LIBRJ^R Y 
 
 >F TU|; 
 
 Theological Seminary 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 BR 45 .H84 1875 
 Vaughan, Edward Thomas 
 Some reasons of our 
 Christian hope 
 
SOME REASONS 
 
 OF 
 
 OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE 
 
SOME REASONS 
 
 OF 
 
 OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE: 
 
 BEING THE 
 
 HULSEAN LECTURES FOR 1875, 
 
 EDWARD T. VAUGHAN, M.A. 
 
 RECTOR OF HARPENDEN, HONORARY CANON OF PETERBOROUGH, 
 AND FORMERLY FELLOW OF CHRISt's COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 ILontJon : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 i8;6. 
 
 lAll Rights reserved.] 
 
PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 HENRY ALFORD, D.D. 
 
 LATE DEAN OF CANTERBURY, 
 
 THESE LECTURES 
 
 ARE INSCRIBED, 
 
 AS A RECORD OF A FRIENDSHIP 
 
 BEGUN IN EARLY DAYS, 
 
 AND ONLY ENDING 
 
 WITH LIFE ITSELF. 
 
PRIITCETOTT 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The Lectures which this volume contains were 
 dehvered in Great St Mary's Church, Cambridge, 
 in December and January last, in fulfilment of the 
 office of Hulsean Lecturer for the year 1875. The 
 duties of the office, as prescribed by Mr Hulse's 
 will, have been modified by various orders of the 
 Court of Chancery and of the University Com- 
 missioners, Parts of the Lectures were necessarily 
 omitted in the delivery for want of time. 
 
 Their general plan is as follows. I have en- 
 deavoured first to define the nature of our Chris- 
 tian hope, and to shew that it is adapted to certain 
 real and deep wants of human nature \ I have 
 recognized, secondly, the history of our Lord's 
 earthly life, His death and resurrection, as the only 
 basis on which that hope can be rested ; and have 
 
 ^ Lecture i. 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 sought to shew further that some such history is 
 required to account for the origin of the Christian 
 Church, and for the admitted facts of the Christian 
 life, as these have been experienced, in the largest 
 possible variety of circumstances, during the last 
 eighteen centuries \ I have sought, thirdly, to de- 
 termine by strict examination the real value of the 
 direct evidence of the truth of the Christian history, 
 afforded by the various books included in the 
 Canon of the New Testament I 
 
 I have then gone back to the Scriptures of the 
 Old Testament, and have sought to shew that they 
 afford convincing proof of a divinely guided pre- 
 paration for the coming of the Son of Godl I 
 have sought finally to consider carefully certain 
 difficulties which are very generally felt to be 
 involved in those conceptions of Revelation and 
 Inspiration which, in some shape, seem to be neces- 
 sarily implied in our Christian faith^ 
 
 1 Lecture ii. 2 Lecture in. 3 Lecture iv. 4 Lecture v. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 The Lectures are intended to meet a want 
 which I believe to be real and pressing. The 
 wonderful progress of inquiry, historic, scientific, 
 and philosophical, in recent years, has given a 
 new shape to many old objections, and has pro- 
 duced many which were apparently unknown to the 
 generations in which our great English works on the 
 evidences were written. The difficulties of belief 
 have been eagerly and skilfully paraded in books 
 which have gained a more or less wide circulation ; 
 and are continually alluded to, often with an im- 
 plied assumption that they are insuperable, in 
 much of the popular literature of the day. For 
 the last few years an impression has prevailed 
 widely, even among those to whom it was most 
 unwelcome, that recent investigations have greatly 
 weakened, if they have not altogether destroyed, 
 the force of the formerly accepted evidences of 
 Christianity. 
 
 Many of those who have been and are dis- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 quieted by this apprehension, however intelligent 
 and well informed on general subjects, are unable 
 or unwilling to read large books, or to enter upon 
 profound and difficult investigations for themselves. 
 Those writings on the subject, whether popular or 
 philosophical, which satisfied a former generation, 
 do not deal directly enough with the sceptical 
 difficulties of our own day, to make the real force 
 of their argument felt by those to whom I wish 
 especially to address myself. I have endeavoured 
 to supply their want of a statement of the Chris- 
 tian argument, in a shape adapted to the diffi- 
 culties of the present day, which shall be clear 
 and true, as far as it goes, and shall serve in 
 some measure as a guide to further study of the 
 subject. 
 
 My aim in these Lectures has not been contro- 
 versial. I mean that I have not wished to reply 
 to any particular writer. I have aimed to speak 
 as a Christian to Christians, with resrard to the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 nature and the grounds of a hope in which we have 
 a common personal interest, but which we have no 
 wish to retain if it be not really founded in truth. 
 I have hoped to shew them that the history which 
 is the basis of our Christian hope is as fully proved 
 as any history can be ; and that the faith which 
 that history implies is reasonable in itself, and is 
 adapted to the real wants of man with a profound 
 wisdom plainly betokening its divine origin. 
 
 I am well aware that my aim, as above defined, 
 is a limited, and comparatively humble one, but 
 that, even so understood, the work undertaken is 
 difficult, and that I am very imperfectly qualified for 
 it. The argument which I have treated is indeed 
 one on which I have thought continually through 
 life ; and I have endeavoured to urge nothing 
 which I do not entirely believe, after long conside- 
 ration, to be worthy of the place which I have 
 given to it in the proof. But the subject is vast ; 
 and a life spent in active parochial work has not 
 
xu 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 allowed me time for that deep research, or even for 
 that patient consecutive thought on difficult ques- 
 tions, without which no man can hope to offer con- 
 tributions at once new and trustworthy to apo- 
 logetic theology. My hope has been that I might 
 help some, who have not time for extensive reading, 
 to see that they have within their reach, in facts and 
 considerations of which the truth can scarcely be 
 denied, ample ground for a reasonable conviction 
 that the Christian creed, and the life which should 
 result from its acceptance, are realities, not illu- 
 sions. — Some too, I hope, who are entering on a 
 wider range of reading, may find what I have 
 written useful, as an introduction to study, and a 
 clue through the labyrinth of detail in which a 
 young student sometimes becomes bewildered. 
 
 It would be impossible and useless to acknow- 
 ledge all I owe to others who have treated parts of 
 my subject. The books to which I am directly 
 indebted are generally well known and easily ac- 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 cessible. But the writers to whom one owes most 
 in reality are often just those to whom one can 
 least express one's obligations by reference to par- 
 ticular passages. They have helped to form one's 
 habits of thought. They have suggested subjects 
 of inquiry. It is scarcely necessary to say that I 
 have used freely, and am deeply indebted to, the 
 works of the Dean of Westminster, of Professors 
 Westcott and Lightfoot, with Professor Pusey's 
 invaluable introductions to and commentaries upon 
 the Minor Prophets. Sometimes I may seem to 
 have borrowed from these and other recent writers 
 results at which I had really arrived independently, 
 in years long past, and which I have only been 
 deeply thankful to find afterwards confirmed by 
 authority so much higher than my own. 
 
 I have found it pleasant and useful to myself to 
 have been engaged, during the preparation of my 
 lectures, with the great truths which lie nearest to 
 the roots of our Christian life, and should therefore 
 
xiv PREFACE, 
 
 be dearest to all to whom that life and its Lord 
 are dear. I can only wish that some of those who 
 read them may find something of the same plea- 
 sure and benefit. From a deep and fairly earned 
 conviction of the certainty and paramount im- 
 portance of these great verities, there should follow 
 immediately a deeper feeling of brotherhood with 
 all who receive them, however they may be ap- 
 parently separated from us by differences about 
 matters of less primary importance. We may hope 
 for a yet further consequence, in a deeper charity 
 toward those also who still find it difficult to re- 
 ceive them, yet are often, by the purity of their 
 lives, and their high moral aims, an example to 
 believers. 
 
 Harpenden Rectory, 
 March 30, 1876. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Our Christian Hope considered as meeting the 
 
 DEEPEST WANTS OF Man I 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 
 The Christian Church and Life must have had a 
 
 supernatural origin 47 
 
 LECTURE IIL 
 
 The weight of the Direct Evidence of the Truth 
 
 of the Gospel History 83 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 The Evidence of the Old Testament to a Divine 
 
 Preparation for Christ's coming . . . .153 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 The Christian Conceptions of Revelation and 
 Inspiration, and some of the Difficulties in- 
 volved IN them 207 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE CONSIDERED 
 
 AS MEETING THE DEEPEST 
 
 WANTS OE MAN 
 
 V. H. L. 
 i ' 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 I Pet. III. 15. 
 
 Be ready always to give an ajiswer to every man 
 which asketh you a reason of the hope that is in 
 you, \but'\ with meekness and fear. 
 
 Every one feels that during the last few years 
 there has been a very general unsettlement of 
 old-established opinion upon almost all questions 
 connected with religion and philosophy. Nearly 
 every question is regarded just now as an open 
 question. Any one of many answers to it may 
 possibly prove true ; and it is more likely than 
 anything else that no final and conclusive answer 
 will ever be found. 
 
 Those who would fain hold fast what they 
 and their fathers have believed and practised are 
 naturally pained by this. To them it is simply 
 terrible to think of the limitless and unfathom- 
 able ocean into which human life seems to be 
 
 drifting without chart and compass. The world 
 
 1—2 
 
4 PREVAILING UNSETTLEMENT [lect. 
 
 seems as firmly convinced as it can be of any- 
 thing, that the old chart and compass are delusive 
 or outworn. We shrink from the bewilderment, 
 the loss of salutary restraint, the absence of guid- 
 ance in life and of hope in death, which appear 
 to await our children. 
 
 Nor is the behaviour of those whose sympa- 
 thies are with the general movement usually such 
 as to diminish these natural apprehensions. Their 
 tone and manner constantly betray a want of any 
 just sense of the momentous import of the ques- 
 tions which they are raising. They seem either 
 never to consider, or, if they do consider, to pre- 
 sume upon, the want of fitness for any serious 
 and patient consideration of these questions, under 
 which a very large part of the audience to which 
 they address themselves — the inexperienced, the 
 half-educated, the uninformed on philosophical 
 and historical subjects — is necessarily labouring. 
 They seem to forget that, if belief has its pre- 
 judices and obstinacies, scepticism has also its 
 supercilious pride of superiority to prejudice, and 
 
r.] OF RELIGIOUS OPINION. 5 
 
 its emancipation from irksome restraints ; and that 
 these may commend it to an unreasoning accept- 
 ance, with many who will never take the trouble to 
 form a real conviction either way. They seem 
 unaware, or not displeased, that many wish to 
 live for this world only, and will welcome as a 
 relief from all check upon worldliness, the gospel 
 (as it would be to them) that the unseen world 
 has no certain existence, and consequently no 
 claim upon recognition in their plans of life. 
 
 I am not at all sure that this is more the 
 case now than it has often been before. Bishop 
 Butler complained that it was so in his day\ 
 Wilberforce, a generation or two later, says some- 
 where that before the Great Revolution of last 
 century it was so everywhere in the upper circles 
 of English life. Much of the apparent unbelief 
 around us is rather apparent than real, and does 
 but float on the still surface of society. It seems 
 to be widely diffused among men of the literary 
 
 1 See * Advertisement,' prefixed to the Analogy, dated May, 
 1736. 
 
6 PREVAILING UNSETTLEMENT [lect. 
 
 profession, which has become so important an 
 estate of the realm within living memory. It 
 is natural to suppose that the popular literature 
 of an age indicates the general current of its 
 thought and feeling. And, no doubt, in quiet 
 times the world does accept, without any audible 
 protest, the pleasant food provided by the period- 
 ical literature of the day. But whenever any 
 great emergency makes the world serious for a 
 few months, it becomes impatient of the scepti- 
 cism of its self-constituted teachers. At such 
 times a deep undercurrent of religious belief mani- 
 fests its unsuspected strength. And the energy 
 of Christian feeling displaying itself in various 
 forms, and the amount of self-denying Christian 
 labour which is being expended in well-doing on 
 every side of us, are tokens of the reality of Chris- 
 tian life existing in multitudes, such as may well 
 make any Christian thankful and hopeful, on a 
 broader view of our time, rather than dejected. 
 
 Still, after all abatements have been duly made, 
 it seems the fact that for some years past there 
 
I.] OF RELIGIOUS OPINION. 7 
 
 has been, and probably for some years to come 
 there will be, a general impression among educated 
 and intelligent men that the grounds of Christian 
 belief have been considerably weakened by the 
 progress of scientific, philosophic, and historical 
 inquiry. It is very generally assumed by many 
 popular writers and speakers, and the world is 
 impressed by the assumption, that the Christian 
 scriptures are irreconcilably at variance with ascer- 
 tained facts in science : — that the evidence of their 
 credibility is proved by historic criticism to be con- 
 siderably less than was formerly supposed : — that 
 many of the fundamental conceptions implied in 
 Christianity and its alleged evidence have been 
 proved by an accepted philosophy to be impossible. 
 That this impression does exist in very many 
 minds, may and must be confessed alike by those 
 who regret and those who rejoice in its existence. 
 
 What then shall be the attitude towards this 
 popular scepticism of those who still believe that 
 the foundation of their faith stands firm } Not, I 
 trust, one of fear, or of anger. That can only be 
 
8 IN WHAT SPIRIT AND WAY [lect. 
 
 possible to those who have some secret misgiving 
 as to the truth of their Creed. In them it may 
 be natural enough. For 
 
 When men are tost 
 On tides of strange opinion, and not sure 
 Of their own selves, they are wroth with their o^vn selves 
 And thence with others i. 
 
 But he who truly believes is sure, in the poet's sense, 
 of his own self; and therefore can afford to be 
 patient with those whom he believes to be in error. 
 Still less one of contempt. That is of all feelings 
 the most alien from a Christian's mind toward 
 those who (possibly with little fault of their own) 
 are casting away what he knows to be the greatest 
 blessing. Nor yet of such averseness from the task 
 of examining the foundations on which our faith 
 rests, as shall either make us refuse to inquire, 
 or become incapable of fair dealing, and of hearty 
 sympathy with any really earnest doubt and diffi- 
 culty which exists in the mind of others. 
 
 Neither shall we be hopeless, as some would 
 
 1 Queen Mary, Act III., Scene iv. 
 
I.] SHALL IT BE MET? 9 
 
 tell us that we ought to be, of any really good 
 result from serious examination of the nature and 
 the grounds of our belief 
 
 Of course there can be little hope of good at 
 present from discussion with those who are not in 
 earnest, because they think that truth and falsehood 
 in religious belief or non-belief differ little, and are 
 of little import to individuals or to the world. But 
 many of those who feel doubt and difficulty, and 
 even incline at present toward unbelief, are yet 
 men of deeply religious instincts, and of lives of 
 which the truthfulness, the purity, and the unself- 
 ishness may put that of many Christians to shame 
 by comparison. These men have a right to be 
 reasoned with patiently and kindly as well as fairly. 
 We are bound to shew those who approach the 
 question thus, what we believe, and why we believe 
 it. If they cannot yet receive the truth we live by, 
 we trust that many of them will hereafter feel their 
 way toward it, as the discipline of life forms in 
 them a maturer wisdom, deepens their knowledge 
 of human wants, and opens their hearts to receive 
 
lo IN WHAT SPIRIT AND WAY [lect. 
 
 the divinely given satisfaction of those wants which 
 our faith alone, as we believe, can afford. 
 
 And there are around us and them the many 
 who have no adverse prejudices to overcome ; who 
 have been trained in Christian belief, and are living, 
 or trying to live, Christian lives. These men and 
 women, for they are both, reasonably ask us, who 
 are older, and have made these matters the subjects 
 of our study, to shew them, if we can, that they 
 have no need to be ashamed of the belief which 
 they have learnt first in its simple elements from 
 a mother's lips ; which was then unfolded more 
 fully in the Christian teaching and worship which 
 have been among the best influences of their home 
 and school and University. They demand of us, 
 and often with a very touching meekness and fear, 
 a reason of the hope that is in us. They would 
 very gladly cherish the same hope in themselves, if 
 only they can be shewn that it is no delusion, but 
 a truth which may be tested, which does not fear 
 inquiry, and which has its own appropriate proof, — 
 a proof practically sufficient to sustain its weight. 
 
I.] SHALL IT BE MET 2 n 
 
 I can best hope to make useful my fulfilment 
 of the office intrusted to me, by trying to do the 
 work of which I have thus sketched the outline. 
 I do not address myself to philosophers and scien- 
 tific or deeply learned men, as sitch. They will 
 seek from others the removal of those doubts which 
 their special gifts and studies have made peculiarly 
 perplexing to themselves. They will not expect 
 satisfaction from one who has no claim to be re- 
 garded as their compeer upon their own ground ; 
 still less as their instructor. 
 
 I attempt a much humbler but I believe not at 
 all an unuseful work. I would address myself, if 
 I could hope that my words would reach them, to 
 the general mass of my intelligent and educated 
 fellow countrymen and countrywomen, on those 
 great matters which most deeply concern us simply 
 as human beings^ whatever our condition in life, 
 our acquirements, or abilities may be. I wish to 
 lay before those who will give me their attention 
 some plain and simple considerations, which satisfy 
 me, and which, after long consideration, I think 
 
12 
 
 GENERAL OBJECT OF [lect. 
 
 ought to satisfy them, that a Christian's hope is a 
 reasonable hope; a Christian's rule of duty is a 
 divinely given lazu ; the Christian belief, on which 
 both depend, a divinely revealed reality, I wish 
 to give them an antidote, God enabling me, to the 
 cavil and the sneer which flippant speakers and 
 writers too often throw before those who, as they 
 well know, will not, perhaps cannot sift them. 
 
 I wish, if it may be, to shew such persons that 
 any philosophy which recognizes all the facts of 
 human nature must needs recognize the existence 
 and many of the attributes of a Divine Being ; on 
 whom we and all nature depend ; and for the know- 
 ledge and love of whom man was made. Such a 
 philosophy must therefore leave room for the possi- 
 bility, and ought to confess the desirableness, of a 
 revelation of further truth concerning that Being 
 to man. I wish to shew them that real historic 
 inquiry, proceeding according to the laws which 
 govern all reasonable investigation of history, ought 
 to result in a conviction that the history which is 
 the basis of the Christian revelation is substantially 
 
I.] THESE LECTURES. 13 
 
 true. I wish to shew that it is only a misappre- 
 hension of the design and nature of the Christian 
 revelation, which has ever seemed to bring it into 
 collision with well-established truths of physical or 
 moral science. I wish above all to recognize and 
 give reason for a deep conviction that the Chris- 
 tian life, really lived as it may be and has been 
 lived by many in every age, is the best evidence 
 of its own divine original ; and that he who will 
 honestly try to live that life will in due time find a 
 better witness given him within himself than any 
 external proof, to which yet he does well to give 
 heed, as to a light shining in, a dark place, until the 
 day dawn, and the day star arise in his heart \ 
 
 It will be my aim then to do this, as far as possi- 
 ble, I know that it must be very imperfectly, within 
 the narrow limits necessarily assigned to my work. 
 And in doing it I wish to keep steadily in view the 
 truth of which St Peter's word ^hope^ rather than 
 'faith! seems chosen to remind us. 'Faith' is very 
 apt, and perhaps was so even before the age of the 
 
 1 2 Pet. i. 19. 
 
14 GENERAL OBJECT OE [lect. 
 
 Apostles ended ^ to degenerate into an expression for 
 the hard and dry belief that certain things are true. 
 ^ Hope' does still retain, and can scarcely ever lose, 
 its connotation of a looking for something in which 
 our own personal interest is made sure. " The hope 
 that is in you" means evidently the expectation of 
 some good thing for which we look as promised to 
 oicrselves. One man cannot properly be said to hope 
 for that which is promised to another, in which he 
 himself has no part. 
 
 Yet let me guard by anticipation against a 
 popular misinterpretation of the word hope, or 
 false inference from its use. Never let us think of a 
 Christian's hope as relating to blessings altogether 
 future. They are such in part ; and the perfection, 
 and the full enjoyment of them all, is matter not 
 of present possession, but of future expectancy. 
 But the future for which a Christian looks is not 
 something altogether new and unlike anything to 
 which he can attain in his present state of beingl 
 His future life, if we listen at all to any of those 
 
 1 Jude 3. James ii. r4. 2 jo]-,„ y_ ^^^ ^ j^i^^^ -;_ j^ 
 
I.] THESE LECTURES, 15 
 
 whom the Church has accepted as its teachers, 
 from the Apostles downward, is the development, 
 in their full perfection, of capacities and habits 
 which have their beginning in this life, and their 
 appropriate exercise in its daily trials. It is the 
 full enjoyment, unbroken and without hindrance, 
 of that which has its foretaste given even now, 
 though it be only known in part, through many 
 hindrances, in much imperfection. 
 
