
 the big world among rough hearts : give it, as you give 
 freedom, to all men. Then it will spread, keep alive, 
 and finally triumjih. 
 
 It was this Christ saw, and therefore Christianity flew 
 far and near, took a novel life in every heart, a novel 
 form in every nation, and though its ideas, by the very 
 nature of the method, were travestied, or turned upside 
 down, or idealized too much, or realized too grossly ' 
 
36 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 (in fact, they suffered every transformation they could 
 suffer), yet they spread, the}' lived an ever-renewed 
 life; and, clearly conceived and justly felt by some, they 
 have already shaken off many of their false and absurd 
 forms, and stand out, the leading conceptions on which 
 the progress of the race is founded. The false and 
 absurd forms, or tlie inadequate ones that still remain, 
 will also l)e exhausted in the sifting and resifting which 
 the intelligence and heart of all the world will give 
 them ; and after ages of development, during which 
 mankind shall have gone through them up to its full 
 height, tliey will appear as the sun a})pears when, lifting 
 his majesty out of the clouds of morning and drinking 
 them into his light, he illuminates with joy and radiance 
 all mankind. 
 
 The whole conception, the Avhole method, was worthy 
 of a divine mind, was prompted by a foresight truly 
 Godlike. It needed intense belief in God, it needed 
 intense belief in human nature ; and it had both in 
 Christ in a way which was true of no other teacher 
 the world has known. It Avas a method which, once 
 accepted (and in its determined carrying out of it the 
 Christian Church has been true to its Founder), l>ecame 
 the enemy of all aristocracies of culture and religion, 
 and wherever it prevails it is their foe. Christ is at the 
 head of a spiritual democracy before God. He said: 
 "All men are ecjual : in spirit and in heart, they are all 
 to be conceived as cajiable of receiving the same truths, 
 though the degree of their growth in them be different. 
 In the giving of truth there shall be no exclusiveness. 
 Therefore, I take this central truth, and give it to this 
 ignorant Avoman to make of it what she likes. God wUl 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 37 
 
 direct it ; the seed sown will grow, — it may be into a 
 false form, but it will finally clothe itself with a true 
 one." And how right he was ! Better truth in a false 
 form th;in a lie in a true one ; better truth in an inade- 
 quate form than exclusive silence al>out truth. The 
 form Avill perish, the truth will remain and rise again 
 with a new morning in its eyes. 
 
 That is what I have to say of the method of teaching 
 which Christ ]>ractised, as I learn it from this story. 
 And now for tlie truth itself. God is Spirit; and they 
 that worship him must worship him in spirit and in 
 truth. 
 
 I approach one part of it, or God as a spirit in all 
 men, by dwelling on Christ's act in giving this truth to 
 the Samaritan woman as a representative act. In giving 
 it to her, he gave it to all in her state of intellect and 
 heart. He proclaimed in giving it to her that it was 
 not only for learned and civilized people, but for all 
 peo2)le, however ignorant, savage, and poor ; and, if for 
 all, then the spiritual life, or the indwelling of God, was 
 Ijossible to all. But, if it was j^ossible for all, it could 
 only be so by a previous kinship between all human 
 spirits and God the source of spirit. To give it to all 
 was then to jiroclaim that God as sj^irit moved in all. 
 
 Again, to put it in another form. When Christ gave 
 that truth to all, it was in fact the logical carrying out 
 of the truth itself. God is Spirit. Did it occur to no 
 philosopher when he excluded some from the knowledge 
 of that truth as incapable of feeling it that he was 
 practically denying it? How could God be Sj^irit, if 
 any human sjiirit whatever w^as radically unable to know 
 and live by that truth. For it supposes God — unless 
 
38 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 we deny a soul to the ignorant or tlie brutal, as some 
 more reasonably ilid — as in all spirits; it supposes that 
 no sjjiritual being can exist at all except through the 
 existence in it of the essential spirit. That is the logical 
 inference: if he is spirit, he is in all spirits; in all living, 
 thinking, feeling beings of whatever kind. "What! the 
 jihilosopher would say, and some are saying now, — in 
 the Helot, and the barbarian, in those who live like the 
 brutes, who mock at knowledge ? in the far back men in 
 whom our race first felt intelligence and whose remains 
 we find in caves and dens of the earth? in the gross 
 savage of Australia and Africa, in races as far remoA-ed 
 from our intelligence as east is from Avest? in the 
 criminal and the outcast of our streets, in the sinner as 
 in the seraph? Yes, that is simply what Christ said and 
 meant, believe it or not, if you -will,— that is simply what 
 the statement that God is Spirit partly means, unless we 
 deny that there is a God who is Spirit. There is in all 
 who are born into this world as ])art of mankind a 
 universal Life, and that life is God's life, latent in some, 
 more formed in others, vivid and full in the best of the 
 race, but absent from none. None are divorced from 
 the Life of Truth and Love and Righteousness, none able 
 finally to be divorced from it; and though that Life in 
 the man, like Truth in the world, may run wild and run 
 to evil, it will be sovereign in him in the end and perfect 
 him, as Tr\ith will be sovereign in the race. That is the 
 first conception I give you with regard to the truth of 
 God as Spirit. 
 
 Believing that, what should be the result on our life? 
 We should ourselves worship God in this truth, and in 
 its spirit live among men. For ourselves, to Avorship 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 39 
 
 God ill this trutli is to live one's whole sjiiritual life in 
 it and by it, believing that God is in us. We may have 
 been reckless, godless, because we heard our nature pro- 
 nounced to be corrupt in all its waj's : Ave now turn Avith 
 a thrill of joy, and recognize, led by the light of a new 
 faith, the A'ery Spirit of God in us, speaking, liA^ing, 
 iiii|)elUng, Avorking with us for our 2)erfection. We 
 believe, not in the degradation of our nature, but in 
 the insjjiration by God of its best desires and affections. 
 We knoAV it is true that Ave are tAvofold beings, half-evil 
 and half-good; and Ave knoAV our evil all the better Avhen 
 Ave are conscious of the good in us. We feel all our 
 human Aveakness and its failures; but Ave also know that 
 a high resolve Avhich passes into action, and the uncon- 
 tented energy Avhich despises a day gone by Avithout 
 some progress tOAvard our ideal, — that the tears of a 
 penitence Avhich is not repented of, and the faith AA^hich 
 begins again after failure, — that the hopes which are so 
 Ijright and pure that they act on us like realities, and 
 the Love Avliich is making our Avhole character ucaa', — 
 are things in us not merely human, but the Avork Avithin 
 us of an inspiring Spirit wdiom Ave Avorship in spirit. 
 
 There is indeed a God Avith us, in our hearts. BelieA'e 
 in that, live in the truth that God is incarnating himself 
 in you, that his spirit is at one Avith ydurs. So that, if 
 you Avill, your thought and Avork and Avill may be God's 
 thought and Avork and Avill, and you yourself become a 
 Christ, dAvelling in God, and God in you, at one with 
 the Father, as he Avas at one Avith the Father. Realizing 
 the full meaning of the last part of the jjrayer of the 
 Saviour in the Gospel of St. John, all life will become 
 divine, all thought godlike, all Avork glorious : you will 
 
40 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 live in the veiy Being of the Eternal and Righteoiis God, 
 through the jiower of Jesus Christ. 
 
 Secondly, worship God not only in yourselves in this 
 truth, hut live in it and in its spirit among men, and 
 your outward life will then he in it worship of God in 
 spirit and truth. 
 
 What will that worship he? It Avill he to search for 
 the divine in men, to assume its existence, to delight in 
 it, and draw it forth. Most of iis assume the contrary, 
 and we find it. Men find that which they seek ; and 
 there is plenty of evil to find, if we like that sort of dis- 
 covery. It is bad and ugly work; for, looking for evil 
 and finding it, we make men more evil than they were 
 befoi-e. Did you ever search for falsehood in your child, 
 and not find it, and not make your child falser by contin- 
 ually imputing falsehood to it, and making it conscious 
 of it? That is the wicked work men may do in the 
 world to their fellow-men, and it is devilish work indeed. 
 Or, if they do not find evil, — being spurred by their 
 base assumption of evil in man, — they create it. Their 
 eyes are blind to good, quick to image sin. Their very 
 intelligence is made foolish by prejudice of evil, — just 
 as some in a late autobiography refused to believe in a 
 disclaimer of wrong from the lips of the dead, as if it 
 could be a lie ! This is also, in its stupidity, as well as 
 its malice, quite in harmony with the devil nature. 
 
 It Avas not, it never was, the way of Christ. He 
 neither looked for evil, and found it, nor was forced 
 by an ugly necessity to invent it. He assumed, on the 
 contrary, the divine in all, searched for it, expected it, 
 and found it. And it is that more than all else in him 
 that attaches me to him : it is that I reverence and woi-- 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT, 
 
 41 
 
 ship with my Avhole souL Let it be our way of worship- 
 l^ing God the Sjjirit among men. Let us say, when we 
 meet man, Avoman, or child : " The goodness of God is 
 in this human spirit, if I only could find it. Give me 
 therefore, Divine Sjiirit, whom in the spirit of this truth 
 I worship, power to find thj self here in my fellow-man. 
 If thy goodness be clear within him, may it teach and 
 help me : if it be latent, overlaid with error and sin, may 
 I have the blessedness of drawing it forth to light, and 
 making known to the man how good he may become, 
 how near God he is. What my Saviour did for the 
 Magdalene and for Zaccheus be my example and my 
 aim." 
 
 That will be a blessed life, — a real life of worship of 
 God in spirit and truth. It will lead you, as it led Christ, 
 to care very little for the judgments of the world about 
 persons or social classes, or for the judgments of moral- 
 ists and so-called religious persons. It will lead you into 
 what the world and its whitewashed sepulchres will call 
 false charity and immoral laxity of 02).inion. You will 
 be said to be mad, or to have a devil. You may be 
 called not of God, because you do not obey the maxims 
 of social ojjinions, and infidel because you traverse the 
 faiths of society. But that will matter little, if you are 
 sure of your faith in goodness. The talk of the world 
 about you will be as the hum of a city to a man who 
 lives above it on the hill, — it will scarcely reach your 
 ear. Nor is it worth your while to listen to it. It 
 leadeth only to penury of intelligence and to meanness 
 or hardness of heart. The maxims of society and the 
 condemnations it formulates by them on tlie ground of 
 its ceaseless suspicion of evil are so wicked at times, and 
 
42 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 SO Ugly always, that your great difficulty will be to 
 extend to the persons who imt them forth the tolerance 
 and the loving-kindness which you must not give to 
 their opinions; and the spirit of them is so dull and 
 unintelligent as well as uncharitable — is not all want of 
 charity necessarily stupid? — that the greatest good that 
 can happen to a man's heart or intellect is to have 
 escaped altogetlier from the atmosphere of the world. 
 But you must not expect at the same time to get on in 
 the world: you must frankly give up its rewards, if you 
 choose to escape from its region ; and you must escape 
 on Christ's ground, — on the ground of believing in tlie 
 goodness of man. It will not do to separate yourself 
 from the world, and to keep up harsli judgments and 
 contemjst of men and disbelief in goodness, and become 
 the morose and inhospitable scorner of men. You must 
 not, in setting yourself against the opinions of the world, 
 disbelieve in the divine Spirit ni those who hold those 
 opmions, else you are just as bad as they. Nay, more, 
 in such a separation you are in worse case than if you 
 lived in the world, — for tliere you are at least among 
 men and have a chance of attaining belief in goodness, — 
 in bitter isolation \o\i have none. No, you must live 
 your separate life in separation from opinions, not from 
 men, and live it freely, nobly, on the ground of Christ, 
 — on belief in the divine spirit in all. Then your heart 
 will be warm enough not to care what men will say of 
 your ojjinions or your mode of life. You Avill be very 
 happy. You will have the ceaseless joy of finding 
 people so much bettor than you imagined, of making 
 people really better l»y 1)ringing them to know their own 
 good, and giving them hope and faith in God by that 
 
GOD IS SPIRIT. 
 
 43 
 
 knowledge; of sympathies continunlly extending and of 
 new lives continually added to yours, so that your soul 
 will widen every day; of greater hopes for man grow- 
 ing greater and more beautiful as you grow older ; of an 
 increasing conviction of God's jJi^esence and power in 
 men and in yourself, and of the certainty spi-inging 
 from that, of final restoration for mankind. And day 
 by day, to add to your joy, there will increase the 
 number of those who will thank you for new life, and 
 love you so dearly and so faithfully that you will not 
 know what to do with your happiness, except by making 
 it an increased power of making others ha2)])y. And, 
 finally, your own religious life Avill deepen. Living 
 always witli God in others, continually finding him in 
 them, and worshipi)ing him there, you Avill see new 
 phases of his character, and your conception of him 
 will grow nobler and more A-arious. LiA-ing always with 
 what you find of righteousness and truth and love in 
 others, you will grow into greater lo\e of these divine 
 Powers. The desire to realize them more fully in your 
 life will change into the power to do so, — for strong 
 desires incessantly searching for and conversant with 
 their objects become powers of those objects, — and at 
 last beholding in all men, in every living spirit, some- 
 thing of God's intellectual and si)iritual life, some phase 
 of his love or his beauty or his wisdom or his truth, 
 you Avill see in yourself and in all, as in a glass, the glory 
 of the Lord, and be changed into the same image, from 
 glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 
 
 See now to what Ave luiA-e been led! Look around you, 
 and in every lunnan soul Ave behold that God is Sjjirit. 
 We cannot see one lonely islet of humanity where he 
 
44 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 is not, where his light does not shine, round which his 
 love does not break like waves. Wander where we will, 
 in the human spirit, we find him; and, finding him 
 and knowing him everywhere, how can we help adoring 
 him? We worship him in spirit and in truth, and he 
 seeks with delight for our worship. 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 
 
 1875. 
 
 "And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom : 
 and the grace of God was upon him." — Luke ii., 40. 
 
 The ■\vay in which we naturally represent God to our- 
 selves is as a man with the power and wisdom and 
 goodness of a perfect man. It was inevitable that this 
 should be the case in early times among men not capable 
 of abstract thought. We see the same thing working in 
 our children, even in ourselves. In jii'i^yt'i', in thanks- 
 giving, in the going forth of feeling to him, however 
 much our purer reason denies God's visible jJersonality, 
 we represent him to ourselves in human form. 
 
 It is a tendency which, indulged in too far, has jiro- 
 duced great evils and awakened the strongest opposi- 
 tion. In the present day, scientific study of all kinds, 
 as well as philosophy, have set themselves against any 
 anthroiJomorphic representation of God. If there be a 
 God, they say, conceive him through nature. I have no 
 objection. In fact, the immense increase of knowledge 
 forces us to reform our intellectual conception of God; 
 and he would be a fool indeed who did not use all means 
 whatever of enlarging and ennobling tliat conception. 
 Moreover, if we believe in God, all the new knowledge 
 
46 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 comes from him, and is intended to reveal more of liim 
 to ns ; and, when we receive it, we take it not only for 
 its own sake, but that we may lead all the ideas we 
 receive from it back to their source, and find them com- 
 pleted and harmonized in our idea of him. All sciences 
 end in theology. Therefore, it is with joy and the kind- 
 ling hope of reaching higher trutlis about the Divine 
 that we listen to all that men of science tell us. We 
 know, if they do not, that Nature is the body of God, 
 and that it reveals him as our l)ody; and its organs and 
 their functions reveal our thought. In its myriad-minded 
 work, it discloses the myriad-minded God. " Tlie invisi- 
 ble things of him from tlie creation of the world are 
 clearly seen, being understood by the things that ai-e 
 made, even his eternal j^ower and godhead." We are 
 bound, then, if we Avould have a worthy theology, to be, 
 if not students of science, at least students of the results 
 of science. 
 
 And it is just the same with that part of art which 
 addresses the sense of beauty and its pleasure in Nature. 
 Art, in representation of natural beauty of landscape 
 and of form, has more than doubled the range of its 
 work, both in painting and poetry. Ahnost the whole 
 natural world has been laid under contribution by art 
 with an intensity and a univers.ality unknown before; 
 and if we are wise, and know our time and our needs, 
 we ought to be able to take all the ideas pertaining to 
 beauty and form which we receive through art concern- 
 ing Nature, and lead them upwards also to ennoble and 
 enlarge our idea of God. 
 
 All, then, that we knew previously of infinite order, of 
 harmony within diversity, of thought as Lord and King 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 
 
 47 
 
 of iiKitter, of beauty as its soul, of infinite evolution, of 
 infinite love brooding in the world of Nature, of ever 
 new Aveaving and reweaving, forming and reforming, has 
 been indefinitely increased through tlie new work of 
 science and of art. What is the result, what should be 
 the result, for us Avho believe in God ? We should say 
 with great gratitude, " Our intellectual and imaginative 
 conception of God as pure Tliouglit and pure Beauty has 
 also been indefinitely increased, our whole theology is 
 widened." And this is what science and art have done 
 for us: only in their doing of it we have got rid of the 
 humanity of God, of the conception of his personality. 
 
 Is tliis all we need to know of God? Are we satisfied 
 with a God who contents our intellect and our sense of 
 beaut}', — with God conceived as pure Thought through 
 knowledge, or 2:ture Beauty through art? We have cer- 
 tainly got rid of . anthropomorphism and of personality ; 
 but are we much the better for getting rid of them? 
 Does it give us all we want ; or, indeed, is it the highest 
 conception we can form of God to say he is the universe 
 of Nature conceived as Matter, or the universe of Nature 
 conceived as Thought, or the mind of Nature conceived 
 as Harmony and Beauty and impersonal Love? 
 
 It seems to me that as many evils follow on the exclu- 
 sive representation of God as im2:)ersonal Thought or 
 Beauty or Love as follow from the exclusive representa- 
 tion of him as having a human personality. What are 
 we to do? This: let us take all the ideas we win from 
 the world of Nature and form out of tliem part of our 
 conception of God. But the world of Humanity is more 
 important than the world of Nature, and we ought to 
 conceive God also through it : we ought to add to the 
 
48 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 thoughts "H'e liave won of hiiu from Nature others which 
 we gain tlirough Man, and the first and most natural 
 way of thinking of him is as perfect Manhood. It was 
 that idea that Christ gave to us in a way fitted for 
 the conscience and the spirit. God was our Fatlier in 
 heaven, wlio was absolutely good, and who loved us 
 utterly and wished us to be as good and as loving as 
 himself, and worked with us for that purpose. God was 
 placed in a human relation to us; and we conceived him, 
 not only as Thought and Beauty, but as a righteous Per- 
 son and a divine Father, whose Spirit was the source of 
 truth and love and pity and justice. lie was made ])er- 
 sonal, and put into i^ersonal, moral, and si)iritual rela- 
 tions to us. It was the highest anthroj^omorjihism. 
 
 Add, then, to the conception of God we have received 
 from science and art that which we have received from 
 Christ ; add, that is, to infinite Thought and Beauty 
 the idea of an infinite Person, with a will, a character, 
 a sense of right, a power of love and truth and justice 
 such as we i30ssess, but freed from sin and infinitely 
 extended, and we possess a conception of God of which 
 we need not be otherwise than justly and nobly proud. 
 Only guard it by remembering always that, in saying 
 that God is j^ersonal, we do not mean to say tliat his 
 personality is the same as ours, but only tliat there is 
 that poAver in him by which he can make himself per- 
 sonal in us and for us, and that he is the source of 
 2)ersonality such as we conceive it. Infinite Thought, 
 infinite Beauty, infinite Love and Truth and Righteous- 
 ness, infinite Humanity, infinite Personality, all are his; 
 but tney do not fully express him, and to take any one 
 of them and limit our idea of him to that alone is evil 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 
 
 49 
 
 and leads to evil. For we must remember that, if we 
 conceive God as Man exclusively, Ave are sure to i^roduce 
 as much evil as if we conceive God as Nature exclusively. 
 
 Do we not know how evil it is ? Theology has taken 
 this idea of God conceived of as a Man, and so exclu- 
 sively dwelt upon it that it has given birth to all kinds 
 of wrong and idolatrous ideas about God. I need not 
 dwell on the A-arious phases in which this special one- 
 sidedness has apjieared. God has been conceiA^ed and 
 represented as a kind of Caesar, a great king and Avarrior, 
 of irresponsible poAver, Avhose will Avas his only laAv, and 
 not his will limited by right; whose might made his 
 right ; a tyrant and no more. He has been couceiA'ed 
 as a great Philosopher alone, or a great Judge alone, or 
 as a great Creator alone, or as a Mechanician, divided 
 from his universe, arranging the whole and leaA'ing 
 details to themselves. And all these ideas, because they 
 stood alone and limited our idea of God, brought forth 
 eA'ils on evils. Take them all, take CA'ery one you can 
 gain, and they Avill each modify the other and lead you 
 on to higher ideas. Take one only, and it aa'III corrupt 
 in your hands. This, then, is conclusiA'c. The concej)- 
 tion of God through Man is good Avhen it takes into it 
 all the ideas Ave receiA^e of him from Nature, evil when 
 it does not. The conception of God tlirough Nature is 
 good when it takes into it all the ideas Ave receive of 
 him through Humanity, evil when it does not. And our 
 whole conception of him ought to be draAvn from all 
 that Ave learn from Nature and all that we learn from 
 Humanity. On that ground, we have almost endless 
 means of expanding our idea of God ; and anthropo- 
 morphism, instead of degrading or rendermg false that 
 
50 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 idea, is of the highest use possilile in ennobling it and 
 making it more trtie. Only, as I say, it must be com- 
 plete. "When we frame an idea of God through Man, 
 we must take tlie whole of Man. Is that done? One 
 instance will occur at once to you of the contrary, 
 which will not only illustrate the evil of limitation of 
 thought in this matter, but also, when corrected, the 
 amazing exjjansion and ennobling of the idea of God 
 which is given by its correction. Men have conceived 
 God only as masculine, and not feminine. He thinks, 
 feels, acts like a man in their thoughts, never like a 
 womnn. The result of this one-sided Avay of thinking 
 was tliat all kinds of horrors were connected with his 
 action, and all kinds of Avicked feelings attributed to 
 him, in which the conception of Christ also shared. At 
 last, Roman Catholicism invented the Virgin and added 
 her to the Godhead. ^Ve cannot do that ; but if we 
 want to correct our idea of God, and to ennoble it, one 
 of the first things we ha^-e to do is to add to it all the 
 noble characteristics of womanhood. Take the distinct 
 elements which belong to that, and which are for ever 
 different from those that belong to manhood, and, 
 making the necessary abstractions, add them to your 
 growing conception of God. Fix your mind on this, 
 even for one week, and you will be deliglited to find 
 how much your concejJtion of God will grow in breadth, 
 in nobility, incompleteness, — amazed to find hi>w much 
 you have omitted from it, into how many mutilated, 
 harmful, and even base ideas of him you have fallen 
 by conceiving him through only half of Humanity. 
 
 To go still further on tlie same j^atli, men have con- 
 ceived God as having the characteristics Avhich belong 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 
 
 51 
 
 to different |)C'rio(ls of Man's life. In formative art, in 
 poetry, in the visions of the heart, he has been repre- 
 sented to the imagination of men as a man in the prime 
 of life when tliey desired to conceive him as fulness 
 of intellect and power, as eternal and strong old age 
 when they wished to conceive hun as the fulness of 
 eternal wisdom; and of hoth these modes we have 
 examples in the Bible. That which the poets and artists 
 have done in this way, Ave ourselves do continually in 
 our thoughts, as different experiences and trials lead us 
 to imagine God differently; and in this way, in this 
 twofold effort, they and we have certainly developed 
 into greater variety the spiritual and intellectual idea 
 of the Supreme. But one representation of him has 
 been omitted or but very rarely touched ; and it is this 
 which I shall lay before you to-day, with all the thoughts 
 connected with it. 
 
 I cannot recall any instance in wliicli God has been 
 conceived as the Eternal Child, in which the attributes 
 of such perfect youth and childhood as we can shape 
 in our thought have been added to our idea of the 
 Highest. This we need to do, and this is suggested to 
 us by the childhood of Him who was the express image 
 of the Father. 
 
 The first sight we have of God revealed in Man is 
 God revealed in Christ the Child. The second is of God 
 revealed in youth, when, after twelve years, we find 
 the Saviour in the Temjile ; and, looking up from the 
 Revealer of the Infinite God to the Infinite One himself, 
 we conceive the glorious elements of perfect childhood 
 and 2)erfect youth as existing in him, and we do so with 
 a reverence which takes into itself a great and dear 
 delight. 
 
52 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 In that exquisite unconsciousness of self which belongs 
 to childhood, and which adorns it with the beauty of 
 an eternal morning, we recognize one of the elements 
 of the Divine Perfection. Though all his works are 
 known to him from the beginning, yet they are known 
 without any work of the reHective faculty, such as we 
 possess, upon them. Tlioy have not been thought out 
 nor thouglit upon. They are done at once, — thought, 
 act, and will being as one, — no passing from one to the 
 other, no meditation, no sense of the possible or the 
 impossible, — infinite wisdom and power acting as a child 
 acts. 
 
 We are wearied with a thousand thoughts and ques- 
 tions. We have to build up our acts in meditation; 
 we ask Avhether they are right or wrong, wise or foolish, 
 whether they are likely to fail or succeed, whether 
 our motive is selfish or unselfish, whether the end is 
 noble or worth the pains, wliether we shall reach an 
 end at all: at every stej), we are self-conscious. In the 
 child there is nothing of that. In God there is nothing 
 of it. And with its absence is perpetual blessedness, 
 impossibility of weariness, intensity of life, and I believe 
 the very depth of j^ersonality. For by this absence 
 of self-consciousness the child throws itself into the life 
 of all it loves and sees and hears. Things are living 
 to it which are dead to others. It lives in the most 
 wondrous worlds of tale and fancy, and they are real to 
 it; and wholly absorbed in this life other tlian its own, 
 and loving it with all its heart, it possesses that personal 
 life in its fulness which we want, which we only reach 
 now and then in those rare moments of deep passion, 
 when love of some great thought, or of ideal truth or 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 
 
 53 
 
 beauty, oi* of man or woman, liave made us wliolly forget 
 ourselves, and live in the life of the universe or in the 
 lives of men. 
 
 This is the essence of God's life, — life in the life of 
 all things and souls which have flowed from him; no 
 sinjrle attribute of his being felt or known within him- 
 self, but felt and known in that and those whom he has 
 made the outward form of his thought and spirit, so 
 that God's life is that intensity of love which loses self, 
 to speak humanly, in that which it creates and loves. 
 
 And that is the deejiest root of wliat we mean by 
 God's personality. It is in those rare moments when 
 yve have passed utterly beyond our own circle of self 
 that Ave feel most a person, most a distinct and living 
 soul. God has that glorious sense of Being at every 
 moment of his infinite existence, never shadowed for 
 an instant by what we should call a return into our- 
 selves, never lost, as we' lose it, when, after losing self, 
 self leaps up within us and cries, "Where have you 
 been away from me, how is it you have forgotten me?" 
 Death comes back at the cry, personality seems to slip 
 away from us, we ask again " wdiat we are," we doubt 
 whether we are or are not ; in fact, we cease to be : we 
 take uj) again the weary task of becoming. 
 
 These are some of tlie tilings which belong to the idea 
 of the Eternal Childht)od of God. Intensity of life, 
 depth of personality held in the absence of self-conscious- 
 ness. Further, do you not see that such a life can have 
 no age, nor ever be older after millions of years have 
 gone by than it was millions of years before ? Like the 
 child, it has no past, no future : it abides in an ever- 
 present; it looks neither behind nor before; it has no 
 
64 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 memory, no prophecy ; it sees all that was and will be at 
 the same moment, and its infinite knowledge makes it 
 forever young. Yes, it seems to me that if, after long 
 searching, it were once granted to mortal eyes to see in 
 a vision, in that solemn dreamland into which we enter 
 once or twice in life, that form which God might afford 
 us as a symbol of himself, Ave should see a child, -with 
 the a^vful light of eternity within its eyes and the smile 
 of unfathomable joy ujion its lips. 
 
 For this idea we add also to our conception of God 
 from childhood, — that there is eternal rapture in his 
 Being. Our thoughts of God are solemn, su1)limc, tinged 
 often with a certain gloom of solitude : we unconsciously 
 link to our thought of his ceaseless work some vain touch 
 of weariness, some sense of struggle. It is wise, then, 
 to turn to the thought of this eternal youth, which is 
 renewed forever in making all things ever new; whicli 
 sees all things as childhood sees them, with the dew of 
 morning on them, without a shade of languor or satiety ; 
 which finds in the never-ending creation of new things 
 in thought, and in that which men call matter, never- 
 ending rapture, — that matchless, radiant rapture which 
 we know the shadow of when we create. It is only God 
 Avliose pleasure has never been dimmed by a sense of 
 incompleteness in things thought and done ; whose de- 
 light is endless, because each thing he gives birth to is 
 intensely loved by him, — him the Eternal Poet, whose 
 poem is, for us, Nature and Human-kind, — him who 
 rejoices forever like a child. 
 
 Add to tliis, and from childhood also, — into whose face 
 we look and catch the vision of innocence, — unutterable, 
 self-delighting Goodness ; not goodness won, as ours is, 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 
 
 55 
 
 by struggle, and bearing on it tlie stains of sorrow, l)ut 
 goodness, spontaneons, necessary, from everlasting to 
 everlasting ; goodness to which evil is non-existent, 
 which knows not and cannot know evil, which does not 
 contend with that which we call evil, but sees it as the 
 shadow which goodness casts m an imperfect nature, a 
 shadow .which must pass away Avhen that nature is made 
 jierfect, — a goodness, therefore, which has all the ex- 
 quisite joy of innocence without its ignorance, — all its 
 naturalness of life without its foolishness, and without 
 its dulness. 
 
 These are some of the thoughts of God we wm when 
 we think of liim as the Eternal Child. And these 
 thoughts ought to be dear to us, for so we add charm 
 and joy and rapture, and a wonderful hope of glorious 
 youth to come," and the feeling of the heart when of a 
 dewy morning we walk out in new-born sj^ring, to our 
 religion and our life with God. Solemn, grave, and 
 stately with many sorrows is our life with the Eternal 
 One, when we sit surrounded by long years of trial, sin, 
 struggle, painful victory, in the chambers of our own 
 heart, looking wearily forward to the long years to come 
 in which daj- by day we shall renew the battle and 
 set our face steadfastly to our Jerusalem with Christ. 
 Within ourselves, Avithin our memories, our hopes, and 
 fears, we seem to Avorshiji a God Avhose first-born is 
 sorrow and whose law is trial, even to tlie breakin"- of 
 all but the last cord of the heart. It seems as if Ave 
 Avere saved only, so as by fire, in the supreme agony of 
 being M'lien it asserts its immortality against the ])lian- 
 tom Death. It is thus looks our religion, our life and 
 Avorship, Avhen we find our God only Avithin the circle of 
 
66 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 our own experience. Pass out of thcat experience now 
 and then, see God ■without the sphere of the thoughts of 
 manhood, womanhood, and age, and as within the sphere 
 of eternal youth, eternal childhood, — worship him not 
 only as the Lord Avho heals sorrow and forgives sin, and 
 brings you back from wandering, but as the ever joyful, 
 ever young Delight, whose life is rapture because his 
 life is unconscious Love. That will take you somewhat 
 out of yourself, make small your sorrows, dip in forget- 
 fulness your sins, fill your lips with praise, and put a 
 new song in your heart. It makes life happier to con- 
 sciously conceive and worship the Eternal Hapjjiness. 
 It takes away the curse of time to know and love for 
 his beauty the Eternal Youth. It refreshes, as with 
 the cool rain of tlie even, the languid meadows of later 
 life, where every blade of grass is a thought and every 
 flower a feeling, when we realize, in an hour of divine 
 inspiration, that there abides for us an eternal childhood 
 in the Eternal Childhood of God. 
 
 Lastly, see how much that does for you, how much 
 beauty and largeness it adds to your thought of him you 
 worsliip. Take the method and do the same kind of 
 work for every period of the life of manhood and 
 womanhood, and your thought of God wiU grow in 
 grandeur and in breadth. Pass from the characters of 
 ordinary human life to those of the lives of great and 
 inspired men and women, 2>ersons of genius and power 
 and keen feeling and matchless love and victorious holi- 
 ness and jnercing truth, — the jjrophets and ])oets and 
 philosophers and teachers and healers and saviours of 
 the race, — and collect into one thought all the elements 
 in them which are highest; pass from individuals to 
 
THE CHILDHOOD OF GOD. 
 
 57 
 
 nations, and collect into your thought of one Behig all 
 the ideas in their Avorld-wide development which the 
 national life of all nations has wrought out at large and 
 handed down to us ; pass from nations to the whole of 
 the human race, see it in its entirety, grasp and con- 
 ceive the ideas and feelings which rule it in their most 
 universal form ; expand them, idealize them into per- 
 fection, and, when you have done all in this ascending 
 series, add them to your conception of God. Have you 
 then conceived him as he is? No! no! but you have 
 wonderfully enlarged and cnnohled your thought of him. 
 
 Can you go further still? Oli, certainly. Take the 
 whole of Nature and all the knowledge you have gained 
 of it; see it in its infinite detail, then generalize into 
 a few great ideas all that you have learned from the 
 detail ; pass beyond this earth into the infinite worlds 
 of space, — beyond the flaming Avails ; weary imagina- 
 tion with the thoughts wliich are born in you, as you 
 pierce into the ineffable silence and darkness of the 
 spaces beyond our star-cluster where other star-clusters 
 float, — and add all the ideas you then conceive to 
 your conception of God. Do more; people all these 
 worlds with living spirits, different no doubt from us, 
 but all at least the same in this, that all think and all 
 love. Imagine the countless myriads of spirits which 
 live, and all have their source and their end, their 
 thought and tlicir love, of God and by him and through 
 him, and have you found him yet? No, not so as to 
 exliaust him. But you have indefinitely enlarged and 
 ennobled your conception, and you know that he whom 
 you worship is worthy of your worship. 
 
 Then are you at rest. Not because you have done 
 
58 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 all, not because your conception has attained finality, 
 but because you have formed as adequate an idea of 
 God as is possible to you, and you kno-w that it will 
 continue to expand. Every new extension of knowl- 
 edge, every new secret science wrests from Xature, 
 every new idea wrought into form through the prog- 
 ress of man, every new representation of beauty that 
 art makes, every new develo])mcnt of human feeling 
 and work in CA'ery sphere of human activity, will s\\ ell 
 and dignify your conception of the divine and univer- 
 sal One who is also your Father. Till at last you 
 will know, in that vivid Avay in which one does know 
 spiritual truth, that such thought and such growth of 
 thought about God Avill be immortal, and form the 
 ground of your immortality. It cannot be that this 
 mighty Idea, in me, in all my fellow-men, once we have 
 possession of it, should die in us; infinitely worthy in 
 itself, it makes tliose who have it infinitely worthy. 
 The thought is by itself eternal, and guarantees eternity 
 to those who think it. In itself, by its essence, it is 
 immortal. I who think it am immortal. It is in God, 
 who lives forever. I who think it am also in God for- 
 ever. 
 
THE LIGHT OF GOD li^" MATsT. 
 
 1876. 
 
 "That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh 
 into the world." — John i., 9. 
 
 These -words were written many years after Christ 
 had left the earth, and they were written expressly from 
 tlie spiritual point of view. That is, they refer to the 
 inward light of Christ's spirit in men's hearts, not to the 
 outward light which he manifested tlirough his earthly 
 life. The light is the diVine indwelling of Christ's sj^irit 
 in the soul. It helongs, we are told, to every man that 
 Cometh into the Avorld. It is not given at random or by 
 favoritism, as some decide : it is not given at bajDtism, 
 and not Avithout bajitism : it is not given through man 
 or man's ordinances. All these and similar statements 
 are added to the Scriptures. It is simply, we are told, 
 the liglit in eveiy man that is born, — God's light in us, 
 the uncreated fountain of all that is true and good and 
 beautiful and kind. 
 
 When we grasp a truth, and the exquisite pleasure 
 of knowing what is true abides with us like a noble 
 guest ; when we conquer a selfish or worldly desire, and 
 lie down to rest on the goodness we have won, and feel 
 at peace ; when in the golden summer time we pass 
 
60 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 through the happy woodland, and hear the stream and 
 the trees talk to one anotlier, and the beauty that flows 
 into the eyes and eai-s kindles its instructive fire in our 
 hearts; when we give love or ])ity or kindness to those 
 that need it, and the quick thrill of lieavcnly joy, such as 
 the shepherd feels when he finds his lost sheep, swells 
 the heart, — what is it that we feel? We feel not only 
 ourselves, but God witliin us. His is the truth, the 
 goodness, his the beauty and the tenderness, and his the 
 joy. He is mingled with us then. His light and life 
 make our light and our life. 
 
 And it matters but little as to our j^ossession of this, 
 whether we be ]ioor or rich, learned or imlearned, 
 commonjilace or filled with genius. It is true it is more 
 or less in all men, it is of different kinds in different 
 men; but it shines in all. One may hold it in a soul 
 which is a palace for the crowned Truth to dwell in; 
 another may keej) it in a soul'which is a ruined cabin, 
 where many an outlawed thought and many a felon 
 feelinc: dwells. But its eternal fire burns in both, — in 
 one as brightly as the sun, in the other dimly as in 
 a dying star. Jfone are without the Spirit of God. 
 We live and move and have our being because he is 
 in us. Tliere is no true life, no true thought, no true 
 feeling of which he is not the source and essence. 
 Therefore, we know whence we are, and what we are, 
 and whither we are tending. We are from God, we are 
 of God, and we are going on to deeper union with him. 
 Therefore, we know whether we are mortal or immortal. 
 As he has wrought himself up with us, we cannot die. 
 We are a vital part of his eternal Being. 
 
 When we say these things, we assume the Being 
 
THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAN. 
 
 61 
 
 of God and our being in liim. We start our whole 
 thought and reasoning and feeling on the subject of 
 what we are from the belief in God. And we think 
 that our own being and that of Nature, and all the 
 phenomena of both, are better explained, and that more 
 of their facts are explained and correlated by that 
 theory than by any other. 
 
 But there are others who hold a different theory, 
 and who, desiring to explain and find out what Man is, 
 start from Man himself. There are two classes of these 
 persons, and they differ widely. 
 
 One is the speculative. They have the jjoetical, and 
 not the pr.;ctical, disposition. They long for light, not on 
 tlie facts of matter, but on those of thought and feeling. 
 "What is the end," they say, "and what the source of 
 all I imagine in my brain and heart ? Ideas rise within 
 me, and passionate emotions thrill me. I love them 
 and pursue them, I win and exhaust their good and joy, 
 then they decay and fail. Are they tlien of the dust, — 
 the dust to which my body shall return ? I would fain 
 think not. I hear of a God who made me, of a heaven 
 and a hell in future ; but I know only myself and the 
 earth, and that I suffer and rejoice in the present." 
 
 Then they send their soul wandering into the invisi- 
 ble to search for an answer; and it comes back after 
 long speculation, bearing no olive-l)ranch, but silent and 
 weary, with no reply npon its lips, and they take it in 
 and say: "Alas! there is no voice, no light. I, and 
 only I, am the centre of the universe. I myself am 
 God and Heaven and Hell. God is the name I use 
 when I think upon my Fate. Heaven is the image 
 I make to myself of my fulfilled desire. Hell is the 
 
62 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 image I ci'eate of my desire, when, powerless to fulfil 
 itself, it still goes on craving and consv^ming. There is 
 no reality beyond myself that answers to these names. 
 Tkey are but pictures in the dark looking-glass into \\ liich 
 I gaze when I look outside of myself. I see in it, it 
 « seems, infinite de])ths, and far, far away in them dim 
 shadows seem to move. But the mirror is only a thin 
 surface of my own creation, in which my own self is 
 reflected. Itself and its shadows and its depths are all 
 my pliantasy. And, when I die, the glass is shattered 
 and the images. It is nothing, it tells me nothing, be- 
 yond it there is notliing. 1 have come ^\■ande^ing into 
 this world I know )iot why, nor whence. All day long I 
 ask what I am and whither I am going, and, when (driven 
 by the desolateness of old age and tbe torment of decay) 
 I am asking it most bitterly, I am suddenly struck down 
 — and all is over. 
 
 " ' A moment's halt, a momentary taste 
 Of Being from the well ainid the waste ; 
 And lo ! the ])hantom caravan has reached — 
 The Nothing it set out from. Oh, make haste ! ' 
 
 It is ghastly ignorance, and it Avere well I could cease to 
 torment myself about it. But I cannot. I cannot help 
 asking. An inward passion urges me, and it finds its 
 food in everything. Never for one moment am I moved 
 hy a great thought or touched by a deej) feeling, without 
 tljis greater and deeper question rising and appealing to 
 me for a reply." 
 
 Is there an answer ? Well, we Christians say there is, 
 and we find it in the life and words of Christ. If he is 
 the reiaresentative and ideal of Humanity, and if what he 
 
THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAN. 
 
 63 
 
 said of himself as sucli be true, then these questions are 
 answered. The very kernel of the Incarnation is tliat 
 God and Man are at one in Christ, and Ciirist luniself 
 said lliat what lie Avas liis hrotlu rs w ere to be, — at one 
 Avitli God. It was as 3Iau and as one of ns tliat he said, 
 "I and niy Father are one." It was as one of us that ho 
 said, " I came fortli from tlic Fatlier, and am come into 
 tiie world : again, I leave tiie Avoi-ld, and go to tlie 
 Father." It was as the ideal Man he said, " The Son 
 can do nothing of himself but what he seeth the Father 
 do, for what tilings soever he doeth these also doeth the 
 Son likewise " ; it was as such he said, " The Father that 
 dwelleth in me, he doeth the works " ; and, " My doctrine 
 is not mine, but his that sent me." It was as man he 
 sai^l, " I must work the works of him that sent me." 
 
 If these things be true of us men as they were true, 
 Christ said, of himself, then all your questions are an- 
 swered. Whence came you"? You came out from the 
 Father. Why are you here ? To work the woi-ks of 
 liim that sent you. What are you ? You are a living 
 child of God, one with God, so dwelt in by him that 
 your works are his and your doctrine his. AVhitlicr are 
 you going? You leave the world, and go to tlie Father. 
 
 You answer. What right have I to claim for myself to 
 be that which Christ was? I reply: You ha^■e the right 
 he has given you, the right God has given you through 
 him. You are not now wholly what he was : you are 
 imperfect, sinful, struggling against error and tempta- 
 tion ; but, still, you are at one with Christ, by right and 
 through him at one with God ; and by and by, when you 
 are wholly redeemed and clean, you shall be in fact that 
 which you are now by right. That is what Christ says 
 
64 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 himself. He liad no doubt that v^hat lie was as Man all 
 men who followed him should be. " The glory which 
 thou gavest me"— so he speaks, ijraying to his Father — 
 "I have given them; that they may be one, even as we 
 are one : I in them, and thou in me, that they may be 
 made perfect in one." 
 
 The certainty of that is the revelation of Pentecost. 
 The very Spirit of God dwells in the soul of man and is 
 his life : he is the light that lighteth every man. Be- 
 lieve that truth, and all your life will change. You will 
 not need to send your soul into the infinite to find God. 
 You will find him in your heart ; and, finding him, you 
 will know, far more certainly than you know any fact of 
 matter, whence you are and Avhat you are and whither 
 you are going. Weary speculation will cease, fruitless 
 effort will become fruitful work : all you think and do 
 will have an aim, and you will know you shall reach your 
 aim. And when, at death, you stand on the jieak of the 
 mount of life, and earth lies beneath you, sleepmg in the 
 mist, you shall look up to a radiant Heaven, and cry, 
 stretching forth your hands in utter thankfulness and joy, 
 "I lea\e the world and go to the Father, my Father, to 
 be at one with him f()re\ er, with the light that lighted 
 me when I came into the world." 
 
 That, then, is the answer which the Spirit of God in 
 Christ gi\ es to the souls that cannot as yet believe, but 
 must speculate on life and death and eternity. They are 
 speculations that ha-s e in them imagination and jjoetry. 
 They stir the emotions of those who make them. They 
 are prompted by passionate thought, and they kindle it. 
 They bring with them longing which lifts a man above 
 the world, and often indignation against God which, in 
 
THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAN. 
 
 65 
 
 the stirriiiL;" it gives tlic soul, lias a reflex action towarrl 
 good upon it. For it is an indignation whieli soon 
 changes into love of God, Avlien the idea of God is 
 changed. At least, they keej) the man irom sinking into 
 a mere intellectual machine: they remove him from the 
 drudgery into which the desire of nothing else but what 
 is called practical brings its followers at last. 
 
 But there is another class of men to-day, who do not 
 speculate at all. They do not send their souls out from 
 themselves, for they d<j not l^elieve in anything like a 
 soul. " We cannot hold it in our hand," they say, " nor 
 l)rove that spirit is by reasoning." They hear of a Divine 
 Light and Life and Spirit in them, whom men call G<^d ; 
 and they say that they do not feel it, and do not care to 
 feel it. They will not sj^ecnlate on sul)jects to which 
 they see no end, and of which they know no beginning. 
 The feelings on such subjects are blind guides, and tliey 
 dim the dry light in which they wish to work. They 
 allow the existence of conscience as now felt, they allow 
 tlie existence of the religious feeling in man, of love and 
 aspiration and desire for continued life; but they do not 
 allow that tliese are spii-itual powers that have an exist- 
 ence of their own, derived to us from a S2)irit who loves 
 us and gave us being. They stick to facts, as they say; 
 and the only way to find what men call the soul, and the 
 feelings it is said to i»ossess, is to look for them in tlie 
 vessels and the nerves and the matter of tlie brain, and 
 in the movements of their atoms, and they grojje for 
 them in the decay of the dissecting-room and in the tort- 
 ured tissues of animals. "We ha\e not found the soul," 
 they cry : " it is not there." 
 
 No, indeed it is not; and you will never find it there. 
 
66 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 Life is not found in death : you will not touch the incor- 
 ru])tible in the corruptible. You may find movements 
 correlative witli thought, but not the moving power of 
 thought, — movements correlative with the desii'e of God, 
 but not the source of the movements or of the desire. 
 Never, never will you find that in the ceaseless clash of 
 atoms. 
 
 Then, as to conscience and the sense of religion and 
 belief in immortality, they must be sought at their origin 
 in animals, and in their slow growth through selected 
 movements of matter which bec(mie habitual and heredi- 
 tary. There, in the far past and in their weakest devel- 
 o]>ments, we shall find out A\'hat conscience and religion 
 and intellect and love tndy are. And these men have 
 made their theories, and they are not pleasant ones. But 
 whether they are pleasant does not much matter, if they 
 accounted for the facts. But it is safe to say that at 
 l^resent they do not ex})lain conscience or genius or the 
 love of a cause or even tlie love of man and woman. 
 
 And we who look on ask, Avith some wonder, whether 
 it would not be a more rational method of finding out 
 what conscience and genius and love are in men, if we 
 Avere to study them in their most perfect and highest 
 form rather than in their imperfect and loAvest. 'No one 
 denies that they haA'e develojied from faint origins, but 
 their origins Avill be better knoAvn, if Ave begin to study 
 tlieni from Avhat they are noAV. 
 
 Look at conscience as it rises in Luther, Avhen he stood 
 alone against the Avorld of his time, and clung to truth 
 in the face of death. Look at genius, Avhen it sjjeaks in 
 Shakespeare's tragedy, Avhen it fills the heart in a mas- 
 ter's music. Look at love, when in Christ it sacrifices the 
 
THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAX. 
 
 G7 
 
 ■\vholo of life for the sake of tlie vast concei^tion of bring- 
 ing the whole race to God ; look at love even in yourself, 
 when you are thrilled with the beauty of the world, 
 when you feel tliat \<m w<mld gladly die for the maiden 
 of your choice: and then ask yourself if you can conceive 
 these things to be only the product of the weaving or the 
 clash of atoms, — if tln'yha\ e come to tliis height and 
 ]io\ver and majesty and immortality, to this oneness with 
 a beauty and a truth Avhich you ai-e forced to conceive as 
 liigher tiian they, by the slow selection of advantageous 
 atomic movements. 
 
 It is when most distressed Avith the noise of those 
 wlio bray tlie love and thought and conscience of men 
 in the mortar of their analysis that in a pause of their 
 unmusical toil we hear with exquisite delight these 
 ancient words: "In him was life; and the life was 
 the light of men. That was the true Light, which 
 lighteth every man tliat cometh into the world." For 
 at least the truth in them is an adequate cause for tlie 
 results we obsei-ve. It accounts for the vast phenomena 
 of the moral, S2)iritual, imaginative, and passionate ele- 
 ments in man. The otiier theory does not account for 
 them, is utterly inadequate to the facts. 
 
 Conscience is not the growth of liuman judgments 
 alone: it is the voice of an Eternal Riglit within us, 
 which comes to us from a living Righteousness without 
 us. Its source in Eternal Right is beyond Humanity: 
 it is throned in the Being of God forever. When 
 we have put aside some wrong with a mighty effort, 
 and feel, after the first agony, the high sense of noble 
 conquest, the deep joy Avithin us is not only that we 
 have won our own apjjroval : it is the joy of being 
 
68 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 nearer to the eternal Goodness wlio loves ns, of feeling 
 that he himself has wrought with us in the conquest. 
 When we are conscious of the strong bitterness of 
 remorse, it is not only that we liave sinned against 
 man that tortures us: it is that we have exiled our- 
 selves for a time from the Father of our si)irils. "O, 
 cleanse thou me," we say, " from my secret faults." 
 "Father, I have sinned against thee." And in that 
 conviction lies our truest chance of rei:)entance, our 
 best ground for repairing the evil we have wrought 
 against our fellow-man. 
 
 Genius is not the haj32)y conjuncture of material 
 elements in a man. It is the breath of the intellect of 
 God, the thrill of God's heart in us, the inspiration of 
 his beauty. When the poet creates, it is the creative 
 Spirit of God that breathes into the men and women 
 whom he makes, and bids them live and love. When 
 the artist paints, the soul in his picture that speaks to 
 us is the living beauty and love of God. When the 
 musician makes the heart i:)aint a liundred images of 
 man and Nature, and gives to each image its OM"n troop 
 of emotions, it is the changing, feeling Sjiirit of God 
 that changes and feels within us. 
 
 Love is not the jjleasant thrill of atomic movements, 
 rejieated till they become fixed in a certain direction. 
 Love is God hnnself in iis, as the desire of good. It 
 is the longing after imre happiness in others. It is the 
 desire of beauty, in God, in Nature, in man or woman. 
 It is the generative, productive, creative power in us. 
 Its power is itself the Word of God in us; and we may 
 truly say of it, in all its noble forms in us, what John 
 said of the i>erf ect love of God, " All thmgs are made 
 
THE LIGHT OF GOD IN MAN. 
 
 69 
 
 by it, and Avitliout it is iK)t anything made that is 
 made." For God is love, and where it is true in us it 
 is God in us. "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in 
 God, and God in him." 
 
 Yes, these things are true; and it is great joy to 
 know and feel that every good and perfect gift cometh 
 doMU from tlie Father of Lights, with whom is no 
 "v ariableness, neither shadow of turning. For then we 
 know these tilings shall not die. The right we strug- 
 gled for and won is not lost in the gra\ e. It is ours 
 in God, a treasure laid up for us in the rigliteous world. 
 The beauty and intellect and noble passion which genius 
 threw into form do not decay with our dust, and enter 
 into the unconscious being of the rocks and trees. They 
 abide and grow forever in us and for us, adding beauty 
 to beauty, thought to thought, feeling to feeling, and are 
 expressed forever in more and more perfect form. And 
 Love is above all immortal. Our childish love of God, 
 the early praise of joy we ga-\ e him, our later desire of 
 good, our longing to know his peace, — this does not die. 
 God, Avho is its life, has made it move in us, keeps it in 
 our hearts from dying, touches us through it into effort, 
 and leads us by it at last to fulfil our true life in unbroken 
 love of him. Nor does our human love die. It has its 
 defect and its excess, its glory and its folly, its constancy 
 and its failure : the subjects of it may lose their hold on 
 us, but all that has been nobly felt and truly thought in 
 it endures ; and it will purify itself in us, and we shall 
 know by and by that it was of God. 
 
 Nor does death divide us from love, or from the pity, 
 the passion, the forgiveness which we have to give or to 
 receive, the longing for, or the peace of finding those 
 
70 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 who have gone away. For God's Spirit is in the living 
 heart that waits for us, and in ours ; and its unity makes 
 our unity. The liglit in which those who have gone 
 away abide is the same that abides in our hearts, and 
 that light is the light of love. Oh, desolate indeed is he 
 who in the hour of some wild sorrow, when life crashes 
 round him, and earth has nothing left to give, has no 
 belief in hearts that wait for liim in a kinder and more 
 peaceful world, Avho sees nothing in the dead but dust, 
 who looks for the heart that beat for him, and the eyes 
 that he gazed into to find comfort, and the h;md that 
 made his supjiort, only in the grass that waves above the 
 grave or the wind that hurries by that haunted resting- 
 place. But there is some joy even in bitter pain, some 
 comfort which we know will arise ere long and sit with 
 us hand in hand, when we think that the all-indwelling 
 spirit of God's Love moves in us, and in the husband, 
 the wife, the children, the brothers, sisters, and friends 
 that have passed bej'ond the grave. 
 
 These, then, are some of the human asjjects which the 
 revelation of to-day presents to our hearts, weary with 
 speculation, still more weary of the claim of science — of 
 some science at least — to rob us of our hopes, to j^ai'- 
 alyze our faith in the immortality of the heart, the con- 
 science, and the intellect. 
 
 If, then, these things be true, — if there be a spirit of 
 goodness, of genius, and of love ; if that sj)irit be God's 
 Spirit, and he abide in us, our true and faithful Light in 
 this dark world of sorrow, failure, and decay, — what is, 
 what ought to be, our daily life and effort ? It is to walk 
 worthy of him who dwells in us, to resist his effort in us 
 no longer, to throw ourselves into union with his right- 
 eousness, his ideas, and his love. 
 
THE LIGHT OP GOD IN MAN. 
 
 71 
 
 What arc the}-? "What do \vc know of God's good- 
 ness, his tlioughts, his love? We know thetu througli 
 the life and work of Christ our Saviour. Tlie Spii-it in 
 us is the same Spirit tliat M as in him, and tlie work the 
 Spirit does in us is to awake in us tlie rememl)rance and 
 the imitation of Christ. " Tlie Comforter, Aviiich is the 
 Holy Ghost, whom tlie Fatlier will send in my name, lie 
 shall teach y<ni all things, and bring all things to your 
 remembrance whatsoe\ er I have done unto you." 
 
 The Goodness we are to pursue and make our om'u is 
 the goodness of Christ, the same fair human goodness 
 that breathed and inspired, labored and endured in the 
 Holy Land, that since then has lived in all the good and 
 pure of earth. It was a A-ery simple goodness : no one 
 can mistake it ; the poorest and most ignorant may 
 understand and follow it. It was loving-kindness and 
 sweet gentleness, and the healing of sickness and sor- 
 row ; it was jiurity of heart and belief in the goodness 
 of men ; it was truth, and such love of truth as the 
 world has not seen again ; it was the giving of truth to 
 all ; it was the glad acknowledgment of truth wherever 
 he found it; it was the abiding of all his life in bis 
 Father, so that his thoughts were his Father's thoughts, 
 his work and his whole being God's work and being; it 
 was unbroken communion with Divine Righteousness, 
 and the unbroken effort to make the communion he pos- 
 sessed with God the possession of men. There, I say, 
 is our ideal. That is what the inward Light in us is 
 striving to accomplish in us. 
 
 And in intellect, genius, the work of thought, what 
 does God's Spirit in us mean for us? The answer is 
 also in his life ^\•ho has given us the Spirit. 'Wliat was 
 the work of his genius? It was not the pandering to a 
 
72 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 popular cry, not the astonishing of tlie world, not the 
 desire of applause, not the sacrifice of gifts to the Avin- 
 ning of money, not the solitary jileasure of increasing 
 knowledge or of refining feeling. It was the firm con- 
 ceiving of great ideas, useful for the human race ; it was 
 the shaping and rounding of these into instruments that 
 men could use for the advance and saving of the world ; 
 it Avas the entirely faitliful and resolute Avorking out of 
 these in life, it Avas death for them at last ; it Avas belief 
 in tlicir immortality and joy, in their resurrection in men 
 and nations, that had seemed to lose them, in their eter- 
 nal abiding in men by his Spirit. 
 
 It was not only the conceiving of thoughts, but the 
 creating of men. Christ made new men by the power 
 of intellect. He used, that is, all the poAver thought 
 gave him for the jjurpose of making useless and dead 
 characters into liA'ing and useful ones. He was the 
 artist of men. He saAV what their intellect, feeling, poAv- 
 ers, and senses could become. He saAV the work they 
 Avere capable of, and liis art-work Avas to bring men to 
 the ideal God had of them. It was true creation, and 
 no phrase is truer than this: "If any man be in Christ, 
 he is a ncAV creature." Or this, Avhich more fully ex- 
 presses the thought : " Created in Christ Jesus unto good 
 Avorks, Avhich God hath before ordained that we should 
 Avalk in them." 
 
 That is the Avork of his spirit in us, and that should be 
 our AVork among men. Whatever thought or power of 
 thought God has given us should first of all be given to 
 these two things, — the conceiA'ing of ideas useful for the 
 true progress of man, and the AVork of bringing those 
 Ave meet up to the ideal that God has of them, the crea- 
 tion of ncAV men. 
 
THE LUIHT OF GOD IN MAN. 
 
 73 
 
 And, lastly, whut is the love wliieli the Spirit calls on 
 US to have and to live by? That is contained in a few 
 words of Christ: "Love one another as I have loved 
 you." It is no longer the statement of the old law, 
 "Love your neighbor as yourself": it is "Love your 
 neighbor as Christ loved you," — that is, far, far more 
 than yourself, more than your joy, more than your peace, 
 more than your wealth, more than your knowledge, 
 more than youv hopes, more than your life. Die for the 
 sake of others. What can be added to that? It is 
 that and nothing else that God's S]>irit asks of you. 
 But it is not without its reward, — not a selfish reward, 
 not the wild hajjpiness of earth, not anything which will 
 make you love yourself. It is the reward, or, rather, not 
 the reward, but the necessary fruit of the seed you sow. 
 It is union with the life of God, union Avith immortal 
 love. It is to be at one with the spirit of the love which 
 says, "It is more blessed to give than to receive"; it is 
 to be able through love to lose yourself in living union 
 with all that has beauty in Nature, with all that has 
 nobleness in man, with the whole universe of God, with 
 God himself. Oh, what life shall then be ours, — life 
 which, in losing self, finds itself in union with the ever- 
 beating Life which makes, as it beats with love, the 
 whole creation! And what light! At last, the light 
 within us, hidden now, and dimmed too often by our 
 sin and failure, shall become the light in which our 
 whole being shines and lives. Tlie Sun of Righteous- 
 ness, the Sun of intellectual Truth, the Sun of perfect 
 Love, — these three will mix their glory into one, and in 
 it we shall abide, — conscience, mind, and heart illu- 
 minated and illuminating, eternal light our own, for God 
 is ours forever. 
 
THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 1876. 
 
 "The grace of our Lor J Jesus Christ be with yon all. Amen." — 
 Revelation xxii., 21. 
 
