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 1900. 
 The present religious crisi; 
 

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THE PRESENT 
 
 RELIGIOUS CRISIS 
 
 BY 
 
 AUGUSTUS BLAUVELT 
 
 NEW YORK 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 27 ANl> 29 WEST 230 SIKKKT 
 1882 
 
Copyright, by 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, 
 
 1882. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 After having perused this volume, the reader will per- 
 ceive that it is not designed to be complete in itself. On 
 the other hand, it is put forth merely as the first of a series 
 of volumes, the second of which will be entitled "The Reli- 
 gion of Jesus," and the third " Supernatural Religion." 
 
 Whether the author will or will not be able to develop 
 the entire scheme of religious thought, which he has pro- 
 jected in his own mind, within the compass of these three 
 volumes, without prolonging them to an undesirable length, 
 remains to be determined. If he can, he will. Otherwise 
 it will be abundant time to announce the specific titles of 
 the remaining works after it becomes manifest that they 
 must be written. 
 
 Like every other literary project or production, this one 
 in particular has had its own inner and individual history. 
 When the author says that he was graduated from Rutgers 
 College, at New Brunswick, N.J., and also from the Peter 
 Hertzog Theological Seminary, connected with the same 
 institution, he has given a sufficient guaranty that his origi- 
 nal instruction in divinity was of the most hyper-orthodox 
 description. Nor does he concede that any alumnus of 
 either Alma Mater ever went forth who was, to begin with, 
 a more devout and implicit believer than he was in both the 
 essentials and the non-essentials of the general orthodox 
 theology, and notably that of the Calvinistic order. 
 
 It is needless to assure the reader, that, while he was a 
 student at New Brunswick, the author wns most securely 
 
2 PRE FA CE. 
 
 guarded against all contamination from modern infidelity 
 He does not remember, for example, that in those days he 
 ever heard so much as the very mention of the name of 
 Strauss. At the same time he does have an indistinct recol- 
 lection, that, in a vague and general way, he was taught at 
 once to dread and to abhor that modern theological mon- 
 strosity, namely, German Rationalism. Just why he should 
 either dread or abhor it, he did not learn ; but that it was a 
 theological monstrosity of some sort or another, to be both 
 dreaded and abhorred, he took for granted on the ipse dixit 
 of those distinguished Doctors in Divinity whose special pre- 
 rogative he then conceived it to be to form his opinions on 
 all such subjects. 
 
 Thus matters continued even after the author's gradua- 
 tion, until some eighteen years ago. Then, for the first 
 time, he chanced one day to get a formal introduction to 
 Dr. David Friedrich Strauss, as that arch-heretic is repre- 
 sented in his first " Life of Jesus." 
 
 From that time onward the author has devoted himself, 
 with a constantly increasing degree of exclusiveness, as a 
 specialist, to investigations connected with the various de- 
 partments of modern biblical and rehgious research. 
 
 The specific purpose with which he originally took up 
 these investigations was to vindicate the traditional Protes- 
 tant conceptions about the Bible and religion against all 
 the assaults of the modern unbelievers. But from the very 
 outset he conceived the idea, that, to make this vindication 
 of any actual and permanent service to those conceptions, 
 it must itself be actual, it must itself be scientific, it must 
 itself be something decidedly more than merely theological. 
 In other words, whatever -nlierited conceptions about eithei 
 
PREFA CE. '^ 
 
 the Bible or religion he found he could not establish by 
 valid evidence and by legitimate reasoning, he resolutely 
 determined that he would never make the effort to establish 
 either by any such distortion of evidence or by any such ille- 
 gitimate reasoning as he had fortunately come to discover 
 to be only too characteristic of the mediaeval apologists. 
 
 The longer he has prosecuted his researches from this 
 standpoint and in this spirit, the more he has become 
 astounded at the aggregate results to which he found him- 
 self arriving. Contrary to all his original anticipations, he 
 has come more and more distinctly to perceive that the 
 traditional Protestant conceptions about both the Bible and 
 religion, instead of being scientifically defensible even down 
 to details, require a revision and re-statement of the most 
 revolutionary nature. 
 
 Some suggestions towards such a revision and re-statement 
 the reader will find attempted in this series of volumes ; the 
 first of which is herewith submitted to the consideration of 
 that portion of the public which feels an interest in current 
 biblical and religious discussions. 
 
 In the preface to his thoughtful and scholarly work on 
 "The Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth 
 Gospel," Dr. William Sanday says : " In looking back over 
 this first attempt in the difficult and responsible field of 
 theology, I am forcibly reminded of its many faults and 
 shortcomings. And yet it seems to be necessary that these 
 subjects should be discussed, if only with some slight de- 
 gree of adequacy. I cannot think it has not been without 
 serious loss on both sides, that, in the great movement 
 that has been going on upon the Continent for the last 
 forty years, the scanty band of English theologians should 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 have stood almost entirely aloof, or should only have 
 touched the outskirts of the questions at issue, without 
 attempting to grapple with them at their centre. It is not 
 for me to presume to do this, but I wish to approach as 
 near to it as I can and dare ; and it has seemed to me that 
 by beginning upon the critical side, and taking a single 
 question in hand at a time, I might be not altogether unable 
 to contribute to that perhaps far-off result which will only be 
 obtained by the co-operation of many men and many minds." 
 
 In like manner the present writer feels that any sugges- 
 tions which he can personally make towards that funda- 
 mental revision of the traditional misconcepdons about the 
 Bible and religion which the present age and hour demand, 
 must of necessity be more distinguished for their many 
 faults and shortcomings than for any thing beside. But 
 here in America the average theological considerations of 
 these subjects have thus far been, in comparison with those 
 of Germany, even more superficial, even more unintelligent, 
 even more mediaeval, than have been those of England. 
 And it is high time that we began here in America to grap- 
 ple in earnest with these questions at their very centre ; 
 seeking to come to a thorough-going understanding with 
 them, in view of the most advanced developments of present 
 biblical and religious enlightenment, and even speculation. 
 
 If the author can only succeed in stimulating other 
 and far more able minds, other and far more accomplished 
 scholars, to contribute something towards a radical and sat- 
 isfactory adjustment of these issues, he will after that be 
 perfectly content to see his own crude conclusions discarded 
 and forgotten. 
 
 KlNflSTON-ON-THE-HUDSON, 1882. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. The Crisis 7 
 
 II. Dogmatic Theology 12 
 
 III. The Validity of the Biblical Canon . . 23 
 
 IV. The Inspiration of the Bible ... 31 
 V. The Historical Character of the Gospels . s^ 
 
 VI. The Religion of the Bible .... 79 
 
 VII. Religion 102 
 
 VIII. The Religion of Jesus iii 
 
 IX. Religious Repression 123 
 
 X. Religious Liberty 136 
 
 Index to Authors cited, Quotations, and Evi- 
 dences 185 
 
 5 
 
THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CRISIS. 
 
 Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorn, a leading evangelical 
 divine of Germany, affirms that ''since the first 
 days of the church, when she had to defend her 
 faith against heathen calumny and heathen science, 
 the attacks upon Christianity and the church have 
 never been so manifold and so powerful as at the 
 present time. The contest is no longer upon single 
 questions, such as whether this or that conception 
 of Christianity is the more correct, but the very 
 existence of Christianity is at stake." ^ Indeed, says 
 Professor Christlieb, likewise of Germany : " Whether 
 you visit the lecture-rooms of professors, or the 
 council-chambers of the municipality, or the work- 
 shop of the artisan, everywhere — in all places of 
 private or social gathering — you hear the same tale: 
 the old faith is now obsolete," ^ 
 
 Canon Liddon thus speaks for England : " The 
 vast majority of our countrymen still shrink with 
 
 7 
 
8 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 sincere dread from any thing like an explicit rejec- 
 tion of Christianity. Yet no one who hears what 
 goes on in daily conversation, and who is moderately 
 conversant with the tone of some of the leading 
 organs of public opinion, can doubt the existence of 
 a wide-spread unsettlement of religious belief. Peo- 
 ple have a notion that the present is, in the hack- 
 neyed phrase, 'a transition period,' and that they 
 ought to be keeping pace with the general move- 
 ment." 3 
 
 Professor Macpherson thus depicts the state of 
 things in Scotland: *'A11 religious questions seem 
 to be at present once more thrown into the crucible, 
 to undergo a fiery trial. Not merely the truths of 
 revealed religion, but those truths which constitute 
 what is termed natural religion, are subjected to this 
 trial." 4 "It is also a characteristic of our times, 
 that this contest respecting the foundation of reli- 
 gious belief is not confined, as it used generally to 
 be, within certain circles of speculative men. All 
 classes in society are taking part in it. The press, 
 now so powerful in its influence, has involved rich 
 and poor, learned and unlearned, in this great con- 
 flict." 5 
 
 Pressense, speaking for France, declares that a 
 formidable crisis has there commenced alike in the 
 history of Catholicism and of Protestantism, and 
 that nothing will check it. There is not a single 
 
THE CRISIS. 9 
 
 religious party, he says, which does not feel the 
 need either of confirmation or transformation. All 
 the churches are passing through a time of crisis. 
 Aspiration toward the church of the future is be- 
 coming more general and more ardent." ^ 
 
 In a private letter to the author, Professor J. F. 
 Astie thus speaks for Switzerland : '* In America, 
 the theology of the past is still powerful. With us, 
 orthodoxy has lost the control. At the utmost the 
 old theology is here without hold, except upon such 
 minds as are at once narrow and fanatical. May you 
 never know in the United States the sad condition 
 in which we are here ; for we are here suspended 
 between a past which cannot be restored, and a 
 future which cannot be born. May you not have, 
 as we have had, a theological and ecclesiastical revo- 
 lution, but rather a religious evolution which is at 
 once calm and peaceful." 
 
 But that we are, at least in some initial way, be- 
 ginning to pass here in America, either through an 
 agitated theological revolution, or through a com- 
 paratively calm and peaceful religious evolution, is 
 patent on the surface. Modern unbelief, in one 
 form or another, constitutes to-day one of the up- 
 permost topics of our nation and our times. Our 
 pulpits, according to the modern or mediaeval attain- 
 ments of their respective occupants, make it one of 
 the most prominent subjects either of their discus- 
 
lO THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 sions, or their declamations, or their semi-impreca- 
 tory supplications. It pervades all departments of 
 our domestic literature, whether secular or religious. 
 It is being discussed by us, now in our private con- 
 versations, now in our social gatherings, now in our 
 lyceums or club-rooms. Special professorships and 
 lectureships are devoted to its demolition. Our 
 popular platform orators find it to their pecuniary 
 profit to promulge it. 
 
 Nor is the radical religious revolution which is 
 to-day sweeping, or beginning to sweep, over this, in 
 common with all other Christian countries, either a 
 mere matter of the moment, or due to any tempo- 
 rary or evanescent causes. Adam Storey Farrar, in 
 his Bampton Lectures for 1862, puts it down as the 
 fourth great historical crisis of the Christian faith, 
 and finds himself obliged to treat of it in connection 
 with the development of modern thought in three 
 nations for two centuries. These are, first, English 
 Deism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ; 
 secondly, French Infidelity in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury ; and, thirdly, German Rationalism in the eigh- 
 teenth and nineteenth centuries. 7 
 
 The present religious crisis, then, has already 
 been in progress for more than two hundred years, 
 and has gathered up into itself all the motion and 
 momentum imparted to great religious epochs by 
 international scholarship and thought. Nor can it 
 
THE CRISIS. II 
 
 be doubtful that the underlying causes which have 
 thus far imparted to it this persistent vitality will 
 continue to increase in volume, and to push the 
 crisis forward until every one of its profoundest 
 problems, which is capable of a solution, has even- 
 tually been settled, and settled to the satisfaction of 
 every cultured mind. 
 
 In Germany, where its development has been the 
 most complete, its results have been the most disas- 
 trous to all the traditional conceptions of Chris- 
 tianity, whether Catholic or Protestant. And else- 
 where throughout Christendom, in proportion as its 
 influences extend, almost in that proportion do the 
 like results obtain, or threaten to obtain. 
 
 As for us who have become more or less inextrica- 
 bly involved in this onward religious movement, it 
 certainly cannot be premature for us, on the one 
 hand, to make the effort to discover, in so far as may 
 be possible, whither we are tending ; and, on the 
 other hand, to provide ourselves, in so far as we may 
 be able, with at least some provisional religious be- 
 liefs and hopes, to take the place of those beliefs and 
 hopes from which we have undoubtedly departed, and 
 departed never to return. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 
 
 In his Cunningham Lectures for 1873, Dr. Rainy 
 confesses that he finds himself confronted in Scot- 
 land, not merely with heresy, but with heresy per- 
 sistently professed, and such heresy as is subversive 
 of what is fundamental in the current views of Chris- 
 tianity.^ 
 
 Some specimens of this heresy may be found by 
 the reader in the volume entitled ** Scotch Sermons," 
 issued in 1880. Thus, one of the contributors, the 
 Rev. W. L. M'Farlan, professes to speak for a class 
 which includes in it many of the religious teach- 
 ers in all the churches. This writer, among other 
 things, proceeds to exhibit some of the sections of 
 scholastic theology which these religious teachers 
 regard as specially untenable. These sections, he 
 affirms, comprehend the following dogmas : i. The 
 descent of man from the Adam of the Book of Gene- 
 sis ; 2. The fall of that Adam from a state of original 
 righteousness by eating the forbidden fruit ; 3. The 
 imputation of Adam's guilt to all his posterity ; 
 
DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 1 3 
 
 4. The consequent death of all men in sin ; 5. The 
 redemption in Christ of an election according to 
 grace ; 6. The quickening in the elect of a new life ; 
 7. The eternal punishment and perdition of those 
 who remain unregenerate.^ 
 
 This single example suffices to illustrate, that, 
 within the bosom of all the Protestant denomina- 
 tions, there exist to-day representative persons who 
 have undergone a more or less radical revolution of 
 opinion concerning almost every dogmatic statement 
 of doctrine which has come down to us from the 
 dogma-making epochs. The creed cannot be named, 
 which is so brief that some more or less considera- 
 ble party in the Protestant churches does not to-day 
 contend for its abridgment. The dogma cannot be 
 instanced, which is so fundamental that some repre- 
 sentative minority in the Protestant ranks does not 
 to-day contend, either for its revision and restate- 
 ment, or for its absolute abandonment. 
 
 Let us who are on the extreme wing of this pro- 
 gressive movement within the Protestant ranks de- 
 clare our position, if possible, with even more dis- 
 tinctness. Our rupture with Protestantism does not 
 relate to those mere minor matters of belief which 
 divide Protestants into all their wearisome array of 
 theological sects and cliques. All these sects and 
 cliques combined could not to-day put forth any 
 mere abstract and consensus of their belief so short 
 
14 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 that we would not cut it shorter, or so fundamental 
 that we would not either greatly modify it, or reject 
 it altogether. 
 
 To illustrate. We find in the Constitution of the 
 Evangelical Alliance a brief summary of the con- 
 sensus of the various evangelical or Protestant con- 
 fessions of faith. The opening article — which we 
 need alone to cite — is this : — 
 
 '' I. The divine inspiration, authority, and suffi- 
 ciency of the Holy Scriptures." 
 
 Do we, the representative minority of religious 
 revolutionists still classified with Protestants, and 
 presumably in question, — do we accept of even this 
 consensus } 
 
 If we do not, we may no longer deserve the name 
 of Protestants ; we may no longer deserve in any tra- 
 ditional sense the broader name of Christians ; but 
 do we accept of this consensus } 
 
 Before we give any decided and decisive answer 
 on this point, it will be well to come to such an un- 
 derstanding with ourselves as to render it certain 
 what sort of an answer we alone can give with 
 entire mental rectitude, not to say with entire moral 
 honesty. 
 
 And, in the first place, let us direct our atten- 
 tion to a portion of Article VI. of the Church of 
 England. Here it is : *' Holy Scripture contains all 
 things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is 
 
DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 1 5 
 
 not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not 
 to be required of any man that it should be believed 
 as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or 
 necessary to salvation. In the name of Holy Scrip- 
 ture we do understand those canonical books of the 
 Old and New Testament, of whose authority was 
 never any doubt in the Church." 
 
 With this, so far as our present purpose is con- 
 cerned, all the Protestant churches will substantially 
 agree. 
 
 Over against this the Dogmatic Decrees of the 
 late Vatican Council fulminate as follows: "All 
 those things are to be believed with divine and 
 Catholic faith, which are contained in the Word of 
 God, written or handed down, and which the Church, 
 either by a solemn judgment, or by her ordinary and 
 universal magisterium, proposes for belief as having 
 been divinely revealed." 3 "And these books of the 
 Old and New Testament are to be received as sacred 
 and canonical in their integrity, with all their parts, 
 as they are enumerated in the decree of the said 
 Council." 4 
 
 The semi-scholarly reader will perceive, therefore, 
 that Protestants, first of all, affirm that the Scriptures 
 alone can furnish the Christian church with a divinely 
 authoritative subject-matter for her dogmas. Catho- 
 lics, on the other hand, allege that the written books 
 of the Bible, and the unwritten traditions of the 
 
1 6 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 Church, are equally of a divine authority in all 
 matters of Christian belief, so long as those tra- 
 ditions are only duly proposed and sanctioned by the 
 ruling powers of Rome. But, if the unwritten tra- 
 ditions of the Church be excluded from the problem, 
 we begin at once to approximate to something like 
 a consensus of opinion, even between the Catholics 
 and Protestants. They both concur, that is to say, 
 in the view that the Bible — the written Bible — is 
 divinely authoritative in matters of religious belief, 
 alike for Protestants and Catholics. 
 
 And yet they, of course, have their well-known 
 traditional dispute concerning what the written 
 Bible is. What sacred books together constitute 
 the written Bible } The Catholics say that this was 
 all settled by the sacred Synod of Trent, and that 
 the apocryphal books of the Old Testament must 
 be admitted in the canon. The Protestants contend 
 quite as stoutly that these apocryphal books must 
 not be admitted in the canon. But, if this further 
 bone of contention about the canonical character or 
 uncanonical character of the apocryphal books of 
 the Old Testament be cast aside, we find the high 
 contesting parties standing again almost peaceably 
 together. In other words, while the Catholics will 
 not concede that the Protestant Bible contains, in 
 the Old Testament division, all the canonical books 
 of the Holy Scriptures, they will not merely concede. 
 
DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. IJ 
 
 but insist, that all the books which the Protestant 
 Bible does contain are undoubtedly canonical. 
 
 Nor can any Protestant body, no matter how 
 supremely anti-Catholic, desire a more emphatic 
 statement of the divine and infallible inspiration 
 of the Scriptures than is presented in the Vatican 
 Detrees. For those decrees explicitly affirm that 
 both the Old and New Testaments contain revela- 
 tion with no admixture of error, for the reason that, 
 having been written by the inspiration of the Holy 
 Ghost, they have God for their author. 5 
 
 But not only do Protestants and Catholics to-day 
 concur in the view, first, that all the special books 
 which together constitute the Protestant Bible are 
 sacred and canonical, and, secondly, that these spe- 
 cial books, taken in their integrity and with all their 
 parts, present the traditional theological dogmatists 
 with a subject-matter for their dogmas which is at 
 once divinely inspired and therefore absolutely devoid 
 of every kind of error. Catholics and Protestants 
 have from the very outset held this view in common. 
 It is indeed true, that, on the former point, neither 
 the Protestant divines nor the Catholic divines would 
 to-day regard some of the leading reformers and bib- 
 lical scholars of the sixteenth century as supremely 
 orthodox. Thus Luther denied the canonicity of 
 the Book of Esther. He repudiated the apostolical 
 authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, of the 
 
1 8 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 General Epistles of James and Jude, and also of the 
 Apocalypse. The Apocalypse in particular Luther 
 placed very much on a parity with the Fourth Book 
 of Esdras, — which latter book he talked of throwing 
 into the Elbe. And to him the Epistle of James 
 was but an epistle of straw. 
 
 Dr. Davidson, who is our authority for the above 
 statements concerning Luther, likewise affirms that 
 Bodenstein of Carlstadt divided the biblical books 
 into three classes, namely, those of the first, those of 
 the second, and those of the third rank, in point 
 of dignity and authority ; that Zwingli pronounced 
 the Apocalypse to be uncanonical ; and that CEco- 
 lampadius would not permit either the Apocalypse, 
 or James, or Jude, or Second Peter, or Second and 
 Third John, to be compared with the other portions 
 of the Scriptures.^ 
 
 But all this is scarcely more than an individual 
 development — an almost accidental feature — con- 
 nected with the Reformation. The questioning of 
 the canonicity of the books to-day composing the 
 Protestant Bible did not then become general, and 
 did not, even so far as it progressed, meet with any 
 thing like an ultimate and general Protestant accept- 
 ance. For whether we consult the Helvetic Confes- 
 sion, the Gallic Confession, the Belgic Confession, 
 the Westminster Confession, the Confession revised 
 and accepted by the Synod of Dordrecht, or consult 
 
DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 1 9 
 
 the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, 
 what do we discover ? We discover simply that the 
 Reformation of the sixteenth century decided, in 
 its aggregate and final outcome, as that outcome 
 found expression in the sub-Reformation theology, 
 that the Protestant churches would reject the apoc- 
 ryphal books contained in the Catholic canon of the 
 Old Testament Scriptures, but would retain all the 
 other books of the old Catholic Bible, as being truly 
 sacred and canonical, and making up together their 
 own Holy Scriptures. 
 
 As for the second point, we only need to cite by 
 way of proof the following remark by Adam Storey 
 Farrar : **The belief in a full inspiration was held 
 from the earliest times, with the few exceptions 
 observable in occasional remarks of Origen, Jerome, 
 Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Euthymius Zigabenus 
 in the twelfth centruy." 7 
 
 Looked at, therefore, only with reference to the 
 leading issues and controlling outcome, it was with 
 regard, neither to the canonicityof the various books 
 at present composing the Protestant Bible, nor to 
 the divine and infallible inspiration of those books, 
 that the Protestant reformers of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury came to an open rupture with the Church of 
 Rome. On both of these points they found them- 
 selves practically accordant with the views already 
 existing in the Church of Rome. All they did was 
 
20 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 simply to accept and adopt both these points almost 
 precisely as they found them in the Church of Rome, 
 as being common postulates alike of Catholic and 
 Protestant theology. And that they did this without 
 any due examination of either the one postulate or 
 the other, all modern biblicists are perfectly aware. 
 
 But since the sixteenth century, and especially 
 during the present century, both these postulates 
 have been examined into with some degree of thor- 
 oughness, and still an increasingly profound and 
 searching and scholarly examination of them con- 
 tinues to progress. As Strauss has it : " The old 
 Reformation had an advantage in this, that what 
 then appeared intolerable appertained wholly to the 
 doctrines and practices of the Church, while the 
 Bible, and an ecclesiastical discipline simplified ac- 
 cording to its dictates, provided what seemed a 
 satisfactory substitute. The operation of sifting and 
 separation was easy ; and, the Bible continuing an 
 unquestioned treasure of revelation and salvation to 
 the people, the crisis, though violent, was not dan- 
 gerous. Now, on the contrary, that which then 
 remained the stay of Protestants, the Bible itself, 
 with its history and teaching, is called in question : 
 the sifting process has now to be applied to its own 
 pages." ^ 
 
 What has been the result of this modern siftinsf of 
 the traditional Catholic and Protestant views about 
 
DOGMATIC THEOLOGY. 21 
 
 the Scriptures ? Can we, who are more or less thor- 
 oughly conversant with the sifting process, any longer 
 believe, for one thing, that all the books and portions 
 of books which together constitute the Protestant 
 Bible are canonical ? Can we any more believe all 
 those books and portions of books are divinely in- 
 spired, and therefore utterly devoid of every sort of 
 error ? 
 
 If we should accordingly ask ourselves afresh 
 whether we can accept any mere abstract, no matter 
 how brief, any mere consensus, no matter how unani- 
 mous and fundamental, of the various evangelical 
 or Protestant confessions of faith, what must we 
 answer ? The indications are already becoming some- 
 what pronounced that we will be obliged to answer, 
 that, with us, all further questions about the various 
 Protestant confessions of faith are obsolete ; and 
 that it is extremely doubtful whether we can even 
 accept any mere abstract and consensus of those 
 fundamental, traditional views about the Bible which 
 Protestants and Catholics alike agree upon, and which 
 are placed at the very basis of all Catholic and all 
 Protestant dogmatic formulations of what they are 
 pleased to call sometimes Christianity, and sometimes 
 the true religion of the Bible. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE VALIDITY OF THE BIBLICAL CANON. 
 
 We have already adverted to the traditional dis- 
 pute between Protestants and Catholics as it con- 
 cerns the canonical or uncanonical character of the 
 apocryphal books of the Old Testament. Leaving 
 these parties to share their individual opinions on 
 that subject, we will now proceed to examine very 
 briefly into the validity of some of the leading rea- 
 sons which the Protestants in particular have been 
 in the habit of advancing in support of the canon- 
 icity of the several books composing the Protestant 
 collection of the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 The chief argument which the older Protestant 
 divines present for the canonicity of the Old Testa- 
 ment books, which they accept in common with the 
 Catholics, consists in the allegation that all these 
 books, and none others, received the explicit sanc- 
 tion of Jesus and his apostles. But among modern 
 Protestant biblicists this line of argument must have 
 a very modified value. Thus Professor W. Robert- 
 son Smith affirms that neither the Book of Esther, 
 
THE VALIDITY OF THE BIBLICAL CANON. 23 
 
 nor that of Canticles, nor that of Ecclesiastes, is 
 ever referred to in the New Testament.^ Moreover, 
 Dr. Davidson frankly concedes that the New Testa- 
 ment writings betray a familiarity with the ideas and 
 expressions of the apocryphal books, as James with 
 those of Sirach, Hebrews with those of Second Mac- 
 cabees, Romans with those of Wisdom, and Jude 
 with those of Enoch. ^ 
 
 Regarded from this point of view, therefore, mod- 
 ern Protestant biblical scholars would be compelled 
 to admit that at least three of the non-apocryphal 
 books — Esther, Canticles, and Ecclesiastes — must 
 be excluded from the Old Testament canon, and that 
 at least four of the apocryphal books — Sirach, Sec- 
 ond Maccabees, Wisdom, and Enoch — must be in- 
 eluded in such canon. 
 
 Again : The exact principle which guided the origi- 
 nal collectors in the formation of the biblical canon 
 is confessedly obscure. Still no one can question 
 that authorship, or supposed authorship, had very 
 much to do in deciding whether a particular book 
 was to be accepted or rejected at the hands of such 
 collectors. It is well known, for example, that, in 
 the early ages of the Christian church, the New 
 Testament writings were divided into two distinct 
 classes. The first class was characterized as the 
 Homologoumena, and the second class as the Anti- 
 legomeita. The Homologoumena consisted of such 
 
24 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 books as were universally recognized ; the Antilego- 
 mena consisted of such books as were acknowledged 
 in some parts of the church, but disputed in others. 
 And, according to Professor W. Robertson Smith, 
 the books in the first class were those of admitted 
 and undoubted apostolical authority.3 
 
 But as early as the fifteenth century we find Eras- 
 mus denying the apostolical origin of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, of Second Peter, and of the Apoca- 
 lypse, but leaving the canonicity of these books un- 
 questioned.4 And in the sixteenth century Calvin 
 draws a corresponding distinction between the can- 
 onicity and the apostolical origin of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews and of Second Peter. 5 And now, in 
 the nineteenth century, something like a consensus 
 of opinion is beginning to obtain among the modern, 
 as distinguished from the traditional, Protestant bib- 
 lical authorities, that, as Dr. Davidson observes, the 
 canonicity of the books is a distinct question from 
 their authenticity.^ Thus the general rule is laid 
 down by the late Dean Stanley, that the authority 
 or canonicity of a sacred book hardly ever depends 
 on its particular date or name. For, says he, if for 
 these purposes it was necessary that the writers 
 should be known, nearly half the books of the Old 
 Testament would at once be excluded from the can- 
 on. 7 Nor need it scarcely be remarked, that, if 
 authenticity should be made the standard of their 
 
THE VALIDITY OF THE BIBLICAL CANON. 25 
 
 canonicity, not a few of the New Testament books 
 would share a corresponding fortune. For it is not 
 merely true that in these days a very large percent- 
 age of the Old Testament writings are decided to 
 belong neither to the authors nor the ages to which 
 they are traditionally accredited : it is equally true 
 that Professor W. Robertson Smith merely expresses 
 a prevailing modern scholarly conclusion when he 
 affirms that a considerable portion of the New Tes- 
 tament is made up of writings not directly apostoli- 
 cal.^ 
 
 In a subsequent chapter we will discover, in the 
 New Testament department of modern biblical criti- 
 cism, what slender claims the Gospels in particular 
 possess to having been written by the original 
 apostles or disciples of Jesus, whose respective 
 names they bear. Just here it will suffice, for the 
 benefit of such readers as are not familiar with these 
 subjects, to instance a few of the considerations in 
 view of which so much of the Old Testament litera- 
 ture is to-day decided to be of a more or less un- 
 authentic character. 
 
 One of the clearest and most exhaustive exposi- 
 tions of this topic at large, existing in the English 
 language, is that developed by Professor W. Robert- 
 son Smith, in his " Lectures on the Old Testament 
 in the Jewish Church." 
 
 Speaking with special reference to the Pentateuch, 
 
26 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 Professor Smith, among other things, observes : "The 
 idea that Moses is author of the whole Pentateuch, 
 except the last chapter of Deuteronomy, is derived 
 from the old Jewish theory, in Josephus, that every 
 leader of Israel wrote down, by divine authority, the 
 events of his own time, so that the sacred history is 
 like a day-book, constantly written up to date. No 
 part of the Bible corresponds to this description, and 
 the Pentateuch as little as any. For example, the 
 last chapter of Deuteronomy, which, on the common 
 theory, is a note added by Joshua to the work in 
 which Moses had carried down the history till just 
 before his death, cannot really have been written till 
 after Joshua was dead and gone. For it speaks of 
 the city of Dan. Now, Dan is the new name of 
 Laish, which that town received after the conquest 
 of the Danites in the age of the Judges, when 
 Moses' grandson became priest of their idolatrous 
 sanctuary. But, if the last chapter of Deuteronomy 
 is not contemporary history, what is the proof that 
 the rest of the book is so .? As a matter of fact, 
 the Pentateuchal history was written [not in the wil- 
 derness, but] in the land of Canaan. ... In Hebrew 
 the common phrase for westward is ' seaward,' and for 
 southward, 'towards the Negeb.' The word Negeb, 
 which primarily means parched land, is, in Hebrew, 
 the proper name of the dry steppe district in the 
 south of Judah. These expressions for west and 
 
THE VALIDITY OF THE BIBLICAL CANON. 2/ 
 
 south could only be formed within Palestine. Yet 
 they are used in the Pentateuch, not only in the nar- 
 rative, but in the Levitical description of the taber- 
 nacle in the wilderness (Exod. xxvii.). But at Mount 
 Sinai the sea did not lie to the west, and the Negeb 
 was to the north. Moses could no more call the 
 south side the Negeb side of the tabernacle than a 
 Glasgow man could say that the sun set over Edin- 
 burgh. The answer attempted to this is, that the 
 Hebrews might have adopted these phrases in patri- 
 archal times, and never given them up in the ensuing 
 four hundred and thirty years ; but that is nonsense. 
 When a man says towards the sea, he means it. . . . 
 Again; the Pentateuch displays an exact topographical 
 knowledge of Palestine, but by no means so exact a 
 knowledge of the wilderness of the wandering. The 
 narrator knew the names of the places famous in the 
 forty years' wandering ; but for Canaan he knew local 
 details, and describes them with exactitude as they 
 were in his own time (e.g.. Gen. xii. 8, xxxiii. i8, 
 XXXV. 19, 20). Accordingly, the patriarchal sites 
 can still be set down on the map with definiteness ; 
 but geographers are unable to assign with certainty 
 the site of Mount Sinai, because the narrative has 
 none of that topographical color which the story of 
 an eye-witness is sure to possess. Once more: the 
 Pentateuch cites as authorities poetical records which 
 are not earlier than the time of Moses. One of 
 
28 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 these records is a book, — the Book of the Wars of 
 Jehovah (Num. xxi. 14). Did Moses, writing con- 
 temporary history, find and cite a book already cur- 
 rent, containing poetry on the wars of Jehovah and 
 his people, which began in his own times ? Another 
 poetical authority cited is a poem circulating among 
 the Moshelim, or reciters of sarcastic verses (Num. 
 xxi. 27, seq.). It refers to the victory over Sihon, 
 which took place at the very end of the forty years' 
 wandering. If Moses wrote the Pentateuch, what 
 occasion could he have to authenticate his narrative 
 by reference to these traditional depositaries of 
 ancient poetry V 9 
 
 Such, then, are a few of the considerations assigned 
 by Professor W. Robertson Smith, in proof of the 
 position, that, as a whole, the Pentateuch never could 
 have been written by Moses in the wilderness, but 
 must have been written by some subsequent author, 
 or rather by some subsequent series of authors, in 
 the land of Palestine. And as of the Pentateuch, 
 so of most of the other books, alike of the Old and 
 New Testament. The more rigidly the subject of 
 their authenticity is inquired into, the more doubtful 
 does their authenticity become. 
 