 The aim then of this first Lecture will be to 
 shew you, or remind you, w^hat the blessings are 
 substantially, or as to their essential nature, which 
 a Christian believes that he has now, and which he 
 hopes to have much more fully hereafter. In so 
 doing, we must mark distinctly the connexion, in 
 a Christian's belief, between those blessings and 
 the Person of the Saviour in whom he lives. 
 We must notice also how remarkably they meet 
 all the facts of human nature, and satisfy its 
 wants. In the subsequent Lectures I must en- 
 deavour to shew you some of the reasons which 
 assure us that in so believing and so hoping we 
 
1 6 GENERAL OBJECT OE [lect. 
 
 have noX. followed cunningly devised fables^, but are 
 maintaining truth as surely proved as it is full of 
 comfort to those who hold it in reality. 
 
 Our interest in the inquiry on which we are 
 entering must depend in great measure, of course, 
 on our answer to the question, what those blessings 
 are, which, as Christians we have in part, and hope 
 to have more perfectly . Is it little or much which 
 we have personally at stake, when we ask whether 
 our Christian faith has the rock for its foundation, 
 or some shifting sand? We do not wish to accept 
 for proof that which is not really proof, because 
 the thing to be proved is what we might wish to 
 find true. But neither do we wish to enter into the 
 evidence in a state of cold indifference as to the 
 result of the inquiry; which takes away all earnest- 
 ness and reality from the investigation. We will 
 watch, by God's help, against all self-deception, as 
 we proceed ; but we will not affect or try to forget 
 that the reality of the blessings which faith gives 
 us is a matter to us of life and death ; — of life and 
 
 1 See ^ Pet. i. i6. 
 
I.] THESE LECTURES. 17 
 
 death to ourselves if we are truly Christians; — of 
 the very greatest possible moment to the world, 
 whatever our own personal attitude towards the 
 Christian's hope may be. Moreover, it may well 
 be argued that what so satisfies man's heart must 
 come from Him who made it. 
 
 We must begin by recognizing some of those 
 facts of internal consciousness, common as we be- 
 lieve to all mankind, which our Christian faith 
 presupposes, and of which the recognition is neces- 
 sary to give meaning to its hopes. 
 
 First among them I place the sense, common I 
 believe to all men, of dependence on an unseen 
 Power; which is the elementary basis of all 
 religion. 
 
 I place next the sense of right and wrong with 
 
 regard to our own voluntary actions ; implying of 
 
 course, what I believe that no subtlety of analysis 
 
 can get rid of, the consciousness of will ; that is 
 
 of something in ourselves which is not subject to 
 
 any law of invariable sequence, such as rules (we 
 
 believe) in outward nature. Conscious of freedom 
 V. H. L. 2 
 
1 8 WANTS WHICH OUR [lect. 
 
 to will, we are conscious also that the exercise of 
 that will is subject to responsibility. We know 
 that regret and remorse are feelings essentially 
 different from each other. When we think of 
 our own voluntary acts, and of those states of 
 feeling which accompany or follow on them, and of 
 these alone, we perceive that some of them deserve 
 blame, and others approval. I do not aim to 
 analyse these facts, nor yet do I assume that 
 they cannot be analysed. For our present pur- 
 pose it is enough that, whether elemental or com- 
 pound facts, they are undeniable facts in human 
 nature, attested by all human' language and 
 action. 
 
 A third point, which I simply state in the 
 same way, is that this fact of conscience is closely 
 connected with that other fact of the sense of 
 dependence ; so that we do instinctively connect 
 our sense of right and wrong with the will and the 
 judgement of that unseen Being on whom we de- 
 pend. He approves what is right in our voluntary 
 actions, He disapproves what is wrong. 
 
CHRISTIAN HOPE MEETS. 
 
 19 
 
 I am well aware, of course, that fierce contro- 
 versy rages still as to the nature of some of these 
 facts, and their import. I only put such contro- 
 versy aside, as one of which our Christian faith and 
 hope do not absolutely require the determination. 
 In that broad practical meaning in which alone 
 we assume them, they are almost indisputable. 
 
 These facts being first recognised, certain others 
 must also be recognised, either as implied in these, 
 or as presupposed in order to give them meaning 
 and consistency, or as proved by long and wide 
 experience. 
 
 Such are the following. The nature of that 
 Being on whom we depend ; — His mind towards 
 ourselves ; — the state of our own actual relation 
 to Him ; — must be matter of the deepest import 
 to us. Our mind and heart alike crave for some 
 acquaintance with Him. Our natural affections 
 toward our parents have surely their yet nobler 
 counterparts in love and reverence toward Him 
 in whom we live. Conscience surely is the witness 
 to us of something in Him of which it is the image. 
 
 2 — 2 
 
20 WANTS WHICH OUR [lect. 
 
 It is the utterance of His mind, the reflexion of 
 His character. 
 
 And what then if, as is the case, what we see 
 around us, and what we are conscious of within 
 ourselves, be in great part displeasing to Him ? — 
 That sense of guilt when we have done wrong, 
 that shame, that anxiety, which accompanies re- 
 morse ; — are not these some indications of His 
 displeasure ? — And if the guilt and shame of wrong 
 doing aie found in our own heart, and if we hear 
 them uttered, and see proof that they are really 
 felt, by those around us ; — do we not all greatly 
 need some answer to the question, whether the 
 God in whom we live and move and are, is or is not 
 displeased with sin ; and if He be, then whether 
 any reconciliation with Him be possible, and in 
 what way effected ? 
 
 And if, which surely is the fact, there is some- 
 thing in us which anticipates the continuance of 
 existence, and of conscious existence, after that 
 death which awaits us all and must sever us, we 
 know not when, from those whom we love better 
 
l] christian hope meets, 21 
 
 than we love ourselves ; — then must not all this 
 anxiety with regard to our relations with the un- 
 known God become far more deeply intense ? 
 
 Who can look into his own heart and retrace 
 his past life without discovering much guilt there ? 
 which, if conscience be indeed the echo of the voice 
 of God within us, takes the name and nature of 
 sin. Who can look upon the world around him 
 and not see that sin has a wide dominion there ? 
 And who is there really anxious to purify his own 
 life and heart, that is not painfully conscious of 
 another truth ; namely, that his efforts to overcome 
 evil, either within himself or amongst his fellow- 
 men, are very often ineffectual because of a weak- 
 ness, sometimes even a perverseness of the will ? 
 
 Again, we are social beings, members as we 
 say of a vast human family, v/ith our fellow- 
 members of which we have various relations, with 
 whom and for whom we imcst live in part ; and 
 who in their turn must live for us in part ; — we de- 
 pending in a thousand ways on them, and they in 
 turn, or some of them, influenced by and depending 
 
2 2 WANTS WHICH OUR [lect. 
 
 in part upon ourselves. We find ourselves placed 
 by nature itself in families ; placed by the actual 
 order of the world in nations ; dwelling together as 
 citizens. Have these facts any basis in a divinely 
 appointed social order i* — Is there any higher and 
 better union between man and man than that 
 which we call civil, or natural, or even family life } 
 Any bond of union which shall underlie all these, 
 and give them holier and better meanings than a 
 merely earthly view of them can support ; be wider 
 in their scope than the widest of them-^more 
 intimate than the closest of them — more lasting 
 than the most enduring of them all } 
 
 Is there, again, we ask further, anywhere any 
 power which may be available for the improvement 
 of the world ; — for the regeneration not of the 
 individual man only, but of the society, of the 
 race } — Any motive which shall animate the indi- 
 vidual man to live for his fellow-men ; shall assure 
 him that so living he shall not live in vain, either 
 for himself or for others ; shall tell him that, even 
 when apparently defeated, the cause of truth and 
 
I.] CHRISTIAN HOPE MEETS. 23 
 
 right is really the winning cause, and shall at last 
 prevail ? These surely are wants most real ; well 
 deserving to be numbered amongst the observed 
 facts of human nature. 
 
 And one thing more we must place surely in 
 the same class with these, as even more undeniably 
 real than any other ; — the fact of death, and of our 
 need of something which shall enable us to meet 
 death in its inevitable hour. Without this, human 
 life remains not only a mystery unexplained, but a 
 thing mournful and hopeless, just in proportion as 
 it is deepest and fullest. When the ideal of man 
 is most nearly attained, in all that depends upon 
 himself; — when his mind is ripest and most richly 
 stored with knowledge ; — when all the lessons of 
 practical wisdom have been most truly learnt from 
 long experience ; — when the moral nature seems 
 most completely developed ; — when the affections 
 are expanded to their full perfection and directed 
 to the objects which of all on earth come nearest 
 to satisfy them ; — full often just then — not falling 
 gently after a season of calm decay, like the leaves 
 
24 WANTS WHICH OUR [lect. 
 
 in autumn, but rudely torn and shattered in the 
 midst of their fullest strength and tenderness — 
 death comes, and mars man's purposes, destroys 
 his hopes, blots out and abolishes all that he has 
 treasured, tears from him what he loves : and if 
 this life be all, so it is that the most perfect and 
 noblest thing on earth is utterly despoiled and 
 frustrated. This surely is a fact in human nature, 
 this fact of death, which needs, I will not say to be 
 explained ; — but to be met in some way with a 
 remedy, a counter/act, if I might use the word, 
 which shall balance if it may not remove the fact 
 of death, and so relieve human life from a depres- 
 sion too heavy to be endured. 
 
 I speak with a purely practical aim. I do not 
 propose to offer a complete enumeration, far less 
 analysis of these facts of consciousness. But I be- 
 lieve that these are some of the main facts of human 
 nature, with which any system purporting to be 
 the divine satisfaction of human wants, must neces- 
 sarily deal in some way, if it is to establish its 
 claim to be attended to by thoughtful men. The 
 
I.] CHRISTIAN HOPE MEETS, 25 
 
 sense of dependence on a Being In whom we live ; 
 the sense of responsibility to Him for the exercise 
 of our own will; the craving for friendship and 
 fellowship with Plim; the sense of guilt incurred by 
 acts done contrary to our duty towards Him ; the 
 sense of moral weakness, disabling us for the attain- 
 ment of that which we know that we ought to 
 attain; the sense of human fellowship, and of the 
 want of some divinely ordered way of entering into 
 that fellowship, and working for our fellow-men; 
 and, finally, the craving for some reversal of, or 
 remedy for, the universal doom of death: of these 
 wants, I say, any system, whether it be a con- 
 fessedly human philosophy of human life, or a so- 
 called revelation from above to man, must needs 
 take account : it must in some way attempt to meet 
 them, or it is self-convicted of futility. 
 
 None, I think, will deny that our Christian hope 
 does recognize and deal with them all in a way 
 of its own. It has its answer for each question 
 which we have asked. We have to ascertain in 
 the remainder of this Lecture, what that answer 
 
26 - THE NATURE OF [lect. 
 
 is, and in future Lectures to shew some reasons 
 for believing it to be the divinely given answer to 
 our need. 
 
 The Christian's answer must be understood as 
 including much which it pre-supposes and postu- 
 lates, rather than affirms as distinctively part of 
 itself. It assumes, and so implicitly reaffirms a 
 great deal concerning man which it never claims 
 to have made known to the world for the first time. 
 It fully recognizes all the most important facts of 
 human nature ; the will, the conscience, the affec- 
 tions, the sense of dependence on a Being, in whom 
 we live, with whom we are all in the most intimate 
 contact through conscience, which it teaches us to 
 regard as His voice in us. It reaffirms, what even 
 without it we might surmise, nay, go far to prove for 
 ourselves, that He has made and governs the world ; 
 that He is one whom we may venture to call a Per- 
 son, — a Being, that is, having will and affections and 
 moral character, — the archetype of man, as man 
 ought to be ; in whose likeness, as it expressly tells 
 us, we were made; designed for communion, friend- 
 
i] OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE. 27 
 
 ship, fellowship with Him, most mysterious yet 
 most real ; and finding in this fellowship the highest 
 aim, the truest dignity, the best happiness of our 
 nature, the only true rest and satisfaction of those 
 immortal longings, which we have in us until we 
 quench them. 
 
 So far I believe that the Christian's hope is 
 telling us only what a true analysis of the facts 
 of consciousness would teach the few who are 
 capable of making it. But it soon passes on to 
 affirm something new. It tells us that this God of 
 truth and righteousness, in whom we live, and 
 for union and communion with whom we were 
 made, has always cared for man. It tells us that, 
 from the earliest days of man's existence upon earth, 
 God has been caring for man, with regard to those 
 moral and spiritual wants, in which he differs from 
 and rises above the other creatures which God feeds 
 and clothes and sustains. From the early ages of 
 the world God has spoken as a Friend, a Father, 
 to man, that He may bring man into fellowship 
 with Himself, and maintain him in that fellowship. 
 
28 THE NATURE OF [lect. 
 
 God has not been willing to cease caring in this 
 way for man, when man seemed little careful to 
 feel after God that he might find Him. Whatever 
 else the Bible is, or professes to be, it is first and 
 above all the record of God's revelation of Himself 
 to man, as Friend and Father, righteous, holy, yet 
 full of compassion. It claims to be a faithful re- 
 cord of the way in which God has made Himself 
 known to men, and of the response which God has 
 drawn forth from the spirit of man. 
 
 And in the whole course and progress of this 
 revelation of God to man, it professes to unveil 
 man also to man himself. It recognizes, as we 
 have seen, and reauthenticates all which man can 
 read within himself, as to his moral and spiritual 
 being ; the existence of conscience, and its rightful 
 supremacy over the affections, and control of the 
 will. But it thereby casts also a light upon the 
 existing derangement and disorder of man's inner 
 being ; it convicts him of SIN, that is, of wrong, 
 considered as done against God. It compels man 
 to attend to, and to acknowledge the fact that con- 
 
l] our christian hope, 29 
 
 science is habitually either openly disobeyed, or 
 put to sleep by a process of self-flattery or self- 
 deception. It shews us that everywhere within 
 the world of man's life, whether we regard him 
 in his relations to God or to his fellow-men, 
 all is fatally disordered. Sin defiles the past and 
 the present ; and a certain moral impotency of the 
 will, which does not choose the good it sees above, 
 but the evil to which it is attracted from beneath, 
 overcasts, if it does not wholly destroy, all the hope 
 of the future. 
 
 Our Christian hope therefore assumes as its 
 foundation the fact that it is a hope given to a sinful 
 being, by an act of Grace resting upon an Atone- 
 ment made ; a hope of full redemption, as we shall 
 see presently, of perfect restoration ; but that hope 
 granted to one who, if left to himself, might have 
 had reason to despair. 
 
 I do not now trace the history of what we 
 affirm to have been God's preparation of the world 
 for the mission of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ. That will be the subject of my Fourth 
 
30 THE NATURE OE [lect. 
 
 Lecture. I only wish now to remind you that 
 our Christian hope does assume the fact, that 
 God's care for man as a spiritual being, did not 
 begin with the Incarnation, but culminated in this, 
 for w^hich the whole previous history of the world, 
 regarded on its divine side, was a preparatory dis- 
 cipline. No Christian understands his own position 
 who does not feel that it has for its basis a pre- 
 paratory dispensation, no less divinely ordered than 
 his own, though confessedly imperfect, because 
 earlier and preliminary. I wish now to begin 
 where our Christian creeds begin to add something 
 to that recognition of the Creator and Lord of 
 all, which is necessarily their first word. 
 
 Our distinctively Christian hope, then, or the 
 belief on which it rests, is that which the Church 
 has embodied in its Creeds, and claims to substan- 
 tiate by the Scriptures ; but which in its substance 
 is older than the Creeds or the Scriptures of the 
 New Testament themselves ; as old as the days in 
 which the Gospel history was told by the lips of 
 those who had themselves seen the Lord, and were 
 
I.] OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE, 31 
 
 gathered in His name in some upper chamber at 
 Troas^ or at the house of Justus which joined hard 
 to the synagogue at Corinth". Our hope toward God 
 rests primarily upon our beHef that after a long 
 season of preparation, — after speaking to men for 
 ages, in many parts and in varied ways, by the pro- 
 phets and righteous men of the Old Testament, — 
 God did eighteen hundred years ago speak to them 
 by One who was His Son in a way and meaning 
 in which no mere man ever was or can be. Our 
 hope, as beings conscious of sin and moral helpless- 
 ness, has for its foundation the belief that Jesus of 
 Nazareth lived that life and died that death which 
 our Gospels, at least in their broad outline, describe ; 
 that He rose again from the dead, and was seen 
 alive after His passion by certain chosen witnesses ; 
 in whose presence He ascended into heaven, in the 
 reality of glorified human nature ; that He is 
 now in heaven, and holds all the power of His 
 Father in heaven and earth. 
 
 We believe that when Jesus died and rose 
 
 1 Acts XX. 7, 8. 2 ^(,^5 xviii. 7. 
 
32 THE NATURE OF [lect. 
 
 again, He accomplished the redemption of the 
 world. We dare not indeed attempt, the Church's 
 wisest teachers never have attempted, to frame a 
 theory of Atonement. We believe that all human 
 conceptions of the nature and efficacy of the re- 
 demptive act must needs be most inadequate ; and 
 that if any one of them, however practically true 
 for its own purposes, be taken as expressing the 
 whole, and pursued into its consequences, it will 
 land us in conclusions repugnant alike to our 
 moral sense, and to Scripture. But we confess, 
 with all humility and thankfulness, that the death 
 of Christ was the Atonement^ ; — let us rather say, 
 following more closely the language as well as the 
 general tenor of Scripture, that Christ Himself, 
 who died for us the death of the cross, is the Atofie- 
 vient, the Propitiation for our sins, and not for ours 
 only, but also for the sins of the whole worlds 
 This truth we hold fast, as the firm foundation of 
 
 ^ Rom. V. lo, II. 
 
 2 Compare i Joh. ii. r, 2; iv. 10, with Ephes. ii. 14 fif. ; Col 
 
 20 
 
 ff. 
 
I.] OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE. 33 
 
 our hope. But we hold it remembering also, what 
 Scripture teaches everywhere, that the Atonement 
 itself is the gift of our Heavenly Father's love^ ; — 
 not the procuring cause of his love ; — as though 
 persuading One who did not love us to forgive ; — 
 but the way in which that Father's wise and holy 
 love has wrought to reconcile us to Himself. 
 
 We believe further, as His first disciples did, 
 that from Jesus Christ there has gone forth, in 
 fulfilment of His own promise, the Holy Spirit of 
 God, to renew the springs of human life, and in 
 God's good time to restore all things. We believe 
 that this Holy Spirit, speaking through the con- 
 science, strives everywhere with the spirit of man. 
 But we believe especially that, wherever the name 
 of Jesus as the Saviour is made known to men. His 
 Spirit so accompanies and works with Christ's 
 Gospel, that some receive it into their mind and 
 heart, and are gathered into the Church of Christ. 
 That Society of Christian people, formed first under 
 the ministry of the Apostles by their Lord's com- 
 
 ^ Joh. iii. 16, 17; Rom. v. 8; 2 Cor. v. 18 — 21, with the pas- 
 sages referred to in the last note. 
 
 V. H. L. . X 
 
34 
 
 THE NATURE OF [lect. 
 
 mand, in the expectation of the Spirit's coming, was 
 fully endowed and made diffusive on the day of 
 Pentecost, and gathered in thenceforth believers 
 from all nations, to be built up in the knowledge 
 and love of God. 
 
 This Church then, we believe, has existed, and 
 always will exist on earth, as ' a visible body gifted 
 with invisible privileges ' ^ ; a body constituted ex- 
 pressly for the nurture of believers in the know- 
 ledge and love of God, and as God's witness of His 
 Son to the world. It has existed and spread itself, 
 conquering first heathenism in the Roman Empire, 
 then barbarism in the fall of that Empire. It has 
 fulfilled, no doubt, but very imperfectly the great 
 ends of its existence. It has been disfigured often by 
 the distortion of the truth deposited with it ; and 
 still more by much unfaithfulness to their calling 
 in its individual members. Yet still it has been 
 the great source of nearly all ameliorating in- 
 
 ^ I think that the expression is Dr Newman's. Some remarks 
 on the sense in which I use the word Church will be found in a note 
 at the end of the volume. 
 
I.] OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE. 35 
 
 fluences to the world, in which God has placed it, 
 with a promise that it shall not perish until its 
 Lord shall come in glory as the Judge and King 
 of men. For to this coming again in glory all 
 history and prophecy of God's dealing with men 
 lead up, and in this it will be consummated. 
 
 These are the great objective truths included in 
 our Christian faith. I have given them as simply 
 as I could, and as nearly as possible in the form in 
 which the Apostles seem to have taught them. 
 
 Let me add, that all who have entered into the 
 spirit either of the Apostolic writings, or of the 
 liturgic remains of the early Church, will agree 
 that the faith and love and trust and hope of the 
 Church in every age has had for its centre and 
 root the recognition of our Lord as a Personal 
 Saviour, at once truly man, and the Eternal Son 
 or Word of God ; mediating for men in heaven, yet 
 present evermore with his Church upon the earth ; 
 sustaining, directing, animating by his own Holy 
 Spirit, both each individual believer, and the whole 
 community of the faithful, on earth, and in the 
 
 3—2 
 
6 THE NATURE OF [lect. 
 
 unseen world. The Christian faith, in short, has 
 always had for its true and proper object, not a 
 s}'stem of doctrine, but a Person ; and that Person, 
 the Son of God, who loved His Church, and gave 
 Himself for it ; and who, having once died, is now 
 alive for evermore. 
 