 It is the last text in the Bible, and it fits Avell the last 
 day of the year. It is ■well we should take a blessing to 
 ourselves, or at least try to fancy that it may be ours, for 
 we need it sorely on this day. I,t may have been a year 
 of happiness to some of you, and I AvoiUd gladly think 
 so; for, in the troublesome world in which we live, the 
 best hai)piness possible to us is to know that happiness is 
 a reality. And those of you whom God lias made happy, 
 and who have been Avorthy of your hapi)iness, ought to 
 be very thankful to lam, and should cherish the memory 
 of your happiness and lay it by in a treasure chamber, 
 that, when the evil days come, you may look at it and 
 say, "Then, I had joy, and I can taste its sweetness still: 
 I have failed, but my past delight receives me into an 
 everlasting habitation." Therefore, be grateful for your 
 joy, and keep it well. It has been a blessing ; but, though 
 you have been blest, you will be none the Avorse for a 
 heavenly blessing such as I lay to your heai-ts to-day out 
 of this sacred book. For surely all earthly bliss is made 
 more beautiful if Ave can link it to the grace of the Lord 
 
THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 75 
 
 It may have been a year of misery to some of yon. 
 You may liavo lost out of your life one wlio made all its 
 delight and all its interest, whose sharing in your work 
 made that work worth doing, whose sharing in your life 
 lifted it above dull commoni)lace, in whom were hid yeai's 
 of associated and loving memory. And now your work 
 is done only because it is duty, and your life lived only 
 because it is coM'ardly to die. Or it may not be loss of 
 love, but loss of yoiu' best self that has made the year a 
 misery. AYIiat shall it in-ofit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose himself? It is a greater misery e\-en than 
 loss of one whom we have loved, to look back and feel 
 that in the months gone by some quality, some hope, some 
 belief, has been lost out of the character which can never 
 be restored to it. Something else may be gained in the 
 future, but not that: something betfer maybe gained, 
 but your old companion, which made you so hapi)y or so 
 good, is dead. Again and again in life, irreparable losses 
 take place. The door is shut, and its clang-to sounds 
 like the A'oice of doom itself. 
 
 While, then, you are shut out in the darkness, and 
 before another door opens, beyond which you may find a 
 new light, and gain a new power in yourself which will 
 give energy to life and fulness to character, your time is 
 a time of misery. It will be well for you who are now 
 sufferhig this, to whom this year closes in that jiain, if 
 you ha-\ e the heart or the right to think ujion this bless- 
 ing. Some of you may do so even now; and the grace 
 of Christ may l)e already giving you, through its tender 
 influence, the power to lead a new life. Oli, throw vour 
 Avhole soul into union with it, and seek the blessedness of 
 a life with him ! Others may feel that as yet they have 
 
76 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 neither part nor lot Avith him, that they have no right to 
 his gracious kindness, or they may be too storm-tossed in 
 tlieir hearts to be able to realize that peace can ever come 
 again. I bid them not desj^air. There is only one irre- 
 mediable sin. It is the sin of Judas. It is despair of 
 forgiveness. Despair of forgiA eness ! It is irrational. 
 For how much do we forgive ; and shall not God, who 
 is greater tlian we, forgi\ e more than we do? Take the 
 blessing even with all but a hopeless soul. Lay it like 
 healing dew on your heart, and ere long it will do its 
 work. 
 
 But, after all, most of you, as you look back, do not 
 see unmixed joy or unmixed sorrow in the year so nearly 
 gone. Life is, for the most part, a varied web. It is 
 woven of glow and gloom, thunder purjjle and shining 
 gold. Even in the' midst of our darkest days, deep joy 
 rushed in ; even that which we now most sorrow for 
 had in it, when we lived in it, inexplicable pleasure. 
 Often, as we look back, that Avhich was our happiness in 
 hours gone by — so strangely mixed is life — is now our 
 tragedy, and that which was our tragedy is now our 
 blessedness. And, on the whole, the greater number of 
 us have more joy than sorrow, though in the weight of 
 sorrow we forget the multitude of joy. For sorrows 
 keep together, while joys are dispersed through life, and 
 in the centre of sorrow we cannot recall the joys that 
 are scattered all over the circle of life Think a little 
 less of your sorrows and more of your joys on this day. 
 For the joys will make you gr.ateful, and gratitude is in 
 itself one of the most beautiful ]>leasures of the soul. 
 And, being grateful, you can take this blessing to your- 
 self and make it yours ; for part of the grace of the Lord 
 Jesus is to have a grateful heart. 
 
THE GRACE OF JESUS CHKIST. 77 
 
 It is Avell, then, this day to seek a blessing. For, in- 
 deed, unless one is very young and very strong, and little 
 worn by life, Ave need some blessing. Dwell as we will 
 on the brighter side of things, life is very hard, and men 
 and women are hard on one another, and we ourselves 
 are growing hard, and that is the worst of all. We need 
 something to softefi, in no enfeebling way, the hardness 
 of life and of men and of our OAvn heart. And most of 
 the Ijlessings we seek of our own will weaken our souls, 
 and in the weakening make us harder in the future. But 
 the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, if we could win it 
 and take it, softens all things by making us stronger 
 toward goodness and truth, and righteousness and love. 
 
 What is it? What is his grace? That is our study 
 to-day. Whatever it is, it does not come from one who 
 is ignorant of all we need. He has known to the full 
 the weight of human suffering, and the blessing of his 
 grace that is with us is brought home to us by that 
 knowledge. He can comfort because he knows. He 
 has known what temjstation is, and can feel with the 
 agony of our resistance, an<I through that Avith our 
 Aveakness. He has not known remorse or the loss of 
 good ; but, through his infinite pain in contact Avith sin, 
 and his infinite pity for those enthralled by it, he can 
 understand our unliappiness in guilt. By knoA\"ledge of 
 sorroAV% he can Ijring blessing to sorroAV. 
 
 Nor has he knoAvn joy less. In early life, as boy and 
 youth, he kncAV all our simple and pure joys. In man- 
 hood, Avhen he first Avent out to the Avorld, avc have 
 often traced the joy of enthusiasm in his work. In 
 later days, these only liA'ed in memory ; but another joy 
 took their place, — the mighty joy of universal love, the 
 
78 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 joy of giving uyi all things for all men, — that Mondorful 
 and mystic joy which ^ye faintly realize whenever, out 
 of the dejiths of personal suffering, we rise into the glo- 
 rious life of self-surrender because we love. In that joy 
 of Christ's, all suffering died ; and he who reached thus 
 the uttermost human joy can, through knoMdedge of it, 
 give us the blessing of joy. But his fitness to give 
 comes not only of knowledge of our need, but also of 
 his victory over all that is evil or weak in our need. He 
 overcame, through holy will and through love of others, 
 sorrow, temptation, and sin, went through their depths 
 and came forth their conqueror. It is the Victor who 
 can give grace and strength to those whom the same foes 
 attack. That gift is not in the victim's power. He who 
 lets himself be enslaved by the pains of life, he who 
 allows sorrow or sin to make him effortless, can ne\er 
 o'ive or do good to others. No more than a coward 
 can insjDire the Avar can he inspire or help his fellow- 
 men, and that is his worst punishment and his worst 
 degradation. Christ can give inspiration, can bless, and 
 give of his power because lie mastered the evil forces of 
 life. Xone have ever done that so conijiletely, but 
 many can do it in his spirit. And those who do can 
 help and bless their fellows in pro])ortiou to their vic- 
 tory. Remember that this day, you who are in warfare 
 with pain or guilt. You will be able to bring grace 
 and blessing t j others in the future, whatever your pain 
 be now, if you con<[uer it. And, in order to conquer, 
 win his grace who has conquered, and who will give it 
 to you. 
 
 That grace is, first, kindness, tlie good-will of love. It 
 is usual to sj^eak of the grace of Christ as a s]>iritual gift 
 
THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 79 
 
 "vvhic'li is foinmunicated to us, as the fuA'or .and good-will 
 which he bestows. But tliough that way of looking at 
 the term "the grace of Clirist" is true enough, yet it 
 forgets, or keeps out of siglit, the fact tliat, to give it, he 
 must ha^e it; and the first thing at least we are to look 
 to, and the tlnng wliich is usually left out, is the grace 
 of Jesus Christ himself. It was his own before it is 
 ours. The first meaning of the words then is "the lov- 
 ing-kindness Avhich beh)nged to Christ, which formed 
 part of his character, be with you, and form part of 
 yours." And that is a much more practical way of 
 talking, and more to be understood, than speaking of a 
 kind of vague supernatural gift the exact sense of which 
 we cannot understand. 
 
 ^Yhat that loving-kindness, that grace, was, lies before 
 you in his life. It is old, simple, gracious human love 
 raised to its greatest height and tenderness. It is the 
 showing forth of all those sweet and beautiful qualities 
 "which make liome and social life so dear, and the sliow- 
 ing forth of them in j^erfection. It is the filial tender- 
 ness which laid down the consciousness of genius and all 
 its impulses for thirty years at the feet of his mother in 
 a quiet and silent life, and which won her jjondering and 
 passionate love. It is the penetrating love which saw 
 into the character of his friends, and made them believe 
 in their own capacity for greatness, which led men like 
 Peter and J<»hn and .Janies to find out and love one an- 
 other, wliich bound his followers together in a love that 
 outlasted death. It is the tender insight which saw into 
 the publican's heart, which, when the sinner drew near 
 in tears, believed in her repentance and exalted her into 
 a saint, which had compassion on the multitude and on 
 
80 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 the weariness of ;i few, wliicli wept over Jerusalem and 
 over Lazanis, which ne%'er failed to strike the right 
 chord even with souls so ignorant as the Avoman of Sa- 
 maria, whicli in all human life and the movement of its 
 passions and hopes and faiths did, said, and thought the 
 loving and just thing at the right moment, witliout do- 
 ing or saying the weak thing. Thiiik of it all, you who 
 know the story; and an image of the grace of Clirist as 
 loving-kindness will grow before your soul. And it will 
 be strange if you do not, ravished with tlie sight, say: 
 "Let that blessed power be mine in life. May the grace 
 of the Lord Jesus be with me." It is no theological 
 mystery Avhich you ask for then : you ask that he may 
 give you his strong and tender human lo\ e ; you ask 
 not that he may give you something new, but that he 
 may strengthen and emioble all that you know is most 
 beautiful in your nature and most likely to make you 
 beautiful toward }'0ur fellow-men. It is a blessed thing 
 to ask for and to live for in the coming year, for it will 
 make your life a blessing. 
 
 But there is more in it than this. Human love, left 
 alone, sjiends itself only on those near to us, or on those 
 that love us in return, and, in its fonn of kindness and 
 pity, on these whom we compassionate. Kept within a 
 narrow circle, it tends to have familv or a social selfish- 
 ness. Given only to those who suffer, it tends to become 
 seK-satisfied. To be perfect, it ought to reach, through 
 frank forgiveness, those who injure us; through inter- 
 est in the interests, ideas, and movements of human l^rog- 
 ress, those who are beyond our own circle, in our nation, 
 nay, even in the world; and finally all men, those even 
 who are our bitterest foes, through desire that they 
 should have good ami l)e good. 
 
THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 81 
 
 It was the very glory of the grace of Christ, as love, 
 that it rose into this wonderful height and universality. 
 No act for his truest friend or mother Avas more mtense 
 in feeling than tliat act in which he laid down his life for 
 his enemies. No love for John or Peter was greater 
 than the love which devoted his Avliole life to the salva- 
 tion of the world, of men of whom he knew notlung per- 
 sonally. There was, tlien, a motive power behind his 
 natural human love, which lifted it into a diviner region, 
 which made it Godlike in forgiveness. Godlike in its 
 rush out of the particular into the universal. What was 
 that motive? If we can find it, we shall know the 
 very root and inspiration of the grace of Christ. It 
 is easy to find. It is written in everything he said, but 
 nowhere is it written more clearly than in the first words 
 of his Prayer. When he taught us to jJray "Our Fa- 
 ther," he told us that it was his conviction that all men 
 were children of God, and that necessarily all were broth- 
 ers one of another. It was easy for him to forgive a 
 brother, even were he an enemy. It was easy for him to 
 die for unknown men, if they were brothers. Christ felt 
 it to be an utterly beautiful and joyful thing to love the 
 sons of God, — the sons of him from whom he drew his 
 mission, to whom he owed his love, from whom came 
 all the souls for whom he died. All men were infinitely 
 precious and divine in Christ's^ sight, for he saw them 
 all consciously and unconsciously going into the out- 
 stretched arms of God. Therefore, he could not help 
 loving them all. 
 
 That is the grace of Christ, — the loving-kindness of 
 Jesus, — the human love i-aised into the divine without 
 losing one touch of its humanity, save only as light is 
 
82 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 lost in greater light. I jiray that this grace of Christ 
 be with you all, — the grace of natural love lifted into 
 divine and universal lo\ e through faith in the Father- 
 hood of God. It is Christ's to give because he had it, 
 and when we have it we can give it also. Gain it and 
 give it, and you will be blessed and a blessing. 
 
 Secondly, grace has another meaning other than lov- 
 ing-kindness. It means the kind of beauty we express by 
 the word " charm " ; and in this sense we may translate 
 the text, " Tlic beautiful charm of Clirist l>e M-ith you 
 all." It is the sense in which a Greek would have loved 
 to take the words, and they truly bear that meaning. 
 What was that charm ? It was that of harmonj^ of char- 
 acter, the musical subordination and accord of all the 
 qualities and powers of his nature, so that the whole 
 impression made was one of exquisite and various order 
 in lovely and living movement. It is owing to this that 
 of all the images of history none is so unique and clear 
 and attractive as that of Christ. Its grace in this sense 
 is jjerfeet, and that is its inner Sj^irit. 
 
 In outward action, it showed itself in many delicate 
 and lovely ways. Its loveliest form is in sensitiveness 
 to feeling, — the sensitiveness we find in all his A\-a}-s with 
 men and women. Do you remember how, wlien the 
 world-worn Pharisee expressed his scorn of tlie sinful 
 woman, Clirist felt her boundless love, and said, "Her 
 sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much"; 
 how, when Mary sat at his feet and was blamed by Mar- 
 tha, he alone saw love and rightness of choice in her 
 silence ; how, when the rude utilitarian saw waste in the 
 extravagant love which lavished on him the precious 
 spikenard, he accepted it, not for its extravagance, but 
 
THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 88 
 
 for its passion; liow, when Potcr had sinned Dy a three- 
 fold treaciiery, lie believed in the repentance, and only 
 gave one look of sore and loving reproach ; how, when 
 he was dying, he provided for his friend a mother, and 
 for his mother a son? What charm, what grace in them 
 all ! And their beauty could not stand alone. That 
 kind of exquisite sensitiveness tlowered through the 
 Avhole of his life with men. It was his grace, and all 
 felt its charm. 
 
 Nor is it less seen in his speech than in his act. It is 
 impossible always to explain in what i>erfect literary 
 charm consists ; but one thing is always true, — it is the 
 voice of an inward harmony of character. It is rarely 
 found in its jierfection, but it is nowhere found so exqui- 
 sitely as in the stories and words of Clirist. In direct- 
 ness, in temperance, in a certain sweet Avisdom and 
 ordered liumanity, and in the beaiity that results from 
 these, there is nothing in the loveliest Greek work which 
 matches the parables of Christ, or such sayings as, "Con- 
 sider the lilies of tlie field, how they grow : they toil not, 
 neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you. That even 
 Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
 these "; or, " Come unto me, all ye that labor and are 
 heavy-laden, and I M ill give you rest." The {•harm of 
 them is jierfect. Do you not know that, had Clirist been 
 born when Pericles was master at Atliens, every Atlien- 
 ian would have clustered round him to hear his words, 
 for the very beauty of them ? Sophocles and Socrates 
 would have felt their grace. 
 
 In tninking of him as the Man of Sorrows, in having 
 imposed on us by the ascetic that he had no form or 
 comeliness, we forget what must have been his irresist- 
 
84 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 ible charm. In the reaction which Christendom felt from 
 that heathen woi'sliip of beauty whicli ended in moral 
 deformity, nay, linked beanty to sensualism, the loveli- 
 ness of Christ was too long hidden from us : Ave lost the 
 sense of his grace in the meaning which the nobler 
 Greek Avould have given to the term. 
 
 Do not you forget it. Seek the blessing of the charm 
 that comes of sensitiveness to the feelings of others, of 
 sensitiveness to all that is beautiful, of an inward har- 
 mony of nature, and of the exj^ression of that harmony 
 in beautiful act and sijeech. Say to yourselves in this 
 sense also, " The grace of the Lord Jesus be with me 
 and all." 
 
 And, if we are worthy of it and see it, he will give it 
 to vis. It is given, indeed, through our seeing it. The 
 moment we see loveliness, we cannot help desiring it ; 
 and the moment we desire it, we begin our effort after 
 it. To do this is one of the instinctive passions of our 
 nature. We wish to be like that which we admire, and 
 we no sooner wish for and admire it than wo groM' like 
 to it. And the more like we grow to the beautiful thing, 
 the more we desire to be more fully at one with it, till 
 out of our love of beauty arises an endless asj)iration 
 and a jjressure toward jjerfection which A\ e cannot con- 
 ceive otherwise than eternal. It is hy being beautiful 
 that Christ gives us of his beauty, and makes us into his 
 image. It is in quite a natural, and not a supernatural 
 manner that we are "changed into tlie same image from 
 glory to glory." 
 
 But this is not all, and it needs guarding. So far as 
 we have touched this meaning of the grace of Christ, it 
 is in the manner of his ways and the form of his speech 
 
ft 
 
 THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 85 
 
 alone. It is tnie tlit'se outward tilings sprang out of a 
 beautiful sj^irit ; but to fix our eyes only upon tlieiu is to 
 become a worshipper of beauty as such, to have only an 
 imaginative love for him. And I am not sure that the 
 result of that, ke])t alone, would not be evil. All wor- 
 sliip of beauty for itself alone has two main evils, and 
 the merely imaginative worshij) of Christ is just as likely 
 to lead to them as the Avorship of the idea of beauty. 
 They are, first, absolute revolt fi'om what is dull, ugly, 
 harsh, or commonplace ; and, secondly, the subordma- 
 tion of morality to beauty. These Avere the practical 
 faults of the Greek "grace," and they are the practical 
 faults of our present love of beauty. Our festhetic or 
 imaginative love turns away Avith pain from the unloA'e- 
 liness of human life, from harsh tasks, from vulgar men, 
 from the things that Aveary us. And it looks first at 
 beauty, and then. at truth and justice and ])urity. That 
 is not to have the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is 
 impossible to conceiA-e anything more apart from his life 
 than such an isolated devotion to beauty, such an exclu- 
 sive and excluding " grace." The grace of the Greek 
 Avas ill Christ, but it Avent further than the Greek. Bein$r 
 in union Avith tlie essential Beauty of God, and seeing 
 God ill all things and in all men, it saw traces of the 
 divine loveliness everyAvhere, believed in it and drcAV it 
 forth. His disciples marvelled that he talked so long 
 Avith the dull Avoman of Samaria; yet Christ saw fathoms 
 deep in her soul the pearl of spiritual beauty, and he 
 drew it forth. It is a picture c£ all the work of his 
 grace, in this sense, upon commonplace souls. Nor did 
 liarsh and unlovely tasks deter him. He sought out the 
 diseased, the miserable, the hideous leper, those who 
 
86 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 were stained M itli ugly sin. Tliere Avas such beauty in. 
 redeeming and soothing and helping them that all their 
 unloveliness did not exist to Clirist. And he went him- 
 self through all the j^ain and horror of a dreadful death, 
 and it became })erfectly beautiful t(j him, because it was 
 done in the glowing fire of love. That was the way in 
 which his grace and his love of beauty wei'e shown in 
 distinction from the grace and the lo\'e of beauty which 
 stand aside from the unloveliness of things and men. 
 
 Once more, his grace and his love of doing and being 
 the Beautiful were not ajjart from, or greater than, his 
 love of and doing of moral things, but coincident with 
 them. Nothing which was false or impure or unjust 
 was, in itself, beautiful to Christ ; and the first glory of 
 his grace and chai-m was its harmony with righteousness. 
 "VVe look at it, then, not only with tenderness, such as we 
 feel for loving-kindness, not only with delight, such as 
 we feel for beauty, but also with all that earnest approval 
 and grave enthusiasm which we give to things and per- 
 sons Avho are good. Christ's charm has its root in love, 
 and is identical with truth and justice and purity and 
 courage. It grasps the hand of the Platonist and the 
 Stoic alike, without the vagueness of the one and the 
 rigor of the otlier. And, while it holds to the Ejiicurean 
 so far as the early Epicureans said that pleasiire was the 
 highest good because goodness was identical with pleas- 
 ure, it turns aside from the later Ei)icureans, and from 
 those of our day who put pleasure in beauty first, to the 
 loss or lessening of njoral goodness. Guarded thus on 
 all sides, yet taking in all that is noble in all efforts to 
 find the highest good, it was in truth grace in its sense 
 of beauty that Christ possessed. 
 
THE GRACE OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 87 
 
 That grace, so guarded, so complete, l)ray that it may 
 be with you all, in the year that comes to-morrow. It 
 will bless your lives, and it will make of you a blessing. 
 It will make you at one witli all that is tender, pitiful, 
 dear, and sweet in human loving-kindness. It will make 
 you at one with all that is sensitive and delicate and 
 graceful in manner and speech, and create in you an 
 liarmonious soul. Men will think your life beautiful, and 
 inspiration and effort will flow from it. It will make 
 you at one Avith moral good, just and true and pure. 
 And it will take all that is loving in humanity, and all 
 that is fair, and all that is moral, and link them to and 
 complete them by uniting them to the love of God, and 
 to God's love for all men ; so that to human love and 
 moral love and imaginative loxe will be added the si3irit- 
 ual love which gathers them all into perfection. 
 
 Therefore, having this inspiration and aspii-ation, hav- 
 ing the power of becoming blessed in sharing of this 
 grace of Christ's, we will \mt aside the sorrow with 
 which we look back on the year, and take np a manlier 
 and more resolute strain. "Whatever may have been our 
 l^ain, our loss, our failure, our sin, we are not yet dead, 
 .nor yet lost. And there is much to redeem and much to 
 win. We may yet be blessed, even in a Aveary life of 
 struggle, if we have courage and faith and good-will, by 
 union with the grace that belonged to Christ. And, when 
 ■\ve are so blessed, Ave may by that grace bless others, 
 even though we can not take much of the blessedness to 
 ourselves. We can not be happy, but Ave may be good. 
 We may not have peace, but Ave may Avin the beauty of 
 moral conquest. We may go softly all our years, in 
 remembrance of failure and wrong; but we may at last 
 
88 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 feel that God has forgiven iis, and that ho is making us 
 like himself through Jesus Christ and through love of 
 his grace. And, having these hopes, we may, on this 
 last day of tlie year, when we stand on the verge of the 
 past and future, say with humility and love to each other, 
 — for it is beautiful to end the year with blessing, — The 
 grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. Amen. 
 
THE 
 
 INTELLECTUAL DEYELOPMEOT 
 OF CHEIST. 
 
 1867. 
 
 " Jesns increased in wisdom." — Luke ii., 52. 
 
 The subject on which we are employed is the devel- 
 opment of Christ. I spoke last Sunday of Christ's de- 
 velopment in childhood, throuirli the influence of out- 
 ward nature. Our subject to-day is the intellectual 
 development of Christ. 
 
 The first hint which we receive of this intellectual 
 development is the story of his journey to Jerusalem. 
 We find him in the Temple, listening, and asking ques- 
 tions of the doctors; or, in other words, exhibiting him- 
 self as possessed of the two first necessities for intel- 
 lectual development, — engrossed attention and eager 
 curiosity. 
 
 Now, what were the steps by which, we may con- 
 jecture, the Divine Child had arrived at this kindling 
 of the intellect, and how did these several steps affect 
 his character? 
 
 Last Sunday, we endeavored to represent him as 
 stirred by the outward scenery of nature to recognize 
 what was within himself, and as recognizing in nature 
 not the dead and lifeless world, as we conceive it, but 
 
90 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 a living world, beneath whose outward forms lay spir- 
 itual realities. 
 
 Now, communion with nature intensifies the desire of 
 communion with man. And it seems to me impossible 
 to deny that he who afterward, even in his most solemn 
 liours, on tlie Mount of Transfiguration and in the Gar- 
 den of Gethsemane, sought and surrounded himself witli 
 the sympathy of his three favorite disciples, did not also, 
 as a child, seek for human sympathy to share with him 
 his childhood's delight in the beauty and solemnity of 
 nature. Hence there was strengthened in him love of 
 man, arising from love of nature. There was quickened 
 in him desire of social communion, desire of seeing his 
 own thought reflected by other minds, desire of know- 
 ing what other beings than liimself both knew and 
 thought and did in the world. 
 
 There was not much to gratify these desires in Naza- 
 reth. We know the character of the place; and the 
 Holy Child must even then have felt the first keen stings 
 of that suffering for the sin of the world which made 
 him, as man, die to redeem the world. Moreover, a re- 
 mote and Jietty village could sujiply but little food to 
 his awakened and craving intellect. He had soon assimi- 
 lated all he c(rald find there of the elements necessary 
 to develop his mental powers. I can conceive him 
 eagerly looking forward to the day when he should 
 accompany his parents to Jerusalem, — not unduly ex- 
 cited, not impatient, but nobly curious to see human life 
 concentrated in one of its great centres, to watch the 
 movement and the variety of the croAvd of many nations 
 who poured into Jerusalem at the Feast of the Passover. 
 
 At last, the hour came, and with the " quiet indej^en- 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRIST. 91 
 
 deiK'c of heart " which lie had secured through still com- 
 munion with nature, with the deep desire of knowing 
 men, and w hh a deep sense of childlike repose on God, 
 the Boy, Christ Jesus, set forth with his company from 
 Nazareth. No doubt, according to pious Jewish prac- 
 tice, he had been instructed in the history of his i)eople ; 
 and now what thoughts were his, as for the first time 
 he saw the interior of Palestine, the Jordan rolling deep 
 between its banks, the savage landscape of tlie eastern 
 desert ! There was not a spot along the route which 
 was not dignified by some association or hallowed by 
 some great name. 
 
 Wiiatever we in youth have felt — for life wears out 
 the keenness of recejitiveness — when Ave have stood 
 upon some spot made glorious in our country's history, 
 whatever thrill of high emotion or rush of noble impulse 
 has then come upon us, and swept us out of our narrow 
 sjihere of childish interests into the wide region of inter- 
 ests which cluster round the words, " our country and its 
 hei'oes," came then, we may be sure, upon the Child. A 
 larger horizon of thought opened before him. The heroic 
 past of Israel became a reality. The sight of places 
 where noble deeds were done made the deeds themselves 
 real. And not only the deeds, but also the me7i ; for, in 
 the years gone by, Hebrew men had here done and suf- 
 fered greatly. Here was their theatre: this was Jordan ; 
 there Avas Jericho; there David had passed l>y; there 
 Jacob had set up his rugged pilloAV. At once, localized, 
 imi)ersonated by the landscape, the men of Israel became 
 real living ])ersonages, the past Avas croAvded Avith moA'ing 
 forms, and History Avas born in the intellect of Christ. 
 The impression must have deepened in him as he entei'ed 
 
92 
 
 FAITH AIvD FKEEDOM. 
 
 Jerusalem. He must liave felt in heart and soul the 
 shook of the great town's first presence. He could not 
 walk unmoved among the streets, so vocal with the fame 
 of Solomon, the patriotic enthusiasm of Isaiah, the sor- 
 row and the passion of Jeremiah. The stones of the 
 walls spoke to him, the gates replied ; and, when first he 
 saw the mighty mass of the great Temple flashing white 
 in the sunlight upon its uplifted rock, what a thrill ! — a 
 thrill of that fine excitement, half of sense and half of 
 soul, which is almost a jjhysical pain, and out of which 
 springs more creative thought than comes afterward to a 
 man in a year of that " set gray life " of work which we 
 know so well in London. These are the impressions 
 which kindle latent intellect, which abide with us as 
 living things within the brain, engendering the life of 
 thought ; and if we, cold northern natures, have felt 
 these things in our childhood, and at a younger age than 
 Christ was now, how must an Oriental child of genius 
 (to assume for a moment a ground which the destruc- 
 tive critics will not deny) have felt their power on his 
 intellect ? 
 
 Look at another point. 
 
 As he drew near to Jerusalem in this journey, various 
 troops of pilgrims must have joined their comjjany. He 
 saw for the first time the great diversity of the human 
 race. Accustomed to one type alone at Nazareth, and 
 that a limited type, for Nazareth was an outlying village, 
 — and a somewhat degraded type, for Nazareth had a 
 bad reputation, — he was now brought into contact with 
 many types of men. 
 
 The same kind of result, we may conjecture, was pro- 
 duced upon his intellect as is produced when a boy is 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRIST. 93 
 
 first sent out of the narrow circle of home into the 
 varied human hfe of a pnbHc school. The impression 
 which is tlion made upon tlie intellect of a boy is one of 
 the most jirodiictive which he receives in life. The im- 
 pression made uj^on the mind of Christ must have been 
 of equal depth at least, prol)ably far greater ; for, first, 
 we know from his after life tliat his intellect was of the 
 mightiest cliaracter, and, secondly, the variety Avhicli met 
 him was greater than that with which an English boy is 
 brouglit into contact. Thus, it was not only the realiza- 
 tion of the past through the power of association which 
 stirred his intellect : it was also stirred by the contact 
 with the varied national and individual life of the 
 2)resent. 
 
 And then there was that wonderful Jerusalem in 
 front where all this variety of life was now concentrated. 
 "What wonder. if the pure, high-hearted Child, with eager 
 thoughts beginnmg to move, looked forward with intel- 
 lectnal enthusiasm to his arrival among the throng of 
 men ? 
 
 More and more, it is plain, the A^ast idea of Humanity 
 must have unfolded itself within him during the journey. 
 Then came, to complete and fix this idea, the rush and 
 confusion of the great midtitude in Jerusalem during the 
 Feast, — men of every nation under heaven in the streets; 
 strange dresses, strange faces. There was the Roman 
 soldier, grave, and bearing in his face the stamp of law 
 and sacrifice ; there was tlie acute Greek countenance, 
 the heavy Egyptian features, the voluptuous lip and 
 subtle glance of the Persian, the wild Arab eyes. Every 
 face was a mystery, and the greatest mystery of all was 
 the wonderful world of men. 
 
94 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOZM. 
 
 What kindles thouglit like th'is, — the first riisli uj>ou 
 the brain of the idea of the diversity of humanity? 
 
 It is an idea naturally concei\ ed by a boy. We do 
 not imjiute to Christ, at this time, the thoughts Avliic-li 
 arise from it, too numerous to mention. But we find it 
 liere in its origin; and in the silent time to come in Xaza- 
 reth it worked in his intellect, producing its fruit of 
 thought from year to year. Do we trace it in his min- 
 istry? "Other sheep I have which are not of tliis fold : 
 them also 1 must bring." "JMany shall come from tlie 
 East and West." "Go ye into all tlie world, and preacli 
 the gospel to e\'ery creature." 
 
 There is another intellect-awakening thought correl- 
 ative to this of the diversity of humanity, which I can- 
 not but think was first stirred now in the mind of Christ, 
 — the thought of the vidttj of the race. 
 
 There was one spirit predominant in all the jjilgvims to 
 the Feast. They came up to Jerusalem, diverse as they 
 were, inspired by one thought, to j'crform one common 
 worship, in one j^lace, to one God. It was the form in 
 which the national unity of tlie Jewish people had been 
 of old embodied. But now hundreds of other nations 
 had received tlie Jewish religion as proselytes. Christ, 
 therefore, saw not only the Jews, ljut Gentiles, miited by 
 the worsliip of a universal God. We do not S'.iy that he 
 clearly conceived the thought of the oneness of human- 
 ity at the age of twelve, — it was probably too large for 
 his normal development, — but we do say that there is 
 nothing unnatural in believing that the germ of it was 
 then first quickened into life. Now there are few 
 thoughts which more than this promote intellectual de- 
 velopment. We may imagine it slowly growing into 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRIST. 95 
 
 fulness (luring tlic maturing years at Xazaretli, till at last 
 it altered its form and became personal. This imity of 
 humanity, so broken, so imjierfect, — this great idea, — 
 ■where is it realized perfectly? And out of the dejiths 
 of Christ's divine and human consciousness came the 
 answer. It is realized in me. All that is human meets 
 in me. I n\n the centre Avhere all the di\ erse and con- 
 verging lines of humanity meet. Zam the race. 
 
 Once more, in tracing the intellectual development of 
 Chi'ist in connection with this one glimpse of his history, 
 we come to the scene in the Temple. Led there by his 
 desire to know, he was brought for the first time into 
 contact with cultivated intellects. He heard for the first 
 time the acute reasoning of the schools : he realized for 
 the first time the vastness of the sea of knowledge. The 
 thought of the diversity of the human intellect was ex- 
 hibited to him in the diversity of the opinions which he 
 heard. He was made acquainted with the parties among 
 the Jews : with the petrified theology of the scribes, 
 Avith the conventional morality of tlie Pharisee, with the 
 conservative infidelity of the Sadducee, with all the false 
 show of religion and the death which lay beneath. There 
 he saw 
 
 " Decency and Custom starving Truth, 
 And blind Authority beating witli his staff 
 The Child that might have led him." 
 
 Probably, these were, at first, only impressions ; but we 
 cannot doubt that tlicy produced their fruit at Nazareth. 
 For, starting ivom these experiences, there grew nj) 
 within him that clear comprehension of Jewish life and 
 all its opinions and parties, and of the way in which he 
 
96 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 ■was destined to work upon them, wliich comes out so 
 wonderfully in his ministry. He did not hear in vain the 
 doctors disputing, he did not ask them questions without 
 a great intellectual result. 
 
 Such must have been the iniluence on the intellect of 
 Christ of his days in the Tem])lc. It should l)e delight- 
 ful to us to think of him, whom m'c reverence as Master 
 and Lord, sharing thus in our curious childhood, listen- 
 ing with engrossed attention, "both hearing them " — 
 questioning with eager desire — "and a'sking them ques- 
 tions." It should he a Avonderful thought for us to im- 
 agine, with love and awe coinbined, how idea after idea, 
 existing there potentially, unfolded their germs under 
 this influence in the mind of Christ, — germs which, ma- 
 turing, and as they matured generating otliers, grew up 
 during the yeai-s of silence at Nazareth, into that per- 
 fect flower of intellect which, shedding its living seeds 
 over eighteen centuries, has given birth to tlio great ideas 
 which once created, and still create, the greater part of 
 the intellectual life of the world. 
 
 We may conjecture that the first impressions in Je- 
 rusalem awoke in Christ's spirit the elevated view of 
 human nature which we conceive from his after life to 
 have been latent in him as a child. But when he came 
 to consider classes and individuals, and not the race as a 
 whole, — in its idea, — he found hypocrisy, selfishness, 
 tyranny, meanness. But tlie first idea must have re- 
 mained firm, coexistent Avitli the other sad ideas which 
 followed it. 
 
 Man, then, was great, and man was base ; man was 
 mighty, and man was weak ; man had a divine nature, 
 and man had given himself over to a base nature. But 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHEIST. 
 
 97 
 
 the greatness, strength, and Jlvineness "were his true 
 nature : the others Avere the result of an alien and usurp- 
 ing power. Both existed; but the one existed to be 
 made perfect, the other to be destroyed. Hence, not all 
 the evil Clirist came into contact ■with, not all the blind- 
 ness, sin, and cruelty which he saw and suffered from, 
 could ever overthrow his divine trust in that which man 
 might become. Here was a real spiritual thought bear- 
 ing on his mission, — man is ccipaUe of being redeemed. 
 
 As his spirit grew more conscious of what it really 
 was, he felt that truth — man's capability of being re- 
 deemed — not only witliout, but Avitliin himself. How 
 could he despair of human nature, when he kncM' that he 
 himself Avas sinless human nature? His A'ery existence 
 as man was j^roof that man was destined to be perfect. 
 Conscious thus, from his own sinlessness, of man's pos- 
 sibility of sinlessness, he became conscious, for the same 
 reason, of another truth: that he was the destined Re- 
 deemer of the race from the usurj^ing power of sin. 
 Being pure, he knew he could save the impure ; being 
 perfect Life, he knew he could conquer the death of 
 man ; being 2)erfect Love, he knew he could cast out of 
 the race the devil of self-seeking. Immediately, intui- 
 tively, he felt thus: was conscious of himself, first, as 
 sinless humanity; secondly, as the Redeemer of human- 
 ity from sin. 
 
 We seem, in this way, to see faintly a strange co- 
 existence of apjtarently conti-adictory ideas witliin the 
 sjiirit of Christ during liis life at Xazareth. One Avould 
 alniDst think tliat that impression of the greatness of the 
 human soul would have been worn out by daily contact 
 with the wild dwellers at Nazareth ; and yet with what 
 
98 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 sort of a spirit did he come forth into the ■\vorhl ? With 
 unshaken trust m human nature, recognizing its evil, but 
 believing, as none have ever believed before or since, in 
 its nobility, its capabilities, its infinite power of work. 
 It M as not only interest in hximanity, it was lo\e of 
 humanity, love, the " business of his Father." 
 
 We come to that by slow degrees ; rise into that life 
 by finding out the wretchedness and death of self, but 
 in the Saviour's s^nrit it rose into being like a flower 
 from a seed already there. It developed itself till it 
 penetrated his Avhole nature with one great sj)iritual 
 thought, " I will give away all my being for the human 
 race." 
 
 This love of man, and desire to impai't life to those 
 who needed life, was correlative to another spiritual idea, 
 — indignation at t'xll. It was this which balanced love 
 in Christ, and kept it from the weakness of our affection 
 and the maudlin sentiment of much of our philanthrojiy. 
 Christ abhorred sin, and saw it in its native darkness. 
 There was in him, therefore, an agony of desire to re- 
 deem us from it, and a j'itying indignation for our des- 
 olate slavery. He labored to conA'ince men that they 
 did need a deliverer from sin ; and Avhen a man, like 
 Zacchajus, fi'lt his selfishness and desired freedom, it is 
 wonderful how the Saviour's spirit sprung to meet the 
 seeking sjiirit, clung to it, and 2)oured into it a stream of 
 life and faith and hope. But when men, for the sake 
 of keeping up an ecclesiastical dominion, for tlie sake of 
 success, for the honor of dead maxims, stopjied the way 
 of others, gave men lifeless forms, and persecuted the 
 Light because it condemned their darkness, how the 
 holy anger kindled ! As the Child listened to the intol- 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRIST. 99 
 
 erancc of tlie Pliariscc', the dogmatism of tlie scribe, and 
 tlie srt)iTiful iiiiiilelity of tlie Sadducee, tliere must have 
 s})ruiig up in liLs heart an instinctive feeling of ojjposi- 
 tion ; and this spiritual wratli at M'rong done to the souls 
 of men grew and deepened at Xazaretli, — as the mean- 
 ing of •what he had heard in the Temjjle Avas made clear 
 to him by his after knowledge, — till it cuhninated in the 
 withering denTuiciations of his ministry. 
 
 Clirist returned to Nazaretli from Jerusalem, the same, 
 and yet how changed, how largely widened and deepened 
 must have been his human nature ! The thought of 
 humanity had now taken a higher place in his mind than 
 the thought of nature. The thouglit of God as the 
 Father of man had now succeeded to the thought of God 
 as the Life of nature. His own relation to the race grew 
 into distinctness. The deeper " knowledge of tlie world " 
 which he had gained made, as if by a subtler sense, all 
 the common human life of Nazareth an image of the 
 Life of the great world. He saw — being himself the 
 ]Man — in every one he met the great common principles 
 of humanit}-, wliile he recei^•ed the impress of tlieir dis- 
 tinctive characteristics. "Among least things, he had the 
 sense of greatest." There Avas not a word or action of 
 other men which did not, as he grew in wisdom, touch a 
 thousand other things, and fall into relationship with 
 tliem under the uni\ ersal princii)les which, being the 
 daily companions of his intellect, linked together in his 
 mind the present in which he lived to the past and fut- 
 vire of the race. A new interest had arisen within him, 
 the interest in humanity, or ratlier, I sliould say, a new 
 love. It clung to him, it pervaded his whole thought. 
 That scene in Jerusalem stamjied itself on his memory 
 forever. 
 
100 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 With tliis luiman centre of thought, he lived on in 
 peaceful solitude in the stillness of the upland town. 
 Often, he must have Avandered to the summit of the hill, 
 when wearied by the i^etty life of the Aillage, and, as in 
 after life, so now, communed in that prayer which is not 
 petition, hut union deeply felt, ^\ ith God his Father, and 
 seen his life unrolling itself before him — not devised and 
 planned, but intuitively recognized — as a panorama of 
 Avhich death for truth and for love of men was the sad 
 and glorious close. But he was not deprived of tenderer 
 and more delightful thought. How often must the 
 thouglits of his cliildliood, — of wiiich we spoke last Sun- 
 day, — -the thouglits developed in him by the beauty of 
 his Father's Avorld of Life and Light in nature, have 
 come to satisfy and cheer his inward life of thought ! 
 How often, as the turmoil of tlie world pressed upon his 
 brain, must the stai-s and mountains and the peace of 
 evening have given to him tlieir silent ministrations! 
 How often, as the shadflAV of his sorrow fell upon his 
 heart, must the quiet joy of his Father's order, felt in 
 nature, have restored and soothed his intellect ! 
 
 For it were exquisite pleasure to him to pass (with 
 full knowledge now of the true relation of man and nat- 
 ure) from the contemplation of the w^eakness and the 
 want of life of the human world into communion with that 
 living spiritual world of God's activity and peace which 
 he saw witliin the phenomena of nature. This was the 
 one deejj solitary pleasure of his life. For though, as we 
 have said, the thought of humanity, and not the thought 
 of nature, was now the jire-eminent thought in his mind, 
 — because the redemption of man was his work, — yet 
 the more divine thouglit must always have been the 
 
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHRIST. 101 
 
 thought of nature. His labor was inspired by the former: 
 his recreation, joy, and consolation were supj^lied by the 
 latter. 
 
 Brethren, let us part with tlie solemnizing imagination 
 of this, — Christ's silent growth in wisdom in the stillness 
 of the retired Galilean village. May it calm our noisy 
 lives and our obtrusive interests to realize, if but for one 
 dignified moment, the image of the Saviour of the world, 
 in whom was now concealed from men the regeneration 
 and redemption of the race, — living a forgotten life, but 
 ever " voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone." 
 
THE FITISTESS OF CHRISTIAmTT 
 FOR MANKmD.-I. 
 
 1871. 
 
 " Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of 
 heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took and 
 sowed in his field : which indeed is tlie least of all seeds ; but when 
 it is grown, it is the greatest among herlis, and becomcth a tree, so 
 that tlie birds of tlie air come and lodge in the branches thereof." — 
 Matt, xiii., 31, 32. 
 
 "VYb are told, in one of the Arabian stories which 
 charmed our childhood, of a fairy tent which a young 
 jarince brought, hidden in a walnut-shell, to his father. 
 Placed in the council-chamber, it grew till it encanopied 
 the king and his ministers. Taken into the court-yard, 
 it filled tlie space till all the household stood beneath its 
 shade. Brought into the midst of the great plain with- 
 out the city, where all the army was encamjDed, it spread 
 its mighty awning all abroad, till it gave sliolter,to a 
 host. It had infinite flexibility, infinite e.\;i)ansiveness. 
 
 We are told in our sacred books of a religion given to 
 man, Av^hich, at its first setting forward, was less tlian the 
 least of all seeds. It was the true fairy tent for the 
 spirits of men. It grew till it embraced a few Jews of 
 every class; and men thought, " Now, it will do no more: 
 it can never suit the practical sense of the lloman, nor 
 
FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 103 
 
 sholtt'i- Le'iicath its sway the subtile intellect of the Greek. 
 To do one is improbable, to do both is inij)ossil>le." 
 Curious to say, it did both. It made the Roman more 
 practical : it made the Greek intellect alive again. 
 When Rome fell, and during her long decay, some may 
 have said : "Tliis boasted religion may suit civilization, 
 but it can never adapt itself to barbarism." But it ex- 
 panded in new directions to embrace the transal}>ine 
 nations, and took new forms to suit them with an un- 
 equalled flexibility. Soon it covered Europe with its 
 shadow; and, in a continent where types of race are 
 oddly and vitally varied, it found accepitance with all. 
 It has gone abroad since then, and reached out its arms 
 to the Oriental, the African, the American tribes, and 
 the islands of the seas. And, however small may have 
 been its success at present, there is one thing in which 
 it differs from every other religion : it has been found 
 cajjable of being assimilated by all, from the Avild negro 
 of thcwest coast to the educated gentleman of India. 
 I s])eak of the teaclilng of Clirist, not of unyielding 
 Christian systems; and iiothing is more remarkable in 
 that teaching than the way in which it throws off, like a 
 serjient, one after another, the sloughs of system, and 
 spreads undivided in the world, and operates unsi)ent, by 
 its own divine vitality. 
 
 Xow, it is this extraordinary power of easy ex^^ansion, 
 this power of adapting itself to the most diverse forms 
 of thought, which is one strong proof of the eternal fit- 
 ness of Christianity for mankind. This is our subject. 
 
 It has these powers, first, because of its want of sys- 
 tem. 
 
 Christ gave ideas, but not their forms. We have one 
 
104 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 connected discourse of liis, niid there is not a vcstifje of 
 systematic theology in it. Nay more, many of tlie state- 
 ments are so incaiiable of being grasped by the intellect 
 acting alone, and so ambiguous and paradoxical to the 
 pure reason, that they seem to have been sj^okcn for the 
 despair of systematizers. 
 
 What is one to do with a sentence like this, " Blessed 
 are the pure in heart, for tliey sliall see God"? We 
 cannot make a dogma out of it ; we cannot get it into a 
 system ; it breaks down under logical analysis. " ^Yhat 
 is it to be pure in heart?" asks some defining person. 
 " Does it refer to general cleanliness from all sin, or free- 
 dom from the sjiecial sin of unchaste tliought ? TVTiat 
 is it to see God ? Above all, what is God? That ques- 
 tion is insoluble, unknowable." 
 
 We cannot call a teaching systematic which in this 
 way leaves aside the understanding, unless first instructed 
 by feeling, which appeals first of all to certain spiritiial 
 jjowers in man which it declares to be tlie most human 
 powers he ]iossesses. Such phrases have no intellectual 
 outlines. Purity of heart has nothing to do with the 
 resion of the iinderstandinu; : God is not an intellectual 
 conception. But, if man has distinctly sjtiritual emo- 
 tions and desires, Avords like these thrill hun like music. 
 
 Indeed, there is a fine analogy to Christ's words in 
 music. It is the least definable of all the arts : it appeals 
 to emotion, not to reason. Neither you nor I can say 
 of that air of Mozart's that it means this or that. It 
 means one thing to me, another thing to you. It leaves, 
 however, an indefinite but similar impression uj^on us 
 both, — a sense of exquisite melody Avhich soothes life, a 
 love of a life in harmony Avith the impression made, and 
 
riTNESS OF CHKISTIANITY FOli MANKIND. 105 
 
 an affection for the man •\vlio gave us so delicate an emo- 
 tion. So is it with the words of Clirist. Tlie \mder- 
 standing cannot define them : the sjiirit receives them, 
 and each man receives them in accordance with the state 
 of his spirit. To one, these Avords, "Blessed are the 
 pure in lieart, for tliey sliall see God," are solemn with 
 warning, to another they are soothing with comfort ; to 
 one they mean battle, to another peace ; to one they 
 sound like music on the waters, to another like the trump 
 of doom. 
 
 Could you define the meaning of Mozart's air, so that 
 it should be the same to all, how much had been lost ! 
 Could you do the same by Christ's words, what a mis- 
 fortune ! To limit them to one meaning would be to 
 destroy their life. 
 
 Again, take the paradoxical sayings. " If a man smite 
 thee on the one cheek, tui-n to him the other." Submit 
 that to the criticism of tlie understanding, without per- 
 mitting spiritual feeling to play upon it, and it becomes 
 absurd. Define it accurately, and there is either too 
 much or too little left of it. Tell the man who has a 
 tendency to fear that he is to take it literally, and he 
 becomes a coward on princii)le ; tell the same to another 
 who has military traditions of honor, and he says that 
 Christ's teaching is not fit for practical life. But do not 
 attempt to define it : let the spirit of each man explain 
 it to himself, and the truth which is in it will work its 
 way. 
 
 There is no doubt, I think, tliat Christ would have 
 refused to explain it. All he would have said, he did 
 say : " He that hath ears to hear, let him hoar." 
 
 It seems as if Christ distinctly chose indefiniteness in 
 
106 
 
 FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 
 
 certain parts of liis teaching, in order to shut out the 
 jjossibility of any rigid system of Christian thought. 
 
 Of conrse there are })ositive and definite portions of 
 his teaching. " Do unto others as ye "would they should 
 do luito you." "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in 
 heaven is i)erfect." " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." 
 "Love one another, even as I have loved you." These 
 were definite statements, which aj^pealed to the sjiirit of 
 man ; but even in their case Clirist never wove them into 
 a fixed system of theology, nor hardened them into an 
 unchanging mode of practice. 
 
 IIow Avas he to systematize aspiration to perfection, 
 or define the love of man to man, or exjjlain in limited 
 words the passionate desire to be redeemed from the 
 moral degradation of sin ? ^"as he to reply to men Avho 
 asked him to say what he meant by "our" in " Our 
 Father"? 
 
 Xo : the statements were positive, but they had to do 
 with things not knowable by tlie understanding, not de- 
 finable by the intellect. Therefore, Christ's religion can 
 never be made into a system. It will form the basis and 
 the life of system after system : it will never be itself a 
 system. And, because of this, it has the power of ex- 
 panding with the religious groAvth of tlie world, and of 
 adajiting itself to the religious stand-points of various 
 nations. 
 
 Men must form systems: it belongs to our nature to do 
 so. Fifty years did not pass after tlie death of Christ 
 before Christianity was cast into a numid, and intellect- 
 ual projjositions formed around it. But exen then Saint 
 Paul cast it into one mould, and Saint John into one 
 quite different. It was flexible to both, and retained 
 
FITNESS or CHKISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 
 
 lOT 
 
 in both these men its root ideas and its spiritual influ- 
 ence, so tliat its spirit througli Saint John liad jjower 
 ny>on the Oriental and through Saint Paul upon the 
 Western Avorld. 
 
 A century afterward, the modes of rejjresenting Chris- 
 tianity changed, and continiied to change from genera- 
 tion to generation in that intellectual time, till tliere 
 were as many systems of Christianity as there were na- 
 tions in the Church. Its flexibility Avas proved to be 
 almost infinite. And it has continued so up to the pres- 
 ent time. It is sj^stematized in three or four forms in 
 Enghmd at this moment, and they may all have perished 
 in a century; but the spirit of Christ's teaching will 
 have remained, expanding to suit the new thoughts of 
 men and the j^rogrcss of the whole nation. Therefore, 
 it is contained in the idea of Christianity that its out- 
 Avard form should be not only subject to continual 
 change, but should even be different at one and the same 
 time in different nations. 
 
 Hence, the fighting and opi)Osition of sect to sect 
 which has been objected to Christianity is one of those 
 things which flow from its very nature. If its founder 
 left it unsystematized, it was sure to be systematized in 
 different ways, and these differences would j^roduce con- 
 tention. Contention is an evil, but it is a less evil than 
 the spiritual stagnation which would have followed uj^on 
 a hard and fast system. 
 
 Moreover, if Christianity was to expand, it was neces- 
 sary that its truths shoiild be the subjects of controversy, 
 that different and opposing systems might jjlace now 
 one of its ideas, now another, in vivid light ; so that, by 
 the slow exhaustion of false views, it might come forth 
 
108 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 clear at last, unrobing itself as a mo\intain from the 
 mists of the dawn. 
 
 Make any religion into a system, define its outlines 
 clearly, and before long there will be no movement of 
 thonght about it, no enthusiasm of feeling, no vital in- 
 terest felt in its ideas. It suits the time at which it is 
 put forward; but, when that time has passed, it has 
 nothing to say to men. But let system be foreign to it, 
 — let its original ideas be capable of taking various re- 
 ligious forms, — and it will have the power of expanding 
 forever, of becoming systematic Avithout ever binding 
 itself to system; changing its form not only in every 
 time, but in every country, and growing in a direct ratio 
 to the growth of the world. 
 
 Therefore, we say the original want of system in 
 Christ's teaching ensures its power of expansion, and 
 that fits it for the use of the Race now and hereafter. 
 
 But, if this were all, it would prove nothing. There 
 must be a quality in a religion destined to be of eternal 
 fitness for men which directly appeals to all men, or else 
 its want of system will only minister to its ruin. And, if 
 that quality exist, it must be one Avliich we cannot con- 
 ceive as ever failing to interest men, and therefore as 
 expanding with the progress of Man. 
 
 "We find tliis in the identification of Christianity with 
 the life of a perfect Man. 
 
 "What is Christianity? Christianity is Christ, — the 
 whole of Human Nature made at one with God. Is it 
 possible to leave that behind as the race advances? On 
 the contrary, the very idea supposes that the religion 
 which has it at its root has always an ideal to present 
 to men, and therefore always an interest for men. As 
 
FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. lOQ 
 
 long as men nre men, cm they ever have a higher moral 
 conception of God than that given to them through the 
 character of a perfect Man, and can Ave conceive, in 
 centuries to come, men ever getting beyond that idea, 
 as long as they are in the human state ? The concejition 
 of -what the ideal Man is Avill change, as men grow more 
 or less i)erfect, or as mankind is seen more or less as a 
 vast organism ; but, as long as there is a trace of imper- 
 fection in us, tliis idea, — that perfect humanity, that is, 
 jjerfect fatherhood, perfect love, i)erfect justice, — all our 
 imj^erfect goodnesses, — realized in perfection, and im- 
 personated in One Being, is God to us, can never fail to 
 create religion and kindle worship. It is the last absurd- 
 ity, looking at the root ideas of Christianity, to say that 
 it is ceasing to be a religion for the race. 
 
 The "religion of Humanity" and the "worship of 
 Humanity," considered as a great and living whole, is 
 the latest phase into which religion, ajsart from Christian- 
 ity, has been thrown. I am unable to see how it differs, 
 so far as it asserts a principle, from the great Christian 
 idea. Everything it says about Humanity, and our du- 
 ties to Humanity, seems to me to be implicitly contained 
 in Christ's teaching, and to be no more than an expan- 
 sion of the original Christian idea of a di\ ine Man in 
 whom all tlie race is contained, and who is, ideally, the 
 race. But I am far from wishing tliis new religious idea 
 to be set aside as unworthy of consideration, nor do I 
 join in the cry which has been raised against it. On 
 the contrary, I wish it to be carefully studied, that we 
 may get all the good out of it we can, and add many of 
 its ideas to our present form of Christianity. Most of its 
 positive teaching is Christian in thought and feeling, 
 
110 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 though it denies or ignores otlier Cliristian ideas wliich 
 seem necessary for a human religion. It would be un- 
 true in a Christian teacher to despise or abuse a religion 
 which puts self-sacrifice forward as the foundation of 
 practical duty, not only among men, but among societies 
 and nations. It Avould be equally untrue, if I did not 
 say that the refusal to consider the existence of a per- 
 sonal God and the immortality of man will, in the end, 
 make that religion die of starvation. 
 
 But, with regard to the special point in question, — the 
 worship of a great Being, called Humanity, — there is 
 this difference, and it is a radical one, between Cluistian- 
 ity and the religion of PositiA'ism, that the Humanity 
 the latter worships is indefinite to the religious emotions, 
 while its system is definite to the understanding. It is 
 in this the exact reverse of Christianity, which has no 
 system capable of being defined by the understanding, 
 and possesses a Human Person distinctly defined for the 
 emotions. It is plain that, if what I have said be Avorth 
 anything, the definite sj-stem in this religion will be an 
 element of death in it, and forbid its contemporaneous 
 growth with tlie race. It is no matter of doubt to me 
 that tlie Avorship of a Humanity — Avhich it needs an 
 active intellectual effort to conceive, and a large knoAvl- 
 edge of history to conceive adequately, or Avhich se- 
 cludes one sex as a special representative of its ideal 
 — can ncA'cr stir religious eniotion nor awake action 
 based on love to it, in the mass of mankind, hoAvever 
 much it may do so in particular persons. The general 
 mass of men reqiiire that this ideal Man be concentrated 
 for them into one person, Avith Avhom they can haA'e 
 distinct personal relations, Avhom they can jjersonally 
 
FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. Ill 
 
 love for his love, and reverence for liis perfection. It ' 
 is not easy, knowing manlvind as we do, — seeing its 
 meanness, cruelty, and weakness, as well as all its nobil- 
 ity, — to rejjresent it to ourselves as an object of wor- 
 sliip, or to care ])articularly whether its blessing rests on 
 ns or not. Than this, it is certainly more easy to con- 
 ceive, as an object of worshi]), God, revealed in will and 
 character by a j^erfect Man ; and more simple to think 
 of one Man embodying all the Race than of the whole 
 Kace as one Man. It is a more satisfying thought to 
 give our love to human nature as seen in Christ, without 
 evil, full of perfect love and sympathy, both male and 
 female in thought and feeling, than to Mankind as seen 
 in history. It is more delightful to love men as seen in 
 him, for the glorious ideal they will attain to, than to 
 love them as they are, and without a sure hope of their 
 eternal jirogress ; and that the blessing of Christ's j^er- 
 fect Manhood and Womanhood should rest upon us, that 
 liis love, pity, strength, support, and peace should belong 
 to us and accompany iis; that he should attend us as a 
 personal friend and interest himself in our lives, till they 
 reach the perfection of his life; and that he should be 
 doing the same for all our brothers as for us, — does seem 
 more fitted to kindle worship and stir emotion than the 
 thought that we arc parts of a vast organism which con- 
 tinues to live, like the body, by the ceaseless and eternal 
 death of its parts. 
 
 It may be possible to feel a pleasure in sacrificing 
 one's self for the good of this great Being which lives by 
 consuming its own children, and to enjoy the thought of 
 immortality in its continued progress Avithout ever j^er- 
 sonally realizing that immortality. But, after all, this 
 
112 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 oversliadowing and abstract " Humanity," which crushes 
 us Avhile it moves on, is not attractive, and is more 
 likely in the end to create desjiair and anger than to give 
 life to hope and love. 
 
 But the ideal Man in Clirist is very different. It de- 
 mands the same self-sacrifice, but it does not aniiihilate 
 men. And in itself it is intensely interesting to men, 
 because it is so perfectly human. AVliethcr men are 
 Cliristians or not, that exquisite life of Clirist will always 
 attract them ; so true to cliildhood, youth, and manhood; 
 so simple, yet so comjilex ; so womanly, yet so manly ; 
 in love, in honor, and in truth, in noble endurance, in 
 resolute will and purity, so ideal, yet so real to tliat 
 which we feel we ought to be, or may be, tliat there is 
 no possible age of the world in the far-off future which 
 will not, as long as men are human, love tliat with the 
 love which is worshiji. 
 
 So the ideal manhood, wliich is at tlie root of Chris- 
 tianity, ensures to it a i)Ower of expanding with the 
 growth of the race; and this power is one 2>i'oof at least 
 of the eternal fitness of Christ's teaching for mankind. 
 
 The third quality in it which ensures its expansive- 
 ness is that it has directly to do Avitli the subjects which 
 have always stirred the greatest curiosity, awakened the 
 profoundest thought, and produced the highest poetry 
 in man. And these are the subjects which are insoluble 
 by logical analysis, unknowable liy the understanding: 
 "WHiat is God, and his relation to us? Whence have we 
 come? Whither are we going? What is evil, and why 
 is it here? What is truth, and is there any positive 
 truth at all ? Do we die or live forever ? 
 
 It is the fashion among some to say, " Do not trouble 
 
FITNESS OF CHRISTIAKITY FOR MANKIND. 113 
 
 yourself about the insoluble " ; and there are those who 
 succeed, 2:)erhni3s, in doing so. Well, I think them 
 wrong, as they think me wrong. No one feels more 
 intensely than I do the pain of not having things clear, — 
 the vital torment of a thirst ever renewed, and not as 
 yet fully satisfied; but I had rather keej) the pain and 
 the thirst than annihilate, as it seems to mc, a portion of 
 my human nature. I must trouble myself about these 
 things, and so must others; and the trouble has its source 
 in an integral part of our human nature. We must tear 
 away that part before we can get rid of these subjects 
 To deny that this part of our nature exists is absurd; to 
 affirm tliat it has been produced by education in men, 
 not having originally been in their nature, is to beg the 
 question. What we have to do with is what lies before 
 us; and if I were asked what is the most universal char- 
 acteristic of man, that which most clearly distinguishes 
 him from the lower animals, I should answer that it was 
 the passion for solving wliat is called the insoluble, the 
 desire of knowing what is said to be unknowable. 
 