 It should be carefully noted, however, that it has 
 all along been quite aside from the present writer's 
 purpose to enter at length upon the full and formal 
 discussion of the general subject of the authenticity 
 
THE VALIDITY OF THE BIBLICAL CANON. 29 
 
 or unaiithenticity of the various biblical books. His 
 design has been merely to permit Professor Smith, in 
 the most summary manner possible, to place the ordi- 
 nary reader, by an illustrative argument or two, on an 
 understanding relation with modern biblical scholars 
 on this question. The question itself has already 
 been canvassed backward and forward, and over and 
 over again. As the result of this discussion, biblical 
 scholars have already become permanently divided 
 into two well-defined classes, — the new and the old. 
 Broadly speaking, the old continue to adhere to 
 the opinion that the various biblical books belong 
 to the authors and the ages to which they are tradi- 
 tionally referred. The new have reached the final 
 conclusion that, exceptional instances aside, such is 
 not the case. 
 
 Modern biblical scholars accordingly find them- 
 selves confronted with the following dilemma. Either 
 they must admit that most of the books of both the 
 Old and New Testament are not canonical ; or else 
 they must insist, after the manner of Dr. Davidson, 
 Dean Stanley, and Professor W. Robertson Smith, 
 that the authenticity of these books is no proper, or 
 at least no necessary, criterion of their canon icity. 
 
 But, if authenticity be no necessary criterion of 
 their canonicity, what criterion is to be adopted } 
 Why, says Dr. Davidson : " Canonical authority lies 
 in the Scripture itself ; it is inherent in the books. 
 
30 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 SO far as they contain a revelation, or declaration of 
 the divine will. Hence there is truth in the state- 
 ment of the old theologians, that the authority of 
 Scripture is from God alone." ^° Or, as the same 
 thing is substantially expressed in the Vatican De- 
 crees : " These books of the Old and New Testament 
 the Church holds to be sacred and canonical, not 
 because, having been carefully composed by mere 
 human industry, they were afterwards approved by 
 her authority, nor merely because they contain rev- 
 elation with no admixture of error, but because, 
 having been written by the inspiration of the Holy 
 Ghost, they have God for their author, and have been 
 delivered as such to the Church herself." ^^ 
 
 The general subject of the inspiration of the Bible 
 is so large a one, however, that we shall be obliged 
 to devote a special chapter even to the preliminary 
 aspects of its consideration. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 The extremest view of biblical inspiration is that 
 promulgated in the extract from the Vatican Decrees 
 which is cited at the conclusion of the foregoing 
 chapter. 
 
 This view represents the entire biblical I'iterature, 
 from Genesis to Revelation, as having been so writ- 
 ten by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost that it 
 contains not merely a revelation, but a revelation 
 without the least degree of error. And not only is 
 this the view of the subject which is officially pro- 
 claimed to-day by the Church of Rome : it is like- 
 wise the view of the subject contended for, even in 
 this nineteenth century, by the super-orthodox among 
 the Protestant divines. 
 
 The question is thus raised, whether, as a matter 
 of fact, the Bible does contain no elements of error. 
 
 In the New Testament department Strauss in par- 
 ticular has exhibited in great detail, and with a 
 microscopic minuteness, the discrepancies and con- 
 tradictions alleged to exist in our present Gospels. 
 
 31 
 
32 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 Thus he points out, that, after a stormy passage 
 across the Sea of Galilee, Jesus meets a single 
 demoniac coming out of the tombs, according to 
 Mark and Luke, but meets with two, according to 
 Matthew.^ So in the narrative of a certain cure of 
 blindness said to be performed by Jesus at Jericho, 
 Matthew duplicates the single blind man of Mark 
 and Luke ; and Luke makes the cure take place on 
 the entrance of Jesus into Jericho, whereas Matthew 
 and Mark make it take place on the departure of 
 Jesus out of Jericho.2 
 
 But not only are such discrepancies and contradic- 
 tions as these pointed out by Strauss, almost ad 
 nauseam, all through the Gospels. Corresponding 
 discrepancies and contradictions are pointed out by 
 Zeller, Baur, Kuenen, and other so-called destructive 
 critics, all through the Bible. 
 
 Every biblical scholar is familiar, of course, with 
 the manifold expedients resorted to by the traditional 
 harmonists and apologists, to explain away these dis- 
 crepancies and contradictions. But modern, as dis- 
 tinguished from mediaeval, biblical scholars, have too 
 much intellectual self-respect to take refuge in any 
 of these harmonistic and apologistic subterfuges. 
 They prefer, on the other hand, frankly to recognize 
 the facts, and to say that the Bible doubtless does 
 more or less abound with errors, and such errors as 
 destroy the proposition that it is infallibly inspired. 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 33 
 
 Thus, in a special test case, Professor Christlieb con- 
 cedes that there are incompletenesses, inaccuracies, 
 and non-agreement in details, in the Gospel histories 
 of the Resurrection. He also assumes the general 
 position, that faith depends not on the letter of Scrip- 
 ture, but on the essential substance of the facts re- 
 corded in it.3 But, as Renan well observes : " Errors 
 of detail are no more compatible with the inspiration 
 of the Holy Ghost than impostures are." 4 
 
 Professor Tischendorf likewise says : " But the 
 reply will be made to me, that with all this the con- 
 tradictions of the Gospels are not solved. That such 
 are, in fact, presented, though many have been arbi- 
 trarily and erroneously alleged, I do not deny. . . . 
 We have, of course, no right to afifirm a mechanical 
 inspiration of the Evangelists which secures against 
 every error." 5 
 
 Pressense affirms that there exists between the 
 Synoptics and St. John a grave discrepancy, and one 
 which has not yet received a satisfactory explanation, 
 in relation to the date of the death of Jesus, — which 
 event the fourth Gospel places on the 14th, and 
 the Synoptics place on the 15th, of Nisan.^ This 
 same writer insists that the first Gospel has assigned 
 a wrong date to the celebration of the last passover.7 
 He also reasons that whereas, in recording the ac- 
 count of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, 
 St. Matthew speaks of two asses, while the other 
 
34 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS, 
 
 Evangelists mention only one, therefore the author 
 of the first Gospel must have been guided by the 
 parallelism of Zech. ix. 9, instead of giving us the 
 correct statement of an ocular witness. ^ *' In fact," 
 says Pressense, with reference to the general charac- 
 teristics of the Synoptics : " In parts they are almost 
 absolutely identical. And yet they show numerous 
 differences. . . . Often two of the Synoptics agree 
 together, while the third relates the same fact with 
 very considerable variations. How explain these 
 resemblances and these differences .^ The theory of 
 literal inspiration cuts the knot of the difficulty, for 
 those at least who can accept an arbitrary system 
 which does violence to the best-established facts, 
 and in reality identifies the action of the Divine 
 Spirit with a mechanical or magical force. We are 
 happily not reduced to this desperate resource," 9 
 
 Thus, without making any further exhibition of 
 the evidence, do we already come upon another 
 broad line of demarcation between the modern and 
 the mediaeval biblicists. The mediaeval maintain that 
 the Bible is infallibly inspired. The modern recog- 
 nize the prevalence of a greater or less degree of 
 error all through the Bible. 
 
 Nor is this recognition made by the destructive 
 critics alone, who deny tJi toto that the Bible is in- 
 spired. It is made equally by modern critics who 
 contend that the Scriptures contain, and contain in 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 35 
 
 the proper sense, a divine revelation. Here, for 
 instance, Christlieb and Strauss, Tischendorf and 
 Zeller, Pressense and Baur, Professor W. Robertson 
 Smith and Dr. Kuenen, are perfectly at one. 
 
 Thus far, however, the infallible inspiration of the 
 Bible has been impugned chiefly with regard to what 
 is characterized as the letter of the Scripture, in dis- 
 tinction from its substance. But how about the 
 substance } To illustrate. Professor W. Robertson 
 Smith directs our attention to the various conflicting 
 statements which are made concerning the same 
 events in the Chronicles and Kings. ^° Take two 
 or three examples. Chronicles affirm that Josiah's 
 reformation began in his eighth year, before the 
 law was found ; Kings, that it began in his eigh- 
 teenth year, and in pursuance of his having heard 
 the law read after it had been discovered." Accord- 
 ing to Chronicles, the expenses of the temple ser- 
 vices were defrayed, in the early years of Jehoash, by 
 a special collection levied upon all Judah ; according 
 to Kings, they were defrayed, during the same period, 
 as a burden upon the priestly revenues brought in 
 by the worshippers. ^^ According to Chronicles, the 
 local high places were abolished both by Asa and 
 Jehoshaphat ; according to Kings, they were abol- 
 ished neither by Asa nor Jehoshaphat. ^3 
 
 Professor Smith admits that people may shake 
 their heads at all this, and say that he is touching 
 
36 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 the historical character of the Book of Chronicles. 
 But his answer is, that our first duty is to facts. 
 And the facts are doubtless as he states them. 
 
 Still further. Every one knows that for many cen- 
 turies both the Catholic and the Protestant divines 
 were accustomed to maintain that the Scriptures 
 speak with a divine decisiveness in the department 
 of physical science as well as in the domain of ethics 
 and religion. But the Bible, at least as aforetimes 
 interpreted, having proved to be a very fallible crite- 
 rion in the former department, the general tendency 
 of the mediaeval biblicists in our own times is to take 
 refuge in the position that the Scriptures were never 
 designed to be considered as a scientific treatise or 
 authority at all. Thus the Vatican Decrees them- 
 selves appear prepared to affirm that the Bible is 
 infallibly inspired only in matters of faith and mor- 
 als. ^4 *< It is of supreme importance, moreover," says 
 Dr. Geikie, ''that we demand no more from Scrip- 
 ture than God intended it to yield. It was given to 
 reveal him to us, and to make known his laws and 
 will for our spiritual guidance, but not to teach us 
 lessons in natural science." ^5 *' It must therefore be 
 an error to look for the exactness of scientific state- 
 ment in the Scriptures. They were given for a 
 specific purpose, and for that only, and in other 
 matters use only the simple language of the senses, 
 which all ages, from the earliest to the latest, can 
 understand." ^^ 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIB IE. 37 
 
 So far as this argument goes, it may be accepted 
 as a more or less complete vindication of the scien- 
 tific inexactitude of very much of the biblical lan- 
 guage in relation to physical phenomena. Thus, 
 when the Bible affirms that the earth is fixed, or 
 depicts the sun as rising and setting, it would be a 
 manifest injustice to insist, after the manner of the 
 old clerical persecutors of Copernicus and Galileo, 
 that the Bible designs to teach, as a matter of scien- 
 tific verity, either that the earth is fixed, or that the 
 sun does revolve about our little mundane sphere. 
 In all such instances as these the Bible doubtless 
 speaks of natural phenomena only incidentally, and 
 in the current language of appearance, — not as they 
 would be spoken about in a formal scientific treatise, 
 but merely as they would be spoken about in any 
 popular book, or even in our ordinary conversation. 
 
 It materially militates against the present and the 
 future fortunes of mediaeval biblicism, however, that 
 this argument does not go far enough to cover all 
 the case in hand. For the Bible not merely speaks 
 in an incidental way concerning physical phenomena, 
 with no pretensions to teach the scientific truth 
 about them. It likewise speaks concerning such 
 phenomena as its direct subject-matter, and after 
 such a fashion also that it must either declare the 
 precise scientific truth about them, or else declare a 
 scientific falsity. For instance, says Principal Daw- 
 
38 THE PRESEA'T RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 son : '' With respect to the history of creation and 
 the subsequent references to it, we cannot rest in the 
 general statement that the Bible is not intended to 
 teach science, any more than we can excuse inaccu- 
 racy as to historical facts by the notion that the 
 Bible \e.g.y the Book of Chronicles] was not intended 
 to teach history." ^7 ** In the first chapter of Gene- 
 sis we find an obvious attempt to give the method of 
 creation, or at least its order in time. This narrative 
 of creation trenches on the domain of science, and 
 refers to matters not open to direct observation. It 
 must therefore be a revelation from God, or a result 
 of scientific induction or philosophical speculation, 
 or a mere myth." ^^ Which is it } 
 
 On the whole, Professor Haeckel considers that 
 this Jewish account of the creation contrasts favorably 
 with the confused mythology of the creation current 
 among most other ancient nations. But he points 
 out and emphasizes the fact, that the record repre- 
 sents the results of the great laws of organic devel- 
 opment as being the effects, not of such laws, but of 
 the direct actions of a constructins; Creator. ^9 And 
 it is notably with reference to this special aspect of 
 the record that Professor Huxley must be understood 
 as speaking, when he affirms, first, that the account 
 of the origin of things given in the Book of Genesis 
 is utterly irreconcilable with the doctrine of evolu- 
 tion ; and, secondly, that the evidence upon which the 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 39 
 
 doctrine of evolution rests is incomparably stronger 
 and better than that upon which the supposed author- 
 ity of Genesis rests." -° 
 
 Now, whether one personally adopts the evolution 
 theory of the origin of things, or still adheres to the 
 special-creation theory, this much is certain : the 
 evolution theory has already secured a very wide- 
 spread acceptance, and is constantly gaining fresh 
 adherents ; and that not merely among the profes- 
 sional physicists, but likewise throughout the read- 
 ing, thinking world at large. And, in the estimation 
 of all such persons as these, the Book of Genesis 
 stands convicted of a scientific misstatement of the 
 most fundamental character. 
 
 This conclusion is an ex parte one, indeed ; but it 
 is a conclusion which no modern biblicist can fail to 
 recognize, and mention with respect. 
 
 Again : Principal Dawson frankly concedes these 
 two things : first, that on no point has the Bible 
 appeared to insist more strongly than on the crea- 
 tion of the earth and its inhabitants in six ordinary 
 days ; and, secondly, that nothing can be more surely 
 established, on the basis of scientific induction, than 
 the vast periods which such creation must have con- 
 sumed, according to the evidences revealed by the 
 strata of the earth's crust.^^ 
 
 But Principal Dawson proposes to extricate the 
 Bible from the charge of affirming a demonstrable 
 
40 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 scientific falsity on this subject, by having recourse 
 to the well-known rejoinder of the traditional divines 
 that the Hebrew \vord yoni does not of necessity 
 mean a natural day of twenty-four hours. ^^ This no 
 Hebraist will of course dispute. Yoin sometimes 
 signifies a natural day, and sometimes signifies a 
 much greater lapse of time. Thus in Gen. ii. 4, it 
 covers the entire period of the creation, however 
 prolonged that period may have been. But if it ever 
 means a .natural day of twenty-four hours anywhere 
 in the Scripture, it means that in the connection 
 now immediately in question. Each of the ^\y.yoms 
 is explicitly defined and limited as being a natural 
 yom with a morning and an evening. Besides, the 
 use of the word in Gen. ii. 2, 3, and in the Decalogue, 
 is even more precise and fixed. God worked six 
 yoms, and rested on the seventh. The Jews were to 
 work six yoms, and rest on the seventh. And, ac- 
 cording to all the best established laws of language, 
 there is no more reason to say that yom means an 
 indefinite geological epoch in the one instance than 
 in the other. 
 
 Now, if the author of Genesis did not originally 
 design to declare that the six yoms in which God 
 created the heavens and the earth were six natural 
 days, he was clearly bound to say so. If he had any 
 idea that the creative ji/<97« was a different thing from 
 the ordinary yom, instead of confounding them, as he 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 4 1 
 
 notably does in the Decalogue, his business was to 
 distinguish them. And it was precisely as easy a 
 thing for any Hebrew writer to do this, as it was for 
 him to distinguish the Sabbath yom from the other 
 yoins of the Jewish week, or the yom of the Atone- 
 ment from the o\!^^x yoins of the Jewish year. 
 
 But the case is even worse than this. If the 
 alleged inspired author of Genesis had any concep- 
 tion that the work of creation consumed an almost 
 indefinite lapse of ages, he might better not have 
 employed the word yo7n at all in dividing up those 
 ages into six special eras of development. Instead 
 oi yom, the word olam was the one for him to use. 
 Olam conveys exactly that idea of almost indefinite 
 eternalness which precisely corresponds to the mod- 
 ern scientific conception of a great creative epoch. 
 And if, in the Decalogue and in the other passages 
 of Genesis now being considered, it had only been 
 asserted that God created the heavens and the earth, 
 not in ^i^yovis, but in six clams, how delighted the 
 mediaeval biblicists would have been to-day ! We 
 should then have heard them proclaiming far and 
 near that the Book of Genesis had anticipated by 
 many thousands of years the latest demonstrations 
 of modern physical science concerning the almost 
 immeasurable periods during which the creation of 
 the cosmos must have been in progress. Nor would 
 they then have been without an overwhelming argu- 
 
42 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 ment in favor of the supposition that, in so far at 
 least, the Book of Genesis must have been inspired. 
 As it is. Genesis says that the creation took place 
 not in six olams, but in ^\y^yoms, and not in six crea- 
 tive j/<?;;/i-, but in SIX y 07ns so limited and defined that 
 it is perfectly apparent that six ordinary j^<:?;;/i-, corre- 
 sponding to those of the current Jewish week, were 
 explicitly intended. And under these circumstances, 
 the less there is said either about the scientific cor- 
 rectness or the infallible divine inspiration of this 
 portion of the Book of Genesis, the more respect 
 thus much of the Bible will enjoy, and the less will 
 be the ridicule to which the mediaeval biblicists stand 
 exposed in the estimation at once of every modern 
 physicist and every modern biblicist. 
 
 Passing forward to the consideration of another 
 detail of this so-called Mosaic account of the origin 
 of things, Professor Huxley contemptuously observes 
 that it would be an insult to ask any evolutionist 
 whether he credits the preposterous fable respecting 
 the fabrication of woman therein recorded. ^3 
 
 Some time since the present writer directed the 
 attention of a prominent physical scientist, who is 
 also a conspicuous orthodox biblical apologist, to 
 this remark of Huxley, with special reference to its 
 bearing on the subject of biblical inspiration. We 
 asked him in our letter whether he had any reply to 
 make to Huxley here, and, if so, whether he would 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 43 
 
 communicate such reply to us in private, with per- 
 mission to make it public. His answer, italics and 
 all, runs as follows : *' I would not be refe^'rcd to as 
 having expressed any definite views on the subject. 
 But you will find what seem to me the best and most 
 judicious statements I have met with, in Macdonald's 
 'Creation and the Fall' He does not, however, 
 define the precise physiological nattirc of excising 
 the rib, or separable portion of the side, and building 
 it into a woman. Very probably the original seer 
 to whom the fact was revealed did not understand 
 this any better than Huxley ; but he had, no doubt, 
 more faith and less brutal views of humanity. We 
 know absolutely nothing of the precise mode of ex- 
 traction of either man or woman ; but to me the ori- 
 gin of man from the dust of the earth, and of the 
 woman from the man, appears infinitely more proba- 
 ble than that of either from apes." 
 
 But in saying all this our distinguished physicist, 
 after the manner of a model mediaeval biblicist, man- 
 ages to evade the real point at issue. The question 
 is not whether he can explain the precise physiologi- 
 cal nature of excising the rib, and building it into a 
 woman, any more than it is whether he can explain 
 the precise mode of the extraction of either man or 
 woman. The question is, whether he is willing in 
 this nineteenth century to come before the public, 
 and openly declare, in his capacity of physical scien- 
 
44 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 tist, that he veritably believes that the Deity did, as 
 a matter of scientific record, and even as a matter 
 of divinely inspired scientific record, cause a deep 
 sleep to fall upon Adam, and after any physiological 
 process whatever excise one of Adam's ribs, and in 
 any mode whatever build that rib into a w^oman. 
 Put in this way, however, our eminent physicist does 
 not care to be so much as referred to as having any 
 definite views to express on the subject. But this 
 much is not to be denied. Genesis afifirms that 
 Jehovah built Eve out of one of Adam's ribs, just 
 as explicitly, just as circumstantially, and just as 
 literally, as it affirms that Noah built an ark out of 
 gopher-wood. 24 And if in these days we cannot 
 conceive such a statement as this is to be scientifi- 
 cally tenable, it matters little after that by what spe- 
 cial name the narrative in which it occurs is called. 
 For whether it be called a preposterous fable, or a 
 palpable myth, or an integral portion of the Sacred 
 Scriptures, it is equally fabulous and false. 
 
 Among the ethical difficulties objected to the 
 inspiration of the entire Old Testament, none have 
 been more frequently discussed perhaps than those 
 presented by the imprecatory Psalms. 
 
 If the reader needs to have his memory refreshed 
 concerning the perfectly awful maledictions poured 
 forth in these productions, he may read the one 
 hundred and ninth Psalm by way of specimen. 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 45 
 
 Is such a class of literature as this divinely in- 
 spired ? If so, what are we to think of the Deity 
 who could have inspired it ? 
 
 To these questions various answers have been 
 attempted by the orthodox divines. And, of these 
 answers, the most plausible one is to the effect that 
 the Scriptures are made up of two different elements, 
 — the divine and the human, — and that the Psalms 
 now being considered are accordingly to be regarded, 
 as Dr. Hessy expresses it in his Boyle Lectures for 
 1872, as the unrestrained expressions of the feel- 
 ings of their respective writers. ^5 
 
 But, from the standpoint of mediaeval biblicism, 
 there is, first of all, the fundamental objection to this 
 theory, that it practically abandons the position that 
 these special Psalms are in any sense inspired. For, 
 if they are to be looked upon as the unrestrained 
 expressions of their respective human writers, mani- 
 festly the Deity could have had no more to do with 
 inspiring than restraining them. Besides, this theory 
 makes a radically incorrect division of the Scriptures 
 in its efforts to cover the case in hand. That is to 
 say, instead of affirming that the Scriptures are 
 composed of the divine element and the human, it 
 would be requisite to affirm that they are composed 
 of the divine element and the inhuman. For more 
 inhuman expressions, in a more mhuman spirit, than 
 these very Psalms abound with, it would be difficult 
 
46 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 to instance in any language under heaven, whether 
 civilized, semi-civilized, or barbarous. 
 
 Nor are these imprecatory Psalms by any means 
 the only portions of the Old Testament which are 
 regarded in these days as not deserving, from their 
 very nature, to be accorded a position among the 
 divinely inspired portions of the Scriptures. For 
 example. Professor W. Robertson Smith puts down 
 the Song of Solomon as a mere lyrical drama, in 
 which, according to most critics, the pure love of 
 the Shulamite for her betrothed is exhibited as 
 victorious over the seductions of Solomon and his 
 harem. 26 And M. Renan very pertinently inquires 
 whether the author of this charming little poem ever 
 could have suspected that he would one day be taken 
 from the company of Anacreon to be set up as an 
 inspired bard who sang of no love but the divine.^; 
 
 Thus, even upon this very partial and very super- 
 ficial examination of the evidence, do we arrive at 
 two well-established conclusions. The first of these 
 conclusions is, that the Bible, as a whole, was never 
 so written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost as 
 to be devoid of every sort of error. The second of 
 these conclusions is, that a greater or less proportion 
 of the subject-matter of the Bible is of such a nature 
 as utterly to preclude the supposition that the Holy 
 Ghost ever could have had any thing whatever to do 
 with its inspiration. 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 47 
 
 The question accordingly arises, in what manner 
 the entire subject-matter of the Bible ever came to 
 be regarded as having been immediately inspired by 
 the Deity himself. 
 
 Every biblical scholar is aware, that, as a matter of 
 historical fact, it was only by a very slow and gradual 
 process that the various biblical books ever came, 
 one after another, to be regarded even in the light 
 of Scripture. Thus, in the days of Ezra, the Penta- 
 teuch alone appears to have enjoyed any such distinc- 
 tion. But by the close of the first Christian century 
 the entire Old Testament literature seems to have 
 arrived at that distinction likewise. It was not, how- 
 ever, until the second half of the second century of 
 the Christian era, that, as a whole, the New Testa- 
 ment writings attained the eminence in question. 
 But, from that time onward, the New Testament and 
 the Old stand precisely on a parity. They are alike 
 and indifferently cited as Scripture. They, together, 
 make up the one sacred book — the one Holy Bible 
 — of the Christian church at large. 
 
 Now, as there was this slow and gradual historical 
 development of the idea that all the various biblical 
 books deserved to be dignified with the name of 
 Scripture, so there was a corresponding historical 
 development of the idea that all those books were 
 originally delivered to certain chosen men by the 
 immediate inspiration of the Holy Ghost. If we 
 
48 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 are to credit Professor W. Robertson Smith, for 
 example, there was a period when the Jews assumed 
 the position that the law of Moses, in and by itself 
 considered, contained the whole revelation of God's 
 goodness and grace, which either had been given, 
 or ever could be given. They considered that the 
 Psalms, the Prophets, and the other books were in- 
 spired indeed, but only in the sense of being authori- 
 tative interpretations and applications of the law of 
 Moses.28 But it will be perceived, that, even at this 
 period, the conception that the entire Old Testament 
 literature was in the fullest sense inspired, was slowly 
 rising in the Jewish mind. And, when we come 
 down to the days of Josephus, it had become natural, 
 he says, to all Jews, immediately and from their birth, 
 to esteem every one of the twenty-two books which 
 he mentions as containing the decrees of God.29 
 And presently we find Irenaeus declaring the entire 
 Scripture — inclusive of the New Testament as well 
 as the Old — to be perfect, insomuch as it was uttered 
 by the Spirit and word of God. 3° 
 
 Thus, beginning in a germinal way simply with 
 the Pentateuch, or the law of Moses, the idea, first of 
 scripturalness, and after that of divine inspiration, 
 became gradually attached by almost imperceptible 
 degrees, during the long lapse of ages, to the entire 
 biblical literature which we possess to-day. 
 
 We are now in a position to see the force of two 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 49 
 
 or three considerations of cardinal importance. The 
 first relates to the almost nonsensical reasons in view 
 of which both the later Jews and early Christians 
 frequently came to associate the idea of a divine 
 inspiration with the composition of their sacred writ- 
 ings. There was an opinion current among the an- 
 cient fathers, for instance, that Ezra himself, with 
 five scribes to write at his dictation, within the 
 period of forty days reproduced the entire Old Testa- 
 ment, in so far as it had been either destroyed or 
 injured at the time of the Captivity. But the source 
 of this superstition, Professor W. Robertson Smith 
 assures us, was merely a fable to that effect existing 
 in the Book of Esdras. The same authority informs 
 us that the account of the origin of the Septuagint 
 current in the days of Jesus was full of fabulous 
 embellishments designed to establish the authority 
 of the version as having been miraculously composed 
 under divine inspiration.3i The very additions to 
 the Hebrew text ventured upon by the Septuagint 
 interpreters were considered to have been put in by 
 the express authority of the Holy Ghost. 3^ Now, all 
 this is simply childish ; and so very childish that we 
 must manifestly be upon our guard against accepting 
 the entire biblical literature as having been divinely 
 inspired, merely because it was so regarded whether 
 by the later Jews or early Christians. 
 
 Another circumstance to note and emphasize is 
 
50 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 this. The idea that the entire biblical literature is 
 divinely inspired does not by any means inhere in 
 that literature itself. On the contrary, it is an idea 
 about the Bible, as a whole, which gradually grew up 
 in the imagination of the later Jews and early Chris- 
 tians, in the manner pointed out above. In other 
 words, while certain portions of the Scriptures pro- 
 fess to be inspired, other portions, and other very 
 considerable portions, do not profess to be inspired. 
 
 In the New Testament department this is true, for 
 instance, of the book of the Acts. The author of 
 this book does not begin his record with the afifirma- 
 tion that he is about to write it in the capacity of a 
 kind of amanuensis of the Holy Ghost. The key-note 
 which he rather strikes is simply this : *'The former 
 treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus 
 began to do and teach." On the supposition of 
 the mediaeval biblicists, which may for the moment 
 be adopted, that the writer here is Luke, and that 
 the former treatise to which he refers is the Gos- 
 pel of Luke, we turn to the prologue of that Gospel 
 for further information with relation to the point 
 in hand. But, according to this prologue, the author 
 of St. Luke's Gospel does not have the slightest 
 suspicion that he is about to indite it under all the 
 safeguards against every sort of error implied in 
 the supervising inspiration of the Deity himself. He 
 merely conceives himself to be one out of many con- 
 
THE INSPIRATION OF THE BIBLE. 5 1 
 
 temporaneous writers who have undertaken to put on 
 record the general subject-matter of his Gospel, and 
 thinks it quite enough to say, by way of establishing 
 his personal qualifications for the faithful execution 
 of his task, that he was himself, from the very begin- 
 ning, among the eye-wdtnesses of those things, his 
 version of which he was about to write out systemati- 
 cally for the confirmation of the faith of his most 
 excellent friend Theophilus. In like manner, if we 
 compare St. John xix. 35 and xxi. 27, what do we 
 discover ? We discover merely that the author of 
 the fourth Gospel declares himself to be, not a 
 divinely inspired historian, but simply the disciple 
 who wrote these things and knew that his testimony 
 was true. In a word, you will search the four Gos- 
 pels in vain to find them putting forth the internal 
 claim of being divinely inspired records of the acts 
 and words of Jesus. The Jesus of the four Gospels 
 habitually speaks and acts, indeed, in the capacity of 
 a divine messenger, and even of a divine revelator. 
 But the Gospel records of Jesus' acts and words no 
 more profess to be divinely inspired than do the cur- 
 rent reports made in our modern newspapers of the 
 movements and speeches of our leading public men. 
 
 And as of the New Testament, so of the Old. 
 Not merely entire passages, entire books, do not pro- 
 fess to be inspired. 
 