 And now as to the appropriation of these truths 
 by the individual believer, so as to make them the 
 ground and rule of his own personal Christian life. 
 
 We believe, as the Apostles taught in their 
 Master's name, that the Christian life is one which 
 can only be worthily described as the life of his 
 Lord communicated to him. "I live," St Paul says 
 of himself as a Christian, *'yet not I, but Christ 
 liveth in me\" " Your life," he says to his fellow- 
 Christians, "is hid with Christ in God'." St John's 
 expression for that life is to "abide in Christ^;" 
 even as he tells us that " hereby we know that He 
 abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us^" 
 Other Apostles may have entered less deeply into 
 the secrets of the inner life, and certainly have 
 
 1 Gal. ii. 20. ' Col. iii. 3. ^ 1 Joh. ii. 6, 28. * 1 Joh. iii. 24. 
 
I.] OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE. 
 
 37 
 
 spoken less fully of them in their few remaining 
 writings. The Church has always regarded these 
 two great Apostles as its special teachers of 
 spiritual wisdom, and has thoroughly accepted 
 their declarations on this subject as part of the 
 faith once delivered, and as having their counter- 
 part in the experience of every mature Christian. 
 But all our apostolic teachers agree to call the com- 
 munication of this life to the soul a new birth, 
 a birth from above, effected by the power of the 
 Spirit of God. On this point St Peter, and even 
 St James, speak as distinctly as- St John or St 
 Paul. "Of His own will begat He us with the 
 word of truth," St James says, " that we should be 
 a kind of first-fruits of His creatures\" St Peter 
 speaks of his fellow-Christians as " born again, not 
 of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the 
 word of God, which liveth and abideth for everl" 
 
 1 James i. i8. Though early external testimony to the author- 
 ship of the Epistle is scanty, the internal evidence, coupled with the 
 early recognition by the Syrian Church, seems decisive. See Alford's 
 Prolegomena to the Epistle, for a fair summary of the evidence. 
 
 2 I Pet. i. 23. 
 
^S THE NATURE OF [lect. 
 
 Even as St Paul speaks^ of the laver of regenera- 
 tion and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He 
 poured forth on us abundantly, as the chief fruit of 
 God's goodness and kindness toward man, whereby 
 we are saved ; and as St John tells us that we are 
 " born of God '," born '' not of the will of the flesh, 
 nor of the will of man, but of God^" 
 
 Led by these guides, we believe that in varied 
 ways, and through divers means, according to His 
 own will, God by His Spirit speaks to the spirit in 
 man, and awakens it to hunger and thirst after com- 
 munion, a loving fellowship, with Himself, through 
 Jesus Christ as the Redeemer, who is the Atone- 
 ment for their sins. And we believe that He who 
 implanted the desire satisfies it in due time with 
 the blessing desired. The heart which seeks Him 
 finds Him. He draws nigh to those who draw nigh 
 to Him. His love desires our good ; His Spirit 
 yearns to lead us through Jesus Christ to our 
 Heavenly Father ; His Father and our Father, His 
 God and our God*. Sometimes from the first 
 
 1 Tit. iii. 5. 2 I Joh. v. i. '^ Joh. i. 12, 13. ^ joh. xx. 17. 
 
I.] OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE, 39 
 
 opening of consciousness in the child, sometimes 
 after much resistance or indifference to the divine 
 call, — after many wanderings and much experience 
 of famine in the far country, away from God, — God 
 in His great mercy brings His child to the know- 
 ledge of His mercy, and the full experience of His 
 love. And when this is so, there follows, as the 
 fruit of the Spirit's indwelling, patient continuance 
 in well-doing, earnest pursuit of holiness, a life 
 and heart renewed in the likeness of that Saviour 
 whom His servant follows evermore with true 
 heart, though sometimes with faltering steps. 
 
 Day by day, as we advance in the Christian 
 life, we feel perhaps only the more deeply those 
 two great and most pressing wants of every heart, 
 which is not sunk in sensuality or worldliness, or 
 absorbed in an intellectual self-worship ; — the 
 want, I mean (as I have said already), first of 
 pardon for sin, and peace with God, perpetually 
 renewed ; and then, of strength not our own, in which 
 to overcome the power of evil. And day by day 
 the experience is more fully given to those who 
 
40 THE NATURE OE [lect. 
 
 try to live by faith in Christ, and seek God's own 
 teaching in humihty, that He in whom we live 
 supplies this need and every other. He lives, and 
 we live in Him. He has overcome, and we in his 
 strength are enabled to overcome also. He is made 
 to us of God indeed, as his Apostle tells us, "wis- 
 dom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemp- 
 tion^;" according to our daily need of each. 
 
 And as in the present conflict with evil we find 
 Him in whom we live all sufficient, so it is promised 
 that we shall find Him in the illimitable future, 
 to which the spirit of man looks forward with 
 irrepressible longing. Death remains before the 
 Christian, as it does before other men. But the 
 Christian does not, like the child of this world, 
 regard death as the end of his connexion with 
 that for which he cares, the spoiler who scatters 
 and breaks in pieces the accumulated treasures of 
 a life-time. He believes that to depart is to be with 
 Christ, which is far better^ He believes that all the 
 appointed discipline of life, both its joys and its 
 ^ 1 Cor. i. 30. ^ Phil. i. 23. 
 
I.] OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE. 41 
 
 sorrows and its temptations, yield, to him who 
 makes his spiritual union with Christ a reality by 
 faith, the fruit of a continual growth in faculties 
 and habits and dispositions of soul which will find 
 their freer exercise and their perfect development 
 in the world which lies beyond death \ When 
 sorrowing for those who go before him, he does not 
 sorrow without hope^ They will rise again, and he 
 himself will rise, through Him who is the Resurrec- 
 tion and the Life I He does not ask very anxiously 
 what form he shall give by anticipation to that 
 hope of resurrection. He is very willing to leave 
 in his Lord's hands the solution of all questions 
 with regard to the relation between his present 
 body and the spiritual body with which he expects 
 his spirit to be clothed again at the day of Christ's 
 appearing*. But he does believe (if he believes with 
 the Apostles) that some wonderful organism, very 
 different^ from the soul's present instrument of per- 
 ception and action, will in that day restore the 
 
 1 2 Cor. iv, 17. ^ \ Thess. iv. 13. ^ Joh. xi. 25; v. 28, 29. 
 * I Cor. XY. 44. ^ dWa'^riaoiJ.eda, i Cor. xv. 52. 
 
42 THE NATURE OF [lect. 
 
 spirit to its capacity for serving God in activity as 
 well as in contemplation. "If we believe that Jesus 
 died and rose again, even so them also which sleep 
 in Jesus will God bring with Him\" 
 
 Nor is this personal hope for the future one in 
 which a Christian stands insulated, as thinking of 
 himself alone. His great business in this present 
 state is to follow his Lord in caring for others^ 
 working for others, in true love to them and to 
 Him who has redeemed them. For all those who 
 bear his Saviour's name he is ready to care. With 
 those who shew anything of his Saviour's character 
 he has the closest sympathy. For all mankind — 
 made in his Heavenly Father's image, redeemed 
 by the same Saviour who has loved him and given 
 Himself for him — he has a very loving compassion. 
 He finds his strength to work in the cause of true 
 freedom, of sound improvement, social and political, 
 as well as directly religious, in the same faith 
 which is the support of his own inner life. 
 
 If it has ever seemed otherwise ; if sometimes 
 
 ^ I Thess. iv. 14. 
 
I.] OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE. 43 
 
 Christianity has been made an excuse for indif- 
 ference to national life, or for resistance to sound 
 and useful progress; the fault has lain either in 
 some disturbing accident, — as when the nation or 
 its government has opposed or persecuted Christi- 
 anity, or by some corrupting influence has ener- 
 vated it; — or else in the imperfect apprehension 
 which Christians have too often had of their own 
 principles. Necessarily the Christian life works 
 from within. It does not deal directly with the 
 outward forms of the social or political system 
 which it finds existing, but aims to purify their 
 springs in the individual man. And sometimes 
 crood men have failed to see that in a Christian 
 nation, public life and its improvement form an 
 important part of the service in which their Saviour 
 has called them to occupy^ until He come. They 
 have not seen, and so have failed to fulfil, the 
 obligation laid upon them by their Saviour's lawl 
 We cannot wonder if the less obvious consequences 
 
 1 Luke xix. 13, irpayixaTevaaade. 
 
 2 See note at the end of the volume. 
 
44 
 
 THE NATURE OF [lect. 
 
 of a principle are sometimes missed by those 
 who nevertheless honestly intend to accept it 
 entirely. 
 
 And, finally, a Christian regards the day of his 
 own final redemption as the day also of blessing 
 to the whole world. Whatever dark shadow may 
 and must rest upon some points in the future of 
 some parts of the human family, he believes that 
 the day of the resurrection will be a day also of 
 the restitution of all things\ He believes that then 
 all the sin which pollutes this earth will have 
 been cast out ; and all the sorrow which troubles 
 human hearts will have passed away for ever. He 
 believes that "the tabernacle of God will then be 
 with men, and He will dwell with them ; and they 
 shall be His people, and God Himself shall be 
 with them and be their God. And God shall wipe 
 away all tears from their eyes ; and there shall be 
 no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither 
 shall there be any more pain; for the former things 
 are passed away^" 
 
 ^ See note at the end of the volume. ^ Rev. xxi. 4, 5. 
 
I.] OUR CHRISTIAN HOPE. 45 
 
 I think that I have not exaggerated or mis- 
 represented the Christian's hope. If not, surely 
 it is a hope which we may well be unwilling 
 to lose. Really to believe this ; to live in the 
 belief of it ; so to live that my own part in it 
 might be sure and certain ; — this would indeed be 
 life. It would be assured peace in the midst of 
 outward change and uncertainty. It would be 
 strength for well-doing alike and for suffering. It 
 would be light shining more and more unto the 
 perfect day. 
 
 Is it a hope, then, of which the grounds are 
 sufficient t — I must endeavour to answer this ques- 
 tion, as honestly as I can, in the remaining Lec- 
 tures of this course. 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND II FE 
 
 MUST HAVE HAD A SUPERNATURAL 
 
 ORIGIN 
 
 I 
 
LECTURE IL 
 
 I Cor. XV. 17. 
 
 If Oirist be not raised, your faith is vain ; ye are 
 yet in yotir sins. 
 
 In my last lecture I endeavoured to state as 
 simply and yet as fully as I could, the nature of 
 our Christian hope. 
 
 In so doing I have assumed, or if you please 
 have conceded, that the basis on which every 
 Christian who understands himself must rest that 
 hope, is the belief expressed in that earliest Creed, 
 recited here by St Paul, as the substance of the 
 Gospel which he had preached everywhere, and 
 which all who learnt their faith from him had 
 received ; the belief, namely, that Christ died for 
 our sins, according to the Scriptures ; and that He 
 V. H. L. 4 
 
50 THE HISTORIC BASIS OF [lect. 
 
 was buried, and that He rose again the third day, 
 according to the Scriptures. 
 
 Indeed it seems perfectly clear that any con- 
 fession of Jesus Christ which recognizes Him at 
 once as truly man, and as in any real sense a 
 Saviour, must imply the belief of His resurrection. 
 One can understand, I suppose, the ground taken 
 by those early heresies which denied the truth 
 alike of the resurrection and of the death of Christ; 
 making Him man in appearance only ; some Being 
 of superior order ; shewn for a while on earth, and 
 snatched away. But this ground is entirely alien 
 from modern thought, and fails otherwise at every 
 point. And the true humanity, implying a real 
 death, demands also a resurrection and a continued 
 life in heaven, as the conditions of a present trust 
 and love to Him who died. Without this, Jesus 
 Christ might be proclaimed as Teacher, as Pattern, 
 as Martyr ; but not as a Redeemer from death; not 
 as the source and sustainer of the life of His people; 
 not as a present Friend and Helper ; not as a 
 Conqueror for them of death. 
 
II. ] OUR FAITH ESSENTIAL. 5 1 
 
 Nothing certainly can be more distinct than 
 the Apostle's assertion, in the text and everywhere 
 else, that with the loss of this belief of the facts of 
 Christ's death and resurrection all Christian faith and 
 hope must perish. There were some, it seems, even 
 among those who had learnt the truth once from 
 St Paul's own lips, who deceived themselves into 
 thinking that they could have Christianity in some 
 sense, apart from this historical foundation, and 
 from the confession of the hope of the resurrection 
 from the dead. But St Paul at once brands this 
 thought as delusive. " If Christ be not risen, then 
 is our preaching vain, and your faith also is vain^:" 
 "ye are yet in your sins I" St Paul accepts this as 
 the issue joined between the Christian and the 
 denier of Christianity. The one must needs affirm, 
 the other must needs deny, or call into doubt, the 
 fact of our Lord's resurrection, as an historical fact, 
 proved or not proved by human testimony. 
 
 I am well aware that some whom we esteem 
 
 ^ Verse I4. ^ Verse 17. 
 
 4—2. 
 
52 THE HISTORIC BASIS OF [lect. 
 
 and love would flinch from the severe simplicity 
 of the issue thus joined. Some even who, we 
 would fain think, do not themselves doubt the 
 fact of our Lord's resurrection ; which, we affirm, as 
 St Paul did, to be the key-stone of the arch on 
 which our faith and hope rest ; would yet shrink 
 from admitting that the affirmation or denial of 
 this fact is of absolutely vital moment. They 
 dread to drive into unbelief some who revere Jesus 
 of Nazareth, as the greatest of all Teachers of moral 
 and spiritual wisdom, though they have persuaded 
 themselves that the historic basis of St Paul's creed 
 is one which cannot be proved, or indeed believed, 
 to be real. 
 
 I have the greatest sympathy with this tender- 
 ness towards all who would fain hold fast what 
 they can of Christian ideas, while parting with 
 the Person in whom they centre, and the historic 
 facts through which that Person has been revealed 
 to us. But I may not and dare not speak other- 
 wise on this matter than as those spoke whom all 
 Christians, from the first generation downward, 
 
n.] OUR FAITH ESSENTIAL. 53 
 
 have acknowledged as the heroes and exemplars 
 of the Christian faith and life. There may be 
 piety, but not Christian piety ; there may be lofty 
 aims, but not Christian faith and love and hope, 
 where Christ is not believed to have died for our 
 sins and risen again for our justification. I accept 
 at once the question whether these alleged facts 
 of the Christian creed are truly facts or not, as 
 the question which is really at issue, and on the 
 answer to which our whole attitude towards Chris- 
 tianity must depend. This is the question then 
 with which we have to deal now, and in the re- 
 mainder of these Lectures. It must be our aim to 
 deal with it as fairly as we can, God helping us, 
 and as fully as our narrow limits of time will allow. 
 I address myself to educated people, who have 
 grown up under Christian influences, taking for 
 granted, in early years, the truth of the creed in 
 which they have been nurtured. I suppose that 
 they wish now to consider fairly whether there is 
 reasonable ground for receiving with a personal 
 assent, as grown-up men and women, what they 
 
54 TO WHOM OUR ARGUMENT [lect. 
 
 have hitherto in a good measure taken provision- 
 ally upon authority. They wish to know, as St 
 Luke speaks\ the certainty of those things wherein 
 they have been instructed : they wish, as St Paul 
 bids them^, to prove all things, and hold fast that 
 only which is really good. I would encourage 
 them to examine rigorously and thoroughly the 
 grounds of their belief. There is something hollow 
 in a belief of which the grounds have never been 
 examined, though the capacity for examining them 
 has come. Whether that hoUowness ends in pro- 
 ducing unbelief one way, or a careless and listless 
 acceptance of all which professes to come with 
 authority in the other way, it has in either case 
 been very mischievous. 
 
 In trying to help them a little in the enquiry, 
 I wish most earnestly to watch in myself against 
 the spirit of advocacy, which unfairly exaggerates 
 evidence and depreciates* difficulties. And I may 
 claim in return, that those who wish the sifting to 
 
 ^ Luke i. 4. 2 I Thess. v. 21. 
 
II.] IS ADDRESSED. 55 
 
 be honest and real shall not (like some recent 
 writers) foreclose the enquiry by a preconceived 
 opinion, resting on a priori ground, that no miracle 
 can be proved by any amount of evidence. 
 
 I am not qualified, nor if I were should I feel 
 disposed, to deal in this place with the philosophi- 
 cal question. That has been treated by others, at 
 whose feet I am content to sit\ The discussion is 
 one which few ought to undertake, because very 
 few are capable of entering into it thoroughly. I 
 think that for our present purpose it will be enough 
 to assume something which probably all who hear 
 me will grant, namely, not that this opinion is 
 proved false ^ but that it is not by any means con- 
 clusively proved true. One simple consideration 
 seems to outweigh much argument. We are con- 
 scious of something in otirsclves which is self-deter- 
 mined, and is not subject to any law of invariable 
 seqtience. To deny this of ourselves is to annihi- 
 late our moral freedom and responsibility. The 
 
 ^ See note at the end of the volume. 
 
56 ASSUMPTIONS ON WHICH [lect. 
 
 reign of that law then is not universal. There 
 are limits to its supremacy. There is a realm into 
 which it does not enter. And believing this, we 
 have reason to believe that there is also, out of 
 and above ourselves and all other human beings ^ 
 a supreme tvill, guided by a wisdom and goodness 
 of which conscience in ourselves is the reflexion. 
 We are disposed to believe that, as our own will 
 can act on matter, so this supreme will is the 
 ground and root of all the phaenomena of nature: — 
 the laws of nature being in truth the manner in 
 which this all-creating and sustaining will acts in 
 and on the world of nature which it has called into 
 existence^ This concession then, that the miracu- 
 lous is not absolutely incredible, I must claim on the 
 one hand from those who accompany me in the 
 present enquiry. But on the other I concede of 
 course, most willingly, that unusually strong and 
 weighty proof may well be required, where the 
 facts to be alleged are so unusual. 
 
 1 See Xen. Mem. Book i. iv. 8, for a somewhat similar inference. 
 ^ See note at the end of the vohmie. 
 
II.] OUR ENQUIRY PROCEEDS. 57 
 
 At what point will such an enquirer as I have 
 supposed be willing to begin his investigation of 
 the grounds and reasons of belief? 
 
 He will do well, I think, to begin with some 
 undeniable facts in the present state of the world 
 in which he finds himself, and to ascend from these 
 to their causes in the past. 
 
 I. The first fact of which we must take ac- 
 count is the present existence of the Christian 
 Chnrch, I use that word in the widest sense in 
 which it can be applied to anything existing upon 
 earth. I use it, as our Prayer Book does\ to ex- 
 press the whole company of those who profess 
 and call themselves Christians, wherever scattered, 
 however organized. I should perhaps prefer to 
 use the word Christendom ; if that word had not 
 almost lost the religious aspect of its meaning in 
 the political one of an aggregate of kingdoms or 
 nations of which the governments do some homage 
 to Christianity. But express the truth as we may, 
 
 1 See Prayer for all sorts and conditions qj=c. ; Prayer for the 
 Church militant ; and Art. xix. 
 
58 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH A FACT \y^CY. 
 
 it is a fact, undeniable, and surely most remark- 
 able, that almost the whole of that new world 
 beyond the Western and the Southern Oceans, in 
 which so much of the hope of mankind for coming 
 ages is bound up, and almost all the dominant 
 and growing portion of this older continent, should 
 in some sense and measure be included in this 
 great Society, and own allegiance to Christ as its 
 unseen Head. 
 
 It is quite true that the allegiance yielded with 
 the lip, whether by individual men or by nations, 
 has too often very little influence upon the heart 
 and life. None can deny that it has some in- 
 fluence everywhere. Upon the whole face of 
 society, upon law and government, upon the social 
 and family relations of men, upon the general 
 conduct of men one toward another, the general 
 acknowledgement of the history, and character, 
 and legislation, and above all the divine yet human 
 Personality of Christ, has had an influence which, 
 though often thwarted by contending agencies, 
 and always limited and checked by many hind- 
 
II.] TO BE ACCOUNTED FOR. 59 
 
 ranees, has yet been very great and most beneficent. 
 Christianity has in fact been (to say the least) one 
 of the very chiefest purifying and ameliorating in- 
 fluences at work in the world of human life, ever 
 since, as a new and persecuted faith originating in 
 an obscure corner of the earth, it penetrated and 
 subdued the Roman Empire. 
 
 The very existence, surely, after so many cen- 
 turies full of infinite change, of this great Society, 
 claiming to be the one divinely appointed fellow- 
 ship for the whole human race, as the children of 
 one God and Father, brethren of one family, re- 
 deemed by One Saviour, intended to be guided 
 and animated by One Spirit, is, to say the least, 
 one of the most remarkable phsenomena of history. 
 Evidently some most remarkable cause is needed 
 to account for it. Evidently some wonderful power 
 must have been at work. The system and the 
 institution must have met some very deep wants 
 in the mind and soul of man. The Society could 
 not otherwise have outlived first the days of 
 heathen persecution; then the dissolution of the 
 
6o THE INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN LIFE, [lect. 
 