 I meet that longing everywhere. There is no history 
 which is not full of it. There is no savage nation which 
 has learned the first rudiments of thought, in which 
 you do not find it. There is no poetry which does not 
 bear the traces of it, — nay, whose nol)lest passages are 
 not inspired by it. There is scarcely a single philosophy 
 which does not work at it, or at least acknowledge it by 
 endeavoring to lay it aside. One cannot talk for an hour 
 to a friend without touching it at some point, nor take 
 up a newspaper without seeing its influence; and, if 
 Christ had stai-ted a religion for mankind with the 
 dictum. Lay aside thinking about these questions, his 
 
114 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 religion Avould seem to be imfit for men : it ■would, liavc 
 shut out the whole of the most cui'ious part of our being. 
 But he did the exact contrary: he recognized these 
 questions as the first and the most unportant. He came, 
 he said, for the expi'oss purpose of enabling us to solve 
 them sufficiently. He said that truth "was to be found, 
 that God could be known, that immortality was a reality, 
 that evil was to bo overthrown, that Ave came from God 
 and went to God. 
 
 But to solve these questions and to knoAV God is not 
 done at once. It is the work of a lifetime. Christ said 
 that there were answers to be found : he did not rcA-eal 
 the answers at once. He did not wish to take away 
 from men the discipline of personal effort, nor to free 
 them from the pain, the victory over which Avould give 
 them spiritual strength, the endurance of which Avould 
 make them men. He put them in the way of solving 
 these questions for themselves. By asking and seeking, 
 by i)rayer and humility, they Avere to soh e the aj?}^:!!'- 
 ently insoluble. By doing his will, by liA'ing his life of 
 holiness, self-sacrifice, and devotion to truth, they were 
 at last to know the truth. 
 
 Therefore, because these jjroblems AA'hich are called 
 insoluble were left by Christ as personal questions which 
 CA^ery man born mto the world must soh-e for hunself, 
 human effort after God can ncA^er suffer the stagnation 
 AA'hich complete knoAA'ledge Avould produce in imjjerfect 
 man. Religious emotions, tlie l>lay of feeling and intel- 
 lect around spiritual tilings, desire after higher good, 
 prayer, actiA-e Avork toAvard a more jierfect loA-e and 
 toward the Avinning of truth, are all kept up in us by 
 the sense of imjaerfect knowledge, imperfect sjairitual 
 
FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOK MANKIND. 115 
 
 being, and, iu addition, by the hope -wliicli grows 
 stronger through tlie experience of growth, tliat we 
 shall know even as we are known, and become perfect 
 even as our God. 
 
 Remove from religion these difficult questions, and 
 the hope and the passion of discovering their answers, 
 and I believe that all religious emotions will die, and all 
 religion of any kind finally perish in contact with the 
 world. 
 
 It is because Christianity as taught by Chi'ist acknowl- 
 edges these questions as necessarily human ; it is because 
 it leaves their solution to jiersonal effort, and so secures 
 an undying source of religious effort and emotion ; it is 
 because it j^n'omiscs that those who follow tho method of 
 Christ, and live his life, shall solve them, — that Christian- 
 ity belongs to men, is calculated to expand, to suit men 
 in every age. If so, there is another reason which may 
 be alleged for its eternal fitness for the race. 
 
 Lastly, if what Christianity says be true, that we shall 
 all enter into a life everlasting, these three qualities in 
 Christ's religion of which I have spoken are not without 
 their meaning or their value to us there. 
 
 That our religion should be without a system will en- 
 able us, in a new life and under new conditions, to reor- 
 ganize it without difficulty, to fit it into the new circum- 
 stances of our being, to use it in novel ways. 
 
 That our religion is a human religion, that it appeals 
 directly to human nature, that it is nothing apart from 
 mankind, that it is woven up with all the desires and 
 hopes and sorrows of men, that it bids us concentrate 
 all the race into One Person, and love all men in him, 
 that it throws all our effort and enthusiasm on the 
 
116 
 
 TAITH AND FBEEDOM. 
 
 progress of mankind, — these do not belong to tliis ■world 
 alone. If we live again, we shall live in a higher way, 
 in the race ; for we shall live in Christ, not an isolated 
 life, but a life in all mankind. We shall be more united 
 with onr fellow-men, more ready to give ourselves aAvay 
 to them, "more interested in the progress of mankind, 
 more able to help. Never, as long as Christ is, can we 
 foi'get, or cease our communion with, the whole world of 
 men. 
 
 And, finally, that even after attaining much, enough 
 at least to set us in all the ])cace which is good for us, 
 there should remain, as I think there will remain, in the 
 eternal life, certain questions which we shall have to 
 solve, certain things which man cannot wholly know, it 
 will not be an evil, but a good tiling for us. For that 
 there should always be things above us and imknown 
 ensures our eternal aspiration, ensures to us the passion- 
 ate delight of ceaseless progress. 
 
THE riTOESS OF CHRISTIAOTTT 
 FOR MAI^KHs^D -II. 
 
 1871. 
 
 "Another parable put he forth unto them,- saving, The kingdom of 
 heaven is like to a, grain of mustard-seed, which a man took and 
 sowed in his field : which indeed is the least of all seeds ; but when it 
 is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that 
 the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof." — Matt. 
 xiiL, 31, 32. 
 
 Those who love variety of color and variety of form 
 can scarcely reap a deeper pleasure than is his "w ho 
 walks slowly through the lower part of one of the Ital- 
 ian valleys of the Alps when si:)ring is at its heiglit. 
 The meadows are full of flowers, at once so brilliant, 
 soft, and manifold of hue, that the grass seems sown with 
 dust of rainbows. The gray boulders, which lie like 
 castles on the slojjing lawns, are stained scarlet and gold 
 and bronze with many lichens. Chestnut and walnut 
 spread tlieir rich leaves below; above, the oak clusters 
 in the hollow places; higher still, the pines climb the 
 heights in dark battalions. Color, form, development, 
 are all different : each flower, leaf, and tree, each variety 
 of grass or lichen, has its own peculiar beauty, its own 
 individuality. 
 
 It seems impossible to include them all under one 
 
118 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 temi, to say tliat they are all substantially one thing. 
 Yet they are all transmuted sunshine. Eveiy fibre, 
 every cell, every atomic arrangement "which enables 
 each of them to give us the sensation of red or violet, 
 or Avhat color lies between these, has been built u]) 
 through means of the force or the forces of the sunshine. 
 Nevertheless, this one original element has been modi- 
 fied by the tendency — I use a word which but expresses 
 our ignorance — of each seed to assume a specialized 
 form at a certain stage in its growth, to be modified by 
 what one would call in mankind its character. So that 
 we have two things, — one simple source of vegetable life, 
 infinite forms and modifications of form through which 
 that force is conditioned. 
 
 It is a happy analogy by which to arrive at the idea 
 of the one spirit of Christ's life, received and modified 
 into a thousand forms by different characters of men 
 and different tj-]Des of nations. Christianity is like the 
 sunshine, — not a given form, nor imposing a imiform 
 system of growth : it is a force of sjiiritual heat and 
 light, which expands, develops, and irradiates ; a sj^irit- 
 ual chemical force which destroys dead things, and 
 quickens half-living things in the character. It is as- 
 similated, but according to the original arrangement of 
 the sjiiritual atoins of each character, so that it does not 
 destroy, but enhances individuality ; does not injure, 
 but intensifies variety. 
 
 There has scarcely exer lived a single Christian man 
 whose Christianity has been identical in form with that 
 of another, though the species may liave been the same. 
 There is certainly no Cln-istian nation which has j^ro- 
 duced a type of Christianity uniform with that of 
 
FITJfESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 119 
 
 another. Look at tlie Apostolic Clmrch, read the Epis- 
 tles which remain to us. The letters of Saint James, of 
 Saint Peter, of Saint Paul, of Saint John, differ as the 
 oak differs from the chestnut, as the fir differs from the 
 ash-tree. Tliese rcjjrescnt in various forms "vvhat the 
 sunshine has done for them : the Epistles represent, in 
 various forms of Christian thought, what the sjiirit of 
 Christ had wrought in their authors. 
 
 I venture to say that there never has existed a set of 
 religious books which so manifestly despised outAvard 
 consistency, and so boldly fell back uj^on an inner unity 
 of spirit; which, though they systematized to a certain 
 extent, showed more plainly, taken together, that there 
 was no system in the source from whence they drew 
 their inspiration ; which dared more audaciottsly to vary 
 their modes of expressing spiritual truths, relying on, 
 and because of, their apjieal to the primary instincts of 
 mankind. 
 
 This was one of the elements which we saw last Sun- 
 day lay at the root of the success of Christianity. It 
 left individual and national development free, and it ap- 
 pealed to a common humanity. And, having no system, 
 it i^romoted liberty of growth in mankind ; and when 
 that growth had passed a certain stage, and the charac- 
 ter of the time changed, it changed its form in turn to 
 suit the new ideas of men. But, beneath all these 
 varied representations, there will always be a few clear 
 principles, and a spirit wliich will remain the same. 
 ^Vliether Christianity exist as Calvinist or Rittialist, 
 Roman Catholic or Lutheran, Wesleyan or Unitarian, 
 all these forms will liave taken their life and built nji 
 their being from the sunlight of Christ. 
 
120 
 
 "FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 It ■will 1)0 easily seen from this how much I desjiise 
 the struggle for uniformity, and how much 1 dread it as 
 directly anti-Christian. Unity of sjtirit we should en- 
 deavor to seek for, and keep in the bond of peace ; but 
 uniformity! Imagine a world in which all the trees 
 were pines. 
 
 The effort to establish uniformity is not only the note 
 of an uncultivated spirit, it is es2iecially the mark of one 
 who has not studied the teaching of Christ, nor the 
 teaching of the Apostles. And Christianity has been 
 especially unfortunate in the way in which, for many 
 ages, its followers, foolishly disniaj-ed by the cry of 
 inconsistency, have made it almost a jioint to struggle 
 against Christ's altogether divine conception of a spirit- 
 ual imiverse of Avorshippers at one in the midst of a 
 boundless variety. Yet such is the vitality of Chris- 
 tianity that it has resisted the very efforts of its own 
 children to nullify its qualities, and remains as before, 
 a spirit of liglit and a spirit of life, capable of endless 
 ex2)ansion, ready to alter its form in order to co-operate 
 with every human movement, and working out in every 
 human soul who recelAcs it some sul)tile phase of its 
 beauty, some delicate shade of its tenderness, some new 
 manifestation of its graces. 
 
 "\ye have spoken so far of the religion of Christ in 
 contact with human character: let us look at it in con- 
 tact with some great human interests. 
 
 Take politics. Other religions have laid down jioliti- 
 cal systems, and bound themselves to ideas of caste, to 
 imperialism, or to socialism. The latest religion has 
 woven into its body a most cumbrous arrangement of 
 mankind and the nations of mankind. Consequently, 
 
FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 121 
 
 these religions, being tied to tlie transient, perished, or 
 will perish, with the political systems to which they are 
 bound. 
 
 Christianity never made tliis mistake. It refused to 
 be mixed up with any political system, or to bind those 
 who followed it down to any form of political union, as 
 it had refused to bind them down to any particular form 
 of religious union. Leaving itself jierfectly free, it 
 could therefore enter as a spirit of good into any form 
 of government. And it did enter into all forms — patri- 
 archal, military, feudal, monarchical, imperial, demo- 
 cratic — as a spirit which modified tlie evils of each, and 
 developed their good. It is objected to Christianity 
 that it does not touch on great political questions, such 
 as the limits of obedience to a ruler or the duties of the 
 State to the citizens, and therefore that it is not a relig- 
 ion for men ; but it does not touch directly on these 
 questions, because its object was to 2>enetrate them all 
 as an insensible influence. Had it decjai-ed itself imjoe- 
 rialist or democratic, it would have been excluded from 
 the one or from the other. But, entering into the 
 hearts of men as a spirit of love, of asjjiration after per- 
 fection, of justice and forgiveness, it crept from man to 
 man, till in every nation there existed a body of men 
 who had absorbed the spirit of Christ, who slowly 
 brought about political regeneration tlu'ough spiritual 
 regeneration. 
 
 But because it has 2>revailed in countries where feudal 
 systems and the tyrannies of caste have ruled, it has been 
 accused of having been on the side of o])prcssors of the 
 race. The objection is plausible, but it is unfair. Some 
 distinction is surely to be made between a church made 
 
122 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 into a political organ and Christianity itself. When the 
 Church, as in France before the Revolution, became a 
 mere adjunct to the throne, and threw in its lot with 
 tyrants, it forswore its Christianity. When it estab- 
 lished itself at Rome as a tyranny over men's souls, it 
 turned upon its Founder and recrucified him. More- 
 over, if Christianity has been accused as the handmaid 
 of ojjpression, it is at least just to look on the other side, 
 and see if it has not been the insjjirer of the noblest 
 revolutions. All its fundamental ideas — the Father- 
 hood of God, the brotherhood of all men in. Christ, the 
 equality of all men before God, the individual responsi- 
 bility of every human soul, the surrender of all things 
 for others, the one necessity of salvation for all alike, 
 emjieror and jjeasant — are spiritual ideas which bear an 
 easy translation into political ideas, and which, gather- 
 ing strength, have proved the ruin of many tyrannies. 
 If Christianity has any close relation with a distinct 
 political idea, it is with the idea of a high democracy; 
 and if, as some say, the world is irresistibly tending to 
 democracy, there is nothing in Christianity to prevent its 
 falling in with this political tendency. I see no limit to 
 its expansion, should that take place. On the contrary, 
 I think that it will take in democracy a farther and a 
 more brilliant, a freer and more devotional develo2)ment 
 than ever it has yet done. The atmosphere will be more 
 congenial to it. 
 
 Again, take art. Greek religion lent itself to sculpt- 
 ure, but after a time its ideas were exhausted. It 
 afforded no universal range of subjects. Some way or 
 another, human as it was, it Avas not human enough to 
 enable it to last. It was of Greece : it was not of man- 
 kind. 
 
FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 
 
 123 
 
 The religion of Mohammed shut out all jjainting and 
 sculpture of living forms from its sacred architecture. 
 But the Romanesque and Gothic builders, with a strange 
 instinct that in Christianity there was nothing irrelig- 
 ious, and that every act of human life, if done naturally, 
 or for just ends, even if it were such an act as war, was a 
 religious act, and that all the world, animate and inani- 
 mate, was holy to the Lord in Christ, filled jiorch and 
 arcade and string-course with sculjJture of all things in 
 earth ami heaven, — symbolized the revolving year, made 
 parables of beauty and of terror, and threw into breath- 
 ing stone the hopes, the passions, the fears, and the faith 
 of Christian men. 
 
 This was but one field of the immense space which 
 Christianity opened to religious art. No limitations 
 were placed upon it by the religion. It was left to each 
 nation, according to its genius, to develop it in its own 
 way. 
 
 It was the same with poetry as with architecture. It 
 lost nothing by the addition of the Christian element : 
 it gained, on the contrary, a great subject. And that 
 subject, in its infinite humanity, in the way it has of 
 making those who grasp it largely interested in all 
 things, in the majesty which belongs to it, does not pre- 
 vent men from rising into the grand style, — that style 
 which makes a man feel himself divine as he reads. On 
 the contrary, of the three poets who, since Christ, have 
 l)Ossessed this style in |)erfection, two employed all their 
 power on subjects which belonged to Christian thought. 
 The majesty of the subject reacted on their power of 
 expression. They proved at least that Christianity does 
 not exclude, but is expansive enough to include, the 
 
124 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 art of poetry. Moreover, a religion which appeals to 
 human feeling, which is nothing apart from Man, whose 
 strongest impulse is the " enthusiasm of humanity," can 
 never be apart from an art like that of poetry, which 
 withers, corrupts, and dies when it is severed from the 
 interests of men. One may even go further. Chris- 
 tianity has to do with the insoluble, with visions which 
 love alone can realize, with questions to which the under- 
 standing gives no reply, with feelings which cannot be 
 defined, only approached, in words. It is the very 
 realm in which half of the poetry of the world has been 
 written. 
 
 There is nothing, then, to prevent Christianity exist- 
 ing in harmonious relation, with all true poetry from age 
 to age of the world. In itself, it gives a grand subject to 
 poetry, and both it and poetry have similar elements : 
 their common appeal to, and their death apart from, 
 human interests and feelings ; their common life in a 
 region above the understanding. 
 
 I need not dwell on the arts of music and painting. 
 Let us pass on to science. Supposing Christianity had 
 committed itself to any scientific statements or to any 
 scientific method : it could never have been fitted to 
 expand with the expansion of knowledge, to be a relig- 
 ion for a race which is continually advancing in scientific 
 knowledge. If it had bound itself up with the knowl- 
 edge of its time, it would naturally be subject now to 
 repeated and ruinous blows. If it had anticipated the 
 final discoveries of science, and revealed them, nobody 
 would have believed it then, and nobody would proba- 
 bly believe it now. Christianity committed itself to 
 nothing. " Yours is not my province," it said to science. 
 
FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 125 
 
 " Do your best in your own sphere, with a single eye to 
 truth. I will do my best in mine. Let us not throw 
 barriers in each other's way. The less we obstruct each 
 other, the more chance there is of our finding in the end 
 Tinion in the main ideas which regulate both our worlds 
 in the mind of God." 
 
 Foolish men have mixed it up with science, and en- 
 deavored to bind each down upon the bed of the other, 
 to make science Christian, and Christianity scientific; 
 but the result has always been a just rebellion on both 
 sides. The worst evil has been the unhallowed and 
 forced alliance of the doctrine of the plenary inspiration 
 of the Bible, or of the infallibility of the Church, to 
 Christianity. The moment science was truly born, war 
 to the death arose against a form of Christianity M'hich 
 violated the original neutrality of Christianity toward 
 the pure intellect and its pursuit of its own truths. But 
 get rid of this alliance, and how is Christianity in oppo- 
 sition to science? What is to prevent its being a relig- 
 ion fit for man in that future when the youngest child 
 will know more than the philosopher of to-day? It is 
 no more in actual oi^jiosition to science than poetry is. 
 
 The river glideth at his own sweet will. 
 
 I suppose no scientific man would run atilt at that. Its 
 thought, its feeling, the impression it is intended to 
 convey, are all out of the sphere of science. Neverthe- 
 less, the natural philosojiher recognizes that it apjjeals to 
 his imagination. He receives 2>leasure from it : he accepts 
 it as true in its own sphere. 
 
 But, if he were told that the writer claimed infallibility 
 for his expression, said that it exjjressed not only a cer- 
 
126 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 tain touch of human feeling about the river, br.t also the 
 very physical truth about the movement of the river, he 
 would naturally be indignant. " You have left your own 
 ground," he would say to the poet, "where you were 
 supreme, and you haxe come into mine, where, by the 
 very hypothesis of your art, you are a stranger. You 
 claim my obedience, here, in my own kingdom, the abso- 
 lute surrender of my reason in a realm where reason is 
 the rightful lord. You may be a poet, but you are deny- 
 ing the first principles of your art. 
 
 Precisely the same might be said to those Avho are 
 ill-informed enough to connect the spirit and life of 
 Christianity with efforts to suppress jjhysical science or 
 historical criticism as tending to infidelity, or as weaken- 
 ing Christian truth. It might be said to them by a wise 
 scholar: "You may be Christians, but you are doing all 
 the harm you can to Christianity. You are endeavoring 
 to bind an elastic and expanding spirit into a rigid 
 mould, in which it will be suffocated. You are fettering 
 your living truth to jjliysical and historical theories 
 which have been proved to be false and dead, and your 
 Christianity will suffer as the living man suffered when 
 the cruel king bound him to the corjise. Your special 
 form of Christianity Avill grow corru])t, and die, for it 
 attacks truth." But if some Christian ])eo]ile have gone 
 out of their sphere, there are not Avantiug i)hilosophers 
 to do the same. "I know nothing of God and immor- 
 tality," says science, and Avith an air as if that settled the 
 question. "I should think you did not," Christianity 
 Avould gravely ansAver : " No one ever imagined that you 
 coiild, but I do. I do knoAV a gi-eat deal about those 
 wonderful realities ; and I haA'e given my knoAvledge of 
 
FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 127 
 
 them to inillions of the luiniau nic-c, who have received 
 it, i)roved it through toil and 2)ain, and found it powerful 
 to give life in the hour of death." " Pro^•ed it," answers 
 science, " not in my way, the only -w ay worth having, 
 the way which makes a thing clear to the imderstanding." 
 But there are liundreds of things which are not and can- 
 not be submitted to such a proof. We cannot subject 
 the action of any of the jiassions to tlie explanations of 
 the understanding. By reasoning alone, we cannot say 
 Avhat an envious, jealous, self-sacrificing, or joyful man 
 may do next, nor explain his previous actions. One 
 might far more easily predict the actions of a madman. 
 
 We cannot give any reason for love at first sight, or, 
 Avhat is less rare, but as real, friendshiji at first sight. 
 We cannot divide into compartments the heart and soul 
 of any one jjerson in the world, saying. This is the 
 boundary of that feeling. So far, this quality will carry 
 the man in life. For the understanding is but a second- 
 ary power in man. It can multiply distinctions. It 
 cannot see the sjjrings of life wdiere the things are born 
 about which it makes distinctions. 
 
 "Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops." 
 
 What tells us that is poetry ? The voice of the under- 
 standing? "Night's candles are burnt out," it says: 
 "it is a ridiculous statement of the fact that the stars 
 have ceased to shine. Day never stands tiptoe on the 
 misty mountain-tops. Is that poetry ? It is nonsense." 
 But the understanding rarely acts alone in this Avay : a 
 higher power in man proves to him, he cannot tell how, 
 that the lines are inagnificent poetry, — nay, that the 
 
128 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 jioetry is in the very passages whicli the understanding 
 despises. 
 
 Let each kecj) to their own spheres, and do their work 
 therein. Christianity has no weapons in her original 
 armory which can be wielded against science, and science 
 cannot attack spiritual truths with purely • intellectual 
 weapons. No one asks for a spiritual proof tliat the 
 earth goes round tlie sun : it is equally absurd to ask for 
 a j^urely intellectual proof of the existence of an all- 
 loving Father. And it would be wiser if science kept 
 her hands off Christianity. Mankind will bear a great 
 deal, but it Avill not long bear the denial of a God of 
 love, the attempt to thieve away the hope of being 
 perfect and our divine faith in immortality. These 
 things are more precious than all physical discoveries. 
 The efforts made to rob us of them, when they are 
 made, and tliey are but rarely made, are not to be pa- 
 tiently endured. They are far less tolerable tlian the ill- 
 advised attempts of Christian men to dominate over 
 science. These hitter efforts are absurd, but the former 
 are degradino: to human nature. 
 
 It really does not make mvich matter to the race in 
 general whether the whole science of geology were 
 proved to-morrow tij have been proceeding on a wrong 
 basis, or whether the present theory of force be true or 
 not ; but it would make the most serious matter to man- 
 kind, if they knew for certain to-morrow that there was 
 no God of justice and love, or that immortality was a 
 fond invention. The amount of suppressed and latent 
 belief in these truths, which we should then discover in 
 men, who now deny them, would be perhaps the 
 strangest thing we should observe ; but it hath not en- 
 
FITNESS OF CHEISTIANITY FOR MANKESTD. 
 
 129 
 
 tered into the heart of man to imnghie the awfuhiess 
 of the revohition wliich, following on this denial, would 
 j^enetrate into every corner of human nature and human 
 life. 
 
 Both science and Christianity have vital and j^recious 
 truths of their own to give to men, and tliey can develop 
 together without interfering with each other. Should 
 science increase its present knowledge tenfold, there is 
 nothing it can discover which will enable it to close up 
 that region in man where the S2>irit communes in prayer 
 and praise with its Father, where the longing for rest is 
 content in the i)eace of forgiveness, where the desire of 
 being perfect in unselfishness is satisfied by union with 
 the activity of the unselfish God, where sorrow feels its 
 burden lightened by divine SJ^npathy, where strength is 
 given to overcome evil, where, as decay and death 
 grow upon the Outward frame, the inner sjjirit begins to 
 2)ut forth its wings and to realize more nearly the eternal 
 summer of his presence, in whom there is fulness of life 
 in fulness of love. Xo : as Christianity can expand to 
 fit into the progi-ess of politics, and to adapt itself to the 
 demands of art, so it can also throw away, without losing 
 one feature of its original form, rather by returning to 
 its purer tyjje, all the elements opposed to the advance 
 of science which men have added to its first simplicity. 
 
 It will be pleasant, if what I have said be true, for all 
 of us to meet five hundred years hence, and, interchang- 
 ing our tidings of the earth, to find that the thoi;ghts 
 and hopes of this sermon, in which many of you must 
 sympathize, have not been proved untrue. 
 
THE CHA^5'GED ASPECT OF CHEIS- 
 TIAl^ THEOLOGY.* 
 
 1873. 
 
 " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
 now." — St. John xvi., 12. 
 
 The foundation of Christian Theology is the revela- 
 tion given by Jesus Christ with regard to God in his 
 relation to man. It Avas the flower of tlie previous reve- 
 lations, the concentration and completion of the the- 
 ology of the past. 
 
 But did it do as much for the theology of the future, 
 did it once for all give to man all the knowledge of God 
 which he is to have hereafter? Our accredited teaching 
 answers that question in the negative. We look for- 
 ward to a time when Christ shall come a second time 
 and close this dispensation, and we, freed from the bar- 
 riers which darkly close us in, shall jjossess an immedi- 
 ate knowledge of God, see him as he is, know him even 
 as we are known by him. The revelation of Christ, 
 then, did not complete revelation. 
 
 But, again, the question arises, Is this future revelation 
 to which we look to be a sudden, unprepared revealing 
 of higher truths about God, or will it be the natural 
 result of a slow development of truth? Will it be like 
 
 •A sermon preached before the University of Oxford. 
 
CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 131 
 
 tlioso sudden creations of now animal life and a now 
 world which once were hold to be true in geological 
 science, or will it follow the analogy of the slow evolu- 
 tion which we know has ruled the progress of life and 
 the changes of the face of the earth ? 
 
 I believe in the latter view. It will be as much the 
 easy and natural result of a continuous revelation which 
 is now going on as the Revelation of Christ, eighteen 
 hundred years ago, was the result of a revelation which 
 had been going on for thousands of years before he 
 came. It will not be a new building suddenly upraised 
 from its foundations : it will be the last stone laid u2)on 
 a building which God had been laying stone by stone 
 from year to year. In idea, then, the progress of revela- 
 tion is analogous to that which science teaches us about 
 the progress of life, to that which we know of the prog- 
 ress of the race in history, of the progress of Art, of 
 the progress of Knowledge. Everywhere there is conti- 
 nuity, evolution without a break ; and in revelation it is 
 the same. 
 
 Now, what position does the revelation given by 
 Christ hold towai-d this continuous revelation ? It gave, 
 in com])lete statement, all that was needed at the time 
 it was given, and tliat which was then given in this way 
 will always be needed by man. But there was much in 
 it which was not comjiletely stated, much more than 
 appeared to the men of that generation. It held in it 
 not only clear thoughts, but germs of thought which 
 were afterward to be developed ; and in their slow and 
 successive development consists the continuity of revela- 
 tion. 
 
 At first, they remained asleej) ; but, as the elements 
 
132 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 fitted to make them grow were added to the soil of the 
 workl, tliey grew up, one after another, trees of knowl- 
 edge and of life, of whose fruits men took, and, eating, 
 knew more of God, of their own being, and of their 
 duties to tlieir fellow-men. Many of these seeds are 
 still asleep, and the future extension of revelation con- 
 sists in their coming to the light as the conditions under 
 which they can sj)ring up are fulfilled in the progress of 
 mankind. "I have yet many things to say to you," said 
 Christ, " but ye cannot bear them now." And, again, 
 " T\Taen he, the S2)irit of Truth, is come, he will guide 
 you into all truth. . . . He shall take of mine, and shall 
 show it unto you." The j^rinciple is laid down in that 
 text ; for Ave ought not to give it a particular, but a 
 universal interpretation. It was not saitl to the A^ios- 
 tles alone, but to all mankind in the jiersons of the 
 Apostles. 
 
 It seems reasonable, then, to say that revelation is 
 not completed, but being completed; that we look for 
 higher knowledge of God, for larger moral views of his 
 relation to us and of ours to him, as time goes on and 
 mankind grows. Theology is not, then, a fixed science. 
 God has not said his last word to us, nor Christ given 
 his last counsel of jjcrfection; nor lias the Spirit yet 
 shown to us the whole of truth. There is, then, a reve- 
 lation in the past, the full meaning of which is being 
 evolved in the progress of history. 
 
 We have readied a certain point in that development, 
 and a clearly marked one, — the i>omt at which theology 
 is at last tending to become as unlimited in its statements 
 about God and man as the statements of Christ were. 
 To speak of that and of the duties it imposes on us will 
 
CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 133 
 
 fill lip the second part of this sermon; hut, first, I must 
 discuss hoM^ it is that we have been so long in arriving at 
 that point, and how we have arrived at it. 
 
 First, then, when Christ came on earth, he stated 
 ideas which were xuiiversal in the sphere of religion, 
 and which led directly to ideas universal in the sphere 
 of ])olitics. There was one universal Father, and all 
 men of every nation were his children. There was 
 therefore only one nation, the nation of mankind ; and 
 all were, because children of one Father, brothers to 
 each other. And, because all were children and need- 
 ing redemption, there was a universal education and a 
 universal salvation. Beyond all the differences, then, of 
 mankind, there was one spiritual country of Avhich all 
 were equally citizens, with equal duties and equal rights; 
 and every citizen of that country had an unrestricted 
 right to personal development and communion with God 
 his Father. These are what I call universal ideas; and 
 they bore an easy translation into the social and political 
 life of classes and nations, and it was their fate to be so 
 translated. But not at once : that was impossible. It 
 is true they were so translated by the early Christians, 
 on whom the ideas of the world around them had little 
 jiower, in whose hearts still glowed the personal influence 
 of the Saviour ; but, the moment they passed from the 
 narrow circle of the believers into contact with the 
 Roman world, they not only ceased to be transferred to 
 the social life of men, but they lost also their universal 
 character. For, being universal, they could not be un- 
 derstood or received Ijy a world to Avhich all universal 
 ideas were unknown except the idea of universal empire, 
 and that one universal idea was in direct antagonism to 
 
134 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 their spirit. The elements of tlie -world then entered 
 into Christianity and changed its form, and the main 
 element of that world Avas Imperialism. It stole into 
 the doctrines of the Chnrch, and the idea of God in his 
 relation to ns was formed in accordance with the impe- 
 rial idea with which Rome had impressed the world, 
 and M'ith the exclusive and particular ideas of that time. 
 It stole into the polity of the Church, and it became 
 imperial in spirit and in form ; and the democratic ele- 
 ment, as it has been called, in the ideas of Christ, was 
 laid asleep for a time. 
 
 We may regret this, but we must not forget that it 
 was necessary. If tlie Christian ideas were to enter 
 men's hearts at all, they were obliged to take forms 
 suited to the times. But in taking, both in doctrine 
 and in ])olity, such forms, they were stripped of their 
 universality. And they could not help this. To declare 
 a universal doctrine of Fatherhood, Salvation and Broth- 
 erhood to a world steeped in the political and social the- 
 ories of the Empire, would have been to suppress Chris- 
 tianity for a time. It had to be imperialistic, or it Avould 
 not have been received. 
 
 That is one j^oint, and another follows from it : that 
 this form which the thoughts of Christ took in the 
 Church was not the creation of the Church, half as 
 much as it was the creation of the world which sur- 
 rounded the Chui-ch. It was imposed on Christianity 
 from without: the existing jiopular A'iews necessarily 
 made the garments of Christianity. 
 
 Tliat was the fate of tlie outward revelation of Christ. 
 Meantime, the ideas of Christ, though received under 
 worldly forms, entered into men's hearts and did their 
 
CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 135 
 
 work tliere ; and tlie inner revelation wliieh is wrought 
 out by tlie Spirit of God in men began to grow. The 
 ideas of Christ were wide as the workl, the form they 
 took was nan-OAv, but tlieir universal spii'it penetrated 
 into the heart and set up a subtiie and hidden resistance 
 to their exclusive form. Tlie Sj^irit took the things of 
 Christ and showed them to men. 
 
 The same things are true with regard to intolerance 
 and persecution. It became natural for the Cliureh to 
 insist on the opinions it held being received by all. 
 Natural, because it was the fashion of the day in other 
 realms than those of religion. Rome did not tolerate 
 the expression of free opinion against its government. 
 It searched it out, and ruthlessly put it down. No one 
 thought that it did wrong in doing so. It was deter- 
 mined to force all nations into the Roman mould, to 
 compel them to adopt and live by the Roman ideas. 
 And this view of things naturally entered into Chris- 
 tianity, when it grew into form in a Church ; and it 
 would have been impossible for the Church to have 
 been so far beyond its time as not to be as intolerant of 
 difference of religious opinion as the State Avas of dif- 
 ference of ])olitical opinion, as not to have tried to force 
 all men to believe the same things in tlie same wav. It 
 had to be intolerant and pei'secuting. 
 
 It has been held up to hatred because of tliis. But 
 again I say, this was not the creation of tlie Cliurcli 
 alone, but of the people also. The Church was intol- 
 erant and persecuting. What else could she be? It 
 was the spirit of the whole time for centuries. If she 
 alone had escaped that evil, it would have been miracu- 
 lous. And tolerance would not have been understood, 
 
136 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOIM. 
 
 and would have mot then with universal blame.* Not 
 to force truth on men by every means in one's power, 
 not to put away those Avho opposed it, would have 
 argued that one did not care for truth, that in itself it 
 Avas worthless. It is perhaps too great a j^aradox, and 
 yet there is much truth in it, to say that it was neces- 
 sary, in order that the spirit of Christ's tolerance should 
 insensibly creep into men's hearts, tliat his ideas should 
 for a time be clothed in the garment of intolerance. 
 That was again the fate of the outer Revelation, but at 
 the same time the ideas of Christ, even through tliis 
 alien form, stole into the hearts of men, and wrought 
 out, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, a practical 
 charity, even an international kindness unknown before. 
 The seeds of tolerance, of free thought, and the love of 
 it, were sown in the world. An inner revelation grew 
 up in opposition to the form which the Church, in- 
 fluenced by worldly elements, had given to the revela^ 
 tion of Clirist. 
 
 It would be too long now to show how the same kind 
 of thing took place when that which has been called the 
 Fevidal System took form, and the aristocratic element 
 which grew out of feudalism divided men sharjily into 
 classes, isolated them from each other, and crejit into 
 the conceptions of God and Heaven and Earth which 
 both Protestant and Catholic set forward; and how, 
 Avith this, intolerance and persecution grew stronger. 
 
 But again, as before, these elements of doctrine and 
 practice were more the creation of the world than the 
 Church. Again, as before, the ideas of Christ, though 
 their form was worldly and evil, made way, and far 
 
 * See the history of Theodoric. 
 
CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 137 
 
 more than before. Even in tlie Cliurch itself, the relig- 
 ious orders spread far and wide more democratic views 
 of man; and, both within and without the Church, a 
 rapidly accumulating series of new impulses, collected 
 by us now under the name of the Renaissance, tended 
 toward freedom of tliought, a larger charity and tol- 
 erance, and in religion produced men like Erasmus, 
 whose teaching, ' almost as large as advanced modern 
 thought, was also far larger than his time could receive. 
 
 On the wliole, then, tMO things a])pear to be true. 
 First, that the Revelation of Christ was taught by the 
 Church through forms, both of doctrine and jiractice, 
 whicli Avere created by the spirit of the world, and that 
 it could not have been received at all, except it had been 
 taught through these forms : that therefoi-e the imjie- 
 rial and aristocratic elements in the Church were not 
 created by the religious body acting alone, but by the 
 whole spirit of the age. The priests were not, as their 
 opponents say, the tyrants who invented these things : 
 they were the mouthj^ieces of general opinion. It is 
 said. As the priest, so the people: it is far truer to say, 
 As the people, so the priest. 
 
 And it follows that these elements and the forms 
 under which Christianity was represented were not 
 then seen as evil b^'^ the peoi)le nor by the Church, but 
 were considered good thin£rs. 
 
 Secondly, that, in spite of the forms in Miiich the 
 universal ideas of Christ Avere cast being evil, though 
 not known as evil then, they entered into men's hearts, 
 and in their slow growth is to be sought the real work 
 of the Spirit of God in the development of Cliristianity. 
 How shall I make it more clear? The direct influence 
 
138 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 of Christianity had to be exercised tlirough evil forms; 
 but, since tliey were not looked ajjon as evil by the world 
 of the time, its inner influence was not corrupted by 
 them. But that inner, indirect influence in men's hearts 
 worked against those forms, and slowly undermined 
 them; and in the subtile, hidden growth of its ideas, and 
 the liA-ing spiritu.al force they created, tending ever to a 
 wider a-icm^ of God's love to man, a larger view of the 
 equal comniunion of man with man, — to the destruc- 
 tion of intolerance in religion and of o])j)ressive systems 
 in society, to tlie freedom of man's soul, and the free- 
 dom of all from every form of tyranny, — consists the 
 revelation of God through Man in history, the true work 
 of the S])irit of Christ, taking liis things and showing 
 them unto us. We look, then, to the ideas which the 
 Sjiirit of God has evolved in history out of the seeds 
 which Christ sowed for the truest form of his revelation, 
 not to the forms into which the Church threw only a por- 
 tion of the thoughts of Christ. 
 
 And, now, the resistance which this inner spirit of 
 Christ's ideas had set uj) against the restrictive forms 
 imposed on them from without gradually took more 
 force to itself, ^^assed from the inward to the outward, 
 formulated itself in thought, set on fire no longer indi- 
 viduals, but masses of men, and became a revolutionary 
 power in tlie world. Mixed as it was with much evil, it 
 was indeed an angel wliicli troubled the Bethesda pool 
 of Europe ; and it brought healing with it to the life of 
 men. For it was the coming to the light of the true 
 conceptions of Christ. 
 
 Sometimes, they took greater strength from the side 
 of religion. A 2)rophet came, or a priest turned into a 
 
CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTD^ THEOLOGY. 139 
 
 proplict ami proclaimed tliom. Sometimes, on the other 
 liaud, they were pushed forward from tlie side of irrelig- 
 ion. Those in whom the ideas of Christ were working 
 Avcre often and naturally thrown into opposition to the 
 Church wlien the Church joined itself to the ojipressors 
 of the people, or sought to exercise its own spiritual 
 tyranny. Then these men became infidels ; and we have 
 the curious spectacle of those who denied Christ teach- 
 ing the thoughts of Clirist, blindly working the will of 
 Heaven. But, from whatever source these ideas came, 
 they grew and gathered strength as the years rolled on, 
 till at last — in the proclamation that all men had equal 
 duties which made equal rights, that there was but one 
 nation, the nation of Mankind, one class, the class of 
 Man, that all were brothers and citizens of one country, 
 that all were free and bound to sacrifice their own good 
 for tlie good of all, that caste and the whole range of 
 systems bound up with it was a sin against the whole 
 race — the universal ideas which Christ had given in 
 religion took form in the social and political worlds, and 
 the doom of imj^erial, aristocratic, exclusive theories in 
 politics, society, and religion was sealed. Bclshazzar in 
 Cliurch or in State alike looked up and saw the fiery let- 
 ters grow on the walls of the world, which told him his 
 time had come. At last, the inner revelation had come 
 to the surface, and proclaimed itself as the Gospel of Man 
 in the realms of social and political life. Then for the 
 first time it became possible for the world to understand 
 or receive a wide tlieology. For, in that long struggle, 
 the ideas of the world, which were opposed to the univer- 
 sal spirit in those of Christ, were sifted, tried, e.vhausted, 
 — that Avhich was good in them wrought into, that which 
 was bad in them wrought out of, the body of society. 
 
140 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 Look round now ujion the world. The spirit of the 
 whole age is exactly contradictory of that which at its 
 first contact with the world stripped Cliristianity of its 
 universality ; the leading ideas of the time have become, 
 both here and in Europe, universal on the subject of 
 Man; philosojihers, historians, j^oets, and the mass of 
 the peojile, have preached, and are full of these ideas : 
 it has therefore become possible, for the first time in the 
 history of the world, to have a theology whicli shall be 
 universal in spirit, tolerant in practice, and adequate in 
 its conception of God. 
 
 The doctrines of the universal Fatherhood of God, of 
 the whole world as the Church of God in idea, and to 
 become so in fact ; of the education of every soul of 
 man to perfection at last, since all are necessarily in God, 
 and can never be finally divided from him ; of universal 
 Salvation, of universal Immortality ; of the Avhole Race 
 being held, sanctified, and redeemed in Christ ; of the 
 final glory, when all who have ever lived shall know 
 their equal Brotherhood and do its duties, which universal 
 love will make delight, — these have now for the first 
 time become possible in theology, and all the doctrines 
 which ojipose or deny them are tottering to their fall. 
 The force of that popular opinion which is the result of 
 the work of God's Sj^irit in man is against them, and 
 their days are numbered. We see already that political 
 and social ideas, Avhich are universal as regards man, are 
 working their way into the theology of Europe, and 
 re-creating its forms. For as the people and the sj^irit 
 of the past had made the Church limited in thought 
 and persecuting in practice, so now they will make it 
 tolerant in j)ractic2 and universal in thought. The- 
 
CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 141 
 
 ological ideas will slowly but surely harmonize them- 
 selves with the universal ideas in the social and political 
 kingdoms, and we shall have a religion fitted for the 
 farther growth of Man. 
 
 In fact, for the first time in history, and after a sus- 
 tained battle, we have nearly worked up to the level at 
 ■wdiich Christ spoke. We stand upon his platform; we 
 know what he meant when he said, "I have yet many 
 things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now." 
 There is a clear path of progress before us ; and it will 
 not be long before we may run along it with joy, looking 
 unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. 
 
 This, then, is the point at whicli the world has 
 arrived. This is our remai'kable and unprecedented 
 position in tlie history of religious 2)rogress. 
 
 But, though that is the jiosition, there are few who 
 recognize it, and scarcely any Av^ho occupy it with a 
 knowledge of what is wanted. 
 
 Tliat which is needed is a theology which will repre- 
 sent in its own realm and with equal breadth of view 
 the ideas which have arisen with regard to Man, both in 
 his social and j^olitical relations. It is wanted, because 
 men, who have consciously adopted these ideas, or who 
 unconsciously live by them and in their atmosphere, are 
 desiring a religion and a theology which will not only 
 enable them to link their views about mankind to God, 
 but also supply them with a higher enthusiasm in the 
 practical working of those vieAvs than irreligious jiliilos- 
 ophies of Man can giA'e. For the first thing one feels in 
 lookmg round on society is that there is no Avant of the 
 desire to be religious, but that the desire despairs of 
 finding a form in which it can clothe itself, and re- 
 
142 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 mains, therefore, a vague as])iration, without ahility to 
 act or even sense to know itself. 
 
 Such men look naturally to the Church or to tlie vari- 
 ous religious bodies of the country for some theology 
 which they can harmonize with the universal ideas aliout 
 Man, of which I have spoken ; and the search is in a ain. 
 On the contrary, they find in the Church the old jKiliucal 
 and social ideas still retained, and in both the Church 
 and Dissent religious ideas such as the salvation of tnily 
 a few, which, wholly out of harmony with their vicAV f>f 
 Man, are yet imposed on them as necessary to believe, if 
 they would be religious. The result is an immediate 
 recoil from theology and even religion, violent in some, 
 sorrowful in others, but resolute in both. Left utterly 
 unhelped, feeling this irreconcilable antagonism, they 
 become angry infidels or quiet sceptics. And this infi- 
 delity and scepticism is becoming more wide-sjjread day 
 by day. It is unfortunate, but it cannot be helped ; and 
 it will continue, and must continue to spread, until the 
 harmony I speak of is established, till the ideas of theol- 
 ogy on God and Man are as universal in their sphere as 
 those of the movement called the Revolution are on the 
 subject of Man. 
 
 A few are trying to do this, but no class of thinkers, 
 as a class, are doing it; and the result is that there is a 
 dead-lock to-day between religion and life. There is no 
 attempt to construct an adeqtiate theology for the new 
 world. We hear nothing but negations of what others 
 hold, and one is very wearied of negations. "Every 
 work of opposition is a negative work, and a negation 
 is a nonenity. If I have called tlie bad bad, have I 
 gained much ? But, if by chance I called the good bad, 
 
CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 143 
 
 I have done a great evil. He ^vllo wislies to be of use 
 to the Avorld ought not to insult anything. That which 
 is bad will die of itself ; and our work is to build, and 
 not to overthrow." But, in order to' build, we Avant a 
 plan; and Ave cannot make a plan till Ave knoAv the Avants 
 of the Avorld for Avhich Ave build. 
 
 The Church makes A'arious efforts, but none of them 
 touch the time. Some are re-creating the Past and try- 
 ing to fit it to the Present. It is pouring new wine into 
 old bottles, and Ave can jiredict the result. 
 
 Some are trying to prove that Christianity is nothing 
 but a high morality, and asking the unbelievers to find 
 all they desire in that view. But men may have as high 
 a morality as is necessary for life here, and be Atheists ; 
 and, unless the Church has something higher than moral- 
 ity to offer, it will give no help to the Avorld. And, 
 unless it has more than a high morality to offer, it has 
 ceased to be Christian. For, as in all Art, so in Chris- 
 tianity, its direct end is not to make men moral, but to 
 aAvaken in them those deep emotions, and to present to 
 them those high ideals, which, felt and folloAved after, 
 Avill not only indirectly produce morality, but aspiration 
 and effort to do far more than men are absolutely bound 
 to do by the moral law. 
 
 Some are saying that the religion for man is contained 
 in the spirit of Christ's life, — in being gentle, kind, Ioa'- 
 ing, true, and forgiAdng. I am sure that teaching of 
 that kind alone Avill not put an end to sce])ticism. Men 
 Avant a theology as Avell as a daily religion of "sAveet 
 reasonableness," Avant the intellect satisfied as Av.ell as 
 the heart. They Avish for ideas under Avhich they can 
 collect their thoughts with regard to the questions in- 
 
144 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 volved in the relation between God and man, such as 
 4he Being of God, what Nature and Man and Evil are in 
 relation to him, forgiveness of sins, immortality, the 
 future fate of the" race. It wall not be enough to say to 
 men asking for light on these subjects: "I can say noth- 
 ing clearly. I do not knoM-, but I can tell you to live 
 the life of Christ." Why, the very thing which Avearies 
 them into scepticism is that they have no clear vision ; 
 and it does not helj) them to hear confessions of igno- 
 rance rejieated. If we wish to lead, we must be able to 
 assert sometliing clearly; and that which we assert must 
 be in harmony with those new thoughts about mankind 
 which 02)enly took form at the end of the last century. 
 
 Then we ask what Unbelief is doing. Is it heljiing 
 the world ? It has on one side deified negations; and to 
 accustom the intellect and imagination to denial is to 
 rob it finally of the power of construction. Nothing so 
 retards the advance of the world as to put negations in 
 the place of assertions, and to idolize them as if they 
 were ideas. No idolatry is worse than that, no super- 
 stition is more degrading ; and it is the general error of 
 the infidel party. On tlie other side, those of them who 
 have made a religion have taken out of it God and 
 Immortality; and, though a few can l)ear the loss of 
 * these ideas, it leaves the mass of men without a centre 
 for thought, without any support for noble emotions, 
 without any courage or hope or faith in the future of 
 Man. Again, as to the scientific unbelief, its present 
 tendency is more and more toward Materialism ; and, if 
 that were once largely received by the unintelligent 
 masses, it would ra]>idly tend to destroy ideas of any 
 kind and their influence. And even those thoughts of a 
 
CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 145 
 
 coiiiinon mankind, of one humanity, of equal duties owed 
 to all, of the equal rights of all to self-development, 
 wliich have done so much to civilize, soften, and ennoble 
 Man, would aftei- a time cease to have jjower, and finally 
 cease to exist, Avere materialism to win tlie day. On the 
 side of Unbelief, little is doing to set forward the world, 
 much to retard it. For Philosophy and Art, Moralit}' 
 and Piiilanthrojiy, unless Religion and its enthusiasm 
 exist alongside of them, dry up into mere systems, or 
 take corrupt and even unnatural forms, Avhich the world 
 is obli<jed to get rid of in the end. 
 
 In every case, then, but little is doing to give a relig- 
 ion to the really jiOAverful ideas, to those wider concep- 
 tions of Man which, first taken up in England by the 
 j^oets, have now filled nearly every sphere of thought 
 with their influence ; and that nothing is doing is a great 
 pity for the sake of the ideas themselves, for they only 
 possess half their normal power without a religion in 
 harmony with them ; nor have we any notion how they 
 would jjush tlieir way, if they had a theology behind 
 them Vhich should rejiresent them. Till that is done, 
 we shall have our scepticism. 
 
 But those within the Church who see the position at 
 wliieli the world has arrived have a clear duty and a 
 noble woi"k to do. They have, first, to take away from 
 theology, and esi)ecially from its idea of God and his 
 relation to Man, all exclusive and limited concejjtions, 
 all also that are tainted by the influence of those ideas 
 which crept into it from the s])irit of the imperial, aristo- 
 cratic, and intolerant ages. They have to harmonize 
 theology by the progress of the world, by asserting in it 
 ideas as universal with regard to Man and God as those 
 
146 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 which tlie Spirit of God lias tauglit the world with re- 
 gard to man and his fellow-man. They have, in fact, to 
 bring the outer teaching of Christ's revelation up to the 
 level of that inner one which has now become outward 
 in society and politics, to confess and accept this as the 
 work of God ; and, having done that, to look back to 
 Christ's words and life, and say, "At last, we arc free 
 from perversions of his Thoughts; at last, we breathe 
 his atmosphere ; at last, Ave know what he meant ; and, 
 since this is what he meant in society, we will make our 
 theology mean the same." 
 
 And, secondly, that, in accordance Avith this, their 
 teaching in the Church should heartily, l)ut temperately, 
 go Avith the ideas Avhich are collected round the Avords 
 Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity ; not serving the Avild 
 image Avhich France made of them, but the image Avhich 
 an honest and a just idealism jsresents to our hojse. Not 
 that the Church should proclaim these social ideas as 
 part of its teaching, for that is not its Avork, but that it 
 should ncA'er hesitate to symijathize Avith them through, 
 and by means of, its religious teaching ; that it -should 
 cease to support Avith its voice all institutions and gOA'- 
 ernmonts Avhich ojjpress or hamper the free growth of 
 the peojjle ; that it should set itself loose from the ideas 
 of caste ; that it at least should say, " I liaA'e nothing to 
 do Avith upper, middle, or lOAver classes, but all men 
 before me stand on the same ground, as sons of God and 
 brothers of each other"; that it should pay no longer 
 any special honor to Avealtli or rank for their OAvn sake, 
 but only see in any man his character as a member of 
 Christ, and speak as much home to the vices and follies 
 of rich and titled jjersons as to those of the jioor, and 
 
CHANGED ASPECT OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 147 
 
 more sternly, inasinucli as it is more difficult to make 
 them feel, owing to traditionary pride ; that it should 
 take its stand on ideas, not on custom ; on jarinc-ijiles, 
 not on maxims ; on love, not on law ; that it should live, 
 looking not to the Past and Present only, but chiefly to 
 the Future of Mankind, and organize its action for the 
 sake of the future ; that it should not be too anxious to 
 serve order, lest its power and wealth should be dis- 
 turbed, whcnsoeA'er, at least, it sees that the existing 
 order of things is not a living order because it repre- 
 sents the best thoughts of the time, but only a negation 
 of disorder ; that it should not be afraid of what are 
 called revolutionary thoughts, remembering that all rev- 
 elations have given birth to revolutions, and that if Re- 
 ligion heads a revolution it becomes a reformation ; and, 
 finally, that it shoidd get nearer in spirit and in life to 
 him Avho was the intimate friend of the poor, whom the 
 common jieople gladly heard, and Avho never hesitated 
 one instant to proclaim ideas which he knew would over- 
 throw the existing conditions of society. 
 
 To do these things Avith Avisdom, foresight, firmness, 
 rememliering that he who believes does not make haste, 
 but believing that God is educating all men to perfec- 
 tion, that Christ has redeemed all men, and Avill complete 
 that redemption, that the Divine Spirit is now revealing 
 more and more of Truth to the world, and that the 
 world is groNviug by tliat truth, will rescue men from 
 scepticism; and many years will not pass by before we 
 know, even more fully than noAv, Avhat Jesus meant 
 when he said, "I have yet many things to say unto you, 
 but ye cannot bear them now." 
 
THE LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL 
 CRITICISM.* 
 
 1871. 
 
 " Prove .all things ; hold fast that which is good." — I. Thess. v., 21. 
 
 I AM going to-d.ny to speak of the jjoint in the late 
 Privy Council judgment which .affects the question of 
 tlie liberty of Biblical criticism in the Church of 
 England. 
 
 Some years ago, in the judgment i)ronounced in the 
 case of the Essays .and Reviews, a large freedom of inter- 
 pretation and of criticism of the Bible was gr.anted, or 
 ajipeared to be granted, to the Cliurch. That freedom 
 was gratefully accepted, and freely used. Tlie results 
 have been remarkable. The Bible, a]i])roached in the 
 same manner as we approach any other book, has gained 
 in reality, in interest, and in power. Its human and 
 its sjiiritual sides have both been brought into greater 
 liromincnce. Its liter.ary and intellectual interest has 
 been more widely recognized. It has become not less 
 the book of religious circles, but more the book of Hu- 
 manity. And tliese gains have been in proportion to 
 the loss of those mystical and infallible qualities which 
 have been imputed to it in the i^asi, and which had 
 
 •A sermon suggested by the judgment pronounced in the case of Mr. Voysey. 
 
LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 149 
 
 relegated it to a region in whicli all exercise of the 
 reason upon it was pronounced either impious or dan- 
 gerous. No true book suffers from being removed out 
 of the misty valley of sujjerstition and placed in the 
 mountain air of honest inquiry ; and the Bible is not less 
 reverenced or loved by us, but more, now that we have 
 subjected it for some years to the ordinary critical tests. 
 The pixre gold of tlie book shines brighter, and is recog- 
 nized more quickly, now that we try to separate it from 
 the alloy ; and the alloy itself has become interesting for 
 its historical and human value. Formerly, when both 
 were considered equally divine, both suffered from the 
 confusion. It is easy to see what follows when alloy is 
 maintained to be gold, and gold to be alloy. 
 
 Well, it has seemed to many, both witliin and without 
 the liberal ranks, that the late judgment takes away 
 from us this freedom. It a2:)pears to them to say, first, 
 that no passage in the Scriptures may be subject to free 
 criticism which relates to faith or morals; secondly, that 
 no laassage may be so interjireted as to contradict an- 
 other ; and, thirdly, that no individual criticism is allow- 
 able at all, and that this last restriction is in fact a 
 death-blow to criticism altogether. 
 
 But criticism has already done its work ; and what are 
 its sure results? 
 
 According to any true princij^le of interpretation, the 
 books of the Bible must be subjected to the same tests 
 as all other books. Are there passages which belong to 
 the sphere of physics ? Then they are to be subjected 
 to precisely the same strict inquiry as any physical 
 hypothesis is subjected to by a natural j^hilosopher ; and, 
 as they answer the inquiry, they are to be accepted as 
 true or rejected as erroneous. 
 
160 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 Many of the Biblical statements liave not stood that 
 test ; and at once Ave come to the conclusion that, wliat- 
 ever insj^iration may mean, it does not include infallibil- 
 ity on these points. We deny that the writers knew 
 more on these subjects than any other men of the time 
 at which they wrote. The discovery of Galileo, in fact, 
 settled this point. 
 
 Unfortunately, the idea of a BiV)lical infallibility still 
 lingers among men, and the spiritual jjower of the Bible 
 is still involved with its accuracy on jihysical questions. 
 Whether the question be one of geology, or a new the- 
 ory of species, or the descent and age of man, there is 
 still a battle to save this book from being pronounced in 
 error, a series of reconciliations are still jn'oposed. 
 
 These attem2)ted reconciliations only serve to bring 
 the Bible into discredit, partly because, as science goes 
 on, they are one by one proA-ed inadequate, jiartly be- 
 cause they contradict and disprove one another, and 
 Avholly because they all try to make the words of Scri]it- 
 ure mean something else than a common-sense interjsre- 
 tation, such as Ave Avould give to the same statements in 
 any other book, avouIcI lead us to adopt. They' seem to 
 me waste of time and labor in supj>ort of a Avrong notion. 
 I do not say that it is a matter of indifference to me 
 Avhether the Bible be j^roved in accordance Avith modern 
 science or not ; for I should feel, if it were in accordance 
 Avith modern science, that the Avisdom of Inspiration 
 might be fairly challenged. To link modern knoAAdedge 
 to a sjiiritual revelation given to men Avho had no mod- 
 ern knoAAledge would have injured their reception of 
 that revelation. If Moses had told the people of Israel 
 that the earth Avent round the sun in the same breath as 
 
LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CEITICISM. 151 
 
 ho told them that the Lord their God was one Lord, the 
 total incredibility witli which they would receive the 
 first would lead them to be as incredulous of the second. 
 A revelation must be given in accordance with the 
 knowledge of the time, or it will be rejected. On dis- 
 tinct grounds, its truth and its use are outside of the 
 sphere of physical truth. 
 
 Under this head comes, of course, the very important 
 question of miracles. Miracles seem to directly contra- 
 dict the root theories of science. There are many factors 
 in the question, which have to be discussed in any thor- 
 ough treatment of it : whether natural sequence really 
 and necessarily is invariable ; whether matter really ex- 
 ists, or is essentially nothing but force ; and then whether 
 force is anything but will or thought ; and then whether 
 the whole universe is not actually the will or thought of 
 God. And, should the latter ever admit of proof, then 
 the miracle would certainly seem to be thinkable, and 
 therefore less improbable than the existence of matter, 
 which most people accept, but which is jAilosophically 
 unthinkable. Be our theories about miracle, however, 
 what they may, as a miracle is plainly something out of 
 the ordinary sequence of things, any alleged miracle 
 ought to be most severely investigated ; and, if any other 
 explanation than a miraculous one is fairly allowable, 
 that explanation ought to be received. I claim the free- 
 dom of criticism, therefore, on the miraculous element in 
 the Bible, because, unless the question be discussed with 
 liberty, we shall never arrive at any intellectual certainty 
 on the possibility, for instance, of a miracle like the 
 Resurrection. 
 
 Passing to another point, we claim the liberty to sub- 
 
152 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 mit to free criticism the liistorical portions of the sacred 
 Scriptures. Tilings necessary to salvation we believe, 
 but it can hardly be said that a belief in the infallible 
 accuracy of the whole history is necessary to salvation. 
 Moreover, if such a belief is demanded of us, one proved 
 inaccuracy is fatal to the whole; and it is almost ridic- 
 ulous to bind up the historical reality of the account of 
 the Passion of Christ with the historical reality of the 
 story of the dispersion at Babel. 
 
 Criticism has proved that there are discrepancies in 
 the historical books; it has rendered it more than j^rob- 
 able that the more archaic narratives in Genesis and else- 
 where are of little historical value ; it has shown that the 
 authors of many of the books were not contemjioraries of 
 the events narrated, and that the details are necessarily 
 traditional, and share in the uncertainty of traditions. 
 
 Whatever inspiration means, it does not guarantee his- 
 torical infallibility; and the history of the Bible is open 
 to the same sort of criticism as that which we bestow on 
 any other history. 
 
 Such criticism — once we ha^-e laid aside the theory of 
 infallilde inspiration — has not in its results done any 
 wrong to the Bible, but the contrary. The book is not 
 less, but more, reverenced by us, now that it makes no 
 longer impossible claims on oxir belief. The critical and 
 careful laying aside of that which we found mistaken, 
 temporary, and local in it, has brought out more clearly 
 than before that which is divine, spiritual, and perma- 
 nent in it. And the historical record, freed from the 
 superstitious claims made for it, has given up that which 
 is true in it, and become of the greatest possible interest 
 and value. 
 
LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 153 
 
 If it is no longer lawful, for exampk', to say that Saint 
 Paul changed his ojjinion on some points as he grew 
 older, so that j^assages in his later Epistles a2:)2)ear to be 
 at variance with passages in his earlier Epistles ; if we 
 can no longer point out the differences which exist be- 
 tween the first three and the fourth Gospels, differences 
 which I myself think can be embraced into a unity, but 
 which apparently exist ; if criticism be not allowed to 
 play freely round these and similar points, — then we are 
 simply put back to the time when men forgot the spirit 
 and life of the sacred Scriptures in a theory of their in- 
 fallibility, when reason was sacrificed to a superstitious 
 idea of an insjiiration which was independent of the 
 writer's character and growth, when interjireters, in- 
 stead of asking what the writer really meant when he 
 wrote, set themselves to force the expressions of the 
 writer into what they wished him to say. 
 
 And, as to discreisancies and contradictions, if it is 
 incumbent on us to say, in the face of the Scriptures 
 themselves, that there is no discrepancy between, for 
 instance, the two accounts of the flood in Genesis, or no 
 inconsistencies in the narrative of the Gospels, or nothing 
 irreconcilable in the genealogies of Christ ; or that there 
 are no contradictions between the Books of Kings and 
 Chronicles; if we are forced to begin again the old 
 miserable, useless labor of harmonizing and reconciling 
 accounts, with the clear knowledge now, not only that 
 they cannot be perfectly liarmonized, but also that, if 
 tliey could, it Avould be fruitless work, — then we are in- 
 deed depraving our teaching of the Bible by uniting it 
 to falsehood in ourselves, and dej)raving the Bible itself. 
 
 The whole question of the authorship of the books 
 
154 
 
 FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 
 
 both of the Old and Xew Testaments must also be left 
 open. It cannot be suppressed by any pretence that it 
 does not exist. In the case of the Old Testament, it has 
 been already far and wide assumed that the authorship 
 of the books is an open question. Xo one denies that 
 the books are canonical, but Ave have felt quite free to 
 discuss the date of composition of the several books of 
 the Pentateuch and the various ages of their fragments; 
 to divide Isaiah as we have it between the jirophet of 
 that name and another writer of the C'a])tivity ; to trace 
 insertions from earlier times m Isaiah and the various 
 l^rophets ; to relegate Ecclesiastes to a much later date 
 than Solomon ; to freely treat the authorshiji of all the 
 books as a question to be determined by historical crit- 
 icism. The judgment has not pronounced against this 
 liberty of ours Avith regard to the Old Testament, and 
 we noAV claim the same liberty with regard to the 
 authorship of the books of the Xew Testament. 
 
 The notion that their authority as a rule of faith de- 
 pends entirely on their authenticity arises out of the 
 theory of a special inspiration differing in kind from that 
 given to other good and holy men, a notion wholly, I 
 think, unsupported by the Scriptures themselves. That 
 the writers were insjjired by God, I believe to be true ; 
 that holy men of old Avrote as they were moved by the 
 Holy Spirit, I believe to be true : but were only those 
 inspired whose names are handed down to us, does God 
 inspire no one now, do no men speak now moved by the 
 Holy Ghost? Many do so, for God has not ceased to 
 act on men. 
 
 The next and last thing I shall discuss is the inference 
 which some have draAvn from the judgment that we are 
 
LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 155 
 
 not permitted to explain any passage having reference to 
 faith or morals in a sense at variance with any other. 
 But Ave need not trouble ourselves about inferences. A 
 judgment such as this speaks only, of course, of that 
 which lies before it. Nor, indeed, could the judgment 
 intend that such an inference should Ije drawn Ijy any 
 one. If it meant its Avords to liave full value on this 
 point, they Avould directly take away the power of stat- 
 ing views about the Scriptures which the Scriptures 
 themselves encourage us to state. 
 
 Take, first, questions of faitli. The doctrine of Im- 
 mortality is a question of faith. We hear nothing of 
 immortality in the earlier books of the Old Testament. 
 There are e-\ en passages which apparently deny it along 
 Avith others Avhich apparently assert it. It Avould be 
 difBcult, for example, to say that this passage in Heze- 
 kiah's jirayer, "The grave cannot praise thee, death 
 cannot celebrate thee, they that go down into the pit 
 cannot hope for thy truth," is not somewhat at variance 
 Avith " I liave a desire to depart and to be Avith Christ, 
 Avhich is far better." 
 
 The doctrine of a Sacrifice for Sins is a matter of 
 faith, but the mode in which the Old Testament con- 
 ceived it during the Mosaic dispensation is expressly 
 said in the Epistle to the Hebrews to be rej^laced by 
 another, "He takcth away the first that he may establish 
 the second." And Avhen a covenant is expressly declared 
 to be made old, as it is in this Epistle, to be decayed and 
 ready to vanish away before a iicav one, it can scarcely 
 be denied that there are some things in the old Avith 
 which the ncAV may be at A'ariance. 
 
 The doctrine declared in the second commandment 
 
166 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the chil- 
 dren was a matter of faith to those to whom it was 
 given. But the prophet Ezekiel, having reached a 
 higher spiritual level, directly contradicts it ; and it is 
 said that the whole chapter (the eighteenth) was so 
 startling to the Masters of the Synagogue, as seeming to 
 contradict the Pentateuch, that they hesitated to include 
 Ezekiel in the canon. "The fathers have eaten sour 
 grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." "As 
 I live, saith the Lord God, there shall be no more this 
 jjroverb in the house of Israel." "The son shall not 
 bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father 
 bear the iniquity of the son ; the righteousness of the 
 righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the 
 wicked shall be upon him." In fact, the chapter itself, 
 as a whole ; and the history of the dismay of the Rabbis 
 at its repugnancy to another part of sacred Scripture is 
 a death-blow to such a statement as some suppose they 
 ought to infer from the judgment. 
 
 We claim then, on the ground of the sacred Scriptures 
 themselves, liberty to contrast passages in them which 
 pertain to matters of faith with other passages, and to 
 say that they may be at variance with one another ; and 
 that this is, on the supposition of a jirogressive revela- 
 tion, necessarily so. 
 
 Again, with regard to matters of morals. The rela- 
 tions of wife to husband are a matter of morality. 
 Christ himself reverses the Mosaic conception, and re- 
 places it by the ideal one. " And they said, Moses suf- 
 fered to write a bill of divorcement and to put her away. 
 And Jesus answered, For the hardness of your heart he 
 wrote you this precept." And then he reverses the 
 
LIBEBTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 
 
 157 
 
 precept in "a counsel of perfection," ending with this 
 phrase, " What therefore God hath joined together, let 
 no man put asunder." 
 
 It "was lawful under the Mosaic law to claim an eye 
 for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and orders are said to 
 be given by God to the Israelites " not to seek the peace 
 or the good of their enemies, tlie Moabites, forever. 
 Christ reverses both these when he says, "Love your 
 enemies, bless them which curse you, do good to them 
 that hate you," in another counsel of perfection. 
 
 The keeping of the Sabbath is considered jiart of the 
 moral law. The mode of keeping it enjoined in the 
 Pentateuch is put aside even in the Prophets, is de- 
 cidedly 2)ut aside in the Gospels, is still more decidedly 
 put aside in the Epistles. "Ye observe days and months 
 and times and years," said Saint Paul. " I am afraid of 
 you, lest I have bestowed on you labor in vain." That 
 is a passage which can hardly be said not to be at vari- 
 ance with a hundred j^assages in the Old Testament. 
 
 We claim, then, the right which the Scrij^tures them- 
 selves give us to interpret passages which relate to moral 
 action in a manner repugnant to others, Avhen those 
 others are plainly at variance with the highest morality 
 taught us in the Bible, We say that we must expect 
 this variance; for Christ has taught us, and the Epistles 
 in various passages carry out this teaching, that the rev- 
 elation given in tlie Bible is a j^rogressive revelation. 
 
 XoAV, a progressive revelation assumes that the revela- 
 tion given is proportioned to the moral sense of those 
 who receive it. As much and no more than they can 
 aspire to is given. To give the morality of the Gospels 
 to the savage and ignorant Jews of the desert would 
 
158 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 have been absurd. It would have been like giving to 
 a boy who has just mastered the first book of Euclid 
 the Principia of Newton as his next study. To ask of 
 Joshua's army that it should do good to its enemies 
 would have been as much oiit of the question. 
 
 The morality taught in the Pentateuch is the morality 
 ( f a primer : the morality of the earlier Psalms is higher, 
 the morality of the Projjhets is higher still. As the 
 nation advanced through the revelation given, — the rev- 
 elation being always somewhat in advance of the natural 
 morality, — new revelations, higher and higher still, each 
 containing the germs of that Avhich was to follow it, 
 grew up in the minds of the best men, under the work 
 of God's Spirit, and Avere given through them to the 
 people ; and the conclusion is that we must not demand 
 more from the nation or the writings than the time 
 allows us, we must not ask the morality of Isaiah from 
 Samuel, nor the morality of Saint John from Isaiah. 
 We must expect to find many things in the earlier books 
 of the Old Testament at variance Avith the morality of 
 the Proj^hets, still more at variance Avith the morality of 
 the Gospels. We haA'e an actual right, then, from our 
 Christian point of a'Icav, to say that many things attrib- 
 uted to God in the Old Testament, such as the com- 
 mands to utterly annihilate the Canaanites, are Avrongly 
 attributed to God, and that many things called good, as 
 when Jael is blessed for the slaughter of Sisera, and 
 others, are the product of the imperfect morality of the 
 time, though we must also remember, first, hoAV divine 
 the morality is Avliich is mixed up Avith these things, hoAV 
 far beyond anything Ave jiossess in books of contemporary 
 or eA'en of later age are the leading truths of reA'elation 
 
LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CBITICISM. 
 
 159 
 
 in the sereral Old Testament books; and, secondly, tliat 
 these things in which we see a morality at variance with 
 that of the Gospels were not unnatural nor horrible at 
 the time, and that, if we had lived ourselves at the time, 
 our conscience would not have been violated by them at 
 all. Nay, it would be quite possible for some of us in a 
 moment of passionate patriotism to sing as Deborah did, 
 and to break into jiraise of one who should assassinate 
 a tyrant as doing the work of God, as some did here 
 when Orsini made his attempt. Nor have we quite for- 
 gotten how not very long ago we claimed our merciless 
 slaughter of the Hindoos, in which whole villages of 
 innocent jiersons suffered, as the vengeance of God 
 himself. 
 
 On the ground, then, that the revelation given in the 
 Bible is a progressive one with regard to faith and 
 morals, passing from less jjerfect to more perfect, and on 
 the authority of the Bible itself, Ave claim the right to a 
 free criticism of j^assages relating to faitli and morals, 
 taking in this case as our standard the ideal of faith and 
 morality given in the accepted teaching of Christ. We 
 claim the right to say that it is, in itself, a depraving of 
 Scripture and a denial of its whole idea of the j^rogres- 
 sive disclosure of more and more perfect things to take 
 without any modification many of the statements of the 
 Old Test.ament as binding now on faith and morals, or 
 to understand many passages as not at variance with the 
 faith and morals revealed to us in the received teaching 
 of Christ. 
 
 It may be thought that the whole of this statement 
 contradicts the seventh Article, in which it is said that 
 the Old Testament is not contrary to the New. It is 
 
160 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 not so : the Avhole argument is based on that continuity 
 of a progressive revelation which asserts that the rev- 
 elation in the Old Testament contained the germs out of 
 which developed, century after century, the revelation 
 in the Xew. The Xew Testament fulfils, explains, and 
 com^jletes the Old. One s|)irit, one set of truths, run 
 through both. But that by no means imjilies tliat every- 
 thing in the one is in strict accordance, on sul)jects of 
 faith and morals, with everything in the other, or that 
 everything in the books of each, on such subjects, is in 
 accordance. On the contrary, it implies that such ac- 
 cordance cannot be. The tree, at each stage of its 
 growth, differs from the sapling, though the same life 
 and the same idea runs through all its stages, though 
 every stage of its growth supposes the next. 
 
 You may say. How am I in this difficulty to judge as 
 to what is permanent or not, divine or not, necessary to 
 sah"ation or not in the Bible? All authority is taken 
 away from me. Xot quite : there is the moral consensus 
 of the time in which you live, a consensus which has 
 been developed by the slow action of Christianity upon 
 the world, and which is, in itself, I V)elieve, the work of 
 the divine spirit of God on humanity. Any plain con- 
 tradiction of that consensus, whether in faith or morals, 
 in the Bible, cannot be in it of divine or ])ermanent 
 valv;e. We are bound to reject it as part of the rule 
 of faith, unless we deny that our present standard of 
 morality is the Avork of God, a denial which would be 
 practical atheism. 
 
 Ultimately, in our jjersonal life, the appeal for author- 
 ity is made to the spirit of God in us, who verifies for us 
 his own work. But he verifies it in no preternatural 
 
LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 161 
 
 manner, Itiit tlirough the means of spiritual organs, 
 which he assists in their work. ^VTiat are these " ver- 
 ifying facnhies," to adopt a term from a well-known 
 writer ? Here are some of them : " He that loveth 
 knoweth God." " If any man will do his will, he shall 
 know of the doctrine." " "Whosoever shall not receive 
 the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise 
 enter therein." " Blessed are tlie pure in heart, for they 
 shall see God." " He that is of the truth heareth my 
 voice." 
 
 These are the faculties wherel)y we discern the things 
 of the spirit of God in the Bible, — a loving and a pure 
 heart ; obedience to the known will of God ; tlie childlike 
 spirit ; the being of the truth : to these, the Bible is an 
 open book ; and he who jjossesses them, and in whom 
 God's spirit is developing them day by day, needs no 
 outward authority. Of his own self, he determines what 
 is necessary or not necessary to believe in the Scriptures. 
 
 A good deal has been said about the evils of destruc- 
 tive criticism. I do not like criticism the aim of which 
 is destruction, not truth. But its evils are those which 
 time most surely cures, and truth is not destroyed. De- 
 structive criticism, when it becomes licentious, cuts its 
 own throat ; and it is better to let it arrive at this conclu- 
 sion. If you Avish to keep its evils alive, the best way to 
 do that is to persecute it. If you wish it to produce 
 good results by a kind of reflex action, let it have its 
 course, — w.atch it, seize the hints it gives you, let it tell 
 you what is really dead in the things it criticises, and 
 build up for yourselves a firm edifice of true things by 
 constructive criticism. 
 
 Destructive criticism has its evils, but none so great as 
 
162 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 the evils 'wliich follow on forbidding criticism altogether. 
 To I5ut the clergy back into a 230sition where they wiU 
 have to continually twist their intellect awry and to 
 violate the morality of common-sense and to suppress 
 the trutli, in order to appear to get over Biblical difficul- 
 ties, is to encourage a sort of criticism which, far more 
 rapidly than any infidel criticism, will destroy with the 
 laity not only any resj)ect for the clergy, — and that is 
 not unimjjortant, — but any reverence for the book 
 which the clergy are asked to maltreat in the name of 
 Truth. 
 
 The time has come wlien silence on the known results 
 of criticism or on unfinished critical inquiries is no longer 
 right or prudent. Even if we would, w'e cannot now 
 leave to men and women their old opinions. The matter 
 is taken out of our hands. The questions which crit- 
 icism debates are debated in every Avorkshop, in every 
 drawing-room. And are the clergy the only j)ersons on 
 whom silence is to be im])Osed, — we, who ought to be 
 beforehand and not behindhand in such discussion on 
 things dear to us ? Wlien aU the world is inquiring, is 
 the pulpit to be the only jjlace where inquiry is for- 
 bidden ? Are we, j^art of Avhose business is Biblical 
 interpretation, to ignore all the efforts of tlie laity to 
 i;nderstand tlie Bible? When a Christian ministry iags 
 behind the knowledge of the time, it must soon come to 
 an end; and its end will be swifter, hastened by a just 
 contempt, if it is believed to know truth and to suppress 
 it, if it is open to the charge of loving truth less than its 
 opinions. It would be, indeed, a deadly blow to the 
 Church of England if this judgment meant, as some 
 think it means, that all searchers for truth have no 
 business within its pale. 
 
LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 163 
 
 I cannot think tliat tlie judgment means this, and we 
 wait to know clearly what it does mean. But meantime 
 we cannot be silent. 
 
 We call upon all, ministers and people, to inquire 
 after truth, and to hold it as the first of virtues without 
 which all other virtues become corru2)t. We have no 
 sjTnpathy Avith its intemperate pursuit, nor with the 
 notion that overthrowing everything is the way to find 
 it. It ought to be pursued by a slow, sober, just, 
 jjatient effort, based upon the jirinciple that in all error 
 there is a grain of truth liidden by which the error lives, 
 the loss of which grain, by our heady violence, will 
 vitiate our conclusion. We shall not be afraid of fac- 
 ing criticism on the Scriptures ; but we should subject 
 criticism itself to critical tests, and weigh its conclusions 
 well. Nothing is easier than destructive criticism, and 
 nothing is more intellectually contemptible than the 
 hasty acceirtance of its inferences by persons whose 
 delight is to contradict received opinions. Tlie sudden 
 determination of questions which have employed the 
 intellect of centuries by men who have a constitutional 
 infirmity of seeing only one side of a thing is an inso- 
 lence done to the love of truth. A sIoav sobriety in 
 balancing the results of criticism, and in judgment, is 
 one of our greatest wants. There is no need of hm-ry. 
 We have an eternity before iis in which to arrive at 
 truth ; but, because we have eternity before us, we must 
 not neglect the endeavor to discover truth : for such 
 neerlect Avill have its results in the enfeeblinof of the 
 organs by which truth is found ; and neither in this 
 world nor in the next is knowledge given to feebleness. 
 The Bible will not lose, but gain, from the process de- 
 
164 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 voutly l)ut sternly perfonned. Its truths, as they 
 appear, freed from the mist of human error, will he all 
 the more dear to us because they have been told to us 
 by men who shared in our common humanity. It will 
 no longer be set xip as the ojiponent of reason, but as in 
 harmony with it ; and, the intellect satisfied, will leave 
 free room to the spirit to receive its wise and tender 
 lessons. It will speak to the heart in the heart's own 
 language. Its human lives, and the history of their 
 guidance by God, will tell us that we are also guided 
 and cared for liy him. The j^rinciples of its profound 
 national morality, as declared by the Prophets, will pass 
 into our national life. Its psalms and prayers will ex- 
 jjress for us the Avants and sorrow and joy of our souls, 
 and deepen, by expression, our religious life. Its his- 
 tory of the continuity of religious life will unite us to 
 the whole past of humanity, and, while it makes us at 
 one with Abraham and David and Isaiah, teach us to be 
 at one with Socrates and Aurelius and Confucius. And 
 its centi'al figure Christ, where all these things meet and 
 mingle into sinless unity, — where the Fatherhood of 
 God and the Sonhood of Humanity reveal themselves; 
 where all that is divine is made himian, and all that is 
 truly human is exalted to the divine ; where the past 
 revelation fulfilled its imperfections, and in whom the 
 future revelation is contained in germ, — in whom Love 
 and Truth and Purity met together to give us a per- 
 sonal revelation of the character of God, will have his 
 redeeming, consoling, and exalting power on our souls. 
 
 But any attempt to maintain o2iinions al)out the Bible 
 Avhich science is every day jiroving more and more to be 
 erroneous and absurd, and any attempt to check inquiry, 
 
LIBERTY OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 165 
 
 can only bring down manifold disasters upon the Church. 
 The stream of freed Biblical criticism once let loose 
 cannot now be dammed up without danger. Its waters 
 will collect behind the dam, and the feeble barrier will 
 give way. But, in the rush of the conglomerated waters, 
 not only the barrier, but the very foundations of the 
 present <;onstitution of the Church, may be swept away. 
 
THE ATOI^EMEISTT. 
 
 1871. 
 
 " Lord, liow are tliey increased tliat trouble me 1 Many are they 
 that rise up against me. Many there be wliich say of my soul, There 
 is no help for him in God. But thou, 0 Lord, art a shield for me ; 
 my glory, and the lifter up of mine liead. I cried unto the Lord with 
 my voice, and he heard me out of his holy hill." — P.sai,m iii., 1, 2, 3, 4. 
 
 This is a laorning psalm, as tlie fourth, wliicli follows 
 it, is an evening psalm. There is a high probability 
 that the tradition which refer.s them both to the time 
 when David fled from Absalom's advance to Mahanaim 
 is a true tradition. The third psalm would then belong 
 to the first morning after that on which David left 
 Jerusalem, and the fourth to the e\'ening folloAving. 
 
 David left Jerusalem early in the morning. He passed 
 through the outskirts, over the brook Kidron, and took 
 the ascent of Olivet, amid the loud Availing of the j^eojile 
 of the city. He reached the mountain-top at noon : 
 there he met Hushai, and sent him back to confound the 
 counsel of Ahitoj^hel. As lie descended the rugged path 
 on the other side, there rained upon his head the stones 
 and curses of Shimei, adding their store of sorrow to 
 that which was too much. It Avas not till evening fell 
 that he reached the ford of Jordan. 
 
 There he snatched a short slumber, while he waited 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 167 
 
 for the news of Iidw tilings were going in Jerusalem. 
 "I laid me down, and slejjt." At midniglit, he was 
 roused with the message, "All is safe for a time; the 
 pursuit is delayed ; get over the river at once to Maha- 
 naim." David sprang to his feet, his old energy return- 
 ing. " I rose 11]) again, for the Lord sustained me " ; 
 and at break of day they had all reached the other side 
 in safety. 
 
 Then, as the sun rose, making into a blaze of glory all 
 the dew-drenched western bank, — seeming like God's 
 summons to activity, — David's impulsive poet-heart 
 began to thrill with gratitude and courage, and this 
 psalm rushed in a moment to his lips. 
 
 If this be true, a vivid interest draws us to the psalm. 
 It is the unpremeditated expression of the passionate 
 feeling of a great man's heart at a great crisis in liis life. 
 We seem to look for a moment into his inmost heart. 
 
 It is in times like these that we see character. Men 
 are true when passion is profound. The first agony of 
 sorrow wears no mask. Anger, at its fiercest, lays the 
 secrets of the heail bare. Fear is a magic glass, through 
 which we see the long-hidden evil or weakness of the 
 soul. Joy at deliverance has the same j'ower. 
 
 This is still more true when the character is impulsive, 
 and the impulsiveness is under the power of a strong 
 will. Such a character had David, — imjiulsive, always 
 ready t<) gratify or ex])ress the feelings of the moment, « 
 but cajtable now and then of holding them in with the 
 steadiest curl^. A\'lien the curb was withdrawn by the 
 will, then, only observe how most of his psalms burst out 
 with a cry, like the leaj) forward of a beautiful wild ani- 
 mal held in bonds too long. 
 
168 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 And David's passion and David's impulsiveness, now 
 at their height, swelled by the rejjression of twenty-four 
 hours, — swelled by an awful sorrow, swelled by a terrible 
 anger, — were suddenly let loose by the sense of safety. 
 He looked round upon his folloM'ers, and rejoiced; he 
 felt the exhilaration of the naorning; he saw the sun rise, 
 like hope, after a night of storms. Silence seemed 
 shameful in that moment, and tlie i)salm arose into life. 
 
 How the words came rushing like waters. "Jeho- 
 vah!" — mark the cry at the beginning, — "how many 
 are become niy oppressors; many are they that rise 
 against me. Many say of my soul. No help has he in 
 God." 
 
 But yesterday a king, and now an exile. Only yester- 
 day in his own city, the j^eople weeping for love and 
 sorrow round him! What were they doing now? And 
 David heard, in the ear of his imagination, the shouts 
 which welcomed Absalom, the darling of the j^eojale: 
 "The king is dead. Long live the king!" fancied the 
 sneer and scoff which circulated among the rebel offi- 
 cers; caught the sleek murmur of Ahitophel's insidious, 
 hateful voice; and saw Avith startling distinctness among 
 the crowd the face of Shimei sharpened with hate. He 
 realized the thought which gleamed in every eye and 
 hung on every lip. "They say of my soul," he cried, 
 "there is no helj) for huu in God ! " 
 
 Svich is the judgment of the world. JItsfortune means 
 GocVs anger. Is that judgment true? That is the first 
 question the psalm suggests. 
 
 We answer, first, that God is never angry in our sense 
 of the Avord. Sacred indignation at evil is inseparable 
 from his being, because it is the natural repulsion of 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 169 
 
 lioliiiess from sin ; but from tliis we must, so far as we 
 can in thouglit, remove all suspicion of angry passion. 
 It is all but impossible for us to do this, for it is so 
 rarely in our lives that we feel unmixed indignation. 
 Jealousy steps in ; sometimes fear, sometimes a wish to 
 display, sometimes wounded vanity, sometimes selfish 
 motives, till at last, or in a moment, indignation is de- 
 graded into violence, and violent passion brings about 
 revenge. 
 
 It is owing to this almost necessary inability to con- 
 ceive pure indignation that the idea of God's wrathful 
 anger has taken such lodgement in the heart of men. 
 Few superstitions — I call it such, for it is born of igno- 
 rance and fear — have cxev done more harm in the 
 world. It lay at the root of the jjojjular cry Mhich 
 forced persecution on the Roman governors ; the gods 
 Avere jealous of their honor. It has lain at the root of 
 all persecutions : of the cruelties of the inquisitors, who 
 attributed to God the desire to revenge himself upon 
 the Jews, and the nursing of endless rancor against 
 heretics ; of the persecution of those sects who repre- 
 sented God as vindictive, vain, and touchy. It has lain 
 at the root of the i^erishing doctrine of eternal jiunish- 
 ment. 
 
 It is the sujicrstition which the Church of Christ ought 
 above all to cast out now. It is the thing above all else 
 on which we Avant clear notions. 
 
 IIow shall I best explain it, illustrate it ? What is 
 God's indignation ? It is love doing justice. Supj^ose 
 that you saw in the streets a brutalized man beating 
 a woman : your feeling would be indignation, you would 
 inflict punishment ; but there would be, for the most 
 
170 
 
 FAITH AKD FREEDOM. 
 
 jjart, feelings of contemijt, of violent anger, of horror, 
 combined with your indignation. In vindicating the 
 woman's cause, there would be no pity for the man. 
 That is anger doing justice. But the indignation of 
 God would jjunish as severely as you, more severely in 
 the end ; but there would be no anger in the sense of 
 passion ; and there would be infinite \nty, compassion, 
 and love for the man, more so than even for the woman. 
 "So lost, so brutalized, so fallen, — my son, I must redeem 
 him." This is love doing justice : this is the indignation 
 of God. The offender is punished, the sin is abhorred, 
 but the offender is not detested : the tie of Fatherhood 
 is not dissolved, the necessity of saving the lost is not 
 forgotten. " You have done this wrong," God says to 
 you and me: "you must suffer for it. I am a consuming 
 fire to your evil. But I do not love you less : my love 
 is shown in insisting on the 2>unishment. For the pain 
 points to the disease, and says to you, ' Get rid of the 
 evil thing, or you die.' " 
 
 Moreover, anger like ours is capricious, easily roused, 
 easily lost ; punishes too much or too little ; does not fit 
 the punishment to the guilt, so that it may seem natural 
 to the giiilty and touch the conscience, but takes what- 
 ever jninishment lies next to hand. Want of justice, 
 want of balancing all the motives and circumstances on 
 both sides, want of natural fitness, characterize the inflic- 
 tions of our anger ; for it has no time for all this slow 
 woi'k, and no thoughtfulness. Let it wait to work or 
 think, and it ebbs away like Esau's, or quickens into 
 revengefulness like Saul's. 
 
 There is an absolute freedom from all these faults in 
 the indignation of God, and it is this which gives it its 
 
THK ATONEMENT. 
 
 171 
 
 ;nvfulness. It is based on law, or, I should say, on the 
 eternal truthfulness of God to himself. If God ceased 
 to punish ■\vrong-doing, he would cease to be God ; if he 
 did not apportion the exact measure of punishment to 
 the wrong, making it the natural result, and felt as such, 
 of the sin ; if he did not see the wrong in all its excuses 
 and all its aggra^'ations, and make botli tell, and be felt 
 as telling, in the punishment, he could not be the just 
 Omniscient Being we conceive him to be. If he acted 
 hastily, and Avithout full thought of the results of the 
 punishment upon the character of the person punished, 
 could not believe in his love. 
 It is not, remember, that indignation is modified by 
 love, or love modified by justice : there are no argumen- 
 tative elements in God's nature, things whicli plead and 
 reply, and replead and re-rej^ly within him. If we had 
 more reverence for God's iinity, we should be more in- 
 dignant at representations of him which make his heart 
 like a court of law, in which his attributes are advocates 
 for and against the criminal. His love is his justice, his 
 justice is his love, his mercy is both love and justice, and 
 his indignation is the inevitable expression (according to 
 tlie unalterable nature of his being) of his character in 
 contact with sin in the persons of his children. It is 
 punishment ; but it must be merciful as well as just pun- 
 ishment. 
 
 So far, then, the fact of misfortune coming to a man 
 proves that he has erred against some law, and that, iu 
 consequence, God is indignant with him. It may be 
 only his own unconscious transgression of some physical 
 law, or it may be that his parents have transgressed 
 some law of health. In that case, the indignation of God 
 
172 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 carries with it no moral blame : it is simply the expres- 
 sion of laAv. It may be that he has erred against his 
 own sense of the moral law, and that remorse has fol- 
 lowed ; or that he has knowingly broken some physical 
 law by excess, and that disease has followed. In that 
 case, he recognizes himself that the spiritual or the tem- 
 jioral misfortune proves that God is indignant with him ; 
 but it does not prove that God has ceased to love him, — 
 least of all, that he has forgotten him. It proves the 
 exact contrary. Wherever there is indignation, there 
 must be his love ; wherever there is jiunishment, there 
 must be his remembrance. 
 
 The cry of the Jewish world, " There is no help for 
 David in God," was hopelessly wrong; and the really 
 noble and grand thing,^ as we shall see, was that in the 
 very midst of the punishment David knew that they 
 were wrong. 
 
 But there is another answer to the question. Does mis- 
 fortune prove God's anger? In the case of the guilty, 
 it jjroves, as we have seen, God's indignation. But, in 
 the case of the innocent, it proves God's love for the 
 race. Supjjose an innocent man suffers : what has often 
 been the verdict of the world? It says, "There is a 
 crime beneath the seeming innocence, or he Avould not 
 suffer." That was the judgment of the friends of Job, 
 and the Book of Job gives the Old Testament answer to 
 this blind oinnion. The comjilete answer is in the death 
 and suffering of Christ. It has l)een Avritten there for 
 all the world to read that its stupid maxim is Avrong. 
 Suffering does not always prove God's anger, nor prove 
 the sufferer's sin. If increase of love were jjossible, 
 never did the Father so deeply love the Son as at the 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 173 
 
 hour of the cross; if increase of righteousness were 2"'os- 
 sible, never was the Son more sinless tlian in that hour 
 of human agony and apj^arent defeat. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is astonishing how strongly this super- 
 stitious view of God's anger clings to the minds of men. 
 It has vitiated the whole view taken of the atonement 
 by large numbers of tlie Church of Christ. They are un- 
 consciously influenced by the thought that where there 
 is suffering there must be sin. The cross is suffering: 
 therefore, somewhere about the sufferer there must be 
 sin, and God must be angry. But Christ had no sin : 
 then what does the suffering mean ? Their sup2)ressed 
 premise, the maxim, puts them into a sad dilemma. 
 
 At hist, light comes to them, — not spiritual, but logical 
 light, — and the thing is clear. Man sins; and sin against 
 an Infinite Being is infinite, and deserving of infinite 
 pimishment. A debate takes place in the natm-e of God. 
 Justice says : " I must punish. I will take the law." 
 Mercy rei^lies, " Have i)ity ! " " N"o," answers Justice : 
 " I must have my bond." Then Love steps in. " Is 
 there no way to make mercy and justice at one ? The 
 Son of God is infinite. Let him bear as man the infinite 
 l^unishment ; let the sins of the race lie upon him ; let 
 Justice exact from him the forfeited bond ; let God's 
 anger be poured upon his head. Then, Justice being 
 satisfied, Mercy can have her gracious way." And this 
 was done ; and the cross is no excepti(jn to the maxim, 
 Where there is suffering, there is God's anger. I do not 
 say that this theory was consciously elaborated out of 
 the maxim, but it is certainly its child. It wears on its 
 brow the traces of its worldly ])aternity. It is entirely 
 a woi"k of the mere reasoning faculty, though a special 
 
174 
 
 FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 
 
 spirit viality is curiously claimed for it. There is not a 
 trace of an intuition in it. The intuitioTis are all against 
 it. It outrages the moral sense : if I murdered a man 
 to-morroAv, would justice be satisfied if my brother came 
 foi'ward and offered to be jjut to death in my stead ? It 
 outrages the heart. It makes a Father Avho is perfect 
 love pour his Avrath upon a guiltless Son at the moment 
 when the Son in perfect love chose to die for men. It 
 outrages our idea of God. It makes him satisfied with a 
 fiction. It makes his notion of justice totally different 
 from that which he has given us. It represents the All- 
 Wise as in a j)ainful dilemma, out of which he can only 
 escape by fi subterfuge. It di\ ides his nature, setting 
 one part of it in opposition Avith another, — mercy 
 against justice, — and so destroys all conception of his 
 self-unity. 
 
 It is altogether so crowded with inconsistencies, though 
 so logical if the premises are allowed, that I knoAV no 
 greater proof of the utter inca23ability of the mere intel- 
 lect to deal with spiritual things, no greater proof of the 
 truth of the text, " The natural man understandeth not 
 the things of the spirit, for they are spiritually dis- 
 cerned," than the wide jjrcA-alence of this forensic A'iew 
 of the Atonement. For this theory is only the work of 
 the understanding, — only the work, not of the spiritual 
 but of the natural man, — in the minds of the many noble 
 and Christian men Avho hold it. 
 
 Having rejected this theory, we repeat our question, 
 What does misfortune, suffering, coming to the innocent, 
 mean? We have seen that it cannot mean, as in the 
 former case, God's moral indignation. It means the 
 exhibition to the world, when the suffering is voluntary, 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 175 
 
 even when it is involiuitaiy, of the centr;;! in-hiciple of 
 God's life, the revelation to men that self-sacrifice is life 
 eternal ; and, inasmuch as this revelation redeems man, 
 it means God's love to the race of man. This is the 
 lesson of the Cross. For what is Christ crucified ? It is 
 the declaration in time of the eternal self-giving of God, 
 — of life forever given away that all may live. 
 
 For the very being of God is in self-sacrifice, if I may 
 be allowed to use the word se/fin order to express my 
 meaning. And if we remove from the notion of sacrifice 
 its earthly concomitant of pain, and replace it by perfect 
 joy, by that ecstasy of pleasure which in rare moments 
 a few ill this world have felt when they have given (til 
 to bestow blessing and life upon another, — that thrill of 
 full and i^erfect being which made them feel, " This is 
 life indeed!" — then we have some notion of that divine * 
 life Avhich is God's at every instant of his being. 
 
 3Ian could not see this : he dimly felt it, but it needed 
 to be made cjear. So God sent his Son to reveal it in 
 our nature. Christ came clothed in our mortal nature, 
 and through it lived the sacrificing life of God. But, 
 owing to the human nature, the self-giving was neces- 
 sarily accomplished, not with perfect joy as God accom- 
 plishes it, but with a mixture of keen pain. It Avas then 
 that we saw Love conquering pain ; all the misery of 
 rejected affection, the scorn and hatred of men heaped 
 upon one sacred keart, and yet the sufferer loving those 
 Avho hated him, losing thought of all the ill done to him 
 in pity for those wlio did it, dying for the sake of his 
 enemies. And, seeing this, the world beheld the Divine 
 Life, understood it, and recognized its beauty. It won 
 the love of men. " If I be lifted uji, I will draw all men 
 
176 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 unto me." It won the love of God. " Therefore doth 
 my Father love me, because I lay down my life for the 
 sheej^." This is the attractive power of the Cross. It 
 first attracts Love to itself, and then, by deejiening LoA^e, 
 changes the heart. 
 
 Many explanations have been given of the Avay in 
 which the sacrifice of Christ acts on men as a redeeming 
 230wer, — mystical interpretations, logical pchenies, things 
 which require theologians to ox]>lain them. "We will be 
 content to fiml an exjilanation in that wliicli lies around 
 us, in the doings of our common life, fr.lliiig back on the 
 plain j)rinci])le that tlie laws of Christ's life were the 
 laws of human nature. If we look for it, we shall find 
 the law of redemption now and always at work. Kew 
 in jjroclamation, it was not new in action. No man, no 
 nation, has ever been rescued from degradation, except 
 by the same kind of work as that hy which God rescues 
 the world. 
 
 Take one example out of common life, A widowed 
 mother had an only son. All her Ioa'C, all that regret 
 for the dead which transmutes itself into love of the liv- 
 ing, centred in hira. Her life had but one thought, and 
 that made itself into service of him. Every day was a 
 long self-devotion to Avin means for his education and en- 
 joyment. But far away in the great city he Avastes her 
 substance in riotous living. Health makes lum thought- 
 less, youth makes hira cruel, and she is left alone. Only 
 returning Avhen his purse or his health is exhausted, she 
 forgiA'CS him again and again, and again and again he 
 abandons her. At last, she dies, and dies for him, still 
 hoj>ing, still belieA'ing in him, and leaving to him her 
 blessino- and her Ioa'c. Her lono; self-sacrifice of life is 
 over. 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 177 
 
 And ho returns to tlie country village, and in the quiet 
 evening stands beside her grave. All his neglect falls 
 upon his heart, all her long j^atience and unbroken ten- 
 derness. A spring of love gushes in his soul, and with 
 it hatred of his sin, self-loathing, temptation to desj^air. 
 But he remembers that she forgave, he feels himself 
 still loved, and in a softening rush of penitence he re- 
 solves that she shall be still alive to him. "I ■will be 
 worth}" of her yet : with broken and contrite heart, I will 
 requite her love by being all she wished me once to be. 
 We may meet agam, and I will fall at her feet and tell 
 her all my sorrow, and show her my repentance." A 
 mighty love takes him out of self, anil makes the past 
 hateful. He thinks no more of his own ])leasure, but of 
 what would have been her pleasure. Tliat hour has 
 redeemed him. He enters on a new life. 
 
 But, observe, it is not j^rimarily i-edemption from pun- 
 ishment. The ininishment remains : tlie 2)<iin at his lieart 
 is keen, so keen that one might almost say the punish- 
 ment has only now begun. But it is remedial suffering. 
 It keeps her who sacrificed all for him constantly before 
 his eyes ; it stings him into new efforts to be worthy of 
 her; it urges liim to do for others tliat whicli she did 
 for him. In this way, tlie ])miishment sloM'ly alters itself 
 into a means of enn<j1)lement, — a thing which works the 
 peaceable fruits of righteousness. Thus, an<l tlius only, 
 is he redeemed from punishment. But he ?6' redeemed 
 from self, from hardness of heart, from baseness of char- 
 acter, from inability to feel jiunishment, from the sins of 
 the jjast, from the tendency to yield at once to temp- 
 tation. 
 
 Is that true or not ? Are there not a million v aried 
 
178 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 instances of tlie same kind occurring in the world around 
 us? — friend ■who so sa^ es friend ; wife who so saves her 
 husband ; minister wlio so saves liis jieoj^le ; men Avho so 
 save a nation. Is not that simple, human, natural, easy 
 to be believed in, ai)pcaling directly to our reason and 
 our affections, worthy of our reverence, irresistibly at- 
 tractive ? Then turn and believe in the redemj^tive 
 power of Christ's Atonement, for that is its power. 
 VV hat the woman did for her son Christ did for all man- 
 kind. TVhat influence in redeeming her son's life from 
 self, and in re-creating his life through a j)rofound love 
 for an invisible character, she had, though dead, upon 
 him, Avhen his soul was touched into seeing the divine- 
 ness in her and into believing it as the divine life for 
 liim, is identical with the influence of the work of 
 Christ's life and death upon us, when we see them and 
 acknowledge them divine. 
 
 Christ's death was the act in which the exhibition of 
 this common law of redemption was concentrated, the 
 central rej^resentation in history of the means whereby 
 life is gained and life is given. And to believe on Christ 
 is to look iipon liis life and death of sacrifice, and to say 
 with a true heart : " I know that this is true life. I 
 accejit it as mine. I will fulfil it in thought and action, 
 God being my helper. I see the face of perfect love, and 
 I cannot help adoring ; and, as I adore, I feel that loA'e 
 like this, which gives all, is the only way of reaching 
 the perfect joy of perfect being." 
 
 Then God is received consciously into the soul. Pen- 
 itence breaks our heart, and we weep away our sin. 
 Knowing that Ave are forgiven, we forgive ourselves. 
 We feel in ourselves new jiOSsibUities of nobleness, for 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 179 
 
 has not lie loved iis? Our life changes into likeness to 
 his life ; for in aspiration after it we imitate it, and in 
 contemplating love of it we grow like to that we con- 
 template. We are regenerated, " created anew in Christ 
 Jesus nnto good works which God hath before ordained 
 that we should walk in them." This is the subjective 
 work of the Atonement. 
 
 And, since that has been Avrought in the world, what 
 effect has it had with regard to our question as to 
 whether the suffering of good men proves God's anger 
 or, as we said, God's love to the race '? Those who have 
 so joined -tliemselves to the spirit of Christ's life know 
 that, as long as luimanity is humanity, they can only do 
 redemptive work through suffering ; for he who opposes 
 evil must bear evil. And, knowing this, for the sake of 
 the work they gladly accept the jaain. Nay, more : they 
 know that the self-sacrifice, though it is linked to suffer- 
 ing, is in itself latent joy, for it is the very life of God; 
 and, when men object that it is dreadful that the inno- 
 cent should suffer for the guilty, the innocent rcjily: 
 "What is that to you, when we rejoice in it, when we 
 accej^t it as life eternal, when we th^nk God that he has 
 counted us worthy to do a portion on earth of his re- 
 deeming work, to be indeed a portion of his ceaseless 
 sacrifice ? We know now that to die for men is the 
 noblest life ; and if we are, as you say, good and true, 
 we are only so in him whose life we follow, and God is 
 right to choose those most like his Son to carry on his 
 Son's work and to be crucified with him. Our suffering 
 does not prove that God is angry with ns, but that he 
 loves us so well that he has chosen us out of the world 
 to manifest him to the world. Our suffering jjroves that 
 
180 
 
 TAITII AND FREEDOM. 
 
 he loves the race ; for througli that whieli is of Christ in 
 us he is decLiring his character to men, and bringing 
 them to follow the true life and to obtain the true joy." 
 
 Again, to pass to another side of the question, it is 
 plain that those who feel thus are reconciled to God. 
 This reconciliation of man to God is another of the ideas 
 of the Atonement. IIow does it take jjlace ? how is it 
 we need reconciliation to God? 
 
 We need it, because our first idea of God is a false 
 one. Our fear, united with our ignorance, make out of 
 themselves a God in Avhom omnipotence is united to 
 human passion, — the God of suj)erstition and fanaticism. 
 "VYe are angry with and fear this false idea. Creating 
 our own God, it is no wonder that we hate him. For of 
 what kind is he? One whose might makes his right, 
 who doeth what he will, but whose M'ill is unlimited by 
 that which we recognize as goodness ; one whose love is 
 as arbitrary as his punishment is capricious, who saves 
 this creature and slays another for his own glory and at 
 his own fancy; one who asks for slavish worsliip; who, 
 when he makes us what is called good, does it Avithout 
 demanding any effort from the soul ; wlio requires to be 
 propitiated l)y the sacrifice of reason and conscience, and 
 docs not tell us wliy ; Avho annexes damnation to intel- 
 lectual error, and in whose eyes a jiure and noble life is 
 nothing, if he who lives it mistakes doctrine. I need not 
 go through all that has been told us of God by idolatries 
 and priesthoods and sects. God's answer to them all is 
 this : " Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one 
 as thyself." 
 
 How could we help rebelling against that Being, how 
 be reconciled to him ? Man must rebel against a God 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 181 
 
 who reproduces himself when he seeks for power. Bad 
 as man is, he cannot bear, when he thinks truly, to 
 accept as his ruler one who seems to be as capricious 
 as a tyrant, and more dreadful than any earthly tyrant, 
 because his power is supreme. 
 
 We are told by some, when we refuse to love this 
 God, that the explanation is that tlie natural man is 
 enmity to God. There is a sense in which the natural 
 man is enmity to God ; but in rejecting a God of this 
 character it is not the natural, but the s])iritual man 
 which acts. It is in asserting this false God, a God 
 created by the natural man, that the natural man is 
 enmity to the true God. To create an immoral God, " 
 and to give him an immoral worship of fear and igno- 
 rance, is to be an enemy of God. 
 
 In all our best moments, we are incapable of being 
 reconciled to this Being. We can never be at one with 
 God, atoned to him, never be reconciled to him, till 
 we gain the knowledge of God as he truly is. It was 
 part of the Atonement, that part which united us to God, 
 that Christ revealed God in his life as he was and is 
 for evermore. "He who hath seen me hath seen the 
 Father." 
 
 He revealed a Father, and therefore an Educator, who 
 will bring his children to himself. He revealed a God of 
 compassion and love, whose life was in giving away him- 
 self for all his creatures. He revealed One whose will 
 was determined by right, and in whom justice and love 
 and purity were the same in kind as they are in us, only 
 perfect and infinite : One who asked to be loved, not 
 feared ; to be trusted in, not propitiated by our unmean- 
 ing sacrifices. The sacrifices he asked for Avere such as 
 he showed us in his Son : the saci-ifice of our own pleas- 
 
182 
 
 FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 
 
 uro and will when tlioy were opposed to eternal right, 
 when they did injury to onr fellow-men ; the sacrifice of 
 life for the sake of truth and love ; not the sacrifice to 
 him of his own gifts whereby he makes himself known, — 
 the gifts of reason and conscience and human love. 
 Nay, it is to these that he appeals. " Wliy of your own 
 selves judge ye not what is right? "said his Son. "If 
 a man love not his brother Avhom he hath seen, how can 
 he love God whom he hath not seen?" said his apostle. 
 The God wliom Christ revealed chose si^ecial men out of 
 the world, not that they alone should be saved, but that 
 they might be messengers to do his saA-ing work on all ; 
 and he cliose them not cajiriciously, l)ut liecause they 
 Avere more loving and true than the rest, and therefore 
 better fitted for his work. Tlie God whom Christ re- 
 A-ealed was revealed as one Avho punished guilt, Avho 
 Avould not s]iare retribution, but the punishment was to 
 be remedial, and the retribution to be used as a means 
 of salvation ; as one Avho did not replace our effort by 
 irresistible and imjierial grace, but Avhose grace enabled 
 us to Avork out, as under a free goA-ernment, our OAvn 
 salvation, and demanded the effort of the soul, that we 
 might become each a distinct person Avith a distinct 
 character. And, because alloAving of this individuality 
 and encouraging it, it folloAvs that the obedience he 
 asked Avas not a blind hnt a reasonable one, and that, if 
 the life Avas like his Son's, intellectual error was not 
 subject to damnation. 
 
 I need not dAA'ell on all the points; l;)Ut,AA-hcn this reve- 
 lation Avas made, man was freed from fear and hatred of 
 God, man could become at one Avith God, man Avas 
 reconciled to God. And the gospel truth is this : that, 
 once a man really sees and believes in God in Christ, he 
 
THE ATONEMENT. 
 
 183 
 
 cannot rebel, lie cannot liate, he cannot fear, lie cannot 
 be unreconciled to him. 
 
 There is nothing left to hate or fear. Hate one whom 
 we believe to be our Father in all tlie profound meaning 
 of the word ! Fear one who gives his very life for us ! 
 It is impossible. Once we believe it, we are saved, — 
 saved, first, from our own ignorant and gliastly idea of 
 God, which sets all our life wrong ; saved, secondly, 
 from our sin, because the true idea of God creates 
 infallibly a life in accordance with it. 
 
 And now, in conclusion, and taking the principles we 
 have just exjiounded as our key, has the idea which men 
 have of God's anger no truth beneath its error? 
 
 Yes, this truth : that as long as a man does not know 
 God in Christ, does not understand that God is love, and 
 love him as a father, he will think that punishment is 
 anger, and tliis belief w^ill make him angry with God. 
 For love, exhibited in tlie process of his education, must 
 often take the form of chastisement, and seem wrath to 
 him because he does not comprehend its tenderness. 
 
 Suppose a man with a sore disease, and at the same 
 time mad. The surgeon approaches with his knife to 
 amputate the diseased limb, and cuts deep and relent- 
 lessly. The sufferer sees no reason for the infliction of 
 the pain, does not believe in the surgeon's kindness, 
 whose whole work seems to him mere capricious cruelty. 
 It is so with the sinner who does not know God as a 
 loving Father. His work to liiin is often anger. 
 
 But grant that he gains his reason, becomes conscious 
 of his disease, desires to be free from it, and knows the 
 surgeon's heart: his flesh quivers, his ])ain is bitter, but 
 he understands the meaning of the suffering, and, though 
 not one deep incision is spared, he claims the surgeon as 
 
184 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 his friend, he recognizes his "work as tlie work of love, 
 and, if some niadinan were to say, " See how cruel ; see 
 how the man who said he wished your good is working 
 you evil," tlie sufferer would smile the smile of trust 
 and i)ity. " You mistake," he would reply : " I trust my 
 friend's tenderness. I know his heart : it^ is I who pity 
 you, if you cannot see his love." It is so with the man 
 who believes in the love of God his Father. 
 
 So it was Avith David. No help for me in God ! God 
 angry with me ! God forsaking me ! No, he breaks out: 
 "The Lord is my shield, my glory, and the uplifter of 
 my head." I know I am being punished for my sin, I 
 know I have done wrong to God and man ; but I am not 
 so lost as to imagine that ])unishment means that I have 
 no help in God, and not that it means that he is with 
 me, yes, more closely than in the daj's of my prosperity. 
 Deserted by God ! No ! " I cried unto God with my 
 voice, and he heard from his holy hill." 
 
 This is entirely splendid. This is faith overcoming 
 the world. This is the trust M'hich brings all the powers 
 of the unseen to a man's side. This is the spirit which 
 gives elasticity to life, and makes triumph out of mis- 
 fortune. This is the spirit Avhich transmutes punishment 
 into strength, and sin into goodness. This is the spirit 
 which, by believing in the eternal love of God and dis- 
 believino- in his anirer, realizes God as a Father and him- 
 self as a son, bound together by immortal bonds, which 
 are knit closer by trial as well as by joy. This is the 
 belief which makes a life and a character as noble as 
 that of this old Hebrew king, who in these early times 
 anticipated in experience the ])rofoundest Christian feel- 
 ing, and knew by heart the God of the Christians before 
 their Christ had come. 
 
DETOTIOIsT TO THE COlSrYE^J"- 
 TIONAL. 
 
 1868. 
 
 " Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in lieart and ears, ye do always 
 resist the Holy Ghost : as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the 
 prophets liave not your fathers persecuted ? and they have slain them 
 which shewed before of the coming of tlie Just One, of wliom ye 
 have been now the betrayers and murderers : who have received the 
 law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it." — Acts vii., 
 51-53. 
 
 The rejection of Christ by the Jewisli jieoplc w.as a 
 national sin : it was the act of the whole nation. Plis 
 death Avas the result of the full development of the then 
 Jewish mode of looking at the world : the spirit of the 
 age, among the Jews, killed him. 
 
 I jjut it in that way because the term, a national sin, 
 wants a clear definition. It is used at present in a way 
 which is quite reckless of any settled meaning. Every 
 party, even every sect in the country, declares its oppo- 
 nents guilty of a national sin. But a national sin is not 
 an evil done by any one party to the nation, but an evil 
 done by the n.ation itself, a direct evil consciously chosen 
 and adliered to ; or an evil neglect or blindness which 
 takes its rise from tlie wliole tone and spirit of the mass 
 of the peoijle. I might mention courses of 2:)olitical 
 
186 
 
 FAITH AKD FREEDOM. 
 
 action in which England has jjersisted for years, tlirough 
 all changes of party, which are of the character of na- 
 tional sins ; but I w ill content myself with an illustration 
 which will not stir ujj anger. Ajjart from jjolitical acts or 
 political opinions, on which the generality of the jjeople 
 act, the national sin of the England of to-day is extrava- 
 gance, waste of money. From the administration of tlie 
 army and navy doAvu to the administration of the house- 
 hold of the poorest dock laborer, thei-e is, generally 
 sjieaking, no conscientious, educated, cultured expendi- 
 ture or care of money. The poor are even more extrav- 
 agant, more reckless, than the rich. And the dreadfid 
 jjunishmont which follows on the sin of waste of money 
 is this, that the nation becomes blind to the true uses 
 of money. It spends nearly fifteen million a year on 
 its anny and a little more than one million on educa- 
 tion, so intense an absurdity that it only seems neces- 
 sary to mention it to expose it. It sj^ends ten million a 
 year upon its navy, and is so stingy toward the science 
 which develops the intellect of the whole jseople, and 
 toward the art which exalts and refines the soul, as only 
 to vote about one hundred thoiisand a year for these 
 objects; so that things the value of which cannot be 
 rei>resented in money, and on which great sums have 
 been spent, are perishing for want of a little wise ex- 
 jienditure. We are extravagant where we ought to be 
 economical, and economical where we ought to expend 
 freely. This is our jiunishment ; and future Englishmen 
 will look back with amazement upon this time, Avhcn we 
 sjient millions on war-ships the gmis of which cannot be 
 served in a fresh breeze, and left, to take one example, 
 for want of a fcAV thousands, the noblest s])ecimens of 
 
DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 187 
 
 Assyrian art to rot rai)i(lly away in a daiiiji cellar in the 
 British Museum. Not many months have passed since 
 the great representation of a lion-hunt, carved thousands 
 of years ago by an artist who puts our animal sculpture 
 to shame, and who worked from personal observation of 
 the lion in his ^•igorons contest and in his agony, has 
 been placed in tliat deadly vault. Xow, so rapid has 
 been the destruction that in certain parts there is 
 scarcely a vestige left of the labor of the noble hand, 
 and a white fluff of damj^, gathering iipon the stone, has 
 eaten away all tlie delicate Unes and subtle carving over 
 a great part of the work. In a few years or so, in spite 
 of the glazing, the whole may be corrujit dust. I have 
 mentioned this partly in the hope that it will be taken 
 up by some one who has some interest left in these sub- 
 jects, and some influence to use upon them, and partly 
 to show how a national sin, like extravagance, avenges 
 itself by stinginess in matters where stinginess is de- 
 struction and disgrace. 
 
 But one of the worst of national sins is the rejection 
 or the neglect ]>y the mass of the people of the great 
 men whom God has sent to save the nation, to teach the 
 nation, or to give ideas to the nation. It is a proof of 
 the perfect culture of a people, of its being truly civil- 
 ized, in intellect and spirit as well as in prosperity, when 
 it recognizes, as it were intuiti^•cly, its great men, j^uts 
 them forAvard at once as rulers, and obeys their guidance. 
 It is a proof of its failing j^oM'er, of its rctrogresjion, of 
 its diseased condition, when it neglects, despises, or kills 
 its great men. Of this j^roijosition, for the two are one, 
 history supplies a thousand instances. For the man of 
 noble genius, the i)rophet or whatever else you call him, 
 
188 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 is the test of the nation. He exists not only to do his 
 own active worlv, but to 2)assively prove Avliat is trne 
 gold or false ; and as many as he saves he dooms. Tliose 
 are lost who reject him, — the whole nation is lost if the 
 whole nation rejects him, — for it is not he so much 
 w^hom it rejects as the saving ideas of which he is the 
 vehicle. 
 
 Hence, when such a man apjiears, the question on 
 which hangs the fate of the jieople is this : Will the 
 nation recognize him or not? will it envy and destroy 
 him, or believe in him and follow him '? 
 
 That question, which has again and again been placed 
 before the nations of the world, was placed in the most 
 complete manner before the Jews at the apjiearance of 
 Christ, the perfect Man, — is jjlaced in him before each 
 of us as individual men, — since he was not only the 
 representation of that which was noblest in the Jewish 
 nation, but of that Avhich is noblest in humanity. Christ 
 was the test of the Jewish nation, and his rejection by 
 them jiroved that they Avere lost as a nation. Christ is 
 the test of each of us, and our acceptance or rejection of 
 him prov es that we are worthy or unworthy of our hu- 
 manity. This passive, unconscious work of Christ was 
 recognized by the wisdom of the old man Simeon when 
 he said, "This child is set for tlie fall and tlie rising 
 again of manv in Israel." It was reco£rnized bv Christ 
 himself in many of his parables, notably when he said, 
 "For judgment," i.e., for division, for sifting of the chaff 
 from the wheat, "am I come into the world." 
 
 And so it Avas, Avherever he Avent he Avas the touch- 
 stone of men. Those Avho Avere pure, single-eyed, and 
 true-hearted saAV him, clung to him, and loAed him: 
 
DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 189 
 
 those who were conscious of their need and sin, weary 
 of long searching after rest, and not finding, weary 
 of conventionalities and hypocrisies, believed in him, 
 drank deep of his Spirit, and found redemi^tion and 
 repose. They flew to him as naturally as steel to the 
 magnet. Those who were base of heart or false of heart, 
 proud of their sin, or hardened in their prosjjerous hy- 
 jjocrisy, men who worshipped the mummy of a past relig- 
 ion, naturally hated him, recoiled from him, and, to get 
 rid of him, hanged him on a tree. 
 
 In doing so, — and this Avas the deed of the mass of 
 the people, — they destroyed tlieir nationality which was 
 hidden in their reception of Christ. It is at least a 
 curious coincidence with this view tliat, when the jn-iest- 
 hood before Pilate openly rejected Christ as king, they 
 did it in these words, — words which repudiated their 
 distinct existence as a nation, — "We have no king but 
 C-esar." 
 
 He did nothing overt to produce this. He simjDly 
 lived his life, and it acted on the Jewish world as an 
 electric current upon water : it separated its elements. 
 
 It will not be without interest to dwell upon some of 
 the reasons which caused this rejection of Christ among 
 the Jews, and to show liow the reasons of the rejection 
 or acceptance of Christ are not jirimarily to be found 
 in certain spiritual states or feelings which belong to a 
 transcendental region into which men of the world can- 
 not or do not care to enter, but in elements of action 
 and thought which any man may recognize at work in 
 the world around him, and in his own heart; in reasons 
 which are identical with those which cause a nation to 
 
190 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 reverence or neglect its really great men, to lead a 
 noble or an ignoble life. 
 
 The first of these is devotion to the conventional. 
 
 It is jjractically identical with want of individnality, 
 one of the most jiainful deficiencies in our ])resent 
 society. 
 
 Now, the rectification of that evil lies at the root of 
 Christianity. Christ came to jjroclaim and to insure 
 the distinct life, the originality, of each man. All the 
 principles he laid down, all the teaching of his fol- 
 lowers as recorded in the Epistles, tend to produce 
 individuality, rescue men from being mingled up, indis- 
 tinguishable atoms, with the mass of men, teach them 
 that they possess a distinct character, which it is God's 
 Avill to educate ; distinct gifts which God the Spirit Avill 
 ins2)ire and develop; a i^eculiar work for Avhich each 
 man is elected, and in performing which his personality 
 will become more and more defined. 
 
 Now, the spn-it of the Avorld, Avhen it is conventional, — 
 and when is it not? — is in exact opjjosition to this. Its 
 tendency is to reduce all men and women to one jiat- 
 tern, to level the landscape of humanity to a dead plain, 
 to clip all the trees which are growing freely, "of tlieir 
 own divine vitality," into pollards, to wear all individu- 
 ality down into uniformity. There must be nothing 
 original, — in the world's language, eccentric, erratic; 
 men must desire nothing strongly-, think nothing Avhich 
 the generality do not think, haA'e no strongly outlined 
 character. The influence of society must be collective, 
 it must reject as a portion of it the influence of any 
 marked individuality. Custom is to be lord an.d king, — 
 uay, despot. We must all dress in the same Avay, read 
 
DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 
 
 191 
 
 the same books, talk of the same things; ami, when we 
 change, change altogether, like Wordsworth's cloud, 
 "which nioveth altogether, if it move at all." We do 
 not object to progress, but we do object to eccentricity. 
 Society must not be affronted by originality. It is a 
 rudeness. It suggests that society might be better, that 
 there may be an imperfection here or there. Level 
 everybody, and then let ns all collectively advance ; but 
 no one must leave the ranks or step to the front. 
 