 Let us, therefore, lay aside the altogether gratui- 
 
52 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 tons assumption of the later Jews and early Chris- 
 tians, that these portions of the Bible are inspired, 
 and look at them from their own standpoint; namely, 
 that they are nothing more than ordinary human 
 compositions. 
 
 Regarded from this point of view, the undeniable 
 discrepancies and contradictions with which our pres- 
 ent Gospels abound do not present the slightest 
 embarrassment to the modern biblicist. No four 
 human writers will narrate their several accounts of 
 the same events without a greater or less degree 
 of divergence in relation to the details. 
 
 The same remark applies with reference to the 
 various conflicting statements which we have seen 
 to exist between the Chronicles and Kings. For 
 neither do the Chronicles nor Kings any more pro- 
 fess to be divinely inspired histories than do the his- 
 tories of Gibbon or Macaulay. 
 
 So with regard to the imprecatory Psalms. The 
 Psalms themselves do not pretend to be inspired. 
 Aside from the single expression, **The Lord said 
 unto my Lord," a "Thus saith the Lord" does not 
 occur, so far as we recall, throughout the whole col- 
 lection. "The Greek doctrine of the inspiration of 
 the poet," Professor W. Robertson Smith observes, 
 "never led to the recognition of certain poems as 
 sacred scriptures. But the Indian Vedas were re- 
 garded in later times as infallible, eternal, divine." y^ 
 
THE IXSP/RAT/O.V OF THE BIBLE. 53 
 
 In like manner the Psalms, originally claiming to be 
 only a portion of the merely human religious poetry 
 of Israel, gradually became converted, in the super- 
 stitious imagination of the later Jews, into the ver- 
 itable Jewish Vedas, — sacred, eternal, and divine. 
 But, looked at in their true light as purporting to be 
 only purely human ancient Jewish poetry, the impre- 
 catory Psalms cast no reflection whatever on the 
 Deity. David may or may not have personally com- 
 posed them. But, even if he did, the Holy Ghost 
 stands no more responsible for their monstrous male- 
 dictions than he does for the murderous and adulter- 
 ous animus of the letter which David wrote to Joab, 
 saying : "■ Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest 
 battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smit- 
 ten, and die." 34 
 
 Another pertinent example would be the Song of 
 Songs. Not only does this poem expressly purport 
 to be Solomon's, not the Lord's. Even so recently 
 as the apostolical era, R. Akiba hurled his theological 
 anathemas at those among the Jews who sang it with 
 a quavering voice in the banqueting house, as if it 
 were a common lay. 35 As a mere Song of Solomon, 
 or, as other critics maintain, of some other ancient 
 Jewish writer, modern criticism would not incline to 
 speak of it severely. But, as the Holy Ghost lays no 
 claim whatever to its authorship, modern criticism 
 does not feel at any greater liberty to foist its author- 
 
54 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 ship upon the Holy Ghost than it does to foist upon 
 the Holy Ghost the authorship of any corresponding 
 amatory writing, which some critics regard as merely 
 sensuous, but pure, and other critics regard as both 
 sensual and positively immoral. 
 
 Nothing, however, could be more foreign from 
 the present writer's purpose than to throw out the 
 slightest intimation that the biblical literature does 
 not contain its inspired elements as well as its un- 
 inspired. If certain very considerable sections of the 
 Bible do not profess to be inspired, other very con- 
 siderable sections do profess to be inspired. And all 
 that we maintain is simply this : Only those portions 
 of the Bible which profess to be inspired can come 
 legitimately before the modern biblicist for investi- 
 gation when he comes specifically to consider in 
 how far the general subject-matter of the Bible is 
 inspired. Not that the mere profession of a biblical 
 book, or portion of a book, that it is inspired, would 
 be, in and by itself considered, sufficient proof of its 
 inspiration. What we merely mean to affirm is, that 
 if a given biblical book, or portion of a book, does 
 not so much as claim to be inspired, no presumption 
 is raised in favor of its inspiration : no starting-point 
 is offered even to begin the formal consideration of 
 its inspiration. 
 
 In a subsequent volume which the writer hopes to 
 put forth on the great general subject of Supernatural 
 
THE IiXSPI RATION OF THE BIBLE. 55 
 
 Religion, he will endeavor to give a detailed state- 
 ment of the reasons why he firmly holds that the 
 Bible contains, as well as professes to contain, an 
 element which is the form of a direct divine revela- 
 tion. But his immediate object — which is pre- 
 liminary, not final — is abundantly secured if he has 
 simply succeeded in vindicating the general assertion 
 that the current conceptions of the mediaeval bibli- 
 cists concerning the divine inspiration of the entire 
 biblical literature are fundamentally at fault ; and 
 that they consequently require a revision of the most 
 revolutionary character. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 
 
 We have already seen that our present Gospels do 
 not profess to be divinely inspired histories of the 
 acts and teaching of Jesus ; but that, at the highest, 
 they purport to be merely ordinary human histories, 
 composed by his contemporaries and companions. 
 
 We have now to consider whether they were actu- 
 ally written by those original disciples of Jesus whose 
 respective names they bear. 
 
 And, in the first place, however much modern bibli- 
 cists may disagree about other things, they concur in 
 the view, that, as Renan remarks, a proper name at 
 the head of such works does not mean much.^ 
 Thus, in the Old Testament department. Professor 
 W. Robertson Smith admits that all of the titles 
 of the Psalms would be authoritative, if it were not 
 for the fact that some of the titles, not being so old 
 as the Psalms themselves, must be resrarded as the 
 mere conjectures of the individual copyists. It 
 therefore becomes important, he says, to ask whether 
 all the titles now found in the Old Testament go back 
 56 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 57 
 
 to the original authors, or whether some of them are 
 not the merest surmises of the later copyists. And 
 this question is naturally suggested, he maintains, by 
 what we find in manuscripts of the New Testament, 
 many of which prefix the name of Paul to the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, though it is quite certain that the 
 oldest copies left the Epistle anonymous.^ 
 
 The mediaeval biblicists here interpose the objec- 
 tion, however, that to write a book in the name of 
 another, and to give it out to be his, is to perpetrate 
 a deliberate literary forgery ; and such a forgery as 
 would be destructive of all trustworthiness in the 
 book itself. 
 
 To this Dean Stanley answers, that it is as absurd 
 to charge the biblical writers with forgery because 
 they very frequently wrote under fictitious names — 
 as under the pseudonym of David, Solomon, or Daniel 
 — as it would be to characterize the poet Burns as a 
 forger because he places his address to the army of 
 Bannockburn in the mouth of Robert Bruce. 3 
 
 But neither by the mediaeval biblicists, nor even 
 by Dean Stanley, is the case here correctly stated, 
 as it is understood by modern biblicists at large. 
 For the allegation of the latter critics is not that 
 very many of the biblical books were originally put 
 forth in the name of a fictitious author. They 
 merely maintain that the great majority of the 
 biblical books, particularly in the Old Testament 
 
58 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 division, were originally put forth anonymously, and 
 that some subsequent editor or copyist, wishing to 
 cover the contents of a given book with the authority 
 of some great name in the ancient Jewish or early 
 Christian annals, gave to the book a fictitious title. 
 And; regarded in this light, it will be perceived that 
 the charge of forgery does not have the slightest 
 pertinency when it is applied to the subject-matter 
 of the book, — however apposite it may be when it 
 is directed against the alleged authorship of the pro- 
 duction. 
 
 There is no sufficient historical evidence, therefore, 
 that the formulae, ''according to Matthew," "accord- 
 ing to Mark," "according to Luke," "according to 
 John," are headings prefixed to our respective Gospels 
 by the original authors of our Gospels. On the other 
 hand, it is quite as probable that these compositions 
 were originally put forth just as anonymously as 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, and that these headings 
 were afterwards prefixed to them by some editor 
 or copyist. 
 
 Again : among early ecclesiastical writers, Papias 
 is the first who mentions the tradition that Matthew 
 and Mark composed written records of the life and 
 teaching of Jesus ; 4 Irenaeus the first who ascribes 
 the authorship of the third Gospel to Luke by name ; 5 
 and Theophilus the first who cites an undeniable 
 passage from the fourth Gospel in connection with 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 59 
 
 the name of John.^ But Papias was bishop of 
 HieropoHs in the first half of the second Christian 
 century,7 Irenaeus bishop of Lyons A. D. 178,^ and 
 Theophilus bishop of Antioch A. D. 179.9 
 
 Roughly speaking, therefore, it is not earlier than 
 from A. D. 150 to A. D. 175 that we find written 
 records of the history of Jesus even traditionally 
 accredited to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 
 
 What gave rise to that tradition } Did it rest on 
 any more substantial basis than the mere headings 
 of the Gospels, which were themselves presumably 
 fictitious } 
 
 But if our Gospels were at least not demonstrably 
 composed by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, possi- 
 bly they may have been composed by contemporaries 
 of Jesus. That much, at the lowest, is once asserted 
 in the third Gospel, and twice asserted in the fourth. 
 Still, whether we are to credit this assertion or not, 
 we shall be in a better position to judge after we 
 have given a cursory consideration to the question of 
 the probable date of the composition of our Gospels. 
 
 All critics, indeed, agree with Strauss that thus 
 much is certain : that towards the end of the second 
 century after Christ the same four Gospels which we 
 now possess are found in their present written form, 
 both fully recognized in the Church, and freely 
 quoted in the then current ecclesiastical writings, — 
 particularly in those of Irenaeus in Gaul, Clement in 
 
6o THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 Alexandria, and Tertullian in Carthage. ^° But how 
 much sooner than the end of the second century our 
 present written Gospels existed as we have them in 
 our hands to-day, is more or less a matter of conjec- 
 ture. 
 
 Tischendorf, however, endeavors to carry the argu- 
 ment in favor of their earlier existence back even to 
 the apostolical era, by establishing a connecting link 
 between Irenaeus and Polycarp." 
 
 Polycarp, it will be remembered, was a contempo- 
 rary both of the original disciples of Jesus and also 
 of Irenaeus. And, in a letter to one Florinus, Ire- 
 naeus, among other things, observes : " When I was a 
 child, I saw thee at Smyrna, in Asia Minor, at the 
 house of Polycarp. ... I can recall . . . his frequent 
 references to St. John, and to others who had seen 
 our Lord : how he used to repeat from memory their 
 discourses which he had heard from them concerninsf 
 our Lord, his miracles and mode of teaching ; and 
 how, being instructed himself by those who were 
 eye-witnesses of the word, there was in all that he 
 said a strict agreement with the Scriptures." 
 
 And, in view of this. Professor Tischendorf de- 
 mands to know who will venture any longer to ques- 
 tion whether Irenaeus had ever heard a word from 
 Polycarp about the Gospel of John. 
 
 It so happens, however, that Polycarp, as reported 
 above by Irenaeus, does not say a single word about 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 6 1 
 
 the real point at issue ; namely, about a Gospel which 
 had been reduced to writing so early as the apostoli- 
 cal era, whether by St. John, St. Matthew, St. Mark, 
 St. Luke, or by any other eye-witness of the career 
 o£ Jesus. He speaks, indeed, of hearing from such 
 eye-witnesses discourses concerning the miracles and 
 mode of teaching of our Lord, which he could still 
 repeat from memory. But those discourses were 
 manifestly verbal ones, not written ones. Had Poly- 
 carp only said that he had heard St. John, St. Mat- 
 thew, St. Mark, and St. Luke read the original 
 manuscripts of our present Gospels, that would in- 
 deed signify something to the purpose of mediaeval 
 biblicism. And if, up to the time of their death, 
 those apostles had, as a matter of fact, produced any 
 such manuscripts, it is scarcely to be conceived that 
 so intimate a companion of them as Polycarp pur- 
 ports to be should have been altogether excluded 
 from their confidence concerning the very existence 
 of those manuscripts ; or that, having been made 
 aware of their existence, he should not have men- 
 tioned their existence in the hearing of Irenasus. 
 
 The fair inference, therefore, is, that, to the best 
 knowledge and recollection of Polycarp, no disciple 
 and contemporary of Jesus had ever written out a 
 formal history of Jesus. 
 
 The effort is made, again, to establish a compara- 
 tively early date for the composition of our Gospels 
 
62 ■ THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 by appealing to the abundant quotations made from 
 them, as it is alleged, in ecclesiastical writers of the 
 first part of the second Christian century. But some 
 of these writers do not mention any source from 
 which they make their quotations, and hence leave it 
 a perfectly open question whether they quote from 
 any written Gospels, or only quote from traditions 
 appertaining to the history of Jesus which still existed 
 merely in an oral form. 
 
 Be that, however, as it may, Justin Martyr cer- 
 tainly wrote two Apologies, or Defences of Christians 
 and Christianity, addressed to the Roman Emperor 
 and Senate. The first of these was probably written 
 about A. D. 147, and the second somewhat later. ^^ 
 
 In these Apologies Justin speaks of Memoirs or 
 Memorabilia of Christ, composed by the apostles and 
 by companions of the apostles, and which were also 
 called sometimes the Gospels, and sometimes collec- 
 tively the Gospel. 
 
 Whether these apostolical Memoirs of Jesus which 
 Justin mentions were or were not identical with our 
 present Gospels, is one of the most hotly contested 
 questions connected with modern Gospel criticism. 
 And, in the first place, there is only the greatest 
 vagueness expressed by the merely general and wholly 
 indefinite title. Memoirs of the Apostles. Had Jus- 
 tin only subdivided this running title, and said here 
 that he quoted from Matthew, there that he quoted 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 63 
 
 from Mark, here that he quoted from Luke, and 
 there that he quoted from John, much more precision 
 would have been imparted to his evidence in its bear- 
 ing on the special point before us. It is, however, 
 only in a single instance that Justin approaches to 
 any such precision : that is when he speaks, not in 
 a general way of the Memoirs of the Apostles, but 
 in a specific way of the Memoirs of Peter. 
 
 Now, it is maintained by one class of critics that 
 by these Memoirs of Peter, Justin must have designed 
 to designate the same Gospel as our present Gospel 
 of Mark. For, say these critics, to begin with, Peter 
 was regarded by the ancients as having furnished the 
 materials for the second Gospel, which Mark merely 
 wrote down at the dictation of Peter ; and hence it is 
 not unlikely that in the days of Justin the second 
 Gospel may have borne the name of Peter, who fur- 
 nished its materials, though it subsequently became 
 called after the name of Mark, who had originally 
 acted only in the capacity of an amanuensis to Peter 
 in its composition. Besides, these critics continue, 
 when Justin particularly specifies the Gospel of Peter 
 as the source of his information, he speaks of our 
 Saviour as changing the name of Peter, and of his 
 giving to James and John the name Boanerges, which 
 are circumstances mentioned, so far as we are aware, 
 exclusively in the Gospel of Mark. 
 
 But a large number of opposing critics contend, 
 
64 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 that, when Justin refers to the Gospel of Peter, he 
 cannot refer to our Gospel of Mark, but must refer 
 to another and very different work, which, under 
 various names, as under those of the Gospel accord- 
 ing to Peter, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, 
 and the like, was circulated more or less extensively 
 throughout the early churches. 
 
 Now, no one denies that there was a Gospel of 
 Peter, which was not our Gospel of Mark, but which 
 was condemned by Serapion, bishop of Antioch, as 
 containing objectionable matter, and pronounced by 
 Eusebius to be an evidently spurious production. 
 But while there was a tradition, as we have seen, 
 that Peter furnished Mark with the subject-matter of 
 the second Gospel, the hypothesis is purely conjec- 
 tural, or, at the highest, is strictly inferential, that the 
 Gospel of Mark was ever cited, whether by Justin or 
 by any other ancient ecclesiastical writer, under the 
 name of the Gospel of Peter. And, until the lost 
 Gospel of Peter has been recovered, it never can be 
 demonstrated that it did not contain, in common 
 with our Gospel of Mark, precisely those passages 
 which Justin quotes in relation to the changes made 
 by Jesus in the names of Peter, James, and John, 
 and which, in the absence of the Gospel of Peter, 
 have been preserved to us only in the Gospel of 
 Mark. And, under all these circumstances, it be- 
 comes an exceedingly problematical question with 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 65 
 
 the perfectly impartial modern biblicist, whether, 
 when Justin speaks of the Gospel of Peter, he means 
 the lost Gospel of Peter, or means our Gospel of 
 Mark, which, for the reasons assigned above, might 
 at one time have possibly been called the Gospel of 
 Peter as well as the Gospel of Mark. 
 
 But the main argument in favor of the supposi- 
 tion that the apostolical Memoirs mentioned by Jus- 
 tin are the same as our present Gospels remains to 
 be considered. This argument is very clearly stated 
 by Dr. Ezra Abbot when he affirms, first, that Jus- 
 tin nowhere expressly quotes the Memoirs for any 
 thing which is not substantially stated in our Gospels ; 
 and, secondly, that there is nothing in the deviations 
 of Justin's quotations from exact correspondence 
 with our Gospels as regards either matters of fact, or 
 the report of the words of Jesus, which may not be 
 abundantly paralleled in the writings of the Christian 
 fathers who used our four Gospels as alone authori- 
 tative. ^3 
 
 First, then, there can be no dispute that the quo- 
 tations made by Justin from his Memoirs are sub- 
 stantially the same as they would have been had he 
 quoted from our Gospels. For, while these quotations, 
 regarded from a merely verbal point of view, deviate 
 in almost every instance to a greater or less degree 
 from corresponding passages in our Gospels, never- 
 theless not even the author of " Supernatural Reli- 
 
66 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 •gion " is able to gainsay that they usually agree in 
 substance with such corresponding passages. And 
 if merely substantial, as distinguished from strictly 
 verbal, accuracy in quoting from our Gospels, would 
 prove that Justin Martyr, in employing his apostoli- 
 cal Memoirs, did not employ our Gospels, it would 
 equally prove that Eusebius and many other ancient 
 Christian writers could not have used our Gospels 
 as the source of their citations. Thus Dr. Abbot 
 instances a single passage which is quoted by Euse- 
 bius not less than eleven times, but each time with 
 some verbal variation. h But every scholar knows 
 that Eusebius, and the other Christian fathers re- 
 ferred to, just as undeniably had our present Gospels 
 before them, or at least in their possession, as has 
 any modern biblicist. 
 
 The supposition, therefore, is, that the earlier eccle- 
 siastical writers were strangers to our modern cus- 
 tom of literal transcription from our Gospels, and 
 that, when they had occasion to cite our Gospels as 
 authority, they either quoted merely from memory, 
 or only aimed to give the point and substance of a 
 passage. 
 
 Let it be assumed, however, for the purpose of 
 the argument, that Justin Martyr did not so employ 
 his Memoirs. In other words, let it be assumed that 
 his habit of citation was that of modern biblicists, 
 — that when he quoted from his Memoirs he did so 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 6/ 
 
 verbatim, et literatim, et pinictiiatim. It would still 
 remain true, that, while verbally different from our 
 Gospels, his Memoirs were yet identical with our 
 Gospels in their main outlines and in their substance 
 and substratum. Moreover, Justin says that his Me- 
 moirs were statedly read in the Christian churches, 
 or rather in the Sabbath Christian gatherings of his 
 time,^5 and that they contained every thing concern- 
 ing our Saviour Jesus Christ. ^^ All the probabili- 
 ties, therefore, are, that his Memoirs continued to 
 remain, and be handed down within the inner Chris- 
 tian circles, as the recognized standard and exponent 
 of the acts and teaching of Jesus, and that it was 
 mainly, and more or less immediately, from them, that 
 our present Gospels were eventually produced. 
 
 As early as the days of Justin, therefore, our pres- 
 ent Gospels must have ceased to exist in a merely 
 written form, and been substantially reduced to 
 writing, — passing, however, still under the general 
 name of the Memoirs of the Apostles. After this 
 they must have undergone some changes indeed, but 
 changes of a merely minor nature. Thus, on the 
 conjectural supposition that Justin quoted from them 
 as they existed in his age, verbally and literally, 
 they must subsequently have passed through all 
 those strictly verbal transformations which would be 
 requisite to bring them into an exact verbal corre- 
 spondence with our Gospels. A certain amount of 
 
68 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 subject-matter must likewise have been eliminated 
 from them, such as the traditions that Christ was 
 born in a cave, that the Magi came from Arabia, 
 and that Jesus, as a carpenter, made ploughs and 
 yokes, ^7 — subject-matter that would seem to have 
 been in Justin's Memoirs, but which certainly has 
 not survived them in our Gospels. Another change 
 relates to the name of Justin's Gospels. By this we 
 mean, that instead of continuing to be called merely, 
 in a general way, the Memoirs of Christ, by the 
 apostles and companions of the apostles, this title 
 became in due process of time subdivided and dis- 
 tributed, so that each separate Gospel had its own 
 special apostolical author, namely, Matthew, Mark, 
 Luke, and John. 
 
 In this department of modern biblical criticism, 
 where almost every thing is to some extent conjec- 
 tural, we have accordingly arrived at a few provis- 
 ional conclusions. And, in the first place, it would 
 appear to be nearly certain that no original apostle, 
 or disciple, or contemporary of Jesus, produced, in a 
 manuscript form, any written record of the history 
 of Jesus. On the other hand, this history would 
 seem to have existed only in the shape of strictly 
 oral traditions until the post-apostolical era had not 
 merely opened, but to some degree advanced. Just 
 when these oral traditions first began to be fixed in 
 writing, however, is quite another question. But 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 69 
 
 since their composition was substantially completed 
 in the days of Justin, the fair inference would be, 
 that the initial stages of their composition must 
 have commenced considerably before the days of 
 Justin. In a general way also an apostolical author- 
 ship had already begun to be ascribed to these pro- 
 ductions prior to the period of Justin. And when 
 we come down to the days of Papias, Irenaeus, and 
 Theophilus, — A.D. 150 to A.D. 175, — each of the 
 Gospels had then acquired for itself its own special 
 apostle for an author. After which it only remains to 
 add, that all classes of critics are agreed that by the 
 conclusion of the second century our present written 
 Gospels had passed through the final stages of their 
 literary development ; had ceased to undergo any 
 further changes, whether as to their language or their 
 subject-matter ; had become permanently fixed in 
 writing as we possess them in our hands to-day. 
 
 Assuming the general correctness of these pro- 
 visional conclusions, therefore, both the authorship 
 of our Gospels, and the precise period of their com- 
 position, are among the unsolved and insolvable 
 problems of modern biblical speculation. Still the 
 period of their composition appears to have extended, 
 say from some time before the conclusion of the first 
 century after Christ, until some time after the mid- 
 dle of the second century. And, as to authorship, 
 we can form nothing beyond the vaguest surmises 
 
70 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 as to how many different editors and copyists there 
 must have been who at one time and another, and 
 in one way or another, contributed either verbally 
 or substantially, or both, towards casting and fixing 
 them in their present form. 
 
 And yet, by whomsoever and whensoever our Gos- 
 pels were composed, they still possess a certain 
 degree of historical value when regarded in the light 
 of professed ancient histories of Jesus. 
 
 Taking up these documents, therefore, quite inde- 
 pendently of all illusive questions about alike their 
 authorship and date of composition, we will in the 
 next place endeavor to arrive at some approximate 
 estimate of their intrinsic historical worth. 
 
 It is well known that a certain very able and influ- 
 ential school of modern critics deny their historical 
 character not partially, but wholly, in so far as they 
 narrate the supernatural. And, while this feature 
 of supernaturalism is perfectly intolerable to these 
 critics even in the first three Gospels, it is superla- 
 tively intolerable to them as it is presented in the 
 fourth. As Strauss has it, in the presence of this 
 latter Gospel it is incumbent upon the modern anti- 
 supernaturalists either to break in pieces all their 
 weapons, or force it to disavow all claims to histori- 
 cal validity. ^'"^ 
 
 Any thing like an adequate consideration of the 
 various hypotheses which have been advanced to 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. yi 
 
 explain away the supernatural relations of the sev- 
 eral Gospels as utterly unhistorical cannot be at- 
 tempted, however, either in this chapter, or even in 
 the present volume. On the other hand, the subject 
 is so large a one that its discussion must, of neces- 
 sity, be deferred until we can find scope to take it 
 up in a formal manner in our projected work on 
 Supernatural Religion. 
 
 The supernaturalism of the Gospels being thus 
 for the time altogether eliminated from the problem, 
 the question arises : In how far are our Gospels his- 
 torical ? or are they historical at all ? 
 
 The greatest difficulty here presented to the 
 modern biblicist is, what historical position is to be 
 accorded to the Gospel of John. And, in the first 
 place, it is maintained by the most pronounced oppo- 
 nents of this Gospel, as by F. C. Baur and Strauss, 
 that it more or less abounds with conscious and 
 intentional fiction. But by some of these opponents 
 the effort has been made to separate the Gospel into 
 two distinct elements, one of which is comparatively 
 historical, the other of which is little better than 
 fictitious. These elements are, first, the narrative 
 portions of the Gospel, and, secondly, those portions 
 of the Gospel which purport to give the discourses 
 of Jesus. But if either of these portions is historical, 
 and the other one is not so, which one is the histori- 
 cal, and which one is not the historical } Weisse, 
 
72 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 for instance, says that the discourses are historical, ^9 
 and that the narratives are fictitious; Renan — vice 
 vcrsa.^^ Now, Strauss concedes, that, if there can 
 be degrees of impossibihty, the genuineness of the 
 speeches imputed to Jesus in the fourth Gospel is 
 to some extent more inconceivable than the genuine- 
 ness of its narrative portions. At the same time he 
 insists on the untenableness of the entire hypothesis 
 that this Gospel can be divided into the above-men- 
 tioned elements, one of which is historical and the 
 other not historical, and contends that conscious 
 and intentional fiction is characteristic alike of its 
 narrations and discourses. ^i 
 
 It is fortunately possible for us, however, wholly 
 to extricate ourselves from this entanglement by 
 putting aside the narrative portions of the fourth 
 Gospel altogether, and considering only the dis- 
 courses. For, comparatively speaking, we have but 
 an incidental interest to-day in the merely external 
 facts and features of the history of Jesus. What 
 most deeply concerns us, and what we particularly 
 wish to know, relates the rather to those ideas and 
 principles of personal living, both outer and inner, 
 which Jesus did or did not bequeath us. 
 
 On the whole, therefore, are the speeches accred- 
 ited to Jesus in the fourth Gospel genuine, or spuri- 
 ous .? 
 
 And, to begin with, it is at least a notorious fact 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 73 
 
 that, in addition to our four canonical Gospels, the 
 early Christian literature contained several other 
 Gospels which are now designated as apocryphal, 
 and rejected as being false and manufactured repre- 
 sentations, or rather misrepresentations, of the acts 
 and words of Jesus. 
 
 One of the principal reasons assigned, as by Pro- 
 fessor George P. Fisher, for the rejection of these 
 apocryphal Gospels, is that they present no claim to 
 our attention on the score of age, — all of them hav- 
 ing been produced at a demonstrably later date than 
 Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. 22 But this is an 
 objection which applies with no inconsiderable force 
 as well against the historical character of the fourth 
 Gospel in comparison with the Synoptics. For all 
 modern critics, including Professor Fisher 23 and 
 Professor Tischendorf,24 are perfectly agreed that 
 the fourth Gospel certainly saw the light after the 
 other three. 
 
 It is alleged again that the apocryphal Gospels 
 are at a world-wide remove from the canonical Gos- 
 pels in the character of their contents. ^5 But it is 
 likewise alleged, to use almost the exact language 
 of Canon Westcott, that it is impossible to pass from 
 the synoptical Gospels to that of St. John without 
 feeling that the transition involves the passage from 
 one world of thought to another. ^6 With special 
 reference to the point now before us, M. Renan 
 
74 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 insists, indeed, that the fourth Gospel puts into the 
 mouth of Jesus discourses the tone, the style, the 
 manner, the doctrines, of which have nothing in com- 
 mon with the discourses reported in the Synoptics. ^7 
 
 Since, however, no one disputes that a broad 
 and fundamental diversity obtains between the dis- 
 courses in question, there is no occasion to enlarge 
 any further on this special aspect of the subject, 
 beyond, perhaps, remarking that the most casual 
 reader of the Gospels must have observed it for 
 himself, or that, if he has not done so, he may readily 
 observe it by contrasting the Sermon on the Mount, 
 for example, with any extended report of the osten- 
 sible words of Jesus which may be selected at random 
 in the Gospel of John. 
 
 It may here be interposed, however, that we are 
 overlooking the real point of the argument against the 
 genuineness of the apocryphal Gospels, as contrasted 
 with that of the canonical Gospels, so far as the 
 marked dissimilarity of their respective contents is 
 concerned. For it is not a full and correct state- 
 ment of the case when it is merely said that the 
 apocryphal Gospels differ from the canonical Gos- 
 pels in the sense that the fourth Gospel differs 
 from the Synoptics. The discourses of the fourth 
 Gospel differ from those of the Synoptics very nota- 
 bly, indeed ; but the former do not differ from the 
 latter as sense does from nonsense. The element 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 75 
 
 of dignity and elevation of thought is at least 
 a common factor between the speeches of Jesus re- 
 corded in the Synoptics and the speeches accredited 
 to Jesus in the fourth Gospel. But as contrasted 
 with that of the canonical Gospels, a preponderating 
 proportion of the subject-matter of the apocryphal 
 Gospels is absurd and frivolous, — is mainly made up 
 of almost silly tales about the nativity and infancy 
 of Jesus, the glories of his mother, and other kindred 
 stories, which are too palpably fabulous to merit any 
 attention. 28 
 
 Over against this, it is to be remembered, that, 
 among other things, the mighty personality and 
 influence of Jesus imparted to his disciples and 
 adherents a marked literary impulse after he was 
 gone. And the manifestations of this literary im- 
 pulse were as manifold as were the various classes 
 of minds which yielded to its sway. Thus, in one 
 direction, it resulted in the Pauline Epistles ; in 
 another, it gave rise to the Epistle to the Hebrews ; 
 and, in yet another, it produced the Book of Revela- 
 tion. And if, in its action upon a certain class of 
 minds innately inclined to find expression in the 
 fabulous and frivolous, it resulted in an apocryphal 
 literature after the general type either of the Gospel 
 of Peter or the Gospel of Nicodemus, for example, 
 it is quite within the limits of the possible that in its 
 action upon a certain other class of minds, innately 
 
76 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 inclined to be contemplative and metaphysical, it 
 might ha\'e resulted in an apocryphal production 
 answering to the general description of the Gospel 
 of John. 
 
 Now, in all this, we do not design positively to 
 affirm that the fourth Gospel, and notably that the 
 discourses of Jesus in the fourth Gospel, are demon- 
 strably unhistorical. We merely mean to declare, 
 and to declare with the greatest emphasis, that there 
 is no scholarly method of establishing their historical 
 character beyond a reasonable basis of doubt. " Not 
 that this doubt will be shared by all modern biblicists, 
 but that it will be shared by a very large proportion 
 of them. In a word, the question of the authenticity 
 of St. John's Gospel has already been discussed back- 
 ward and forward, and over and over again, now for 
 nearly half a century. And Dr. Ezra Abbot is per- 
 fectly correct when he states the aggregate result of 
 this discussion to be, that, among scholars of equal 
 learning and ability, as between Hilgenfeld, Keim, 
 Scholten, Hausrath, and Rcnan, on the one hand, 
 and Godet, Beyschlag, Luthardt, Weiss, and Light- 
 foot, on the other, opinions are yet divided, with a 
 tendency, at least in Germany, toward the denial of 
 its genuineness. -9 
 
 But it is a subject for congratulation that modern 
 investigation into the historical character of the syn- 
 optical Gospels has for its aggregate outcome some- 
 
HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE GOSPELS. 'J'J 
 
 thing more assured than a mere division of opinion. 
 For, even among the so-called destructive critics, it 
 now passes as a sort of common postulate, or axiom, 
 that, aside from their elements of supernaturalism, 
 and despite their hiata and their errors, we still pos- 
 sess in the synoptical Gospels a generally correct 
 historical preservation, so far as it goes, if not of the 
 acts, yet of the teachings, of Jesus. 
 