 Roman Empire, and the birth of modern Europe ; 
 then the great shock of the Reformation in the 
 sixteenth century, and the Revolutions of the 
 eighteenth and nineteenth. What, we ask, is tJie 
 niystcrioiLS poiver which has given cohesion a? id 
 vitality to a mass so large and {when ive view it 
 as a whole) so imperfectly organized? 
 
 2. But this is only an outward and superficial 
 view of the fact before us. Looked into more 
 closely, studied more patiently, it becomes even 
 more remarkable. 
 
 It seems at first sight that, whatever the in- 
 fluence of Christianity in its broad outlines may 
 be upon society and national life, its hold upon 
 individuals is feeble. Many (it might perhaps be 
 said 7nosf) of those who bear the name of Christ 
 have but little faith or love to Him, and neglect 
 or violate some of His plainest directions. And 
 this is too true. Yet in the midst of those many 
 who call Jesus Lord, and do but little of the things 
 which He says, there are some scattered here and 
 there who are really making it their first aim to 
 
II.] HOW TO BE ACCOUNTED EOR? 6i 
 
 live by His law, and who do reflect something of 
 His likeness in the holiness and loving-kindness of 
 their own lives. 
 
 These true followers of Christ are widely sepa- 
 rated from each other by social position, by country, 
 and race, and culture, by all their habits of out- 
 ward life and inward thought. The outward form 
 given to the worship in which their faith finds 
 expression, and to the organization in which they 
 are combined for purposes of mutual fellowship 
 and of action on the world, have differed, and do 
 differ very widely. But they agree in this, that 
 they acknowledge One Father in heaven ; and live 
 the life which they now live in the flesh by faith 
 in the Son of God, who loved them and gave 
 Himself for them ; and are animated by One 
 Spirit flowing forth from Him to form His likeness 
 in them ; and continue patiently in well-doing for 
 His sake, serving their generation in doing or 
 suffering according to God's will. Differing much 
 from each other; — sometimes, alas, anathematizing 
 each other; — these true believers in Christ all 
 
62 THE INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN LIFE, [lect. 
 
 agree in tracing up their inward life to Him as 
 its source no less than its pattern. And in their 
 best and happiest moments they know and feel 
 that there is between Him and themselves and 
 all who are truly His, an inward unity deeper than 
 any outward diversity. 
 
 And however careless and scornful men may 
 scoff, those who have a truer wisdom than the 
 scorner's will feel that such persons as these are 
 to be listened to with deep respect, as still speak- 
 ing no dream, but a sober certainty of waking 
 bliss, when they tell us that the truth of what they 
 believe concerning Christ is assured to them by 
 an inward experience, which can scarcely be more 
 deceptive than their consciousness of existence. 
 All of us have known, I trust, some persons of 
 whom this may be truly said. They are found 
 sometimes in palaces, sometimes (we have known 
 such men amongst ourselves ; — some of them very 
 lately missed from our society) among philosophers 
 and men of science ; far more often among the lowly; 
 oftenest of all among the suffering. Some of you, 
 
II.] HO W TO BE A ceo UNTED FOR ? d^ 
 
 as I speak, will think of a mother, a father, a sister, 
 or elder brother, who has watched like a guardian 
 angel for your life ; — gone perhaps now where all 
 care and suffering, even all anxiety for you, is 
 swallowed up in the full sunshine of God's own 
 presence. You will recollect how, in the presence 
 of such persons, sin became hateful, and doubt 
 became almost impossible. You could not think 
 that unreal which they felt to be so certain. 
 
 It cannot be denied that there is force in this 
 consideration. Christianity claims to be a prac- 
 tical thing, a remedy for a great evil, the power 
 of a new life, to whoever will receive it into his 
 heart. These witnesses tell us simply that they 
 have tried the remedy, and it has fulfilled its 
 promise. They feel the power of the new life 
 within them, and shew it in its appropriate action. 
 Can all this be mere delusion } — And if it be at 
 all real, does it not throw light back upon all the 
 visible forms in which Christian life has been em- 
 bodied, and through which it has been transmitted 
 to ourselves } 
 
64 CONTINUITY OF THE CHURCH [lect. 
 
 Surely we may add to our former considera- 
 tion this second result of enquiry; — the effect of 
 the Christian Institution upon those souls into 
 which it enters fully as a reality, and which are 
 really moulded by its influence. These are the 
 special fruit of the venerable tree ; — so rugged 
 perhaps in stem; so encumbered perhaps with 
 unsightly and almost fruitless branches ; but 
 yielding still, here and there, a fruit so good and 
 beautiful, in heavenly lives lived among earthly 
 care and toil, in souls evidently ripe for heaven, 
 as to convince us that its root and power of 
 growth must be indeed divine. We do not know 
 how human life could bear the impoverishment 
 which would follow, if it w^ere indeed discovered 
 that the hope which had sustained and ripened 
 these souls was a delusion ; and that they who had 
 fallen asleep in Christ had perished. 
 
 3. So far, we have been dealing with facts 
 existing before our eyes. It is time that we look 
 back to trace their connexion with a long past 
 history, in which they evidently have their roots. 
 
II.] FROM EARLY TIMES, 65 
 
 And as in the present, so in the past, we have two 
 distinct aspects of Christianity to contemplate. 
 We have to trace both the corporate existence and 
 action of the Society, and the development and 
 realization of the faith in the individual life. We 
 begin with the former, as the more obviously defi- 
 nite and tangible. 
 
 For the existence, age after age, of the Christian 
 Society is, after all, one of the most conspicuous 
 facts of history. An adversary may say that it has 
 hQQn painftdly coiispimous ; and a Christian will not 
 dispute the word, though he may well claim to add 
 (what no candid adversary will deny) '7iot always 
 painfully ; often viost gloriously, most beneficently 
 conspicuous;' — paijiftdly, we may venture to say 
 even now, in the outset of our retrospect, just in 
 so far as the Society has forgotten its own ideal, 
 and its true principles of thought and action ; 
 beneficently^ just in so far as it has been true and 
 faithful to them both. 
 
 The Society which now subsists in a divided 
 state, so far disorganized that superficial or 
 V. H. L. 5 
 
66 CONTINUITY OF THE CHURCH [lect. 
 
 pedantic observers may hesitate to account it as a 
 society at all, existed already before the Reforma- 
 tion of the sixteenth century. That modified in 
 many ways its conditions of existence, but did not 
 anywhere wholly destroy to create a society alto- 
 gether new. Changes were made with regard to 
 the precise relations between the Christian Society 
 and the several forms of national life, and between 
 the clergy and the mass of Christian people. There 
 were partial changes as to the doctrine taught, 
 the forms of worship used, the special embodi- 
 ments of Christian activity. And all these were 
 important in their own place; but still they pre- 
 supposed a certain continuity of existence between 
 the reformed and the unreformed society, scarcely 
 less real where the spirit of innovation was strongest, 
 than where (as in our own country) the spirit of 
 conservatism manifestly presided over the reform. 
 Those who changed most did it in the name not 
 of the creation of a new thing, but of the restora- 
 tion of a prior and better order of things. Those 
 who changed least were agreed that all which was 
 
II.] FROM EARLY TIMES. 67 
 
 retained must be tried by the test of its conformity 
 with a standard of truth once given and essentially 
 unchangeable. 
 
 And great as the changes were, they left the 
 supreme objects of faith and of worship, the su- 
 preme standard of truth, the supreme rule of duty 
 toward God and man, formally unaltered. The 
 Scriptures remained ; the Creeds remained ; the 
 Sacraments remained ; the Christian ministry re- 
 mained ; the great outlines of holiness remained. 
 Explanations of each, theories about each, the cir- 
 cumstantial form of each, might be changed ; — the 
 things themselves did not pass away. 
 
 Nay, when men's view is no longer confined, 
 as it cannot be now, though it very naturally was 
 so at the time, to the Patriarchate of the West, 
 it is seen that the Reformation was not even the 
 first dislocation of one compactly organized society 
 into several, some more some less completely orga- 
 nized. East and West had long been separated 
 as far as the acts of rulers could separate them. 
 The Eastern Church itself had been broken up 
 
 5—2 
 
68 CONTINUITY OF THE CHURCH [lect. 
 
 for centuries into portions deeply alienated from 
 each other. And yet this apparent disunion only 
 made the inward unity which underlay the out- 
 ward division more remarkable to a true observer. 
 In every fragment there remained something of 
 the same life, and the consciousness (perhaps some 
 might say the dream — but if so it was a dream 
 which had deep truth behind it) of some earlier 
 and better state, when the life was fuller, and the 
 union more complete. 
 
 And so, as we rise backward, to the age when 
 the conflict of the Church with paganism ended 
 in the outward submission of the Empire to the 
 throne of Christ. Still we have the same funda- 
 mental unity in diversity ; — still the same recog- 
 nition of one Body and one Spirit, one Lord, one 
 Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, as 
 the true ideal of the Church, — imperfectly realized, 
 but never destroyed. 
 
 There is no difficulty in reconstructing from 
 abundant evidence the actual state of the Christian 
 Society; either in the fourth century — when the 
 
II.] FROM EARLY TIMES. 69 
 
 new relations between the Empire and the Church 
 were greatly modifying the previous condition of 
 each — or if we wish it, as we do for our present 
 purpose, from, at least, the beginning of the next 
 previous century. Still everywhere that which 
 gives cohesion and aggressive force as well as 
 inward vitality to the Society, is not any frame- 
 work of semi-political organization, but a certain 
 ideal of Christian life, resting on the firm belief of 
 certain historic facts ; — those facts being such as 
 to reveal certain spiritual realities, for which the 
 heart of man yearns, and without the knowledge 
 of which human life is homeless and without 
 hope. 
 
 We will grant for the present all which a 
 severely sceptical historic criticism can claim, as 
 to the obscurity of the history of the Christian 
 Society during the age before that of which we 
 have just spoken. All reasonable criticism will 
 grant us that we do know what Christians gene- 
 ally believed and taught, and how they were 
 organized for joint action, at the end of the second 
 
70 CONTINUITY OF THE CHURCH [lect. 
 
 and beginning of the third century; the age when 
 Irenaeus was an influential teacher in Gaul, Tertul- 
 lian in Africa, Clement in Alexandria. We do 
 know that they believed in substance what Chris- 
 tians generally believe now with regard to God 
 and Christ, and the rule of duty and the salvation 
 of man. But above all, we do know that those 
 men (whether they interpreted them always rightly 
 or not) referred to the same writings, within 
 narrow limits, for their knowledge of truth and 
 duty, to which Christians refer now. There is a 
 small margin of disputed books, admitted here, 
 excluded there, from the circle of books received as 
 authentic records of the revelation made to men 
 by God in Christ Jesus. But we may safely say 
 that in the last quarter of the second century the 
 appeal was made, on all questions of belief and 
 duty, either to the tradition, believed to be un- 
 broken, of certain Churches founded by Apostles, 
 or to certain writings believed to be sanctioned 
 by Apostles; and that these two witnesses were 
 believed to agree. We may say further, that in the 
 
II.] FROM EARLY TIMES. 71 
 
 list of books then believed to be of Apostolic au- 
 thority were included our Four Gospels, the Acts, 
 thirteen Epistles of St Paul, and two at least of the 
 Catholic Epistles. We may add that no trace 
 remains in this period of any other account of the 
 origin of the Christian Faith and Church than that 
 which those writings contain. If any other ever 
 existed, it had been lost beyond recovery some 
 years before the close of the second century. 
 
 This basis of fact, either admitted or distinctly 
 proved, with regard to the Church of the last 
 quarter of the second century, enables us finally 
 to infer much, with regard to the obscure three 
 quarters of a century which precede. As the 
 geologist infers with confidence the nature of his 
 earlier formations, from the traces which he finds 
 of them in those which overlie them, and are 
 formed from their ruins : so the Christian infers 
 much, with regard to the earlier age of the 
 Church, from that which next succeeded it, and 
 was necessarily moulded by its influence. 
 
 We have indeed very scanty remains of the 
 
72 TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH [lect. 
 
 Christian literature of the end of the first century, 
 and the earher portion of the second. We have 
 therefore very Httle direct and positive evidence 
 as to the history of the eighty dark and troubled 
 years which passed between the death of the last 
 surviving Apostle and the age of Irenaeus. Inge- 
 nious men may make almost what they please out 
 of the fragments which remain to us from them, if 
 they look at them as mere literary fragments, apart 
 from the admitted history of the following age. 
 We have letters of two bishops trying to set right 
 disorders in distant churches for which they care ; 
 a few in which another pours out his heart in the 
 prospect of martyrdom. We have the pleading of 
 an apologist or two, giving necessarily a very 
 guarded and external account of Christian faith 
 and practice. We have a story or two gathered 
 by some lover of the traditions of a more heroic 
 age than his own. And these are almost the only 
 relics of a time in which men were living their 
 faith and dying for it, rather than thinking or 
 writing about it. 
 
II.] TO ITS OWN ORIGIN, 73 
 
 One thing which strikes us in the Fathers and 
 Apologists of the close of the first century and the 
 early half of the second, is that they are men evi- 
 dently oppressed, and almost enfeebled, by their 
 consciousness of inferiority to a giant race who 
 have gone before them. A glance at those 
 writings which the next following generation cer- 
 tainly received as Apostolic, at once explains 
 this depressing sense of inferiority. The vigour 
 and the freedom and the largeness of view which 
 mark the Pauline Epistles., tell us why Clement 
 and Ignatius and Polycarp felt themselves to be 
 the puny successors of a race of giants. They 
 were so indeed. Yet if any other than the Chris- 
 tian theory of the origin of the Christian Church 
 and its Scriptures is to be accepted, it must be 
 one which shall make the pigmies the creators 
 of the giants. If the Apostles were not really 
 what we believe them to have been, they were but 
 the creatures of the fancy or the fraud of those 
 who felt themselves unworthy to be their fol- 
 lowers. 
 
74 TESTIMONY OF THE CHURCH [lect. 
 
 Two or three things are abundantly clear from 
 the remains of the second century. 
 
 The first of these is that, though a few tradi- 
 tional acts and sayings of Jesus were extant then, 
 which appear to have been derived from other 
 sources than our Canonical Gospels, no other 
 history of our Lord's earthly life was known 
 than one substantially the same with those which 
 our present Gospels contain. 
 
 It is equally clear that no other history of the 
 origin and early years of the Christian Church 
 was known than one perfectly consistent with 
 all which the Acts and Apostolic Epistles supply. 
 
 Nor yet is there any consciousness of a ' cata- 
 clysm' between their own and the previous age, 
 in which an earlier Church or an earlier history 
 can have perished, and a later and different one have 
 been created. If our accepted records be not true, 
 the whole history has perished, and any attempt 
 to recover or reconstruct it is futile. 
 
 The next important inference from the exist- 
 ing remains is that the early half of the second 
 
II.] TO ITS OWN ORIGIN. 75 
 
 century was entirely incapable of inventing either 
 the character of Christ, or the New Testament 
 history of the Apostolic age. 
 
 A third important result is that the admitted 
 facts of the second century can be explained by 
 the assumption of the substantial truth of the 
 New Testament history, and cannot be satisfac- 
 torily explained upon the supposition that that 
 history is a fiction. This consideration, if it does 
 not prove the details of the history, raises a strong 
 presumption in favour of its general truth. 
 
 4. But we have something further to con- 
 sider in our retrospect of Christian history. I have 
 been speaking of the Society, and tracing the story 
 of a corporate life, and that on its external side. 
 There is another side which demands recognition, 
 the individual life of Christian souls within the 
 large and often loosely organized mass of the 
 Society. 
 
 Every society, I suppose, has its inner circle of 
 energetic and representative individuals. Cer- 
 tainly the Christian society has and always has 
 
76 CHRISTIAN LIFE REAL [lect. 
 
 had such souls, in every one of its sections. We 
 have taken notice of this fact as seen in the Church 
 of our own day. Let us observe that it has been 
 seen in every past age from the first. From its 
 very nature we can only see the fact in part. The 
 individual life is but imperfectly expressed even in 
 the actions which are the surest indications of its 
 reality and worth. Yet in various ways the life 
 does manifest itself to discerning eyes, and has 
 always done so. 
 
 Some in each age have so believed the common 
 creed of all as to make it the determining principle 
 of their life. Each portion of the Christian body 
 has produced its saints ; and their good works have 
 spoken to the world in a way which the world 
 could often understand and appreciate. 
 
 The Church of the eighteenth century had its 
 Thorntons, and Wilberforce, and Whitfield, and 
 Wesley, and Fletcher, and Howard, and Butler. 
 Ken, and Evelyn, and Baxter, and Howe, and 
 Usher, and Hammond, and Hooker, and the mar- 
 tyrs of the Reformation, shewed that the Church 
 
II.] EVERYWHERE AND ALWAYS. 77 
 
 of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries in our 
 own country, was not dead, though it may have 
 slumbered. Feh'x Neff, and Oberlin, and Eugenie 
 de Guerin, and Lacordaire and Besson in France 
 almost in our own day ; with Fenelon, and Antoine 
 Court, and Philip de Mornay, in evil times of old ; 
 and still earlier, Thomas a Kempis, and Savona- 
 rola, and St Francis, in the ages next before the 
 Reformation ; with Bernard, and Augustine, and 
 Chrysostom, and Basil, and many scarcely less 
 illustrious than these ; shewed the reality of the 
 divine life in other branches of Christ's Church. 
 All these caught from the Gospel history, and the 
 witness of the Church to its Creed, a divine fire, 
 which made them living witnesses of the truth 
 and energy of the Christian life, not to their own 
 age only, but to all coming time. And in all 
 ages doubtless the most impressive of all witnesses 
 have been found in lowly places and dark corners. 
 The poor and suffering have always been the 
 special heirs of God's Kingdom on earth, as its 
 King prepared us to expect they would be. 
 
78 THE WITNESS OF THIS II FE [lect. 
 
 When we are repelled (as who has not been ?) 
 by the dryness of Church history, as it has too 
 often been written, let us turn gladly for refresh- 
 ment to this inner side of the same story. The 
 teaching of our Divine Founder bade us expect to 
 find the tares among the wheat ; but let them never 
 hide from us the true seed which springs up and 
 bears fruit beside them. 
 
 There is yet another point which we should 
 carefully mark in our study of these records of the 
 inner Christian life. It is the likeness of these 
 true and faithful servants of the One Lord to Him 
 and to each other. They have all tried to follow 
 His steps ; and the lineaments of His truthfulness. 
 His patience, His loving-kindness, His self-sacrifice, 
 have been more or less perfectly reproduced in 
 each of them. 
 
 What then has been the source of this life ? and 
 by what power has it been sustained ? If we listen 
 to those who have lived it, it has come to them from 
 their Lord, and has been sustained by union with 
 Him. He was its source, and its sustainer, as well 
 
II.] TO CHRIST AS ITS SOURCE. 79 
 
 as its perfect pattern. Without Him believed in 
 as a real Saviour, a living Friend in heaven, who 
 had once really died for them, and by His Spirit 
 lived in them, they tell us, (and shall we not believe 
 them ?) that their life would have been impossible. 
 
 This witness is made all the more impressive 
 by the very diversity of outward form and cir- 
 cumstance out of which it comes to us. Let any 
 one who doubts the worth of this argument study 
 as wide a range as he can of the records of 
 really heroic or exemplary Christian life, in the 
 different sections of Christendom past and present. 
 No study can be so beneficial morally and spiri- 
 tually. But even apart from its higher uses, it 
 compels us to recognize the real oneness of the 
 Christian life, in various forms ; and its real beauty, 
 even when marred by many imperfections and 
 narrownesses. 
 
 And then again, finally, from this perception 
 of the reality and beauty of the Christian life, two 
 conclusions may well be drawn. The first will be 
 a deep conviction of the divine origin of the life 
 
So CHRISTIANITY NOT AN [lect. 
 
 itself. The other will be a firm persuasion that 
 those who have lived the life speak truly when they 
 tell us of the connexion between their own life and 
 that of their Lord and Saviour. All tell us that 
 the life is really His, not their own. We cannot 
 set this testimony aside, as wholly fancy. If it 
 does not supersede further inquiry, we cannot re- 
 gard it as worthless. They tell us that they were 
 sick, and they went in spirit to Christ as the phy- 
 sician, and He has healed them. They wanted 
 rest, and He has given it to them. We dare not 
 think this experience wholly delusive. 
 