 This is the spirit which either cannot see, or, seeing, 
 hates men of genius. They are in conflict with the 
 known and accredited modes of action. They do not 
 jjaint pictures in the manner of the ancients, nor judge 
 political events in accordance with public opinion, nor 
 write poems which the customary intellect can under- 
 stand, nor lead a jjolitical party according to precedent. 
 They are said to shock the world. As if that was not 
 the very best thing which could happen to the world ! 
 So it comes to pass that they are depreciated and neg- 
 lected, or, if they are too great and persist, persecuted 
 and killed. And, indeed, it is not difficult to get rid of 
 them ; for you have only to increase the weight of the 
 spirit of custom and bring it to bear upon them, and 
 that will settle the question, for men of genius cannot 
 breathe in this atmosphere, it kills them: the air must 
 be natural in which they live, and the society must be 
 free. The pitiable thing in English society now is, not 
 only the difficulty of an original man existing in it, but 
 that society is in danger of becoming of so dreadful a 
 uniformity that no original man can be developed in it 
 at all. This, if anything, will become the ruin of Eng- 
 land's greatness. 
 
192 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 Tliere is, it is triu', a kind of reaction going on at 
 present against this tyranny of society. Young men 
 and Avomcn, weary of monotonous |)leasures, are in re- 
 bellion ; but the whole social condition has been so de- 
 graded that they rush into still more artificial and 
 unnatural pleasures and excitements. In endeavoring to 
 become free, they enslave themselves tlie more. 
 
 Tliose ^vho might do much do little. It is one of the 
 advantages of wealth and high position that those who 
 possess them may initiate the uncustomary without a cry 
 being raised against them. But, even with every oppor- 
 tunity, how little imagination do they ever display, how 
 little invention, how little they do to relieve the melan- 
 choly uniformity of our pleasures, or the intense joyless- 
 ness of our work! 
 
 Xow, this was 2)recisely the spirit of the Jewish relig- 
 ious world at the time of Christ. Men were bound down 
 to a multitude of fixed rules and maxims, they were 
 hedged in on all sides. It was all arranged how they 
 were to live and die, to repent and make atonement, to 
 fast and pray, to believe and to worshij?, to dress and 
 move. It was the most finished conventionalism of relig- 
 ion, in spite of the different sects, which the world has 
 ever seen. 
 
 Then came Christ, entirely original, proclaiming new 
 ideas, or, at least, old truths in a new form, making 
 thoughts imiversal which had been particular, over- 
 throwing worn-out ceremonies, satirizing and denouncing 
 things gray with the dust of ages, letting in the light of 
 truth into the chambers Avhere the priests and lawyers 
 spun their webs of theology to ensnare the free souls of 
 men, tramjiling down relentlessly the darling customs of 
 
DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 193 
 
 the old conservatism, shocking find bewildering the relig- 
 ious society. And they were dismayed and horrified. 
 
 He did not keej), they said, the Sal)bath day. He ate 
 and drank — abominable iniquity! — with pubUcans and 
 sinners. He allowed a fallen woman to touch him. 
 Worse still, he did not wash his hands before he ate 
 bread. He did not teach as the scril^es did. He did not 
 live the time-honored and ascetic life of a prophet. He 
 dared to speak against the jnuesthood and the aristoc- 
 racy. He associated with fishermen. He came from Naz- 
 aretli. That was enough: no good could come from Naza- 
 reth. He was a carpenter's son, and illiterate ; and no 
 jjrophet was made, or could be made, out of such mate- 
 rials. And this man ! he dares to disturb us, to contest 
 our maxims, to set at naught our customs, to array him- 
 self against our despotism. " Come, let us kill him." 
 And so they crucified him. The conventional spirit of 
 society in Jerusalem, that was one of the murderers of 
 Christ. They did not see, the wretched men, that in 
 murdering him they murdered their nation also. 
 
 So far for this conventional spirit as that which hinders 
 the development or obstructs the work of genius, and as 
 that which, in strict analogy with its work to-day, killed 
 the Prince of Life long ago in Jerusalem. Let me take 
 the question now out of the realm of thought and his- 
 tory, and apply it practically. 
 
 Ask yourselves two questions : First, what would be 
 the fate of Christ if he were suddenly to appear as a 
 teacher in the middle of London, as he did of old in the 
 middle of Jerusalem ? How would our orthodox relig- 
 ious society and our conventional so(;ial world receive 
 him? Desiring to speak Avith all reverence, he would 
 
194 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 horrify the one by his heterodox oj^inioiis, as they wouhl 
 be called ; the other by his absolute carelessness and 
 scorn of many of the very palladia of society. SujjjJOS- 
 ing he were to denounce — as he woidd in no measured 
 terms — our system of caste; attack, as he did of old in 
 Jiidea, our most cherished maxims about 2>i"operty and 
 rights; live in ojjposition to certain social rules, receiv- 
 ing sinners and dining with outcasts ; tear away the 
 flimsy A-eil of words whereby Ave excuse our extrava- 
 gance, our vanity, our 25ushing for position ; contemn 
 with scorn our accredited hypocrisies, which we think 
 allowable, because they make the surface of society 
 smooth ; live among us his free, bold, unconventional, 
 outspoken life, — how should we receive him? It is a 
 question which it is worth while that society should ask 
 itself. 
 
 I trust more would hail his advent than we think. 
 I believe the time is come when men are sick of false- 
 hood, sick of the tyranny of custom, sick of liA'ing in 
 unreality ; that they are longing for escape, longing for 
 a new life and a new order of things, longing for some 
 fresh ideas to come and stir, like the angel, the stagnant 
 pool. What is the meaning of the vague hopes every- 
 where exjjressed al)out the new Parliament ? It really 
 means that England is anxious for a more ideal, a more 
 true and serious life, a reformed society. 
 
 Again, to connect tliis first question with the religious 
 world : suppose Christ Avere to come now and proclaim 
 in Scotland that the Sabbath Avas made for man, or to 
 preach the Sermon on the Mount as the full rcA-elation 
 of God to men accustomed to hear the gospel scheme 
 discussed each Sunday. In the first case he Avould be 
 
DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 
 
 195 
 
 persecuted as an infidel, and in tlio second as a heretic. 
 Supposing he were now to speak against sacerdotal jn-e- 
 tension or the worship of the letter of the Bible, against 
 a religion Avhich sought to gain life from minute observ- 
 ances, or against a Sadducean denial of all that is spirit- 
 ual (a tendency of the religious liberals of to-day), as 
 strongly and as sharply as he spoke at Jerusalem, — how 
 would he escape? The religious world could not crucify 
 him, but they would open on him the tongue of pei"se- 
 cution. 
 
 I belieA-e there are thousands who would join them- 
 selves to him, thousands more than recognized him in 
 Judea, — for the world has advanced indeed since then, — 
 thousands of true men from among all religious bodies, 
 and thousands from among those who are now plenti- 
 fully sprinkled with the epithets of rationalists, infidels, 
 heretics, and atheists ; but there are thousands who call 
 themselves by his name who would turn from him in 
 dismay or in dislike, who would neglect or persecute 
 bun, for he woidd come among our old conservatisms of 
 religion, among our doctrinal systems and close creeds, 
 superstitious, false liberalisms, priesthoods, and ritual- 
 isms, as he came of old among them all in Jerusalem, like 
 lightning, to consume and wither everything false, retro- 
 grade, conventional, restricted, uncharitable, and super- 
 stitious; to kindle into life all that is living, loving, akin 
 to light, and full of truth within our religious world. If 
 we could accept the revolution he would make, our 
 national religion would be saved : if not, it would be 
 enervated by the blow, and die. 
 
 Brethren, Ave ought, realizing these things as members 
 of society or members of any religious body, — realizing. 
 
196 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 I say, Christ speaking to us as he would speak now, — to 
 feel our falseness, and, in the horror of it, to act like 
 men who have discovered a traitor in their camj-), whom 
 they must destroy or themselves perish. We may save 
 our nation if we resolve, each one here for himself, to 
 free ourselves from cant and formalism and superstition, 
 to step into the clear air of freedom, individuality, and 
 truth, to live in crystal uprightness of life and holiness 
 of heart. 
 
 And, lastly, ask yourselves this second question, how 
 far the spirit of the world, as devotion to convention- 
 ality, to accredited ojiinion, is jjreventing you personally 
 from receiving Christ. 
 
 Is your sole aim the endeavor to please your party, 
 running after it into that which you feel as evil, as Avell 
 as that which you feel as good; forfeiting your Christian 
 individuality as a son of God, that you may follow in the 
 wake of the jjublic opinion of your jjarty? Is that your 
 view of manly duty? Then you cannot receive Christ, 
 for he demands that you should be true to your own 
 soul. 
 
 Are you permitting yourself to chime in with the low 
 morality of the day, to accejit the common standard held 
 by the generality, repudiating, as if it were a kind of 
 Christian charity to do so, the desire to be better than 
 your neigliVjors, and so coming at lust to join in the light 
 laiigh with which the world treats social immoralities, 
 reckless extravagance, the dishonesty of trade or the 
 dishonesty of the exchange, or the more flagrant shame, 
 dishonesty, and folly which adorn the turf, — letting 
 evils take their course because society does not protest 
 as yet, till gradually the evils appear to you at first en- 
 
DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 
 
 197 
 
 durable, and then even beautiful, being protected by the 
 deities of Custom and Fashion, which Ave enthrone in- 
 stead of God? Are you drifting into such a state of 
 heart ? If so, you cannot exjaect to be able to receive 
 Christ, for lie demands tluit life should be ideal : not 
 only moral, but godlike ; not the jjrudence of silence 
 about evil, but tlie iin])rudence of bold sej)aration from 
 evil. 
 
 And, leaving much behind, to come home to the inner 
 sjjiritual life, is your religion only the creature of custom, 
 not of conviction, only conventional, not individual ? 
 Have you received and adopted current opinions because 
 they are current, without inquiry, without interest, with- 
 out any effort of the soul, — orthodox because it is the 
 fashion to be orthodox, or heterodox because it is the 
 fashion to be heterodox ? Hc^w can you receive Christ, 
 — for where he comes he claims reality, the living 
 energy of interest,- the passion of the soul for light and 
 progress? Ye must be born again, born out of a dead, 
 Pharisaic, conventional form of religion into a living 
 individual imion with tlie life of God. Some may tell 
 you not to inquire, lest you should doubt ; not to think, 
 but to accept blindly the doctrines of the Church, lest 
 you should end in sce^Jticism. Counsels of cowardice 
 and faithlessness, productive of that false sleep of the 
 soul which is ten times worse than scepticism, which 
 takes from man 1,he activity of thinking, of doubtmg, of 
 concluding, which destroys the boundless joy of relig- 
 ious personality, the pleasure of consciously willing, of 
 full conviction, to be a follower of Christ, a man at one 
 with God. Our faith, when it is accepted only on the 
 word of others, is untried and weak. It has the strength 
 
198 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 of a castle wlucli has never been attacked, of a chain 
 which never has been proved. It may resist the trial, 
 but we are not snre about it. We are afraid of search, 
 afraid of new opinions, afraid of thought, lest possibly 
 we lose our form of faith. Every infidel objection makes 
 us tremble, every new discovery in science is a terror. 
 Take away the old form, and we are lost : we cry out that 
 God is dead and Clirist is overthrown. 
 
 In reality, we have no faith, no religion, no God. "We 
 have only a superstition, a set of oj^inions, and, instead 
 of a living God, a fetish. 
 
 The true religious life comes of a clear realization of 
 our distinct personal relation to God. The views of 
 society, the accredited opinions of the Church on relig- 
 ion, the true man does not despise : he seeks to under- 
 stand them, for jierhai^s they may assist him in his 
 endeavors; but he does not follow them blindly: he jnits 
 them even aside altogether, that he may go straiglit to 
 God, and find God for himself, and as a, j^e/'so/i. know that 
 God is his, and that he is God's. His faith is secure, 
 because he has won it by conquest of objections, because 
 he has reached it through the overthrow of doubt, 
 because he has j^i'oved it in trial and found it strong. 
 He has come at truth by j^ersonal thought, reflection, by 
 personal struggle against falsehood, through the 2)assion 
 and effort of his soul. His love of Christ is not a mere 
 religious j^hrase : it is a reality. He has ajjplied the 
 jjrinciples of the Redeemer's life and words to his own 
 life, to the movements of the world, as tests and direc- 
 tion in the hours of trial, when duties clash or when 
 decision is demanded ; and he has found them ansM'er 
 to the call. He has studied the SaA'iour's character and 
 
DEVOTION TO THE CONVENTIONAL. 199 
 
 nK'(lit;itL'<l on liis life; and of conviction lie has chosen 
 him as the highest object of his worshi]), as the ideal to 
 M'hich he aspires. 
 
 Prayer is no form of words to him : he has known and 
 proved its power to bring his soul into blest communion 
 with the Highest. He does not hesitate to speak the 
 truth, for he feels tliat he is insi^ired of God. 
 
 Such a man's religion is not conventional, has no fear, 
 is not superstitious: it is individual, it is inwoven 
 with his life, 2>:irt of his l)eing; nay, it is his being. He 
 is consciously at one with God. He has freely, with all 
 the faculties of his humanity, received Christ Jesus. 
 
 Two things, then, are laid, before you this day: con- 
 ventional religion, a whited sepulchre ; j^ersonal religion, 
 a fair temi)le whose sure foundations are bound together 
 by the twisted strength of the innermost fibres of the 
 soul, — a religion of words accejited from others, which 
 begins in self-deception and ends in blindness, supersti- 
 tion, and the terror of the soul, or a religion at one 
 with life, begun in resolution, continued in personal 
 action toward Christ, the Ideal of the soul, and ending 
 in the conscious rest of imion with God. 
 
 Choose ; and may God grant us all grace to choose 
 that which makes us men, not the pu|)])ets of opinion, — 
 that life which frees us from the slavery of following the 
 multitude, and makes us sons of God through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. 
 
THE RELIGION OF SIG5^"S. 
 
 1868. 
 
 " And when the people were gathered thick together, he began to 
 say, This is an evil generation : tliey seek a sign ; and there shall no 
 sign be given it but the sign of Jonas the prophet." — Luke xi., 29. 
 
 From the ancient (lays of tlie people of Israel, ■when 
 Moses, knowmg the character of his nation, asked of God 
 that he Avould vouchsafe to him a sensible sign to show 
 as proof of his mission, until the time of Christ, Ave find 
 among the Jews the craving for signs and wonders. 
 
 They desired material proofs for spiritual things, they 
 demanded that every revelation should be accredited by 
 miracles. It was through the gate of the senses and 
 under the guidance of wonder, not through the gate of 
 the spirit and under the guidance of faith, that they 
 entered the temj^le of Religion. 
 
 Now, this was absolutely a childish position. The 
 child is the scholar of the senses, but it is a disgrace to a 
 man to be their slave. The child may believe that the 
 moon is self-luminous, — it is through believing the error 
 that he finds out its erroneousness, — but it is ridiculous 
 in the grown-up man who has examined the question not 
 to say, " My senses are wrong." 
 
 It is spiritual childishness which believes that a doc- 
 
THE RELIGION OF SIGNS. 
 
 201 
 
 trine or ;i man's life are true becau.se of a miracle. The 
 miracle speaks for the most part 'x the senses, and the 
 senses can tell us nothing of the spiritual world. 
 
 It is spiritual manliood which out of a lieart educated 
 by the experience arising from the slow rejection of 
 error can say of any sjnritual trutli, "It so, it must be 
 so. I have the witness of it within ; and, though a thou- 
 sand miracles Avere to suggest the denial of it, I should 
 cling to it unswervingly." 
 
 Now, the position of mind exactly opposite to this M-as 
 that held by a Large number of the common Jcm's, and 
 apparently by the greater ])art of the chief men. The 
 latter demanded signs of Christ as proof of the truth of 
 his teaching : the former displayed an absolutely sensual 
 craving for miracles. And yet on neither of these 
 classes did the miracles, per se, produce any lasting 
 effect. The Pharisees confessed, we are told, the reality 
 of the miracle of the raising of Lazarus, and then imme- 
 diately met to take measures to put Christ to death. 
 The common people were so little im]»ressed with one 
 miracle that they immediately demanded another, as if 
 the first had had no meaning. 
 
 This is the plain sjjirit of Fetishism, or the worship of 
 sensible wonders without any knowledge why the wor- 
 ship is given, without any attempt to discover why the 
 wonder has occurred. 
 
 It was the temptation to yield to this ])assion of his 
 time and to employ his miraculous i)ower for the sake of 
 winning the favor of the multitude, or for ostentation, or 
 for the sake of establishing his kingdom rapidly, Avhich 
 Christ conquered in the trial called that of tlie ])innacle 
 of the temple. In that temptation was gathered up the 
 
202 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 whole meaning of this part of tlie sjjirit of tlie age; and, 
 in conquering it at the outset of his career, lie conquered 
 it for liis M-hole life. Again and again it met him, but it 
 met him in vain. Even at tlie hist, tlie voice of this 
 phase of the spirit of the world mockeil him upon the 
 cross. " If he be the King of Israel, let him now come 
 down from the cross, and we will believe liira." They 
 fancied, even tlien, that an outward sign could secure 
 their faith: as if those men could l^elie^-e, who were blind 
 to the wonder of love, obedience, and martyrdom for 
 truth, which, greater than any miracle, was exhibited 
 before their eyes on Calvary. 
 
 His greatest utterances, where all was great, were 
 spoken in the spirit contrary to this religion of the 
 senses. He threw men back ujion the witness of their 
 own heart, — " They that are of the truth hear my 
 voice." He declared that his true folloAvers know him 
 by intuition, — "My sheep know my Aoice, and they 
 follow me." He made eternal life consist, not in the 
 blind faith which came and went with the increase and 
 cessation of miracle, but in the faith which recognized 
 him as the Son of God ; in the s])iritual union which 
 he expressed in the words, "He that eateth my tlesh 
 and (Irinketh my blood dwelletli in me, and I in him." 
 God, in his view, was not the Avonder-worker of the Old 
 Testament, but a Spirit Avho demanded a spiritual wor- 
 ship arising out of a deej) conviction of his necessity to 
 the soul. "God is a spirit, and they that worship him 
 must worship him in spirit and in truth." He swept 
 away with fiery and pregnant words all the jugglery of 
 superstitious ceremonial with which men had overloaded 
 the simple idea of God; and he called them back to 
 
THE KELIGION OF SIGNS. 
 
 203 
 
 nntural life and feeling, to childlike trust in a Father 
 ever near to tliem, to a simple and pure morality. But, 
 at the same time, he presented to their effort a grand 
 ideal, which, though it seemed too high for human 
 nature, has yet stirred and exalted men as no other 
 ideal has ever done, — "Be ye therefore perfect, even as 
 your Father in heaven was jierfect." 
 
 It A\ as all too high, too simple, too spiritual, to please 
 the Jewish taste. It is true lie condescended in a cer- 
 tain degree to their weakness of faith ; and he did many 
 mighty Avorks, partly because he felt that some men 
 must be first attracted through the senses, and j^artly, 
 as in the case of Nathanael, in order to confirm a waver- 
 ing faith. But, on the other hand, lie always refused to 
 do any miracle without an adequate motive. Where the 
 miracle could establish no principle, where it was not 
 preceded by faith, or where it did not teach a universal 
 lesson, Christ would not pander to the Jewish craving 
 for a sign. This was his stern answer, " An evil and 
 adulterous generation seeketh after a sign. There shall 
 no sign be given it," etc. 
 
 Stung with his righteous scorn of their passion for the 
 visible, they slew him, and signed in his death the war- 
 rant of their nation's ruin. 
 
 Now, I have been endeavoring to show that the spirit 
 of the world in its several developments, which killed 
 Christ, is identical with the spirit Avhich in every nation 
 has neglected, enfeebled, and persecuted all individu- 
 ality, originality, or genius, not only in religion, but in 
 philosophy, poetry, art, and science. We have seqn this 
 in the case of the Avorship of the conventional and of 
 the worship of gain, ostentation, and comfort. We have 
 
 \ 
 
204 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 seen how these phases of the spirit of the world hare 
 corrupted, ruined, and killed the life of men wlio rose 
 abov . the common standard. I do not say that this 
 result is due altogether to the spirit of the world : much 
 is due to the weakness of the men themselves ; hut we 
 who are not gifted men have no idea of the suhtlety 
 and awful force of the temptations of the world to men 
 of genius ; Ave, who have not the strength nor the weak- 
 ness of genius, can scarcely conceive how cruel and 
 how debasing the influence of the world may be, when 
 it masters that strength or flatters that weakness into 
 folly. 
 
 The phase of the spirit of the world of which we 
 sjjeak to-day is that of devotion to signs and wonders. 
 
 Men of genius are themselves signs and wonders in 
 the Avorld. How does tlie world treat them? It does 
 not help tliem, it does not bring out what is best in 
 them : it makes a show of them, and then dismisses 
 them Avith a sigh of weariness. They are taken up and 
 flattered till all their strength is drained away. They 
 are polished down till all the angles which made them 
 of use, which jarred upon the splendid dulness or irri- 
 tated into some life the lazy indifference of common 
 society, are smoothed away; and the man offends no 
 more by originality. It fills one with pity and anger 
 to think how many, who might have been Samsons and 
 have smitten our modern Philistinism to its death, have 
 been ensnared by the Delilah of fashionable society, 
 and set, " shorn of their puissant locks," to work in the 
 prison and to make sport for the Philistines. XVe mourn, 
 and Avith just cause, the loss of many Avho, born to be 
 kings, have sunk into willing slaves. 
 
THE EELIGION OF SIGNS. 
 
 205 
 
 Look at tlic Avay in wliich this devotion to signs and 
 wonders in the Avorld acts now npon tlie literature of the 
 country. In that sphere, it is represented by a craving 
 for " sensationalism," which results in intellectual sloth. 
 Men ask for books which excite, but give no trouble. 
 They h;ive not time, they say, to read slowly, much less 
 to read a book twice o^^er. A book genuinely thought 
 out, but not brilliant, in which the experience of a life of 
 intellectual work is concentrated, has scarcely a chance 
 of success. The 2)ublic are too indolent to read even a 
 thoughtful review of such a book, unless it be written in 
 sparkling style and flavored with a spice of sensation. 
 Except they read signs and Avonders, they will not read 
 at all. What are the consequences? Men of thought, 
 who are strong of will and believe in themselves, refuse 
 to submit to this tyrannical cry for signs. They persist 
 in writing books of worth and weight ; but they do it 
 in a kind of despair, and their work suffers from the 
 dogged dulness Avhich despair creates. Unlistened to 
 and hojDeless, they cannot write with the joy which en- 
 livens exjjression, with the uplifting sense of a public 
 sympathy. 
 
 Men of thought, who are weak of Avill, and whose 
 self-confidence depends upon tlie public voice, write one 
 book of i^ower, and then surrender their high mission. 
 They enter on the career which demoralizes the finer 
 powers of genius, — the career of the reviewer and the 
 magazine contributor, — and too often end by drifting 
 into the mere sensationalist, writhig a book which, like 
 an annual, grows, blooms, and dies in a season. They 
 strain after brilliancy, — not brilliancy for its own sake, 
 but brilliancy for the sake of show or favor. They fall 
 
206 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 into the very temptation wliieli Clirist resisted in the 
 case of miracles. 
 
 I might illustrate the subject in other spheres than 
 the sj)here of literature; but enough has been said to 
 sliow the operation upon men of genius of this element 
 of the spirit of the •\vorld, which as a craving for signs 
 and wonders among the Jews hurried the Saviour to the 
 cross. 
 
 Now, a society tainted with the diseased jiassion for 
 this class of writing is drifting away from tliat temjier 
 of mind which can frankly accej)! Christ Jesus ; for his 
 is not the life which can satisfy the sensationalist. 
 
 Separate it from the moral glory, the spiritual beauty, 
 which rose from it like a sea of light out of inner foun- 
 tains, and it is a common life enough. Uneventful for 
 thirty years, the story of it, even in the midst of its 
 miracles, is marked by nothing especially exciting. It 
 was in itself eminently natural, unartificial, deep, cool, 
 and quiet as a garden Avell, passed by preference among 
 rustic, uneducated men, amid the holy serenity of the 
 mountain and the desert, among the gracious simijlici- 
 ties of natural beauty, beside the ripple of the lake, upon 
 the grass-grown hill, — seeking even at Jerusalem refuge 
 from the noise and passion of the city in the peaceful 
 village of Bethany or among the shadows of the silent 
 Garden of Gethsemane. 
 
 "We cannot understand it, we cannot understand him, 
 we cannot enter into the profound simplicity and truth 
 of his teaching, if we have habituated our mind to 
 morbid excitement, our moral sense to a continual a Io- 
 lation of it in both French and English novels, and our 
 emotions to a mental hysteria Avhich destroys the will. 
 
THE RELIGION OF SIGNS. 
 
 207 
 
 This may seem a slight evil ; Init it is more tliaii we 
 imagine. We should look Avitli i'l'ar u])oii the growtli 
 of this temper in English society: it is denaturalizing 
 it. It renders botli mind and lieart corrupt. It will 
 end by making the life corrvipt and society impure. Sen- 
 sationalism in literature is closely coimected with sensu- 
 ality in society. 
 
 Again, take in the jn-eseut time, as another form of 
 the Jewish ])assion for signs and wonders, tiie existence 
 among us of men and A\'omen with a jiassion for the false 
 supernatural. The true supernatural is not the miracu- 
 lous, but the purely si)iritual ; not the manifestation of 
 things which astonish the senses, Imt the revelation of 
 things which ennoble the spirit. In neither of these 
 ways are the things Avitli which we have been lately 
 favored truly supernatural. They are abundantly ma- 
 terial, and they do not ennoble. The last appearance of 
 the chief prophet has not been characterized by a surplus 
 of spirituality. 
 
 Every day, however, fewer persons are likely to be 
 swept away by this spiritual quackery ; for, as the ozone 
 of scientific knowledge is added to our social atmosi)]iere, 
 these corrupt growtlis dwindle and die. But it is worth 
 while j^erhaps to say that they enfeeble tlie intellect and 
 do harm to Christianity. No man can long float in the 
 misty region of pale speculation in which these exhibi- 
 tions involve him, — speculation which starts from no 
 fixed point and aims at nothing, — nor be tossed about 
 by the inconsequence of the so-called phenomena, with- 
 out feeling his intellect ebbing away and its manliness 
 departing. They render the reason a useless part of our 
 being. 
 
208 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 So doiiio;, they do evil to Cliristianity ; for to conceive 
 Christianity grandly, to expound it nobly, to develop it 
 within oiir own souls as fnlly as ])Ossible, and to woi'k 
 for its perfect kingdom, we need to xniite to its spiritual 
 power within ns "the ]>ower of a free, vigorous, manly, 
 and well-cultured intellect." We need for the work of 
 Christ, not only sjiiritual life as the first thing, but in- 
 tellectual light as the second. 
 
 Again, one of the greatest evils which arise from 
 the encouragement of charlatanry of this kind in con- 
 nection with religion — and it is so connected — is that 
 it j^rotracts the period when the work of science and 
 religion, by consent of their several professors, Avill ad- 
 vance together. It causes scientific men to think that 
 everything connected Avitli religion is inimical to the 
 methods of science : it intensifies their opposition to the 
 thought of the supernatural by setting before them a 
 false supernaturalism. It throws contempt upon and 
 degrades the notion of a spiritual world. It increases a 
 credulity on the one hand which leads to gross supersti- 
 tion, it increases an unbelief on the other which leads to 
 crross materialism. The extremes of the two sides are 
 set into stronger o])position ; and, in the noise which the 
 extreme parties make, the voices of Aviser men remain 
 unheard. 
 
 One element of good hope, however, attends its ap- 
 pearance among us. The sjjirit in society which it feeds 
 has almost always, in conjunction with a spirit of unbe- 
 lief with which it is connected, preceded a revolution of 
 thought. It was so before the teaching of Christianity. 
 It was so before the rise of the Reformation. It was so 
 before the outburst of new ideas which gave force to the 
 early days of the French Revolution. 
 
THE RELIGION OF SIGNS. 
 
 209 
 
 I liave hope that this blhid confusion, tliis tossing 
 together of the elements of credulity and unbelief, will 
 create, in a reaction from them, a rational and liberal 
 faith. 
 
 Analogous to this is the endeavor to awake and excite 
 religious sensibility either by the overwrought fervor of 
 the revivalist, producing an hysterical excitement which 
 is mistaken for a spiritual manifestation, or by the sen- 
 sual imin-essions made by the lights, incense, music, 
 color, and all the paraphernalia of the ritualists. I do 
 not deny the real enthusiasm, however cruelly mistaken 
 in its mode of action, nor the good wliich many of the 
 revivalists have done ; nor the good and the enthusiasm 
 which follow the efforts of the ritualist, but in a certain 
 degree they both agree in this, — they try to produce 
 spirituality from without. They make use of stimulants 
 which are unnatural in relation to the spirit, though 
 natural in their relation to the body. 
 
 Precisely the same thing is done by those who hunt 
 after exciting sermons, who imagine they rejiair the 
 ravages of the devotion of six days to the world by an 
 emotional impression on Sunday as transient as the 
 morning dew ; who mistake a thrill of intellectual excite- 
 ment for a spiritual conviction, a glow of aspiration for 
 a religious act, and pleasure in a sermon for the will to 
 concjuer evil. 
 
 Now, all these things are, under one form or another, 
 the jiroducts of the same sjnrit which in the days of 
 Christ sought for signs and wonders. 
 
 Tlie melancholy superstition which is called so iron- 
 ically spiritualism unfits its devoted votaries for their 
 daily work. Some play with it, and it does them little 
 
210 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 h:\vm ; but others, embarking in it with energy, get into 
 an excited, inoperative, unhealthy condition, in which a 
 quiet Christian life becomes all but impossible, in wliich 
 duty becomes a burden if it separate them from their 
 experiments, in which it seems better to sit at a table 
 slothfully waiting for a spiritual communicatit)n than to 
 go with Christ into the middle of the arena of life, and 
 do our duty there against the evil. It is there, in faith- 
 ful following of him, tliat we sluill have sitiritual com- 
 munications ; it is there, in self-sacrificing action, that 
 we shall feel inspired by God to act and speak; it is 
 there that we shall realize our communication with the 
 host of all great spirits, in enduring like them all things 
 for the truth ; it is there, by faithful prayer and resist- 
 ance to temptation, by the warfare against sin within 
 and wrong without, that our hearts will begin to beat 
 with the excitement which ennobles and the enthusiasm 
 which does not decay ; it is there, loving our Saviour's 
 spirit above all things and aspiring to reach his divine 
 perfection, that we shall enter into the true spiritual 
 world, and feel, not the miserable presences of beings 
 which, on the impossible supposition of their existence, 
 it is a disgrace to associate witli, but the very presence 
 of tlie Spirit of God within us ; hear, not a futile and 
 laborious noise, but the voice of God liimself, saying to 
 us, after the conquest of sin or tlie performance of duty 
 in liis strength, " Well done, good and faitliful servant." 
 
 And as to the attempts of revivalists or ritualists to 
 influence the spirit tlirough the flesh, tliere is this i)lain 
 evil : that all stimulants of this character produce each 
 their own peculiar reaction, and are followed in the 
 reaction by exhaustion. Then the passionate emotion 
 
THE RELIGION OP SIGNS. 
 
 211 
 
 must be worked up again by another and a fiercer ad- 
 dress, or the aesthetic impression which produced the 
 thrill must be again received, but this time by means 
 of a more exciting service. It follows, then, that the 
 exhaustion of reaction is greater, since the stimulant has 
 been more violent. So it proceeds, till at last the limit 
 of stimulation has been reached and the excitement can 
 be aroused no more. Only the exhaustion remains, the 
 craving is still there ; and the worn-out votaries of the 
 religion of tlie nerves and the senses turn back, unable 
 to do without their thrilling sensations, to the old excite- 
 ments, and go back in the case of revivalism to sin, in 
 the case of ritualism to the world. 
 
 Of course, we only speak of tendencies, not of persons. 
 It would be absurd to deny that many faithful men 
 have been made by revivalism. It would be far more 
 absurd to deny that there are thousands of devoted men 
 who attach a living meaning to ritualistic observances, 
 and to whom these things are not a form without a 
 spirit, but the natural expression, and therefore to them 
 the right expression, of spiritual feelings, who use them 
 not to create from without, but to embody from within, 
 their inner life with God. 
 
 But, making this allowance, it seems clear that this 
 form of religious life is not the highest nor the truest 
 form of the Christian life. It encourages that temper 
 of mind which demands signs and wonders as proofs and 
 supports of faith. It is in bondage to ceremonies : it is 
 against our full freedom in Christ Jesus. It says to men, 
 in principle, "Except ye be circumcised, Christ shall 
 profit you nothing." It denies the equal holiness of all 
 times, of all places, to the Christian heart, by asserting 
 
212 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 the especial holiness of certain times and certain places. 
 It places the priest between us ajid God as a necessary- 
 means, whereby alone we may hold communication with 
 God. It asserts the absolute necessity of certain sym- 
 bolic observances for the reception of any higher spirit- 
 ual grace from God. 
 
 This is not the purity and simplicity of Christianity. 
 It is a rehabilitation of those elements in Judaism which 
 Christ attacked and overthrew. It is opposed to the 
 whole spirit of his teaching. He removed the barriers 
 of ceremonies, of sacrifices, of authority, of localized and 
 exclusive sanctities ; and he brought the heart of each 
 man into direct communion with the Heavenly Father. 
 As to a priesthood, and its pretensions to interfere be- 
 tween us and God, Christ swept it away with every 
 word and action of his life, and by uniting the individual 
 soul to God made every man his own priest, and the 
 daily spiritual offering of each man's love in feeling and 
 in action the acceptable sacrifice. " If any man love me, 
 he will keep my words ; and my Father will love him, 
 and we will come to him, and make our abode with 
 him." 
 
 There is the charter of our freedom; and there is not 
 a woi'd in it of the necessity of God's grace coming to us 
 filtered through the medium of a priest, or a ceremony, 
 or a sacrament, or a symbol. 
 
 Blessed is he, in these times of devotion to the sensi- 
 ble, who can behold the obedience and the deep self- 
 sacrifice of the Saviour's life and death ; Avho can watch, 
 unfolding in him, perfect love, undaunted courage, stain- 
 less purity, the simple nobleness of truth, the union of 
 mercy and justice, and, recognizing that as God in 
 
THE EELIGION OF SIGNS. 
 
 213 
 
 humanity, throw liiinself upon it in a pure passion of 
 love, and with a solemn force of faith, and clasp the per- 
 fect man to his heart as his unique jjossession, as his 
 living impulse, as his Redeemer, in whose love his sin 
 is drowned, his lower self annihilated. 
 
 Signs, wonders, excitements, observances, I need them 
 not to make me trust in thee. I feel thy power in my 
 heart, thy presence moving in my life. I hear thy 
 voice : it is enough, my spirit knows its sound, claims it 
 as the voice of the rightful Master of my being. I have 
 not seen ; but, O my Saviour ! I have felt^ and I believe. 
 
THE I^^ATURAMESS OF GOD'S 
 JUDGMEI^TS. 
 
 1867. 
 
 " And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these 
 Galileans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered 
 such things 1 I tell you, Nay : but, except ye repent, ye shall all like- 
 wise perish. Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, 
 and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that 
 dwelt in Jerusalem ? " — Luke xiii., 2—4. 
 
 Last year, during the prevalence of the cholera, we 
 spoke of it from this place, and of the lesson.s Avhich it 
 taught us. We then laid down the principle that all 
 the so-called judgments of God were the natural results 
 of violation of laws, and as such always unarbitrary. 
 
 The principle is a common one, but it requii-es to be 
 stated and restated continually, and especially so from 
 the pulpit. First, because it is explicitly or implicitly 
 denied by a large number of religious persons, to the 
 great detriment, I believe, of religion ; and, secondly, 
 because, in establishing it firmly, we get rid of nearly all 
 that sets scientific men in opposition to religious men. 
 
 Now, the princijjle that every judgment of God is con- 
 nected, in the way of ordinary cause and effect, with the 
 sin or error therein condemned, destroys at once the 
 notion that plague or famine are judgments upon us for 
 
NATURALNESS OF GOD's JUDGMENTS. 
 
 215 
 
 infidelity or rationalisiii or sabbatli-breakiiig, or our 
 private sins; for there is plainly no natural connection 
 between the alleged sin and the alleged j)unishment. 
 For e\'amj)le, the town which takes due sanitary precau- 
 tions may refuse to give one penny to missions, but it 
 will not be visited by a virulent outbreak of cholera. 
 The town which takes no sanitary precautions, but gives 
 £10,000 a year to missions, will, in spite of its Chris- 
 tian generosity, become a victim to the e])idemic. The 
 lightning will strike the ship of the good man who 
 chooses to sail without a lightning-conductor, it will 
 spare the ship of the atheist and the blasphemer who 
 provides hhnself with the protecting-rod. The cattle 
 plague will not touch the cattle of the most active 
 Roman Catholic in England, if his quarantine is exclu- 
 sive enough; while it will destroy all the cows of the 
 best Protestant in the country, if he be careless of their 
 isolation. We may sin as much as we please in our own 
 jjersons, but we shall escape cholera as much as we shall 
 escape famine, if we discover the source of contagion and 
 ffuard ajjainst it. 
 
 There is, then, alwjiys a natural connection between 
 the sin and the punishment; and the punishment points 
 out its own cause. To follow the guiding of its finger 
 is to discover the evil, and, when discovered, to rectify 
 it. But Ave assume a supernatural cause, and the evil 
 remains hidden from us. There is no hope of success 
 till Ave act u]ion the principle Avhich is here laid down. 
 
 It is my intention this morning to show the truth of 
 this principle in other spheres than that of epidemic 
 disease. If Ave can manifest its uniA'ersality, Ave go far 
 to proA'^e its truth. Take as the first illustration the 
 case of the Moral LaAV. 
 
216 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 The Ten Commandments ajjjiear at first siglit to be 
 arbitrary rules of conduct. Why shotild we not kill a 
 man wlien he has injured us? Why should we not steal 
 when we are in want ? Many a savage community has 
 argued in this way, and we do not want for isolated in- 
 stances of the same feeling in civilized societies. But, 
 as civilization increased, the commands of the Decalogue 
 were felt to be right, not only because they were re- 
 echoed by an inward voice, but also because they were 
 proved to be necessary for the ]>rogress of humanity. 
 They were commanded, then, not only because of their 
 agreement to eternal right, but also because of their ne- 
 cessity. Some of them were in very early times clearly 
 seen as needful, — the sacredness of an oath, the sacred- 
 ness of human life, the sacredness of ])ro|)erty. On the 
 other hand, it has taken centuries to show that poly- 
 theism is a destructive element to national greatness. 
 Others Avere not so clearly seen to be just. "Thou shalt 
 not covet" seemed to make a great deal out of nothing; 
 but experience taught men, though slowly, that inor- 
 dinate desire for the goods of another was the most 
 fruitful source of violation of social riglits. Again, to 
 reconcile the fourtli commandment with a natural feel- 
 ing of right has been a puzzle to many. But men saw, 
 as the labor of the world increased, the naturalness of a 
 day of rest and its necessity for human nature. It was 
 seen to be commanded, not of caprice on the jmrt of 
 God, but because it was needful for humanity. The 
 commandments have force, therefore, not because they 
 are commanded by a God of power, but because they are 
 either needful for, or natural to, human nature. 
 
 Nor is the judgment which follows on their violation 
 
NATURALNESS OF GOD's JUDGMENTS. 217 
 
 any more arbitrary tliaii the laws tlieui.selves. As they 
 have their root in our nature, so they have their pun- 
 ishment in our nature. Violate a moral law, and our 
 constitution 2)rotests through our conscience. Sorrow 
 awakes, remorse follows ; and remorse is felt in itself to 
 be the mark of separation from God. Tlie punishment 
 is not arbitrary, but natural. Moreover, each particular 
 violation of the moral law has its own proper judgment. 
 The man who is dishonest in one branch of his life soon 
 feels dishonesty — not impurity, not anytliing else but 
 dishonesty — creep through his whole life and enter into 
 all his actions. Impurity has its own punishment, and 
 that is increasing corruption of lieart. Eaoli sin has its 
 own judgment, and not another's ; and the judgment is 
 so naturally linked to the sin that it jjoints out unmis- 
 takably what the particular sin is which is j>unished. 
 The moral pain calls attention to the moral disease. It 
 is the voice of God saying: " There, in that thing you 
 are wrong, my child. Do not do it again, do the very 
 opposite." 
 
 Take, again, the intellectual jjart of man. The neces- 
 sities for intellectual progress are attention, persever- 
 ance, practice. Refuse to submit to these laws, and you 
 are punislied by loss of memory or inactivity of memory, 
 by failure in your work or by inability to think and act 
 quickly at the ])ro))er moment. The intellectual jyunisli- 
 ments follow as naturally uj)on violation of tlie laws of 
 tlie intellect as sickness does on violation of the laws of 
 healtli, and they })oint out as clearly their causes as 
 trembling nerves point out their cause in the indulgence 
 of the drunkard. 
 
 Again, take what may be called national laws. These 
 
218 
 
 TAITH AND TUEEDOM. 
 
 have Ijeoii, as it were, codified by tlie Jcwisli jirophets. 
 They were men whose holiness brought them near to 
 God, and gave them insiglit into the diseases of nations. 
 They saw clearly the natural result of these diseases, and 
 they jiroclaimed it to the world. They looked on Sama- 
 ria, and saw there a corrupt aristocracy, failing jiatriot- 
 ism, opjiression of the poor, falsification of justice, and 
 they said, God will judge this city, and it shall be over- 
 thrown by Assyria. Well, was that an arbitrary judg- 
 ment? It was of God; but given a jiowerful neighbor, 
 and a divided peojile in which the real fighting and 
 working class has been cruslied, enslaved, and unjustly 
 treated, and an enervateil, lazy, ])leasure-'consumed up- 
 I^er class, and what is tlie natural result? Why, that 
 very thing which the proj^hets called God's judgment. 
 God's judgment w^as the natural result of the violation 
 of the first of national laws, — even-handed justice to all 
 parties in the State. The same jjrinciple is true in a 
 thousand instances in history: the national judgments 
 of war, revolution, pestilence, famine, are the direct re- 
 sults of the violation by nations of certain plain laws 
 which have become clear liy exiiorience. Unfortunately, 
 men took them to mean a su2)ernatural exjiression of 
 God's anger, instead of looking for their natural causes. 
 It is this notion of God not being a God of order, but a 
 God Avho interferes capriciously with the course of soci- 
 ety, which has made the advance of the world so slow, 
 and made so many of his judgments useless. For these 
 judgments come to teach nations what is wrong in 
 them ; and the judgments must come again and again, 
 while the wrong thing is there. It is slow work teach- 
 ing blind men ; but God does not si)are trouble, and the 
 
NATURALNESS OF GOD's JUDGMENTS. 
 
 219 
 
 laws of the universe cannot be bouglit off by jirayer. 
 There is but one way of making tliem kind, and tliat is 
 by getting on their side. We find them out by punish- 
 ment, as a child finds out that he must not touch fire by 
 being burnt. Look at slavery. It was not 2>lainlj' for- 
 bidden, l)ut no nation practised it Avithout l>aying dearly 
 for it. It devoured, like a slow disease, national ])ros- 
 2)erity and U2)rightness. It was not so deadly to the 
 earlier nations as it has been to the Southern States ; but 
 then ancient shivery was not so bad as American slav- 
 ery. Ancient slavery had no vast breeding system. Its 
 oppression was more cruel, but it was not " so degrad- 
 ing, so systematic, and so unrelenting." The slave had 
 hope, had a chance of liberty, could hold some property, 
 could receiA^e some education : none of these things alle- 
 viated slavery in America. Wherever it has prevailed 
 in modern times, it has corroded family life, degraded 
 national honor,- and reduced flourishing lands to wil- 
 dernesses. The Southern States would not learn that 
 lesson from history. They Avere judged and sentenced 
 by God, But their defeat was the natural result of 
 their clinging to slavery. They were destitute of men 
 and of means to fight the North. They had no middle 
 class, no working-men class, they had no manufactories, 
 scarcely any of the natural Avealth of their States was 
 Avorked, A'ast tracts of once productive land Avere ex- 
 hausted. rioAV could the Southerners succeed Avhen all 
 the vast resources of the North, supported l)y a spiritual 
 idea, Avere brought to bear upon them? The result 
 could not be doubted for a moment. It Avas God's judg- 
 ment, but it Avas naturally Avorked out. 
 
 The conclusion I draw fn^m this is that all national 
 jiidgmoits of God come ahovt vat /irall i/. 
 
220 
 
 FAITH AND FIIEEDOM. 
 
 But there are certain judgments mentioned in the 
 Bible wliich seem to be supernatural, — the destruction 
 of Sodom, of Sennacherib's army, of the Egyptians in 
 the Red Sea, the plagues sent ui^on the Israelites, and 
 others. These are the difficulty. How shall we explain 
 them ? or shall we seek to ex])lain them at all ? First, 
 we must remember that the writers had not the knowl- 
 edge capable of explaining them, that nature to them 
 was an insoluble mystery. They naturally, then, re- 
 ferred these things to a direct action of God, or rather, 
 because they were out of the common, to an interference 
 of God with nature. They were right in referring them 
 to God ; but it is possible that, owing to their ignorance 
 of nature, they were wrong in their way of explaining 
 them. If they had seen clearly, they would have seen 
 sufficient reason for them in ordinary causes. We ac- 
 cept their teaching as far as it is connected with the 
 spiritual Avorld : we cannot accept it as far as it is con- 
 cerned with the i)hysical world, for they knew nothing 
 about it. 
 
 Secondly, there is a thought which goes far, if it be 
 true, to explain these things : it is that the course 
 of human history may be so arranged that, at times, 
 healing or destructive natural occurrences coincide with 
 crises in the history of a nation. For example, we 
 misht say that the sins of Sodom had reached their 
 height at the very period when tlie elastic forces which 
 were SAvelling beneath the plain of tlie Dead Sea had 
 reached their last possible expansion. Or that the army 
 of Sennacherib lay encamped in the way of the pestilen- 
 tial wind, which would have blown over the spot whether 
 they had been there or not. 
 
NATURALNESS OF GOD's JUDGMENTS. 221 
 
 Tliirdly, whatever difficulty tliese things present to 
 us ill the Bible, the same difficulty occurs in ■what is 
 profanely called jirofane history. There is not the 
 slightest doubt that, had the Carthaginians been Jews, 
 the earthquake at Thrasymene would have been repre- 
 sented as a miraculous interference of God. There is 
 not the slightest doulit, were your English history written 
 by a Hebrew of the time of the kings, that the eclij^se 
 and tlie thunder-storm at Creyy, and that the storms 
 Mhicli broke tlie Armada on the rocks of England and 
 Scotland, Avotild hn\e been im2)uted to a miraculous in- 
 terference by God with the course of nature. We do 
 not believe these to have been miraculous; but we do 
 believe them, M'ith the Jew, to be of God. But we must 
 also believe that they are contained in the order of the 
 world, not disorderly elements arbitrarily introduced. 
 That is, while believing in God as tlie Director and Ruler 
 of human affairs, we must also believe in him as the 
 Director and Ruler of the course of nature. Wliile we 
 believe revelation, Ave must not disbelieve God's other 
 revelation in science. One is as necessary to believe in 
 as the other. 
 
 We see in all things this laAv holding good,- — -that 
 God's judgments are natural. In these apparently super- 
 natural judgments, it Avould also hold good, if we knew 
 all ; and our attitude toward science, therefore, should 
 not be an attitude of attack, or even an attitude of de- 
 fence, but an attitude of ready assistance and inquiry. 
 We should endeavor, as religious men, not to attack 
 scientific men because they endeavor to discover truth, 
 but to assist them Avith all our power, knoAving that, the 
 more we do in this Avay, the better chance there is of 
 
222 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 getting at the truth Avhicli will reconcile the teaching of 
 science with the teaching of revelation. At present, we 
 force on them the attitude of oj^position, we call them 
 names, we ourselves are frightened out of our senses at 
 every new discoAcry. We are faithless men. Neces- 
 sarily, men of science attack us with contemjit for our 
 unbelief, and they are right ; though it is curious to 
 watch how Pharisaism and priestcraft are creeping upon 
 them, and how their liierarcliy are reproducing, in intol- 
 erance and ignorance of our position, the very sins and 
 mistakes of which they accuse us. It would be worth 
 while if we were both to try the other mode of action, 
 and see if truth would not better come out of union than 
 out of disunion. 
 
 There is another class of occurrences which have been 
 called judgments of God, but to which the term "judg- 
 ment " is inapplicable. The circumstance mentioned in 
 the text is an example of these, ajid the violent destruc- 
 tion of human life by the late hurricane of Tortola is 
 another of the san^e type. About the latter, I wish, in 
 conclusion, to say a few words. 
 
 There are even now some Avho say that the sufferers 
 under these blows of nature suffer because they are 
 under the special wrath of God. 
 
 What does Christ say to that? He bluntly contra- 
 dicts it. " I tell you nay," — it is not so. There ai-e 
 not a few Avho still blindly think tliat suffering proves 
 God's anger. Has the Cross taught us nothing better 
 than that, revealed to us no hidden secret, — not the 
 exi^lanation given by a fierce theology, that there we see 
 God's necessary anger expended on a surety, but the 
 healing truth that there God's Love died for the sake of 
 
NATURALNESS OF (iOl/s JUDGMENTS. 223 
 
 mail, and tliat tlic st'lf-sacrifico did not expiate wratli, 
 but manifest eternal Life, — was necessarily the salvation 
 of man from death ? The instant we realize this, our 
 view of suffering is changed. We see it always, not as 
 the misery-making, but as the redemptive, power in the 
 world. Tliere is no pain, mental or physical, which is 
 not a part of God's continual self-sacrifice in us, and 
 which, were Ave united to life, and not to death, Ave 
 should not see as joy. Who regrets that the martyrs 
 jjerished so cruelly ? Not they themsches, not the 
 Church Avhose foundations they cemented Avith their 
 blood! Sympathy Ave can give, but regret? To regret 
 their death is to dishonor them. Wlio can say that the 
 death and pain of thousands in America for a great 
 cause is matter of indignant sorroAV? They died, — half 
 a million of them, — to establish a principle, and so to 
 redeem from curse and degradation, for all the future, 
 millions of their countrymen ; and they suffered devot- 
 edly, and died well. And those young hearts in Italy 
 who fell on the vine-slopes of Mentana, fighting to the 
 last, Avere they fools or redeemers? Redeemers, if the 
 Cross be true. Every man Avho dies for Italy adds to 
 Italy a new element of salvation, and makes it more 
 impossible that she should much longer exist either as 
 the slave of tyrants or the dupe of kings. It is an 
 eternal Liav, — if you Avish to save a thing, die for it ; if 
 you Avish to redeem a man, suffer for him. And, Avhen 
 God lets men suffer and gives them to ]iain and deatli, 
 it is not the worst or the guiltiest, but the best and the 
 25urest, whom he often chooses for his Avork ; for they 
 will do it best. Men Avring their hands, and weep and 
 wonder ; but the sufferers themselves accejjt the jjain in 
 
224 
 
 FAITH AKD FEEEDOM. 
 
 the joy of doing redemptive work, and pass out of the 
 region of complaint into that of the nobler spirit which 
 rejoices that it is counted Avorthy to die for men. 
 
 But, say others, God is cruel to pei"mit such loss. 
 Three thousand souls have jjerished in this hurricane. 
 Is this your God of love ? 
 
 But look at the history of the hurricane. A mass of 
 heated air ascends, along a line of heated Avater. Tavo 
 currents dash in right and left to fill the space : they 
 clash, and a Avhu-lwind, rotating on a vast scale, sweeps 
 along the line. It is the only Avay in Avhich the equi- 
 librium of the air can be restored. Those avIio object 
 to this arrangement Avill pcrha])S prefer that the air 
 should be left quiet, in order to protect their notion of 
 a God of love. Well, AA'hat is the result ? Instead of 
 three thousand by a hurricane, thirty thousand jjerish 
 by a pestilence. 
 
 " But why restore it so violently ? Could not God 
 arrange to have a uniform climate over all the earth?" 
 ■\Ye are spiritually puzzled ; and, to arrange our doubts, 
 God must make another Avorld ! We knoAV not what 
 Ave ask. A uniform climate over all the earth means 
 simply the death of all living beings. It is the tropic 
 heat and the polar cold Avhich cause the currents of the 
 ocean and the air, and keep them fresh and j^ure. A 
 stagnant atmosphere, a rotting sea, tliat is Avhat Ave ask 
 for. It is Avell Gud does not take us at our Avord. When 
 Ave A\-ish the hurricane away, Ave A\ ish away the tropic 
 heats in the West Indies and along the Avhole equator. 
 What do Ave do then ? We Avish aAvay the Gulf Stream, 
 and aimihilate England. How long Avould our national 
 greatness last, if Ave had here the climate of Labrador, 
 
NATURALNESS OF GOD's JUDGMENTS. 
 
 225 
 
 More than half of tlie soleinii folly which is talked 
 about a God of love not jjcrinitting those physical calam- 
 ities is due to piire ignorance, is due to sceptical per- 
 sons never reading God's revealed book of nature. A 
 mere smattering of meteorology Avould answer all spirit- 
 ual doubts of this kind of God's tenderness. 
 
 Because a few perish, is God to throw the whole world 
 into confusion ? The few must be sometimes sacrificed 
 to the many. But they are not sacrificed without due 
 warning. In this case, God tells us jilainly, in his book 
 of nature, that he wants to keep his air and his seas 
 fresh and clean for his children to breathe and sail upon. 
 The West Indies is the ])lace where this work is done 
 for the North Atlantic and its borders; and, unless the 
 whole constitution of the world be entirely changed, 
 that Avork must be done by toi*nadoes. God has made 
 that plain to us ; and to all sailing and living about 
 warm currents like the Gulf Stream it is as if God said : 
 " Exj^ect my hurricanes: they must come. You will 
 have to face danger and death, and it is my law that 
 you should face it everywhere in spiritual as well as 
 physical life ; and to call me unloving because I impose 
 this on you is to mistake the true ideal of your humanity. 
 I mean to make you active men, not slothful dreamers. 
 I will not make the world too easy for my children. I 
 want veteran men, not untried soldiers, — men of endur- 
 ance, foresight, strength, and skill for my work, — and I 
 set before you the battle. You must face manfvdly those 
 forces which you call destructive, but which are in real- 
 ity reparative. In the struggle, all that l)elongs to your 
 intellect — invention, activity, imagination, forethought, 
 combination — will be enkindled and developed, and all 
 
226 
 
 FAITH AXD FREEDOM. 
 
 the uoLler qualities of the spirit — love to me and man, 
 faith iu me and man, sympathy with the race, tender 
 guardianship, the purity of life which is bom of activity 
 of charity — will enter into you and mould you into my 
 likeness.*' 
 
 Brethren, we cannot com2)lain of the destructive forces 
 of nature. We should have been still savages, had we 
 not to Contend against them. But, oh ! we might bitterly 
 complain of the ruin wrought by them, if the souls who 
 perish iu the contest died for evermore. 
 
 "Wlxat happened when the " Rhone," iu mid-day mid- 
 night, went down with all its souls on board ? AVas it 
 only the descent of a few bodies of men and Avomen 
 into the silence of an ocean death, or not rather the as- 
 cension of* a number of emancijiated spirits into life? 
 When the hungry sea had swallowed all, and the loud 
 waves rolled onward imconcerned, where were the dead ? 
 TVe know not where ; but this we do believe : they were 
 better off than they had been alive, the good in that 
 they had entered into their rest, the evil in that God had 
 taken in hand more sharply to consume their evil. For 
 he will not let us go, evil or good, till he has brought us 
 all to his perfection. It matters little whether we die by 
 hurricane on the sleepless sea, or quietly by disease in 
 the sleeping city : the result is the same, we go to a 
 Father who is educating us, we fall into the hands of 
 Eternal Justice. 
 
LIBERTY. 
 
 1874. 
 
 " Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind." — Rom. 
 xiv., 5. 
 
 Liberty is one of the ideas on which the progress of 
 mankind dejiends, and on it I speak to-day. It is, of 
 course, necessary that, as far as possible, I should define 
 what I mean by it, else we pass into that mere fine talk 
 which produces a momentary and inactive enthusiasm, 
 and docs not sujiport tliat love and devotion to liberty 
 which is the parent of activity. If an idea is to rule 
 life, we must be able to say what we mean by it. Other- 
 wise, like Ixion, we embrace a cloud. 
 
 It is now said tliat liberty is not only an indefinite 
 term, but that it is nothing more than a negation. We 
 are told, in order to prove its indefiniteness, tliat it has 
 meant different things to different people and at differ- 
 ent times ; and that, if you ask a number of persons, they 
 will give different explanations of it according to their 
 ])rejudices or desires. And that is true enough. But, all 
 the same, it does not prove that the idea is indefinite in 
 itself. It is the characteristic of any large idea to take 
 different forms at different times, — in fact, it must do 
 so : it is the characteristic of an idea to grow as mankind 
 
228 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 advances, and its form is tlicrefore sure to change. Out- 
 wardly, it must always be in a condition of weaving and 
 nnweaving, of ehb and flow, of birth and death. But, if 
 people took tlie trouble, tliey could at any time arrive at 
 its root, and express that in a definite statement. That 
 trouble they do not take, and naturally enough. They 
 are too closely involved in the struggle for a particular 
 part of the idea, to ask themselves aljout the other parts 
 and to collect them all under one expression. Thnt is 
 the work of the student. 
 
 But, again, the idea of liberty does not seem one whit 
 indefinite to those who at any period are struggling for 
 it. Those who loved and fought for it at the great Re- 
 bellion, or at any time in our history, knew right well 
 what they contended for. It may have been only part 
 of the idea for which they fought, Init it was a definite 
 part of it. And we, looking back noAv on our own his- 
 tory and on the history of man, can point to fifty great 
 human efforts for liberty, and say. All those were strug- 
 gles for portions of the idea of liberty, and the results 
 arrived at are definite parts of the idea. We can take 
 these results, generalize them, and find one expression 
 which will include them all. And, having found that 
 exjoression, Ave can predict, with some accuracy, the new 
 forms the idea is likely to take in the future, and define 
 them. 
 
 It is really nonsense to say that the idea of liberty is 
 only a negation. Men do not feel so strongly about 
 any mere negation as they do about liberty, and when a 
 man feels, I am free, or I am not free, he is feeling 
 about something which is as positive to him as his own 
 existence. 
 
LIBERTY. 
 
 229 
 
 The difficulty, liowever, in any clear definition, arises 
 from this : that the necessary action of the State in 
 restriction of absolute freedom of action must be con- 
 sidered. There are many things people cannot be al- 
 lowed to do ; there are times when for the safety of the 
 whole, or for the growth of the whole State, certain 
 things, as, for example, liberty to Imrn one's self alive in 
 India, or to keej) one's children from school in England, 
 must be prohibited. 
 
 The statement, then, which we desire to generalize 
 from all the various definitions of liberty at different 
 times, ought to be one which should not interfere with 
 the just and recognized work of the State, and at the 
 same time one which shoixld not be so wide as to allow 
 the State to ride roughshod over it, which should again 
 and again step in and prevent the State from falling into 
 its common habit of meddling too much, of enacting 
 restrictive laws for the sake of expediency. 
 
 I should exjjress, then, the idea of lil)erty in this Avay: 
 that every sane person has the absolute right of free 
 thought and its expression, and that there should not 
 be any restraint whatsoever placed on his expression of 
 thought on any subject. That I hold to be the last 
 generalization of the idea of liberty, and I want no more. 
 It gives me all I Avant. In politics, when every one is 
 entirely free to discuss the different forms of govern- 
 ment, to think his own thoughts and to say his say about 
 them, the best form of government and the freest will be 
 arrived at in the end. All we want is absolute freedom 
 of thought and discussion, even of subjects supposed to 
 be dangerous to the State, even of forms of government 
 which directly contradict the existing form. And, on 
 
230 
 
 FAITH AKD FREEDOM. 
 
 the whole, we have got that in England, and, havmg got 
 it, Ave can in the end make prevail any new parts of the 
 idea of liberty we may wish to work out. If those parts 
 are really necessary to the idea, we have only to pro- 
 claim them, and they will whi tlicir Avay in time. 
 