 With regard to the synoptical teaching of Jesus, 
 however, it is important to note that the destructive 
 critics all, or nearly all, accord the first rank to 
 Matthew. Thus Strauss affirms, that, notwithstand- 
 ing all doubt upon individual points, every one must 
 admit that we have the speeches of Jesus in the first 
 Gospel, though not unmixed with later additions and 
 modifications, yet in a purer form than in any of the 
 others. 3° And Renan does not hesitate to say that 
 Matthew clearly deserves unlimited confidence as 
 regards the discourses. 3^ 
 
 In undertaking to determine, therefore, what is the 
 actual historical teaching of Jesus, unless we would 
 enter upon an almost interminable controversy at 
 the very outset, it would be requisite to assume, as 
 a common basis of investigation with those who 
 reject the discourses of John, that the synoptical 
 discourses, and particularly that the Login recorded 
 in Matthew, are to be regarded as the standard. 
 Whether the discourses of John are likewise to be 
 
y8 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 taken into the account, or not, is a question which 
 would remain for subsequent examination. And the 
 decision of this question would hinge mainly on the 
 conclusion which we might arrive at concerning this 
 one thing ; namely, whether the discourses of John 
 are merely divergent from those of the other Gospels, 
 or are so radically at variance as to be absolutely in- 
 compatible with those of the other Gospels. 
 
 But this is an aspect of the subject which can be 
 adequately discussed only by a detailed comparison 
 of the synoptical discourses with the discourses of 
 John on all their leading topics, as on that of ethics, 
 on that of theism, on that of the person of Jesus, and 
 the like. 
 
 For the execution of such a task as this, however, 
 the author has not space remaining in the present 
 chapter ; although he hopes in some measure to 
 perform it in a future volume, to be devoted to a 
 general consideration of the Religion of Jesus. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 In depicting the present condition of things in 
 England, Matthew Arnold says that clergymen and 
 ministers of religion are full of lamentations over 
 what they call the spread of scepticism, and because 
 of the little hold which religion now has on the 
 masses of the people. And it is the religion of 
 the Bible that is professedly in question with all the 
 churches when they talk of religion, and lament its 
 prospects. With Catholics as well as Protestants, 
 and with all the sects of Protestantism, this is so. 
 What the religion of the Bible is, and how it is to 
 be got at, they may not agree ; but that it is the 
 religion of the Bible for which they contend, they 
 all aver.^ 
 
 With regard to what the religion of the Bible is, 
 Protestants and Catholics not only now disagree : 
 they must always continue to disagree. Why.'* 
 Because, although they proceed upon the common 
 postulate, as we have seen, that the Bible contains 
 a divinely inspired revelation without the slightest 
 
 79 
 
8o THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 admixture of error, they yet adopt a radically dif- 
 ferent standpoint, and pursue a radically different 
 method, when they would respectively determine 
 how the religion of the Bible, exclusive of the sub- 
 ject-matter of the apocryphal books of the Old Tes- 
 tament, is to be got at. For when the question is 
 specifically raised, how the religion of the Bible is 
 to be got at, the Catholics respond — to use the pre- 
 cise language of the Vatican Decrees — that, in mat- 
 ters of faith and morals appertaining to the building- 
 up of Christian doctrine, that is to be held as the 
 true sense of Holy Scripture which our Holy Mother 
 Church held and holds, to whom it belongs to judge 
 of the true sense and interpretation of the Holy 
 Scriptures, and therefore that it is permitted to no 
 one to interpret the Sacred Scriptures contrary to 
 this sense, nor contrary to the unanimous consent 
 of the Fathers. 2 
 
 The Protestants, on the other hand, contend, as 
 every one knows, for the right and duty of private 
 judgment in the interpretation of the Scriptures. 
 
 But in employing their private judgment to deter- 
 mine what are the true sense and interpretation of 
 the Holy Scriptures, how do Protestants proceed .'* 
 Their method is simply to compare Scripture with 
 Scripture. As Dr. Rainy says : " The whole truth 
 on any point which the Scriptures give, they give 
 not always in complete single statements, but in 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. «I 
 
 various statements which explain and guard and 
 complete each other. ... I must gather up and 
 present to myself the joint effect of these state- 
 ments, so far as I have understood them." 3 Or, as 
 Dean Mansel puts it : " Scripture is to the theologi- 
 cal dogmatist what experience is to the philosophi- 
 cal. It supplies him with the facts to which his 
 system has to adapt itself. It contains in an unsys- 
 tematic form the positive doctrines which further 
 inquiry has to exhibit as connected into a scientific 
 whole." 4 
 
 Contrasted with the CathoUc process of determin- 
 ing what the religion of the Bible is, therefore, the 
 Protestant process at least guarantees that the reli- 
 gion of the Bible will be got at with a comparative 
 purity and correctness. For, according to the Prot- 
 estant process, the teaching of the Bible on any 
 given topic is gradually arrived at by a scientific 
 collection and classification of all the detached and 
 more or less widely-scattered subject-matter of the 
 Bible bearing on the point. Thus, in the hands of 
 Protestants, the Bible becomes its own expositor and 
 its own interpreter. Thus, in the hands of Protes- 
 tants, the religion of the Bible, in all of its various 
 aspects, becomes developed from within the Bible 
 itself, and will be guarded against the incorporation 
 into itself of senses, ideas, and principles from with- 
 out, which are foreign to the subject-matter of the 
 
82 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 Bible. But the moment that any external authority, 
 such as the Catholic Church, undertakes to deter- 
 mine from without what are the true sense and 
 interpretation of the Bible, that moment a perfect 
 flood-gate is thrown open for the inflow of senses, 
 ideas, and principles, into the alleged religion of the 
 Bible, which do not by any means inhere in the inner 
 teachings of the Bible, but which inhere the rather 
 in the self-interests, the misconceptions, and even in 
 the vices and the superstitions, of the externally 
 interpreting body. 
 
 But let it be assumed, for the sake of the argu- 
 ment, that, whether by the Catholic process or the 
 Protestant process of getting at the thing, or both, 
 the religion of the Bible has been more or less accu- 
 rately determined. It yet remains true, as Matthew 
 Arnold suggests above, that there is a wide-spread 
 modern rupture with this very biblical religion. 
 
 This rupture is the most pronounced so far as the 
 Old Testament element enters into such religion. 
 There can be no question, for example, that multi- 
 tudes of modern minds are fairly up in revolt against 
 many of the theistic conceptions presented in that 
 department of the Scriptures. Thus Professor Christ- 
 lieb says that the objection is frequently raised, that, 
 side by side with many exalted ideas of God, there 
 are in the Bible, at least in the Old Testament, 
 many views unworthy of him. 5 Even believers in 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. ^^ 
 
 the Bible, he continues, are sometimes offended by 
 the manner in which the God of the Old Testament 
 is appealed to in the Psalms as a God of vengeance, 
 and also, generally speaking, by the whole spirit 
 expressed in those passages in which the poet in- 
 vokes destruction on his enemies.^ 
 
 But so far as the theism of the Psalms is specifi- 
 cally concerned, we have already, in the chapter on 
 Inspiration, cleared the Deity of the Old Testament 
 from all reprehensibleness. The authors of the 
 imprecatory Psalms habitually invoke Jehovah, in- 
 deed, as the most awful God of vengeance. There 
 is no reason to suppose, however, that Jehovah either 
 inspired those authors, or gave any answer to their 
 fearful invocations. 
 
 But, when we come to consider Jehovah as a God 
 of War, the manner in which he is to be vindicated 
 before the tribunals of the modern judgment and 
 conscience is not by any means so palpable. 
 
 One of the most notable attempts at doing this is 
 that made by Canon Mozley in his " Ruling Ideas in 
 Early Ages." In substance, the Canon proceeds to 
 say, that such wars as the exterminating wars of 
 Israel, done in obedience to a divine command, are 
 strongly urged by unbelievers against Old Testament 
 morality, — by which he means, of course. Old Tes- 
 tament theism. It is replied that God is the author 
 alike of life and death, and that he has the right to 
 
84 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 deprive any number of his creatures of life, whether 
 by the natural instrumentality of pestilence or fam- 
 ine, or by the express employment of man as his 
 instrument of destruction. As soon, therefore, as a 
 divine command to exterminate a whole people be- 
 comes known to another people, they not only have 
 the right, but are under the strictest obligation, to 
 execute such a command. In what way, however, is 
 a divine command for the destruction of a whole 
 nation made known to the destroying nation } It is 
 usually answered, and answered with truth, that it is 
 made known to them by the evidence of miracles. 
 Still, some distinction is yet wanted in dealing with 
 this subject. For, while miraculous evidence consti- 
 tuted to the ancient Israelites a sufficient proof of a 
 divine command to exterminate certain nations, it 
 would not constitute a sufficient proof of any such 
 command to us in modern times. Why not } Be- 
 cause there is a vast difference between the concep- 
 tions of those ages and our own, in consequence of 
 which such commands were adapted for proof by 
 miracles then, but are not so adapted now. In par- 
 ticular, our much more developed ideas of humanity 
 and justice would now be an absolute bar to the 
 execution of certain proceedings, against which the 
 moral sense of the earlier ages of the world did not 
 act as such a barrier. That is to say, in these days 
 we should be divided in our minds between two con- 
 
THE RELIGION OE THE BIBLE. 85 
 
 tradictory evidences, — the evidence of the miracle 
 that such a command came from God, and the evi- 
 dence of our sense of justice that it could not have 
 come from God. But in olden times these com- 
 mands had no resistance from the moral sense; they 
 did not look unnatural to the ancient Jew ; they were 
 not foreign to his standard ; they excited no suspicion, 
 and created no perplexity ; they appealed to a genu- 
 ine but rough sense of justice, which existed when 
 the longing for retribution upon crime in the human 
 mind was not checked, as it is now checked, by the 
 strict sense of humanity and justice. Such com- 
 mands were, therefore, then adapted to miraculous 
 proof, but are not so adapted now.7 
 
 But it will be perceived, that in all this Canon 
 Mozley merely manages to extricate the ancient 
 Jews from our modern execration for the part they 
 took in the execution of the allesred commands of 
 their Jehovah to slaughter their enemies by the 
 wholesale, even to the women and the children. 
 Semi-savages that they were, their conceptions alike 
 of humanity and justice were so barbarous, in com- 
 parison with our own, that they could even conscien- 
 tiously almost exterminate nation after nation, at the 
 order of their Deity. 
 
 But what are we to think, in these days, of a Deity 
 who could deliberately, repeatedly, and persistently 
 command such wholesale human slaughters that only 
 
86 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 a semi-savage people, like the ancient Israelites, 
 could possibly carry his commands into execution 
 without a moral shock ? 
 
 But of this aspect of the subject, — which, after 
 all, is the only vital aspect, — Mozley seems to be 
 entirely oblivious. 
 
 Speaking directly to this point, the question is 
 raised, whether, as a literal matter of fact, Jehovah 
 ever issued any such commands to the ancient Jews. 
 They were certainly capable of prosecuting precisely 
 such wars without divine or even diabolical direction. 
 We are informed, for instance, that, after Joab had 
 besieged and captured Rabbah, David brought forth 
 the inhabitants thereof, and cut them with saws, and 
 with harrows of iron, and with axes, and then pro- 
 ceeded to do the same in regard to all the cities of the 
 children of Ammon.s This, however, does not pur- 
 port, in the record, to have been done by David in 
 pursuance of any divine command, but was mani- 
 festly done by him in obedience to his own innate 
 propensities to cruelty and barbarism. 
 
 On the other hand, it is not to be forgotten, that, 
 according to the Old Testament representation of 
 the case, if that representation is to be understood 
 literally, either Jehovah had nothing to do with the 
 exterminating wars of ancient Israel, or he had sub- 
 stantially every thing to do with them. For, funda- 
 mentally considered, these wars, according to the 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 8/ 
 
 general letter of the Old Testament history of them, 
 were neither originally conceived, nor subsequently 
 carried forward, by the Israelites themselves. On 
 the contrary, Canaan was selected out beforehand by 
 Jehovah for the Israclitish conquest ; and it was he 
 who personally took the initiative, and led the He- 
 brews forth on their career of death and desolation. 
 In fact, the battles themselves were largely fought 
 by Jehovah himself, in distinction from the Jews. 
 Now he sends the hornet among the foe,9 now he 
 hurls down great hailstones from heaven on their 
 devoted heads,^° and now he fights against them, 
 either with his thunders " or his destroying angels.^^ 
 
 Nor, so far as Jehovah is depicted in the Old Tes- 
 tament as personally mingling in these wars, is there 
 the slightest use to make the attempt either to dis- 
 guise or mitigate their horrors. They were wars to 
 the knife, and wars to the death. According to his 
 explicit direction, whole cities were to be obliterated ; 
 entire tribes, and even entire nations, men, women, 
 and children, were to be destroyed. ^3 
 
 What have we to say to this .? We have to say, 
 simply, that because, literally construed, the profess- 
 edly historical books of the Old Testament portray 
 Jehovah as personally taking this terrific part in the 
 Israelitish wars, it by no means follows that he there- 
 fore did so. As has already been observed, the 
 Israelites were themselves abundantly capable of 
 
S8 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 butchering their enemies indiscriminately, without 
 the shsihtest insti2:ation or assistance from either 
 deity or demon. Besides, the IsraeHtes were by no 
 means pecuhar among their semi-savage contempora- 
 ries in regarding their divinities as being gods of 
 war, to whom aUke their defeats and their victories 
 were to be immediately ascribed. Thus, when the 
 Philistine lords had at last succeeded in getting 
 Samson in their power and putting out his eyes, they 
 gathered themselves together in the temple of their 
 Dagon, and offered a great sacrifice, and held a 
 mighty jubilation, saying: ''Our god hath delivered 
 Samson, our enemy, into our hand." ^4 In like man- 
 ner, those same Philistine lords, after the slaughter 
 of Saul and his three sons, and the general decima- 
 tion of the Israelitish army, published the victory far 
 and near throughout the houses of their idols, and 
 deposited the armor of Saul in the house of Ashta- 
 roth.^5 So also when Sennacherib, king of Assyria, 
 came up, and invaded Judah, he treated with perfect 
 contempt the assurance which Hezekiah had given 
 to the Jews that the Lord their God would help fight 
 their battles, and made it his public vaunt and taunt 
 that thus far the gods of no nation whatever had 
 been able successfully to resist either his own mili- 
 tary prowess, or that of his fathers before him.^'^ 
 And under these circumstances it was precisely as 
 much a matter of course that the ancient Israelites 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 89 
 
 should refer their various fortunes in the field directly 
 to their Jehovah, as it was that the Philistines, for 
 example, should refer their various fortunes in the 
 field directly to their Ashtaroth or Dagon. 
 
 But the Old Testament annals speak in such a 
 matter-of-fact manner about the personal part osten- 
 sibly taken by Jehovah in the old Jewish battles, that 
 they are well calculated to deceive us, unless we pene- 
 trate beneath the surface, and catch their real mean- 
 ing. For, upon reading these annals, the first im- 
 pression produced upon the mind is to the general 
 effect that Jehovah himself was seldom absent from 
 among the Israelitish hosts, as a sort of visible com- 
 mander-in-chief, directing all their military move- 
 ments ; and that when he was not thus personally, 
 and almost visibly, present in the field, he was yet 
 always near at hand in a kind of theocratic pavilion, 
 ready upon the instant to be inquired of through 
 his aides-de-camp or prophets, and through them to 
 issue his orders of the day. But, manifestly, all 
 this is merely ancient Orientalism ; is merely ancient 
 anthropomorphism ; is merely of a piece, for example, 
 with such other biblical statements as that in the 
 Book of Genesis, which represents the Lord God as 
 walking in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the 
 day, and talking face to face with Adam and his 
 wife. ^7 And, if in these days we were called upon 
 to narrate events corresponding to those related in 
 
90 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 the Old Testament military journals, we would do 
 so with little of this ancient Orientalism, and with 
 still less of this ancient anthropomorphism. Sup- 
 pose, for instance, that our subject were the career 
 of Cromwell. We would then write — to give two 
 or three illustrations — substantially as follows : The 
 first military exploit of Cromwell was to occupy the 
 city of Cambridge, and to seize upon the university 
 plate, in the name of God, to defray the expenses of 
 the war. ^s Qr thus: After the capture of Bristol, 
 Cromwell wrote to the Parliament, saying, "This is 
 none other than the hand of God, and to him be 
 the glory." ^9 Or thus : When Cromwell had been 
 almost compelled to surrender his forces at Dunbar, 
 upon seeing the Scotch advancing, instead of pru- 
 dently delaying the battle, his exclamation was, *' The 
 Lord hath delivered them into our hands." ^o Qr 
 yet again : After Cromwell had taken Drogheda by 
 storm, he issued orders that nothing should be spared, 
 and then piously added, ''This bitterness will save 
 much effusion of blood by the goodness of God." ^^ 
 That is to say, being sufficiently divested of their 
 ancient Orientalism and their ancient anthropo- 
 morphism to be correctly understood in modern 
 times, the Old Testament military annals would 
 then merely affirm that Jehovah was personally 
 engaged in, and personally responsible for, the old 
 exterminating wars of Israel, only in the same sense 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 9 1 
 
 that we would now assert that Providence was per- 
 sonally, engaged in, and personally responsible for, 
 the general military course of Cromwell. 
 
 But how about the miracles which Mozley assumes 
 were wrought in attestation to the ancient Jews that 
 their warfare upon the surrounding nations was waged 
 in obedience to the most literal and the most explicit 
 injunctions of their presiding Deity ? Two of the 
 most notable of these alleged miracles are recorded 
 in the Book of Joshua. The first is to the effect 
 that the walls of Jericho were demolished without 
 the employment of any other human agency than 
 the blowing of seven trumpets made from rams' 
 horns. 22 The second consisted in the suspension 
 of the apparent revolutions of both the sun and the 
 moon, in order that the Israelites might have the 
 opportunity to wreak their vengeance on their ene- 
 mies. ^3 But this latter so-called miracle is a manifest 
 myth, which the author of Joshua, or at least that 
 portion of Joshua, says he copied from the Book of 
 Jasher.24 And, if the former of these so-called mir- 
 acles is not likewise a manifest myth, then we would 
 thank the mediaeval biblicists to instance one which 
 they consider such in the whole range of ancient 
 religious literature. In saying which we do not 
 mean to affirm that all of the miracles recorded in 
 the Bible are not historical. Far otherwise. We 
 merely mean to assert that some of the miracles 
 
92 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 recorded in the Bible are not historical, and to 
 insist that the two specified above are — and that 
 upon the very face of them — abundant proofs of 
 this assertion. 
 
 We have thus far been considering some of those 
 objections to Old Testament theism which are most 
 frequently discussed. But we have discovered that 
 these particular objections are directed rather against 
 modern misconceptions of Old Testament theism than 
 against Old Testament thetem itself. One of the most 
 prolific sources of these misconceptions is the mediae- 
 val theological custom of foisting upon the Old Testa- 
 ment Deity the personal inspiration of the more re- 
 pulsive subject-matter of the ancient Jewish Scrip- 
 tures — such as that of the imprecatory Psalms — 
 which subject-matter does not, however, originally 
 purport to be, in any sense, inspired by this Divin- 
 ity. Another, and an almost equally prolific, source 
 of these misconceptions is the mediaeval theological 
 habit of construing with the most absolute literal- 
 ness the ancient Orientalism and the ancient anthro- 
 pomorphism of the Old Testament methods of ex- 
 pression, — an illustration of which has been given 
 in connection with the Israelitish wars. 
 
 But even if the Old Testament theism, or, in a 
 more comprehensive sense, even if the entire Old 
 Testament religious system, should be laboriously 
 cleared from all these modern misconceptions, it 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 93 
 
 Still would remain to affirm that this religious 
 system would be almost inexpressibly repulsive to 
 the modern religious sense, and that it would in no 
 degree respond to the modern religious development 
 and need. Assuming, for instance, that the highest 
 external and national expression of this religion was 
 to be met with in connection with the ancient Hebrew 
 temple-worship, when that temple-worship was at its 
 best and purest ; yet any truly religious soul could, 
 in these days, almost as soon conceive of himself as 
 resorting to an ordinary slaughter-house, as resorting 
 to such an institution as the Jewish temple, whether 
 to worship God or to hold religious fellowship with 
 his common brotherhood of man. 
 
 Not that we are to be here understood as speak- 
 ing in terms of unqualified reprobation of the ancient 
 religious observances of Israel. Far otherwise. 
 'Those observances, even in their aspects of butchery 
 and barbarism, were pre-eminently adapted to the 
 ethical and the religious condition of the Israelites 
 themselves. And, when contrasted with the reli- 
 gious observances then in vogue among the surround- 
 ing pagan nations, those of Israel must at once take 
 rank among the greatest religious advances ever 
 made in general human history. To illustrate. One 
 of the commonest forms of religious observance pre- 
 vailing among those surrounding pagan nations con- 
 sisted in the worship of Baal joined with that of 
 
94 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 Ashtoreth. But Baal, the sun-god, was regarded by 
 his devotees as being the male principle of life and 
 reproduction in nature, whereas Ashtoreth repre- 
 sented to them their conceptions of the female prin- 
 ciple. And the religious worship of these divinities 
 combined was, moreover, of the most revolting char- 
 acter. It was attended, for example, not merely 
 with the wildest and most frantic dances, not merely 
 with the laceration and the disfigurement of the 
 persons of the worshippers with such instruments 
 as knives, but likewise with the occasional offering 
 of human sacrifices, and with the habitual enactment 
 of the grossest and the most shameless scenes of 
 sensuality, licentiousness, and even systematic pros- 
 titution. For as there were professional religious 
 prostitutes connected with the Egyptian temple con- 
 secrated to Isis, and with the Grecian temple at 
 Corinth dedicated to Aphrodite, in a like manner 
 the daughters of Moab and Baal-peor were profes- 
 sional religious prostitutes connected with the grove 
 and temple worship, or rather revels, of the ancient 
 Canaanitish tribes. 
 
 Crude and coarse, bloody and revolting, therefore, 
 as the religious rites and ceremonies of the ancient 
 Hebrews doubtless were, when regarded from the 
 modern religious standpoint, this single illustration 
 suffices to show that they were, nevertheless, an 
 almost immeasurable advance upon the surrounding 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 95 
 
 heathenish rites and ceremonies, from which they 
 had begun in a most pronounced degree to separate 
 themselves, and to separate themselves in the direc- 
 tion of a far greater social and sexual purity, and a 
 far higher order of ethical and theistical conception. 
 Here, in fact, we have the far-off and germinal begin- 
 nings of that special line of religious development 
 and progress which has eventually resulted in the 
 highest and purest forms of religious thought and 
 service known among ourselves to-day. 
 
 But that which was, in the olden ages of the world, 
 a much better form of religion than had been devel- 
 oped among the completely heathenish Canaanites, 
 and which was also a very good form, if not the very 
 best possible form, of religion for the semi-heathen- 
 ish Israelites, is scarcely a form ' of religion to be 
 either perpetuated or defended at so late a period as 
 this. And while the Protestant and the Catholic 
 churches do not go to the extreme length of keep- 
 ing up the old Israelitish scenes of bloody sacrifice 
 and slaughter in the courts of their respective places 
 of worship, they yet do make the combined effort 
 both to perpetuate and to defend the old Israelitish 
 religion in many of its fundamental aspects, and that 
 even in this nineteenth century. For is it not their 
 common boast that their religion is the religion of 
 the entire Holy Scriptures ? In particular is it not 
 at once the watchword and the war-cry of all the 
 
96 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 Protestant denominations, that their religion is the 
 religion of the Bible, of the whole Bible, and of noth- 
 ing but the Bible ? But the religion of the whole 
 Bible contains in itself the religion of the Old Tes- 
 tament as well as that of the New. Hence it results 
 that in all Protestant and in all Catholic statements 
 of religious belief, Old Testament theism, Old Tes- 
 tament ethics. Old Testament religion, forms one 
 of the most conspicuous features. But unless the 
 world is to reverse its present forward mental and 
 moral movements, and is to go back to the old 
 Israelitish general conditions of semi-barbarism, the 
 Old Testament element must either be very largely 
 expurgated alike from Catholicism and from Protes- 
 tantism, or else both Protestantism and Catholicism 
 must hereafter increasingly cease to furnish a satis- 
 factory form of religious belief and practice through- 
 out the modern world of development and culture. 
 
 But, Catholicism and Protestantism quite aside, 
 in what way and to what degree must the Old Tes- 
 tament element be eliminated from the general reli- 
 gion of the Bible, in order to bring up the general 
 religion of the Bible to the requirements of the mod- 
 ern religious need } To this we would reply, that 
 this work of elimination was specifically attempted 
 upwards of eighteen centuries ago, and attempted 
 by one whose entire competency to undertake the 
 task no Catholic and no Protestant will question. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 97 
 
 We scarcely need to add that we here refer to 
 Jesus. 
 
 When we come specifically to treat of the religion 
 of Jesus, in our projected volume on that subject to 
 which we have already adverted, it will come legiti- 
 mately before us to point out in detail how radically 
 revolutionary the religious undertaking of Jesus was 
 in nearly all of its relations to the old Israelitish 
 system. But even here enough must be said to 
 justify the general observation that Jesus doubtless 
 was a most pronounced revolutionist, when he is 
 regarded from the ancient Jewish standpoint. 
 
 And, to begin with, it is a very significant circum- 
 stance, that the personal religious life of Jesus was 
 led and held almost entirely aloof from the temple 
 at Jerusalem. In fact, according to the synoptical 
 Gospels, after he had been once taken up by his 
 parents to the holy city at the age of twelve, he 
 never repaired thither again bat a single time dur- 
 ing his life, and that time was just before his death. 
 And while there on this single occasion he took no 
 part whatever in the temple rites and ceremonies, 
 aside from partaking of the Paschal feast. He went 
 frequently into the temple, indeed ; but he went there 
 to teach, to cast out the money-changers, and the 
 like, but not to offer sacrifice, and not to perform, 
 with the one exception instanced, any other ritual 
 observance usually performed by the orthodox and 
 pious Jew. 
 
98 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 Separating himself thus ahiiost absolutely from the 
 temple at Jerusalem, Jesus went about from place to 
 place, and chiefly among his fellow countrymen, gath- 
 ering about himself his own disciples and adherents, 
 and seeking to form those disciples and adherents 
 into a distinctive religious body. This distinctive 
 religious body he sometimes called the church, but 
 much more habitually proclaimed to be the king- 
 dom of God, or the kingdom of heaven. And, so far 
 from being a mere reformed reduplication of the 
 ancient Jewish theocracy, this kingdom of God, this 
 kingdom of heaven, which Jesus proclaimed, was 
 something so entirely new in his conceptions of it 
 that he said to his contemporaries, in one breath, 
 that the kingdom of God should be taken from them, 
 and, in the next breath, that the kingdom of God had 
 come unto them. 
 
 But wherein did this new kingdom of God, pro- 
 claimed and founded by Jesus, essentially differ from 
 the ancient Jewish theocracy } It differed from the 
 ancient Jewish theocracy in very many respects, two 
 or three of which we now proceed to notice. And, 
 in the first place, the Old Testament Scriptures 
 constituted the great law-book — in fact, the only 
 supreme law-book — of this theocracy. On the other 
 hand, the personal commands of Jesus were to con- 
 stitute the sole standard of appeal, the only law of 
 the ethical and religious life, in his new divine society. 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 99 
 
 But what were the personal commands of Jesus, if 
 they were not substantial repetitions and re-affirma- 
 tions of the Old Testament Scriptures ? To this we 
 can best reply by first citing these remarks by 
 Refian : "The Puritan reformer is particularly bibli- 
 cal, — starting from the immutable text to criticise 
 the current theology which has been progressing from 
 generation to generation. Jesus laid the axe at the 
 root of the tree far niore energetically. We see him 
 sometimes, it is true, invoke the text against the 
 traditions of the Pharisees. But in general he makes 
 little of exegesis. At the same blow he hews down 
 text and commentaries. He shows clearly to the 
 Pharisees that with their traditions they are seriously 
 innovating upon the religion of Moses, but he by no 
 means claims himself to return to Moses. His aim 
 is forward, not backward. Jesus was more than the 
 reformer of a superannuated religion : he was the 
 creator of the eternal religion of humanity." ^5 
 
 Now, that Renan does not here employ too em- 
 phatic language in depicting the hostile attitude 
 assumed by Jesus toward the Old Testament Scrip- 
 tures, is patent on the surface. It is useless for the 
 mediaeval biblicists to affirm that this hostile attitude 
 was assumed only, against the rabbinical additions to 
 and corruptions of the Old Testament, but not against 
 the Old Testament itself. To illustrate. In the sin- 
 gle observation ; " Render therefore unto Caesar the 
 
100 THE PRESENT RELIGIONS CRISIS. 
 
 things that are Caesar's, and nnto God the things 
 that are God's," Jesus aboHshed for his followers all 
 those precepts and provisions of the Old Testament 
 which had converted the old Jewish theocracy into a 
 political organization as well as a religious. Again : 
 Jesus provided for only two exceedingly simple ritual 
 observances in his new divine society, — that of bap- 
 tism upon entrance into the society, and that of the 
 eucharistic feast to be observed within the society 
 itself. And in this summary manner did Jesus at 
 once and forever abrograte for his disciples almost 
 the last traces of the ceremonial and ritualistic ele- 
 ment in the Old Testament Scriptures. But Jesus 
 went much farther, and struck much more deeply at 
 the very fundamentals of Judaism, than even this. 
 It is indeed true that he publicly declared that he 
 did not come to destroy the law and the prophets, 
 but to fulfil them, — that is, to bring them to perfec- 
 tion. But the manner in which he proceeded to ful- 
 fil them was that of the religious revolutionist, not 
 that of the conservative religious reformer. For to 
 him the entire sum and substance of both the law 
 and the prophets were nothing more than this ; 
 namely, that his disciples should love the Lord their 
 God supremely, and likewise love their neighbors as 
 themselves. And this remark suggests that Jesus 
 was almost perpetually drawing a broad line of dis- 
 tinction between what had been said by them of old 
 
THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 10 1 
 
 time, and what he had to say himself, even upon the 
 ethical side of the Old Testament injunctions and 
 prohibitions, as with reference to what constitutes 
 murder, adultery, and the like. Nor were the very 
 theistical conceptions of Jesus the theistical concep- 
 tions of the Old Testament Scriptures. Take, for 
 example, just here, a salient feature or two of con- 
 trast between the theism of the Decalogue and the 
 theism of the Sermon on the Mount. In the one 
 case we have a mere tribal divinity bringing up a 
 special people out of Egypt ; in the other case we 
 have an universal heavenly Father, who regards all 
 the nations of the world, without distinction or ex- 
 ception, as his beloved children. In the one case 
 we have a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the 
 fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth 
 generation ; in the other case we have a benignant 
 parent who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and 
 the good, and who sendeth his rain on the just and 
 the unjust. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 RELIGION. 
 