 5. Nor is it only on a small scale, so to speak, 
 and in its power to sanctify individual life, that we 
 see proof of the vitality and truth of the Christian's 
 creed. Sometimes men speak as if that creed 
 might once have had some energetic vitality, but 
 had now become exhausted and effete, except in 
 a few specially predisposed individuals. I think 
 we can give proof to the contrary. What shall be 
 said of the course of men like Havelock and Moffat 
 and Patteson and Selwyn and Livingstone and 
 
II.] EXHAUSTED SYSTEM, 8i 
 
 Goodenough? But, you will say, these are indi- 
 viduals still. I ask then that you will take account 
 of what Christianity has done on a larger scale, 
 since the beginning of this century, in New Zealand, 
 and Melanesia, and Western Africa, and in many 
 spots in India and Burmah. I ask you to go into 
 the dark corners of almost any one of our great 
 cities, or scenes of mining and trading and manu- 
 facturing industry, and observe what Christian faith 
 is doing to animate self-denying labour to recover 
 the lost, and bind man again to man. The salt, it 
 seems to me, has not yet lost its savour. 
 
 And remember that the very variety and laxity 
 of form and order under which the Christian 
 Society appears in our own day gives greater 
 emphasis to every manifestation of self-denying 
 activity in the cause of Christianity. A perfectly 
 organized and vigorous despotism may force its 
 troops into successful action, in a cause for which 
 the soldiers personally care very little. There 
 have been times and places where such an expla- 
 nation of Christian activity might have gone some 
 V. H. L. 6 
 
82 CHRISTIANITY NOT AN qt^c. [lect. ii.] 
 
 way toward accounting for Christian work. But 
 in modern, and especially in Protestant Europe, 
 any such explanation is manifestly impossible. It 
 is the very opprobrium of our present condition, 
 that we are said to be on the verge of absolute 
 dissolution as a visible Society. Organization 
 and government are supposed to have reached 
 their utmost point of enfeeblement. 
 
 There is some truth in the charge. Yet still 
 Christian work goes on ; — with a great waste of 
 power no doubt, for want of more unity of di- 
 rection ; but with great force of individual energy. 
 Now when we see a half-disciplined militia main- 
 taining war effectually, we are sure that the im- 
 pulse of patriotic ardour must be strong and 
 frenuine. Let us draw the like inference from 
 what we see of Christian self-denial in well-doing 
 on every side of us at home and elsewhere. The 
 Christian life must be vigorous indeed which 
 attempts much, and accomplishes something, in 
 circumstances apparently so disadvantageous. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE WEIGHT OF THE DIRECT EVIDENCE 
 OF THE TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL 
 HISTOR Y. 
 
 6—2 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 St John i. 14. 
 
 A 7id the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, 
 {and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only 
 begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. 
 
 Our Christian hope claims to be a new life, having 
 its root in the life of a divine Person, who once 
 revealed Himself on earth as man; first living the 
 divine life in our nature ; then dying and rising 
 again ; now living in heaven, as the divine yet 
 human Son of God. 
 
 We want to ascertain whether the belief on 
 which this hope depends, practically as well as 
 theoretically, is a reasonable one. To do this, we 
 have been tracing backward the story of the Chris- 
 tian Church, as far as unquestionable evidence will 
 
S6 THE CHURCH'S ACCOUNT [lect. 
 
 enable us ; that so we may connect the life as it is 
 now seen and felt, 'both in the Christian Society 
 and in the individual believer of our own day, with 
 the history in which it claims to have had its origin. 
 
 The process is surely a legitimate one. The 
 existing fact is evidently the outgrowth of a past 
 history, which must explain a great deal of it. We 
 know that history well, and on abundant evidence, 
 as far back as (we will say) the last few years of 
 the second century of our era. We find in the 
 history of the centuries between that point and 
 our own day, a great deal which has modified the 
 fact with which we are concerned, but nothing 
 which can have created it. At the furthest point 
 to which direct and undisputed evidence will carry 
 us, the twofold fact which we are tracing, namely, 
 that of the Christian Society and the Christian life 
 hved in that Society, exists, the same essentially 
 which we see it now. Its causes then must lie yet 
 further back. 
 
 We know, from pagan historians and statesmen, 
 that in some shape the Christian Society existed, 
 
III.] OF ITS OWN ORIGIN. 87 
 
 and compelled the notice of the Roman government ; 
 in Asia Minor, in the early years of the second 
 century^; at Rome^ and in Judaea^ within the third 
 quarter of the first century. We want to learn 
 what we can from itself about this living germ, 
 which must have had a living cause. It has been 
 developed doubtless under many influences, but 
 none of those influences could have given it being. 
 We. want to find how it began to be. 
 
 It has its own account of its own birth; a very 
 wonderful one ; but one which certainly, if we 
 believe it founded in truth, seems adequate to ex- 
 plain all. At the end of the second century it 
 gave the same account, in the main, which it gives 
 now. It referred then to the same records to 
 which Christians refer now. If these records are 
 
 ^ See Pliny's well-known letter to Trajan {Ep. x. 97), with 
 Trajan's answer (x. 98), of which the probable date is A. D. 103. A 
 translation of parts of these letters, and of the passage in Tacitus 
 referred to in the next note, will be found as a separate note at the 
 end. 
 
 ^ Tacitus, Ann. xv. 44. The date given by Walther is A. D. 65. 
 
 ' If the debated passage of Josephus {Ant. xviii. 3, 3) be spuri- 
 ous, the account of the death of James {Ant, xx. 9. i) seems sufficient 
 to warrant what I have said above. 
 
88 EXAMINA TION OF [lect. 
 
 credible, they explain a phenomenon which cer- 
 tainly s'eems unlike any other. It is time then to 
 examine the records which come to us so recom- 
 mended as authentic. 
 
 To examine the historic worth of these docu- 
 ments themselves will be our next undertaking. 
 We want to ascertain, on their own internal evi- 
 dence, whether they deserve belief or not. If the 
 result of such an examination, fairly conducted, 
 is not absolutely conclusive, it must at any rate 
 be an important step toward the solution of the 
 problem. 
 
 We include among the documents which, at 
 the end of the second century of our era, were 
 universally acknowledged in the Church as au- 
 thentic records, our Four Gospels, the Book of 
 Acts, thirteen Epistles of St Paul, the First Epistle 
 of St Peter, and the First Epistle of St John. We 
 will make no use at present of any other documents 
 than these \ 
 
 ^ See Westcott on the Canon, Part ii. ch. i. p. 333, 4, of 4th 
 edition. I extract a few words. ' With the exception of the Epistle 
 
III.] ITS CREDIBILITY. 89 
 
 In the first instance we will confine ourselves 
 within a much narrower circle. Even the most 
 sceptical school of historical criticism in Germany 
 accepts as genuine the first four of St Paul's Epistles. 
 It admits consequently the historic reality of St 
 Paul himself, so far as his character and history are 
 set forth to us in those Epistles, or may be fairly 
 inferred from them. Such as these Epistles repre- 
 sent him to us, he was ; what they teach, he taught ; 
 what they imply of belief, was his belief; — the 
 belief of a contemporary, though a rather younger 
 contemporary, of the generation which (if the 
 Christian history has any basis in fact) must have 
 known our Lord according to the flesh. What are 
 
 to the Hebrews, the two shorter Epistles of St John, the second 
 Epistle of St Peter, the Epistles of St James and St Jude, and the 
 Apocalypse, all the other books of the New Testament are acknow- 
 ledged as Apostolic and authoritative throughout the Church at the 
 close of the second century. The evidence of the great Fathers by 
 which the Church is represented varies in respect of these disputed 
 books, but the Canon of the acknowledged books is established by 
 their common consent. Thus the testimony on which it rests is not 
 gathered from one quarter, but from many, and those the most 
 widely separated by position and character. It is given, not as a 
 private opinion, but as an unquestioned fact : not as a late discover)', 
 but as an original tradition. ' 
 
90 EVIDENCE OE ST PAUES [lect. 
 
 the legitimate consequences, we ask, of this neces- 
 sary admission ? 
 
 The facts of St Paul's own outer and inner life, 
 as these Epistles present them, are surely most 
 significant. He has been himself, in former years, 
 a persecutor of the Church of God^; well known 
 to the Churches of Judaea as one of their bitterest 
 enemies^; suddenly, as he himself believes, God is 
 pleased to reveal His own Son in him^; and after 
 some short interval of seclusion^ he becomes equally 
 conspicuous as a preacher of the faith of which he 
 once made havoc. He claims to be believed when 
 he tells us^ that he has himself seen Jesus, whom 
 he calls his Lord, his Master, his owner*^, not in 
 flesh upon earth, but alive again from the dead. 
 He has spoken with Him''; has heard His voice; 
 has received from Himself, without the interven- 
 tion of any human instrument, the truth which he 
 
 1 I Cor. XV. 9. Gal. i. 13. ^ Gal. i. 22, 23. 
 
 3 Gal. i. x6. 4 Gal, i. 17. ^ 1 Cor ix. i, xv. 8. 
 
 ^ IlaOXoj hovXo'i \r]ao\j XpiaTov, Rom. i. i; rod Kvpiov i^fiuip. 
 I Cor. i. 2, 3, and passim. 
 7 2 Cor. xii. 8, 9. 
 
III.] UNDISPUTED EPISTLES. 91 
 
 preaches everywhere ^ and in which he lives as the 
 all-engrossing reality. How shall we account for 
 this belief, of which none can question the sin- 
 cerity ? 
 
 'He is a mystic', men have said, 'a dreamer; — 
 one to whom what passes within his own soul is 
 so real, and what passes without is so transfigured 
 by some reflexion from within, that he is a bad 
 witness ; honest, as to intention ; — this none can 
 question ; — but easily self-deceived.' It is an ob- 
 vious solution, no doubt, but yet one which can 
 never satisfy any man who will judge fairly of the 
 writer of these Epistles. 
 
 For, first, we are almost as much struck with 
 the sobriety, the practical wisdom, the good sense, 
 of this enthusiast, when he comes to deal with any 
 question of Christian ethics^, or with the passions 
 and religious prejudices of other men^ as we are 
 with his passionate earnestness, his deep affections, 
 his quick and tender sympathies. This is not a 
 
 1 Gal. i. II, 12, ii. 20. ^ See i Cor. v, vi. vii. viii. 
 
 ^ Rom. xiv. I — XV. 13. i Cor. viii. x. 
 
92 HIS TESTIMONY NOT [lect. 
 
 man to whom things outside himself are unreal ; 
 though he regards them all as subordinate to a 
 higher reality ; — namely, the Saviour who has 
 loved him and given Himself for him\ and in 
 whom he is brought near to God, as to a loving 
 Fatherl 
 
 Again, though he does claim to know Christ 
 and Christ's truth by a direct revelation made to 
 himself; and though he expects that the change 
 made in himself shall be evidence to other men^; 
 he is by no means indifferent, nor does he wish 
 that others should be indifferent, to the testimony 
 which other men, claiming to be eye- and ear-wit- 
 nesses, have borne to the great facts of the life and 
 death and resurrection of Jesus. He appeals ex- 
 pressly to that testimony when the hope of the 
 resurrection is in question*. The actual sight of 
 Jesus Himself dying, and of Jesus alive again from 
 the dead, by Cephas, by the Twelve repeatedly, 
 by James, by above five hundred brethren at once, 
 
 ^ Gal. ii. 20. ' Rom. viii. i6, 39, etc. Gal. iv. 6. 
 3 Gal. i. II— 13. ^ I Cor. xv. 1—7. 
 
III.] THAT OF A DREAMER. 
 
 93 
 
 weighs with himself as confirmation of what he 
 himself has seen, and he puts it before others as 
 ground of their reasonable belief. These are not 
 the words of a dreamer, who confounds the objec- 
 tive and the subjective in the one glamour of his 
 devotion to an idea. They are words of soberness. 
 It is very difficult to resist the conviction that they 
 are words of truth. It is not easy to believe that 
 he who so believed and lived the truth of Christ 
 risen, was sustained by a fancy. 
 
 But another matter remains to be considered. 
 St Paul is not alone in his belief, nor are those 
 who share it with him, all of them, disciples of his 
 own, who have learnt it wholly from him. Far 
 otherwise. A large section of the Christian Church 
 believes as firmly as he does, but has learnt all it 
 believes quite independently of St Paul's teaching. 
 While he was yet an unbeliever, there was a Chris- 
 tian Church in existence ; for he devoted his life to 
 destroy it\ Consider what this implies. These 
 Epistles were all written before St Paul's imprison- 
 
 ^ See Gal. i. 23. i Cor. xv. 9, 
 
94 CHURCHES NOT GUIDED BY [lect. 
 
 ment at Rome, or even at Caesarea ; — certainly 
 therefore (as we shall see presently) before A. D. 
 60. Now when he wrote his Epistle to the Gala- 
 tians he had been a Christian, it seems, for at least 
 twenty years \ Therefore within ten years of the 
 death of Jesus there was a Christian Church, which 
 not only existed, but was causing alarm to the 
 Jewish rulers and religious leaders. How could 
 that Church exist at all, unless Jesus was believed 
 to have risen ? A crucified man, a martyr at the 
 utmost, was no Saviour in whom men could believe, 
 in confession of whom, as Lord and Christ, a Chris- 
 tian Church could have been gathered. The belief 
 of the resurrection must then in some way have 
 been created, and made energetic, against enormous 
 difficulties, in the very country, in the very city, 
 where the death of Jesus took place, among those 
 who had either helped in putting Him to death, or 
 been driven to despair by the sight of their Teacher 
 dying the accursed death of the cross. Are not 
 these facts deeply significant } Can they be reason- 
 
 1 Comp. Gal. i. 18 with ii. i. 
 
III.] HIM HELD THE SAME FAITH. 95 
 
 ably denied ? And if they are admitted, is it easy 
 to believe that the resurrection of Christ was a de- 
 lusion ? 
 
 But mark again another fact shewn by these 
 unquestioned Epistles, and its significance. There 
 was, as we have seen, an elder branch of the Church, 
 consisting mainly of Jewish believers, in Palestine, 
 and some parts of Syria. There was also a younger 
 branch at Antioch, in Asia Minor, and Greece, 
 gathered chiefly, but not exclusively, through St 
 Paul's own teaching^ Even at Rome, the Christian 
 society, which neither St Paul nor any other 
 Apostles had yet visited, counted many members, 
 partly of Jewish, partly of Gentile birth and train- 
 ingl The Church existed, then, within thirty years 
 after the Crucifixion, as a society very numerous, 
 and very widely scattered. And it was not one 
 entirely homogeneous body under one exclusive 
 influence. It was divided into two great sections 
 at least ; one under Jewish influence, on the whole 
 unfriendly to St Paul, and looking mainly to the 
 
 ^ See Gal. ii. 9. ^ See Rom. xiv. throughout. 
 
96 CHURCHES NOT GUIDED BY [lect. 
 
 Apostles who were in Christ before him ; the other 
 owing its existence mainly to him and those who 
 had learnt their faith from him. These two por- 
 tions of the Church were almost as separate from 
 each other then as the Eastern and Western Church 
 in the fourteenth century, as Catholic from Pro- 
 testant bodies now. They had different forms of 
 worship and of outward observance ; it might 
 almost be said, different Apostles. For though 
 St Paul claims a full recognition of himself and 
 Barnabas by those who seemed to be the pillars 
 of the Church of circumcision \ it is evident that 
 the Apostles of the Gentiles were still held in 
 suspicion, if not disowned, by the Churches of 
 Jewish origin. 
 
 Yet these two great sections of the Church alike 
 believed in Christ as the Son of God, born of the 
 seed of David according to the flesh, and set apart 
 as the Son of God with power according to the 
 Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead \ 
 Can this harmony in the foundation of the faith, 
 
 ^ Gal. ii. 9. 2 Comp. Rom. i. 3, 4, with xiv. 9. 
 
III.] HIM HELD THE SAME EAITH. 97 
 
 coupled with this diversity in feeling and outward 
 observance, be accounted for, except upon the sup- 
 position of truth in the Creed common to both, and 
 the facts on which that Creed rested ? Those facts 
 were the life, the death, the resurrection of Jesus. 
 That Creed was, One God, the Father, of whom are 
 all things, and we unto Him ; — One Lord Jesus 
 Christ, through whom are all things, and we through 
 Him^ ; — One Spirit, who divideth to all men seve- 
 rally as He willl 
 
 We pass on to notice the remaining nine Epis- 
 tles of St Paul ; excluding that to the Hebrews. 
 Historic criticism has been busy with them all. 
 Conceding the genuineness of the four great epis- 
 tles, it has sought to shew that this or that of the 
 remaining nine cannot be genuine, because it differs 
 in style or character of teaching from that of the 
 four. I believe that there is no single instance in 
 which the argument will carry abiding conviction. 
 The differences seem to me very far less important^ 
 in every instance, than the indications of a common 
 
 ^ I Cor. viii. 6. ^ i Cor. xii. ri. 
 
 V. H. L. 7 
 
-J 
 98 UNDESIGNED AGREEMENT OF [lect. ': 
 
 authorship. The writer, as disclosed to us in them j 
 
 all, seems to me manifestly to have the same j 
 
 strongly marked and unique individuality ; only 
 a little modified, in a way almost always easy to , 
 
 explain, by difference of age and circumstances, ; 
 
 in the writer or the persons to whom the letter is • 
 
 addressed. ' 
 
 But whether we confine ourselves to the four, or • 
 
 take the whole of the thirteen into account, we have 
 a most remarkable result when we compare the 
 Epistles with another book, telling us much of the l 
 
 story of St Paul's Christian life and ministry, which j 
 
 found an admitted place in the Canon long before 
 the end of the second century. At present we will i 
 
 consider only that portion of the book, beginning j 
 
 with its ninth chapter, of which it may be said with ' 
 
 substantial truth that St Paul is the central figure. 
 We find that the history and the letters fit into | 
 
 each other, and incidentally confirm each other, in j 
 
 the most remarkable way. I must not go into the | 
 
 details from which this singular proof of truth derives 
 its force. It has been drawn out by Paley with his ! 
 
III.] HIS EPISTLES WITH THE ACTS. 99 
 
 own characteristic clearness and sagacity. Possibly 
 now and then he may have pushed his argument a 
 little too far. It is the fashion at present to depre- 
 ciate its force. There are minds too subtle in their 
 perception to be convinced by a proof which appeals 
 to the common sense of men. But it is the spe- 
 cial benefit of our English training that we can 
 estimate the real weight of evidence in practical 
 matters. And I believe that no healthy mind 
 will deny that real coincidences exist between the 
 Acts and the Epistles of St Paul, which can 
 neither be ascribed to chance nor to design ; and 
 that these are so numerous, and so varied, as to be 
 substantial indications that the history is true, and 
 the letters are genuine. 
 
 Let us examine, then, the history which comes 
 to us recommended by this remarkable internal 
 evidence of truth. It manifestly purports to be 
 written by a companion of St Paul. The writer is 
 with him, as appears simply from the incidental 
 change of a pronoun \ not always, but frequently ; 
 
 ^ Comp. e. g. Acts xvi. 8, lo, 17, 40, xx. 5 to tlie end of the Book. 
 
 7—2 
 
loo THE BOOK OF ACTS SHEWN TO BE [lect. 
 
 he Js shipwrecked with him ; he comes with him to 
 Rome, probably in the spring of A.D. 6i. The book 
 closes with the simple mention of the fact that St 
 Paul, for two years after his arrival there, abode as 
 a prisoner, but in his own hired lodging, preaching 
 the Gospel with all boldness and without hindrance. 
 I can imagine no likely reason why the book should 
 end just thus and no otherwise, except the very 
 simple and obvious one, that the writer knew of 
 nothing more which it concerned his intended 
 readers to know. Now, supposing any one of the 
 various possible terminations of St Paul's imprison- 
 ment to have taken place before the book was 
 published, can the silence of the writer, after he 
 has mentioned the two years of outwardly unevent- 
 ful captivity, be naturally accounted for ? I think 
 not. If St Paul had either been tried and acquitted, 
 or tried and condemned, or had died in prison still 
 untried, I cannot but believe that a writer so closely 
 connected with him, whether remaining at Rome 
 with him or not, must very soon after have heard of 
 the event. I infer that the Book of Acts was com- 
 
III.] A CONTEMPORARY RECORD. loi 
 
 pleted and published not very long after the end 
 of the second year of St Paul's imprisonment at 
 Rome; that is, not long after the year A.D. 6^^. 
 
 If so, the history is the work of one who has 
 lived through the time of which he writes ; has 
 known many of the leading actors in it ; has not only 
 been the friend and companion of St Paul for years ; 
 but has been the guest of Philip the deacon, the 
 colleague of Stephen^; has spoken with James and 
 the elders of the Church of the circumcision at Jeru- 
 salem^; has dwelt at Csesarea, the city of Cornelius^, 
 within easy reach of the scenes not only of the early 
 chapters of the Book of Acts, but of the Gospel 
 history also. He is one, then, who has had the very 
 best opportunity of knowing the true story of the 
 time of which he writes, and has published his ver- 
 sion oi the story in the lifetime of the generation 
 which has witnessed all. 
 
 Ingenious reasons have been imagined, why 
 some author who lived long afterwards might leave 
 off just where and as the Book of Acts does. 
 