 In the case of religious lil)erty, the same thing holds. 
 We should have the right to think and express our 
 thoughts on all religious subjects, and there should be no 
 State restraint whatsoever upon this. That is also, on 
 the whole, tlie case in this country. The existence of 
 a State Church may seem to deny it, with its subscrip- 
 tions and legal restrictions. And uji to a certain point 
 it does, and for myself I have no doubt that before long 
 a State Church will perish. But it has felt the general 
 influence of the idea. Its work for the last twenty years 
 has not been one of restriction. It has added no new 
 restraints; on the contrary, it has so loosened obliga- 
 tions that, so far as the law goes, almost any religious 
 opinion, a few doctrines being distinctly held, may be 
 expressed within its limits. Subscrijition has been re- 
 duced by law to a merely nominal thing ; and so far as 
 State restriction goes, and leaving out the freaks of indi- 
 A'idual conscience, he would be a very sul)tle ])erson who 
 did not feel himself, provided he was not a pure theist 
 or an atheist, at a very large liberty of thought in the 
 English Church. At present, it is the religious body in 
 "which men's opinions are allowed the fullest freedom, in 
 which the idea of lil)erty, in its relation to religion, has 
 the largest development. 
 
 This, then, whicli we find in England nearly complete, 
 the right, wliolly unrestrained, of individual thought and 
 of its exjjression, is the best and most definite cxj^ression 
 
LIBERTY. 
 
 231 
 
 of the idc'ii of liberty. It is tlie real ground of all the 
 noble struggles for freedom that the world has seen. 
 When we get back as far as we can to the farthest cause 
 of wars of liberty, of reformations and revolutions for 
 liberty, that is the last expression which we come to. 
 That idea, then, is the root of all developments of lib- 
 erty, the centre whence all the various radii diverge. 
 And that is what we are to \o\e and dcA ote our li\ es to, 
 and die for, if need be ; and in loving it, and in sacrifice 
 for it, we love and sacrifice ourselves for the race. 
 Wlienever we say, think, and do anything insjnred by it, 
 no matter how humble or how retired our life, we assist 
 the onward movement of man : whenever we deny it 
 or are false to it in act, even in the little range of our 
 own family, we are living for ourselves and injuring 
 mankind. 
 
 The State that in all its Avork consistently holds to 
 this idea of liberty promotes the good, not only of its 
 own special subjects, but the good of the whole race. 
 The State that in any way whatsoever jn-escribes it or 
 disables it injures itself, and injures man. 
 
 Now, I call that definite enough : thought and its 
 expression are to be absolutely free, no restraint what- 
 ever is to be ])laccd u])on them. Tliat is the idea. And, 
 if you ask Avhere are tlie restraints to be found, then, 
 against evil thoughts and evil opinions, and the evil their 
 proi5agation is likely to do, I say that they are only to 
 be rightly found witliin the idea itself, — in the free ex- 
 pression (in oj)iiosition to evil opinions) of good opinions, 
 and in the victory these are certain to have in the end. 
 
 And now, having got our definition, and therefore 
 our idea of liberty, what are the religious grounds on 
 
232 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 which yve cling to it? In stating these, — and these 
 have not been stated, the subject has not been ap- 
 proached from this side, — I will sliow my reason for the 
 assumption I make, that tlie best opinions and ideas 
 will, after free discussion, prevail in the end. 
 
 1. This idea on tlie side of religion is founded on 
 the fact that God has made each one of us a distinct 
 person ; that we each ])ossess, and are bound to act up 
 to, an individuality. I have an intellect, heart, charac- 
 ter, and life of my own, modified by circumstances and 
 by the influence of others, but my own ; and I have a 
 body of thought as the residt of this, which I have a 
 more absolute right to than I have to my 2:)roperty, and 
 which I am bound to express by a stronger duty than 
 that Avhich binds me to my jiroperty. Why is that? 
 From the religious point of view, I answer. Because it is 
 God who has made you an individual, it is he himself 
 who in you has made you a rejiresentative of a distinct 
 phase of his being, a doer of a distinct part of his 
 work. Christianity says the same thing. It revealed 
 and insisted on the distinct and individual relation of 
 every sejiarate soul to God and to its fellows. And in 
 so doin<r it fell in with the stroncrest element in human 
 nature, the personal element, tliat element which in its 
 ceaseless growth in each man lias created the idea of 
 liberty. Falling in with that element, it jiromoted nec- 
 essarily the idea of liberty; and, if anything is remark- 
 able in Christianity, it is tlie way in which it gave an 
 impulse to individual thought and to the freedom of 
 self-development. When God in Christ said to every 
 man and woman, You are infinitely worthy as a person 
 in my eyes, you have a distinct personal relation to 
 
LIBERTY. 
 
 233 
 
 mc : yonr tliought is youi' own, and you must rather 
 die than allow it to be forced, or give it up for the sake 
 of earthly rewards, he confirmed and gave a new im- 
 pulse to every effort of liberty, and lie fixed its idea. 
 Of course, the wliole range of the ideas of the cultured 
 and political classes were against that doctrine of indi- 
 vidualitv, and it had slow growth. Tlie Churcli itself, 
 more wise than the State, took the popular ideas of 
 restriction of opinion, and used them with the help of 
 outward force. But the idea of liberty of thouglit and 
 its expression was too strong for Str.te and Church in 
 the end; and, though their restrictions linger still, the 
 idea has prevailed and Avill prevail, for God directs it. 
 No one can now say it is indefinite or a negation, with- 
 out blindness. In every reformation of religion, in e^■ery 
 political revolution, it has been the one grand thought at 
 their root. God has made it pretty plain that it is one 
 of the ideas which are absolutely needful for tlie l)rog- 
 ress of mankind ; and it is founded on the first religious 
 and Christian idea, that every single soul is a distinct 
 child of God, for whose jjerfect development as a 2)er- 
 son he cares and works. 
 
 But that de\ elopment is impossible, if thought and 
 its expression are restrained. For a father to do tliat 
 for a child is bad enough, for a State or a Church to 
 do it for a large number of their subjects is ^worse still. 
 And, wlienever this liberty is repressed by force of 
 law or arms, tliose wlio do it are fighting against God. 
 And men have always felt this; and every struggle for 
 liberty of thought becomes a religious one, and ought 
 to be considered as such. And it is confessed to be 
 such by those who share in the struggle, except Avhen 
 
234 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 the Church lias taken tlie side of repression, and forced 
 the contenders for liberty into irreligion. But what- 
 ever side the Church took, and ho\vever irreligious the 
 contendei's for liberty were, the struggle itself, in its 
 absolute relation to things, M'as religious; for it was on 
 the side of God. 
 
 That is one religious foundation of the idea. The 
 other relio'ious ground of the idea is in truth an cxten- 
 sion of the former. It is this, — God is educating not 
 only persons, but the race. His end is to bring it to 
 perfection. But he does this not in the manner of a 
 paternal desjiot who makes peo])Ie good by force, not in 
 any supernatural Avay, but Avithin tlie ordinary laws of 
 human nature. 
 
 lie does not tell men what is T)est, and impel them 
 into it at once. He respects the freedom of the creat- 
 ures he has kindled into being, and bids them find out 
 through experience and effort the best things ; while he 
 keeps at the same time a general direction of the whole, 
 assists the effort when it is toward good, and moves in 
 the Avhole race and its history as a spirit of love and 
 freedom and power and goodness. 
 
 It follows, if this theory be true, and it follows as a 
 part of the theory, tliat there is a necessity, in order 
 that men should discoA cr Avhat is good to believe and act 
 on, that they should go through' every j^ossible view of 
 anything they need to believe or use, and arrive at the 
 right idea of it by exhausting all the wrong ones. Then 
 and not till then can they finally discern the right one, 
 and saying, Tliis form, and this, and this of the idea, are 
 wrong, and jiroved to be MTong by their evil results, but 
 this is the right one, and j^roved to be so by every day's 
 
LIBERTY. 
 
 235 
 
 experience, secure at last, after ages of discussion, an 
 eternal truth. 
 
 We hold then, first, that God practically says to man : 
 Figlit out every question. I give you absolute freedom 
 of thoiight on them, and I wish you to use it. I M'ish 
 you m Ik'u you have any thouglit on them to ex])ress it, 
 and I gi\-e you absolute freedom to do so. And tliat is 
 the real state of tilings ■which we find to ha\e prevailed 
 on looking back at history. Every great question, every 
 great idea, has l)een represented in a thousand forms of 
 thought ; and all have been freely fought over. Some 
 are still under discussion, as the idea of liberty, for 
 example; others, we may say, are settled in civilized 
 countries, but it has taken centuries to settle them. On 
 the whole, and often by reason of the very elements 
 which seem to 02)pose it, there has been in this world 
 a fierce freedom of discussion and thought ; and it has 
 had its source in God. 
 
 We hold, secondly, since God guides the world, that 
 however fierce the battle, and however confusing the 
 chaos of ojjinions, the best and noblest thing will in the 
 end prevail, and its idea in its right and j^t'i'f'-'Ct form 
 stand clear at last, and be recognized by all. And when 
 all the ideas which are necessary for man to believe and 
 act on have gone through this long series of experiments, 
 and are knoM U and loved by all, then Avill the race be 
 perfect. 
 
 Now, these things, being believed, are a ground of the 
 idea of liberty I haxe i>ut forward. We ought to fall in 
 with the method of God's education of the race; and the 
 way to do it is for the State in public life, and for our- 
 selves in social and private life, to give- perfect liberty of 
 
236 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 thought and its expression on all jiossible subjects. But, 
 then, there will be continual contest, disturbance, differ- 
 ence, and no jjeace. Certainly, what else can you ex- 
 jject ? It is the natural result. It will happen whether 
 you like it or not, and all your efforts after repression of 
 thought Avill only increase the disturbance. You are 
 fighting, when you restrain thought, against a law of 
 humanity, and, instead of making ])eace, you only double 
 war. Recognize the law, chime in with it, and assist 
 and stimulate the battle of opinion. The peace you 
 desire can only be won through this war. Not till every 
 oj^iuion on any large question is worked through can 
 peace on that question be attained. 
 
 But men are frightened to do this. They say that 
 immoral or evil oj)inions will be put forward; and that 
 this will hinder the progress of mankind, that opinions 
 dangerous to the welfare of the State, dangerous to lib- 
 erty, dangerous to })olitioal jirogress, will be put for- 
 ward, and that these will do cruel damage. Therefore, 
 they think there is no hoj^e of solution excej^t in author- 
 ity, in repressing or discouraging by the strong hand of 
 the State thoughts which we know to be evil for man- 
 kind or perilous to the State. I say that is not only a 
 sin, in that it violates liberty, but a folly, in that it has 
 been proved a hundred times that it does not attain its 
 end. It only strengthens the false opinion, it only gives 
 new life to the dangerous one. Place a dam across a 
 river, you do not diminish the volume of water behind 
 it, you only give it force in that particular place. You 
 may be very comfortable below it for a time where you 
 have lessened the amount of water ; but the time comes 
 when the river swells, and then where is your dam, and 
 what is its result ? The devastation of an inundation. 
 
LIBERTY. 
 
 237 
 
 " But, if we allow absolute freedom of thought and 
 expression, we do not produce any clear ideas on any 
 subject, only a chaos of opinions, as, for example, on the 
 subject of liberty." That is only too likely to be your 
 view, if you do not believe in a God who is educating 
 the race. And you are driven back, having no faith or 
 hope, on the plan of authority ; but tlie true lover of 
 liberty, who believes in God as a divine and guiding 
 spirit in men, has not only hope, but certainty, that a 
 solution will be found. He knows that the best and 
 highest view of the idea will in the end prevail ; and 
 that the more liberty of discussion he gives, even of evil 
 and dangerous opinions, the sooner will the solution be 
 arrived at. 
 
 Tlicse are the religious grounds on which we base our 
 idea of liberty ; and for that idea, so founded, M-e are 
 ready to die. We ought to love it with all our heart 
 and soul ; we ought to sacrifice anything and everything 
 for it ; we ought to devote our life and all our powers to 
 extend it ; we ought to be true to it, no matter how 
 alluring the temptation to palter with it. And we ought 
 to love it as a jiart of our religion, for we know that it is 
 the will of God, when we look at the revelation he gave 
 through Christ, and at the revelation he has given in the 
 course of history. I hold, then, that all restraint of opin- 
 ion and its expression is irreligious. All disabling laws 
 are irreligious, no matter how expedient they may seem ; 
 that is, all laws M'hich make the exi^ression of thouglit on 
 any subjects whatever a crime to be punished by the 
 State. The State has notliing to do with oi^inion. It is 
 quite different when opinions are put into overt acts. 
 Of these, the State has cognizance. It has a perfect 
 
238 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 right to step in there, and say, You have a right to hold 
 your opinion, to preach it, and make it prevail, if you 
 can. If you can, it will, through winning a majority to 
 its side, become part of the law of the State ; but, till 
 you do make it jsrevail, I have a right to prevent your 
 ])utting it into act, and to punish you if you do, and in 
 so doing I do not violate but secure liberty. And, if you 
 do get a very large nimiber to hold your view, and not 
 being able to make it prevail in the free council of the 
 State, and seeing, too, that it is getting weaker instead 
 of stronger, — as, for examj^le, was the case in America 
 with regard to the question of slavery, — you choose to 
 supjjort it overtly in arais, I have a right, in the inter- 
 ests of liberty of thought, to go to war with you, and 
 compel you, if I can, to bow to the more prevalent 
 opinion. 
 
 That would be the case in free States where liberty 
 of thought and its expression on political subjects is 
 allowed by the State. 
 
 Then there is another class of questions much dis- 
 cussed at present, — marriage, education, and others. To 
 insist on civil marriages, to make education compulsory, 
 to say that every clergyman connected with the State 
 should take a university degree, does not in the slightest 
 infringe on the idea of liberty I have laid down, if the 
 State at the same time permits tlie freest possible dis- 
 cussion of these things ; if it says. Preach, teach, protest, 
 agitate against them as much as you will, strive your 
 best to make the ojiposite views prevail. But, if it not 
 only frames these laws, but also makes it penal to agitate 
 against them by free speech, then it does violate liberty, 
 and is committing a sin and a folly. 
 
LIBERTY. 
 
 239 
 
 And this I hold tliat Germany is now doing in tlie 
 matter, not of tlie above laws, but on the question 
 of papal infallibility. It has said, To preach this doc- 
 trine is dangerous to the State. It conflicts with luy 
 ideas, it liindcrs ])rogress, it is injurious to freedom, and 
 I will make the teaching of it penal. Your ])ricsts have 
 taken the oath of allegiance to the State, and belong to 
 a State Church. This new faith of yours contradicts 
 your oath, and you must give up the expression of it. 
 You may say that you submit to tlie rule of the State 
 Church ; but, if you teach this oj)inion, I will hold that 
 it violates those rules, and make a law to that effect to 
 restrain your opinion. 
 
 The State has no right to do that, if it jjretends to 
 be a free State. Its action violates the idea of liberty. 
 If German liberals say that this is being true to liberty, 
 they must be either very blind or very hypocritical. I 
 do not accuse them of the latter. They are really 
 carried away by hatred of an illiberal system into a 
 deliberate violation of liberty. They choose to violate 
 liberty for the sake of what they think to be liberty. 
 They have got no clear idea of what the idea of liberty 
 is. And they are utterly Avrong. They are placing expe- 
 diency before right; they are fighting agamst human 
 nature in figliting against the fi-ee thought of the indi- 
 A'idual and its expression: they are fighting against God 
 in fighting against his will that all truth should be ar- 
 rived at only by absolute freedom of discussion. And 
 it is downright persecution ; and surely we know that 
 persecution of oijinion is wrong. If I am told truly, 
 there are a number of Roman Catholic churches entirely 
 shut up in the Rhine Provinces. What does that mean? 
 
240 
 
 FAITH AlfD FREEDOM. 
 
 It is not only wrong, it is folly. Have we not learned 
 yet, has history not yet made it clear, that persecution 
 is a mistake, — that it invariably weakens the State, even 
 when it gains its end of destroying or expelling those it 
 persecutes? What did it do for Spain when it drove 
 out the Moors and decimated the Jews? What for 
 France, when it made the country too hot for the 
 Huguenots? It is double folly at this time of the world, 
 when it cannot do its work completely by extermination, 
 but only proceed by fine and imprisonment. The result 
 will show its folly. It will be to strengthen ultramon- 
 tanism in Germany, and to extend its life. For the State 
 to make its opponents martyrs is to deejjen their power. 
 Ultramontanism will die out ; but this sort of thing 
 ■will be a cordial to its decaying body. It is further 
 wrong in that such a law directly tempts men to do 
 wrong. No sin could be greater or more degrading 
 than that any man, believing an opinion to be right, 
 should cease to teach it for the sake of escaping punish- 
 ment or of gaining worldly reward ; and all laws that 
 make opinion penal tem2)t men to that. You may say 
 individual opinion must be sacrificed to the welfare of 
 the State. Yes, the individual may do that of his own 
 free will, and be right in doing so. But that is very dif- 
 ferent from this, which forces him or tries to force him 
 to do so : it is not a sacrifice you claim from him, it is 
 self-degradation ; and the degradation of any citizen of 
 the State weakens the State by the lowering of the 
 moral tone of the citizen. And, lastly, the very excuse 
 made for it is as wrong and as foolish as it is itself. "All 
 ultramontane A'iews oppose and hinder liberty, and re- 
 tard the progi'ess of man : we are right to repress their 
 
LIBERTY. 
 
 241 
 
 being taught because they (hi so." Tliat is, liberty is 
 violated for the sake of lilx-rty. This is the old iniqui- 
 tous thing, a leaf out of the book of the very Jesuitry 
 they are opjiosing, "The end justifies the means, let us 
 do evil for the sake of good." That is a wrong excuse, 
 it is a foolish excuse also. To tell lies for the sake of 
 tnith lias never succeeded; and to violate liberty — no 
 matter liow exjiedient it may seem, no matter how dan- 
 gerous to liberty the opinions repressed may be — has 
 never strengthened liberty. And just as much harm as 
 jiious frauds have done to religion, so much harm to be 
 illiberal for the sake of liberty does to liberty. 
 
 It is in order to express sympathy with the German 
 struggle against ultramontanism, of which this perse- 
 cuting law is an integral part, that there are meetings 
 to be held this week in London. I trust that those 
 who direct then^ will, while approving of some of the 
 Falk laws, mark their disapproval of that one which 
 violates the idea of liberty I have ventured to lay down. 
 If they are liberals and they suffer themselves to be be- 
 trayed into apjiroval of it, they will be contradicting all 
 the principles we have been contending for during more 
 than two centuries. I fear that many will be hurried 
 away through dislike of ultramontanism, and, for the 
 sake, as they think, of liberty, to some sort of approval. 
 I am already dismayed by hearing the old arguments 
 used by those who opposed the repeal of the penal laws 
 against the Catholics, arguments which went on the 
 ground that Catholic ojnnions were dangerous to liberty, 
 used noAV by men who have been up to tliis moment, 
 when they are irritated l)y the views of tlie ultramon- 
 tanes, true partisans of liberty. And I and many others 
 
242 
 
 FAITH AKD FREEDOM. 
 
 are asking, Have men really no clear idea of liberty, no 
 firm ground on which to place it, that now prejudice or 
 expediency at once carries them away ? It is, of course, 
 hard to resist using authority when one has to contend 
 against a retrograde and degrading set of ideas, such as 
 those of the ultramontanes; l)ut surely we ought to be 
 able to hold fast in the midst of our irritation to our 
 idea, and keep it in its j^nrity. And I am very sorry, as 
 a matter of wisdom and for the sake of liberty, that the 
 meeting is to be held. It will have tM'o results: it will 
 strengthen ultramontanism in tliis country, and it will 
 raise the old, wild, unreasoning Protestant cry, with all 
 its attendant intolerance, in the mass of the uncultivated 
 people of this city. 
 
 It is in cases like this that we are called upon to 
 hold fast to our idea. Do not let hatred of that which 
 is against liberty lead you to be false to liberty. Love 
 your idea too well to be untrue to it, even for its own 
 sake. Believe in it too strongly to be afraid of any 
 opinions that oppose it. Say to men like the ultramon- 
 tanes, who stand in the way of truth and knowledge and 
 freedom, I believe in liberty: therefore, the more you 
 express your opinions, the better. Say to yourself, God 
 wishes free thought and individual expression of it; 
 therefore, I know I am right in refusing to use authority 
 of any kind for its re])ression, and in disapproving the 
 action of any State so far as it uses it. Say to yourself, 
 God IS educating the world through the battle of free 
 thought: therefore, the noblest view of the idea of lib- 
 erty must preA'ail in the end ; and, in order that it may 
 more quickly prevail, let iis exhaust by free discussion of 
 them all the ignoble ones. I know that all the false ones 
 
LIBERTY. 
 
 243 
 
 will go down: my part is to be true to the true idea, to 
 love it, to devote myself to it, to sacrifice myself for it. 
 And in doing so I devote myself, so far forth, to the race 
 of man ; I love and sacrifice myself for man ; I follow the 
 example and live by the spirit of Jesus Christ. » 
 
THE mDIYIDUAL SOUL AI^D GOD. 
 
 1875. 
 
 " What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of 
 them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go 
 after that which is lost, until he find it ? " — Luke xv., 5. 
 
 WiTHix this outward "world, which we think so real, 
 but which is only a shadow, lies the inward actual world. 
 It is invisible to our eyes, inaudible to our ears. Visions 
 of it come and go before us, notes of its music, hints of 
 its truths, just touch us, who are common men, and go. 
 It is hard ; for all life and all knowledge and all rest 
 consist in our Avinning some of its realities, in finally 
 finding enough of it to gain the power of living in it. 
 Hapjjily for us, there are men and women born into the 
 world who are A'ery near it, who live on its frontier, who 
 often pass into it. These have what we call genius. It 
 is the mark of genius that it sees the invisible world, 
 hears its music, feels its thoughts. Tou may think I 
 speak only of the spiritual world which has to do with 
 the spirit of man in its relation to God. Not so : that is 
 only one part of the actual world of which our world is 
 the shadow. The true world is as much the invisible 
 one in all the secular realms of thouglit and feeling and 
 act as It IS in the spiritual realms of thought and feeling, 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 
 
 245 
 
 and Ave must get into it at all points before we can truly- 
 live. It is men of genius who are the mediators between 
 us and it, the way by Avhich Ave enter into it. They 
 reveal the unknoAvn life and music and truth : Ave see 
 the things they reveal, loA-e them, and shall finally attain 
 them. 
 
 The artist sees within the block a beautiful thing, and 
 carves it for men ; and it becomes a liA'ing thing to him 
 and us, a thing not of this Avorld, but of the invisible 
 world. It lives for us, and Ave loA'e it. The story of 
 Pygmalion is no dream. Another sees in every quiet 
 nook among the hills, in every stormy battle of the 
 clouds, not the relations of color and form that seem to 
 us, but the emotions and life of the living Being, the 
 movement of Avhose heart and brain makes the AA'orld to 
 us ; and it is these he paints. We look at the picture, 
 and we see the invisible world through his Avork. The 
 great natural philosopher, like Newton or Faraday, sees 
 the ideas that make the material Avorld bans: together, 
 and knows the truth he has to prove before he proves it. 
 The great poet does not build up by reasoning the talk 
 of Othello and lago, and Romeo and Juliet : he has 
 heard them speak, and seen the chamber at Cyprus, the 
 orchard at Verona, — only the names are nothing, the 
 world in which they are is the inA'isible Avorld of the 
 human emotions. The great musician listens Avith no 
 earthly ear to his music. That Avhich he makes us hear 
 he has heard, sung, and played Avhere no Avaves of air 
 repeat the A'ibrations. 
 
 Eye hath not seen nor ear heard what these men feel. 
 But, Avhen they make them into form, Ave hear and see, 
 though it is only dimly, something of that invisible and 
 
246 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 inaudible world which is the true one, and we are led 
 away from the apparent world which surrounds us to 
 love and seek the other ; and, as we seek, we learn a 
 little, and that little helps us forward, till more and more 
 our inner eye and ear are awakened, and at last we see 
 and hear for ourselves, and then we are happy. We 
 have lost the shadow world, and gained the substantial. 
 We know the worth of the sensible tilings, that they are 
 shadows useful only to tell us that there are real things 
 that cast them. And, the real things attained, we think 
 no more of their shadoAvs. 
 
 In this effort, of what use is the intellect acting by 
 itself? It is of no use at all till the truth is seen, and 
 it never sees or can see truth. It has to do with the 
 phenomenal world alone, with the shadows of the true. 
 All it can do is to make the shadows darker and their 
 outlines more defined. Those who work by it alone 
 think when they have done this that they have discov- 
 ered truth. They have only made truth more difficult 
 to reach, because they have persuaded us, as so many 
 try to persuade us now, that the shadows are real. 
 Truth is never discovered : it is seen, and then revealed. 
 When it is seen, and only then, is tlie intellect of any 
 use. Then comes in its service. It makes the truth 
 more clear, confirms and fits it for practical use by 
 showing how the shadows we call facts bear witness to 
 the truth that casts them, by showing the relation the 
 ap])arent world bears to the real, by enablhig us to make 
 iise of the shadows to grasp the real things more firmly. 
 
 I daresay few of you will believe all this. It may be 
 true, you will say, in the spiritual world. It is not true 
 in the realms of art, science, or jihilosophy. I think it is. 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 
 
 247 
 
 I make no distinction between the metliods and princi- 
 ples of the spiritual and secular worlds. There is one 
 mind at the root of both, and in both the mere intellect 
 is worthless till truth is seen. In both, all truth comes 
 to us by Revelation; and, when Revelation has given it, 
 then it is reasoned on for confirmation and a|)plication. 
 
 Those ■whom we call men of genius in knowledge and 
 art, we call prophets in the spiritual world. They are 
 seers, who see directly the truths of God's relation to 
 man, and of man's to God. They declare these truths, 
 they do not attempt to prove them: they let them prove 
 themselves. Some receive them at once, others say tliey 
 must prove them by reasoning; but they can only be 
 seen, not proved. They can never be reasoned upon 
 Avith any practical use till the reasoner has felt the life 
 and seen the beauty in them. And it will be hard for 
 a man who thinks intellect the first and greatest power 
 to do this, for they generally traverse and deny the 
 reasoning of centuries. Naturally, for they deny the 
 A'ery existence of that which is apparent, that very thing 
 on which the intellect only employs itself. 
 
 All this is illustrated by the scene and the parable on 
 the main subject of which we preached last Sunday. 
 Long theological reasonings had convinced the Pliari- 
 sees and Scribes tliat their scheme of the universe of 
 spirit was the only true one. It followed that all those 
 who did not agree with them had nothing to do with 
 God ; that all those who, like Christ, disagreed with 
 their opinions and practice, that all those whom their 
 society rejected for certain open sins, like the publicans 
 and sinners, were excluded. They thought no more of 
 them as individuals : they classed them into one mass. 
 
248 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 and called tliem the lost. The notion that God had to do 
 with them as individuals, tliat he must consider them as 
 such, was impossilile to their intellect. They did not 
 even try to prove a negative, for they could not conceive 
 a negative. Christ, on the other hand, knew of tlieir 
 reasonings, but tliouglit them contemptible. Tlieir world 
 Avas not liis world at all. He did not reason, he saw. 
 And this is what he saw : he saw God in distinct per- 
 sonal relation with every human soul present. He saw 
 them all as children, each with a separate being, and 
 each connected with God and dear to him in a different 
 way from the others. Each was a living personality 
 linked to a living Father. 
 
 That was the invisible fact he saw ; and it cut right 
 across all the long lines of theology which the Pharisees 
 had laid down after years of intellectual work on their 
 notions of God. And no wonder ; for it is plain, sup- 
 posing it true, that it is not a truth which the intellect 
 can reach or prove. It shines by its own light, if it 
 shines at all. Even when it is received, all the intellect 
 of man can do witli it is to apply it, not to prove it. It 
 cannot be proved in the Avay of reasoning. 
 
 Indeed, the intellect of man, working out its reason- 
 ings on society, on tlie races of mankind, on men's 
 physical and moral constitution, has always arrived at 
 conclusions which either directly deny that truth, or 
 implicitly deny it. It must have struck the Pharisees 
 as ridiculous : it is equally absurd to a number of 
 religioixs sects to-day, who cannot conceive that the 
 Roman Catholic, or the Unitarian, or the atheist, or the 
 open sinner, or the High Churchman, or the liberal theo- 
 logian, is each the special child of God. They are 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 
 
 249 
 
 lost classes, not individuals, whom God is seeking. It 
 contradicts just as much all the tendencies of ancient 
 and modern philosophies, and all the tendencies of mod- 
 ern social and physiological science. It runs counter to 
 all that scientific thought, which makes us aiatomatons or 
 machines, or mixes us up with nature, or labels us only 
 as superior animals. It is equally at variance with all 
 the philosophies which, beginning from biology, make us 
 only the creatures of development, not only in body, but 
 in conscience, thought, and feeling, and mingle us ujd 
 with the whole race, which say, "Humanity lives, but 
 its parts each perish." Yes : it is altogether unconform- 
 able with all the most laborious efforts by which human 
 reasoning, working in its favorite daylight, has tried to 
 explain what we are, and whence we come. It pro- 
 claims the distinct individuality and eternity and divin- 
 ity of each human soul, the individual and separate 
 preciousness of each. It isolates each man with God, 
 though in another point of view it unites them all with 
 him and one another. Pharisee and Scribe might say 
 what they would, lose the thought of the sinner in the 
 sinfulness of the class, see in the publican a necessary 
 outcast (part of the dross l)y purging itself of Avhich 
 the gold of society becomes clear), Christ, the Seer of 
 the Invisible, held their speech as vile, and saw — what? 
 Saw all the pity of the earth, and the Mighty God, and 
 the whole host of heavenly intelligences concentrating 
 their eager thought, their passionate endeavor, their love 
 and interest, and their joy round one wandering human 
 soul. " What man of you having a hundred sheej), if 
 he lose one of them. . . . Likewise, I say unto you, there 
 is joy in the ])resence of the angels of heaven over one 
 sinner that repenteth." 
 
250 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 That is a revelation, — one of the invisible truths 
 which we believe, because it exalts our whole nature 
 and makes beautiful the Avorld of man, and makes God 
 beautiful, and fills our life with joy and hope and self- 
 sacrifice and faith and trust, and thrills i;s with emotion 
 in which we rise into God, — but which we do not be- 
 lieve, but would rather deny, when we investigate the 
 problem of mankind by the help of the intellect alone. 
 
 Christ then declares here the absolute distinctness of 
 individual being. But on what ground? On this, — that 
 each man is in separate and unbreakable union with 
 God. There is, properly speaking, only one Being in 
 the whole universe, only one self-existing Being. To 
 conceive that seems to be a necessity of thought, if we 
 do not deny Being. But the very power of conceiving 
 it seems to prove that Ave are part of it. We could not 
 conceive of self-existent Being, were we not conscious our- 
 selves of Being; and to be conscious of Being is to be 
 conscious of God. When we feel that we are, we feel God 
 in us, or rather God himself becomes in us self-conscious. 
 A jjart of him, a phase of his beauty or knowledge or love, 
 takes form in us. This is our individuality ; and it would 
 be i^erfect in us, as it was in Christ, if we could feel, as 
 he did, that all our thoughts were thoughts of God, that 
 all our words and actions were the speech and deed of 
 God, — if we could say, " I and my Father are one." 
 Toward that we are struggling all our lives ; to that, at 
 some time or another, eternity will bring us. And the 
 first step toward it is to believe that we are (by our very 
 being, and because we are) indissolubly united to God; 
 so that, if we wander away from him, he must seek us, 
 and we must be found of him. And the must consists 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 251 
 
 in this: that, if we were lost, a part of Infinite Being 
 would be missing forever, which is an absurdity. 
 
 There exists, then, between us and God a distinct per- 
 sonal relation, different in each person, and different 
 forever. No one can ever be mixed up with another, no 
 one can ever ajoproach God or be approached by him, in 
 exactly the sa-me way. Of all the infinite number of 
 human spirits, there has not been one whose relation to 
 God has been the same. In one aspect, in our personal 
 relation to God, each one of us and he are alone in the 
 universe. 
 
 Nothing can proclaim more strongly or create more 
 vividly the doctrine of human individuality, and it is a 
 Christian creation. It has run into great evils : in its 
 corruptions, it has stimulated i-eligious selfishness, and 
 made persecutions, and brought forth asceticism, and 
 created a license of thought and act which has done 
 harm, or seemed to do harm. But the evils sink into 
 nothing before the good that has flowed from it. It has 
 been at the root of all liberty of thought, of all the 
 struggles for political liberty. It has, in claiming and 
 carrying out man's right to develop his own being, been 
 at the root of all increase of knowledge, of the arts, of 
 culture. It lias also, in so doing, made manifold and 
 complex, with a million individual efforts, all the simple 
 ideas and feelings, so that life has been indefinitely en- 
 riched. It has placed ideas and truths in a thousand 
 different ways before mankind, so that the universe of 
 tiiought and feeling is more infinitely varied than the 
 universe of nature, and human life, as the world goes on, 
 grows in interest and delight. In its infinite production 
 of infinite forms of sjjiritual thought and emotion, it has 
 
252 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 made iis know something of the infinite God. It is an 
 idea which is the salt of the earth, and Ave owe its 
 revelation to Christ. 
 
 And I am sure it was wanted and is wanted. The 
 tendency of society is to make men all of one pattern, 
 to repress all that is original, to tyrannize over all indi- 
 viduality. Imperialism tries to force all thought into 
 harmony with the will of one, democracy into harmony 
 with the will of the many. Religious opinion classes us 
 into bad and good, and forgets the infinite modifications 
 of both. Political party wants us to act with our party, 
 and classes us by jiarty (justly enough, as religion also, 
 for its own purposes) ; but it is one tendency the more 
 against individuality. Science tells us that we are neces- 
 saiy results of all that has gone before, that we could not 
 help ourselves, and that we cannot do so now. Given 
 such a body, such arrangement toward growth of atoms, 
 such a disarrangement in them as we call hereditary 
 disease, we will be this or that infallibly. That wars 
 against individuality. The root of individuality is that 
 we have a living will within, which may be master, and 
 can conquer circumstances, and compel development, in 
 spite of nature ; which is not the effect, but the master 
 (by right of a different and higher being in it), of our 
 physical nature. Science denies that, and I am very 
 sorry for those who deny it. Of late, it has gone fur- 
 ther ; and now it tends to make us think of ourselves as 
 only necessary parts of a great machine, and of our 
 actions and thoughts as mechanical, — worse still, auto- 
 matic, so that we cannot be said even to think or act 
 truly at all. No, nor even to feel. A mother's love for 
 her child is the resultant of a vast number of past 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 
 
 253 
 
 atomic motions. Our love for one anotlier reduces itself 
 at last to physical arrangement, our sense of beauty to 
 the same. 
 
 What is the use of trying to prove all these things? 
 They never can be proved ; and, if they seemed to be 
 proved, the mass of men — tliank God ! — would not be- 
 lieve them. They are very odious in themselves, and the 
 efforts to ])rove them are mere waste of time and intel- 
 ligence. It is almost pitiable to see all this hard work 
 spent in trying to prove a negative the belief in which 
 arises from tliese men having shut one of their eyes. It 
 is more than pitiable, it is an evil thing to override the 
 world with these theories ; for they go with all the other 
 tendencies which war against individuality. We cease 
 to be persons : we are made by these theories only one of 
 the forms of jihysical nature. 
 
 Then there are all the philosopliers of to-day who 
 wither the individual for the sake of the race. I have 
 almost forsworn any more usage of the word " race." 
 I have almost thought of giving up any more jjreaching 
 of self-sacrifice for the use and good of the race ; and I 
 would do so, were it not to be as provincial as they, if 
 I were to refuse to look at their side of the shield be- 
 cause they sit fixed in such ecstatic contemplation of it 
 as to be unable to see the other, which asserts the impor- 
 tance of individual being. But, though one does not 
 give up the truths which lie in the idea that we must 
 surrender personal inclinations and live with the thought 
 of the happiness and good of the coming humanity as 
 one of our first motives, one is bound at the same time 
 to protest against the whole swallowing the parts. The 
 good of the race is not our only motive for life : it must 
 
254 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 be coincident with careful self-development for the sake 
 of our everlasting connection with God. That is seltish, 
 they cry. No, it is not ; for its end is union with perfect 
 love. It is degrading to the loftier ideas, they cry. Is 
 it? Compare the results in the case of ideas. This 
 philosophy has lost the idea of God, and replaced it by 
 the idea of a humanity which is destined to perish as 
 a whole, and every part of which jjerishes forever, each 
 soul dropping day by day into eternal night for the sake 
 of those who also are to di-op into an abyss of nothing- 
 ness. Is that notion of a divinity to worship loftier than 
 the idea of God? Is that notion of all-overmastering 
 death, of the final destruction of all the thought and love 
 and beauty and knowledge and art of man, loftier than 
 the notion of their immortal continuance and activity? 
 Oh, no ! The degradation of thought is on the side of 
 those who, in withering the individual for the race, anni- 
 hilate God and Immortality, and finally wither forever 
 the race. Look to the end : for what have they sacri- 
 ficed their individuality? They have sacrificed it for 
 the sake of a humanity which, individually and collec- 
 tively, ends in the ridiculous and shameful tragedy of 
 universal annihilation. 
 
 It is a faith inconceivably dull and hopeless and sor- 
 rowful ; and looking on it all, on all the tendencies which 
 war against individual being and against the strong and 
 creative sense of it which is active in man, we turn with 
 intense jileasure and faith to the revelation by Christ of 
 our vivid and continuous personality. 
 
 And we need not be downcast about it, as if all these 
 tendencies could damage it, nor need we think that man 
 will lose this precious truth. Art and Christianity both 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 255 
 
 support it. Men who love art will always develop them- 
 selves just as they please, and will, if philoso])hy or 
 society attempt to limit their lives by rule, rebel against 
 them both ; and, if science attempt to prove that they 
 love or enjoy T)eauty or create it in a mechanical way or 
 because they cannot help it, laugh at and desjiise sci- 
 ence. To them there will always be a large jjart of their 
 liumanity, and that in their minds the highest, which has 
 nothing to do with knowledge, and which transcends the 
 understanding, and thinks its pOAvers and its work com- 
 monplace. 
 
 Men who love God, and who feel that he loves them, 
 who know that a direct personal relation is established 
 between him and them, and that they are living beings 
 forever, will equally and still more strongly resist the 
 tendencies of which I speak. Religion, when it means 
 the personal tie between a good Father who loves and 
 a child whom he is educating, will always make indi- 
 vidual men. Once a man feels, " I am myself God's, and 
 he sijeaks and works in me and through me," he has that 
 Avithin him which forces him to make himself himself, 
 which saves him from exev losing his personality or be- 
 lieving in any theory which directly, or by implication, 
 puts it aside. Christianity is the saving of the individ- 
 uality of man ; and it is the thing hest worth saving, not 
 only for the man himself, but for the whole race. Yes, 
 for the sake of the wliole, it is tlie best thing. The true 
 good of the whole does not consist in the repression, but 
 in the strengthening of the individual. The true life of 
 the whole does not consist in the dying of the parts, but 
 in the intensity of the life of each part. The true growth 
 of the race does not consist in the sacrifice of the parts 
 
256 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 when they have grown for sixty years, but in their end- 
 less continuance in growth. 
 
 Nor is it less true that the Christian declaration of 
 indiAdduality is a stronger basis of union among men 
 for mutual good than the sacrifice or the suicide of in- 
 dividuality. The true basis of union is not the union 
 of dying men in a dying whole, but the union of living 
 men in a living God. The true basis of mutual love is 
 not the union of men who die daily for others who die 
 also, but the union of all men to promote the loving life 
 of all in God. The higliest motive for love of our fellow- 
 men and for universal love is found in the truth that we 
 all love the same Father, and are all his children. That 
 is the true and unconquerable ground of the brother- 
 hood of humanity; and, while it creates infinite self-sacri- 
 fice, it retains individual life and the eternal growth of 
 personality. 
 
 To hold it, to live by it, is not at least duU. Dull, 
 do I say? It transfigures the world, and makes glorious 
 our own life and all the lives of men. No one who 
 believes it feels himself a machine : he feels the living 
 God within him. No one can hold it, and yield to the 
 dull monotony of society, or bend himself in stupid 
 compliance to the rules of hfe the world lays down : 
 he who lives by it laughs at the knowledge which pro- 
 nounces his feelings necessary or his thoughts automatic. 
 He knows better. Nothing will convince him that he is 
 a congeries of atoms; nothing will prove to him that 
 he is only matter ; nothing will make him think that he 
 is going to die. All that he has thought and felt and 
 learned and done, out of which his personality has been 
 made, will be a j^art of him for ever, and bring forth 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL AND GOD. 257 
 
 new fruit in a new life. All his interests will remain, 
 only they will grow more intense as his life develops; 
 and they will grow more intense, not in a selfish indi- 
 viduality, but in one which will realize itself in losing 
 self-consciousness, in living in all things, in eternal loving, 
 and in the joy of loving. 
 
 And what he believes for himself, he believes for all. 
 He sees all men, like himself, as living persons, growing, 
 acting, thinking, rejoicing, and united forever into one 
 vast and loving humanity. For through the infinite 
 varieties of personalities which secure progress there 
 runs one mighty spirit, the united spirit of a common 
 love to Him, their Father, in whom they live and move 
 and have their being, who sought them wandering on 
 earth, who would not lose one of them, and who now has 
 made them lie down in green pastures, and led them 
 beside still waters, — one flock and one Shepherd. 
 
IMMOETALITY.-I. 
 
 1871. 
 
 " For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live unto 
 him." — Luke xx., 38. 
 
 There is a common reason for the perverse denial of 
 immortality. It is that man, when living solely for this 
 world, cannot believe in a world to come. He who is 
 blind has no conception of the stars. He who is with- 
 out passion cannot believe in enthusiasm. He who lives 
 for himself cannot believe in self-devotion. 
 
 And he who is living a base life cannot believe in a 
 noble one. If his soul is plunged in the sensual, he can- 
 not realize the spiritual. When his whole energies are 
 given to this world, he cannot conceive or possess the 
 world to come. There are, then, thousands of men 
 calling themselves Christians, to whom immortal life 
 is merely a name, to whom their little life is indeed 
 "rounded with a sleep." 
 
 Practically, they disbelieve in immortality. They may 
 even inwardly go further, and deny it to themselves, 
 should the question intrude upon their pleasure. But 
 they do not deny it before the world. Something holds 
 them back from boasting of their unbelief, — a conscious- 
 ness that they have thrown aside a noble thing, a regret 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 259 
 
 which will steal in, that now they can no longer aspire 
 beyond their present life. Unal)le to realize immortality 
 themselves, they yet shrink from an open denial of it 
 with a sense of shame and degradation. But, still more, 
 it becomes a dreadful thing to them, if they have any 
 sensitive reverence left for the sorrow of mankind, to 
 throw doubt upon this doctrine. If true, it is so pre- 
 cious that it seems the race might bear any suffering, 
 provided it was its fate at last. If it is only held to be 
 false, and not proved false, a man may well doubt 
 whether, on his own judgment alone, he should proclaim 
 that he liolds it false. There is a devotion to one's own 
 truthfulness, which is, in certain circumstances, intoler- 
 able cruelty to others ; and, in spiritual matters, where 
 ])vooi has not been attained, unless we clearly feel that 
 to disclose our opinion is good for man, we are only 
 Pharisees anxious to jilacard our honesty, when we 
 loudly proclaim our negations in }>ublic or in jirivate. 
 Truthfulness without charity is a vice and not a virtue, 
 as love without truthfulness to moral right becomes 
 idolatry. 
 
 And men in general have felt this, and Avhen they dis- 
 ' believed in iminortaiity have held their tongue. 
 
 Moreover, they have refrained, because they insensibly 
 felt that the denial of immortality is practically atheism. 
 Clinging still to the notion of a God, they connect with 
 him their ideas of right and wrong. He is their source, 
 and he allots their sanctions. But no one can lon<i con- 
 tinue to believe in and to love a God who is assumed to 
 give us these ideas, and then so forgets all about his gift 
 and his creature as to plunge obedience and disobedience 
 into the same nothingness ; or who, by wilfully annexing 
 
260 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 annihilation to all human lives alike, proclaims that in 
 his eyes Tiberius, rotting to a shameless deatli in Caprea, 
 is on the same level with the Saviour, dying on Calvary 
 for the Truth. One must feel that such a God would be 
 wicked. He would deny that very morality whicli we 
 imagine he has implanted in us. We should be obliged 
 to deny his existence, in order to retain our morality. 
 To disbelieve in immortality is to disbelieve in God: 
 with the fall of the one, falls the otlier. 
 
 And this also men have felt, and I know no instance 
 where the denial of immortality has not led directly to 
 atheism. Men did not like to realize, by putting their 
 denial of immortality into speech, that they did not 
 practically believe in God at all. 
 
 But these motives have now ceased to operate, at least 
 to the same extent. Matters have taken a new phase. 
 Immortality is boldly or quietly denied, not only by im- 
 pure and selfish men, but by men of culture and of a 
 high morality. It is accompanied, as it must necessarily 
 be, by latent or overt atheism, as a cause or a result of 
 the denial. 
 
 Wliat are the jjarticular causes of this denial at pres- 
 ent ? One is the jjrevalence of certain theological views 
 which, once largely accepted, are now felt to be repug- 
 nant to the moral sense. Good men, some among the 
 best and holiest of the race, have held these views, and 
 lived and died by them. And it is a strong proof that 
 theological opinions have no necessary connection with 
 goodness that these men have been so good. It proves 
 also tliat we cannot judge the morality of one time, so 
 far as it relates to the morality of opinions, by the mo- 
 rality of another time. For few doubted then of the 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 261 
 
 accordance of these opinions with moral right; and now 
 many persons distinctl}', and it seems to me with truth, 
 reject tliem as immoral. 
 
 Among these, the first is the conception of God. The 
 conception of God's nature which has been laid before 
 us for many years has brought many men at last to turn 
 away from it with dismay and ])ain. Tliey feel that the 
 morality of tlie pulpit on this matter lags behind the 
 moral feeling of society. God has been rejiresented, 
 they think, and I tliink with them, as selfish, as seeking 
 his own glory at the expense of his creatures' welfare, as 
 jealous, as arbitrary, as indulging in favoritism, as con- 
 demning all for the sake of one, as insisting on forms of 
 temporary im^Jortance and binding them forever on the 
 conscience, as ruining men for mistakes in doctrine, as 
 claiming a blind submission of the conscience and the 
 intellect, as vindictive, as the resolute torturer of the 
 greater \)avt of the human race by an everlasting pun- 
 ishment Avhich ^presupposes everlasting evil ; as, in one 
 word, anything rather than the Father revealed in Jesus 
 Christ. Much of this teaching remains still, though it is 
 presented under a veil by Avhich its coarser outlines are 
 modified. It is accepted by many who either do not 
 possess a strong and individual sense of morality, or who 
 do not think or prefer not to think on the matter, lest 
 they should shake the fabric of their easy faith or spoil 
 their religious sentiment. But those who do, and whose 
 moral feelinc; of riffht and wronir is sane and strong, 
 turn away revolted from a God of this character, believe 
 that to be immortally connected with him would be 
 degradation, even the very horror of hell. 
 
 But not having been taught any other God, and being, 
 
262 
 
 TAITH AKD FREEDOM. 
 
 to a certain degree, culpably lazy about examining into 
 the teaching of Christianity for themselves, they fall 
 back on their last resource, and disbelieve in immor- 
 tality. " It is better to perish forever than to be the 
 slave of such a ruler. We deny his existence, and we 
 deny the immortality he is said to promise. But, at the 
 same time, we will be true to our sense of right and 
 wrong ; we will do what we can to help the race ; we 
 will have our immortality in the memories of the future, 
 or in the ' Being of Humanity ' : but, as for ourselves, 
 let us cease, for we could not live with the Being who 
 has been described to us." 
 
 Now, I believe this to be, and no one need mistake my 
 meaning, a really healthy denial of immortality, for it is 
 founded on the denial of a false God. And so far as it 
 is founded on the assertion of a true morality, so far it 
 is, though these men do not confess it as such, the asser- 
 tion of the true God. The God who has been preached 
 to men of late has now become to us an idol, that is, a 
 conception of God lower tlian we ought to frame ; and 
 a revolt against that conception is not in reality a revolt 
 against God, it is a jirotest against idolatry. I sympa- 
 thize strongly, then, with that part of the infidel effort 
 which is directed against these immoral views of God's 
 character, though I am pained by the manner in Avhich 
 the attack is conducted ; and it is my hope that the 
 attack will lead our theologians to bring their teaching 
 lip to the level of the common moral feeling on this sub- 
 ject, and to reveal God as the Father of men in all the 
 profound meaning of that term. The belief in immor- 
 tality will then return, for the love of God will return to 
 men. For it is impossible for any man to clearly see and 
 
IMMOETALITY. 
 
 263 
 
 believe in the Father as revealed in Christ, and not pas- 
 sionately desire to draw nearer and nearer to him for- 
 ever, and not feel that he must live and continue to live 
 forever. Therefore, in oi-der to restore to men such as 
 I have described a belief in immortality, we must restore 
 to them a true conception of God. This is, this ought 
 to be, the main work of the preachers and teachers of 
 this time. For as long as the morality of the pulpit 
 hangs behind the morality of religious-minded men, 
 those religious-minded men will be infidels. 
 
 Again, another reason for the prevalent disbelief in 
 immortality is the selfish theory of religious life. That 
 theory has almost died away among religious teachers, 
 but the reaction against it still continues. We havie 
 given it up, but it is still imputed to us by our infidel 
 ojjponents. 
 
 It is said that we are to do good, in order to be re- 
 warded ; and to avoid evil, lest we should be punished. 
 In this doctrine,, badly stated as it has been, there is 
 nothing which ap^ieals to the nobler feelings of man. 
 Selfish gratification and selfish fear are alone addressed. 
 It is a direct appeal to that part of our being which is 
 the meanest, as if that Avere the part which could most 
 readily accej^t religion. It connects us to God by bonds 
 of self-interest, as a servant to a patron, not by bonds of 
 love, as a child to a father. 
 
 Against this theory many rose in revolt, declaring that 
 according to it the desire of immortal life was a selfish 
 desire, and proposing, as an escape from this selfishness, 
 that men should live a noble life without hopes for the 
 future. They set this forth as the highest form of self- 
 sacrifice. " Live," they said, " doing good, without hope 
 
264 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 of reward, only for the sake of good ; hating and fighting 
 "witli evil, because evil is degradation, not because it is 
 punished. You cannot do this, if you accept the Chris- 
 tian doctrine of immortal life. For it nourishes selfish- 
 ness. It locks a man up in care for his own safety. On 
 the highest religious grounds, we deny the doctrine of 
 immortality as prejudicial to a noble and pious life." 
 
 And, if that were really the Christian doctrine, they 
 would do well in denying it, and we might be driven 
 to accept their fine-sounding theory of self-sacrifice. 
 
 But we meet it, first, by a blunt contradiction of the 
 false representation of Christianity, from which it has 
 sprung as a reaction. Christianity says precisely what 
 these men say, only not in so abstract a manner. It 
 asks us to do good, not for the sake of abstract good, but 
 for the sake of being like to God, the personal goodness. 
 That is not a selfish doctrine, nor does it lead to selfish- 
 ness. It urges us to avoid evil, lest we should become 
 unlike God, in whose image we are, and whose temjjle 
 we become. That is not a selfish motive. It takes us 
 out of self, and makes our life consist in living in God, 
 and, because he lives in all the race, in living through 
 him in the interests and lives of all our brother-men. 
 That is not a selfish doctrine. Its reward is not a selfish 
 reward : it is the reward of being made unselfish, be- 
 cause made like to God. " Your rcAvard," said Christ, 
 "shall be great, for ye shall be the children of your 
 Father " ; that is, resembling your Father in character. 
 
 Nor does Christianity appeal to fear of jjunishment, 
 but to the feeling of love. It does not say menacingly, 
 "Thou shalt not kill, or steal, or be an idolater" : it says, 
 "Love the Lord thy God with all thy soul, and thy 
 
IMMORTAIJTY. 
 
 265 
 
 neighbor ns thj'self," for then, shu e tlioii lovest, thou 
 eanst not injure thy neiuliboi-, or sin against God. It 
 rejects fear, as having torment, as belonging to a spirit 
 of bondage, not a sjairit of life. It apj^eals throughout 
 to self-snorifice, self-devotion. It asks us to live by all 
 that is noblest in us, to ^\'alk Avortliy of our high voca- 
 tion, — likeness to Christ, who died for men. It does 
 not i)roelaini the selfish doctrine on ■which this denial of 
 immortality is founded. 
 
 But it is plain that it does declare rewards and punish- 
 ments; and an objector may say that, even on the sup- 
 position that Christianity does not really appeal to the 
 selfish feeling, yet the introduction of the element of 
 rewards has in itself a tendency to produce selfish feeling. 
 
 Certainly, we answer, if the rewards are material, if 
 they belong in any way to the selfish part of our nature. 
 But if they have nothing to do with that, but with that 
 part of our being which lives by the denial of self and 
 the jiractice of self-devotion, if they are purely spiritual 
 rewards, to long after them is not sellish, but the high 
 duty of the soul. God says, "Do good, and you are 
 rewarded." How? By an increased power of doing 
 good. Is it selfish to desire that? God says, "Love me, 
 love your brother-men Avith all your heart, and you shall 
 be rewarded." How? By deeper capability of loving. 
 Is it selfish to desire that ? The true statement of the 
 doctrine of rewards at once dissipates this absurd accu- 
 sation of selfishness. 
 
 To look forward to this increase of the spiritual life, 
 to this daily growth of unselfishness, and to live and act 
 in the hope of that and for its sake, — it is ridiculous to 
 call that a selfish theory. To do good, and to think of 
 
266 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 the reward of being loved by God and of becoming more 
 like to God, is no moi-e a selfish life than to spend one's 
 whole life for one's country, and to rejoice in the idea of 
 being loved by one's country, and becoming more worthy 
 of her love, is selfish for the high-hearted soldier. A life 
 of love, lived in the hope of the rcAvard of becoming 
 more capable of love, does not encourage in the heart a 
 single germ of sclfisliness. 
 
 And as to immortal life itself, if you choose to sepa- 
 rate it for a moment from these spiritual qualities of 
 love and jmrity and truth (which in us are immortal life), 
 the desire of life, keener, purer, more abounding, cannot 
 be selfish; for it is a natural appetite of the human 
 sj^irit. 
 
 Now, the lawful gratification of api^etite is not selfish. 
 No one is so aljsurd as to say that the desire of food or 
 drink when we are hungry or thirsty, for the sake of 
 relieving these apjjetites, is a selfish desire. No one says 
 that the desire of knowledge for the sake of knowing is 
 a selfish desire. It is a noble ajjpetite of the intellect. 
 Yet here, when we get into the realm of the spirit of 
 man, we are told that the desire of immortal life for the 
 sake of life, and that acting for the purpose of being a 
 partaker of tliat life, is selfish, and encourages selfish- 
 ness. It is a greater absurdity than the others. Desire 
 of life is the most natural appetite of the sjiirit, and we 
 are in desperate peril of becoming truly selfish when we 
 crush it, or caricature it, or attempt to live without it. 
 
 Indeed, that is often the residt. I do not speak now 
 of those who replace the doctrine of personal immor- 
 tality by the mystical and impractical notion of an 
 immortality in the race, for these at least allow of the 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 267 
 
 existence of a longing and ])as.sion for immortality, of 
 ■which they are bound to take notice ; nor of those who 
 frankly, on scientific grounds, avow that they do not 
 believe in the existence of a spirit in man apart from his 
 mortal frame, but of those who quietly, on the fantastic 
 ground of the selfisliness of this passion, deprive the 
 race of one of the mighty hopes which make us men. 
 
 On the whole, mankind resents this, and resents it 
 justly. It separates itself from these men who have 
 separated themselves from the common longing. They 
 feel their isolation, and retire from the world. Or they 
 become angry with tlie world, and mock and scorn its 
 asijirations. Or they seclude themselves and their theory 
 in Pharisaic dignity, and thank Fate that they are not 
 as other men are, blinded by superstition, but seated 
 aloft in the clear light of unapproachable self-sacrifice, 
 the martyrs of a grand idea. 
 
 The end of it all is that they become as self-involved 
 as the Simeon Stylites of the poet, as self-righteous, and 
 as self-conceited. Aiming at the utter denial of self, 
 they arrive at the utter assertion of self. 
 
 And this result follows, because the self-sacrifice put 
 forward by tlicse theorists is not self-sacrifice at all, but 
 the immolation of the best and most aspiring part of our 
 nature. They give up what is good, and call it self- 
 sacrifice. It is an inversion of tlie truth, for self-sacrifice 
 is surrendering what is -\\-rong, or jileasurable, for the 
 sake of good to others. There are certain necessary 
 elements in an act of true self-sacrifice. It must be in 
 itself a moral act, and distinctly felt as such by the actor, 
 else one throws the halo of self-surrender over evil : it 
 must not be merely instinctive, but done with a rational 
 
268 
 
 .FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 belief that it will produce good ; and the doer of it must 
 not give up or weaken any clement in his natin-e, the 
 existence and strong existence of which, even in a single 
 individual, is of importance for the progress of the race. 
 It is not self-sacrifice to crucify a high desire for the 
 sake of attaining an ideal. It is not self-sacrifice to give 
 up what is true for the sake of being more true. That 
 is as absurd as giving uji one friend for the sake of being 
 a more perfect friend to anotlier. You do not gain, but 
 lose so much of poM'er of friendship. And those who 
 surrender the hope of immortal life, for the sake of being 
 freed from all thought of self, do not gain the self-sacri- 
 ficing heart : they only take away one of the motive- 
 powers of self-sacrifice. 
 
 On the whole, we want clearer notions of self-sacrifice. 
 There are some things we have no right to give up. It 
 is not self-sacrifice to surrender our conscience, though 
 we might save a whole nation by doing so. It is not 
 self-sacrifice to be false to our own soid, for the sake of 
 those we love, as the martyr would have been, had he 
 worshipi3ed Jupiter, because his father and mother wept 
 at his feet, and were left to ruin by his death. It is not 
 self-sacrifice to commit suicide, as in some novels, for the 
 sake of the hapj^iness of others. It is not self-sacrifice 
 to marry one who loves you, because you do not wish 
 him or her to suffer, Avhen you do not love in return: it 
 is self-destruction. It is not self-sacrifice to cast aside 
 immortality, that it may not vitiate by a taint of self 
 your doing good. It is spiritual suicide, — nay, more, 
 there is a hidden selfishness in it; for he who does this 
 is endeavoring to secure liis own ideal at the expense of 
 the race of men whom he deprives of the hope which 
 
IMMOKTALITY. 
 
 269 
 
 more tlian all else has oliocrod and strengthened them in 
 the battle agamst evil. It is selfish to wilfully shut our 
 eyes to this, that we may indulge a fancy of our own. 
 
 For the sake of right reason, if not for the sake of 
 God, do not let yourself l)e tricked out of your belief in 
 immortality by a subtile seeming good, by an appeal to a 
 false idea of self-sacrifice. First cast aside the theology 
 which has given rise to tliis twisted notion of self-sacri- 
 fice, and then Avith a clear judgment you will recognize 
 that the true self-sacrifice is not incompatible with the 
 reward of that immortal life which is in itself nothing 
 less than the life of self-sacrifice. Your smile will then 
 be a quiet smile, when men tell you to give up longing 
 for immortality because it is a selfish ground of action. 
 What, you will say, is it selfish to hope to be forever 
 unselfish? Is it selfish to desire to be at one with the life 
 of Him who finds his life in giving himself away? Is it 
 selfish to aspire to that fuller life which is found in living 
 in the lives of others by watchful love of them ? These 
 are my rewards, and every one of them ministers to and 
 secures unselfishness. 
 