 It is well known, that, in his final volume on 
 "The Old Faith and the New," Strauss, as the arch- 
 representative of the modern religious revolutionists, 
 discussed these two leading questions : I. Are we 
 still Christians ? II. Have we still a religion ? 
 
 The first of these questions Strauss answered with- 
 out hesitation in the negative. But the general tenor 
 of his conclusions in response to the second, question 
 is thus epitomized by himself in a single sentence : 
 *' We demand the same piety for our Cosmos that 
 the devout of old demanded for his God." ^ Well, 
 therefore, may M. Renan observe that when a Ger- 
 man boasts of his impiety he must never be taken 
 at his word. Germany is not capable of being 
 irreligious. When it would be atheistic, it is so 
 devotedly and with a sort of unction. ^ 
 
 But is not M. Renan himself one of the most con- 
 spicuous, not to say one of the most notorious, of 
 the modern irreligious leaders ? Such he is indeed 
 thought to be by a great many very pious people. 
 
RELIGION. 103 
 
 Yet, if he be permitted to speak for himself, he 
 becomes one of the most outspoken advocates of 
 religion now before the public. Thus Renan says : 
 " The sad but inevitable quarrel over the history of a 
 religion, between the sectaries of the religion and 
 the friends of impartial science, should not then 
 bring on science the accusation of anti-religious prop- 
 ao'andism." 3 "I am not unmindful of the misunder- 
 standings to which he exposes himself who touches 
 on matters that are objects of credence to a large 
 number of men. But all fine exercise of thought 
 would be forbidden, were we obliged to anticipate 
 every possible perversion that prejudiced minds may 
 fall into when reading what they do not understand. 
 . . . By their leave one is pantheist or atheist with- 
 out knowing it. They create schools on their own 
 authority, and often one learns from them, with some 
 surprise, that he is the disciple of masters he never 
 knew." 4 ''Far from seeking to weaken the religious 
 sentiment, I would gladly contribute something to 
 raise and purify it." 5 "All the symbols which serve 
 I to give shape to the religious sentiment are imper- 
 fect, and their fate is to be one after another rejected. 
 But nothing is more remote from the truth than the 
 dream of those who seek to imagine a perfected 
 humanity without religion." ^ ''Devotion is as natu- 
 ral as egoism to a true born man. The organization 
 of devotion is religion. Let no one hope, therefore, 
 
I04 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 to dispense with religion or religious associations. 
 Each progression of modern society will render this 
 want more imperious." 7 ''Religion is a thing sici 
 generis : the philosophy of the schools will never take 
 its place." ^ *' It may be that all we love, all that in 
 our eyes makes life beautiful, the liberal culture of 
 the mind, science and exalted art, are destined to last 
 but a generation; but religion, — that will never 
 die." 9 
 
 Among other recognized leaders of modern thought, 
 John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and Professor 
 Tyndall have been frequently represented, both in 
 the orthodox pulpit and in the general religious 
 press, as being little better than the sworn enemies 
 of religion. But John Stuart Mill expressly main- 
 tains that the influences of relisfion which will remain 
 after rational criticism has done its utmost against 
 the evidences of religion, are well worth preserving. 
 Besides, he specifically mentions, as among the other 
 inducements for cultivating a religious devotion to 
 the welfare of our fellow-creatures, these two cardi- 
 nal considerations : first, that we shall thereby im- 
 pose a limit to every selfish aim ; and, secondly, that 
 we shall thereby be acting in accordance with the 
 feeling that we may be co-operating with the unseen 
 Being to whom we owe all that is enjoyable in life.'° 
 Moreover, Herbert Spencer says that we must re- 
 member, that, amid its many errors and corruptions. 
 
RELIGION. 105 
 
 religion has always asserted and diffused a verity. 
 The truly religious element of religion has always 
 been good : that which has been proved untenable in 
 doctrine and vicious in practice has been its irre- 
 ligious element, and from this it has been ever 
 undergoing purification.^^ Generally speaking, the 
 religion current in each age and among each people 
 has been as near an approximation to the truth as it 
 was then and there possible for men to receive. 
 Few, if any, are as yet fitted to dispense with such 
 conceptions as are current. The substituted creed 
 can become operative only when it becomes, like the 
 present one, an element in early education, and has 
 the support of a strong social sanction. We must, 
 therefore, recognize the resistance to a change of 
 theological opinions as in a great measure salutary. ^^ 
 Nor is Professor Tyndall, any more than either 
 John Stuart Mill or Herbert Spencer, justly charged 
 with being arrayed in open hostility to religion. 
 On the other hand, he repels this charge in the very 
 strongest language. He says, for example : '' The 
 facts of religious feeling are to me as certain as the 
 facts of physics. But the world, I hold, will have to 
 distinguish between the feeling and its forms, and 
 to vary the latter in accordance with the intellectual 
 condition of the age." '3 *' The world will have re- 
 ligion of some kind." ^4 "You who have escaped 
 from these religions into the high and dry light of 
 
I06 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 intellect may deride them ; but in doing so you 
 deride accidents of form merely, and fail to touch 
 the immovable basis of the religious sentiment in 
 the nature of man. To yield this sentiment reason- 
 able satisfaction is the problem of problems at the 
 present hour." ^5 
 
 But the traditional divines may here interpose that 
 the Apostle Paul speaks of a certain class of persons 
 who are without God in the world, and may demand 
 to know whether Renan, Tyndall, and the like, are 
 not at least without God in their religion. 
 
 That these men are freely accredited with the most 
 downright atheism by their orthodox opponents, no 
 one will of course think to question. But we have 
 already heard Renan, for one, in a general way dis- 
 claim that he is either a pantheist or an atheist. 
 Elsewhere he more explicitly observes : " If your fac- 
 ulties, vibrating in unison, have never rendered that 
 grand, peculiar tone which we call God, I have noth- 
 ing more to say. You are wanting in the essential 
 and characteristic element of our nature. Granting 
 even that for us philosophers another word might be 
 preferable, there would be an immense disadvantage 
 in separating ourselves by our speech from the sim- 
 ple, who adore so well in their way. Tell the simple 
 to live a life of aspiration after truth, beauty, moral 
 goodness, the words will convey no meaning to them. 
 Tell them to love God, not to offend God, they will 
 
RELIGION. 107 
 
 understand you wonderfully. God, Providence, Im- 
 mortality, — good old words, a little clumsy perhaps, 
 which philosophy will interpret in finer and finer 
 senses, but which it will never fill the place of to 
 advantage. Under one form or another, God will 
 always be the sum of our supersensual needs, the 
 form under which we conceive the ideal. In other 
 words, man, placed in the presence of the beautiful, 
 the good, the true, goes out of himself, and, being- 
 caught up by a celestial charm, annihilates his petty 
 personality, and becomes exalted and absorbed. 
 What is that, if it be not adoration } " ^^ 
 
 As John Stuart Mill mentions above, the convic- 
 tion that one is co-operating with the unseen Being 
 as being one of the strongest incentives to leading a 
 truly religious life, there is no occasion to adduce 
 any further evidence that he likewise is a theist, as 
 distinguished from an atheist. 
 
 As for Herbert Spencer, we are free to confess 
 that we do not just now remember to have met with 
 the specific name of God, used in his own behalf, 
 anywhere in his published writings. But Herbert 
 Spencer is a philosopher, and does not seem to agree 
 with Renan about the desirableness of not separat- 
 ing himself in speech from simple-minded people, 
 j Still Herbert Spencer is no more an atheist than is 
 Dean Stanley or Canon Mozley, for example. Only, 
 in all connections where either Stanley or Mozley 
 
ro8 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 would employ the good old-fashioned name of God, 
 Spencer prefers to speak of the Unknown Cause, 
 the Inscrutable Power, or something of the sort. ^7 
 
 Professor Tyndall has been, over and over again, 
 compelled by his clerical opponents to define his 
 positioft on this point. Among other things, he 
 says : *' In connection with the charge of atheism, I 
 would make one remark. Christian men are proved 
 by their writings to have their hours of weakness 
 and of doubt, as well as their hours of strength and 
 of conviction ; and men like myself share, in their 
 own way, these variations of mood and tense. Were 
 the religious moods of many of my assailants the 
 only alternative ones, I do not know how strong the 
 claims of the doctrine of * Material Atheism ' upon 
 my allegiance might be. Probably they would be 
 very strong. But, as it is, I have noticed, during 
 years of self-observation, that it is not in hours of 
 clearness and vigor that this doctrine commends 
 itself to my mind ; that in the presence of stronger 
 and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears 
 as offering no solution of the mystery in which we 
 dwell, and of which we form a part." ^^ "Often, in 
 the spring-time, when looking with delight on the 
 sprouting foliage, 'considering the lilies of the field,' 
 and sharing the general joy of opening life, I have 
 asked myself whether there is no power, being, or 
 thing, in the universe, whose knowledge of that of 
 
RELIGION. 109 
 
 which I am so ignorant is greater than mine. I 
 have said to myself : Can man's knowledge be the 
 greatest knowledge, and man's life the highest life ? 
 My friends, the profession of that atheism with which 
 I am sometimes so lightly charged would, in my 
 case, be an impossible answer to this question, — only 
 slightly preferable to that fierce and distorted theism 
 which still reigns rampant in some minds, as the 
 survival of a more ferocious age." ^9 ''But, quitting 
 the more grotesque forms of the theological, I already 
 see, or think I see, emerging from recent discussions 
 that wonderful plasticity of the Theistic Idea which 
 enables it to maintain, through many changes, its 
 hold upon superior minds." 2° 
 
 Thus, at no slight risk, perhaps, of proving some- 
 what prolix, if not positively tedious, we have en- 
 deavored to demonstrate that, — despite all the 
 counter outcries of the orthodox divines, — in a 
 broad and general way of speaking, we have all 
 along been perfectly correct in characterizing the 
 present as being a religious, as distinguished from 
 an irreligious, crisis. Not that we would be under- 
 stood as going so far as to affirm that there are abso- 
 lutely no modern thinkers who have succeeded both 
 in securing a certain limited degree of public recog- 
 nition, and likewise broken with religion in every 
 sense and form. We would merely claim to have 
 shown, by the instances adduced above, that all, or 
 
no THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 nearly all, of our really great modern thinkers, who 
 may be fairly said to give at once an impulse and a 
 direction to the general public thought, and who may 
 be fairly said also to represent the extremest phases 
 of what is popularly known as modern unbelief, — 
 that these latter thinkers have, almost without dis- 
 tinction or exception, failed to take the final step of 
 parting with all religious faith. They do not, indeed, 
 all of them, still believe in a religion in any tra- 
 ditional sense or form ; and yet, in some sense and 
 in some form, they do believe in a religion still. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF JESUS. 
 
 According to the conclusion arrived at in the 
 preceding chapter, the modern religious world, as 
 distinguished from the Protestant and Catholic re- 
 ligious world, may now be said to be divided into 
 two leading classes, — those who still believe in a 
 religion in some traditional sense and form, and 
 those who still believe in a religion, but in no tra- 
 ditional sense and form. 
 
 The object which we next propose to ourselves is 
 to discover the ultimate line of division which 
 separates these classes the one from the other. 
 
 That this ultimate line of division cannot be any 
 dogmatic system of theology, whether Protestant or 
 Catholic, it would be almost absurd to do any thing 
 more than merely to suggest, at the present stage of 
 this discussion. That it can no more be the general 
 religion of the Bible, is equally apparent to every 
 thoughtful reader of the foregoing pages. What, 
 then, is it.'* To this we answer that it is the religion 
 of Jesus. For, as Professor Tischendorf remarks, 
 
112 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 the life of Jesus has become, in Christian science, 
 the great question of the day.^ Or, as Strauss him- 
 self expresses it, it may surprise us that the debate 
 as to the truth of Christianity has at last narrowed 
 itself into one as to the personality of its founder ; 
 that the decisive battle of Christian theology should 
 take place on the field of Christ's life.^ Accordingly, 
 Professor Christlieb demands to know : What think 
 ye of Christ ? Whose Son is he ? And then pro- 
 ceeds to say that this is not a question, but the 
 question, which, of all other questions, most deeply 
 agitates the world to-day. 3 
 
 But we must first of all protest against making the 
 mere question of the personality of Jesus the one 
 crucial, all-decisive question of modern religious 
 thought. For by the personality of Jesus all parties 
 to the debate mean specifically and professedly the 
 proper divinity of Jesus. And the reason why we 
 object to making the decision of this one subject 
 substantially the decision of all other subjects now 
 at issue in the sreneral domain of relisfious investiira- 
 tion, will be apparent at a glance after we have 
 attended to the following remarks by Strauss. He 
 says : " It is indeed of importance to assure ourselves 
 that Moses and Mohammed were no impostors ; but 
 in other respects the religions established by them 
 must be judged according to their own deserts, irre- 
 spectively of the greater or less accuracy of our ac- 
 
THE RELIGION OF JESUS. II3 
 
 quaintance with their founders' Hves. The reason is 
 obvious. They are only the founders, not at the 
 same time the objects, of the rehgion they instituted. 
 While withdrawing the veil from the new revelation, 
 they themselves modestly stand aside. They are 
 indeed objects of reverence, but not of adoration. 
 This is notoriously otherwise with Christianity. Here 
 the founder is at the same the most prominent object 
 of worship, and the system based upon him loses its 
 support as soon as he is shown to be lacking in the 
 qualities appropriate to an object of religious wor- 
 ship. This, in fact, has long ago been apparent ; for 
 an object of religious adoration must be a divinity, 
 and thinking men have long since ceased to regard 
 the founder of Christianity as such. But it is said 
 now that he himself never aspired to this, that his 
 deification has only been a later importation into the 
 church, and that, if we seriously look upon him as a 
 man, we shall occupy the standpoint which was also 
 his own. But, even admitting this to be the case, 
 nevertheless the whole regulation of our churches, 
 Protestant as well as Catholic, is accommodated to 
 the former hypothesis ; this Christian cultus, this 
 garment cut out to fit an incarnate God, looks slov- 
 enly and shapeless when but a mere man is invested 
 with its ample folds." 4 
 
 In other words, if the standpoint be assumed, 
 that, as Renan observes, Jesus never for a moment 
 
114 'T^E PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 enounces the sacrilegious idea that he is God, 5 then 
 both Protestantism and Catholicism do indeed be- 
 come shaken at their very foundations. But in the 
 mean while what has happened to the religion of 
 Jesus ? Nothing more serious than that Jesus has 
 been simply restored to that position of a mere man 
 in his own religious system, which no one more ear- 
 nestly than Strauss contends is precisely the position 
 that he personally conceived himself alone to occupy. 
 This is not, however, to pronounce any judgment 
 for the present, either the one way or the other, on 
 the ofeneral merits of the modern debate concernins: 
 
 CD O 
 
 Jesus' personality. It is merely to point out the only 
 legitimate results of denying or even disproving his 
 divinity on the ground that he personally professed 
 to be nothing but a man. 
 
 But some one may here demand to know more 
 specifically what is meant in these days when per- 
 sons speak of the religion of Jesus. 
 
 In the chapter on the Religion of the Bible we 
 discovered, for one thing, that the religion of Jesus, 
 differs in almost every essential respect from the 
 religion of the Old Testament, on the one hand ; and 
 the question now arises, how it stands related to the 
 general religion of the New Testament, on the other. 
 
 It has already been seen that the religion of Jesus, 
 as it is set forth in the fourth Gospel, is maintained 
 by a very large number of modern biblicists to be so 
 
THE RELIGION OF JESUS. II5 
 
 incompatible with that religion, as it is set forth in 
 the other three Gospels, that, if the synoptical repre- 
 sentation thereof be accepted as historical, then the 
 Johannean representation must be rejected as on the 
 whole not historical. We now advance to say that 
 the Rev. Mr. Bernard, in his capacity of Bampton 
 Lecturer, feels himself under obligation to combat 
 the strong disposition which is evinced by many of 
 the most eminent of modern writers and preachers 
 to make a broad distinction between the religious 
 teaching of Jesus in the Gospels, and the religious 
 teaching of the apostles, as such teaching finds ex- 
 pression in the Book of the Acts, in the Epistles, 
 and in the Book of Revelation. ^ Not that there is 
 any thing particularly modern in this. On the con- 
 trary, Dr. Ferdinand Christian Baur cites Neander 
 as his authority for affirming that even in the primi- 
 tive days of the Church there existed a party of 
 Christ, just as there existed another party of Paul, 
 and still another party of Apollos, And Baur then 
 goes on to reason that this party of Christ must have 
 adhered to the teaching of Jesus alone, to the entire 
 rejection of the teaching of the apostles.7 And, 
 coming down to later times, Adam Storey Farrar 
 says that Bolingbroke, following the example of 
 Chubb, insisted that there exists a broad distinction 
 between the gospel of Jesus and the gospel of Paul.^ 
 And, according to Dean Mansel, Locke likewise 
 
Il6 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS, 
 
 maintained that the teaching of the Epistles is sepa- 
 rated from that of the Gospels, and that it is not to 
 the Epistles but to the Gospels that we must go if 
 we would learn the fundamentals of the faith, 9 — by 
 which he means, of course, the fundamentals of the 
 religion of Jesus. And, still later yet, we find John 
 Stuart Mill in a general way placing the precepts of 
 Jesus far above the Paulism which is the foundation 
 of ordinary Christianity, and specifically making the 
 Apostle Paul responsible for atonement and redemp- 
 tion, original sin and vicarious punishment, but en- 
 tirely exonerating Jesus from ever having taught any 
 such repellent doctrines. ^° 
 
 Now, whether the religion of Jesus, particularly as 
 it is developed in the synoptical Gospels, is or is 
 not thus at a fundamental variance with the religious 
 system developed in the remaining portions of the 
 New Testament, is a subject which we shall hereafter 
 discuss in our formal volume on the Religion of 
 Jesus. Just here, however, it suffices to say that to 
 raise and discuss the question whether it is, or is not, 
 thus at variance, is by no means to inaugurate an 
 attack on the religion of Jesus. It is merely to make 
 the effort to discover what the religion of Jesus is, on 
 the one hand, as distinguished from what the religion 
 of the remaining portions of the New Testament is, 
 on the other. But manifestly to make the effort to dis- 
 cover what the religion of Jesus actually is, amounts 
 
THE RELIGION OE JESUS. I I / 
 
 to a vastly different thing, both in its animus and 
 intention, from making a formal assault on that reli- 
 gion after it is discovered. And, to bring out the 
 one practical point which it is now our sole object to 
 impress upon the reader, we will argumentatively 
 assume for the time being, that, as the result of 
 investigation, it has been satisfactorily established, 
 first, that the data of the religion of Jesus are to be 
 found almost exclusively in the synoptical Gospels ; 
 and, secondly, that the data furnished by the fourth 
 Gospel, the Book of the Acts, the several New Tes- 
 tament Epistles, and the Book of Revelation, would 
 give us a religious system of quite another realm and 
 order, when compared with that of Jesus. 
 
 Assuming this standpoint, it is, first of all, to be 
 distinctly recognized that the most progressive reli- 
 gious thinkers of the present epoch do not profess to 
 have broken with the religion of Jesus altogether. 
 Take one or two examples. And, to begin with, 
 John Stuart Mill remarks: ''Whatever else maybe 
 taken away from us by rational criticism, Christ is 
 still left, — an unique figure, not more unlike all his 
 precursors than all his followers, even those who had 
 the direct benefit of his personal teaching. It is of 
 no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gos- 
 pels, is not historical, and that we know not how 
 much of what is admirable has been superadded by 
 the tradition of his followers. The tradition of fol- 
 
Il8 THE PRESENT RELIG IOCS CRISIS. 
 
 lowers suffices to insert any number of marvels, and 
 may have inserted all the miracles which he is reput- 
 ed to have wrought. But who among his disciples, 
 or among their proselytes, was capable of invent- 
 ing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagin- 
 ing the life and character revealed in the Gospels ? 
 Certainly not the fishermen of Galilee ; as certainly 
 not St. Paul, whose character and idiosyncrasies 
 were of a totally different sort. . . . What could be 
 added and interpolated by a disciple, we may see in 
 the mystical parts of the Gospel of St. John. . . . 
 The East was full of men who could have stolen any 
 quantity of this poor stuff, as the multitudinous 
 Oriental sects of Gnostics afterwards did. But about 
 the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of 
 personal originality, combined with a profundity of 
 insight, which must place the Prophet of Naza- 
 reth, even in the estimation of those who have no 
 belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the 
 men of sublime genius of whom our species can 
 boast. When this pre-eminent genius is combined 
 with the qualities of probably the greatest moral 
 reformer and martyr to that mission who ever ex- 
 isted upon earth, religion cannot be said to have 
 made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the 
 ideal representative and guide of humanity ; nor 
 even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, 
 to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from 
 
THE RELIGION OF JESUS. II9 
 
 the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so 
 to live that Christ would approve our life." " 
 
 In like manner Renan says : '* Having reached a 
 higher plane than man ever reached before, Jesus 
 founded the eternal religion of humanity." '^ << It 
 will never be possible to surpass him in the matter 
 of religion, whatever progress may be made in other 
 branches of intellectual culture. Religious faith has 
 doubtless perfected itself since his time by becoming 
 disengaged from many a superstit;ion, and from belief 
 in the supernatural. But this progress bears no com- 
 parison with the gigantic stride that Jesus caused 
 humanity to take in the career of its religious 
 development." ^3 "The religion of Jesus is in some 
 respects the final religion. Whatever may be the 
 transformation of dogma, Jesus will remain in reli- 
 gion the creator of its pure sentiment. The Sermon 
 on the Mount will never be surpassed. No revolu- 
 tion will lead us not to join in religion the grand 
 intellectual and moral line at the head of which 
 beams the name of Jesus. In this sense we are still 
 Christians, even though we separate upon almost all 
 points from the Christian tradition which has pre- 
 ceded us." ^4 
 
 Having thus shown that the most radical religious 
 revolutionists of the day do not propose to come to 
 a total rupture with the religion of Jesus, it still 
 remains to say that they nevertheless do propose 
 
I20 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 to come to a rupture with that religion in more 
 respects than one. Thus, on the one hand, Strauss 
 is prepared to admit that every point is fully devel- 
 oped in the religion of Jesus which has reference to 
 love towards God and man, and also to purity of 
 heart and of life. At the same time Strauss insists 
 that it is a perfectly fruitless undertaking to attempt 
 to decide, upon the precepts and after the example 
 of Jesus, what the action of a man ought to be as a 
 citizen, and what his conduct should be in connec- 
 tion with the enrichment and embellishment of exist- 
 ence by trade and art. On these latter points, 
 Strauss contends that something is intrinsically 
 wanting in the original religious scheme of Jesus, 
 which needs to be supplied from the circumstances 
 of other times, and other states, and other systems of 
 cultivation. 15 
 
 It is, however, on the side of its supernaturalism 
 that the most advanced wing of modern religious 
 revolutionists has come to the most absolute breach 
 with the religion of Jesus. It may, indeed, be 
 denied by them that Jesus personally professed to 
 be either a God, or in any other sense a superhuman 
 being. It may also be denied by them that Jesus 
 personally professed to perform any such wonderful 
 works, or miracles, as are accredited to him even in 
 the synoptical Gospels. But it cannot be denied 
 by them that the Jesus of the synoptical Gospels 
 
THE RELIGION OF JESUS. 121 
 
 was a most pronounced believer in the supernatural. 
 This Jesus believed in miracles. This Jesus believed 
 in the efficacy of prayer. This Jesus believed in 
 special providences. This Jesus believed in special 
 and direct divine revelations. And this belief of 
 Jesus in the supernatural, the miraculous, is inte- 
 gral, inwrought, vital to his religious system. But 
 here the religious revolutionists more immediately 
 in question propose to put the religion of Jesus into 
 precisely the same category with all other tradi- 
 tional forms of religious faith which postulate the 
 supernatural, and part company with it, not partially, 
 but completely. In the ultimate analysis, the reli- 
 gion of Jesus is in their estimation the highest, and 
 incomparably the highest, form of religion which we 
 have inherited from the past, and the one which of 
 all others is in many respects destined, they grant, 
 to have the grandest career in the future. It is 
 moreover, of all other inherited forms of religion, 
 the one for which they have the profoundest respect, 
 and which they can, at least on its ethical side, in the 
 largest measure adopt. Still it is a form of religion 
 which requires of them either to break with it fun- 
 damentally, or else to place their credence in the 
 supernatural. But, as for the supernatural, that is 
 to them unspeakably offensive. And it is in this 
 way, therefore, that the religion of Jesus becomes 
 what we announced it to be at the opening of the 
 
122 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 present chapter ; namely, the ultimate line of divis- 
 ion between those among us who having ceased, 
 indeed, to be either Protestants or Catholics, still 
 believe in a religion in some traditional sense and 
 form, or still believe in a religion, but in no tradi- 
 tional sense or form. We of the one class still 
 believe in the religion of Jesus, supernaturalism and 
 all. We of the other class relegate the supernatural- 
 ism of the religion of Jesus to the same regions with 
 all other superstitions ; that is, what are to us all 
 other superstitions. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 
 
 It is indeed true, that, at least in its merely physi- 
 cal forms, ecclesiastical persecution and punishment 
 do not confront the heretic in this nineteenth cen- 
 tury. He can both privately hold and publicly 
 proclaim religious opinions which attack the very 
 foundations at once of Catholicism and of Protes- 
 tantism without any apprehension of either the theo- 
 logical Star Chamber, the rack, or the stake. And 
 yet even in these days ecclesiastical persecution and 
 punishment are by no means either non-existent, or 
 of such a nature as not to make the general observa- 
 tion of Canon Mozley still perfectly true, that a man 
 who in religious matters throws off the chains of 
 authority and association must be a man of extraor- 
 dinary independence of mind, and strength of mind. 
 When, in 1835, Strauss published the initial volume 
 of his first " Life of Jesus," he was occupying the 
 position of a theological instructor at Tubingen, 
 with the most brilliant prospects before him, and 
 beloved and honored of all. But even before the 
 
 123 
 
124 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 appearance of the second volume he was summarily 
 ejected from this position. ^ As the unparalleled com- 
 motion created by his work continued to increase, 
 his own father turned away from him in anger ; his 
 early teachers in divinity hastened to disavow all 
 complicity with his opinions ; and **as for the friends 
 and companions of my studies," says Strauss him- 
 self, " these I had the mortification of seeing exposed 
 to so much suspicion and annoyance for their merely 
 rumored intimacy with me, so far as they refused 
 to sacrifice it, as some did, to circumstances, that 
 it became a point of conscientious duty not to 
 expose them to still greater odium by any public 
 memorial of our friendship." ^ In fact, had it not 
 been for the steadfast sympathy and practical pecu- 
 niary assistance rendered to Strauss by his affec- 
 tionate brother William, his life for many a year 
 after the publication of ''Das Lebcn Jesii'' would 
 have been one of more or less complete social isola- 
 tion, and he might have also been either compelled 
 to forego all future religious research, or else have 
 been reduced to such straits to secure his livelihood 
 as well-nigh to take up the lamentation : The foxes 
 have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but 
 the modern religious outcast has scarcely where to 
 lay his head. 
 
 Take another illustration. Says a recent biog- 
 rapher, M. Henri Harrisse : *' The faculty of the 
 
RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 1 25 
 
 Theological Seminary of Saint Sulpice were once 
 engaged in preparing their annual examinations, 
 when a young candidate for the deaconship, who 
 had always been noted for his great modesty and 
 studious habits, asked leave to submit a number of 
 questions which perplexed his mind, and seemed to 
 depress his religious spirit. Unless they were solved 
 to his satisfaction he could not hope to enter into 
 holy orders. His earnestness astonished and alarmed 
 the entire faculty. They refused at once to examine 
 questions which to them appeared novel or subver- 
 sive ; and justly fearing that a neophyte who, on the 
 threshold of the priesthood, was besieged with such 
 misgivings, might become a cause of strife in the 
 Church, they withheld their protection, and bade 
 him depart from the consecrated place. This inquisi- 
 tive and conscientious student was Joseph Ernest 
 Renan." 3 
 
 After bravely and patiently enduring an ordeal of 
 poverty and privations almost without precedent in 
 the history of a Parisian student, even in the Latin 
 Quarter, M. Renan eventually succeeded in passing, 
 with the highest honors, his examination for Uni- 
 versity Professor of Philosophy. In due process of 
 time his scholarly attainments and reputation became 
 so pre-eminent that the professors of the College of 
 France, together with the members of the French 
 Institute, proposed to him that he should accept the 
 
126 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 professorship of the Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Syriac 
 languages and literature ; and he was thereupon 
 appointed to this position by the emperor.4 The 
 clerical party looked upon the elevation of this heret- 
 ical thinker to the oldest chair of the first institu- 
 tion of the land with mingled anger and alarm. 
 Forming themselves into a cabal, they endeavored, 
 by their clamorous interruptions, to prevent his 
 being so much as even heard on the day of his 
 inauguration ; and on the day following, the official 
 columns of "The Moniteur " contained a govern- 
 mental decree suspending his course of lectures 
 indefinitely. 
 
 The clerical party had thus defiantly thrown down 
 the gauntlet at the feet of Renan ; and just one year 
 from the date of the memorable scene enacted in the 
 College of France his answer appeared, in the form 
 of the ''Vie de yesus'' 5 And, immediately upon the 
 publication of this work, he became denounced from 
 one end of Christendom to the other ; and that by 
 Protestants as well as Catholics. In all orthodox 
 circles he had become, in fact, at once as famous, 
 and as infamous, as Dr. David Friedrich Strauss. 
 
 Nor is this repressive theological method of dealing 
 with the modern heretic at all peculiar either to Ger- 
 many or France. No sooner, for instance, had the 
 volume which was entitled '* Essays and Reviews " 
 appeared in England, than petitions, numerously 
 
RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 12/ 
 
 signed, began to be presented to the bishops to 
 take judicial action against its authors. One of 
 these petitions is computed to have contained the 
 signatures of not less than nine thousand clergy- 
 men of the Established Church. Judicial proceed- 
 ings were commenced ; and Dr. Williams and Mr. 
 Wilson were cited before the Court of Arches, the 
 chief ecclesiastical tribunal of the country. This 
 court decided that the parties arraigned had departed 
 from the teachings of the Thirty-nine Articles on the 
 inspiration of Holy Scripture, on the atonement, and 
 on justification. The culprits were accordingly sen- 
 tenced to undergo suspension from the performance 
 of their clerical functions for a year, with the further 
 penalty of costs, and the deprivation of their salaries. 
 Fortunately, however, their case was subsequently 
 brought before the Privy Council, where the decision 
 of the Court of Arches against them was reversed.^ 
 
 While the commotion caused by this ecclesiastical 
 trial was still running at the highest, Dr. John William 
 Colenso, Bishop of Natal, in South-eastern Africa, 
 began to issue his work on the Pentateuch and the 
 Book of Joshua. This at once diverted the attention 
 of the general Anglican theological police force from 
 all further formal pursuit of the Essayists and 
 Reviewers, and they began forthwith to hunt down 
 the bishop.7 
 
 Crossing over to Scotland, every one knows how 
 
128 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS, 
 
 the declarations of certain modern scholarly views 
 about the Bible, by Professor W. Robertson Smith, 
 recently aroused the mediaeval biblicists to place him 
 on trial for heresy, and resulted in his dismissal from 
 the professorship of Hebrew in the Free College of 
 Aberdeen. 
 