 1 Acts xxi. 8. 2 xxi. i8. ^ xxviii. r. 
 
102 IF CONTEMPORARY THEN [lect. 
 
 But none of these reasons seems to me at once 
 consistent with the facts, and probable in itself 
 And if the simple reason which I have assigned be 
 the true one, the Book of Acts must take its place 
 among the very best specimens of historical evi- 
 dence\ It is very seldom indeed that the history 
 of any great movement can be read in documents 
 so near the source as this. 
 
 The story, then, which the book tells of, the 
 origin and early development of the Christian Church, 
 may well claim to be received as substantially a 
 true record. The account is indeed evidently in- 
 complete. It may possibly require correcting in 
 parts, as it certainly requires filling up from other 
 and less primary evidence, when that can be had. 
 But as far as it goes, and in the main, it may claim 
 to be received as authentic history, not fiction, or 
 legend. 
 
 True, the history is in its nature a miraculous 
 one, in great part. In other words, it is an excep- 
 tional history ; one unlike ordinary experience. 
 
 1 See separate note at the end of the volume. 
 
in.] TRUE IN SUBSTANCE. 103 
 
 I have shewn reason in my last Lecture for think- 
 ing that the origin of the Christian Church must 
 needs have been supernatural ; certainly, if so, ex- 
 ceptional. But at all events, the nature of the story 
 which it contains will not warrant us in shuttino- 
 our eyes to the phenomena of the book itself, or in 
 rejecting the natural inferences from them, as to its 
 date, and its at least general truthfulness. That a 
 miraculous history should obtain belief so near the 
 time of its alleged occurrence, is a remarkable fact 
 certainly ; a perplexing fact, to those who wish to 
 deny its truth. They may possibly be able to 
 explain the fact otherwise than by admitting the 
 truth of the miracles. But the fact itself, that the 
 history is almost a contemporary one, seems to me 
 as clearly proved as any such fact can well be. 
 
 If this be so, some important conclusions will 
 follow. In the first place, the incidental notices 
 which the Book contains of our Lord's earthly life 
 are contemporary evidence as to the belief of 
 the earliest generation of Christians. The history 
 which could be so alluded to, was one already ac- 
 
104 THE CREED OF THE CHURCH [lect. 
 
 cepted by those who had themselves been disciples 
 of the original Apostles. What was this history ? 
 As far as scattered allusions will carry us, the same 
 which we have now. The descent of our Lord from 
 David is referred to as well known and undeniable \ 
 His mother and brethren are mentioned as living 
 in Jerusalem at the day of Pentecostl His minis- 
 try of miraculous beneficence^, begun after John's 
 baptism "*; His rejection by the rulers and people 
 of Israel ^; His death by crucifixion *^; His resurrec- 
 tion^; His present life in heaven, as the Lord and 
 judge of men^; are all alluded to as facts too 
 well known to need any explicit statement. The 
 primary function of the Apostolic office is under- 
 stood to be the bearing witness of our Lord's resur- 
 rection^ The greatest care is taken that a vacancy 
 in the number of the original Twelve shall be 
 filled up by one who has been himself a companion 
 of our Lord and of the remaining Eleven, through- 
 
 ^ Acts ii. 30, 32, xiii. 23. ^ i. 14. ^ ii. 22, x. 38. 
 
 4 i. 22, X. 37. ^ ii. 23, iii. 17, 18. ^ x. 39. 
 
 7 ii. 24, iii. 15, iv. 10 and/.r.ww. ^ j^^ 21, v. 31 zxA passim. 
 9 iv. II, X. 41. 
 
III.] IN ITS EARIIEST DAYS. 105 
 
 out His whole ministry on earth ^; in order that he 
 may be, even manifestly, a competent and inde- 
 pendent witness of this cardinal fact. 
 
 It follows that the Gospel which the Apostles 
 had preached in Jerusalem during the first years 
 after the Ascension, as remembered by the very 
 generation which had listened to it, was founded 
 upon the very same history to which, as we have 
 seen, St Paul's undisputed epistles bear a concurrent 
 testimony, as known and received among St Paul's 
 own converts in the same age. Two distinct lines 
 of evidence assure us that this history found ac- 
 ceptance with those who had the means of knowing 
 its falsehood, if it was false. This consideration 
 will not touch the details of the story. But with 
 regard to its main outline, and above all to its 
 Christology, it seems to have great weight. The 
 impression made upon those who had known our 
 Lord in the flesh, with regard to His Character and 
 Person, was just what the history which we have 
 accounts for and justifies. 
 
io6 ST LUKES GOSPEL MUST BE A [lect. 
 
 But we may fairly draw another very important 
 inference from our examination of the Book of 
 Acts. It gives us firm ground from which to pro- 
 ceed to that examination of our Canonical Gospels, 
 which must be the next step in our inquiry. 
 
 The Book of Acts is evidently a continuation 
 of another history by the same writer, a history of 
 "all that Jesus began both to do and to teach 
 until the day that He was received up\" The 
 identity of authorship between the Acts and the 
 third Gospel can scarcely be disputed. The internal 
 evidence is decisive. The publication of that Gospel 
 is thus carried back to a date not later than some- 
 where about the year A. D. 62"^, 
 
 Nothing can be more truth-like than the ac- 
 count of the motive and manner of its composition, 
 which is given in the short preface to the Gospel ^ 
 The author does not claim to be himself an eye- 
 
 1 Acts i. I. 
 
 ^ The account of the Ascension in Acts i. obliges us to conclude 
 that some interval had passed between the publication of the two 
 books : — new information, explaining and completing the account, 
 had been gained in the meantime. 
 
 3 Luke i. I — 4. 
 
III.] CONTEMPORARY HISTORY. 107 
 
 witness of what he relates. He claims simply to 
 have written down and arranged in order ^ the ac- 
 count which was generally received in the Church 
 on the authority of the eye-witnesses and ministers 
 of the word. Others have already attempted the 
 same thing. After careful inquiry, the author is 
 convinced that he can give his friend a fuller and 
 more exact account than any which has yet been 
 given in writing. He is not telling a history pre- 
 viously unknown, but giving precision and certainty 
 to truth, which his friend and others have already 
 learnt by oral teaching. 
 
 This claim exactly agrees with what we have 
 inferred about the author from the Book of Acts. 
 He is one of the second generation of Christians, 
 
 1 'AvaTa^aadaL, and Kade^ijs ypa\pai., which have been unduly 
 pressed even by Tischendorf, need not imply any strictly chrono- 
 logical arrangement of incidents. No good biography attempts this. 
 The words assert only that some principle of orderly arrangement 
 has been followed, so as to give the work a natural beginning, 
 middle, and end. The fact that the rejection at Nazareth evidently 
 (see Luke iv. 23) took place considerably later than the commence- 
 ment of our Lord's ministry at Capernaum, should have prevented 
 harmonists from assuming that St Luke has followed the order of 
 time. Kindred incidents are sometimes grouped together; e.g. 
 vi. I — ir. 
 
io8 THIS HISTORY CANNOT BE [lect. 
 
 the much younger contemporaries of the original 
 Apostles. It agrees also with what we have learnt 
 indirectly from St Paul's Epistles, which presup- 
 pose a knowledge just such as St Luke here 
 attributes to his own readers. Why should we 
 hesitate to accept the account, so very nearly con- 
 temporary, so appealing to contemporaries to wit- 
 ness the identity of the history with one already 
 known, as being at least substantially correct ? It 
 does little more than fill up the outline traced in 
 St Paul's allusions, and the incidental notices con- 
 tained in the speeches of the Apostles, as recorded 
 in the Book of Acts. 
 
 If it be true that either the Book of Acts or the 
 Gospel consists in part of previously existing written 
 documents, which the author has incorporated 
 with his own work, this supposition will only place 
 us in even more immediate contact with the original 
 actors and their first disciples. The previous re- 
 cords which are imbedded in histories published 
 before A.D. 65, must at least be dated within half a 
 generation of the Crucifixion. Until good cause be 
 
iii.l A LEGENDARY ONE. 
 
 109 
 
 shewn to the contrary, such histories have the 
 strongest possible claim on our belief. 
 
 So far, I think, we are on very safe ground in 
 our investigation : We are dealing with a virtually 
 contemporary history. There has been no room 
 for the growth of a legendary story, which shall be 
 neither true, nor intentionally false. There has 
 been no time even for the gradual and unconscious 
 deflection of fact into fiction founded on an 
 indeterminable basis of fact. We have in St Luke 
 and the Acts either history substantially true, or 
 conscious and intentional fiction. We must not 
 shut our eyes to the alternative. 
 
 I will say nothing just yet of the nature of the 
 story, or of the character and the teaching of Him 
 who is its one central subject. Before we approach 
 that part of our argument, we must first observe 
 some other evidence which lies before us. Side by 
 side with St Luke's Gospel we find two other 
 books professing to give the same history. Neither 
 tells us anything directly or indirectly about its 
 author. But the story told in each is the same in 
 
no MUTUAL RELATION OF THE [lect. 
 
 its general outline ; the character and work of 
 Jesus is the same ; the account of the death and 
 resurrection of Jesus is substantially the same. 
 Yet clearly no one of these three accounts is an 
 echo of either or both the other two. There is a 
 general outline which is common to all, while each 
 has also a great deal which is peculiar to itself. 
 Incidents and discourses are numerous in St Mat- 
 thew which are not in St Luke, and the contrary. 
 St Mark, who might seem at first sight to have 
 little of his own, who records few incidents, and 
 only one parable^ not contained in one or both of 
 the other two, yet almost always tells what he 
 does tell with a force and freshness, and an addi- 
 tion of minute and picturesque circumstance to his 
 narrative, quite inexplicable if he were only a 
 compiler from St Matthew and St Luke. 
 
 It would be impossible, within the compass of 
 a single Lecture, to discuss satisfactorily the dif- 
 ficult question of the precise relations between the 
 first three, or, as it has become usual of late to call 
 
 ^ That of the seed growing secretly. Ch. iv. 26 — 29. 
 
III.] FIRST THREE GOSPELS. m 
 
 them, the ' synoptic ' Gospels. But it seems neces- 
 sary to state shortly the conclusions to which long 
 consideration has led me, upon a few of those main 
 points in the question which alone affect their 
 historic value ; and to indicate at least the general 
 nature of the reasons for my opinion. 
 
 In the first place, any possible form of what 
 may be called the 'supplemental' theory of the 
 composition of the three Gospels seems to me en- 
 tirely irreconcilable with the actual facts of the 
 case, when these are fairly and carefully examined. 
 Every possible arrangement of the three among 
 themselves has found some eminent supporter. 
 But whichever arrangement we adopt, we are 
 met by the fact of omissions of most important 
 matter, which (on the supposition made) must 
 have been under the eye of the later writer ; of 
 arbitrary alterations of order and collocation ; of 
 discrepancies, amounting to apparent contradiction, 
 in the time and circumstance of incidents. All 
 these variations are natural and easily explicable, 
 if each Gospel was composed independently ; but 
 
112 THE SUPPLEMENTARY THEORY [lect. 
 
 seem inexplicable, if any one of the evangelists 
 had the work of either or both of his predecessors 
 in his hands. The failure (as I think any candid 
 judge must pronounce it) of innumerable attempts 
 to harmonize the three Gospels, in the sense in 
 which that word has unfortunately been used — 
 that of constructing out of the very words of the 
 three Gospels, dovetailed into each other, one nar- 
 rative which shall be complete, and perfectly con- 
 sistent with itself and with each of the original 
 documents — would be a real difficulty on this theory ; 
 while it is perfectly explained, if we suppose the 
 three narratives to be independent portraits taken 
 from different aspects, or (to vary the illustration) 
 the notes of one chord, harmonious, not in unison. 
 The theory to which I object, seems to me to miss 
 probability in itself; and to be at variance with 
 any natural view of the phenomena of the Gospels ; 
 when it represents each Evangelist after the first as 
 writing with the work of his predecessor or pre- 
 decessors before him, and intending simply to com- 
 plete that narrative by addition, or to adapt it by 
 
III.] OF THEIR ORIGIN FAILS. 113 
 
 explanation and selection, to some new class of 
 readers. I am persuaded that this theory will lose 
 its hold in proportion as the subject is thought- 
 fully and candidly studied. 
 
 In the next place, we have to consider whether 
 it be possible to explain the phenomena of the 
 three Gospels, in so far as they have matter and 
 language in common, by the supposition of an 
 'Original Gospel^', committed to writing before 
 any of them existed, and used by their authors 
 as a common source of information. This sup- 
 position seems to me to become less credible just 
 in proportion to the distinctness with which we 
 attempt to conceive the contents and nature of the 
 supposed document, and to adapt our hypothesis 
 to the complicated facts for which it has to ac- 
 count. If the supposed Gospel contained only 
 what is common to all our three Canonical Gos- 
 pels, it must have been of a very meagre descrip- 
 tion indeed ; a very bare outline of a very arbitrarily 
 chosen cycle of incidents, such as can scarcely have 
 
 ^ The Ur-evangelium of German writers. 
 V. H. L. 8 
 
114 SO DOES THAT OF A WRITTEN [lect. 
 
 served any intelligible purpose. Moreover, in our 
 Gospels, verbal agreement and divergence are much 
 too rapidly interchanged to be easily accounted for 
 (as on this theory they ought to be) by the mere 
 presence in the supposed Gospel of a whole section, 
 or its absence. Yet these are the very facts to 
 explain which it has been invented. No direct 
 evidence of the existence of any such document 
 can be produced. We might naturally have looked 
 for some clear allusion to it in the opening of St 
 Luke's Gospel; but his words will not bear any 
 such construction. They refer naturally to oral 
 teaching^ as the source of whatever knowledge his 
 readers already had. They are not inconsistent 
 with the supposition that portions of this oral 
 teaching may have been already put into writing. 
 But if so, they suggest fragmentary anecdotes, 
 which St Luke himself, and others known to him, 
 were undertaking to rearrange^, rather than an 
 authoritative and orderly history, such as the 
 'Original Gospel' must have been. If, as I think, 
 
 1 KaTTJXvdv^, Luke i. 4. = dvard^aaOai,, Lukei. i. 
 
III.] ORIGINAL GOSPEL. 115 
 
 the hypothesis is as far from 'solving the phe- 
 nomena', as it is from being externally attested, 
 it must be abandoned as untenable. 
 
 For reasons then of which I have given a bare 
 outline, but of which the real force depends upon 
 the patient examination of a great number of 
 minute particulars, it seems necessary to reject 
 alike the theory which makes our Gospels mu- 
 tually dependent upon each other, and that which 
 makes them all dependent in great measure upon 
 a common written original variously modified. I 
 believe that the fair conclusion from sufficiently 
 wide and careful induction will be that each of the 
 three Gospels was composed by an author who lived 
 very near the original witnesses of the history of 
 our Lord's Galilean ministry. His last sufferings and 
 resurrection, and was familiar with the narrative of 
 these events as orally recited by the Apostles and 
 their companions in the earliest days of the Church 
 at Jerusalem. In this oral narrative (whether in 
 part already committed to writing in a fragmentary 
 form, or still passing only from mouth to mouth) 
 
 8—2 
 
ii6 THE THREE GOSPELS ARE [lect. 
 
 lies the explanation of the coincidence of language, 
 and the general agreement in the selection of facts 
 and discourses recorded, so far as these agreements 
 exist. But I think it at least equally clear that 
 each writer has worked independently of the other 
 two, and has been in possession of special informa- 
 tion, not included in the cycle of the recognized 
 oral Gospel. St Matthew, for instance, has a 
 knowledge at first hand of many of our Lord's 
 longer public discourses, which is peculiar to him- 
 self. St Mark, if not an eye-witness, has been in 
 close communication with a singularly gifted eye- 
 witness of a great number of our Lord's actions. 
 St Luke has learnt much from friends in Jerusalem 
 and in Galilee, who have known the Mother of our 
 Lord, and the other faithful women who accom- 
 panied him in his ministry. In one large portion 
 of his Gospel he has apparently followed, in the 
 main, the guidance of the current oral narrative ; in 
 another he has worked in almost entire indepen- 
 dence of it. He has preserved for us a treasure 
 of parables and discourses unknown to his fellow 
 
III.] MUTUALLY INDEPENDENT. 117 
 
 evangelists. He thus shews us our Lord's teaching 
 in new and most instructive aspects. He tells us 
 how it dealt with the sinful and outcast^; how it 
 exposed the worldly to themselves^; how it taught 
 the lesson of universal brotherhood with suffering 
 humanity^ 
 
 I have thought it right to enter thus far into the 
 consideration of a very interesting and difficult pro- 
 blem, because it has a certain bearing upon the 
 value of our three Gospels as evidence of the truth 
 of the history which they agree in telling. But the 
 two results which alone seem to me really impor- 
 tant in this view are independent of any hypothetic 
 element. I think it completely proved that each of 
 the three lived and wrote at least in the generation 
 which grew up under the personal teaching of the 
 Apostles, and either witnessed, or knew many who 
 had witnessed, the facts which he related. I think 
 it also clear that each wrote without any knowledge 
 of the work of his fellow evangelists ; so that his 
 
 * See e. g. Luke vii. 36, xv. * Luke xii. 13, xvi., throughout. 
 ^ Luke X. 30. 
 
ii8 INTERNAL PROOF OF THEIR [lect. 
 
 testimony is an independent testimony, not a mere 
 improved repetition of another's testimony. 
 
 Indeed if the mutual independence of the three 
 Gospels be conceded, it will follow almost necessa- 
 rily that they were written very near the same time. 
 A difference of anything like ten years between the 
 date of the earliest and latest would have made it 
 almost certain that the earlier written must have 
 been known to the author of the later Gospel. 
 Consequently, if St Luke's, as I have shewn strong 
 reason for thinking, must have been written within 
 some thirty years after the Ascension, the other 
 two Gospels cannot be dated much earlier or much 
 later. 
 
 There is strong internal evidence, quite indepen- 
 dent of this consideration, to shew that the first two 
 Gospels were written long before the end of the first 
 century. It has been justly noticed, for instance, 
 that the absence of any allusion to the fulfilment 
 of our Lord's denunciations of judgment upon the 
 apostate city and people would have been strange 
 and almost unnatural, if the destruction of Jerusa- 
 
III.] VERY EARLY COMPOSITION. 119 
 
 lem and the consequent dispersion of the Jews had 
 taken place before the Gospels were composed \ In 
 St Matthew and St Mark too, even more manifestly 
 than in St Luke, the prediction of judgment on 
 Jerusalem is mixed with and interpenetrated by the 
 announcement of our Lord's coming again and the 
 end of the world, in a way which it is less easy to 
 conceive as possible after than before the one event 
 had actually occurred^ But far more weighty indi- 
 cations of the early composition of all the three 
 Gospels are to be found in the language, the style, 
 and cast of thought of each. Scarcely even in the 
 earliest portion of the sub-apostolic age, scarcely at 
 any time after the generation of the Apostles them- 
 selves had passed away, could any one of these have 
 been exactly what they are. A generation later. 
 Christian writers, if as familiar as the writers of the 
 
 1 Compare Acts xi. 28. 
 
 ^ This is recognized indirectly even in De Wette's remark (on 
 Matt. xxiv. 30, 31. Ed. 2. 1838.) ^^^w.rlj^k.,welcherwahrscheinlick 
 nach der Zerstorimg Jemsalems schrieb, scheint die Zukunft etwas 
 hinauszuschieben, weil er den Romern fiir den Besitz von Jerusalem 
 einen gev^^issen Zeitraum zumisst (xxi. 24) und die letzte grosse Ent- 
 scheidung durch ein schwankendes koX einfiihrt (v. 25)." 
 
I20 INTERNAL PROOF OF THEIR [lect. 
 
 Gospels are with Jewish habits of thought and feel- 
 ing, would have been Christians of the Ebionite or 
 Nazarene type ; narrow, prejudiced, incapable of 
 conceiving or representing faithfully the character 
 and teaching of our Lord, as these Gospels repre- 
 sent it. If of Gentile birth and freer intelligence, 
 they would have been probably ignorant of, certain- 
 ly destitute of sympathy with, Jewish conceptions 
 and practices. Judaism would have been to them 
 a thing dead and of the past ; or if living and pre- 
 sent, an object of detestation ; instead of being, as 
 it evidently has been to the writers of our Gospels, 
 the atmosphere which they have been used to 
 breathe ; the source from which their habits of 
 thought and speech have been derived. Only men 
 born and educated as Jews, but lifted above their 
 Jewish prejudices, and imbued with wide and human 
 sympathies, by contact with their Lord Himself or 
 his chosen associates, could have thought and felt 
 as these Evangelists do. Only men so born and 
 educated could have written exactly as they write. 
 Their language is the colloquial Greek of the East 
 
III.] VERY EARLY COMPOSITION. 121 
 
 largely modified by familiarity with the spoken 
 Aramaic of Palestine, with the Hebrew of the Old 
 Testament, with the literal rendering of that He- 
 brew into Alexandrian Greek. This is just what it 
 ought to be, if our date for the composition of the 
 Gospels be correct, and what it could not well have 
 been, even half a generation later. It was scarcely 
 possible for Christians of the third or second gene- 
 ration to be at once sufficiently Christian and suffi- 
 ciently Jewish to think and write as the authors of 
 our Gospels have done. It would be an anachro- 
 nism equally in point of language and of religious 
 position to ascribe them to any age but the first. 
 