 Lastly, there is another reason for the denial of im- 
 mortality, which arises from theological teaching. It is 
 the extremely dull and limited notions of the future 
 life. We have too much transferred to our northern 
 Christianity and our active existence of thought the 
 Oriental conceptions of heaven drawn from the book of 
 the Revelation. We have taken them literally instead 
 of endeavoring to win the spiritual thoughts of which 
 these descriptions are but the form. And, literally taken, 
 they are wholly unsuitable to our Teutonic nature. They 
 make the future life seem to our minds a lazy dreamy 
 existence, in which all that is quickest and most vital in 
 
270 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 US would Stagnate, in which all that makes life interest- 
 ing, dramatic, active, would perish. It is not needless 
 to notice this. For it is astonishing how, even among 
 men who should have known better, the early childish 
 conceptions of heaven remain as realities. I have met 
 active-minded working-people and cultivated men who 
 looked forward with dislike to death, because they 
 dreaded the dulness of the next world. Till we have a 
 higher, more human conception of the future life than 
 that usually given, we shall not restore to society a joy- 
 ful belief in immortality. Our theology wants a picture 
 of the world to come, fitted to meet a larger and a 
 worthier ideal of humanity. If we wish to awake 
 interest in the future life, we must add to the merely 
 spiritual ideas of uncultivated teachers others which 
 will minister food to the imagination, the intellect, the 
 social, and national instincts of man ; nay, more, if we 
 believe in the resurrection of the body, others which 
 minister to tlie delight of the purified senses. 
 
 We need only go back to the revelation of Christ to 
 gain tlie true ground of this wider conception. He 
 revealed God as each man's Father. Now, the highest 
 work of a father is education, and the end of God's edu- 
 cation of man is the finished and harmonious develop- 
 ment of all his powers. If in the future life our intellect 
 or imagination is left undevelo2:>ed, it is not education, 
 and we cannot conceive of a jierfect fatherhood. If all 
 our powers have not there their work and their ojjpor- 
 tunities of exj^ansion, the full idea of fatherhood is lost. 
 If any of our true work here on earth is fruitless work, 
 and does not enable us to produce tenfold results in a 
 future life, no matter what that work may be, work of 
 the artist, historian, politician, merchant, tlien the true 
 
IMMORTALITY. 271 
 
 conception of education, and therefore of God's father- 
 hood, is lost. 
 
 No, brethren, we rest on this: "I go to prepare a place 
 for you." A place is prepared for each one of us ; a 
 place fitted to our distinct character; a separate work 
 fitted to develop that character into jierfection, and in 
 the doing of which we shall have the continual delight 
 of feeling that we are growing, — a ])lace not only for us, 
 but for all our peculiar powers. Our ideals shall become 
 more beautiful, and minister continually to fresh aspira- 
 tion, so that stagnation will be impossible. Feelings for 
 which we found no food here shall there be satisfied 
 with work, and exercised by action into exquisite per- 
 fection. Faint jiossibilities of our nature, which came 
 and went before us here like swallows on the wing, 
 shall there be grasped and made realities. The outlines 
 of life shall be filled tip, the rough statue of life shall be 
 finished. We shall be not only spiritual men, but men 
 complete in Christ, the perfect flower of humanity. 
 
 And this shall be in a father's home, where all the 
 dearest dreams of home-life shall find their happy ful- 
 filment ; in a perfect society, where all the charming 
 interchange of thought, and giving and receiving of each 
 other's good, which make our best happiness on earth, 
 shall be easier, freer, purer, more intimate, more spirit- 
 ual, more intellectual ; and, lastly, in a ])erfect polity, 
 "fellow-citizens with the saints," where all the interests 
 of large national life shall find room and opportunities 
 for development ; and, binding all together, the omni- 
 present Spirit of love, goodness, truth, and life, Avhom 
 we call God, and whom we know in Jesus Christ, shall 
 abide in us, and we in him, "for he is not a God of 
 the dead, but of the living; for all live unto him." 
 
IMMOETALITT.-II. 
 
 1871. 
 
 " For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living ; for all live 
 unto him." — Luke xx., 38. 
 
 It is remarkable that the theological questions ■which 
 are now most widely spoken of are no longer those 
 which presuppose a general confession of Christianity, 
 but other and deeper questions altogether, — questions 
 the very discussion of which shows how strongly the 
 foundations of the religious world are moved. It is 
 now frequently asked whether there be a God or not, 
 whether immortality be not a mere idol of the imagi- 
 nation. It is plain, when society has got down to these 
 root questions, that modern theology in its past form 
 has no longer the power to do its work, otherwise these 
 things would be axioms. It is plain that, if Christianity 
 is to keep its ground, it must go through a revolution, 
 and present itself in a new form to the minds of men. 
 
 It is the characteristic excellence of Christianity that 
 it is able to do this. For, with regard to his own relig- 
 ion, the saying of Christ remains forever true, that say- 
 ing which declares the continued progress of revelation, 
 — "I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot 
 bear them now." 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 273 
 
 But when the time draws near for the growth of 
 Christian thought around a new idea, and for the re- 
 generation of Christian practice by the life which flows 
 from the fresh thought, the change is heralded by the 
 appearance, sometimes in infidel teaching, sometimes in 
 isolated religious teachers, of scattered and disconnected 
 truths, which do not naturally belong to the old form of 
 religion, or which are sot uj) in opposition to it. Being 
 half-truths or isolated truths, they point forward to a 
 complete form which shall suj^iilement and include them. 
 At the present day, many of the new truths, or rather of 
 the extensions of the old truths, M hich Christianity will 
 have to absorb, are to be found in infidel teaching, com- 
 bined with a rejection of immortality and of the being 
 of a God. We shall search for those truths to-day, and 
 try to show that without the doctrine of immortality 
 they have no lasting value, but that in union with it 
 they are of real importance, and ought to be claimed for 
 Christianity. 
 
 But first let us examine for a moment what is taking 
 place at present with regard to Christian and infidel 
 teaching. 
 
 During the time when an old form of Christian 
 thought is slowly jjassing away, having exhausted all it 
 had to give, it repeats again and again with the gar- 
 rulity of old age the j^hrases which in its youth were the 
 expressions of living thought and feeling. They fitted 
 then the wants of men, and they were the means by 
 which religious life advanced and religious truth devel- 
 ojjed. But, being naturally cast into a fixed intellectual 
 system, they remained behind the movement tliey be- 
 gan : they made men grow, but men outgrew them, for 
 
274 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 systems become old, but mankind is always young. It 
 follows then, almost of necessity, that, when a certain 
 point in this j^rogress is reached, there will be a strong 
 reaction against the old form of Christianity, and the 
 reaction will contain the assertion of that which is want- 
 ing in the dying phase, and a protest against its weak- 
 ness. Both the assertion and the protest will often be 
 combined with infidel teaching ; for there will be many 
 who, seeing these garments of Christianity rotting away, 
 and hearing them declared to be Christianity itself, will 
 believe the declaration, and attack not only the gar- 
 ments, but the living spirit itself which is waiting to be 
 reclothed. The infidel teaching on religious subjects will 
 then consist of two parts, a negative and a positive part. 
 The negative will deny or ignore all Christian truth as 
 then taught : the positive will assert some ideas neces- 
 sary for the present time, and answering to some of its 
 religious wants. It is the business of Christian teachers, 
 while setting aside the negations, to claim as their own 
 those positive ideas which, though developed in a for- 
 eign soil, are yet derived from Christian seeds. They 
 will say, "We have learned from our enemies : they have 
 told us what the age desires. In answer to that desire, 
 they have unwittingly fallen back upon Cliristian ideas 
 and expanded them, led unconsciously thereto by the 
 ever-working spirit of God. Those expansions are ours : 
 we did not see them before, but we claim them now." 
 If we do that, the infidelity of the infidel — that is, his 
 negations — will slowly share the fate of all negations ; 
 and the scattered truths he teaches, taken into Chris- 
 tianity, find in it their vital union with all its past, and 
 form stepping-stones for its future growth. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 275 
 
 Tliis is the general sketch of tlie movement in which 
 we are now involved. We are at that point in it in 
 which we are beginning to recognize that the infidel is 
 teaching a few truths which naturally belong to Chris- 
 tianity. But Ave have not yet fully assimilated those 
 truths, or established their connection Avith those AA'^e 
 possess. Not till tiiat is done Avill our Avider form of 
 Christian thought be completed. 
 
 Let us take the two main forms of infidelity which pre- 
 vail, — secularism and Comtism, — the first Avidely spread 
 among the Avorking-classes ; the second — the religion of 
 positivism, to call it by its other name — held by a small 
 number of the cultivated class. 
 
 Both of these hold in them ideas Avhich ought to be 
 ours. It is said that these ideas are foreign to Chris- 
 tianity. On the contrai-y, I believe that they are the 
 children of Christianity born in an alien land, and more- 
 over that they fit more harmoniously into the Christian 
 system than into the system Avith Avhich they are noAV 
 united. 
 
 Of the coarse, brutal secularism, Avhich does nothing 
 but deny and bluster, I have nothing to say ; but there 
 is another form of it, Avhich does not so much deny as 
 say: "We do not kno\\- : there may be another life to 
 come, there may be a God, but Ave cannot jn-ove these 
 things. They are wrapped in jnystery : they leave us 
 in the mystery. God, if there be a God, gives no an- 
 sAver to us. All the feelings Avhich Ave are asked to 
 feel about him, all the hopes and fears Avhich cluster 
 round the doctrine of immortality, only hinder our prac- 
 tical work, make us think of ourseh'es, and not of our 
 duty : nay, more, they do harm ; for more suffering and 
 
276 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 evil have come upon the race, more cruelty and more 
 hindrances to jirogress have arisen from these notions 
 than from any others. We will ])ut them utterly aside, 
 and act by faith in other ideas." 
 
 This is their denial, and even from this we may learn 
 much. For the God the conscientious secularist denies 
 is the God of whom we spoke last Svmday, — a God of 
 arbitrary will, who makes salvation de2)end on assent 
 to certain systems of theology, and men responsible for 
 sins committed before they were born ; who dooms the 
 greater ])art of the race to eternal wickedness. And the 
 immortality he does not care for is an immortality based 
 on the selfish doctrine of which we also sjjoke, Avhich by 
 working on the fears and greed of men jiroduces jjerse- 
 cution in public and continual brooding on self in pri- 
 A'ate ; above all, which destroys unconscious aspiration. 
 Looking at this, we learn our faults. "We are driven back 
 to that concejition of a Father which Christ revealed. 
 We are taught to preach a loftier of the nature of 
 immortal life. We turn and say to the secularist, " The 
 God whom you reject, we reject : the immortality you 
 deny, we deny also." 
 
 But we may learn much more from what he asserts 
 as his religion. He believes that nature contains all 
 things necessary for the guidance of mankind ; that duty 
 consists in a steadfast pursuit, according to the laws of 
 nature, of results tending to the happiness of the race; 
 and that in doing that duty he becomes happy. His 
 God is duty, his Bible is nature, his heaven is in the 
 happiness of man and the progress of mankind to per-, 
 fection. His sin is in violating natural laws, because 
 such a violation is sure to bring evil on men. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 277 
 
 The two main ideas running through tliis we ought to 
 learn to make more prominent in Christianity, the idea 
 that man lias a higher duty to mankind than to himself, 
 the idea of the progress of the race to perfection. The 
 first is distinctly contained in the whole sj^irit of the life 
 of Christ, the second in the Cliristian conception of 
 God's Fatherhood. But there is no doubt that our 
 Christianity has not sufficiently dwelt on these thoughts, 
 and that the Christianity of tlie future must absorb 
 them. We accept then, with thankfulness, this teach- 
 ing from without; but we say that to fulfil it in action, 
 and to bring it home to the hearts and lives of men, 
 there must be added to it the Christian ideas of God and 
 of immortality. The absence of these deprives the sec- 
 idarist of any certain ground for that reverence for 
 human nature and for that faith in ultimate perfection 
 without which there can be no joyous self-sacrifice for 
 man, no unfaltering work for his j^rogress. Their ab- 
 sence deprives him of the mighty impulse which arises 
 from a profound love for an all-loving person, and re- 
 places it by the weaker im2:)ulse which is born of love to 
 an abstraction called duty, or to a "humanity" which is 
 always disappointing the love which is lavished on it, 
 till our love, feeding on imperfection, becomes itself en- 
 feebled or corrupt. Their absence deprives him of the 
 idea which more than all others makes a religious society 
 coherent, that all its members are held together by the 
 indwelling in each, and in the whole, of one personal 
 spirit of good ; of the idea which makes work for human 
 progress persistent, that all work done here is carried to 
 perfection in a kindlier world, not only in the everlasting 
 life of each worker, but in the mighty whole of a human 
 
278 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 race destined to slowly form itself, through the undying 
 labor of each and all in God, into the full-grown man. 
 And, finally, their absence deprives him of any large 
 power of appeal to those deep-seated feelings of awe, 
 mystery, and adoration, which are drawn out in men by 
 the idea of God ; and which are, when linked to the in- 
 spiration whicli flows from the lo\-e of a perfect man, 
 the source of that enthusiasm which supports and con- 
 tinues a religion. 
 
 Practically, then, we should expect a priori that sec- 
 ularism, on account of its negation of God and immor- 
 tality, could not float its noble ideas. And this is really 
 the fact : it has had many followers, but the greater 
 number do not remain in it ; they change out of it into 
 many Christian sects, or they pass from entire unbelief 
 into credulity. Some are the victims of remote and 
 strange phases of fanaticism : others, like Robert Owen, 
 end in the ojiposite extreme of " spiritualism." 
 
 Nor have the societies or sects of secularism any co- 
 herence : none of them can keep up a permanent organi- 
 zation, and their quarrels are as bitter as they say that 
 those of Christians are. The very best among them pass 
 through life doing their duty to tlie last, but in a kind 
 of mournful hoj^elessness, their heart unsatisfied, though 
 their intellect may be at rest ; for there is, deep down in 
 their minds, the painful suspicion that clinging to nega- 
 tions may after all be itself as blind a suiJerstition as any 
 of those which they attack. 
 
 To siun up all, there are a few ideas in secularism 
 which owe their origin to the insensible growth of the 
 ideas of Christ among men. These ideas are in advance 
 of the accejjted Christianity of this day, but they are 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 279 
 
 inoperative in secularism. "When we take them into 
 connection with the belief in God and immortality, they 
 will become operative, but they will modify the present 
 form of Christianity. 
 
 Secondly, we consider the religion of positivism in the 
 same light. It maintains, though in a different and 
 more cultured form, tlie same views on these j^oints as 
 secularism. But it avoids negations for the most 2)art, 
 and confines itself to saying that Christianity has noth- 
 ing more to give to man ; that its good influence is 
 exhausted for the western nations. In it, the Christian 
 doctrine of God and immortality entirely disappears. In 
 sjiite of this, and far more than secularism, it has drunk 
 deep of the spirit of Christianity : most of its doctrines 
 may be directly inferred from the teaching of Christ 
 and the Apostles, and in fact are unconsciously derived 
 from it. Only it is to be said that the accredited Chris- 
 tianity of the day has not yet arrived at these expan- 
 sions of Christian ideas, that, so far, the followers of 
 Comte's religion are in front of iis, and that we ought, 
 in spite of the curious and infidel surrounding of these 
 new thoughts, to claim them as by right our own and 
 embody them in Christianity. 
 
 The future Christianity will have to take into itself 
 such doctrines as social and international self-sacrifice, 
 which is a direct and logical expansion of the Christian 
 doctrine of self-sacrifice. It is surprising, if anything 
 is surprising, that we have not done this already ; that 
 in our pulpits we only speak of the seK-sacrifice of one 
 person for another, and almost nothing of the duty of 
 the citizen to sacrifice himseK for his jjarish, for social 
 
280 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 ends, for the State ; of the duty of nations to sacrifice 
 their own interests for tlie sake of the community of 
 nations, and of tlie duty of the community of nations to 
 sacrifice much in the present for the sake of the future 
 welfare of the whole race. Nor must we leave out 
 other positivist doctrines, such as the necessity of giving 
 to each of the human faculties tlieir ai)])roj)riate work 
 in connection with a large idea of religion, a doctrine 
 contained, as I think, in Saint Paul's view of the relation 
 of gifts and of distinct characters to the growth of the 
 race in God, and of the working * of these differing gifts 
 by a divine s}jirit for that purpose ; nor yet that other 
 doctrine of the sanctification of all human effort to the 
 good of man, so that social feeling may be victorious 
 over self-love, Avhich is in fact the redeclaration, in a 
 Avider form than we declare it, of the whole aim and 
 spirit of Christ's life ; nor yet tliat other doctrine of the 
 union of science, art, and morality into an harmonious 
 whole, under the regenerating influence of the worship 
 of humanity, — a concejition which we shall take, and 
 only change by rei)lac'ing the worship of humanity by 
 the worship of the Christ as the representative and 
 concentration into an ideal man of the whole race as it 
 is in God ; nor yet, finally, that other idea of the race as 
 one great Being ever living and moving on by the service 
 of each to the use of the Avhole, which is, in truth, the 
 idea of the race as " the full-grown man " laid down by 
 Saint Paul in the Epistle to the EjDhesians, adding, how- 
 ever, to this last thought that which gives it reality and 
 concrete form, — the belief in One who is the federal 
 
 *"An these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to 
 every man severally as he will." 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 281 
 
 Head of this great Being, because lie is himself in per- 
 fection that which the race is as yet imperfectly. These 
 are the doctrines Avhich we gladly receive as expansions 
 of our Christianity, and by which we modify our present 
 form of it. 
 
 But we shall absorb them, retaining that which the 
 religion of positivism leaves out as unnecessary, but 
 without which, as we think, these new ideas die of star- 
 vation, — the belief in the Being of a loving Father, and 
 in the endless life of each and all. That there does exist 
 in man the desire of adoring an all-embracing Being, 
 and the desire of immortality, positivism, imlike secular- 
 ism, is too wise to deny; and it attempts to j^rovide for 
 these two passions in its religion. Instead of God, it 
 presents us with humanity conceived of as a A'ast organ- 
 ism comjjosed of all men and women Avho have lived for 
 the sake of mankind. This is the Being we are to wor- 
 ship, a\\(l of Avhora we ourselves arc part : we devote our 
 thoughts to the knowledge of her, our afflictions to her 
 loA'C, our actions to her service. To become, in the 
 thoughts of men, at one with this Being Avhose life re- 
 news itself throughout all time, and to be commemorated 
 and loved by men to come, to have our immortality in 
 the continued existence and affection of the race, — this 
 is the reward and this the eternal life which this religion 
 offers to our accejitance. 
 
 Well, if such an object of worshij) and such an immor- 
 tality satisfy the jiassions and longings, the existence of 
 which the positivist confesses in others, it will be very 
 strange. He allows that they do not satisfy men as at 
 present constituted, that the old feelings must be driven 
 out before the new gosj^el be received. But we are told 
 
282 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 that education from the positivist j^oint of view will 
 transfer the feelings now expended on God to this new 
 Being, and that the aspirations which now cluster round 
 immortality will liave their satisfaction in the delight of 
 having our work interwoven Avith the progress of man- 
 kind. Against these assertions, one can only apjieal to 
 time for a full re])ly. But it does seem true that men, if 
 they worship, wish to worship what is j)erfect and abso- 
 lute, and that the worship of an imperfect and growing 
 humanity cannot ever satisfy their wish. And it also 
 seems true that men, if they worship, wish to worship 
 one whom they can distinctly conceive as a person in 
 relation with themselves, and in whom, as the ideal Man, 
 each man can love his race. The Great-Being of the 
 Comtist does not realize this wish. The organism of 
 which he speaks is not distinct to thought, is not a 
 person, is not capable of entering into sejjarate relations 
 of affection with individuals. The whole thing, while 
 j^rofessing to be siiecially human, seems to me sjiecially 
 inhuman. Nor will men, I think, be satisfied to live 
 only in the memory of those to come, and to exchange 
 the 2)romise of immortal life (growing fuller, Aviser, more 
 intense in Avork and enjoyment of groAA'th, more indiA'id- 
 ual and yet less liable to self-absorption, every day) for 
 the 2>romise of annihilation, except so far as their influ- 
 ence and acts remain in tlie continued ^^I'ogress of the 
 race. They Avill say : " All you promise me I have 
 already in Christianity, and the something more which 
 you do not j^romise. The j^ast and all its human story is 
 far more living to me than it is to you. I belong in 
 Christ (who has redeemed and is redeeming all men) to 
 all the sj^irits who have been. I am a jjart, not of a 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 283 
 
 'humanity,' all the back j^ortions of which are dead, but 
 of a mighty army of living men, who, though called dead 
 to us, are yet united to us in spirit, and doing luiman 
 work in God, in a world to which I am going. Nor do I 
 only belong to the past and present of mankind : I belong 
 in God, who holds eternity within himself, to all the 
 future of mankind. Those yet unborn are living in him, 
 and therefore bound to me. And all the beings of the 
 human race, on earth and in heaven, are advancing 
 together, — a vast jiolity, under the education of the Lord 
 and King, whose name is Eternal Love. Till you can 
 bring your conception up to the level of that magnificent 
 conception, we refuse to take it into serious considera- 
 tion. It is a lower thought, and we cannot change gold 
 against lead." 
 
 We believe, then, in the eternal progress of the race 
 in God, not only in the immortality of individuals, but in 
 the immoi'tality of mankind. It made men fairly object 
 to immortality when it was held to secure to a few con- 
 tinuous union with good, and to the many continuous 
 union with evil. It is to this false and cruel view that 
 we owe the sjiread and the strength of secularism. But 
 day by day the doctrine of the eternity of evil is being 
 driven into its native night before a higher view of the 
 nature of God, and a nobler belief in him as the undying 
 righteousness. We are beginning to understand Avhat 
 Christ meant when he said, " Other sheep I have, which 
 are not of this fold: them also I must bring; and there 
 shall be one flock and one shepherd." It was a "must," 
 an imperative duty which the Saviour felt ; and he spoke 
 in the name of God, who feels the same as a necessity of 
 his relation to us. 
 
284 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 The act of creation lays on us a duty. We bring a 
 child into the world, and the absolute imperative of God 
 is on us to feed, educate, and love to the end that to 
 which we have given life. We do our best for the child, 
 but we will sujjpose that all goes Avrong. We expend 
 our love upon him, he rejects it ; we punish, and he 
 hardens under j^inishment and leaves us ; we go after 
 him, and lie refuses to return ; we give him up to himself 
 for a time, and he grows worse, and dies impenitent. 
 But, if we are of a true liuman nature, we cannot forget 
 him. Our first tliought in the other world is our erring 
 son, and if we can, — and I for one do not doubt it, — 
 our one effort in the eternal life will be to find him out 
 and redeem him to our heart by any sacrifice which love 
 can prompt. And, even could love not move us, duty 
 would call us to this righteous quest. We imcst bring 
 our wanderer home. 
 
 It is so, I firmly believe, with God and men. By the 
 very act of creation, God has laid upon himself a neces- 
 sity of redemi^tion. We wander from him, and he jiun- 
 ishes us through his sjjiritiial laws ; we reap that which 
 we have sown ; we fill our belly witli the husks which 
 the swine eat. He lets us eat of the fruit of our own 
 devices, the day of retribution comes, and our jileasures 
 turn to gall, our irritated desires become our hell. 
 Lower and lower still we sink, and suffering is hard on 
 us ; for impenitent man must touch the abyss of God's 
 chastising tenderness before pride and self be conquered 
 into penitence. But God waits and works : "Tlieni also 
 I must bring," speaks the necessity which flows from his 
 Fatherhood. All through our deepest ruin, God's victo- 
 rious love is opposed to man's reluctant hatred and 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 285 
 
 despair, till at last tliey, being of the finite finite, and of 
 the dead things of the universe dead, are shattered to 
 pieces by persistent love ; and the child, come to himself, 
 calls out from the depths of a divine misery, "I will 
 arise, and go to my Father." Far off, his Father sees 
 him, and in triumphant joy receives him : "This my son 
 was dead, and is alive again ; Avas lost, and is found." 
 It Avill bo tlius within eternity, till, in the fulness of 
 charity, there shall be at last one floek and one shepherd. 
 Most tender and most true of images ! Contrast it, in 
 its beauty, with the common notion of the future of the 
 race, — that notion which has maddened men into athe- 
 ism and hatred of immortality,— a small flock on which 
 all the infinite love of the infinite goodness is outpoured, 
 and beyond its fold a howling wilderness of lost and 
 ruined souls, lost and ruined for ever and ever, and 
 rained upon by the eternal fires of the everlasting anger 
 of a vindictive God. It is not so: that is not our God, 
 nor that our heaven, nor that the immortality for which 
 we cry. God must bring all his creatures to himself. 
 "There shall be one flock and one shepherd." 
 
 As long as the horror of everlasting punishment, or, 
 as it may be better expressed, of everlasting evil, is 
 preached, secularism will keep alive. Rough-thinking 
 men at this time of the world cannot stand Manichieism ; 
 and it is no wonder tliat they deny God, when one of the 
 main things they are told is that God either keeps up 
 evil forever in his universe, or is unable to put an end to 
 it. Nor is it any Avonder that they become unbelievers 
 in Christianity, when a doctrine is linked to Christianity 
 "which denies their moral instincts, and makes them look 
 on God as the sovereign tyrant ; which forces them to 
 
286 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 consider the story of redemption as either a Aveak effort 
 on the part of an incapable God, or a mockery by him 
 of his creatures on the plea of a love which they see as 
 scornful, and a justice which they declare to be favorit- 
 ism. I prophesy, as this doctrine perishes, the resurrec- 
 tion of the working-classes from secularism into faith in 
 the Father of men. I foresee a brighter, more joyous, 
 more natiiral Christianity, in the midst of which faith 
 and hope shall abide, and love which never faileth. Fifty 
 years hence, we shall all believe in the victorious 2JOwer 
 of goodness, and the test of Orthodoxy shall not be that 
 which I once heard ajjplied to a young clergyman, — "Sir, 
 do you believe in the devil?" It will be this : "Do you 
 believe in God ? " 
 
 Again, the doctrine of immoi'tality was fairly objected 
 to, when it led men to dwell on their own salvation as 
 the first thing, when it promoted the idea of individual- 
 ism to the loss of the idea of association. To this 
 tendency of the doctrine, we owe its rejection by the 
 positivist religion ; for it injured one of the foremost 
 doctrines of Comte, — that self-love must be systemati- 
 cally subordinated to social and international sacrifice, 
 that all men and nations ought to be bound together as 
 one man. 
 
 The tendency against which there has been this re- 
 action is indeed contained in the Christian doctrine : it 
 does dwell on and deepen individuality. But it was a 
 shameful thing Avhen men tore away this element of the 
 doctrine from its brother element, isolated it, and turned 
 it, as a half-truth, into a lie. For the doctrine was united 
 on its other side to the frankest sacrifice of the indi- 
 vidual to the whole; nay, it gave men to understand 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 287 
 
 th;it, without the largest sacrifice, immortal life could 
 not l)c attained. "Whosoever saveth his life shall lose 
 it," said Christ; "and wliosoever loseth his lifo, the same 
 shall save it." He himself vas the Eternal Life, hecause 
 he died for the whole world of men. " I could wish myself 
 accursed from Christ," said Saint Paul, "for my brethren, 
 my companions' sake." There was no base individual- 
 ism in that noble sj^eech : to have the spirit which can 
 say it is to have innnortal life. 
 
 Nor did Christianity in its relation to immortality 
 shut out the element of association. Its original church 
 was chosen from mankind for the purpose of bringing 
 all mankind into it. The heathen world are spoken of 
 as apart from it, but only as theji apart from it : its 
 object was to unite all nations into one, to bring the 
 Avildest and remotest within its realm. No class was 
 left out, no classes existed in its spiritual kingdom : all 
 were children of God, brothers of one another; and 
 this was their immortal life in the spiritual world, that 
 they all lived in and for each other. The images used 
 to describe the Christian idea of the Church were im- 
 ages of association: a temple built of living stones; 
 a human body, whose head was Christ, from whom "the 
 whole body, fitly joined together, and compacted by that 
 Avhich every joint suj)j)lieth, according to the effectual 
 working in the measure of every part, maketh increase 
 of the body to the edifying of itself in love." That is 
 not the doctrine of each man for himself, but of each 
 for all. The same idea is more fully carried out in the 
 First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter twelve. And I 
 must here say that these Epistles are not to be taken as 
 addressed to a close sect of believers : they were written 
 
288 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 to all the Corinthian Church, and through them to all 
 mankind. Xor were these words spoken to specially 
 holy i^ersons, but to the whole body of men, bad or 
 good, in that Clmrch, — to fanatics, to drunkards who 
 scandalized the Supper of the Lord, to defenders of 
 incest, to men fighting M'ith one another and divided 
 into religious sects, as well as to the righteous. He 
 begins by speaking of the diversities of gifts, and of 
 their use in the progressive education of the whole 
 body, each ministering that which the other Avanted. 
 He goes on to say that "all have been bajjtizcd into one 
 body, Avhether Jew or Gentile, bond or free " ; for there 
 was no separation of nations or classes. The isolation of 
 one from the rest is then condemned, for the body is not 
 one member, but many ; nor can any member sejjarate 
 himself from the body, because he is not as another: 
 "For if the foot shall say. Because I am not the hand, 
 I am not of the bodj', is it not therefore of the body?" 
 Nor can any member say that lie can live without the 
 life of any other member: "The eye cannot say to the 
 hand, I have no need of thee : nay, even those mem- 
 bers of the body which we think to be less honorable, 
 upon these we bestow more abundant honor, and our 
 uncomely jiarts have more aljundant comeliness. For 
 our comely jjarts have no need; but God hath temj^ered 
 the body together, having givei\ more abundant honor 
 to that part which lacked, that there should be no 
 schism in the body, but that the members should have 
 the same care one for another. And whether one mem- 
 ber suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one member 
 be. honored, all the members rejoice with it." Mazzini 
 himself could not now, eighteen hundred years after, ae- 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 289 
 
 clare more strongly tlie princijilo of association. Comte 
 could not assert more largely the doctrine of interna- 
 tional interdependence. Of course it may be said that 
 these things were written solely to the Christian Church. 
 That I deny, if the Christian Church is taken to mean 
 any isolated body at any time in history. They were 
 written to describe the ideal of the Christian Church, 
 and that ideal includes all mankind. They describe 
 what ought to be the relation of nations to nations, of 
 nations to tribes of every type and color, of men to 
 men all over the world. And they describe what will 
 be in the fulness of time, when the body of mankind, 
 past, present, and future, shall be wholly finished, and 
 the actual be identical with the ideal Man. 
 
 It is this mighty concejjtion which we ought to link to 
 our thought of immortality. Without it, the desire of 
 eternal life becomes selfish and swiftly falls to evil : with 
 it, it grows into the grandest thought which a man can 
 have on earth ; with it, immortality binds itself up with 
 all the noblest sjjeculations of patriot, philosojjher, and 
 lover of man, with all the ideas of our time which have 
 regard to a universal and united mankind, giving to 
 them new strength and coherence, a fresher ho2)e, an 
 unashamed faith ; and leading them beyond the silence 
 and inaction of the toml), where jiositivist and secularist 
 bury forever the mighty drama of the past of men, bids 
 them look forward with a morning light in their eyes to 
 the endless beauty and unfailing work of a mankind so 
 loved, so deeply loved by us, that, when for a moment 
 the thought crosses our brain that it could die and make 
 no sign, something seems to break within our heart. 
 
IMMOETALITY-III.* 
 
 1871. 
 
 "For he is not a God of tlie dead, but of the living; for all live 
 unto him." — Luke xx., 38. 
 
 It h;is been said by the author of the History of 
 nationalism that " the discoveries of modern science 
 form a habit of mind wliich is carried far beyond the 
 limits of physics." 
 
 Nowhere is tliis more true than in tlie scornful doubt 
 with which some natural philosoj^hers meet the belief in 
 immortality, or in the bold denial which they give it. It 
 is not long ago since I heard a geologist say, " As a body, 
 we have given up the belief in immortality." It may be 
 worth while to-day to suggest, first, a cause for this 
 wide-spread surrender of an old belief among the men 
 who pursue physical science ; secondly, to look into the 
 reason they give for tlieir denial, and to see if that rea- 
 son be reasonable ; and, thirdly, to suggest a ])roof of the 
 doctrine. 
 
 1. The cause I believe to be, in the case of many men 
 of science, an unequal development of their nature ; in 
 other words, a want of uniform culture. They give up 
 
 * I am indebted to Fichte'.s Vocation of Man for a portion of the argument 
 in this sermon, from our consciousness of will and its results to the existence 
 of a " self-active Reason and a living Will." 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 291 
 
 their wliole life and all its energy to the study of physi- 
 cal phenomena. In these jjhenomena, they find nothing 
 S2)iritual. The strata of an ocean-bed tell them nothing, 
 in their vast succession of life and deatli, of the eternal 
 continuance of the individual. The combinations of the 
 elements do not speak of the union of the soul with 
 the Eternal Soul of God, and in the convolutions of 
 the brain and the interweaving of the nerves they will 
 not disco^•er faith or love or reverence ; or, not being able 
 to deny their existence, they say that they dissolve with 
 the ner\ e matter, of which they are modes of motion. 
 Xot only do they study nothing but these things, but 
 they ])ut aside any suggestions of spiritual feeling which 
 may come to them in their work, as disturbing elements, 
 as dimming the "dry light" in which they toil. It is 
 no wonder, then, that their spiritual faculty becomes 
 dwarfed or paralyzed, till, not finding its motions in 
 themselves, they are ready to deny their existence else- 
 where. On the other hand, their peculiar habit of mind 
 becomes abnoririally developed, and even their imagi- 
 nation is only used in one direction. They are like men 
 who should sit all their life in a chair and exercise their 
 arms violently. Tlieir arms become immensely strong, 
 their legs so feeble that they cannot walk. One Avould 
 not be sur])rised to hear these persons say, " On the 
 whole, as a body, we have given up any belief in walk- 
 ing being either ])leasant or intended for the human 
 race." The answer is, "You are no judge till you have 
 recovered the use of your legs." 
 
 Xor is one in the least surj^rised by a similar assertion 
 on the jiart of some natural philosophers with regard to 
 immortality. Given the previous habit of mind and 
 
292 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 work, what else but unbelief could ensue ? Only we can 
 , scarcely refrain a smile when the assertion is made Avitli 
 a certain Pharisaic aii", "Nature, I thank thee, I am not 
 led away by superstition or feeling, e^•on as these Chris- 
 tians " ; and the only possible answer is a smile, such as 
 the natural philosopher would greet a religious man 
 with, who had as nnich neglected liis intellect and its 
 exercise as the denier of immortality has neglected his 
 spirit and its exercise, and Avho should saj-, as if it set- 
 tled the Avhole question, "On the Avhole, we have ceased 
 to believe in the truth of the theory of gravitation." 
 
 But, again, as there are some who have lost the use of 
 the religious jiowers through neglect of them, so there 
 are others in whom the religious powers seem Avholly 
 wanting. They seem to be born with a radical defect 
 in their nature, and they can no more see the truth or 
 the necessity of immortality tlian some who are color 
 blind can see the beauty or the use of color. None are 
 more upright than this class of scientific men : they love 
 truth, and pursue after it in jihysics w ithout one back- 
 ward step. But they cannot imderstand the things of 
 the spirit, for these are naturally foolishness to them. 
 
 I can see the use, almost the necessity, of this. Nat- 
 ure has to be ruthlessly examined, forced step by step to 
 yield her secrets. The good of the race demands that 
 a certain amount of this Avork should be done by men 
 who are not disturbed by the speculations or the pas- 
 sions of the spirit ; and, though there are many who unite 
 with ease the realms of faith and of experiment under 
 one government, yet there are a few whose work is 
 needed in physics, and who would do but little therein, if 
 they were called on to contend also in the world of the 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 293 
 
 spirit. These, I think, :ire so far sacrificed in this life 
 for the good of the whole ; allowed to remain imperfect 
 men that they may do their own special work in a per- 
 fect manner. And we accept their work with gratitude, 
 and say to ourselves when we regret their want, " God 
 has plenty of time to finish the education of his laborers: 
 that which is deficient here will be added hereafter." 
 But at the same time, while we recognize the excellent 
 work of these philoso2)hers in their own sphere, we ask 
 of them not to force upon us the results of their blind- 
 ness in anotlier region. If a man cannot see red, we do 
 not let him impose on us the statement that red is not to 
 be seen, even though he may be a perfect musician. If 
 a man cannot conceive immortality, we do not let him 
 imjjose on us the statement that immortality is a vain 
 dream, even though he may be a natural philosopher of 
 the first rank. We are bound to say to the one. As a 
 musician, we accept your criticisms : as a judge of color, 
 you are of no value ; and to the other, As a natural 
 2)hilosopher, we bow to your conclusions: as a judge of 
 the truth or falsehood of immortality, your opinion is 
 worthless. 
 
 Again, in no way is the habit of mind of which we 
 are sj^eaking carried further than in the saying of some 
 physiologist, — that all thought and feeling are insej^arably 
 bound up with physical form, with nervous centres and 
 the rest ; that form makes mind, and therefore that mind, 
 feeling, memory, and the desires, the pain, and the joy 
 of that which we call the spirit, perish with the disso- 
 lution of the machine of which they are part. I have 
 just as good a right to start from the other side, and to 
 say that thought makes form: nay, I have even more 
 
294 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 right ; for, by a strict process of reasoning, one may fairly 
 arrive at the statement that our o'n'n frame and the whole 
 material universe is the product of our own thought. I 
 do not say that I l:now this, nor assert tljat mind makes 
 form, but it is just as probable as, and even more prob- 
 able than, tlie ojiposite assertion. Both statements are 
 incapable of sufficient proof. Professor Huxley says 
 that, "when men begin to talk about there being nothing 
 else in the universe but matter and force and necessary 
 laws, he declines to follow them"; and equally, when 
 men say that there is nothing else in the universe but 
 thought or will or consciousness, we should decline to 
 follow them. The latter is far more possible than the 
 other : I am myself inclined to believe it, but I do not 
 know it. AU we know with relation to our body and 
 mind is that certain physical changes take place simul- 
 taneously with every thought and feeling. Biit no 
 knowledge of the structure of the brain or nerves can 
 show us the connecting link between the two, or enable 
 us to say that physical motion is thought or thought 
 physical motion. " The passage from the physics of the 
 brain," says Dr. Tyndall, "to the corresjionding facts of 
 consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite 
 thought and the definite molecular action in the brain 
 occur simultaneously, we do not possess the intellectual 
 organ, nor apj^arently any rudiment of it, which could 
 enable us to pass by a process of reasoning from the one 
 jihenomenon to the other. They ajijiear together, we 
 know not why." There is no proof, then, that conscious- 
 ness is inseparably connected with the physical frame, 
 and therefore no proof that it perishes with it. The 
 truth, then, of the doctrine of immortality remains, con- 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 295 
 
 sidered from the intellectual point of view, an open ques- 
 tion ; and to daringly assert that it is untrue is ridiculous 
 in the mouth of a sensible man. 
 
 I may say here, in a parenthesis, that Christianity by 
 no means denies that thought and form in man are 
 closely connected one with the other. On the contrary, 
 the doctrine of the resurrection seems to imply that the 
 liuman consciousness needs form in order to be conscious 
 of itself, for it allots a body to the soul. It does not say, 
 as some have vainly fabled, that the body we place in 
 the earth, and whose elements passed into the earth, is 
 raised again : it does say that God gives a spiritual body 
 to the soul, whatever that may mean. It throws the 
 matter on the omnipotence of God ; and, if we believe 
 in God at all, that a new form should knit itself to a 
 mind and spirit which have become personal through 
 the memories and work of a human life is no more in- 
 credible than that they should have been originally knit 
 together. 
 
 Moreover, should it turn out to be true that there is 
 nothing actually existing but thought, and that our j^res- 
 ent bodies are only the product of our j^ower of j^resent- 
 ing to ourselves our own conceptions, then, sup230sing 
 that our personal order of thought continues after that 
 ■which we call death, it Avill weave out of its conscious- 
 ness, under changed conditions, a new vehicle for itself, 
 and forever appear to itself and others to be connected 
 ■with form. 
 
 But to return to our argument. The natural philos- 
 opher who may allow the possibility of immortality will 
 at the same time refuse to consider it as a practical ques- 
 tion, because, before any intellectual proof can be given 
 
296 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 of it, a sj>iritual world must be assumed ; and he refuses 
 to believe without proof in the existence of such a 
 world. He takes nothing for granted : be will have faith 
 in nothing which cannot be proved to the satisfaction of 
 the iindcrstanding. 
 
 Now, I want to try and give some reply to this. I will 
 not assume, as will be seen, a spiritual world. I will only 
 begin with the assumption of the reality of a command, 
 outside of our thought, which bids us do what is right, 
 and supposes that we know what is right. But even 
 this is an act of faith, and to that our natural jjhilosojjher 
 objects in any shajie. 
 
 "Well, it seems to me that precisely the same difficulty 
 which he alleges against the consideration of immortality 
 may be alleged against himself. Ho, too, must begin 
 with an act of faith, and without that beginning he can 
 know nothing at all about the physical world. That he 
 does know something about it is plain. How did he Avin 
 that knowledge ? He would say. By deductive and in- 
 ductive reasoning, accompanied by experiment. I do 
 not contradict him ; but I say that he has left out one of 
 the factors of the answer, and a very important one : he 
 has left out the act of faith with which he started. He 
 willed, by an impulse within himself, for Avhicli his edu- 
 cated reason can give no proof, to believe in the exist- 
 ence of a physical world. And without that act of faith 
 he could, by any and every process of reasoning, have 
 only arrived at the knowledge that he knew nothing 
 at all. It is not diiEcult to make this clear. By the 
 creation of theories which he afterwards proved true 
 through their explanation of all the phenomena within 
 their several spheres, by long experimental arguments 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 297 
 
 conducted from f:ict to fact, ho at last arrived, step after 
 step, at the conception of one thing outside liimself by 
 which all things are, and of which all things are forms, 
 and he calls this Force, — the constant force of the 
 universe. And, having thus reduced all things to one 
 expression, he may tliink that he knows all things, or is 
 in the sure way of knowing them. I do not say that he 
 is not ; but I do say that he assumes without proof, and 
 by faith, that there is this thing outside of his thought, 
 this Force, which is the i)hysical universe. For, with- 
 out assuming that, what happens as he goes on thinking? 
 He will go back, and say to himself: "Just as I ques- 
 tioned whether red or blue had any real existence, and 
 found that they liad none, being only the result produced 
 in my brain by sensations caused in the eye by waves of 
 light of different lengths, and just as when I asked my- 
 self whether light had any real existence as light, and 
 found on inquiry that it was only a mode of motion, a 
 form of force, which was light to me because my eye 
 had certain atomic arrangements, but which might be 
 electricity to me, if the atoms of my eye were differently 
 arranged : so now I ask whether force itself has any 
 real existence apart from my thought of it, and therefore 
 whether there be a physical universe at all. And, led 
 by reasoning alone, I am forced to say that it has not, 
 that there is nothing which I have not first thought, that 
 I can have no thought without having first thought it. 
 By reasoning alone, I come to the conclusion that the 
 whole i^hysical universe is but a picture which my own 
 thought presents to itself, and therefore that I know 
 nothing about it as it really is, if it is ; for, even with 
 regard to my own thought, I cannot say whether I really 
 
298 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 think or only think that I think. I have reached a point 
 at which all certainty disappears. I only know that I 
 know nothing." 
 
 But when we have arrived at this point, and abso- 
 lutely discredited all existence, even our own, — for the 
 argument may be pushed to that, — the absurdity of the 
 conclusion tells us that there is somethins: wrontr in our 
 method of reasoning, that some factor has been left out. 
 
 Our conclusion is that we know nothing; and the 
 understanding, working alone, brings us to that. But 
 one man Avill say, " The fact is that I do know something 
 about the world of nature." "Well," I reply, "look back, 
 and you will find that you either began with an act of 
 faith in the reality of the physical universe, or that you 
 put in that act of faith in the course of your argu- 
 ment." To another, who allows that his reasoning has 
 led him to the conclusion that he can say nothing cer- 
 tain about physical existence, we reply : " No, you, never 
 can know, till you have resolved to add the factor of 
 faith in an outward world to your argument." 
 
 We must begin our reasoning by an act of faith in 
 the existence of a physical world, real at least to us, 
 practically indejjeudeut of us ; and it is this act of faith 
 which gives consistence to the whole fabric of our Jthysi- 
 cal knowledge, makes it useful, keeps up our work, and 
 saves us from yielding to the conclusion to which we 
 are driven by the work of the reasoning faculty alone. 
 It is the foundation-stone on which the whole of natural 
 science is built. 
 
 An unknown impulse in our constitution, the origin 
 of which we cannot trace, determines our will — in spite 
 of our educated reason — to believe in a physical world. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 299 
 
 And that is as much and as absohite an act of faith as 
 that whereby we believe in God or in the reaHty of 
 duty, — two things which are one, and which together 
 infer immortality. When the man of science, then, 
 says to me, " I refuse to consider immortality, it sets 
 out with an act of faith," I reply, " You might as well 
 refuse to consider the physical motions of the universe; 
 for to do so demands that you should first believe in a 
 physical universe, a belief for which you can give no 
 proof at all, till you have believed it." 
 
 And now to apply this to the matter in hand, to the 
 question of the proof of immortality. Taking the under- 
 standing alone as our guide, and believing nothing which 
 cannot be made plain to reasoning, we arrive m the 
 spiritual region at a conclusion similar to that which we 
 found in the region of physics, — at a knowledge only 
 that we know nothing of duty, immortality, or God. 
 AVe ask and ask again ; and the more we ask, the more 
 sceptical we become. This or that may be or may not 
 be. I know nothing at all. And this is misery to an 
 earnest man. 
 
 But as we find tliat the natural philosopher begins 
 by willing to believe that there is a ])hysical world to 
 him, so now, in tliis other region, we ask ourselves 
 whether there is nothing in us Avhich claims our faith, 
 and for which we can bring no proof. Is there any- 
 thing in our consciousness which is independent of our 
 thought? And, as we listen, we hear a voice wliich 
 says, " You were not born only to know, but far more to 
 act ; and not to know and through knowledge to act, 
 but to act, and through action to know." "We have an 
 imjiulse to moral activity, which we feel is one with our 
 
300 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 existence ; and this impulse seems to be originally be- 
 yond all knowledge, to transcend the realm of the 
 understanding, to be, not anything we think, but the 
 ground of all our thinking. And we seem to know 
 immediately and without any jiroof — by a different kind 
 of knowledge, therefore, than that which we gain from 
 reasoning — that we must obey this impulse, or fall into 
 nothingness. If we take up our old habit and submit 
 this inner voice to the questions of the understanding, 
 we are forced to ask if we really feel this impulse or 
 only think we feel it ; and speculation suggests that the 
 imjnilse may be only the thought of a thought which 
 our consciousness presents to us, and that, if we act 
 upon it, we cannot know whether we really act or only 
 seem to ourselves to act. Tenfold darkness of doubt 
 surrounds us then, and our life becomes like a dream 
 within a dream. Therefore, in despair, Ave make a bold 
 step, and, casting away those inquiries which led us 
 to the abyss of nothingness, we resolve with all our 
 will to believe that this impulse to moral action is abso- 
 lutely a real impulse, and to obey it as the true calling 
 of our life. We set aside the understanding at this 
 point, and we call faith to our side. Immediately, we 
 know not how, we are convinced that right is a reality, 
 and that we can do what is right, and that we shall find 
 our true and only life in doing it. We are convinced 
 of this through faith ; and our faith arises not from a 
 series of proofs offered by the understanding, but from 
 our having freely willed to believe in duty, — that is, from 
 the whole set of our inward character. 
 
 And now, having by faith found this clear starting- 
 point, that we are bound to act according to conscience, 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 301 
 
 « 
 
 what follows? The same voice which tells iis that we 
 must act riglitly tolls us also, and that necessarily, 
 that our actions will have a result in the future; and, 
 as our will and action are conceived of as right, the 
 conception at once arises of a better M'orld, in which our 
 will and acts shall have their due Aalue. We neces- 
 sarily look for-\vard to and live in a nobler world. 
 Where is, then, this nobler world ? The religious in- 
 fidel may accept so far our argument ; but he will say 
 that this world to which we look forward is to be found 
 not in any spiritual world, but in a future human world, 
 when man has subdued the forces of the universe so 
 that they spoil his work no longer; when he has, by the 
 long effort of those who have been faithful to the cause 
 of freedom and right, produced a perfect state in which 
 each shall love his neighbor, and each nation love its 
 neighbor nation as himself. This is the nobler world to 
 w4iich our actions and will aspire, and in it are their 
 results. Neither immortality nor a sjjiritual Avorld needs 
 here be inferred from the argument. 
 
 But, granting that mankind will reach this perfect 
 state, Avhat is to happen then ? There will be nothing 
 more to do, nothing to asjjire to left, nothing more to 
 know. Will action, then, and aspiration die, and curi- 
 osity fail for food ? If so, men will cease to be men, 
 mankind will stagnate in its j^lace, or will weep itself 
 to death, for it will have no more Avorlds to conquer. 
 Such is the necessary result of this theory without the 
 addition of immortal life ; aiul to this miserable end 
 we can quietly look forward, for this we can work with 
 energy and patience ! When we have made the race 
 perfect, we have most utterly ruined the race. It seems 
 
302 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 an intolerable conclusion, and an absurd one; and tliere 
 is no way out of it but either the supposition of the 
 annihilation of mankind, which renders our will to do 
 right and the effects we inevitably annex to it ridiculous 
 in our eyes, or the sui^j^osition that there is another 
 world where the race goes on under new conditions, to 
 do new work and win now knowledge, where the will 
 to do right has its highest and most sure resvilts. 
 
 Moreover, our righteous will has but few results in 
 this world. There are a thousand thoughts which it 
 determines, a thousand feelings it impels, which never 
 pass beyond our inner life. The steady volition toward 
 good of a long life has little result on this earth. Many 
 of the good things we succeed in putting into action 
 miserably fail for want of prudence, or even j^roduce 
 evil in this world. Where, then, are the results of these 
 things ? where does the will act ? where are the broken 
 lines, the inner life, completed ? If nowhere, and plainly 
 it is not here, then half of our being is made up of 
 broken ends of thread. 
 
 We are dri^'en therefore to think that the nobler 
 world in wliich all good action has its own good re- 
 sults, in which our will (determined toward right) serves 
 always a noble purpose, is another and a higher world 
 than this, of which we and all our brother-men are 
 citizens. In this world, our will has jjower when we 
 will to do right : it sets on foot endless results. In 
 this world, which must be spiritual, because our will is 
 spiritual, we live and move and have our being now, as 
 really, nay, more really, than we live and move in the 
 physical Avorld by our outward acts, and when we die 
 we do not enter a world of which we have had no ex- 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 303 
 
 perience, but in a more complete manner, as free from 
 earthly limitations, into a world in which we have lived 
 already. 
 
 We are forced, then, Ly feeling that onr virtnons will 
 must have results, and by the fact that it has only a 
 small number of results in this world, to believe in a 
 spiritual world in Avhieh the Avill, being itself spiritual, 
 finds its true ends fulfilled. That is the first step in 
 the argument for immortality, after the act of faith of 
 which I spoke has been freely chosen by the will. 
 
 The second step carries us on to the truth of Im- 
 mortality. 
 
 When I conceive of my will to do right having neces- 
 sary/ results in a spiritual world, I conceive of a law as 
 ruling in that world. If the results must be, there must 
 be a law by which they are necessary. To that law I 
 am connected by moral obedience; and, because it an- 
 nexes fixed results to virtuous volition in me and in all 
 men, it is above and beyond our wills. In it all our 
 finite wills are held, and to it they all are subject. But 
 since the world in which this law is, is not the world of 
 sense, but a spiritual Avorld in which will acts, the law of 
 that world cannot be like that wluch we call a law here, 
 — a mere expression of antecedents and sequences, a 
 mere statement of the way in which things are : it must 
 be a living laAV ; it must be self-active reason ; it must be 
 a will. 
 
 And it is a Will, — the Will from whom all human 
 wills have flowed, to which all human wills are related, 
 in whom all human wills have being; the only self- 
 existent, the only unchangeable, the only infinite Will, 
 of whom and by whom and through whom are all things, 
 
304 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 — God invisible, eternal, absolute, to whom be glory for 
 ever and ever. The voice I hoar in my heart, and to 
 which I willed to give obedience, and whose reality I 
 believed at first, I know now was his voice. My will, 
 which determined to obey that voice, was nrged thereto 
 by tills infinite Will. My will is related to him, and in 
 him must have results in the whole spiritual world 
 which exists in him and by him. And this which is 
 true of me is true of all my fellow-men. As the will of 
 each is contained and sustained by him, and has its 
 own special results in him, he becomes the spiritual 
 bond of union which unites me to all the race : we 
 all together share our life in him. And because we 
 share in his being, and he is eternal and imperishable, 
 we also know, at last, that we are eternal and imperish- 
 able, and that, for the certainty of which our soul has 
 longed and cried, is a reality. We are immortal. Death, 
 as we call it, may touch our sensible vesture, but it is 
 only a vesture which decays. Our being goes on in 
 another life ; for we live in his life, and our true world 
 is not this world. " We look for a city which hath 
 foundations." We abide in him and he in us, and he 
 abides forever. 
 
 The parallel, in fact, between the two lines of argu- 
 ment, is exact. The natural philosopher having put in, 
 either at the beginning or in the 2>i'0cess of his work, 
 a belief in the existence of Force, Avhich is a belief in an 
 outward world, finds that which he was driven to as- 
 sume confirmed at every step of his inquiry. He cannot 
 understand a number of facts except on the ground that 
 Force is a reality to him ; and he leaves aside, as un2:)rac- 
 tical in his work, the question as to whether it has only 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 305 
 
 an existence in Tliought. Ills theory of Force explains 
 by far the greater i)art of natural jihenomona, and is 
 contradicted by none. lie returns then to his starting- 
 point, and says : " That which I originally believed with- 
 out proof is true. Force is a real existence." 
 
 Precisely in the same way, we prove that the reality of 
 Duty, which we willed to believe, and which, seen as we 
 saw it (not as something developed by the slow action 
 of social circumstances, but as a command independent 
 of our own tliought and coming to us from without), 
 necessarily inferred a spiritual world and God and Im- 
 mortality, is an absolute reality. It and its necessary 
 results, which together form our theory of the Universe 
 of Spirit, solve the greater part of the moral and spirit- 
 ual problems of life, and are not distinctly contradicted 
 by any. 
 
 But it may be said that the analogy is not exact. For 
 though Force or the physical world is proved to have 
 a real existence to vs, it is not proved to have an inde- 
 pendent existence ; and some scientific men are in doubt 
 on that question. All Force, they say, may be nothing 
 more than Will, — "Will-force. Moreover, though the sup- 
 position of its existence explains most of the phenomena 
 we know, that does not necessarily infer that it has any 
 existence inde2)endent of Thought. We have no right 
 then, an objector may say, to infer, because our theory 
 of the Universe of Spirit explains the moral and spirit- 
 ual phenomena of human life and its history, the actual 
 existence of Duty, of a sjjiritual world, of God, an of 
 Immortality. We can only infer their existence in 
 Thought. 
 
 Only their existence in Thought ! In what else should 
 
306 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 they exist, and what existence can be moi-e absolute? 
 We ask no more. For, taking the ground of those sci- 
 entific men who think that Force is Will, they think no 
 more than we wish them to think that there is a Will, 
 and therefore a Thouglit, in whom the Universe is. In 
 thinking thus, they grant God, and tlie real existence of 
 all things in him. In tliinking thus, the physical world 
 is no less a reality to thom, but more. The question 
 Avhether it have independent existence or not does not 
 touch their work, nor will their work on tliat account be 
 of less moment forever aud ever; for the principles of 
 the order of this apparent world will be always the same 
 in any other apparent world, however different from 
 this, for they are fixed in God's Thought. We have a 
 right, then, to say that the analogy fits accurately. 
 
 We assume, then, a spiritual world, or rather we as- 
 sume the reality of Duty, from which we necessarily 
 infer, as I said, a sjiiritual world ; and, when we find 
 that the phenomena of the human conscience and spirit 
 can be explained on that assumption, we return to our 
 starting-point, and say : " That which we believed with- 
 out proof is true. There is an imperative beyond our 
 thought and independent of our consciousness, which we 
 are bound to obey. The moment we will to obey it, we 
 are conscious that it must have results, and, on further 
 thought, that these results can only be fully realized in 
 a world in wliich Will and Tliought alone exist, and 
 therefore in a spiritual, not a material world. And, 
 granting these things, our will to do right, and a world 
 in which Will and Thought alone exist, we are forced to 
 infer One whose Will is absolutely good, and who con- 
 tains in his Will our will, and in his self-active Reason 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 307 
 
 and Will, ■which are his personality, our personality ; 
 One therefore "vvho is Eternal Life, and the life of all, 
 the only jiure Being, in whom all Being is. And, lastly, 
 we are driven ■with joy to feel and know that, if Duty 
 and a spiritual world and God Le truths, Immortality 
 must also be a Truth. If we are inseparably connected 
 with the Infinite and Eternal Will, we must ourselves 
 be, as derived from him, infinite and eternal. 
 
 And now, with this knowledge in our hand, we turn 
 to our life, and find it falling into perfect order. We 
 know w'hence we have come and whither we are going. 
 We know the end of all our brother-men and the neces- 
 sary end of all this struggle of Man. Problem after 
 problem is solved, difficulty after difficulty vanishes 
 away ; and, if some things remain obscure, we know that 
 we have but to wait, and our key will unlock them, 
 when we are able to bear the revelation. Peace enters 
 our heart, the peace which comes of certain knowledge. 
 We know and rest in the infinite meaning of the Sa- 
 viour's saying :. " God is not a God of the dead, but of 
 the living ; for aU live unto him." 
 
IMMOETALITT.-IT. 
 
 1871. 
 
 "For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live nnto 
 him." — LcKE XX., 38. 
 
 Xo oxE can help feeling, at this time of the year, a 
 forecasting of decay. The melancholy skies, the naked 
 trees, the heavy smell of rotting leaves, the hateful at- 
 mosphere, tell their own story. And influenced as we 
 are through blood and bone by the elements which sur- 
 round us, and by the memories of brighter weather, the 
 spring of life relaxes, and our thoughts take the color of 
 decay. 
 
 As it is year after year, is it so for man after man? 
 Time goes on, but past years do not live again. The 
 flower-life goes on, but not the same flowers. And does 
 mankind go on, but not men? Have we each our spring, 
 our summer, our rich and swiftly miserable autumn, our 
 winter of death, and never another sjjring? This is the 
 thought of many at this time. The race continues, but 
 the individual perishes. Death is j^ersonal annihilati6n. 
 
 Last Sunday, we gave some reasons for the prevalence 
 of this thought among natural philosophers : to-day, we 
 begin by giving some reasons for its 2:)revalence in other 
 classes of society, and pass on to consider the reason- 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 309 
 
 ableness or not of .'uinilnlation ; meaning by annihilation 
 not, of course, the destrnction of tlic elements of which 
 our body is composed, but the resolution into those ele- 
 ments of all that we call thought, feeling, will, and self- 
 consciousness. 
 
 The reasons of the prevalence of this opinion vary 
 with different tyj)es of men and their different lives. It 
 arises in some from the intensity of youthful ardor, Avhen 
 it has been o\ erstrained. They liave been so full of life 
 that they have drawn upon it too much, and drained the 
 source dry. "Weary, exhausted, yet still desirous to find 
 the old enjoyment, they are tossed between desire and 
 weakness to fulfil desire, till at last the only comfort 
 seems to be to look forward to an eternal sleep. " Why 
 should the vital torment of life be renewed ? " they ask, 
 forgetting that it is torment because life has been mis- 
 used, not knowing that life is vital joy when it is used 
 with temperance. 
 