 The simple truth is, that not a single man of 
 any noted scholarship or genius connected with the 
 modern religious movement has ventured to speak 
 his mind in opposition tc the traditional religious 
 conceptions in any so-called Christian country, with- 
 out being forthwith made to feel the full force either 
 of ecclesiastical discipline or of ecclesiastical punish- 
 ment, in so far as that discipline or that punishment 
 could be brought to bear upon him. If he happened 
 to be a clergyman, what he had to undergo is suf- 
 ficiently indicated above, in what is said of Professor 
 W. Robertson Smith, Colenso, and Strauss. If he 
 happened to be a layman — well, Renan is a layman. 
 Besides, Professor Huxley suspects that there are one 
 or two other laymen still living, who, if the twenty- 
 first century studies their history, will be found to 
 have been recognized by the Christianity of the 
 middle of the nineteenth century only as objects 
 of vilification. s If laymen can be made to experi- 
 ence the effects of incurring the orthodox theo- 
 logical odium in no other way, they can at least be 
 stigmatized as anti-religious propagandists, material 
 atheists, or something of the sort. 
 
RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 1 29 
 
 But, when we speak thus of the orthodox theo- 
 logical odium, it becomes incumbent upon us to do 
 justice to a certain very considerable class among 
 the Protestant divines. " It is my privilege," says 
 Professor Tyndall, "to enjoy the friendship of a 
 select number of religious men, with whom I con- 
 verse frankly upon theological subjects, expressing 
 without disguise the notions and opinions I enter- 
 tain regarding their tenets, and hearing, in return, 
 these notions and opinions subjected to criticism. I 
 have, thus far, found them liberal and loving men, — 
 patient in hearing, tolerant in reply, — who know 
 how to reconcile the duties of courtesy with the 
 earnestness of debate." 9 
 
 Nor is the experience of Professor Tyndall here, 
 as a representative modern heretic, by any means 
 exceptional. The orthodox divines do include among 
 themselves this select number of men, who both in 
 private intercourse and in all their public declara- 
 tions, whether from the pulpit or through the press, 
 treat the most revolutionary opponents of their re- 
 ligious views as if the latter at least belonged to 
 their common human brotherhood. Nor is this the 
 case when they have to deal with the laity alone. 
 Even when it becomes their official duty to partici- 
 pate in the formal ecclesiastical proceedings which 
 may be instituted against any among the clergy who 
 may stand charged with a more or less fundamental 
 
130 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 departure from the teachings of the doctrinal stand- 
 ards of their respective churches, the present writer, 
 for one, has abundant reason to testify that they do 
 so in a liberal, loving, patient, tolerant spirit, and 
 with the manifest reluctance of persons who have a 
 painful task upon their ecclesiastical consciences to 
 discharsie, rather than with the manifest relish of that 
 other, and far different, class among the orthodox 
 divines who pass through the entire procedure as if 
 it were at once their very meat and drink to aid in 
 stamping out yet one more enemy of the faith once 
 delivered to the saints. 
 
 And yet even this latter class among the orthodox 
 divines doubtless act with perfect conscientiousness. 
 In attempting to put down at once the heretic and 
 his heresy, they verily believe that they are doing 
 God service. Indeed, the very sternness and relent- 
 les^ness of both their measures and their methods 
 arise from this conviction. Nor can there be the 
 slightest question, that, when they have to deal with 
 any thing like a flagrant instance of heresy within 
 the ministry itself, all the technical aspects of the 
 case are plainly on their side. The orthodox clergy- 
 man has entered into a formal compact that he will 
 promulgate and defend certain specified doctrines, 
 and that he will neither promulgate nor defend any 
 contravening doctrines. So long as he adheres to 
 the perfectly well-understood conditions of this com- 
 
RELIGIOUS REPRESSION, I3I 
 
 pact, he is of course entitled to all the privileges, 
 emoluments, and remunerations stipulated in the 
 specific arrangements which he may have entered 
 into with any given congregation, denominational 
 institution, or the like. The moment he violates 
 those conditions, at least in any fundamental man- 
 ner, he is plainly and even justly, from a merely 
 ecclesiastical point of view, at the mercy of his 
 ministerial associates or superiors. But all this does 
 not alter the fact, that every orthodox or evangelical 
 clergyman is liable to be repressed for the expres- 
 sion of non-evangelical religious opinions, and that, 
 if he comes to indulge any such opinions in private, 
 the only way in which he can hope to escape from 
 being repressed, so far as it lies in the power of his 
 particular branch of the church to repress him, is 
 simply to keep both his tongue still and his pen still. 
 But, if the orthodox divines have thus at least the 
 manifest technical right to put down heresy within 
 the ministry itself, it may still be enquired by what 
 right they can proceed to make their theological 
 onsets upon the heretical element among the laity. 
 The answer to this inquiry would of course be evi- 
 dent enough when the offending layman stood in a 
 formal covenanted relation with any given orthodox 
 organization or society. Church-members, as well 
 as church-ministers, become the legitimate subjects 
 of what is characterized as ecclesiastical discipline^ 
 
132 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 in case they come to an open rupture with the theo- 
 logical standards of the churches to which they 
 belong. 
 
 Still the orthodox divines do not by any means 
 confine their theological jurisdiction to either the min- 
 isters or the members of their respective churches. 
 Renan, for example, does not need to be a member 
 of the Church of Rome, or Tyndall or Darwin or 
 Huxley to be a member of the Church of England, 
 in order that the orthodox divines should regard it 
 as their peculiar prerogative and privilege to do 
 their utmost to keep him out of any position of 
 prominence and power, corresponding to that of the 
 College of France for instance, and to do what they 
 can likewise to destroy his general public influence 
 by stigmatizing him as an atheist and anathematiz- 
 ing him as an infidel and worse than an infidel. But 
 even in this aspect of the case the conduct of the 
 orthodox divines is not without its explanations, and 
 certainly not without its provocations. For when 
 laymen, who are also non-churchmen, as Renan and 
 Tyndall, declare an open warfare upon the very reli- 
 gious ideas and principles to propagate and defend 
 which the great Catholic and Protestant churches 
 have their organized existence, they at once place 
 both the Catholic and the Protestant divines on the 
 defensive. And it is not for those who declare the 
 war to wonder, much less to complain, if they 
 receive as well as give some ugly sword-thrusts. 
 
RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 133 
 
 But it may be replied to this, that while the ortho- 
 dox divines are doubtless perfectly justifiable in 
 defending their various dogmas as best they may 
 be able to do, when their dogmas are assaulted, they 
 are clearly bound to do so by the employment of 
 legitimate methods. The implication here is, that 
 ecclesiastical repression is not to be numbered 
 among such legitimate methods. Still, say what 
 we will upon this point, the orthodox divines will 
 continue to insist that ecclesiastical discipline is not 
 merely a legitimate method of dealing with heretics, 
 both among the orthodox ministry and among the 
 orthodox church-membership, but that it is precisely 
 the method of being dealt with to which both the 
 orthodox ministry and the orthodox church-mem- 
 bership have explicitly agreed that they will submit 
 themselves upon becoming heretical. And yet even 
 the orthodox divines ought by this time to be get- 
 ting their eyes tolerably well opened to the fact that 
 even if, from the strictly ecclesiastical point of view, 
 ecclesiastical repression is to be legitimately em- 
 ployed in putting down heretics and heresy within 
 the church itself, from a logical ^oint of view, eccle- 
 siastical repression, considered merely as a means 
 to an end, can have no relevancy whatever when it 
 comes to be applied to the heretics and the heresies 
 peculiar to the present religious epoch. For there 
 is- scarcely a single great religious or biblical ques- 
 
134 ' ^^^ PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 tion now up for discussion and decision which is 
 not a more or less strictly intellectual one. Take, 
 for example, the question of the authenticity of the 
 fourth Gospel, or the question of the probable date, 
 authorship, and general literary origin of the various 
 books composing the Protestant canonical Scriptures, 
 or the question of biblical inspiration, or the ques- 
 tion of future punishment, or the question of the 
 relation of the religion of Jesus to the religion of 
 the Old Testament, on the one hand, and the gen- 
 eral religion of the New Testament, on the other, 
 or the question of Darwinism, or the question of 
 evolutionism. What possible bearing can trials for 
 heresy, ejections from professorships, depositions 
 from the ministry, excommunications from the 
 churches, anathemas and vilifications, have upon the 
 intelligent and satisfactory solution of these and 
 kindred problems } And from this time onward 
 the orthodox divines will come increasingly to dis- 
 cover that the less they presume to exercise mere 
 ecclesiastical force simply to stifle out, whether on 
 the part of the ministry or on the part of the laity, 
 a full, dispassionate, scholarly, and scientific con- 
 sideration of all these subjects, and manifold more 
 which might readily be instanced, the better they 
 will in the end subserve the very cause of orthodoxy. 
 For, in the present condition of the general public 
 temper, there is no disposition to permit the down- 
 
RELIGIOUS REPRESSION. 1 35 
 
 right suppression of intelligent objections to the 
 traditional theology, whether Protestant or Catholic, 
 or to the traditional theological views, whether of the 
 Bible or religion, which objections demand investi- 
 gation, research, reasoning, calm, judicial judgment. 
 And any cause which condescends to undertake to 
 defend itself against a purely intellectual assault vi 
 et ai'mis, will, for that very reason, more or less 
 alienate from itself the general public sympathy, 
 and tend to destroy confidence in itself in every 
 thoughtful and cultured community. For it is sim- 
 ply inevitable that thoughtful and cultured people 
 should everywhere come more and more distinctly 
 to perceive that any cause which is even apparently 
 driven to silence, rather than to answer its oppo- 
 nents, is a cause which is at least very unpleasantly 
 open to the suspicion that it is not intellectually 
 capable of responding to its assailants. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 
 
 As has already been observed, the orthodox minis- 
 try, as a class, have entered into a formal ecclesiasti- 
 cal compact that they will promulgate and defend 
 certain specified views of religion, and that they 
 will neither promulgate nor defend any contravening 
 ones. But this is merely another form of stating 
 the fact that the orthodox ministry, as a class, have, 
 for certain considerations of one description or 
 another, formally relinquished their rights to the 
 exercise of any thing but a perfectly one-sided reli- 
 gious liberty. They are, indeed, free enough so 
 long as they promulgate and defend their various 
 denominational dogmas. But the moment they come 
 to a radical rupture with any of those dogmas in 
 their private convictions, and begin to think of 
 proclaiming those convictions, they are at once 
 confronted with the stipulated conditions of their 
 ecclesiastical contract. If they venture openly to 
 declare their denominational heresies, they must 
 stand prepared to do so at every professional cost 
 and every ecclesiastical peril. 
 136 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 37 
 
 Now, at least in the milder senses of the term, 
 there are a great many heretics in the ranks of the 
 evangelical ministry to-day, who are anxious to know 
 in how far, despite the strict provisions of their eccle- 
 siastical compact, they are yet justified in employing 
 their respective pulpits in making known, both to 
 their parishioners and to the general public, in what 
 particulars they can no longer either promulgate or 
 defend the articles of religious belief which are set 
 forth dogmatically in their several denominational 
 standards. Well, the only way in which they can 
 practically solve this problem is simply to try the 
 experiment. Some orthodox churches will accord to 
 their individual ministers great liberty in this direc- 
 tion, whereas other orthodox churches will accord to 
 them either none or next to none. * 
 
 But the heretics among the modern evangelical 
 ministry should never forget that how much or how 
 little of their heresies shall or shall not be heard 
 from their respective pulpits, is a matter which pri- 
 marily belongs, as between themselves and their 
 congregations, not with themselves, but with their 
 congregations, to decide. Orthodox congregations 
 have their religious rights as well as the class of 
 heretics in question. And among the religious 
 rights of orthodox congregations none can be more 
 manifest than this, — that they first of all are to be 
 the judges whether they will or will not permit a 
 
138 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 clergyman, whom they expressly salary and support 
 to promulgate and defend their denominational dog- 
 mas, to turn directly about, and covertly undermine, 
 if he does not openly assail, those dogmas. If any 
 among these heretics desire a larger religious liberty 
 than they can find any orthodox church prepared 
 voluntarily to accord them, then let them either go 
 and enjoy that liberty in some of the heterodox 
 churches, or else abandon the ministry. 
 
 But it is high time that both the orthodox churches 
 as a body, and the general religious public, should 
 thoughtfully consider the question in how far it is a 
 desirable or an undesirable thing that there should 
 exist great ecclesiastical organizations in which reli- 
 gious thought, or at least in which religious expres- 
 sion, is free only within the limits of their denomina- 
 tional creeds and catechisms. And, in the first place, 
 at such a transitional religious period as the present, 
 this arrangement operates with a most demoralizing 
 effect upon a' very considerable element within the 
 orthodox ministry itself. This element is the hereti- 
 cal one. And that this element among the orthodox 
 clergy is already quite a large one, and that its pro- 
 portions are constantly on the increase, no one at all 
 familiar with the facts of the case will for a moment 
 think to dispute. It is not an element, indeed, which 
 is inclined to betray its confidences to the heresy- 
 hunters of the day, whether clerical or laical. But 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 39 
 
 it will take any one who is himself a well-known 
 heretic many a year to get over his surprises at the 
 heretical confidences which gradually become reposed 
 in him on the part of those who, as the expression 
 goes, are still in good and regular standing in the 
 orthodox ministry. Now it will be the pastor of 
 some prominent pulpit, now it will be the editor of 
 some leading evangelical organ of expression, now it 
 will be some distinguished doctor of divinity who is 
 either a college professor or even a theological pro- 
 fessor, by whom the confidence is reposed. Indeed, 
 we venture the suspicion, based upon our own per- 
 ; sonal experience, that there is not a pronounced and 
 I outspoken heretic now before the public who could 
 I not make it exceedingly troublesome for a great 
 ^ many hitherto unsuspected heretics in the orthodox 
 ; ministry, if he could only be base enough to bruit 
 j abroad the secrets which have been imparted to him. 
 Now, what ethical effect have the various Protes- 
 tant methods of confining at least all religious ex- 
 pression within certain dogmatical limitations upon 
 this special class of heretics } It forces them to a 
 systematic and habitual concealment of their actual 
 religious opinions. It frequently drives them to the 
 public advocacy of religious opinions which they no 
 longer either personally believe, or consider that any 
 one else can give a valid reason for believing. It is 
 very true that the way of escape from this slow but 
 
I40 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 sure process of moral deterioration and disintegration 
 is open to them, if they can only make up their 
 minds fearlessly to declare the altered condition of 
 their religious views, undergo a formal trial for her- 
 esy, and have their very names stricken from the 
 rolls of orthodoxy. 
 
 Some of the clergymen in question have already 
 made up their minds to adopt this latter course, and 
 others are doubtless on the point of doing so. At 
 the same time we must not judge over-harshly those 
 others among their number who still continue to 
 promulgate and defend the old conceptions about the 
 Bible, about religion, and the like, while they have 
 come secretly and more or less fundamentally to ac- 
 cept the new. To illustrate. Said Froude to the 
 English clergy in 1864: ''We can but hope and pray 
 that some one may be found to give us an edition 
 of the Gospels in which the difficulties will neither 
 be slurred over with convenient neglect, nor noticed 
 with affected indifference. It may or may not be a 
 road to a bishopric ; it may or may not win the favor 
 of the religious world ; but it will earn at least the 
 respectful gratitude of those who cannot trifle with 
 holy things, and who believe that true religion is the 
 service of truth." ^ 
 
 Now, this is all perfectly easy for Mr. Froude to 
 say. Mr. Froude is not himself a professional clergy- 
 man. Mr. Froude has no prospects of a bishopric 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. I4I 
 
 to renounce. Mr. Froude has no particular reason 
 to consider, in any of his proceedings or his pub- 
 lications, whether he is about to secure the favor 
 or the disfavor of the religious world. But let Mr. 
 Froude, for the moment, put himself in the profes- 
 sional clergyman's place. Let him then conceive 
 that he is confronted with the question whether he 
 will, or will not, put forth such an edition of the 
 Gospels as he suggests above. He will then begin 
 to say to himself : " If I do this, I will first of all be 
 thrown out of my profession. I am rapidly approach- 
 ing, if I am not actually beyond, the meridian of 
 life. I have not merely myself to support, but a 
 wife and children, for whom I must, in some way, 
 provide at least their daily bread. I am more or 
 less unfitted, by my whole clerical education, train- 
 ing, and experience, to take up any other pursuit in 
 life. Possibly I might become a teacher, for example. 
 But that would indeed require to be a very rare and 
 a very exceptional combination of circumstances 
 which would enable me, after I became a branded and 
 excommunicated clerical heretic, either to secure a 
 remunerative position in connection with the general 
 educational institutions, or to anticipate, with a rea- 
 sonable degree of assurance, something like an ade- 
 quate amount of purely private patronage." 
 
 Looked at in this light, therefore, Mr. Froude will 
 perceive that this whole matter of outspoken heresy 
 
142 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 is to the professional orthodox clergyman intensely 
 practical ; and that it is likewise fraught on every 
 hand with the most painful perplexities. And noth- 
 ing can be more certain than this ; namely, that 
 if Mr. Froude were himself a professional orthodox 
 divine, and were about to issue still another edition 
 of the Gospels, he would be sorely tempted, con- 
 sciously and intentionally, to slur over a great many 
 difficulties with a very convenient neglect, and to 
 notice many more with the customary nonchalance 
 of the mediaeval biblicists when they have a case in 
 hand which it is particularly embarrassing to manage. 
 Whether he would, or would not, yield to this tempta- 
 tion, is not, however, quite so certain. 
 
 All honor, therefore, to that clergyman in the 
 orthodox ranks, who, having ceased any longer to 
 believe in a greater or less proportion of the more 
 cardinal tenets of the general evangelical systems 
 of theology, manfully speaks his mind, courageously 
 undergoes the severest ecclesiastical procedures which 
 can be instituted against him, accepts his ejection 
 from the ministry with mingled dignity and fearless- 
 ness, and heroically begins the battle for the main- 
 tenance both of himself and those who may be de- 
 pendent on him in some other calling or profession. 
 But let us, at least, neither think too severely, nor 
 speak too severely, of that heretical clergyman in the 
 orthodox communion who, whether from an innate 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 143 
 
 timidity, or from a primary regard to those merely 
 temporal considerations by which the average human 
 brotherhood must ever be most powerfully and most 
 decisively influenced, cannot bring himself up to the 
 point of becoming at once a hero and a martyr. 
 
 And it is precisely here that the immense practical 
 importance of the remark we made above arises. 
 Were it an easy thing for the heretical minister to 
 renounce his profession as an orthodox divine, it 
 would be a very easy thing for him to escape the 
 moral damage which he must inevitably receive by 
 remaining in his profession. But inasmuch as it is 
 almost a life-and-death matter — not merely with 
 himself, but likewise with his household — that he 
 should remain in his profession, he will indeed need 
 to be a man of exceptional resolution and of excep- 
 tional regard to his absolute ethical integrity, if he 
 does not remain in his profession, promulgating re- 
 ligious doctrines which he no longer personally ap- 
 proves, and defending denominational dogmas which 
 he has abundant reason to know have long since 
 been exploded. 
 
 The orthodox divines who continue in perfect good 
 faith to adhere to the traditional theological dogmas 
 do not, of course, experience any of the evil ethical 
 effects which we have pointed out as affecting the 
 heretical class, by reason of having their religious 
 thinkino: and their relisfious declarations confined 
 
144 ^^^ PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS, 
 
 within the limits of their dogmas. But they do 
 receive a mental damage which is as deplorable as it 
 is undeniable. To illustrate. After the author had 
 begun the composition of the present chapter, he 
 chanced to get into conversation with an orthodox 
 theological professor, whose mediaeval biblical attain- 
 ments are such as to have secured his appointment 
 among those distinguished biblical verbalists who 
 are now at work upon the Oxford revision of the 
 Scriptures passing through the press. The author 
 refreshed the memory of this theological professor 
 with regard to the very familiar fact that two of the 
 Evangelists represent a certain miracle of Jesus as 
 having been performed on the departure of Jesus 
 out of Jericho, whereas another of the Evangelists 
 says, as explicitly, that this same miracle was per- 
 formed by Jesus on his entrance into Jericho. And 
 what solution of these contradictory statements be- 
 tween the Evangelists do you think the professor 
 undertook to give } He said that when he himself 
 was a student in divinity, the following explanation 
 had been offered to his class : *' It is probable, or 
 at least conceivable, that when the miracle was per- 
 formed the different Evangelists had arrived upon the 
 scene in an entirely different condition, — two of 
 them worn out and weary, the other fresh and vigor- 
 ous. When they afterward sat down, each by him- 
 self, to place the miracle on record, to the two Evan- 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 45 
 
 gelists who were worn out and weary at the time of 
 its performance it appeared as if the prodigy could 
 not have been wrought until the departure of Jesus 
 out of Jericho ; whereas to the other Evangelist, who 
 was fresh and vigorous at the time of its performance, 
 it seemed as if the wonderful work must have been 
 done as early as the entrance of Jesus into Jericho." 
 And, unfortunately, we have here only a representa- 
 tive example of those intellectual puerilities which 
 are begotten even among orthodox theological pro- 
 fessors, and which are perpetuated from one genera- 
 tion to another of those professors, in consequence 
 of their being obliged professionally to confine all 
 their mental movements within the narrow limita- 
 tions of their little churchly dogmas. 
 
 Moreover, even when the ratiocination of the 
 orthodox divines is not so perfectly vapid as in the 
 instance adduced above, its unsatisfactoriness and its 
 evasiveness are as characteristic as they are notori- 
 ous. It will be remembered, for example, that Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall some time since enclosed, with his 
 approval, an anonymous communication to the editor 
 of "The Contemporary Review," proposing that the 
 controverted question of the efficacy of prayer as a 
 means of restoring the sick to health should be 
 decided by means of a series of scientific tests.- 
 This communication was afterward announced to 
 have been written by Sir Henry Thompson ; and the 
 
146 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 point of his proposal is thus stated by himself: ** I 
 ask that one single ward or hospital, under the care 
 of first-rate physicians and surgeons, containing cer- 
 tain numbers of patients, afflicted with those diseases 
 which have been best studied, and of which the mor- 
 tality rates are best known, whether the diseases are 
 those which are treated by medical or by surgical rem- 
 edies, should be, during a period of not less, say, than 
 three or five years, made the object of special prayer 
 by the whole body of the faithful ; and that at the 
 end of that time the mortality rates should be com- 
 pared with the past rates, and also with those of 
 other leading hospitals, similarly well managed, dur- 
 ing the same period. Granting that time is given, 
 and numbers are sufficiently large, so as to insure a 
 minimum of error from accidental disturbing causes, 
 the experiment will be exhaustive and complete. I 
 might have proposed to treat two sides of the same 
 hospital, managed by the same men ; one side to be 
 the special object of prayer, the other to be exempted 
 from all prayer. It would have been the most rigidly 
 logical and philosophical method. But I shrink from 
 depriving any of — I had almost said — his natural 
 inheritance in the prayers of Christendom. Practi- 
 cally, too, it would have been impossible. The un- 
 prayed-for ward would have attracted the prayers of 
 believers as surely as the lofty tower attracts electric 
 fluid. The experiment would be frustrated. But the 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. I47 
 
 opposite character of my proposal will commend it 
 to those who are naturally the most interested in 
 its success ; those, namely, who conscientiously and 
 devoutly believe in the efficiency against disease and 
 death of special prayer. I open a field for the exer- 
 cise of their devotion. I offer an occasion of demon- 
 strating to the faithless an imperishable record of 
 the real power of prayer." 3 
 
 No sooner, however, had Professor Tyndall become 
 the public sponsor and the general theological scape- 
 goat of this proposal by Sir Henry Thompson, than 
 the orthodox divines began to treat him, he says, 
 to a **free use of the terms 'insolence,' 'outrage,' 
 * profanity,' and 'blasphemy.' " 4 But what possible 
 relevancy had this "considerable amount of animad- 
 version " 5 against Professor Tyndall towards decid- 
 ing, from the experimental, scientific standpoint, 
 whether prayer does, or does not, possess a veritable 
 and verifiable sanitary value.'* 
 
 Still, some of the orthodox divines did something 
 more than simply to denounce Professor Tyndall for 
 lending his countenance to Dr. Thompson in connec- 
 tion with his suggested prayer-test. Of these Presi- 
 dent M'Cosh may be selected as among the best 
 examples. The President offered two leading objec- 
 tions. He said : " i. The proposal is not consistent 
 with the method and laws of God's spiritual kingdom. 
 The project, in fact, is imperious. . . . The project is 
 
148 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 not prescribed by God, nor is it one to which we can 
 reasonably expect him to conform. Every intelli- 
 gent defender of prayer has allowed a becoming- 
 sovereignty to God in answering the petitions pre- 
 sented to him. ... 2. The project is not consistent 
 with the spirit in which Christians pray. They pray 
 because commanded to pray. They pray because it 
 is the prompting of their hearts, commended by con- 
 science. They pray because they expect God to 
 listen to the offering-up of their desires. They pray 
 because they expect God to grant what they pray 
 for, so far as it may be agreeable to his will and their 
 own good. But they shrink from praying as an 
 experiment. . . . Such prayer, they feel, would im- 
 ply doubt on their part, and might give offence to 
 one who expects us to come to him as children unto 
 a father. They fear that it might look as if they 
 required him to answer prayer in a particular way, 
 whether it may be for good or evil, and unjustifiably 
 expose him to reproach, provided he refused to com- 
 ply with the uncalled-for demand." ^ 
 
 But all this is evasion, and evasion almost pure 
 and simple. It is indeed true that the precise 
 method of testing the sanitary value of prayer out- 
 lined by Dr. Thompson is not propounded in the 
 Bible. And yet a much more crucial test is pro- 
 pounded in the Bible. That is where St. James 
 explicitly instructs the Christian brotherhood, that, 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, I49 
 
 if any one of them is sick, he is to send for the 
 elders of the church, in order that the elders may 
 come and pray over him, anointing him with oil in 
 the name of the Lord. And to this apostolical 
 injunction is attached the specific assurance that 
 the prayer of faith shall save him that is sick. 7 If, 
 therefore, President M'Cosh, as a representative 
 of the orthodox divines, did not feel at liberty to 
 decide the matter in dispute according to the pro- 
 ject of Dr. Thompson, he certainly should have felt 
 at liberty to challenge Dr. Thompson to have it 
 decided according to the project of St. James the 
 apostle. But no. The orthodox divines shrink from 
 praying as an experiment. They fear that they 
 might unjustifiably expose their Deity to reproach, 
 provided he refuses to comply with the uncalled-for 
 demand. As if the very object of the experiment, 
 on the part of the unbelieving scientific world, would 
 not be to discover the truth, whether there be any 
 Divinity whatever who will hear the prayers of man 
 in favor of the sick! As if the very object of the 
 experiment, on the part of the believing, religious 
 world, would not be the practical verification of the 
 fact that the God of the Bible does heal the sick, as 
 well as instruct men to, pray to him that he will heal 
 them ! And as to the demand being uncalled for, 
 certainly, in an age when every thing that is super- 
 natural is being more and more widely called in 
 
150 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 question, if ever the Deity — we speak it with rever- 
 ence — should delight to have his children invoke 
 some special and signal demonstration of his practi- 
 cal regard and personal helpfulness to the suffering 
 human brotherhood, that time is now. ^ 
 
 But just here we must guard ourselves against 
 all misapprehension. Personally we do not by any 
 means occupy the same standpoint in regard to the 
 general subject of prayer with either Dr. Thompson 
 or Professor Tyndall. Personally we not merely 
 believe, if only as a matter of hereditary habit, in 
 the efficacy of prayer, but endeavor to lead some- 
 thing like a life of prayer. And if ever an experi- 
 mental hospital should be established where the 
 efficacy of prayer in the treatment of disease could 
 be tested in the same scientific manner that the effi- 
 cacy of good ventilation, or of any other remedial 
 agent or agency, real or supposed, is tested, we 
 should most assuredly be personally found upon the 
 praying side, — at least, until the experiment had 
 clearly proved a failure. But the whole trouble 
 with the orthodox divines is inadvertently disclosed 
 by President M'Cosh when he furthermore observes : 
 ** The proposal made in the letter forwarded by Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall is evidently regarded as likely to be 
 troublesome to religious men. If they accept, it is 
 expected that the issue of the experiment will cover 
 them with confusion. If they decline, they will be 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 151 
 
 charged with refusing to submit to a scientific test.''^ 
 Accordingly President M'Cosh, in common with his 
 entire class of professional religious evasionists, 
 coming to the private conclusion that the most pru- 
 dential course would be to decline the experiment, 
 undertakes to give the public certain reasons, such 
 as they are, for not accepting it. But to this sort 
 of thing Professor Tyndall very pertinently responds : 
 '* The theory that the system of nature is under the 
 control of a Being who changes phenomena in com- 
 pliance with the prayers of men is, in my opinion, 
 a perfectly legitimate one. But without verification 
 a theoretic conception is a mere figment of the intel- 
 lect. And while science cheerfully submits to this 
 ordeal [of verifying or exploding its various hy- 
 potheses], it seems impossible to devise a mode of 
 verification of their theories which does not arouse 
 resentment in the theological mind." 9 
 
 The simple fact is, that the entire mental life 
 which the orthodox divine is compelled to lead is 
 such as to render his whole mental cast precisely 
 the reverse of scientific. For the primary object 
 in all truly scientific research is simply to discover 
 the truth, whereas the primary object of the ortho- 
 dox divine is simply to defend his dogma. That 
 his dogma is true, he is always obliged to postulate. 
 Whether his dogma is true or false, he is never at 
 liberty candidly and impartially to inquire, except, 
 
152 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 indeed, argumentatively, and then only to proceed 
 to contend that his dogma is doubtlessly true, and 
 true beyond any reasonable sort of question. Which 
 is all very well so long as the truthfulness of his 
 dogma can be established by valid evidence and 
 legitimate reasons. But by this time it must be 
 perfectly apparent to the general reader that his dog- 
 mas are far more frequently false than true. And, 
 having such an enormous aggregate of false dogmas 
 to support, he must of course endeavor to support 
 them by evidence which is not valid and by reason- 
 ing which is not legitimate. Hence his intellectual 
 puerilities, hence his mental make-shifts and eva- 
 sions, hence his apologetic subterfuges, hence his 
 substitution of repression for argument, hence his 
 employment of anathemas when he is unable to give 
 an answer, hence, in a word, his theological, as op- 
 posed to his scientific, tone and temper. 
 
 Such, then, are some of the ethical injuries in- 
 flicted upon the heretical element among the ortho- 
 dox divines ; and such are some of the intellectual 
 injuries inflicted upon the non-heretical element 
 among the orthodox divines, in consequence of their 
 having all their religious thinking, and particularly 
 all their religious expression, confined within the 
 limitations of their various denominational creeds 
 and catechisms. 
 
 Still this is a matter of direct practical moment 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 53 
 
 only to the orthodox divines, and is of interest ^to 
 the general public only to the extent that the gen- 
 eral public is interested in the best ethical and intel- 
 lectual condition of a special class of the common 
 brotherhood of man. 
 