 I venture then to assume, as sufficiently proved, 
 first the mutual independence of the three Gospels, 
 and secondly, their origin in the generation which 
 had known the Apostles as living witnesses of our 
 Lord's life and teaching. It necessarily follows that 
 the history which they embody agreed substanti- 
 ally with that which the Apostles had delivered, 
 and which was generally believed by the generation 
 which had witnessed all. 
 
122 SIGNIFICANCE OF MIRACLES [lect. 
 
 This conclusion premised, we come to consider, 
 in the next place, the general result of their com- 
 bined testimony to our Lord's Person, Character, 
 and Work. 
 
 A careful examination no doubt diminishes our 
 first impression as to the great number of the 
 miracles of which we have any detailed account 
 given in the three Gospels. It seems probable that 
 a few representative instances had been already 
 selected and kept in remembrance. Some of 
 these are so distinctly told with time and name 
 and place and circumstance, as to make it clear 
 that we cannot save the honesty of the narrators, 
 if we refuse to admit the substantial truth of 
 the narratives. These narratives tell the story 
 of a supernatural life, and end with the death 
 and the resurrection of Jesus. To profess to 
 believe the story in the main, and to eliminate the 
 supernatural from it, is impossible. But then on 
 the other hand we must notice also how vtxy far 
 the Gospels are from presenting our Lord to us only 
 or chiefly in the light of a worker of wonders. A 
 
III.] IN THE GOSPEL HISTORY. 123 
 
 comparison with the Apocryphal Gospels on this 
 point is most significant, as shewing what turn 
 human fancy took when it shaped the story for it- 
 self In these our Lord is a mere worker of prodigies. 
 The Christ of our Gospels, on the contrary, is One 
 who claims indeed to be the Lord of man, and of 
 man's world ; — One whom the winds and the seas 
 and the stormy passions of men obey. But He is 
 this, because He is the Son of Man ; the represen- 
 tative of the race for which He is come to give His 
 life a ransom ; — full of sympathy with man's condi- 
 tion ; the source of hope and comfort and of present 
 relief to all human sorrow. This He shews Him.self 
 to be, by exercising a palpable dominion over that 
 part of man's troubles and dangers which can be 
 seen and felt in this present state, and of which 
 therefore the removal can be seen and felt. He 
 heals the sick; He restores the lunatic to sanity; He 
 relieves those who are oppressed by the devil ; He 
 calms the stormy sea ; He feeds the hungry thou- 
 sands ; He raises the dead ; — not that men may 
 wonder and make Him an earthly King, but that 
 
124 THE CHRISTOLOGY OF THE [lect. 
 
 He may reveal Himself and His Heavenly Father 
 to them, and may bring them, forgiven, loved, trust- 
 ful, and holy, to His Father's throne. He shews 
 men by open deed that the order of this world is 
 subject to His Father's will, and that that will is 
 mercy and love even to the unthankful and the evil. 
 His control over nature is not exercised arbitrarily, 
 but to reveal that higher side of human life, in which 
 God, who is a Spirit, deals with the spirit of man, in 
 order that He may bring it to its holy and happy 
 perfection in Himself This purpose of our Lord's 
 miracles is everywhere conspicuous, and gives unity 
 of significance to them all. 
 
 And then who shall express the wonder of the 
 Person, or the beauty of the Character of our Lord, 
 as they are manifested in the same history } I do 
 not at present speak of anything which the Fourth 
 Gospel adds to the teaching of the Three, with which 
 alone we are dealing at present. Who is the Per- 
 son whom the Three, taken together, present to our 
 trust and love, as alive again from the dead, to die 
 no more 1 As living in heaven, yet having pro- 
 
III.] FIRST THREE GOSPELS. 125 
 
 mised to be with His Church and people on earth 
 even to the end of the world ^^ His chosen name 
 for Himself is usually "the Son of Man;" the Repre- 
 sentative and Head of mankind. Yet his chosen 
 Name for the God who has sent Him into the 
 world is *'MY Father which is in heaven^" He 
 is attested as the Son of God at His baptism 
 by John^ He confesses Himself to be the Son 
 of God^, and on this confession is condemned to 
 die by the High Priest and Sanhedrim. His re- 
 surrection reveals Him to be the Son of God. 
 Risen, He claims to have all power in heaven 
 and earth, and promises to be with His Church 
 and people thenceforth, even to the end of the 
 worlds Divine therefore He is, and so the ob- 
 ject of reverence and trust without fear of idolatry. 
 Yet human also ; and, as man, full of all sympathy 
 with man, that He may be the object of full con- 
 fidence to man. In every line we read proofs of 
 an unfailing sympathy with all human want and 
 
 ^ Matt, xxviii. 18 — 20. ^ See e. g. Matt. xxvi. 39. ^ Matt. iii. 17. 
 ^ Mark xiv. 61. ^ jvi^tt. xxviii. 18. 
 
126 THE CHARACTER OF OUR LORD [lect. 
 
 sorrow and infirmity. But in Him the divinest 
 compassion for the sinner is blended always with 
 the purest and holiest hatred of sin. 
 
 And then as to the Character of this most won- 
 derful Person, thus in contact at once and equally 
 with God and with man. What shall we say of the 
 indignant scorn of hypocrisy ; the noble love of 
 truth ; the self-forgetfulness ; the self-sacrifice ? — 
 Who does not feel as he reads that we have before 
 us here the true ideal of humanity ; the presence of 
 feminine purity and tenderness, in harmonious com- 
 bination with manly fearlessness and zeal for truth 
 and right i* — There is no difference in these respects 
 between one Gospel and another, each gives us the 
 same Person and the same Character. The three 
 portraits are taken no doubt from difi"erent points 
 of view ; each gives us some feature or aspect less 
 distinctly seen in the other two. But He whom 
 each represents truly, from its own point of view, is 
 really one and the same in them all. Can He who 
 was this have been any other than the Son of God 
 made man .'' The Image of Him in whose likeness 
 
III.] AS PAINTED IN THEM. 127 
 
 man was made ? And if the Son of God was mani- 
 fested as man, could He have been other than these 
 Gospels tell us that Jesus was ? 
 
 If the Gospels contained only ordinary history, 
 no one would ever have thought of denying to 
 them the character of trustworthy evidence. It is 
 very seldom indeed that we can read history in 
 documents lying so near the time, so apparently 
 ingenuous, so fresh and vivid. It is only because 
 the history which they contain is a miraculous his- 
 tory, the life which they relate is a supernatural 
 life, that any one has ever questioned the con- 
 temporaneousness or the veracity of the Evange- 
 lists. 
 
 It is no doubt right that their evidence should 
 be sifted as closely as possible. And yet I believe 
 that any one who will consider that supernatural 
 Life and its Work, as related by these three wit- 
 nesses, in connection with those indisputable facts 
 of the Christian Society and the Christian life 
 which we reviewed in the last Lecture, will come 
 to the conclusion that the story which the Gospels 
 
128 NO STORY LESS WONDERFUL C^iV^[LECT. 
 
 tell us is necessary to account for the subsequent 
 facts. The Person and character and work of 
 Christ on earth supply an adequate cause, and no 
 more than a sufficient cause, for their undeniable 
 results. Believe our Lord to have been what the 
 Gospels represent Him, and all we know of the 
 origin and early developement of the Church, all 
 we know of the Christian life as lived in that 
 Church, from the earliest point to which other and 
 indisputable evidence will carry us back, becomes 
 intelligible, consistent, and even natural^ in a very 
 real sense of the word. That Life, so wonderful in 
 word and deed, followed by that Death and Resur- 
 rection and Ascension, accounts for the origin of 
 the Church and of the Christian life ; and we do 
 not see how anything less wonderful could account 
 for them. 
 
 Hardly any reasonable sceptic can resist the 
 conviction that, whether truly or mistakenly, the 
 first generation of Christians, the people who had 
 known Jesus on earth, and stood beside His cross, 
 believed Him to have risen from the dead, and to 
 
III.] ACCOUNT FOR ADMITTED FACTS. 129 
 
 have been what the Gospels tell us that He was. 
 This seems as certain as any fact in history. Nor 
 is it easy to see how this impression could have 
 been created but by some very wonderful, some 
 supernatural reality. 
 
 If this impression was true, all which followed 
 is naturally and consistently explained. If it was 
 delusive, then w^e have to account, not merely for 
 the existence of such a belief in the minds of the 
 generation which had known Christ after the flesh, 
 but also for the formation and growth of the 
 Society which subdued the . Empire, and has done 
 much to transform the world. It would be scarcely 
 too much to say that the Life of our Lord seems 
 difficult to believe only when we regard it by itself, 
 apart from the history which preceded it on the 
 one hand, and that to which it has given origin on 
 the other. 
 
 The relation of our Lord's Life to preceding 
 
 history will be noticed in the next Lecture. For 
 
 the present I dwell only on its connection with the 
 
 subsequent history of the world ; which seems to 
 
 V. H. L. 9 
 
I30 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE EOR [lect. 
 
 me to furnish the true point of view for our esti- 
 mate of all direct evidence as to its nature. 
 
 So prepared, we come, finally, to examine the 
 evidence of the Fourth Gospel, which historical 
 criticism has chosen as its peculiar battle-field in 
 our own day. It will obviously be impossible, 
 within my allotted limits, to give anything more 
 than the conclusions which I believe that the con- 
 troversy has established, with the barest outline of 
 the reasons which justify them. 
 
 In the first place, it is admitted that at the end 
 of the second century the Fourth Gospel was almost 
 universally acknowledged as the work of St John 
 the Apostle ; and that among those who refer to it 
 several years earlier as his work were some who in 
 early youth had themselves known disciples of St 
 John. It seems to be proved further that in the 
 scanty remains of the Christian writers of the 
 second and third quarters of the second century 
 there are allusions to the Gospel quite as frequent 
 as we could reasonably expect to find, in the case 
 of a Gospel furnishing little matter to the Apolo- 
 
III.] THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 131 
 
 gist, and which no one supposes to have been 
 written much before the end of the first century \ 
 We may add that there is not a particle of direct 
 evidence in favour of any other author than St 
 John, nor any trace of any wide-spread doubt of his 
 authorship. Those who knew the Gospel at all 
 seem to have known it as his^ So much ought to 
 be admitted on all hands, as to the direct external 
 evidence of the authorship of the Gospel. It is un- 
 doubtedly very strong, and ought to be accepted 
 as conclusive, unless a careful examination of the 
 book itself should shew very clear and cogent 
 reason to the contrary. 
 
 Our next step then should be to examine the 
 Gospel itself, in order to judge whether the internal 
 evidence agrees with the external, or leads to an 
 opposite conclusion. Of course it would be im- 
 possible to attempt such an examination in detail 
 as part of a single Lecture. Happily the inquiry 
 has been carried out with great care and patience, 
 
 1 See separate note at the end of the volume. 
 
 2 The exception of the Alogi is scarcely worth notice. 
 
132 INTERNAL EVIDENCE TO [lect. 
 
 and often with admirable fairness, both in Germany 
 and in England. 
 
 English readers, who wish to examine the ques- 
 tion of the Apostolic authorship for themselves, 
 will find the best that can be said on the side of its 
 opponents, whether on external or internal grounds, 
 stated with great ability, and in a deeply religious 
 temper, by Mr Tayler\ And any one who will 
 read Mr Sanday's very able and thoughtful ex- 
 amination of the Gospel itself^ together with 
 Bleek's judicial summing up of the whole ques- 
 tion^, will have before him all the main points of 
 the evidence on the other side. I think the con- 
 clusion will be that Mr Sanday has not stated the 
 result of the investigation too strongly when he 
 says, 
 
 *' By the facts in this as in all cases we must 
 
 '^ An attempt to ascertain the character ol the Fourth Gospel, by 
 J. J. Tayler, B.A. London, 1867. 
 
 2 The AtUhorship and historical character of the Fourth Gospel, by 
 W. Sanday M. A., Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. London, 
 X874. 
 
 ^ Intj-oduction to the Ne^o Testament. Translated by Rev. W. 
 Urwick M. A., Edinburgh, 1869. 
 
III.] ST JOHN AS ITS AUTHOR. 133 
 
 judge.... In this case they seem to give a clear ver- 
 dict. The Gospel is the work of the Apostle, the 
 son of Zebedee ; it is the record of an eye-witness 
 of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ ; and its histori- 
 cal character is such as under the circumstances 
 might be expected — it needs no adventitious com- 
 mendation to make it higherV 
 
 Bleek concludes his calm investigation of the 
 whole evidence, internal and external, with the 
 expression of an opinion equally decided, 
 
 '' Our investigation has confirmed me in the 
 stedfast conviction, which is unavoidably urged 
 upon us ever and anon from different considera- 
 tions, that this fourth Gospel is really the work of 
 St John, the trusted and beloved disciple of the 
 Lordl" 
 
 The judgment of the veteran Ewald has been 
 often quoted. It is characteristically confident, 
 but coming from him has great weight. 
 
 "That John is really the author... cannot be 
 
 ^ p. 304. The summary, at least, of the internal evidence 
 given in ch. xix. of Mr Sanday's work should be carefully studied. 
 * Vol. I. p. 250, end of § 89. 
 
134 THE AUTHOR IS EVIDENTLY [lect, 
 
 doubted or denied ;... on the contrary, every argu- 
 ment, from every quarter to which we can look, 
 every trace and record, combine together to render 
 any serious doubt upon the question absolutely 
 impossible^ 
 
 I am not disposed to underrate the importance 
 of the question upon which judges so undeniably 
 competent have come to this conclusion. But it 
 must be remembered that the work of an un- 
 named or unknown author may be perfectly good 
 evidence. Who distrusts the Anabasis, because 
 Xenophon does not claim' the authorship, and 
 apparently refers to it in the Hellenica as the 
 work of some one else ? Every reader feels the 
 hand of an eye-witness and actor in every line of 
 the narrative, and believes it to be true history, 
 whoever wrote it. Even so, if a reasonable doubt 
 remained (which I think that it does not) whether 
 St John wrote his Gospel, our conviction of the 
 trustworthiness of the book might remain un- 
 
 1 I quote from the preface to Dr Westcott's ThotigJits on the Study 
 of the Gospels ; but Ewald has expressed the opinion repeatedly. 
 
III.] HIMSELF AN EYEWITNESS, 135 
 
 changed. I think no one could fairly read and 
 re-read the Gospel without the fullest persuasion 
 that its picture of our Lord's character and life 
 and teaching, — so simply drawn, yet so full of 
 living force, — was faithfully painted from the life. 
 As we read the story of the cure of the blind man, 
 in the ninth chapter ; of the raising of Lazarus, in 
 the eleventh ; of the early meetings of his future 
 disciples with our Lord, in the first ; of the conver- 
 sation with the woman of Samaria, in the fourth ; 
 of the washing of the disciples' feet, and the 
 departure of Judas from the supper-table, in the 
 thirteenth ; of the whole scene in the hall of the 
 High Priest, and the trial before Pilate, in the 
 eighteenth, and nineteenth ; of the death upon the 
 cross and the burial, in the latter part of the same 
 chapter; of Mary Magdalene and the two disciples 
 at the tomb in the twentieth ; and of the fishing by 
 the sea of Galilee in the twenty- first ^ ; — it is im- 
 possible to resist the impression that we are reading 
 
 1 I say this believing ch. xxi. to be a later addition by the Apostle 
 himself^ to the Gospel which had originally ended with ch. xx. 
 
136 CONTRAST BETWEEN ST JOHNS [lect. 
 
 the narrative of one who was present, or in imme- 
 diate contact with those who were present at each 
 event ; one who had himself been a disciple of 
 John the Baptist before he followed our Lord ; — 
 who had loved our Lord as a human friend, before 
 he knew Him as the Word made flesh ; — who had 
 sorrowed and despaired by His grave, and had 
 shared in the surprise and joy of the morning of 
 the resurrection ; had himself been made glad when 
 on the same day at evening, Jesus stood in the 
 midst of the disciples, and shewed them his hands 
 and his side ; and had been among the Seven who 
 recognized the divine Master as He stood in the 
 early dawn by the lake of Gennesaret, shewing 
 Himself to be the Lord. 
 
 But it is alleged that this Gospel is hopelessly 
 at variance with the other three, so that we must 
 give up either it or them. If the one portrait of 
 our Lord is true the other must needs be false. 
 Let us see what there is of truth in this statement, 
 and what it is worth as an objection. 
 
 It is true no doubt that, on a hasty view, the 
 
III.] GOSPEL AND THE FIRST THREE. 137 
 
 difference appears perplexing. The three confine 
 
 themselves to our Lord's ministry in Galilee, the 
 
 length of which they leave quite undetermined. 
 
 They give no account of any visit to Jerusalem 
 
 before the Passover at which our Lord suffered. 
 
 On the other hand, the first eleven chapters of St 
 
 John are chiefly^ occupied with a ministry of our 
 
 Lord unnoticed by them, of which the scene 
 
 lies in Judaea and Jerusalem, partly before, partly 
 
 during the intervals of his Galilean ministry. The 
 
 teaching of our Lord as recorded in the 'synoptic' 
 
 Gospels is simple, usually even familiar, in language 
 
 and illustration, authoritative, directly practical in 
 
 its aim. In St John, on the other hand, though 
 
 the teaching is equally simple in language, it 
 
 touches profounder truth concerning Himself and 
 
 His heavenly Father ; and this not only when He 
 
 is alone with His chosen disciples, but when He is 
 
 in conflict with His enemies. These are differences 
 
 which have struck every thoughtful reader at some 
 
 time. 
 
 1 Not exclusively, see e. g. ch. vi. 
 
138 DIFFERENCES ARE REAL, BUT [lect. 
 
 A more minute comparison seems to add to 
 these differences in the subject-matter of the nar- 
 rative between the three Gospels and the fourth, 
 many apparent discrepancies in detail, which seem 
 to baffle any attempt to harmonize. The very 
 utmost, and indeed I think more than the utmost, 
 has been made of these supposed contradictions, 
 and the diversities noticed just now, by critics who 
 attack the truthfulness, or the apostolic origin, or 
 both, of either, or of all our Gospels. But no wise 
 and fair-minded believer will either deny the exist- 
 ence of differences, and even of some few apparent 
 contradictions in detail; or will attempt to force 
 the different narratives into apparent agreement 
 by the invention of arbitrary hypotheses. 
 
 A more patient examination will greatly modify 
 and correct our first impressions. We soon learn 
 that neither narrative excludes the other. We 
 observe that the * synoptic' narrative does not 
 profess to cover the whole of our Lord's earthly 
 ministry ^ and that St John avowedly leaves large 
 
 1 See Mat iv. 12. Mark i. 14. Luk^iv. 23. 
 
III.] HAVE BEEN EXAGGERATED. 139 
 
 gaps^, in which it is perfectly easy to intercalate 
 the Galilean ministry, which he clearly recognizes ^ 
 though he does not usually relate it. We find, 
 on the other hand, that the three Gospels imply 
 a ministry of our Lord in Jerusalem of which they 
 give no account^ There are fragments in them 
 also, in one or two instances at least, bearing the 
 same impress with the discourses in St John ; 
 passages containing deep disclosures, like his, of 
 the relations between the Heavenly Father and 
 his Son, expressed in language which, if we came 
 upon it unawares, would seem to us to be St John's^. 
 If very few, these passages are still enough to shew 
 that our Lord's teaching had another element, dif- 
 ferent from that which the three Gospels usually 
 present to us, and agreeing in general character 
 with St John's much fuller representation. I think 
 too that what the three do record of our Lord's 
 
 ^ For instance some months must evidently have passed between 
 the unnamed Feast in ch. v. i, and the Passover in eh. vi. 4. 
 2 Seg ch. iv. 45, vi., vii. i. 
 5 Mat. xxiii. 37 ; Luke xiii. 34. 
 * See Mat. xi. 25 fF., xxviii. 18 ; Luke x. 21, 22. 
 
I40 ST JOHN'S GOSPEL AN ORIGINAL [lect. 
 
 discourse with his disciples at the last supper, 
 though differing in detail from what St John gives 
 us as spoken on the same evening, has yet very 
 remarkably the same general tone and spirit. 
 This may well dispose us to believe that if the 
 three had recorded more of our Lord's words to 
 his apostles when alone with them, or if St John 
 had given us more of his addresses to the simple 
 crowd of peasants and fishermen in Galilee, the 
 accounts would have differed much less than they 
 do. Certainly the difference, when all is fairly 
 considered, is not such as to affect seriously the 
 credibility of either account. And the few alleged 
 contradictions are usually not at all greater than 
 we expect to find between the testimony of any 
 two perfectly truthful and independent witnesses \ 
 Independent I certainly believe the accounts 
 to be. Probably St John may have seen one or 
 more of the earlier Gospels, possibly all of them. 
 