 It arises in others, and these chiefly business men, 
 from the disease of unceasing work. One of the things 
 which is acting worst on English society is that a num- 
 ber of men have got into that state in which recreation 
 is impossible. All the year round, from morning to 
 night, they jjursue their trade or their profession with- 
 oiit a single break, except their heavy after-dinner sleep. 
 Even in dreams, they hunt their work, like dogs. This 
 is also a misuse of life. All joy is taken out of it, beauty 
 has no place in its foggy realm : even love resolves itself 
 into a dull desire to provide for one's children. The 
 world is not their oyster which they ojjen : they are the 
 oysters of the world. And, when they are deaf and 
 blind to all the loveliness and passion and movement of 
 
310 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 life, what wonder if, having become machines, they do 
 not care to run on forever ? 
 
 It arises in the case of a number of cultivated young 
 men from the depression of failure. Within the last ten 
 years there has been in the universities an atmosphere, 
 almost tropical, of refined culture and scholarship; and 
 in it a number of intellects and imaginations have been 
 forced, till they are, for the most part, unfitted to do the 
 rough work of the Avorld. Educated, then, uj) to the 
 point at which they fully comprehend and passionately 
 feel the great things which men possessing genius have 
 done, it seems to them, by a very common instinct, that 
 they can either do the same, or at least that they have 
 a right to try. Hence, we have the deluge of second and 
 third rate painters, poets, novelists, critics, and the rest, 
 with which England is now overspread. They begin 
 wath hope and joy ; and, after a little deserved ajjplause 
 for the passing pleasure they have given, mankind, whose 
 judgment soon gets right, drops them, and they feel with 
 bitterness that, thoiigh tho}' htixe won something, it is 
 not their ideal, and moreover that they can fiever reach 
 their ideal. The applause does not deceive them: they 
 are too well educated not to see, when the first excite- 
 ment of production is over and they look at the work to 
 which they have given their best powers, that they have 
 failed. Disgust of life ensues, a kind of 2>fissionate hatred 
 of themselves. In that atmosj^here, no good work can be 
 done ; and, if they try again, the inspiration which they 
 had abandons them, it Avas founded on ignorance of the 
 extent of their jjowers, knowledge has disjjersed it : the 
 failure is worse than before. But all this sort of work 
 has unfitted them for ruder and more practical work. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 311 
 
 After riding on Pegasus, they cannot get into tlie traces 
 and pull at the connnon chariot of the work of tlie world. 
 They cease to act, they bury tlieniselves in their learned 
 and artistic leisure, and all vivid life is over. The bitter- 
 ness of failure leads them to utter carelessness of a life 
 to come. Why should they renew the web which will 
 crack from side to side again? And the inaction in 
 which they live takes away the desire to live again, for 
 it takes away the food of life. 
 
 Moreover, among persons of this educated type, the 
 same thing holds good, as in the case of the scientific 
 man who pursues nothing else but science. Devotion to 
 art or to criticism alone develops the faculties used to 
 a strength out of all jiroportion to the rest. Not only 
 are the spiritual powers dwindled to a thread for want 
 of use, so that immortal life is a pretty dream, but the 
 faculties used, being unbalanced by other imi^ortant 
 jjowers of our nature, are not capable of forming a just 
 judgment. Criticism, in discussing matters such as the 
 evidence for immortality, discusses it as it would the 
 evidence for the existence of an early and unimportant 
 myth. It begins by sixpposing it is not true ; it leaves 
 out all the sinritual phenomena which, in the history of 
 the human heart, have accompanied faith in it ; it treats 
 a question Avhich belongs, by the hypotliesis, to the realm 
 of intellect and the si)irit, as if it were a question of the 
 2'ure intellect alone. On the face of it, nothing can be 
 more absurd, — as absurd as the late discussion into which 
 one of our philosophers enters with regard to a mother's 
 love for a child, on physiological grounds alone. It is 
 plain in this case that the critical powers have become 
 so abnormally develoj^ed as to vitiate the purity of 
 judgment. 
 
312 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 On the other linnd, the mere «stlietic life tends equally 
 to a belief in annihilation. A somewhat stern and ener- 
 getic manliness is needed in the character of a highly 
 educated man before he can look forward with joy to 
 living for ever. Increase of knowledge and increased 
 sensitiveness of feeling increase the pain of living ; and, 
 though they also increase its joy, yet Ave begin to fear 
 joy, for Ave know the reaction Avhich follows it. " Can 
 we bear," we ask, "going on with this struggle for- 
 ever?" Yes, Ave can; but only Avhen Ave are i)ossessed 
 by the noblest and the strongest ideas, Avlien Ave enter 
 into the struggle as men who are resolved not to re- 
 treat a single step. Slowly, then, as we grow through 
 long battle into veteran warriors, we feel, not the lan- 
 guid pleasure in beauty, but the glorious joy of the Avar 
 for right ; and to lixe forever becomes the first desire of 
 life, for we know that it means life in union with 
 eterna' Goodness, Truth, and Love. 
 
 This sort of manliness the exclusively fpsthetic life 
 does not cherish, but enfeebles. It produces a soft, 
 rather mournful habit of mind : it unnerves the more 
 active powers, it makes men shrink from the clash of 
 life; its devotion to beauty, for beauty''s sake alone, 
 blurs the sharpness of the lines Avhich divide right and 
 Avrong : everything which charms the senses, proA'ided 
 the charm be a delicate one, is lovely, and Avhether it 
 is morally lovely or not is a secondary consideration. 
 Pain, therefore, disease, strong effort, .the struggle of 
 doubt, the labor to find answers to great problems, such 
 as this of immortality, become bitter and distressful; 
 and in absolute seeking after and finding of the beauti- 
 ful here, in exquisite enjoyment of it when found, and in 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 313 
 
 exquisite regret of it wlieii it can l)c no more enjoyed, all 
 hope, nay, all possibility of enjoying another life than 
 •the present, j^asses aAvay, and life becomes in youtii a 
 passionate desire to get all the joy and beauty jiossible 
 before old age comes, and in old age a wailing memory 
 of jjast delight, and a sorrowful waiting in as much 
 quiet as possible for the everlasting sleep. " Why enter 
 another world? No other world can be lovelier than 
 this; and, if I may not have this, I do not care for 
 another." 
 
 The reasons why many working-men reject immor- 
 tality, I have spoken of elsewhere ; but there is one rea^ 
 son common to them and to many educated men. It is 
 that we are living in a revolutionary period of thought, 
 and the very fact that any ojjinion is an old one is enough 
 to subject it to attack. Now, in the general revolt against 
 things accredited by custom, not only is the orthodox 
 faith involved, but also beliefs which, though included in 
 Christianity, are older than it. Among these is the be- 
 lief in immortality. We are doubting now the doctrine 
 that the ancient Persian, Hindoo, and Hebrew clung to, 
 that Cicero and Plato rejoiced in holding, that the Maho- 
 metan does not dream of denying. It seems as if on 
 this subject the whole world were going back into the 
 old savage, or into even a less noble condition ; for I 
 suppose no man in hours of sober judgment has any 
 doubt as to the nobleness of the idea of immortality, 
 and the degradation involved in the idea of annihi- 
 lation. But the truth is that a vast deal of the denial 
 of the former among the working-classes and among the 
 young men and women of the upper classes is not 
 owing to any thought being exijended on the subject, 
 
314 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 but simply to the revolutionary impulse in them. " The 
 thing is old, let ns get rid of it. The conservative 
 feeling sujiports it : everything -which conservatism sup- 
 ports we attack. Let us have something new." And 
 it is not unamusing — if we put the religious feeling 
 about it aside — to watch the self-conscious audacity 
 with which peo])le try to awake one's astonishment, and 
 really awake one's ])ity, by airing in society their faith 
 in anniliilation, as if to believe in it were not intellect- 
 uallv and morally a miserable business. 
 
 One would despair of the jirogress of mankind, if one 
 thought tliat this would last. But revolutionary jieriods 
 end by finding a new channel for their waters ; and, 
 though the exhausted ideas of the ])ast j)erish in the 
 whirlpool, the noble ideas live and flow on witli tlie 
 new waters. We are now in a kind of backwater of 
 the great river of Progress, and spinning round and 
 round in a confusion of eddies and efforts to get on. 
 Wlien we have found our fresh thoughts and got them 
 clear, we shall get out of the backwater witli a rush, 
 and stream on in that which I like better than revolu- 
 tion, — steady movement, aware of itself, to distinctly 
 recognized ends. But at present every one is naturally 
 dissatisfied with the want of ])urpose, of clear aims, of 
 any coherent ideas in social, political, religious, and 
 artistic life. And the dissatisfaction shows itself chiefly 
 in all niattei-s whicli l»elong to the realm of art ; for 
 in art one always flnds the more subtile asj)ects of any 
 society reflected. Our more modern poets and painters 
 find nothing calm or perfect enough in modern life to 
 represent. They go back out of the present to the 
 past : they tell us stories and paint us scenes from the 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 315 
 
 old Greek and Medijeval life. They try to recover 
 the dead motives of a dead life ; and a Avhole school has 
 sprung n]), both in poetry and on canvas, which pos- 
 sesses much charm, but wliicli is essentially mournful 
 and retrograde, Avhich smells of musk and ambergris, 
 whose ])assion is more tliat of exliaustcd feeling trying 
 by morbid means to sting itself into joy tlian tlie frank 
 and healthy passion of youtli, whose notes are not native 
 to Englisli soil, and whose work does not smack of tlie 
 fresh air, nor seem done face to face with nature, but 
 smells of scented rooms, lit uj) with artificial liglit. 
 
 Our art has been driven from tlie present to the past, 
 and tliose who enjoy and love it naturally cease to feel 
 interest in the future: the whole tone of feeling it 
 encourages tends to lessen the care for and the belief in 
 a life to come. 
 
 But this cannot last : tlie present is always too strong 
 for the i>ast ; and art and jihilosophy and literature, and 
 with them educated society, will emerge from this back- 
 water, wlien modern life finds clear aims, and flo\v on in 
 new channels. Active life in the ])resent will then pro- 
 duce art and literature to represent it, and the interest 
 in the jjresent will make the future so interesting that 
 the tendency to belie\ e in immortality will take to itself 
 fresh life. By that time, Christianity — I mean our j)res- 
 ent form of it, which is also in tliis revolutionary stage 
 of confusion, changing old opinions for new- — -will also 
 have refitted itself to the higher tiioughts and wants of 
 men ; and its doctrine of inunortality, freed from the 
 low ideas with which it has been surrounded by a dying 
 theology, present once more to men, longing again to 
 live forever because they lia^ e found a vital jiresent, a 
 glorious ideal to which they can ;is]iir(' with joy. 
 
316 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 For, after all, wliat is at the root of this belief in an- 
 nihilation? It is that our theology has been for some 
 years presenting to us an idea of God wholly inadequate 
 to our present intellectual and moral conceptions, and 
 an idea of man which we now reject as ignoble, and as 
 untrue because ignoble. Not that this idea of God was 
 inadequate to ])ast society, or that idea of man ignoble. 
 They were then as high as most men could receive, 
 though we always find a few who protested against 
 them, and rose above the common level. But thought 
 on these subjects is now up to that of the higher spirits 
 of the past, and theology must rise to the moral and 
 intellectual level of the present before immortality can 
 be a imiversal faith again. 
 
 An adequate idea of God, a noble idea of man, — these 
 are the ideas which, reintroduced into theology, will 
 bring back the belief in immortality ; for they will 
 render the theory of annihilation intellectually as well 
 as morally absurd. 
 
 The common notion of God divides his being from 
 the universe and from mankind. It is so afraid of 
 being called jjantheistic that it forgets the truth which 
 is in pantheism. If nature and mankind are, as a 
 whole or in any of their parts, capable of being truly 
 severed from God, so that the one runs along like a 
 machine which may run down, or that in the other one 
 soul can, by becoming eternally evil, be eternally divided 
 from the Godhead, then God cannot be considered ab- 
 solute nor all-comprehending nor all-i^owerful for good. 
 There are jaoints at which Ids power fails, his goodness 
 retires from the field, — points at which he is forced to 
 struggle; and the possibility of inferring these things 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 317 
 
 from the orthodox idea of God is surely inconsistent 
 with tlie idea of liim wliicli we feel iioto that we ought to 
 jjossess. It is really less than we can conceive, and for us 
 to worship it any longer is idolatry. We must have an 
 adequate idea of God ; and, till we get it into theology, a 
 great number of men who think deejily will be atheists, 
 and necessarily disbelievers in immortality. 
 
 Again, owing to this imcultivated notion of a God 
 who sits apart, at a distance from us, we are forced to 
 assume another great power in the imiverse. If any 
 one of us, or anything, can have or retain being, ajjart 
 from him, then there nmst be another source of being 
 than his. And, j'l'^ictically sj^eaking, that is what is 
 held. The artist talks of nature, the philosopher of 
 law, the theologian of the devil; and we have a dual 
 government of the world, in which God tends to become 
 more and more a remote and njisty i:)hantom. 
 
 Now, I say, if we believe in a God at all, that the only 
 adequate conception of him which will satisfy our intel- 
 lect and heart alike is one which conceives of him as the 
 sole self-existing Being and of everything and everyone 
 as havincr Beinc: only in his Bcinsf. The life of the uni- 
 verse, of matter and spirit, is one l!f\\ — the Life of God 
 infinitely conditioned in and through a myriad forms. 
 There is not a shred of the world called the world of 
 nature which is not held in him, and is not, indeed, his 
 thought. We all are, only because we are in him and 
 part of his being, our personality held in his jicrsonality. 
 Do not call this jjantheism. It may be pantheism, but it 
 is something more than pantheism. It is not saying the 
 imiverse is God : it is saying God is the universe, and 
 something more than the universe. It is the doctrine 
 
318 
 
 FAITH AKD FREEDOM. 
 
 whicli Saint Paul inferred from the old Greek poet : " In 
 him we live and moA'e and have our being ; as certain 
 also of your own poets have said, For Ave are also his 
 offsj^ring." It is the doctrine of Saint Paul himself : 
 "Of him and by him and through him are all things"; 
 and the moment Ave fully conceive that he alone is, and 
 that nothing is whii'h is not he, it becomes intellectually 
 absurd that any soul should go out as a candle. Once 
 haA'ing been, once haA ing had consciousness, once having 
 had personality, it is impossible to lose being, conscious- 
 ness, and jiorsonality. That AA^hich is in God, in eternal 
 Being, cannot perish. 
 
 But it is 7iot intellectually absurd when God's existence 
 is denied, and to this conclusion men come Avho think of 
 what they mean by annihilation. They knoAV that the 
 denial of immortality irresistibly infers atheism ; that, if 
 there is Eternal Being, those Avho haA-e issued from that 
 Beins and haA^e their beina: in him must be immortal: 
 Ave cannot think the one Avithout thinking the other. 
 And I Avant those Avho so lightly talk of man dying 
 forcA-er to clearly understand either that they are talking 
 nonsense, if they confess a God, or that they are logically 
 driven into atheism. 
 
 For not only is the notion of annihilation of person- 
 ality — that is, of our consciousness, Avill, and character 
 — intellectually absurd in face of an adequate intellect- 
 ual conception of God, it is also moi-.ally absurd in face 
 of an adequate moral conception of God. 
 
 But the fact is that it is not morally absurd to many 
 of us, because Ave have no adequate moral conception of 
 God. The moral inadequacy of our thought of God is 
 chiefly in this, that Ave accept a teaching Avhich thinks 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 319 
 
 of liim as liaviiig no duties to liis children. We are told 
 that he has a Sovereign's riglit to do Aviiat he likes with 
 us, and that ^ve have no business to judge as to tlie right 
 and wrong of liis actions. 
 
 I deny that at once on the ground already laid down, 
 that our being is held in God's being, and therefore that 
 what is truth and justice and l<>\'e to us is the same in 
 kind in us as in God, and that it is absurd to tliink other- 
 wise. But, as these teachers do think otherAvise, they go 
 on to infer that things Avhicli Avould seem unjust if done 
 by a man are not unjust if done by God. We are told 
 that he creates us to damn us, or leaves us alone to ruin 
 ourselves, or that he allows us to be children of the 
 devil, things so absolutely immoral in an earthly father 
 that Ave are driA^en either into a state of blind submis- 
 sion in Avhich intellect is destroyed and the moral sense 
 utterly confused, or into absolute rcA'olt, or into a kind 
 of hojjeless drifting carelessness of the Avhole matter. 
 And in the last state of mind are those who still cling by 
 old custom to belief in God and immortality, but avIio 
 have no real jileasure or interest in their belief in whom 
 it produces no result. 
 
 NoAV, such a Avant of A'ital faith is due to a mean con- 
 cej^tion of their own moral nature folloAving on a mean 
 conception of God's moral nature. " He has left me to 
 myself," they say ; " nay, more, I am told that I am vile 
 and Avorthless spiritually, that my nature is utterly cor- 
 rupt. If I am so bad," they go on, " Avhy should I care 
 Avhat becomes of me? If my nature is corrupt througli- 
 out, what is the use of aspiring to be better? Nay, I do 
 not believe in my aspirations : am I not told that tliey 
 themselves are Avicked?" This is the Avay they have 
 
320 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 argued long ago. Now they have ceased to trouble 
 themselves about the matter ; but the result of the argu- 
 ment remains as an unconscious influence below the sur- 
 face of their life, and the effect is a total loss of interest 
 in iininortality, amounting to practical disbelief of it. 
 
 All this is done away with by a true moral conception 
 of God in his relation to us, based on the moral ideas 
 which we possess ourselves from him. He has sent us 
 forth from himself : therefore, -he is bound to be, we feel, 
 in the highest conceival)le sense, a Father to us, and he 
 is oiu- Father. We can never, then, be separated from 
 him, never let alone by him, never shut uji by him in 
 eternal evil. Our Being has come direct from his, and 
 is now in his Being : therefore, our nature can never be 
 utterly vile. Our aspirations are his voice in us: our 
 justice, truth, and love, svich as they are, are still the 
 same in kind as his. 
 
 He is pure moral being : therefore, since we cannot 
 divide ourselves from him, and since he is bound as a 
 Father to educate us, we must reach in the end jiure 
 moral being. 
 
 It is thus that from an adequate nioral concei^tion of 
 God we arrive at the second thing I said we wanted to 
 restore to xis the belief in immortality, — an adequate 
 conception of man. ^Ye are inseparably united to pure 
 intellectual and moral Being, and in that union we are 
 great, and do great things of the brain and of the spirit. 
 
 And now, in conclusion, taking both of these things 
 together, the greatness of man in God and the absolute 
 morality of God, wliich we now know is in kind the same 
 as ours, let us see if annihilation be not morally absurd, 
 if the being of God be granted. 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 321 
 
 Of course I sliall speak in Avliat follows of good men, 
 and it will be said that the argument does not prove that 
 the wicked will not be annihilated. But I have already- 
 spoken of this question in previous sermons, and I hold 
 that the destruction of the wicked is morally and logi- 
 cally impossible, if there be a God who is the only self- 
 existing Being, and if he be a moral Being. It is a 
 question of redem])ti()n beyond this earth, but the pres- 
 ent argument deals with the question as it lies before us 
 in this world. 
 
 1^0 one can deny, who is not pi'ejudiced by the low 
 theological view of our nature, that it is capable of 
 greatness of character. In every age there have been 
 men who have forgotten self for the sake of right and 
 truth and for a noble cause, even though the self-forget- 
 fulness meant death, — men whose glory shines with the 
 serene light of stai's in the sky which arches over his- 
 tory. Others, too, have been, whose path has lain apart 
 from fame, the quiet martyrs of self-surrender, who have 
 died to the joys of life for the sake of others' joy, or 
 borne in the eloquent silence of resignation bitter j^ain 
 and grief. 
 
 And has all that perished for them? Has the noble 
 effort and the faithful life been in vain for those who 
 lived it ? Are they only to live in our memory and love, 
 but they themselves " to be blown about the desert dust, 
 or sealed within the iron hills"? It revolts all our 
 moral feeling, if we believe in a moral God. Either 
 there is no God, whose children we are, or the denial of 
 immortality is absurd. There is nothing between athe- 
 ism and immortality. 
 
 And that infinite thirst of knowledge we possess, that 
 
322 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 poAver of thought which sweeps us beyond the world of 
 sense and time; that inexhaustible activity of imagina- 
 tion by which we create now worlds ; our jiassionate cry 
 for the rest which lies in harmony of nature; our desire 
 for fuller life, when life is filled with great thoughts and 
 jiure and passionate love of man; that yearning of the 
 spirit for freedom from sin and for union with truth ; 
 that ceaseless cry for more light ; our delight in rever- 
 encing something better than ourselves, in ideal ex- 
 cellence ; our intense sensibility to beauty and sublimity 
 in nature, — have these no final cause, if God exists? 
 Did he give us these powers of intellect and heart and 
 spirit, — powers which draw their fire from the fire of 
 his eternal Thought and Will, — only to resume them 
 into himself, to lure us on to work and then to quench 
 our light ; to make our hopes our hell, our noblest long- 
 ings our deejaest misery ; to extinguish our exhaustless 
 effort and curiosity in the degradation of an eternal 
 sleep ? Did he give us that love of the ideal, that de- 
 light in beauty, that tearful interest in his universe, 
 only to make the grave and the wretched dust of our 
 corruption the vain and miseral)le end? Has he written 
 his scorn on all our aspirations after truth and light and 
 holiness? Does he smile with contemjituous pity when 
 men's hearts go uj) to him in praise for the freshness 
 and radiance of the spring? It is incredible. Either 
 the atheist is right, or that immortality is untrue is 
 absurd. 
 
 Look, too, at our triumph over death. When decay 
 usurps the powers, and memory and life slip from us 
 like a dream, it is then that our inner being most often 
 rises into beauty and victory. And, when the last act 
 
IMMORTALITY. 
 
 323 
 
 of the man is the assertion of his immortality, does the 
 Lord of Eigliteousness contradict him in contempt? Is 
 the spirit on the verge of its greatest loss at its very 
 noblest moment of gain? Does it reach with faithful 
 effort, and thrill with divine hoj^e, the mountain peak, 
 only to topple over the precipice of annihilation ? Then 
 those who believe in God are the real fools of the 
 world. 
 
 Our soul swells with reverence and love for those 
 Avho held life as nothing in comparison with truthful- 
 ness to right ; our soul is full of a sad condemnation of 
 those who pi'efer to live when life is infamous ; and yet, 
 if annihilation be true, God despises the nobility which 
 we revere, and tacitly approves the infamy which we 
 condemn. But this is incredible, if we conceive of God 
 as moral : it is hideous. Either, then, there is no God, 
 or annihilation is false. 
 
 Finally, it is true of a noble human life that it finds 
 its highest enjoyment in the consciousness of ^^rogress. 
 Our times of greatest pleasure are when we have won 
 some higher peak of difficulty, trodden under foot some 
 evil, refused some pleasant temptation for truth's sake, 
 been swept out of our narrow self by love, and felt day 
 by day, in such high labors, so sure a growth of moral 
 strength within us that we cannot conceive of an end of 
 growth. 
 
 And, when all that is most vigorous within us, does 
 God, — pure, moi-al Being, — does God say No? Is that 
 insatiable delight in progress given to the insect of an 
 hour? Does there seem to be a Spirit who leads us 
 through life, conquering the years in us, redeeming us 
 from all evU, bringing in us calm out of sorrow, faith 
 
324 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 out of doubt, strengtli out of trial? And, when he has 
 made us great of spirit like liimself, does he bury all 
 that Avealth of heart in nothingness? 
 
 What incredible thing is this? Only credible if there 
 be no God. 
 
LETTER TO THE CONGREGATION OF 
 BEDFORD CHAPEL. 
 
 ''SALT WITHOUT SAVOR." 
 
LETTER TO THE COITGREGATIO]sr 
 OF BEDFORD CHAPEI.. 
 
 To THE Congregation of Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury : 
 
 It is only after serious and long consideration that I 
 have come to the resolution of which I now inform my 
 congregation. I have decided that it is my duty to 
 leave the Churcli of England, and I have already jjlaced 
 the resignation of my license in the hands of the Bishop 
 of London. Wlien, some years ago, Bedford Chapel 
 was presented to me, the theological opinions I held 
 were legally tenable in the Church of England, but they 
 were not in accordance with its orthodox scheme of doc- 
 trine. I made use of the liberty the law afforded me, 
 and claimed the compromise which the Church, desirous 
 to expand its circle, offers so freely to its members. 
 Nevertheless, I felt even then that my oijinions might 
 settle into some form which the large liberty of the 
 Cliurch could not tolerate; and I accepted the gift of 
 the chajiel on tlie exj^ressed condition that I should not 
 be prevented from stating opinions which might hazard 
 my position in the Cliurch of England. Tliat time has 
 now arrived. As long as I had any doubt as to the in- 
 credibility of miracles, I could justly remain a minister 
 of the Church. I was also bound by a multitude of con- 
 
328 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 siderations not to act on impulse or in a hnrry. The 
 matter was too grave for liaste, but it was also too grave 
 to lay aside. I considered it for four years, but at last 
 to consider it any longer meant to wilfully blind myself 
 to tlie truth for the sake of my jJosition. Therefore, 
 some Sundays ago, in a series of sermons on Miracles 
 and on Authority, I expressed the conclusions at which 
 I had arrived. These conclusions, being equivalent to 
 an assertion of the incredibility of niiracle, and to a 
 denial of the exclusiA'e authority of the Church or of the 
 Bible, compel me to say that I cannot any longer, with 
 truth to myself or loyalty to the Church, remain its 
 minister. The form of doctiine to which the Church of 
 England has committed itself appears to stand on the 
 Miracle of the Incarnation as a building on its founda- 
 tion. Not to accept that miracle is to separate myself, 
 not, I hope, from the spirit, but from the external form 
 of the faith as laid down by the Church of England ; and 
 it is the inability to confess this miracle Avhich, beyond 
 all else, forces me out of its communion. But, though 
 I depart on this ground, the rejection of the miraculous 
 leaves all the great spii'itual truths I ha^-e been accus- 
 tomed to teach untouched by any doubt of mine. They 
 are now, in my belief, more clear than before, more use- 
 ful for men's inspiration and comfort. They are freed, 
 as it seems to me, from errors which may have once been 
 their strength, but which are now their weakness. I re- 
 joice that I can now leave on one side these supports of 
 truth, and teach the truth itself alone. There will be, 
 therefore, no more change in my preaching than that 
 which will naturally follow on the greater sense of free- 
 dom that it will possess. Nor do I leave the Chui-ch to 
 
LETTER TO THE CONGREGATION. 
 
 329 
 
 become a mere Theist. I believe, tliougli tlie Person of 
 Christ is no longer miraculous to me, though I cannot 
 consider him as absolute Gorl, yet that God has sjiecially 
 revealed himself through Christ, that the highest relig- 
 ion of mankind is founded on his life and revelation, that 
 the sjnrit of his life is the life and salvation of men, and 
 that he himself is the Head and Re^jresentative of Man- 
 kind, — Jesus Christ our Lord. Since that is the case, 
 and since I wish to sever myself as little as possible from 
 a long and noble tradition of religion, and from the early 
 associations of a great communion, the English Church 
 Service, Avith some omissions, will be still read in Bed- 
 ford Chapel. The chief of those omissions will naturally 
 be the creeds. They exact agreement with their clauses 
 from those who recite them. It is different with the 
 l^rayers and Christian hymns contained in the service. 
 They are subject to the selection of the worshiijpers ; 
 and no one while I read them will now impute to me 
 doctrines which I do not hold, or mistake my position. 
 I can use them as the best vehicles of religious emotion 
 which we possess, without being sujiposed to agree with 
 all the theological views of their writers. It is not with- 
 out a natural regret that I part from a communion in 
 which I have served for more than twenty years, and 
 from those old and dear associations which have been 
 with me from my boyhood. And I must also feel some 
 sadness for the loss of many who Avill leave my congre- 
 gation and listen to me no more. But the time has come 
 when, at any cost, I must say farewell, and look forward 
 to a new and untried life, in which I pray I shall have 
 the help and blessing of God. But, when I look forward, 
 I cannot regret the parting. I am glad to be freed from 
 
330 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 compromise, glad to be able to speak unfettered by a 
 system, glad to have a clear position, glad to pass out of 
 an atmosphere which had become impossible to breathe, 
 because I was supposed, however I might assert the 
 contrary, to believe all the doctrines of the Church of 
 England in the way the Church confessed them. 
 
 Stopford a. Brooke. 
 
 1 Manchestek Square, London, Sept. 15, 1880. 
 
SALT WITHOUT SAVOR. 
 
 October 17, 1880. 
 
 " Salt is good ; but if the salt has lost its savor, wherewith will ye 
 season it ? " — Mark ix., 50. 
 
 SixcE I List met you, I have taken a step which changes 
 many tilings, both for you who have listened to me for 
 so long and for myself. I have left the Church of Eng- 
 land, and this chapel has entered upon a new life. It is 
 with mingled seriousness and joy that I have departed. 
 Indeed, there can be few hours more grave in a man's 
 life than that in which, late in his career and no longer 
 young, he leaves the home that has sheltered him for so 
 many years, with all its associations and traditions, and 
 sets sail an emigrant to a new land, to till it and to 
 keep it. I have spoken in this personal way, because I 
 wish my congregation to understand and feel as deeply 
 as they can do for me how serious is the step that I have 
 made, and how seriously I have taken it; and I ask them 
 to believe that I have not rashly done this thing, that I 
 have counted tlie cost of it, and that I mean with God's 
 help to work it out, and I have asked for his help in my 
 future life, which is the power of the soul and the insjji- 
 ration of labor. I have made these personal allusions, 
 because I want you to feel and think as seriously of the 
 
332 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 duty I owe to those of you who may choose to remain 
 with me or to come to me as I think of the step I have 
 taken. I was bound not to make such a change, unless 
 I clearly knew in matters of religious thinking and of 
 rehgious life where I was and what I meant, and unless 
 I stated with all tlie clearness I could muster why I 
 have changed my place, and what I thought of those 
 great religious truths to which I cling with all my heart 
 and soul and intellect. It will be necessary, then, for 
 some Sundays that I should si^eak on these truths, in 
 order tliat you may know my views, and may either 
 leave or stay with me. I am glad to be free from a posi- 
 tion of comjjromise : I am now able to express my views 
 "with absolute freedom ; but, on this day when I begin 
 my work, I am forced, somewhat against my will, to 
 make a personal explanation, and to sjieak this morning 
 of some reasons I have for leaving the Church, and this 
 evening of the reasons I have for making those changes 
 in the service which you have already observed in the 
 paper which I sent to my congregation, and which many 
 of those who belong to my congregation have seen else- 
 where. I said that the main reason for my departure 
 from the Church was that I had ceased to believe that 
 miracles were credible ; and that, since the English 
 Church founds its whole scheme of doctrine on the 
 Miracle of the Incarnation, disbelief in that miracle put 
 me outside of tlie doctrine of the Church. That was 
 the crowning cause of my action ; and I shall explain it 
 more fully when I come hereafter to speak of the incar- 
 nation, and necessarily of the personality of Christ. It 
 was enough to state that reason alone in a letter which 
 was bound to be short, and in which I naturally chose to 
 
SALT WITHOUT SAVOR. 
 
 333 
 
 put forward the most prominent cause of action. More- 
 over, to set aside the doctrine of the Miraculous Incar- 
 nation, was to set myself apart, as I wished to do, from 
 the whole scheme of doctrine jjut forth with respect to 
 God and man by the High and Low Church jiartics in 
 the Church. The reason I gave then was quite full 
 enough in itself to explain my secession ; but behind 
 that there were other reasons which I am now bound to 
 lay befoi-e you, and which will more fully explain what 
 I have done and where I stand. I left the Church, not 
 only from disagreement with its doctrines, but because I 
 had come to disaj^prove of the very existence of it as an 
 ecclesiastical body, especially of it as connected with the 
 State, and also of its existence in relation to politics, 
 theology, and religion. 
 
 In all I am now going to say, I must not be understood 
 to say one woi-d against the men or those who belong to 
 the Church, nor indeed against the noble working of the 
 Church itself. I sliall speak simply and clearly of the 
 theory on which the Church exists, and which I felt it 
 imjjossiblc for me to live up to or to retain. Politically, 
 the theory is mixed up Avith the old aristocratic system 
 which has perished or is perishing so rapidly, the very 
 essence of which is in op^^osition, as I think, to all the 
 moving and living forms of society. Tlie theory of the 
 Church is an aristocratic theory, and it has ministered to 
 that imperialistic conception of God which in theology 
 has done as much harm as despotism or caste system 
 of any kind has done to society. The way tlie Church 
 works in society proves what I contend. It has system- 
 atized exclusion and supported caste in religion. It has 
 forced the whole body of the Dissenters from its forms 
 
334 
 
 FAITH AND FEEEDOM. 
 
 to suffer under a religious and social stigma, which is 
 scarcely now beginning to be removed. It claims to 
 separate from itself and strives to keep down large 
 masses of men whose spiritual life is as deep as its own ; 
 nor does the Church recognize their religious move- 
 ments as upon a level with its own movements. The 
 standard of worthiness, then, in the theory of the 
 Church, not of course in Churchmen, is not spiritual 
 goodness, but union with itself. This is not the fault 
 of its members, but the fault of its theory; but the fault 
 condemns the theory. Many Avithin the Church have 
 tried hard to do what was right in the matter, to hold 
 out the hand of union to our Nonconformists; but every 
 effort has failed, and every effort will fail. The theory 
 of the Church is too strong for these men. I could no 
 longer be mixed up with a body whose very political 
 princij^les I hold in condemnation, and the very exist- 
 ence of which, in spite of aU the liberal men in it, sup- 
 ports the 2:)olitical principles and systems which I oppose 
 and shall ojipose as long as I have breath to speak. 
 
 Secondly. Ecclesiastically, the Church supports and 
 claims an outward authority for tlie faith of man. Its 
 system is based on the authority of a creed which em- 
 bodies and crystallizes past religious thought, and makes 
 it still more rigid in articles; or upon the infallible au- 
 thority of the Bible, or ujjon the infallible authority of 
 the Divine Spirit secluded and confined within the limits 
 of the Church itself. On whichever of these forms of 
 authority Churchmen base themselves, the Church, by 
 their voice, calls upon all men to unite themselves to 
 her, to bend before these authorities or to lose or imperil 
 their salvation. It asks them, practically speaking, to 
 
SALT WITHOUT SAVOR. 
 
 335 
 
 surrender a great part of their individuality, and to 
 become one consenting part of the whole. The Bible 
 has spoken, the Church has jsronounced its decree, it is 
 the part of the laity only to believe and to obey. The 
 inevitable tendency of this system and its claims is to 
 make both preacher and hearer the conventional ser- 
 vants, not of a living word, but of a literal system, bones 
 in a skeleton, not members of a living body, slaves eitlier 
 of a hierarchy or of a book; functionaries and listeners 
 Avho do not know what belongs to them, who cannot 
 move excejit in chains, and none the less chains for their 
 ponderous covering. Authority of this kind, faithfully 
 followed and faithfully believed in, disarticulates, I do 
 believe, in the end, the backbone of the intellect and of 
 the spirit, and hangs lead upon the wings of the religious 
 imagination, binds the soul away from sjiiritual freedom 
 into the prison of the past, frequently reduces the con- 
 science to silence, and still more frequently sacrifices the 
 reason upon the altar of ecclesiastical theology. But 
 these powers, which it is the inevitable tendency of 
 authority to weaken and finally to paralyze, powers of 
 the reason, conscience, and sj^irit, are the very and only 
 powers which God has given to us, whereby we can see 
 his truth and recognize his word and grasjj to our hearts 
 the new treasure of revelation, which it is his special 
 work to declare as the world advances. Authority not 
 only tends to enfeeble the power of the soul, but in en- 
 feebling these powers destroys the very conditions in 
 mankind by which the word of God is heard and under- 
 stood. This is its inevitable tendency, and though there 
 are numbers in the Church wlio claim their liberty from 
 these authorities, and maintain their individual freedom, 
 
336 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 and liold their reason, conscience, and spirit largely free, 
 the tendency in the end becomes too imxch for them, or 
 their position becomes untenable. Thej'- cannot liberal- 
 ize wholly a Church based upon authority, and to take 
 away these authorities from tlie Church, as many of 
 them wish to do, will not liberalize it, but will do away 
 with it altogether. It is nothing without its system, and 
 its system is authoritative. How, then, Avhen I came to 
 feel tlius strongly and to express it as I did a few months 
 ago, could I remain bound up with a body which still 
 rested upon authority ; how could I live any longer in 
 the Cluirch ? 
 
 Again, on the question of the greatest of all religious 
 concej)tions, — the idea of a universal Church, — I felt that 
 the theory of the Clmrch was not only inadequate, but 
 contradictory. The theory of the Church excludes from 
 its fold all who do not agree with it, all who will not 
 either confess its creeds or acknowledge the su23remacy 
 of the Bible as infallible, or bend to its spiritual decrees. 
 And the Church is not alone in this. Almost all sects 
 that differ from it have also their exclusive confessions, 
 and many are more exclusive than the Church itself. 
 Now, this exclusiveness and its fruits seemed to me to be 
 at the root of nearly half the evils which had connected 
 themselves with religion. In the irdst, it made intoler- 
 ance and 2^ersecutiou a Christian duty : in the present, it 
 is a source of daily violation of Christian love, both in 
 public and private. It guaranteed exclusiveness as a re- 
 ligious necessity, promoted Pharisaism, and by calling 
 those who did not agree with the Church or with a Con- 
 fession infidels or heretics made them infidels and kept 
 them heretics. This theory, too, denied, in my mind. 
 
SALT WITHOUT SAVOE. 
 
 337 
 
 the mighty concoptiou -which Christ gave to the world 
 of a universal fatherhood in God, and of a universal 
 brotherhood among men, of God incarnate in all men, of 
 the eternal and necessary bond that binds God to every 
 single soul ; of a universal Church which embraces all the 
 race which now exists, in ideal, but which will be com- 
 pleted in fact in the future. These vast and glorious 
 ideas, which, taken together, form the most magnificent 
 concejition of Christendom, are suj^pressed and stifled by 
 the theory of the Church, and by the exclusiveness of 
 sects which bind up themselves within the limits of con- 
 fessions. Churches and sects talk of the Church of God 
 and of the world, as if they were two distinct things, not 
 only in fact, but absolutely in idea, — as if there were a 
 final and necessary sejjaration between the two. The 
 true view is, I believe, that the world and all mankind is 
 the Church of God, and all men in idea are redeemed, 
 but not as yet saved ; that the idea will be realized in 
 full at last, and humanity, one and all, made the absolute 
 Son of God. This idea is lost, nay, is contradicted by 
 the theory of the Church, not, indeed, by all who belong 
 to the Church, but by the very theory on which it exists. 
 But it is the idea which of all is the most deejjly rooted 
 and most ardent and most enkindling in my faith. 
 Therefore, when I came to see that it was not compati- 
 ble with the Church, or with joining any sect which de- 
 manded assent to creeds or confessions as necessary to 
 salvation, I could neither stay in the Church nor join a 
 sect. 
 
 Lastly, I found no rest finally for my foot among any 
 of the parties in the Church, and, least of all, among the 
 liberal Church party. Two clear schemes of doctrine 
 
338 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 existed in the Church some years ago, and were broadly 
 characterized as High Church and Low Church. Both 
 of these schemes have lived for centuries, and they are 
 logical within themselves, and being, indeed, the outcome 
 of two parts of human nature, had and still possess tre- 
 mendous power over the minds of men. Both are op- 
 posed to each other, radically opposed ; and many years 
 ago, when a new religious fervor began to stir in the 
 Church, these two schemes of doctrine, being excited 
 through that fervor, began to clash, and finally clashed in 
 a great trial, so that a split seemed inevitable, and one 
 or other of the jjarties seemed impelled to leave the 
 Church. It was then that the law, to whose sentence 
 the matter was referred, affirmed that both these parties, 
 so opposite, could justly and conscientiously exist within 
 the Church. And, when that was so found, then the old 
 notion of a comprehensive Church, which might repre- 
 sent all phases of belief in the nation, began to take a 
 new consistency in men; and this notion of making the 
 Church comjirehensive soon extended itself. To many 
 persons, among whom I found myself, both these theo- 
 logical schools of which I speak were abhorrent, and 
 these persons, of whom, as I said, I became one, caught 
 at the idea of widening the Church, and, when the com- 
 promise afforded in the case of the Gorham Judgment 
 gave them hope, formed a fresh party in the Church, and 
 strove to naturalize within its limits a liberal theologj\ 
 "The Church was a Church of compromise," they said; 
 " and everything the law allowed them to say they would 
 say." In that way, by introducing liberal views into the 
 Church, they tried to make these views slowly at home 
 within its fold. The Church, they believed, finding 
 
SALT WITHOUT SAVOR. 
 
 339 
 
 these views at Lome witliin it, would naturally expand, 
 open its arms wider, and lessen the severity of its tenets. 
 And, indeed, that has been done. It was a tenable jjosi- 
 tion, upon the ground that the law, which only takes 
 notice of the agreement of words, was the Judge of the- 
 ology; and it Avas further tenable so long as the jaublic 
 understood and recognized that position. But when the 
 theory of that party should come to be pushed too far, 
 and come into contact with vital and 2:)ressing questions, 
 it was certain to break down. There comes a time when 
 compromise is incomprehensible, and that time has come 
 now. Compromise has done its work, it has expanded 
 the Church, it has modified its tests. It has made the 
 whole tone of the Church more tolerant, while the jiower 
 of the Church as a religious body has increased, and 
 justly and nobly increased, owing to the theory of the 
 liberal party within the Church. But you cannot strain 
 even an elastic body beyond a certain point ; and if it 
 should come to be said — and there are some symptoms 
 of such a thing — that the liberal clergy in the Church 
 may say anything, may deny the miracles and the divin- 
 ity, not to say the Godhead of Christ, may abandon the 
 Incarnation and the Resurrection as miracles and utterly 
 deny the authority of the Church and of the Bible and 
 yet cling to the Church, then they will find that the 
 strain will be too great for themselves, for their congre- 
 gations, for the endurance of the Church and for the 
 sympathy and belief of the laity. 
 
 It will be better then for the great cause of religious 
 life in the nation that these persons who may come to 
 push compromise so far should understand and frankly 
 accept the fact that compromise has already reached its 
 
340 
 
 FAITH AND FKEEDOM. 
 
 limits, and either revert to the position occupied a few 
 years ago (and which is now occupied by the greater 
 number of them with a clear conscience) or choose a 
 position outside the Church. That was my personal 
 oj^inion ; and I only exjDress it now in self-defejice, and 
 not m attacking others. I was convmced that the whole 
 of religion was suffering from tlie state of compromise, — 
 not the religion of persons who are already religious, but 
 the chances of religion in the great masses of men who 
 had been affected by unbelief in God or unbelief in 
 Christianity. The High Church and the Low Church do 
 not comjjromise at all: they deliberately oj^pose those 
 who deny miracles, and those who support the doctrine 
 of the Broad Church. Every one understands their posi- 
 tion. But the liberal party in the Church, not opposing 
 those who deny the miracles or attack doctrines, com- 
 promise the matter by piitting aside the question, sjieak- 
 ing of Christianity as a beautiful moral system which is 
 not really founded uj^on miracles or upon dogmas, but 
 lives in the life of the heart. But the question cannot be 
 put aside, and the method of the liberal party in the 
 Church cannot be pushed further with advantage to the 
 religious life of the nation. To say nothing about miracles 
 when the question is leajjing into the mind of every one, 
 to say simply that Christianity does not rest ixi^on them, is 
 to act as men say the ostrich acts. There is the question 
 vivid, full-grown, shouting like Achilles in the trench; 
 and the Trojans smiling within the walls, and saying that 
 it is not a question at all. 
 
 And the other questions, too, which press for solution, 
 owing to the A'ast changes which science has Avrought in 
 the views of history and the physical world, are too vital, 
 
SALT WITHOUT SAVOE. 
 
 341 
 
 too close to the homes and hearts and brains of men for 
 a farther compromise : they involve the very heart of 
 religion ; and men who love religion and believe in Chris- 
 tianity as the saving power of the race, and yet who do 
 not see how they can without self-inflicted blindness deny 
 that the results of science and criticism have changed the 
 whole aspect of religious questions, have no business to 
 ignore by silence or to pass by only with allusions these 
 questions, in order that they may by their inaction widen 
 the Church. They will not widen it, and the very life 
 of religion is in danger among the masses of the 23eo])le. 
 It is no time to think only of a side issue, and to try it. 
 It was because I was convinced of the harm being done 
 by this mode of action to religious life among the people 
 that I resolved to give up that action for another, and 
 can only try it outside the Church; for the moment I 
 proclaimed my unbelief in miracles — for exam23le, in the 
 Mii-acle of the Incarnation — I could not remain in the 
 Church, even were I allowed to remain, and hope to do 
 any good. Every one would accuse me of dishonesty. 
 Now it is different. Now I know that I shall be able to 
 declare that, while I frankly accept the proved conclu- 
 sions of science and criticism, there remain yet to me un- 
 touched and clear the great spiritual truths of the soul, 
 the eternal revelation of God, the deep life of Chris- 
 tianity. I am free, and I am heartily glad of it. I make 
 no sacrifice. I have followed with joy and gladness my 
 own convictions, and look forward with ardor and with 
 emotion to preaching the great truths that declare the 
 divine relations of God and man. I shall speak of God 
 abiding in natvire and abiding in man, of God immanent 
 in history and filling and impelling, day by day, the race 
 
342 
 
 FAITH AND FREEDOM. 
 
 of man to a glorious and a righteous end : of the revelar 
 tion he is daily giving of himself to man and of the in- 
 spiration which he pours into us all ; of God as revealed 
 in the highest way through Jesus Christ, my master; of 
 the life which Christ has disclosed in his own life, as the 
 true life of mankind ; of the power and love by which 
 God through him kindles and supports that love ; of man 
 reconciled to God throl^gh Christ, and reconciled to his 
 brother man ; of God incarnate in all men in the same 
 manner, though not in the same degree as he was incar- 
 nate in Christ ; of the A-ast spiritual communion in which 
 all men are contained, and the depth of the immortality 
 in which they now live and the fulfilment of which is 
 their destiny ; of the personal life of God in the soul 
 and of his universal life in the race, and of a thousand 
 results which in human history and human life flow in 
 practice from the vivid existence of these mighty truths 
 in man. Can I, then, be sorrowful as I look forward, or 
 look back with any dim regret? Perfect freedom in 
 these truths ought to kindle and to insjiire. Oh ! pray 
 that I may always keej) their ardor within me, and that 
 in humility I may strive to be worthy of them and teach 
 them, that the Fatlier of light and of life may be with 
 me, and that humbly and faithfully I may serve God, my 
 Father, Avalking in the footsteps of my master, Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
INSTITUTE ESSAYS: 
 
 READ BEFORE THE " MINISTERS' INSTITUTE," PROVI- 
 DENCE, R.I., OCTOBER, 1879. 
 
 CONTENTS : 
 
 INTRODUCTION Kev. H. W. BELLOWS. 
 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Kev. S. R. Calthrop. 
 
 The Relation op Modern Philosopht to Lib- 
 eralism, Prof. C. C. Everett. 
 
 Influence op Philosophy upon Christianity, F. E. Abbot. 
 
 Monotheism and the Jews Dr. GusTAV Gottheil. 
 
 The Idea op God Rev. J. W. Chadwick. 
 
 The Authorship op the Fourth Gospel, . . . Prof. Ezra Abbot. 
 
 The Gospel op John Rev. Francis Tiffany. 
 
 Methods op Dealino with Social Questions, Rev. J. B. Harrison. 
 Ethical Law and Social Order Rev. Geo. Batchelor. 
 
 "To the reader of comparative theologies, this book has a special interest."— 
 Ziojt^s Herald. 
 
 " The publication of this volume is one of the prreat tide-marks of theological 
 progress in the United States."— /"ree Religious Jjidex. 
 
 "Of all the compilations to which Unitarian discussions have given rise, this 
 will be found the most solid and meaty."— Chi-istia7i Begister. 
 
 " The cause of Unitarianism will have to take care of itself ; but it is a matter 
 of great public importance when clergymen, however stationed in practical life, 
 adt&ess themselves without reserve and without qualification to the ascertain 
 ment of philosophic truth. How well this has been done at the Providence 
 meeting of the 'Institute' is shown by this volume, which is entitled to the cor- 
 dial attention not only of students of theology, but also of those interested in 
 high truth. Those who know enough, and those whose religious system has been 
 completed, had better not approach a volume which, to a seeker after facts. Is 
 wonderfully grateful and stlmu'ating. "—£os(on Advertiser. 
 
 8vo, 280 pp. Cloth, $1.2.5; paper, *1.00. 
 
 THREE PHASES OF MODERN THEOLOGYs 
 
 CALVINISM, UNITARIANISM, LIBERALISM. 
 
 By JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN, A.M., 
 lecturer on ecclesiastical history in harvard university. 
 
 " The addresses rest throughout on Christian theism, the ethical spirit, the 
 temperate soul, vast reading, and good judgment. They are singularly dispas 
 sionate and well balanced, and good readers will find them healthful as well as 
 stimulating and helpful."— /ios(o;i Advertiser. 
 
 8vo, 68 pp. Paper. Price 35 cents. 
 
 THE MINISTER'S HAND-BOOK, 
 
 FOR CHRISTENINGS, WEDDINGS, AND FUNERALS, 
 
 COMPILED AND ARRANGED 
 By Rev. MINOT J. SAVAGE. 
 
 This little volume contains a service for the bajjtism of children, several forms 
 of marriage service, and a variety of burial semces, with a number of selections 
 £n prose and poetry suitable for use at funerals. At the end of the book are a 
 dozen blank pages, for such additions as individual taste may indicate. It is well 
 printed in clear, large type, and put up in neat, tiexible binding, ite size and shape 
 being arranged especially tor the pocket. 
 
 Flexible cloth, 75 cents; full Turkey morocco, lSl.75. 
 
 For sale by booksellers, or sent by mail by 
 
 Geo. H. Ellis, Publisher, 141 Franklin Street, Boston. 
 
AUTHORSHIP OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL: 
 
 EXTERNAL EVIDENCES. 
 
 By EZRA ABBOT, D. D., LL.D., 
 
 Bussey Professor of New Testament Criticism mid Interpretation in the Divinity 
 School of Uarvard University. 
 
 This essay, originally read before the Ministers' Institute, at Provi- 
 dence, R.I., in 1879, and since then revised and greatly expanded, 
 comes most appositely at a time when a destructive school of criticism 
 is subjecting the origin and authenticity of the various books of the 
 Bible to the most searching investigation. Professor Abbot is emi- 
 nently qualified for the discussion which he has undertaken. A valued 
 member of the Anglo-American Bible Revision Committee, he is 
 acknowledged to be one of the foremost scholars of Christendom in 
 his department. This essay is right in the line of his life studies, 
 and bears everywhere unmistakable marks of conscientious labor. 
 Religious papers of all denominations unite in bearing testimony to its 
 value ; and it has been fairly pronounced by a writer in the Popular 
 Science Monthly for August " a masterpiece of critical scholarship." 
 
 " Professor Abbot is familiar with the almost immense literature of his subject 
 as no other American is, and probably he has not over four or five jjeers abroad. 
 He professes to belong to the liberal school of theology, whence his conclusion 
 derives a twofold interest. It is, thus far, the principal contribution of the year 
 to American theology, and cannot easily be overrated. Those who wish to boast 
 Of American theology, without making themselves ridiculous, will do well to 
 appeal to Abbot on St. John."— Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " There is no higher authority on this subject in America than Professor 
 Abbot. There is no more competent scholar in Germany. . . . The book may be 
 said to be the most important contribution to this department of Bibucal 
 apologetics that has been made in America since Norton's work."— JV^. y. Inde- 
 pendent. 
 
 " It is not too much to say that Professor Abbot has laid aU Christian scholars 
 under a deep debt of obligation by the thoroughness of his researches into a 
 qiiestion of primary interest and importance. As the result, he may be con- 
 sidered to have completely turned the tables upon the opponents of the Apostolic 
 authorship. To Bishop Lightfoot and Professor Drummond, much praise is due 
 for their investigations in this field ; but to Professor Abbot clearly belongs the 
 palm. No one before him had so completely mastered the literature of the early 
 Christian period. His reading seems to liave embraced everything, and his 
 memory to retain everything ou the subject." — Christian Life (English). 
 
 " The present volume is the fruit of the author's well-known ripe scholarship, 
 keen insight, and accuracy almost proverbial, and cannot fail to take rank with 
 the foremost publications on the general subject, both here and on the other 
 side of the Atlantic. It is made available to more of the clerical profession than 
 such books usually are, by introducing patristic and other quotations in English, 
 where practicable, in a simple and literal translation. Scarcely anywhere will 
 the reader find such a well-digested stock of information, and such forcible, not 
 to say irrefragable, argument to prove the genuineness of John's Gospel." — 
 Sunday School Times. 
 
 " Professor Abbot's discussion is simply admirable, both for its research and 
 its reasoning. It condenses into itself years of study. Nothing seems to have 
 escaped the author, and his presentaticm of the argument is unsurpassed in its 
 judicial fairness and its good sense. In .short, the discussion is the ablest vindi- 
 cation of historic truth respecting the Fourth Gospi l which has appeared for 
 manyaday, — a discussion which will compel the attention, and. as we believe, 
 the assent of the foremost European scholars. It is one of the most thorough 
 critical essays ever produced in this country." 
 
 8vo. 104 pp. Price, Cloth, 75 Cents. Paper, 50 Cents. 
 
 I*^or sale by booksellers^ and sent by mail by 
 
 Geo. H. Ellis, Publisher, 141 Franklin Street, Boston. 
 
MINOT J. SAVAGE'S BOOKS. 
 
 " Since Theodore Parker died, there has been no clergyman more worthy or more 
 capable of tcearing his mantle than Mr. Savage." — Boston Sunday HEliALD. 
 
 (Just Ready.) 
 BELIEF IN GOD. 
 
 I. Introduction. II. Origin and Development of the Idea of God. 
 III. Doea God Exist? IV. Can we Know God ? V. Is God Con- 
 scious, Personal, and Good ? VI. Why does not God Reveal Him- 
 self ? VII. Shall we Worship God ? VIII. Shall we Pray to God ? 
 IX. The Glory and the Shame of Atheism. X. The Intellectual 
 Basis of Faith (by Wm. H. Savage). 
 
 In this latest work by Mr. Savage, considered by many his best, ho meets with 
 characteristic fearlessness some of the fundamental problems of Theism which 
 must some day present themselves to every thoughtful mind, and discusses them 
 In a spirit of reverent rationalism. Even those who cannot agree with Mr. Sav- 
 age in all points will find much to commend in this volume. 
 
 Cloth. 13mo. 176 pp. Price $1.00. 
 
 THE MORALS OF EVOLUTION. 
 
 I. Is Life worth Living? II. Morality and Religion in the Past, 
 m. The Origin of Goodness. IV. The Kature of Goodness. V. The 
 Sense of Obligation. VI. Selfishness and Sacrifice. VII. The Rela- 
 tivity of Duty. VIII. Real and Conventional Virtues and Vices. 
 IX. Morals and Knowledge. X. Rights and Duties in Matters of 
 Opinion. XI. Moral Sanctions. XII. Morality and Religion in the 
 Future. 
 
 " We should very much like to meet with the pulpit orator who would treat us 
 to a dozen extempore sermons as healthy in tone and as devoid of archaisms as 
 are the contents of this little book. There is not a trace of any antaaonism to 
 venerable creeds. On the contrary, the author's acceptance of Christian theism 
 is firm and clear ; but there is so complete an absence of the traditional 
 phraseolofry of the pulpit, and such an inartificial representation of the best 
 spirit of the age, that the reader totallv forgets he has before him the steno- 
 graphic report of a series of seventh-day homilies."— Westminster Review. 
 
 Cloth, l^mo. 191 pp. Price $1.00. 
 
 TALKS ABOUT JESUS. 
 
 I. Tntroduction. II. Sources of our Knowledge. III. The Mi- 
 raculous. IV. Birth and Childhood. V. Public Life. VI. Death 
 and Resurrection. VII. The Messianic Idea. VIII. Jesus and the 
 Church; or, Was Jesus a Christian ? IX. Jesus and Humanity; or, 
 Christianity among the Religions. 
 
 " This book is well adapted to the needs of the questioner, coming as it does 
 from one who ' has fought over the whole ground of modern scepticism In a 
 hand-to-hand contest with its shadows and facts.' "—Unity. 
 
 Cloth. 12mo. 101 pp. Price SI. 00. 
 
 CHRISTIANITY the SCIENCE of MANHOOD. 
 
 A BOOK FOR QUESTIONERS. 
 
 " It is a thoroughly good book to place in the hands of a voung man ; and it is 
 written in a style so spriLihtly and popular that he will find "his attention held to 
 It, while his mind is persuaded by its convincing reasonings."— Eton's Herald. 
 
 Third edition. Cloth. ISmo. 187 pp. Price Sl.OO. 
 
 Geo. H. Ellis, Publisher, 141 Franklin St., Boston. 
 
THE DUTIES OF WOMEN. 
 
 A COURSE OF LECTURES 
 By FRANCES POWER COBBE. 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES. 
 An eminent American clergyman, writing from London, gays ; — 
 " It is the profoundest, wisest, purest, noblest book, in principle, aim, and tone, 
 yet written upon the True Position of Woman in Society. It should be circu- 
 lated far and wide among all classes of our countrywomen. It should be made 
 a class-book in our schools. It should become the ' Hand-Book ' and Vade Mecum 
 of young American girls." 
 
 " As I turn the pages of this book, I am struck with its candor, sympathy, and 
 insight, and wish that it might be read and pondered by both conservative and 
 radical women. The former mlglit learn the relation of freedom to duty, and the 
 latter may well consider the perils which surround each onward step. . . . Miss 
 Cobbe might have called her book 'Old Duties in New Lights.' It must help 
 many women to lead sincere, self-reliant lives, and to determine at critical 
 moments what their action shall he."— Mrs. Elizabeth K. Churchill, in the Provi- 
 dence Journal. 
 
 " The best of all books on 'Women's Duties.' Now that George Eliot is gone, 
 there is probably no woman in England so well equipped for general literary 
 work as Miss Cobbe."— Col. T. Wentworth Iligginson, in Woman's Journal. 
 
 " I desire to commend it to the careful perusal of women in our own country, 
 as a book full of timely counsel and suggestion, and to all, as a valuable contn- 
 bution to the literatiu'e of ethics." — Julia Ward Ilowe, in Christian Register. 
 
 " Just now, the first • Duty of Women ' is to read this whole book with studious 
 self-application; for it is rich in saving common sense, warm with the love of 
 man, and consecrated by the love of God."— Miss Harriet Ware Hall, in Unitarian 
 Review. 
 
 " What Is best In the whole book Is that she founds her teaching for women so 
 strongly in the deepest and simplest moral principles th.at her thoughts come 
 with a force and breadth which win for them at once a respectable hearing,"— 
 London Spectator. 
 
 " One of the notable books of the season. . . . No true woman can read these 
 lectures without being stirred by them to completer 'iite."— Morning Star. 
 
 " In Miss Cobbe's latest book, ' The Duties of Women ,' there is much to be com- 
 mended for its common sense and its helpfulness. Miss Cobbe goes down to the 
 principles underlying the topics of which she speaks; and the strength with 
 which she utters her thoughts is the strength of conviction and of earnest pur- 
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 " No book has come from England this year, which was better worthy of 
 reproduction than this one." — Saturday Evening Gazette. 
 
 " The six lectures may be said to be the very acme, in facile strength and 
 clearness and power of reasoning, of a long life of most efficient and noble labor 
 In the cause of the elevation of woman and her possession of the rights that are 
 and should be hers. We wish they might be read by every man and woman in 
 this country, with an imderstanding and receptive mind, free from old notions 
 and prejudices."— i/ome Journal. 
 
 Author's American Edition. Cloth. 12mo. Price $1.00. 
 
 For sale by booksellers, and mailed, postpaid, on receipt oj the price, by 
 
 Geo. H. Ellis, Publisher, Boston.