 But there are other aspects of this subject in 
 which the general public has a much more immedi- 
 ate and vital interest. And, in the first place, if 
 there has been any aggregate advancement made in 
 the sum total of human knowledge which is fatal to 
 a continued credence in many of the traditional theo- 
 logical dogmas, the world has certainly no reason 
 to congratulate the professional conservators of 
 these dogmas for this advancemjcnt. And notably 
 have the traditional theological conceptions about 
 the Holy Scriptures been erected by those conserva- 
 tors as a barrier against any such advancement. To 
 illustrate. When the once celebrated question of 
 the Antipodes first began to be discussed, the Bible 
 was made, according to Professor Tyndall, the ulti- 
 mate standard of appeal. And while such theolo- 
 gians as Augustine, for instance, did not go so far 
 as to deny the possible rotundity of the earth, still 
 even Augustine did deny the possible existence of 
 inhabitants at the other side, "because no such race 
 is recorded in the Scripture." '° Again : when, 
 after refraining to publish his book, ** De Revolution- 
 ibus," for thirty-six years, Copernicus eventually 
 
154 TffE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 ventured upon its publication, the Inquisition con- 
 demned it as heretical, and the congregation of 
 the Index denounced his system as that "false 
 Pythagorean doctrine utterly contrary to the Holy 
 Scripture." ^^ Nearly a century afterward Galileo 
 also was accused of imposture, heresy, blasphemy, 
 and atheism, for promulging the alleged anti-Scrip- 
 tural theory that the earth revolves around the sun, 
 and was compelled upon his knees, and with his 
 hand upon the Bible, to abjure and curse this the- 
 ory. ^^ jn like manner, when Columbus proposed his 
 voyages of discovery, the irreligious tendency of his 
 proposal was pointed out by the Spanish ecclesias- 
 tics, and condemned by the Council of Salamanca ; 
 and its orthodoxy was confuted from the Pentateuch, 
 the Psalms, the Prophecies, the Gospels, and the 
 Epistles. ^3 
 
 Now, in view of such unquestioned and unquestion- 
 able historical facts as these. Professor John William 
 Draper certainly does not over-state the truth when 
 he insists that the Church, having set herself forth, 
 Bible in hand, as the arbiter of knowledge, became a 
 stumbling-block in the intellectual advancement of 
 Europe for a thousand years. ^4 
 
 But it may be objected that all this happened cen- 
 turies ago, and at the hands of the Catholic Church, 
 not of the Protestant. And yet Professor Draper is 
 not altogether aside from the mark when he further- 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 55 
 
 more maintains, that, so far as science is concerned, 
 nothing is owed to the Reformation. '5 The Refor- 
 mation adopted for its fundamental postulate the 
 dogma that the Bible is the divinely inspired and 
 therefore the infallible standard of truth. And it 
 is well known that Protestantism has never been 
 able, either in the past or in the present, to tolerate 
 any scientific hypothesis or increment of knowledge 
 hostile to the Bible. If any such hypothesis has 
 eventually secured any thing like a general scientific 
 acceptance, or any such increment of knowledge has 
 come to prevail, it has done so in despite of Protes- 
 tantism, and in despite of all the efforts of Protestant- 
 ism at its suppression. If, for example, men no longer 
 believe that the cosmos was created in six natural 
 days of twenty-four hours, if Darwinism has gained 
 any converts, or if the evolution theory of the crea- 
 tion has met with any considerable progress, no 
 thanks are due to Protestantism. All of these scien- 
 tific truths, or theories whether true or false, and all 
 other scientific truths, or theories whether true or 
 false, which come in conflict with the teachings of 
 the Bible, and which have been promulgated even in 
 this nineteenth century, have been both combated 
 and denounced alike by the Protestant pulpit and by 
 the Protestant press from one end of Christendom to 
 the other. 
 
 Let it accordingly be distinctly understood. If 
 
156 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 Protestantism, pure and simple, could have its way, 
 the Bible, or rather an organized and most powerful 
 body of theological police force in the name of the 
 Bible, would dominate thought, would dominate re- 
 search, would dominate discovery, and never permit 
 the world to get beyond that measure of intellectual 
 development and progress peculiar to those far-off 
 ages of the world when the Bible had its origin. 
 And it is high time that the general Protestant 
 public should become more and more familiarized 
 with the fact, that the fundamental postulate of Prot- 
 estantism concerning the infallible truthfulness of 
 the Bible is a fundamental falsity. And it is high 
 time also that the general Protestant public should 
 begin to arise more and more en masse against that 
 organized and most powerful body of theological 
 police force, which, in the name of the Bible, still 
 undertakes to say, alike to the physicist, to the phi- 
 losopher, to the educator, to the journalist, and to the 
 man of letters, for example : "Thus far shall you go, 
 but no farther. Either promulgate what the Scrip- 
 tures teach, or else we will combine in the effort to 
 repress you." 
 
 But the general Protestant public, or at least a 
 very large element in that public, is concerned in 
 demanding its emancipation from the domination, 
 not to say from the domineering, of this theological 
 police force from the religious point of view as well 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 157 
 
 as from the more or less strictly intellectual. It is 
 true that for certain millions of very excellent and 
 pious people the Catholic Church still continues to 
 furnish a perfectly satisfactory form of religious belief 
 and practice. It is equally true that for certain other 
 millions of very excellent and pious people the vari- 
 ous Protestant churches still perform a kindred ser- 
 vice. But it is likewise true that for thousands and 
 hundreds of thousands of the most deeply religious 
 natures scattered all over Christendom neither the 
 Catholic Church, nor all of the Protestant churches 
 considered as a body, can any longer pretend to have 
 the remotest religious mission. And while these lat- 
 ter persons are resignedly willing to be still further 
 expostulated with, and prayed over, and would be 
 only too thankful to return to the faith of their 
 fathers if such a thing were possible, they must still 
 most earnestly protest against having their heretical 
 heads any longer belabored with the orthodox eccle- 
 siastical police clubs. While they recognize the per- 
 fect right of the Protestant to remain a Protestant, 
 and of the Catholic to remain a Catholic, without 
 either repression or denunciation, they also claim the 
 perfect right both to become and to continue neither 
 Protestant nor Catholic, without being either stigma- 
 tized as anti-religionists, or vilified as infidels and 
 atheists. 
 
 Lest, however, in speaking as we have done of the 
 
158 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 orthodox ecclesiastical police force, we may appear to 
 have done a flagrant injustice to not a few among 
 the orthodox divines, we hasten to make this qualify- 
 ing remark. Very many of these divines — and we 
 here refer specifically to very many of these Protes- 
 tant divines — have inherited the very worst spirit 
 and the very worst characteristics of the very worst 
 of the old-time inquisitors. There is among them 
 more than one Calvin, there are among them more 
 than one thousand Calvins, who, if such a thing 
 would be tolerated in this nineteenth century, would 
 not hesitate for a single moment, either to burn 
 every modern Servetus, or to make him publicly 
 renounce his heresies. But, while this is true, it 
 is likewise true that a very large proportion of the 
 Protestant clergy of the present day, who still re- 
 main essentially orthodox in their religious belief, do 
 not in any sense partake of the old inquisitorial 
 spirit. As we have already said in the foregoing 
 chapter, these latter clergymen are at once liberal 
 and loving in all their relations with us modern here- 
 tics. Nor is this all ; for their voices are always 
 heard, both in the pulpit and in the press, and even 
 in the collective ecclesiastical councils, bravely up- 
 lifted in favor of the most catholic religious tolera- 
 tion, and the widest religious liberty. 
 
 We must here also distinctly recognize, as we did 
 in the preceding chapter, that the Hneal descend- 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 59 
 
 ants of the ancient heretic-killers, which still more 
 or less abound among the Protestant divines, act 
 with perfect conscientiousness. They believe, for one 
 thing, that every assailant of their dogmas, and nota- 
 bly that every assailant of the traditional theological 
 views about the Holy Scriptures, is an open and im- 
 pious enemy of the very truth of God, and that, as 
 such, it is among their most binding religious obliga- 
 tions to kill, no longer himself indeed, but his entire 
 public influence, — if they can, and as they can. But 
 we certainly discovered enough above, when discuss- 
 ing the question of the inspiration of the Bible, to be 
 justified here in insisting that it is perfectly prepos- 
 terous any longer to maintain that the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, as a whole, contain the very truth of God, and 
 nothing but the truth of God. And under these cir- 
 cumstances it becomes a perfectly legitimate under- 
 taking to seek to discover in how far the Holy 
 Scriptures do contain the very truth of God, and in 
 how far they likewise contain errors of almost every 
 description incident, and necessarily incident, to the 
 times and conditions under which the various bibli- 
 cal writings were originally composed. And as for 
 us modern biblicists who have undertaken in one 
 way or another, and from one standpoint or another, 
 to contribute something towards the solution of this 
 most important problem, we have simply to say to 
 the Protestant divines in question : ** Let us alone. 
 
l6o THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 We have precisely the same right to search for the 
 actual truth, as distinguished from the actual error, 
 which exists in the Bible, as we have to search for 
 the actual truth, as distinguished from the actual 
 error, which exists in any other book, or in any 
 other department of investigation. And, what is 
 more, we propose, whether. you let us alone or not, 
 to exercise this right until we have eventually arrived 
 at something like a full and final answer to this 
 problem." 
 
 Another element which enters into the entire con- 
 scientiousness of the would-be modern Protestant 
 heretic-extinguishers is their profound and most de- 
 vout conviction that the eternal well-being or ill- 
 being not merely of the heretic himself, but of all 
 others whom the heretic may influence, hangs sus- 
 pended on the prompt and utter extinction of all 
 religious views which fundamentally contravene the 
 religious views propounded in their dogmas, or, as 
 they might prefer to say, propounded in the Bible, 
 the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. But 
 these Protestant divines should remember, that in the 
 Papal Syllabus of Errors it is explicitly maintained 
 that no man may obtain eternal salvation in any form 
 of religion except the Catholic, and that all Protes- 
 tants in particular are put without the pale of ever- 
 lasting hope, and impliedly consigned to the everlast- 
 ing burning. ^^ Does this frighten Protestants .'* No 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. l6l 
 
 more does it frighten us modern heretics, who are 
 neither Protestants nor CathoUcs, that we are eccle- 
 siastically consigned to the everlasting burning be- 
 cause of our radical rupture with all the traditional 
 forms of religion save that of Jesus and Jesus only. 
 Jesus, as we have substantially shown above, was nei- 
 ther a Protestant nor a Catholic. No more was Jesus, 
 in any current conception of the term, a Christian. 
 That is to say, the religion of Jesus is not only a vast- 
 ly different thing from all the dogmatic systems of 
 theology, whether Protestant or Catholic, but likewise 
 a vastly different thing from the religion of the Bible, 
 the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. And if 
 in adopting the religion of Jesus, in distinction from 
 all the other traditional forms of religion, whether 
 Protestant or Catholic, we modern heretics come to 
 find ourselves in the eternal world lamenting our 
 condition in the deepest depths of darkness, it will 
 be at least one drop of water to cool our parching 
 tongues that we are keeping company with Jesus. 
 In other words, our devotion to Jesus — the personal 
 Jesus of history — is so great, our confidence in his 
 religious system is so complete, and our consecration 
 to his service is so absolute, that we are perfectly 
 resigned, not only to follow after him in life, but 
 likewise to share his fortunes after death, whatever 
 may be the nature of those fortunes. 
 
 But what of that other class of modern heretics 
 
1 62 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 who have broken with every traditional form of 
 rehgion, even to the extent of parting company with 
 the religion of Jesus, at least altogether on the side 
 of its supernaturalism ? To this we answer, that, so 
 long as these heretics continue to adhere — as we 
 have seen above that the vast majority of them do 
 continue to adhere — to the ethical side of the 
 religion of Jesus, and to put that ethical system into 
 practice, perhaps their prospects for the future are 
 not so utterly appalling, after all, excepting only in 
 the groundless apprehensions of the orthodox divines. 
 For with these heretics, as with all others of the 
 common human brotherhood, it shall, for example, 
 remain forever true : Blessed are the pure in heart, 
 for they shall see God. Blessed are they which are 
 persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the 
 kingdom of heaven. But in what Gospel does the 
 historical Jesus declare that the divine benedictions 
 and beatitudes shall hereafter be bestowed on those, 
 indeed, who continue faithful unto death in believing 
 in the supernatural, and that from all others those 
 benedictions and beatitudes shall be withholden by 
 the Deity of Jesus, — even though the Deity of Jesus 
 doubtless is conceived to be a God who answers 
 prayer, performs a special providence, and even 
 works perhaps, now and then, a miracle? 
 
 Besides, no matter how far the one class or the 
 other class of the heretics now immediately in ques- 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 63 
 
 tion may, or may not, have gone astray in their con- 
 scientious religious convictions, hard words can never 
 reclaim them ; and no priestly pledges of good things 
 in the long hereafter can allure them any more than 
 any priestly predictions of bad things in the long 
 hereafter can intimidate them. So far as that here- 
 after is concerned, they are impervious alike to 
 priestly bribes and priestly threats. If they are 
 actually wrong in their religious views, they do not 
 wish to hear any mere jingling of the traditional 
 ecclesiastical keys, accompanied with such observa- 
 tions, in effect, as these : Accept this set of religious 
 views, and here is for you the master-key of an 
 everlasting heaven : reject this set of religious views, 
 and here is for you the master-key of an everlasting 
 hades. They wish to be convinced by calm and 
 dispassionate reasoning, and by downright demon- 
 strable fact, that they are indeed in error. And, if 
 this be not done with them, they will remain, as 
 Professor Huxley substantially remarks, content to 
 follow their own conceptions of reason and fact, in 
 singleness and honesty of purpose, wherever they 
 may lead, in the sure faith that a hell of honest men 
 will be to them far more endurable than any mere 
 paradise replete with — angelic shams. '7 
 
 But, positively, incomplete and fragmentary as it 
 is, we must now begin to bring this discussion to a 
 termination. The fact is, that the topic here touched 
 
1 64 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 upon, like all of the preceding topics, is one to which 
 a volume, rather than a chapter, might have easily 
 been devoted. But we have all along proceeded on 
 the supposition that we are addressing ourselves to 
 an audience of exceedingly busy men and busy 
 women, who would prefer to have a series of what 
 Froude would characterize as short studies on great 
 subjects, than to have an exhaustive and elaborate 
 study on any given subject. Specialists in the vari- 
 ous departments of modern biblical and religious 
 research would, of course, prefer the volume to the 
 chapter ; the elaborate and exhaustive study to the 
 short one. But busy men and busy women, who are 
 not specialists, and yet who are by the hundreds of 
 thousands at the present religious epoch most pro- 
 foundly interested in every department of this re- 
 search, only care to have some of the bottom 
 thoughts and data placed before them, in view of 
 which they may be able to arrive at their own con- 
 clusions, and that not so much concerning details as 
 concerning outlines, not so much concerning special 
 aspects as concerning large controlling issues. 
 
 When we shall have made one or two additional 
 observations, therefore, in connection with the sub- 
 ject of this chapter, we will then consider that we 
 have trespassed upon the reader's time and attention 
 as far as we may presume to do so. And, in the first 
 place, there can be no question that the general cause 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 65 
 
 of religious liberty is making an advancement to-day 
 in all the Protestant churches which is at once aston- 
 ishing and well-nigh incredible. The old dogmas 
 are no longer preached by the vast majority of the 
 Protestant divines with any thing like the old em- 
 phasis, persistency, and stringency. The heretical 
 element among these divines is, as we have said, 
 already large, and continually on the increase. The 
 liberal, loving, tolerant, catholic-minded element 
 among them is already a recognized power within 
 the ranks of Protestantism, and destined ere long 
 to exercise a more and more controlling influence. 
 And, as for the laity, it is difficult to say what 
 heresies they may not now both privately indulge in 
 and publicly promulgate, with none so brave as to 
 inaugurate a formal movement to cast them out of 
 the synagogue. In a word, particularly the clergy, to 
 say nothing of the laity, in nearly all the Protestant 
 communions, without distinction or exception, can 
 to-day take religious liberties with almost a perfect 
 impunity, which a quarter of a century ago, or even 
 ten years ago, they could not have ventured upon 
 without at least incurring the risk of being promptly 
 cited before their respective ecclesiastical police 
 courts. And all of the present tendencies and in- 
 dications are, that a still larger and larger religious 
 liberty will come to prevail throughout the length 
 and breadth of Protestantism. And yet nothing can 
 
1 66 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 be more manifest than this ; namely, that Protestant- 
 ism can never permit within its own ranks, and, 
 above all, can never permit within the ranks of its 
 own ministry, any such rehgious Hberty as is de- 
 manded by the extremer religious developments of 
 the present age and hour. To do so would be 
 deliberately to become a party to its own dissolu- 
 tion. And it only remains for those who desire this 
 latter kind of liberty simj^ly to take it, and to take it 
 by taking their public departure out of Protestant- 
 ism, and to identify themselves, in every practicable 
 manner possible, with what may be characterized as 
 the Reformation of the nineteenth, as contrasted with 
 the Reformation of the sixteenth, century. 
 
 Prolonged as this chapter has already become, it 
 would still be unpardonable to bring it to a con- 
 clusion without a single specific allusion to that 
 perhaps most potent of all modern public influ- 
 ences, by which we mean the press. 
 
 The domination of ecclesiasticism over this mighty 
 public power in the past, we all know to have been 
 almost supreme and absolute. And, had the matter 
 only ended with the past, we might then be content 
 to let the dead past bury its dead. But, even at 
 the present moment, ecclesiasticism, and Protestant 
 ecclesiasticism, would not hesitate to establish, if it 
 could do so, a strict religious censorship over every 
 volume, over every periodical, and over every daily 
 
REL/GIOUS LIBERTY. 1 6/ 
 
 and weekly, issued anywhere in Christendom. And 
 we are not here referring to the various denomina- 
 tional lines of religious literature. We do not deny 
 the right of the Protestant potentates and powers to 
 insist that their denominational publishing establish- 
 ments, and their denominational organs of expression, 
 shall publish, and publish only, in the interests of 
 their dogmas. But what wx do here refer to, and 
 what we do here most emphatically protest against, 
 is the effort made by these potentates and powers to 
 dictate to the secular press at large what religious 
 views it shall or shall not disseminate among the 
 masses. To illustrate, and to speak of facts alone, 
 of which we have a personal and inner knowledge. 
 Even so recently as 1873, " Scribner's Monthly" — 
 the name of which has since been changed to that 
 of "The Century Magazine " — ventured to publish, 
 for the present writer, a series of papers, entitled 
 "Modern Scepticism." ^^ For reasons which need 
 not here be detailed, these papers were, to the very 
 last degree, obnoxious to the potentates and powers 
 in question. Some of them made a public demand 
 for a new editorship of the Monthly. Others rushed 
 into the pulpit, and denounced the Monthly itself, 
 with the view of influencing their parishioners to 
 withdraw from it their patronage. And one dis- 
 tinguished doctor of divinity in particular, starting 
 out with the declaration that "'Scribner' must be 
 
1 68 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 Stamped out," not only undertook to organize, but 
 actually succeeded in organizing, what was perhaps 
 the most powerful ecclesiastical combination against 
 the religious freedom of the modern secular press 
 ever brought together in these United States. 
 
 To this the late lamented Dr. J. G. Holland — 
 that brave and noble spirit, who was then the con- 
 ducting editor of "■ Scribner " — editorially responded, 
 that the papers on ''Modern Scepticism" were only 
 preliminary to others of a kindred nature, by the 
 same author, which were to follow, and that from 
 publishing those future papers no opposition could 
 frighten him, and no amount of vituperation could 
 drive him. ^9 *' Our method," he said, "is simply to 
 substitute a non-partisan investigation for partisan 
 controversy, and to establish, by an appeal to the 
 universal reason and heart, that which not only does 
 not stand by force of ecclesiastical authority, but 
 which totters under its weight. In this work we 
 ask and claim the sympathy of all Christian men 
 and women. To it we invite their attention. The 
 letters which we receive from every part of the 
 country, and our constantly increasing list of readers, 
 show how deep an interest is everywhere taken in 
 the subject, and prove to us that we have neither 
 misinterpreted the signs of the times, nor misdirected 
 our efforts." '° 
 
 Meanwhile the author, on his part, had, in the main, 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 69 
 
 retired again into the silence of his study, in order to 
 make something far more remotely approaching to 
 an adequate preparation before presuming to begin 
 to spread before the public some of the more im- 
 portant results which must inevitably obtain when 
 the non-partisan and the non-controversial method 
 of investigation comes to be faithfully and impar- 
 tially applied to nearly every fundamental tenet of 
 the traditional theology. . 
 
 After an additional year or two had been passed 
 by us in this way, we ventured at last to forward to 
 Dr. Holland a specimen paper, in which some of these 
 results were stated, or rather were foreshadowed. 
 
 In reply, the doctor wrote to us. May 21, 1875, 
 among other things, as follows : " Your last article 
 was received, and I have read it to-day. At the 
 conclusion of its perusal I find myself called upon 
 to make the most important decision that has ever 
 come to me for its making since I became an editor. 
 I must be frank with you. I believe you are right. 
 I should like to speak your words to the world ; but, 
 if I do speak these, it will pretty certainly cost me 
 my connection with the Magazine. This sacrifice I 
 am willing to make, if duty requires it. I am afraid 
 of nothing but doing injury to the cause I love. . . . 
 In short, you see that I sincerely doubt whether the 
 Christian world is ready for this article. The belief 
 in the Bible is so deep, and so sincere, that an article 
 
I/O THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 like this, unprepared for, — without having been led 
 up to, — would produce an awful shock. American 
 Christians at large are not ready for the revolution 
 which this article inaugurates. Instead of the theo- 
 logians, the people would howl. ... I cannot yet 
 carry my audience in such a revolution. Perhaps I 
 shall be able to do so by and by ; but, as I look at it 
 to-day, it seems impossible. I hope you understand 
 that I do not shrink from personal sacrifice in this 
 matter, and that I am afraid of nothing but making 
 the people believe that I have betrayed them. The 
 article is a thunderbolt. . . . My dear friend, I believe 
 in you. You are in advance of your time. You have 
 great benefits in your hands for your time. You are 
 free and true. And I mourn sadly, and in genuine 
 distress, that I cannot speak your words with a tongue 
 which all my fellow Christians can hear. They will 
 not hear them yet. They will some time." 
 
 So far as we can recall, the article referred to 
 above by Dr. Holland related to the divine and in- 
 fallible inspiration of the Bible. How far the views 
 put forth in the present volume on the same subject 
 were, or were not, germinal in that paper, which has 
 long since been destroyed, we cannot just now be 
 certain. Still we deem it only simple justice to say 
 that nothing in the foregoing letter should be con- 
 strued by the reader as lending the personal indorse- 
 ment of Dr. Holland to any of the heresies promul 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. I/I 
 
 gated in this book, whether on the subject of biblical 
 inspiration or any other subject. In such matters 
 as these 1875 is a long while ago; and we are our- 
 selves so much more of a heretic at large to-day than 
 we then anticipated that we should ever become, that 
 we have not the remotest idea that Dr. Holland could 
 have possibly kept up an equal pace with us in his 
 departure from the traditional Protestant conceptions 
 about the Bible and religion. Indeed, so far as we 
 can affirm any thing from our personal and positive 
 knowledge, we should say that, broadly speaking, he 
 must, on the other hand, have departed this life in 
 the firm belief, not in all, but in most, of the leading 
 essentials of the faith of his fathers. 
 
 It would also be the gravest injustice to Dr. Hol- 
 land to impute his reluctant decision not to publish 
 our paper instanced to any lack of moral courage. 
 Other things he may have lacked, but moral courage 
 never. This country — at least in our judgment — 
 has yet to produce the man who would have braved 
 more, or, if need be, would have sacrificed more, in 
 standing firmly by his deepest conscientious convic- 
 tions. But he was altogether in the right in giving 
 earnest heed, lest by the insertion of that particular 
 paper in *'Scribner" he should give the people occa- 
 sion to believe that he had betrayed them. The 
 name which " Scribner's Monthly " bore, the publish- 
 ing-house by which it was issued, and Dr. Holland's 
 
1/2 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 own pronounced religious position before the country 
 prior to his becoming its editor-in-chief, were in the 
 form of a pledge to the general orthodox religious 
 public that the periodical would not, at least under 
 his conductorship, inaugurate any revolutionary at- 
 tacks upon the current orthodox conceptions about 
 the Bible and religion. In a word, Dr. Holland 
 possessed just that combination of moral heroism 
 and practical judgment which the exigencies of his 
 editorial position demanded at such a transitional 
 religious epoch as the present. He knew just in 
 how far it was right for him to permit us modern 
 heretics to find expression through '* Scribner," and 
 from permitting us to find this expression no super- 
 orthodox ecclesiasticism could either intimidate or 
 drive him. He also knew in how far loyalty to the 
 general orthodox constituency of ''Scribner" de- 
 manded that he should not permit us modern heretics 
 to find expression through its columns, and there the 
 matter ended. And yet all this does not in any wise 
 militate against the fact, that the orthodox religious 
 domination over the secular press of this countr)' is 
 still so great that even Dr. Holland, with all his 
 popular prestige and power, did not care to venture 
 the experiment of publishing in the pages of " Scrib- 
 ner" for 1875, an article, no matter by what author, 
 against the current conceptions of the infallible in- 
 spiration of the Bible, which article he believed to 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 73 
 
 be essentially in the right, and also to follow this up 
 with the publication of other kindred papers, which 
 he felt perfectly assured, however mistakenly, would, 
 in the final outcome, prove of signal service to his 
 times. 
 
 And just here it deserves a special mention, and 
 demands a special emphasis, that the prematureness 
 of the article in question constituted the underlying 
 reason why Dr. Holland felt that it would cost him 
 his editorial position on the staff of "■ Scribner," in 
 case he gave it to the world. Here, in fact, this special 
 aspect of religious domination over the secular press 
 simply continues to repeat itself. Were a scientific 
 discussion, for example, now to appear, corresponding 
 to the " De Revolutionibus " by Copernicus, not even 
 the Catholic Church would presume to place it in the 
 Index, merely because of its advocacy of the helio- 
 centric conception of the cosmos. It is only when 
 an anti-theological or an anti-Scriptural theory, or 
 thought, or system of thought, is before its time, and 
 begins to struggle for expression, that the orthodox 
 religious world undertakes to interdict the secular 
 press from its publication. After it has once found 
 expression through the secular press, and been either 
 established or exploded, then the full freedom of the 
 secular press, either to promulgate it further, or to 
 let it die in silence, is quietly conceded. But, if 
 experience can teach the orthodox religious world 
 
174 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 any thing except the persistent repetition of its 
 blunders, experience should certainly have taught 
 the orthodox religious world by this time that noth- 
 ing can be more futile than for it to prolong this idle 
 effort of seeking any longer to intimidate the secular 
 press, whether of this or any other so-called Christian 
 country, from being the first to bring the more ad- 
 vanced thinkers of the times into communication 
 with the public, — no matter how subversive of all 
 the traditional religious conceptions their thoughts 
 or theories may be. The orthodox religious world 
 may indeed succeed, and does, as a matter of fact, 
 succeed, in causing this or that particular representa- 
 tive of the modern secular press to shrink from doing 
 this. But what one publishing-house or periodical or 
 newspaper lacks the moral courage to publish, another 
 publishing-house or periodical or newspaper is sure to 
 give to the people. The simple truth is, that there 
 does not exist to-day anywhere, in at least the Prot- 
 estant portions of Christendom, a single thorough- 
 going heretic who needs to die in silence, even though 
 he be in advance of his generation by a whole mil- 
 lennium. If he really has any thoughts or theories 
 to place before his contemporaries which are worthy 
 of their consideration, whether those thoughts or theo- 
 ries are true or false, some modern secular editor or 
 publisher is just as certain to stand prepared to lay 
 them before the public as the present century is the 
 nineteenth and not the sixteenth. 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1/5 
 
 Nor are these secular editors or publishers just 
 referred to precisely what they used to be. To ex- 
 plain. Professor Philip Schaff evidently rolls it as a 
 sweet morsel under his tongue, that he can say of 
 George Eliot's — or rather of Miss Marian Evans's 
 — translation of the first " Life of Jesus," by Strauss, 
 that it " was republished in New York by some ob- 
 scure house in 1850." ^i Well, we suppose that, so 
 far back as 1850, it would have been only some ob- 
 scure house in New York, or any other city of this 
 country, which would venture to give such an arch- 
 heretic as Strauss a formal introduction, even to the 
 most limited circle of American readers. We sup- 
 pose, also, that at that time it would have been only 
 some obscure and so-called infidel sheet which would 
 venture to disseminate the views of Strauss, in the 
 abridged form of statement peculiar to the daily or 
 the weekly newspapers, with any degree of truthful- 
 ness and fairness. It must have been somewhat 
 later than 1850 that Renan remarked: ** Of all the 
 thinkers of Germany, Strauss is least appreciated in 
 France. Most people know him only through the 
 abuse of his adversaries." -^ And, unless our memory 
 is very much at fault, it must have been somewhat 
 later than 1850 that Strauss was likewise known by 
 most people on this side of the Atlantic only through 
 the abuse of his adversaries. In those days nearly 
 every prominent publishing-house and religious organ 
 
176 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 of expression was open enough indeed to the orthodox 
 assailants of Strauss, but neither to Strauss himself, 
 nor to any other radical and fearless modern religious 
 revolutionist. But it is a characteristic of our times, 
 that, in all matters of this practical character and 
 m.oment, a changed condition of things, having once 
 fairly begun to prevail, progresses so rapidly that the 
 former condition of things appears to have receded, 
 as in an instant, to almost forgotten epochs. The 
 transition from the old -condition to the new is almost 
 telegraphic. It can scarcely be said, for example, 
 that the American translation of Renan's *' Life of 
 Jesus " was published by some obscure house in 
 New York in 1868. On the other hand, it was pub- 
 lished by one of the best-known and most respectable 
 publishers in the metropolis. And what is true of 
 the American publisher of the principal works of 
 Renan, is likewise true of the American publishers 
 of the principal works of Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, 
 Spencer, Haeckel, Biichner, and the like. These 
 publishers are among the most prominent, the most 
 powerful, the most reputable, now connected with our 
 general American literature. 
 
 Another circumstance of paramount practical im- 
 portance to us modern heretics is this. We question 
 whether twenty-five years ago a single respectable 
 bookseller in this country would have openly exposed 
 what was then called an infidel book for sale in his 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY, 1 77 
 
 place of business. He might or might not have been 
 willing to secure a copy of it upon order, to oblige 
 a patron. But, even if he did so, he would, in all 
 probability, have done so stealthily, and, in a manner, 
 secretly. But in these days no leading bookseller 
 hesitates any more to expose a heretical work for 
 sale, or to furnish it on order, than he would in case 
 it were the most orthodox production of the most 
 orthodox divine, and, at the same time, in the highest 
 favor with the general religious world. 
 
 So far as we heretics are concerned, therefore, we 
 have little more to desire in this direction. We not 
 only have our fair proportion of the most influential 
 bookmakers to publish for us ; we likewise have the 
 booksellers of the nation, almost in a body, to cir- 
 culate our volumes far and wide among the people. 
 
 Nor have we any thing to complain of, on the 
 whole, at the hands of the periodicals. It is true 
 that the great majority of the leading popular maga- 
 zines are still too largely dependent upon the orthodox 
 patronage to make it judicious for them to permit 
 us to inaugurate any formal religious movements in 
 their pages of a very revolutionary nature. Still, even 
 they will now and then become our public mouth- 
 pieces in saying some decidedly heretical things, and 
 such heretical things as will throw pretty much the 
 entire orthodox world into something like that common 
 condition of uproar into which the heretical Paul once 
 
1/8 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 threw the orthodox populace at Ephesus. And, if 
 this be not enough, the mere names of " The Con- 
 temporary Review " and of " The Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury," in England, coupled with those of ''The North 
 American Review" and of "The Popular Science 
 Monthly," here among ourselves, furnish a sufficient 
 guarantee, that, in so far as we have any occasion to 
 employ the periodical press, the periodical press is 
 already sufficiently accessible to us, and, even before- 
 hand, placed at our disposal. 
 
 Our acknowledgments are likewise due to nearly 
 every one of the great leading daily papers. If a 
 communication be sent to them touching upon any 
 one of the more popular aspects of modern biblical 
 or religious discussion, they will never for a moment 
 pause to inquire whether such communication is or- 
 thodox or heterodox. Their only question about the 
 communication will be whether, both in its subject- 
 matter and in its limits and method of presentation, 
 it is adapted for publication in their columns, and is, 
 at the same time, likely to prove of general interest 
 and concernment to their readers. But, other things 
 being equal, the signature of Professor Philip Schaff, 
 for example, or President M'Cosh, or Principal Daw- 
 son, will no sooner secure for it an insertion than 
 would the signature — say of Professor Tyndall, 
 Professor Huxley, or even Ernest Renan. 
 
 The orthodox religious world, therefore, cannot 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 79 
 
 come either too soon or too thoroughly to under- 
 stand the fact, that, so far as all practical purposes 
 are concerned, the days of its religious domination 
 over the secular press of Christendom at large arc 
 among the by-gones. It can continue, indeed, to 
 rule over its denominational organs of expression, 
 over its boards of publication, over its tract societies, 
 and the like; but the secular press does not propose 
 any longer to submit even to a religious censorship, 
 much less to a religious dictatorship. 
 
 In fact, not a few of the distinctively religious 
 journals are in these days making themselves ex- 
 ceeding vexatious, not to say to the last degree 
 obnoxious, to the super-orthodox among the Pro- 
 testant potentates and powers, by the liberties they 
 are taking. Contrast, for example, in this respect, 
 such publications as either *'The New York In- 
 dependent " or '' The Christian Union," with such 
 other publications as either "The Christian Intelli- 
 gencer" or "The New York Observer." The latter 
 represent the conservative, the non-progressive, the 
 mediaeval, the repressive, the inquisitorial spirit ; the 
 former, within evangelical limits, represent the pro- 
 gressive, the modern, the liberal, loving, and catholic- 
 minded spirit, in present Protestant journalism. 
 
 And now another paragraph or two, and we have 
 done. 
 
 Professor Hurst informs us that when the first 
 
l80 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 " Life of Jesus " — that earthquake-shock of the 
 nineteenth century — appeared in Germany, the 
 most obscure provincial journals contained copious 
 extracts from it, and vied with each other in defend- 
 ing or opposing its positions. ^3 Pressense says that 
 the people of France have been initiated into the 
 conclusions of Strauss, though they may have never 
 even heard of the famous '^ Leben Jesri,'' and that 
 Renan's " Vie de Jesus " has been there, as elsewhere 
 in all Christian countries, very widely circulated. 
 He likewise laments that scepticism should there 
 find its way into the lightest publication ; that the 
 novel and the newspaper should emulate each other 
 in its diffusion ; and that the short review articles, 
 skilled in giving grace and piquancy to erudition, 
 should furnish it with arguments which appear 
 weighty, because they are so in comparison with the 
 pleasantries of Voltaire.24 And Professor George P. 
 P^isher feels it his duty to warn the very Christian 
 teachers of this country that they are not aware how 
 widely the seeds of unbelief are scattered through 
 books and journals which find a hospitable welcome 
 even in Christian households. ^5 
 
 Under these circumstances we modern heretics 
 may well take heart again, and address ourselves, 
 in the various departments of modern biblical and 
 religious thought and research, with a renewed 
 energy and vigor, to whatever task may have been 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. l8l 
 
 specifically and individually allotted to us in connec- 
 tion with the great religious movement now in prog- 
 ress throughout the length and breadth of Chris- 
 tendom. With at least the secular press so manifestly 
 and so generally for us, what does it signify, even 
 though the whole orthodox religious world should be 
 against us ? In a word, into the hands of the secular 
 press we may now confidently commit both the 
 present and the future fortunes of the highest 
 religious thoughts we have to utter, and the most 
 progressive religious conclusions at which we may 
 hereafter, from time to time, arrive. Granted that 
 these higher religious thoughts, as we conceive them 
 to be, will in all cases be to some degree erroneous, 
 and in some instances will be positively untenable. 
 Granted, also, that our more advanced religious con- 
 clusions will always demand a much more rigid and 
 exhaustive verification than we have been able to 
 give them in private, no matter how many years we 
 may have felt constrained to withhold them from the 
 public, and no matter, likewise, in view of what 
 prolonged and patient processes of investigation we 
 may have come eventually to adopt them. Still, 
 when we have fairly done our personal part in private 
 to eliminate from our higher religious thoughts their 
 elements of error, and to verify, as best we can, our 
 more advanced religious conclusions, we then have 
 the manifest right, through the secular editor or 
 
1 82 THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS CRISIS. 
 
 publisher, or both, to submit them to the considera- 
 tion, to the criticisms, to the acceptance, or to the 
 rejection of the heretical, or modern religious brother- 
 hood at large. 
 
 As for the rest, much as still remains to say in 
 order to treat of this immensely important question 
 of religious liberty with any degree of completeness, 
 we will only add that we can just now recall no more 
 noble and stimulating words in which we may con- 
 clude than these by Herbert Spencer : '* Whoever 
 hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest 
 truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the 
 time, may re-assure himself by looking at his acts 
 from an impersonal point of view. Let him duly 
 realize the fact that opinion is the agency through 
 which character adapts external arrangements to 
 itself — that his opinion rightly forms part of this 
 agency — is a unit of force constituting, with other 
 such units, the general power which works out social 
 [and religious] changes, and he will perceive that he 
 may properly give full utterance to his innermost 
 conviction, leaving it to produce what effect it may. 
 It is not for nothing that he has in him these sym- 
 pathies with some principles, and repugnance to 
 others. He, with all his capacities and aspirations 
 and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of the 
 time. He must remember that while he is a de- 
 scendant of the past he is a parent of the future. 
 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY. 1 83 
 
 and that his thoughts are as children born to him 
 which he may not carelessly let die. He, like every 
 other man, may properly consider himself as one of 
 the myriad agencies through whom works the Un- 
 known Cause [by which some of us at least will 
 understand the Divine Heavenly Father], and when 
 the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, 
 he is thereby authorized to profess and act out that 
 oelief. . . . Not as adventitious, therefore, will the 
 wise man regard the faith which is in him. The 
 highest truth he sees, he will fearlessly utter, know- 
 ing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing 
 his right part in the world ; knowing that if he can 
 effect the change he aims at, well ; if not, well also, 
 though not so well." ^6 
 
INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED, QUOTA- 
 TIONS, AND EVIDENCES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 j: rce Modern RepreseJitations of the Life of Jesus. Four 
 Discourses delivered before the Evangelical Union at 
 Hanover, Germany, by Dr. Gerhard Uhlhorx, First 
 Preacher to the Court. Translated from the third Ger- 
 man edition, by Charles E. Grinnell. Boston: 1868. 
 p. I. 
 
 Modern Dotibt and Christian Belief. A Series of Apolo- 
 getic Lectures addressed to Earnest Seekers after Truth. 
 By Theodore Christlieb, D.D,, University Preacher 
 and Professor of Theology at Bonn. Translated, with the 
 author's sanction, chiefly by the Rev. H. U. Weitbrecht, 
 Ph.D., and edited by the Rev. T. L. Kingsbury, M.A., 
 Vicar of Eaton Royal and Rural Dean. New York: 
 1874. p. 28. 
 
 The Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Chj-ist. 
 Eight Lectures delivered before the University of Oxford, 
 in the year 1866, on the Foundation' of the late Rev. John 
 A. Bampton, M.A., Canon of Salisbury. 'By Henry 
 Parry Liddon, ALA., Student at Christ Church, Preb- 
 endary of Salisbury, and Chaplain to the Lord Bishop of 
 Salisbury. New York : 1868. Preface, pp. xv , xvi. 
 
 185 
 
1 86 INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 
 
 4. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, with an Exaniinatio7i of 
 
 the Spec2ilatio7is of Strauss in his Neiu Life of Jesus, 
 and an Introductory View of the Present Position of 
 Theological Inquiry itt reference to the Existence of God 
 and the Miraculous Evidences of Christianity. By the 
 late Robert Macpherson, D.D., Professor of Theology 
 in the University of Aberdeen. Edinburgh and London : 
 1867. p. 6. 
 
 5. A/., p. 31- 
 
 6. The Early Years of Christianity. By E. De Pressens^, 
 
 D.D., author of "Jesus Christ, his Times, Life, and 
 Work." Translated by Annie Harwood. The Apostol- 
 ical Era. New York: 1870. Preface to English edition, 
 pp. 6, 7. 
 
 7. A Critical History of Free Thouglit in Referetice to the 
 
 Christian Religion. Eight Lectures preached before the 
 University of Oxford in the year 1862, on the Foundation 
 of the late Rev. John A. Bampton, M.A., Canon of Salis- 
 bury. By Adam Storey Farrar, M.A., Michel Fellow 
 of Queen's College, Oxford. New York : 1873. General 
 Analysis of Lectures, from IV. to VI IL, inclusive. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 1. Deliveij and Development of Christian Doctrine. The 
 
 fifth series of the Cunningham Lectures. By Robert 
 Rainy, D.D., Professor of Divinity and Church History, 
 New College, Edinburgh. Edinburgh: 1874. p. 257. 
 
 2. Scotch Sermons, 1880. New York: 1881. pp. 194, i95- 
 
 3. Decreta Doi^matica Concilii Vaticaiii de Fide Catholica et 
 
 de Ecclesia Christi, Caput III. 
 
 4. Id., Caput II. 
 
 5. Id., Caput II. 
 
INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 18/ 
 
 6. The Encyclopcedia Brilauftica. Ninth Edition. Boston: 
 
 1876. Art. Canon. 
 
 7. Critical History of Free Thought^ p. 473. 
 
 8. A New Life of Jesus. By David Friedrich Strauss. 
 
 Authorized translation. In two volumes. London and 
 Edinburgh: 1865. Vol. I., Preface, p. xiv. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 1. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church. Twelve Lec- 
 
 tures on Biblical Criticism. By W. Robertson Smith, 
 M.A. New York: 1881. pp. 132, 133, 174, 175. 
 
 2. Encyclopedia Britannica. Art. Canon. 
 
 3. The Old Testament in the Jewish Churchy p. 153. 
 
 4. Canon Westcott, in Dr. William SniitK's Dictionary of 
 
 the Bible. Art. Canon. 
 
 5. Dr. Davidson. Ency. Brit. Art. Canon. 
 
 6. Id. 
 
 7. Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. Part II., 
 
 From Samuel to the Captivity. By Arthur Penrhyn 
 Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. New York: 
 1877. p. 650. 
 
 8. Ency. Brit. Art. Bible. 
 
 9. The Old Testa?ne7it in the Jewish Church., pp. 321-324. 
 
 10. Ency. Brit. Art. Canon. 
 
 11. Decreta Dogmatica, Caput II. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 1. New Life of Jesus. Vol. II., p. 183. 
 
 2. Id., p. 183. 
 
 3. Modern Doubt and Christian Belief p. 473. 
 
1 88 INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 
 
 4. Studies of Religious History and Criticism. By M. Ernest 
 
 Renan, Member of the Institute of France, and Author 
 of the Life of Jesus. Translated by O. B. Frothingham. 
 With a Biographical Introduction by M. Henri Harrisse. 
 New York : 1864. p. 339. 
 
 5. This citation from Professor Tischendorf may be found 
 
 in the Bre?nen Lectures on Fimdamental, Living, Religious 
 Questions, translated by Rev. D. Heagle, and published 
 in Boston (1871), pp. 217, 218. 
 
 6. Jesus Christ, his Times, Life, and Work. By E. De Pres- 
 
 sense, D.D. New York: 1868. p. 127. 
 
 7. Id., p. 144. 
 
 8. Id., p. 144, note. 
 
 9. Id., pp. 127, 128. 
 
 10. TJie Old Testa?nent in the Jewish Church, pp. 420-422. 
 
 11. Compare 2 Kings xxiii. with 2 Chron. xxxiv. 
 
 12. Compare 2 Kings xii. with 2 Chron. xxiv. 
 
 13. Compare i Kings xv. 14, xxii. 43, with 2 Chron. xiv. 5, 
 
 xvii. 6, XV. 17, XX. 33. 
 
 14. Deer eta Dogmatica, Caput II. 
 
 15. Hours with the Bible, or the Scriptures in the Light of 
 
 Modej'n Discovery and Knowledge f-om CreatioJi to the 
 Patriarchs. By Cunningham Geikie, D.D., author of 
 "The Life and Words of Christ." New York: 1881. 
 
 P- 39- 
 
 16. Id., p. 41. 
 
 17. N'ature and the Bible. A course of Lectures delivered in 
 
 New York in December, 1874, on the Morse Foundation 
 of the Union Theological Seminary. By J. W. Dawson, 
 LL.D., F.R.S., Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill 
 University; author of "Archaia," "Arcadian Geology," 
 "The Story of the Earth," etc. New York: 1875. P- 26. 
 
 18. Id., p. 25. 
 
INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 1 89 
 
 19. The History of Creation^ or the Development of the Earth 
 
 and its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes. 
 A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of Evolution in 
 general, and that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in 
 particular. From the German of Ernest H*aeckel, Pro- 
 fessor in the University of Jena. Revised translation, by 
 E. Ray Lankester, M.A., Fellow of Exeter College, 
 •Oxford. In two volumes. New York: 1876. Vol. I., 
 
 PP- 38, 39- 
 
 20. Critiques and Addresses. By Thomas Henry Huxley, 
 
 LL.D., F.R.S. New York: 1873. P- 239. 
 
 21. N'atiire and the Bible, pp. 'j'j, 'jZ. 
 
 22. Id., pp. 84-88. 
 
 23. Critiques and Addresses, p. 238. 
 
 24. Gen. ii. 20, 21. 
 
 25. Moral Difficulties co7inected with the Bible. Second 
 
 Series. Being the Boyle Lectures for 1872. Preached in 
 her Majesty's Chapel at Whitehall. By James Augustus 
 Hessey, D.C.L., Preacher to the Honorable Society of 
 Gray's Inn, Prebendary of St. Paul's, and Examining 
 Chaplain to the Bishop of London, late Head-Master of 
 Merchant Taylor's School, and sometime Bampton Lec- 
 turer and Grinfield Lecturer in the University of Oxford. 
 London : 1873. P- 35- 
 
 26. Ency. Brit. Art. Bible. 
 
 27. Studies of Religious History and C7'iticism, p. 212. 
 
 28. History of the Old Testament in the Jewish Church, pp. 
 
 145, 146. 
 
 29. fosephus contra Apion, i. 8. 
 
 30. Irenceus adv. Haer., ii. 28, 2. 
 
 3 1 . Old Testament in the Jewish Church., p. 99. 
 
 32. Id., p. 391. 
 
 33. Id., p. 429. 
 
190 INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 
 
 34. 2 Sam. xi. 15. 
 
 35. Professor W. Robertson Smith. Old Testament in the 
 
 Jewish Churchy p. 174. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 1. The Life of Jesus. By Ernest Renan, Membre de 
 
 rinstitut. New York: 1868. p. 19. 
 
 2. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. no. 
 
 3. History of the Jewish Church. Second series, pp. 651, 
 
 652. 
 
 4. Siipernatu7'al Religion. An Inquiry into the Reality of a 
 
 Divine Revelation. In two volumes. London: 1874. 
 Vol. I., p. 449. 
 
 5. The Contents and Origitt of the Acts of the Apostles criti- 
 
 cally investigated. By Dr. Eduard Zeller. In two 
 volumes. London: 1875. Vol. I., p. 159. 
 
 6. Supernatural Religion. Vol. II., p. 474. 
 
 7. Essays 07i the Supertiattiral Origin of Christiaftity, with 
 
 Special Reference to the Theories of Renaii, Strauss, and 
 the Tiibingeti School. By George P. Fisher, D.D., Pro- 
 fessor of Church History at Yale College. New York: 
 1871. p. 159. 
 
 8. Id., p. 41. 
 
 9. Id., p. 44. 
 
 10. New Life of Jesus. Vol. I., p. 56. 
 
 11. When were our Gospels written? By Constantine 
 
 Tischendorf. New York. p. 58. 
 
 1 2. The A uthorship of the Fourth Gospel : External Evidences. 
 
 By Ezra Abbot, D.D., LL.D., Bussey Professor of New 
 Testament Criticism and Interpretation in the Divinity 
 School of Harvard University. Boston: 1880. p. 20. 
 
INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. ' I91 
 
 13. Id., pp. 24, 25. 
 
 14. Id., p. 96. 
 
 15. Id., p. 21. 
 
 16. Supeniaticral Religion. Vol. I., p. 304. 
 
 17. A/., pp. 318, 320. 
 
 18. A' eiu Life of Jesus. Vol. I., p. 141. 
 
 19. Evangelical History. 1838. 77/6' Present Stage of the 
 
 Gospel Question. 1856. 
 
 20. Vie de Jesus. Treizieme edition. Paris: 1867. See, for 
 
 illustrations, pp. Ixiii, 514, 536. 
 
 21. New Life of Jesus. Vol. I., pp. 129-140. 
 
 22. Supernatural Origin of Christianity, pp. 191, 192. 
 
 23. Id., 38. 
 
 24. Breinen Lecttire, p. 218. 
 
 25. Professor George P. Fisher. Supernatural Origin of 
 
 Christia?tity, p. 191. 
 
 26. Introductioti to the Study of the Gospels, p. 249. 
 
 27. Life of Jesus, pp. 28, 29. 
 
 28. Professor George P. Fisher. Stipernatu7'al Origin of 
 
 Christianity, p. 191. 
 
 29. The Authorship of the FoiU'th Gospel, p. 7. 
 
 30. New Life of Jesus. Vol. I., p. 152. 
 
 31. Life of Jesus, pp. 28, 34. • 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 1. Literature a7id Dogma. An Essay towards a Better Appre- 
 
 hension of the Bible. By Matthew Arnold, D.C.L., 
 formerly Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, 
 and Fellow of Oriel College. Boston: 1876. Preface, 
 pp. vi, vii. 
 
 2. Decreta Dogmatica, Caput II. 
 
192 INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 
 
 3. Delivery and Develop77tent of Christian Doctrine^ p. 115. 
 
 4. The Limits of Religious Tho2ight exainined. Eight Lec- 
 
 tures delivered before the University of Oxford, in the 
 year 1858, on the Bampton Foundation. By Henry 
 LoNGUEViLLE Mansel, B.D., Reader in Moral and Meta- 
 physical Philosophy at Magdalen College, Tutor and late 
 Fellow of St. John's College. Boston: 1866. p. 47. 
 
 5. Modern Doubt ajid Christian Belief p. 232. 
 
 6. Id., p. 237. 
 
 7. Ruling Ideas in Early Ages, and their Relatioti to Old Testa- 
 
 ment Faith. Lectures delivered to Graduates of the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford. By J. B. Mozley, D.D., Regius Pro- 
 fessor of Divinity, and Canon of Christ Church. New 
 York: 1877. Lecture IV. 
 
 8. I Chron. xx. 3. 
 
 9. Josh. xxiv. 12. 
 ID. Id., X. II. 
 
 11. 2 Sam. vii. 10. 
 
 12. 2 Chron. xxii. 21. 
 
 13. Josh. ix. 24; compare with Exod. xxiii. 32; Deut. vii. i, 2. 
 
 14. Judg. xvi. 23. 
 
 15. 2 Sam. Ixxxi. 10. 
 
 16. 2 Kings xviii. 29-35. 
 
 17. Gen. iii. 8. 
 
 18. Ency. Americana. Art. Cromwell. 
 
 19. Id. 
 
 20. Id. 
 
 21. Id 
 
 22. Josh. vi. 1-20. 
 
 23. Id., X. 13. 
 
 24. Id, X. 13. 
 
 25. Life of Jesus, pp. 283, 284. 
 
INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 1 93 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 1. The Old Faith and the New: A Confession. By David 
 
 Friedrich Strauss. Authorized translation, by Ma- 
 THiLDE Blind. London: 1873. p. 168. 
 
 2. Studies of Religious History and Criticism^ pp. 339, 340. 
 
 3. Id., p. 47. 
 
 4. Id., p. s(>. 
 
 5. Id, p. 51. 
 
 6. Id., p. 273. 
 
 7. English Conferences of Ernest Renan : Roine and Chris- 
 
 tianity, Marcus A urelius. Translated by Clara Erskine 
 Clement. Boston: 1880. p. 30. 
 
 8. Studies of Religious History and Criticism, p. 385. 
 
 9. Id., 106. 
 
 zo. Nature and Utility of Religion and Theism. By John 
 Stuart Mill. London: 1874. pp. 255, 256. 
 
 11. First Principles of a New System of Philosophy. By 
 
 Herbert Spencer. New York: 1872. pp. loi, 102. 
 
 12. Id., pp. 1 1 6-1 18. 
 
 13. Fragnients of Science. A Series of Detached Essays and 
 
 Reviews. By John Tyndall, F.R.S. London: 1876. 
 
 P- 535- 
 
 14. Id., p. 355. 
 
 15. Id.,^. 529. 
 
 16. Studies of Religious History and Criticism, pp. 340, 341. 
 
 17. See, for illustration, First Principles, pp. 108, 123. 
 
 18. Fragments of Science, p. 537. 
 
 19. Id., p. 576. 
 
 20. Id., p. 328. 
 
194 INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 1. Brenien Lecture^ p. 200. 
 
 2. The Old Faith and the N'ew, p. 53. 
 
 3. Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, p. 340. 
 
 4. The Old Faith and the New, pp. 54, 55. 
 
 5. Life ofjcsns, p. 104. 
 
 6. The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, considered 
 
 in Eight Lectures, delivered before the University of Ox- 
 ford, on the Bainpton Fou7idation. By Thomas Dehany 
 Bernard, M.A., of Exeter College, and Rector of Walcot. 
 Boston: 1873. Preface, p. xiv. 
 
 7. Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ, his Life and Works, his 
 
 Epistles and Teachings. A Contribution to a Critical 
 History of Primitive Christianity. By Dr. Ferdinand 
 Christian Baur, Professor of Evangelical Theology in 
 the University of Tiibingen. In two volumes. Second 
 edition. Issued after his death by Dr. E. Zeller. Trans- 
 lated from the German. London : 1873. Vol. I., p. 299. 
 
 8. Critical History of Fj-ee Tho7tght,\). 146. 
 
 9. Letters, Lectures, and Reviews, including the Phrontisterion, 
 
 or Oxford in the Ni7tetee7ith Century. By the Very Rev. 
 Henry Longueville Mansel, D.D., sometime Fellow 
 and Tutor at St. John's College, Wayneflete Professor of 
 Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy, Magdalen College, 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Canon of Christ 
 Church, Oxford, and Dean of St. Paul's. Edited by 
 Henry W. Chandler, M.A., Fellow of Pembroke Col- 
 lege, Oxford, and Wayneflete Professor of Moral and 
 Metaphysical Philosophy. London: 1873. P- S^S- 
 
 10. Nature and Utility of Religion, p. 114. 
 
 11. /^., pp. 253-255. 
 
 12. Studies of Religious History and Criticism, p. 161. 
 
INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 1 95 
 
 • 3. Id., p. 186. 
 
 14. Life of Jesus, pp. 365-367. 
 
 15. New Life of Jesus. Vol. II., pp. 437, 438. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 1. David Friedrich Strauss in his Life and Writings. By 
 
 Eduard Zeller. Authorized translation. London: 
 
 1874. pp. ss-n- 
 
 2. New Life of Jesus. Vol. I. Inscription to the Memory of 
 
 William Strauss, p. iii. 
 
 3. Renan's Studies of Religious History and Criticism, p. ix. 
 
 4. Id., p. xxii. 
 
 5. Id., pp. xxiv., XXV. 
 
 6. History of Rationalisin, embracitig a Survey of the Present 
 
 State of Protestant Theology. By John F. Hurst, D.D. 
 Fifth edition. New York. pp. 497, 498. 
 
 7. Id., pp. 503-505. 
 
 8. Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews. By Thomas 
 
 Henry Huxley, LL.D., F.R.S., author of " Man's Place 
 in Nature," " Origin of Species," etc. New York : 1871. 
 
 P- 344. 
 
 9. Fragmetits of Science, p. 379. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 1. Short Studies on Great Subjects. By James Anthony 
 
 Froude, M.A., late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. 
 New York : 1871. p. 226. 
 
 2. The Contemporary Review. London: 1872. Vol. XX., pp. 
 
 205, 206. 
 
 3. Id., p. 210. 
 
 4. Fragments of Science, p. 471. 
 
 5. Id., p. 466. 
 
196 INDEX TO AUTHORS CITED. 
 
 6. Conte7nporary Review. Vol. XX., pp. 'j^'^^ 779. 
 
 7. The General Epistle of James^ v. 14, 15. 
 
 8. Contemporary Review. Vol. XX,, p. 782. 
 
 9. Fragments of Science^ pp. 468, 469. 
 
 10. Id., pp. 482, 483. 
 
 1 1 . History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. By 
 
 John William Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor in the 
 University of New York ; author of " A Treatise on 
 Human Physiology," "History of the Intellectual De- 
 velopment of Europe," " History of the American Civil 
 War," and of many Experimental Memoirs on Chemical 
 and other Scientific Subjects. New York: 1875. p. 168. 
 
 12. Id., p. 171. 
 
 13. Id., pp. 160, 161. 
 
 14. Id., p. 52. 
 
 15. /r/., p. 215. 
 
 16. Syllabus Errorum, § HI. 
 
 17. Critiques and Addresses, p. 240. 
 
 18. Scribfier's Monthly for August, September, and October, 
 
 1873. 
 
 19. Id., for November, 1873. ^^' Holland's " Topic of the 
 
 Times," on " The New York Observer." 
 
 20. The same number of " Scribner," and the same " Topic 
 
 of the Times." 
 
 21. The Person of Christ, the Miracle of History. With a 
 
 Reply to Strauss and Renan, and a Collection of Testi- 
 monies of Unbelievers. By Philip ScHAFF, D.D. Boston, 
 p. 230. 
 
 22. Studies of Religious History a7id Ci'iticism, p. 183. 
 
 23. History of Ratiofialism, p. 257. 
 
 24. The Early Years of Christianity. Preface to the English 
 
 edition, p. 4. 
 
 25. The Sjipernatural Origin of Christianity, p. 5. 
 
 26. First Principles, p. 123. 
 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS have in preparation a scries of volumes, to be 
 Issued under the title of 
 
 CURRENT DISCUSSION, 
 
 A COLLECTION FROM THE CHIEF ENGLISH ESSAYS ON QUESTIONS 
 OF THE TIME. 
 
 The seiies will be edited by Edward L. Burlingame, and is designed t« 
 bring together, for the convenience of readers and for a lasting place in tht 
 library, those important and representative papers from recent English period!- 
 cals, which may fairly be said to form the best Jiistory of the thought and in- 
 vestigation of the last few years. It is characteristic of recent thought and 
 science, that a much larger proportion than ever before of their most important 
 work has appeared in the form of contributions to reviews and magazines ; the 
 thinkers of the day submitting their results at once to the great public, which is 
 easiest reached in this way, and holding their discussions before a large audience, 
 rather than in the old form of monographs reaching the special student only. 
 As a consequence there are subjects of the deepest present and permanent in- 
 terest, almost all of whose literature exists only ip 'he shape of detached papeis, 
 individually so famous that their topics and opinions are in everybody's mouth 
 —yet collectively only accessible, for re-reading and comparison, to those who 
 have carefully preserved them, or who are painstaking enough to study long 
 files of periodicals. 
 
 In so collecting these separate papers as to give the reader a fair ■{ not 
 complete view of the discussions in which they form a part ; to make ihetr^ 
 convenient for reference in the future progress of those discussior-'s ; and esjjeci- 
 ally to enable them to be preserved as an important part of the histojy d 
 modern thought,— it is believed that this series will do a ser^'ice that will be 
 widely appreciated. 
 
 Such papers naturally include three classes :^those which by their originality 
 have recently led discussion into altogether new channels ; those which have 
 attracted deserved attention as powerful special pleas upon one side or the 
 other in great current questions ; and finally, purely critical and analytical dis- 
 sertations. The series will aim to include the best representatives of each of 
 these classes of expression. 
 
It is designed to arrange the essays included in the Series under such gen. 
 eral divisions as the following, to each of which one or more volumes wUl be 
 devoted : — 
 
 INTERNATIONAL POLITICS. NATURAL SCIENCE. 
 
 RECENT ARCH^OLOGICAL DISCOVERY, 
 
 QUESTIONS OF BELIEF, 
 
 ECONOMICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE, 
 
 HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY, LITERARY TOPICS. 
 
 Among the material selected for the first volume (International Politics), 
 «^hich will be issued immediately, are the following papers : 
 
 Archibald Forbes's Essay on "The Russians, Turks, and Bul- 
 RAr,iANs;" Vsct. Stratford de Redcliffe's "Turkey;" Mr. Glad- 
 stone's "Montenegro;" Professor Gold win Smith's Paper on "The 
 I'OLiTicAL Destiny of Canada," and his Essay called " The Slaveholder 
 AND the Turk;" Professor Blackie's "Prussia in the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury ; " Edward Dicey's "Future of Egypt;" Louis Kossuth's 
 "What is in Store for Europe;" and Professor Freeman's "Relation 
 of the English People to the War." 
 
 Among the contents of the second volume (Questions of Belief), are : 
 
 The two well-known "Modern Symposia;" the Discussion by Professor 
 Huxley, Mr. Hutton, Sir J. F. Stephen, Lord Selborne, James Martin- 
 eau, Frederic Harrison, the Dean of St. Paul's, the Duke of Argyll, 
 and others, on "The Influence upon Morality of a Decline in a Re- 
 ligious Belief; " and the Discussion byHuxLEY, Hutton, Lord Blatchford, 
 the Hon. Roden Noel, Lord Selborne, Canon Barry, Greg, the Rev. 
 Baldwin Brown, Frederic Harrison, and others, on "The Soul and 
 Future Life. Also, Professor Calderwood's "Ethical Aspects of the 
 Development Theory ; " Mr. G. H. Lewes's Paper on "The Course of 
 Modern Thought;" Thomas Hughes on "The Condition and Pros- 
 spects of the Church of England;" W. H. Mallock's "Is Lim 
 Worth Living ? " Frederic Harrison's " The Soul and Future Life ; ' 
 and the Rev. R. F. Littled ale's " The Pantheistic Factor in Christian 
 Thought/* 
 
 The volumes will be printed in a handsome crown octavo form, and will 
 sell for about $i 50 eacli, 
 
 G. V, PU^rNAM'S SONS, 182 Fifth Avenue, New York, 
 
 V, 
 
Xi 
 
immmim"' ^™'"^^y-Speer Library 
 
 Ll£Ii0l015 9988