 ^ The one instance of real and serious difficulty is the well- 
 known one of the day of Nisan on which the Last Supper was 
 eaten. A few remarks on this will be found in a separate note. 
 
III.] AND INDEPENDENT TESTIMONY. 141 
 
 Undoubtedly he must have known well the oral 
 Gospel, w^hich furnished the common basis of the 
 three ; and which he himself must have helped to 
 mould into that earliest shape in which we may 
 suppose it to have been recited in the Church at 
 Jerusalem, before the . persecution which arose 
 about Stephen. Some knowledge of their contents 
 seems necessary to account for St John's careful 
 avoidance, until the events of the last Passover, 
 of what they have already recorded. But nothing 
 can be more alien from probability, or from the 
 indications presented by the Gospel itself, than 
 any notion of its author writing, like some modern 
 historian, in his study, with the previously written 
 Gospels spread before him. If ever writing did, 
 his Gospel bears the marks of a fresh and un- 
 studied utterance of that which lives in the writer's 
 own memory, and has become interwoven with 
 every thread of his own being. He pursues his 
 own path calmly, pensively, sometimes sadly ; — 
 for is he not tracing the story of his Lord's rejec- 
 tion ; and of the sin and ruin of his own people ? 
 
142 UNITY IN DIVERSITY BETWEEN [lect. 
 
 Yet the retrospect is not wholly painful. The pain 
 is mingled with delight. He is telling that which, 
 far away and long ago, in his plastic youth, filled 
 his own heart with joy and sorrow too deep for 
 words, took possession of his soul, and determined 
 the bent of his whole life. He is telling that which 
 he has seen, and heard, and his hands have han- 
 dled concerning the Word of Life\ that Eternal 
 Life which was with the Father, and was mani- 
 fested to himself; and with himself to those loved 
 comrades, who have long since gone to their rest, 
 and have left him now for a while alone among 
 strange faces, other minds. It matters little to 
 him, thus employed, what others have written. 
 None knew as he knows ; none can feel that which 
 he feels. The Spirit teaches him all things, and 
 brings all things to his remembrance. He is con- 
 scious of a guidance which cannot mislead. He 
 has the mind of Christl 
 
 One thing I believe is entirely clear to every 
 thoughtful reader of the Gospels. Though the por- 
 
 ^ I Joh. i. I — 3. 2 Compare i Cor. ii. 16, with i Job. ii. 27. 
 
III.] THE FOURTH AND THE THREE. 143 
 
 trait of our Lord as painted by St John is taken 
 from a different point of view from that occupied 
 by the writers of the earlier Gospels, the great Sub- 
 ject of the portrait is evidently the same. St John's 
 picture is fuller and more living ; features scarcely 
 visible in the earlier painted likenesses are brought 
 into clear light in his ; but all represent the same 
 divine yet human Personality. The note struck by 
 each is different, but they combine to form one 
 perfect harmony. St John's account presupposes 
 theirs, and completes it. 
 
 It is not difficult to see why it was natural and 
 fit that the simpler record of the three should come 
 first, and be followed by the deeper and fuller 
 treatment of the same subject, which we find in 
 St John. The Church, even at Jerusalem, in its 
 earliest days was composed predominantly of dis- 
 ciples from Galilee \ To them no part of our Lord's 
 life could be so full of interest as his ministry 
 in Galilee, to which they owed their own selves. 
 There alone, apparently, had any clearly marked 
 
 1 Acts ii. 7. 
 
144 UNITY IN DIVERSITY [lect. 
 
 company of constant followers been gathered round 
 Him, to be the germ of the future Church. The 
 story, therefore, of our Lord's life, as told in early 
 days at Jerusalem, dwelt naturally on the incidents 
 of the Galilean part of our Lord's ministry ; to 
 which His Church traced back its own origin. It 
 was told in the simplest way, with scarcely any 
 exercise of reflection upon the deeds or words 
 selected for repetition. These were chosen by a 
 perception, rather instinctive than conscious, of their 
 relative importance. It began naturally with the 
 events which linked it on to the preaching of the 
 Baptist, which had so profoundly stirred the hearts 
 of the whole people, and had been the necessary 
 preparation for our Lord's. It led up to, and 
 ended with the great events of the last week in 
 Jerusalem^ ; the sufferings, the death, the resur- 
 rection of the Lord Jesus ; which were the abso- 
 lutely essential foundation of the Church's faith. 
 The great facts of our redemption were to be 
 recorded, before their meaning and their bearing 
 
 1 The ' Leidensfjescluchte' of Geniian theoloirians. 
 
III.] OF THE FOUR GOSPELS. 145 
 
 on the Christian life could be traced or esti- 
 mated. 
 
 Our earlier Gospels appear to belong to the 
 close of this period of the Church's infancy. They 
 were probably written just as a new generation 
 was beginning to require the perpetuation of the 
 testimony of that which was passing away, as to the 
 facts on which the Creed and life of the Church 
 were based. Whatever is added in them — and much 
 is added in each — to the matter which had formed 
 the oral Gospel, is stamped with the same simply 
 objective and unreflexive character. Meanwhile 
 the Church was spreading widely. It was being 
 brought into contact with Hellenic culture, and vvas 
 being gradually led into the contemplation of its 
 spiritual treasures, chiefly under the guidance of 
 St Paul. The Christian life, in its principles of 
 thought and action, and its relation to the person 
 and life of Christ, was more and more distinctly 
 contemplated ; and so the foundations of Christian 
 theology were gradually laid. 
 
 Then, probably about the end of the third 
 V. H. L. 10 
 
146 RELATION OF THE FOURTH [lect. 
 
 quarter of the first century, the last surviving 
 Apostle takes up his abode in the midst of the 
 Churches planted by St Paul in Asia Minor. He 
 enters into the labours of his great predecessor 
 both in action and in thought. In his person are 
 united the intimate knowledge of our Lord's 
 whole earthly life and teaching, and those natural 
 and spiritual gifts which qualify him to become 
 preeminently the theologian of the Christian 
 Church. He is placed in contact with the nascent 
 forms of error, which have already troubled the 
 closing years of St Paul's ministry ^ and will be 
 developed a generation later into the Gnosticism 
 of the second century. The one effectual antidote 
 to those errors must be the fuller revelation of the 
 Person and the work of Him in whom all the 
 deepest longings of the mind and heart of man 
 are satisfied. The work has been begun by St 
 Paul. St John is guided to follow up and com- 
 plete the task. We have the ripe fruit of the 
 
 1 See I Tim. iv., and Col. i., ii., with Dr Lightfoot's notes and 
 dissertations. 
 
III.] GOSPEL TO THE THREE. 147 
 
 last Apostle's life-long training, outward and in- 
 ward, in the fourth Gospel. It is God's last and 
 crowning gift to us from the outpouring of his 
 Spirit to lead his Apostles into the whole truth. 
 Conflict of substance there is none between this 
 last and those earlier and less perfect gifts. Di- 
 versity of form there is, and growth in knowledge. 
 But the Person known is the same in all. The 
 growth is in the capacity of the mind which has 
 contemplated the truth. That mind is, in the last 
 Gospel, the mind of mature age ; in the earlier 
 Gospels, of the comparatively unreflecting child. 
 
 Here then the present portion of our inquiry 
 must terminate. We have reviewed first the abso- 
 lutely undisputed Epistles of St Paul ; then that 
 larger collection which was received in the Church 
 without doubt as his within a century of his death. 
 We have looked next to the Book of Acts, as a con- 
 temporary record of the origin and early history of 
 the Christian Church ; proved credible by its own 
 internal evidence ; and tested further by the mutual 
 correspondence between it and those Epistles of St 
 
 10 — 2 
 
148 CONCLUSIONS ESTABLISHED [lect. 
 
 Paul. We have then examined the three earher 
 Gospels, as narratives which we have reason to 
 regard as coming to us out of the generation next 
 after that in which the Lord Jesus lived and died. 
 We have passed on then to the fourth Gos- 
 pel, which comes to us strongly attested from 
 without as the work of St John the Apostle, and 
 bearing within itself the strongest possible marks 
 of truthfulness, and of genuine and thorough know- 
 ledge of what it records. And in all these docu- 
 ments we fmd everywhere the image presented to 
 us of One Person, as having been from the first the 
 object to the whole Christian Society of a trust and 
 love absolutely unbounded. The Church not only 
 traced to Him its origin, but confessed Him, ever 
 living in heaven, but present still by His Spirit on 
 earth, to be the source and the sustainer of its 
 individual and collective life. 
 
 The character of this Person is one to which 
 the world has known no parallel. The conscience 
 of man accepts in it the true ideal of humanity ; — 
 an ideal far beyond all human imagination ; yet 
 
III.] BY THE WHOLE ARGUMENT. 149 
 
 when presented, at once recognized as such by all 
 men, in proportion to the truth and depth of their 
 moral perception. 
 
 That this Person so lived and so died as our 
 Gospels tell us, claiming to be the Son of God, 
 made man that we might live the true life of man, 
 through and by union with Him, seems to us a fact 
 as clearly proved as any in the history of the 
 world. That the claim was made BY HIMSELF we 
 hold for absolutely certain. So made, was it a 
 true claim or a false one } This is the real question 
 at issue. No evasion is possible. The claim was 
 either a true one, or a falsehood. The facts 
 being what they are, self-deception was impossible. 
 Either the claim was true, or He who made it 
 knew it to be false. 
 
 And what must then be the inference } which 
 branch of the alternative shall we accept as the 
 more reasonable i* — Surely the former. Surely we 
 have ample reason to believe, as His Church has 
 believed in all ages, that Jesus is indeed the Son of 
 God, the Saviour of the world. He came on earth, 
 
I50 THE CHRTST OF OUR GOSPELS [lect. 
 
 He died, He rose again, He lives in heaven, that 
 He may make sinful men sons of God, renewed in 
 His own likeness, strong and holy by virtue of a 
 life communicated to them from Him. If so, any 
 question as to miracles in detail is superseded by 
 the result of a far deeper and more comprehensive 
 inquiry. The Son and Word of God, the Maker 
 and Light of the world, made man, is the one 
 transcendent miracle in which all others are ab- 
 sorbed. Yet either this transcendent mystery is a 
 blessed and life-giving reality, or else that wonder- 
 ful Character and Person are the fiction of Jews in 
 the first century, completed by the work of oriental 
 theosophists in the second. They are, in someway, 
 the product merely of the mind of man, working 
 upon itself; in just the way and just the age least 
 capable of a conception so pure, so comprehensive, 
 so sublime. 
 
 There are difficulties, of course, we do not deny 
 it. In the revelation of the Son of God dying for 
 sinners and rising again. Strange if there were no 
 mystery in life eternal, when our present life, nay 
 
III.] MEETS ALL OUR DEEPEST WANTS. 151 
 
 being itself, is so fraught with mystery, so baffles 
 comprehension. But we can see that this one 
 transcendent mystery meets every human want. 
 It meets our want of a fuller knowledge of God, of 
 a closer contact with God, than we can gain for 
 ourselves. It meets our want of Atonement, of 
 Mediation between God and man. It meets our 
 want of a sanctifying power which shall purify the 
 springs of human life. It meets our want of a 
 divine sympathy, in a world full of temptation and 
 sorrow. It meets our want of hope for the future 
 of humanity, of a spring of beneficent action in the 
 cause of human progress, of an assurance that such 
 action shall not all end in waste and disappoint- 
 ment. Above all, it meets our want of something, 
 let me rather say of some Person, in the unseen 
 world, which shall enlighten its darkness, and 
 bridge over the awful chasm which death, when 
 all is said that human thought can say for itself, 
 must always seem to human feeling. 
 
 May we not more reasonably believe that He 
 who made these wants has given them all their 
 
152 FAITH IN CHRIST REASONABLE, [lect. hi. 
 
 satisfaction in Christ Jesus ; than that man's own 
 craving, in an age most feeble and outworn, most 
 narrow in its sympathies, most unspiritual in its 
 habits of thought, should have invented that satis- 
 faction for itself? 
 
 I believe, brethren, that the answer to that 
 question ought not to be doubtful. It is given us 
 in the words of our Gospels: " Lord, to whom shall 
 we go.? Thou hast the words of eternal life\" 
 " Lord, I believe ; help Thou mine unbelief^" 
 
 ^ Job. vi. 68. 2 Mark ix. 24. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE EVIDENCE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT , 
 
 TO A DIVINE PREPARATION FOR j 
 
 CHRIST'S COMING. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 Hebrews, i. i, 2. 
 
 Godj ivho at sundry times and in divers man- 
 ners spake in ti^ne past unto the fathers by the 
 prophets, hath in these last days spoken tinto ns by 
 his Son. 
 
 Our argument is in its nature cnmiilative. It 
 depends upon the concurrence in one conclusion of 
 many distinct lines of evidence. Any one of these, 
 taken singly, might fall short of demonstration, and 
 yet the joint result of all might furnish ample 
 ground of a reasonable conviction. 
 
 I have to trace in the present lecture another, 
 of these convergent lines of proof. 
 
 I have spoken hitherto as if the alleged origin 
 of the Christian religion and Church were alto- 
 
156 PRESENT STATE AND CHARACTER [lect. 
 
 gether unconnected with any foregoing history. I 
 have attempted to Infer the substantial truth of 
 the only extant history of the origin of both, from 
 the way in which it coincides with and explains 
 a very large and multifarious mass of subsequent 
 facts, which can scarcely be called into dispute. 
 I wish to-day to call your attention to the Indica- 
 tions, many of them almost equally indisputable, 
 of a divine preparation for the alleged origin of 
 the Christian Religion and Church. 
 
 Our Lord claimed to have come, and was be- 
 lieved by his disciples to have come, in fulfilment 
 of promises given in ages past. It was believed 
 that He was come to satisfy wants of which the 
 consciousness had been awakened and stimulated, 
 during a long course of ages, in one remarkable 
 people. That people still remains among us. We 
 think that we see traces, in its present character 
 and condition, of a discipline given long ago, 
 which, judged by its present and visible results, 
 must have been very wonderful : — mysterious, if 
 we may not yet say miraculous. 
 
IV.] OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE 157 
 
 There are some faces on which is written so 
 plainly that any discerning eye may read it, the 
 record of a whole life-time's aspirations and re- 
 solves, disappointments and sufferings, triumphs 
 and sins. Even so a nation sometimes bears in 
 its present character and condition, the traces 
 of a history enacted in very distant ages. The 
 marks thus left may sometimes be as distinctly 
 legible as the furrows which the storms of cen- 
 turies have worn upon the front of some rugged 
 mountain. 
 
 Israel is by far the most conspicuous instance 
 known to us of a people evidently made what it 
 is now by a discipline undergone long since. Scat- 
 tered everywhere, apparently without a country, 
 it yet retains the consciousness of a national life 
 and unity, which have long survived all its visible 
 bonds of union. It has lost long ago the temple, 
 and the priesthood, and the sacrifices, which seemed 
 to be the very foundation of its national religious 
 life ; yet that life is still vigorous. The people 
 does but cling more firmly to the confession of 
 
iS8 EVIDENTLY THE RESULT OF A [lect. 
 
 the one God whom they believe to have given all 
 these things to their fathers, and to have withdrawn 
 them from themselves for their unworthiness. 
 They stand absolutely alone in the earth ; mixed 
 with all other civilized nations, yet separate from 
 all. They have been driven often, by cruel oppres- 
 sion, from all the openings of political and intel- 
 lectual eminence in the countries of their sojourn. 
 And so they have been almost compelled to be- 
 come in appearance altogether earthly, the slaves 
 of the pursuit of material wealth. And yet they 
 have but clung with a more desperate tenacity to 
 the expectation of a future glory and greatness ; 
 which, if w^eighed in the balance of that mere 
 worldly sagacity which men impute to them as 
 their special characteristic, must, one would think, 
 have seemed to them of all men most unsubstan- 
 tial. The greatness in the past, of which the con- 
 sciousness maintains the national self-respect, is 
 that of having once been the moral and religious 
 leaders and teachers of all people. And it is big 
 with the promise still of a yet higher and better 
 
IV.] MOST REMARKABLE HISTORY 159 
 
 destiny in the future, when their expectation shall 
 at length be fulfilled by the coming of their long 
 predicted King. That expectation may indeed 
 have lost its vigour in those Jews who have been 
 most exposed to the denationalizing influences of 
 wealth and of philosophic liberalism. But I believe 
 that there can be no doubt that it remains as a 
 living force in the great mass of Israelites. Still the 
 hope of the people is that One, of whom their 
 ancient prophets spoke, shall at length appear; 
 shall gather them again around Himself in their 
 ancient country ; and give them back their Temple 
 with a glory greater than Solomon's, and their 
 law with a purity and fulness of observance un- 
 known since the days of Moses. What must the 
 past history have been which could form that 
 character, which could create and sustain those 
 expectations ">. 
 
 The history of Israel during the last eighteen 
 centuries has been lived in the daylight, and is 
 interwoven with the general history of the world. 
 And we may safely say that, though it has modified, 
 
i6o IN AGES BEFORE CHRIST CAME. [lect. 
 
 it certainly could not have created the national 
 character such as we see it now. Those centuries 
 of oppression could not of themselves engender 
 that sense of a high vocation and destiny, grounded 
 on the consciousness of a special relation to the 
 One Living and True God. They may have burnt 
 it deeper into the heart of the nation which already 
 possessed it. They could not have produced it 
 where it did not exist. And we know in fact that 
 it did exist eighteen hundred years ago, just as 
 remarkably as it does now. In this respect there 
 has been no change. That hatred or scorn of 
 the human race, which they already endured and 
 reciprocated in the days of Hadrian and of Augus- 
 tus, had this for its explanation, as they and 
 their enemies in that age agree in telling us. The 
 cause must have preceded its effect. The con- 
 sciousness of a divine vocation, then, must have 
 been the product of a history yet earlier than the 
 age in which Christ came. 
 
 The world has other instances, no doubt, of 
 nations which have lived proudly or regretfully 
 
IV.] THE CHARACTER UNIQUE. i6i 
 
 on the recollections of a distant past» Still it 
 would be easy to point out remarkable differences 
 between the nature of their past and that of Israel. 
 And again, there have been other nations which 
 for ages have seemed instinct with the sense of some 
 high destiny in the present and the future, — some 
 great work to do in subduing and ruling the 
 w^orld, — which has made each citizen contribute his 
 own share in the great work of his nation, almost as 
 If his personal existence had been merged in that 
 of his country. But the singular thing to be ex- 
 plained In the case of Israel is not either of these 
 two remarkable facts separately, but the two in 
 combination, with each other ; a combination, so far 
 as I know, absolutely without parallel. 
 
 But there is another equally remarkable fact 
 which the ancient history of Israel ought to ex- 
 plain ; namely, the state of moral and religious 
 knowledge in that people, as compared with the 
 rest of the world, in the ages just before the birth 
 of Christianity. 
 
 This also we know well, on undeniable evi- 
 
 V. H. L. 11 
 
i62 SUPERIORITY OF ISRAEL [lect. 
 
 dence. The Old Testament, just such in all 
 important points as we have it now, was the Bible 
 of the Jews for some generations, at least, before 
 the Christian era. The people, with their Scriptures 
 already translated into Greek, the common lan- 
 guage then of Western Asia, as well as of Southern 
 and Eastern Europe, were scattered everywhere, and 
 were attracting proselytes in great numbers to the 
 worship of the synagogue. Men and women, weary 
 and sick of an effete philosophy, and of a religion 
 which all thoughtful men disbelieved, however they 
 might practice its outward observances, were drawn 
 to the Jews, simply because their faith met and 
 satisfied in some measure the longing for a better 
 knowledge of God. 
 
 We know well what were the belief and the rule 
 of conduct possessed by Israel, for we have their 
 Scriptures in our hands. It will scarcely be denied 
 that the confession of the personality, the unity, 
 the righteousness of God, was the national belief 
 of Israel. Elsewhere these great truths were but 
 dimly seen by a few of the wisest and best of men. 
 
IV.] IN RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE; 163 
 
 To the mass of mankind they were obscured by an 
 enormous cloud of gross and often very immoral 
 superstition. In Israel they were the common 
 heritage, as far as belief was concerned, of every 
 man, woman, and child. Whence came it that, as 
 Paley has said^ they were children in all things 
 else, men only in this one point, of their knowledge 
 of God ? How can we explain the fact that the 
 whole of this one otherwise insignificant people 
 stood, in this one respect alone, upon a level which 
 no kindred people of the Semitic race, none of the 
 Indo-European race, approached ? 
 
 Their own history, as told by themselves, ex- 
 plains it by a very sufficient cause. It tells us that 
 all was the result of a special discipline, to which 
 the God of heaven and earth had subjected that 
 one people through many ages, for this very pur- 
 pose, that it might in due time become the teacher 
 of the world. We must not yet assume that 
 this explanation is the true one. But we may say 
 that whatever the true history may be, if it is to 
 
 ^ See the wise and pithy chapter of his Evidences, Part in. ch. iii. 
 
 II — 2 
 
1 64 WHICH YET CONFESSED [lect. 
 
 explain a fact so remarkable, it must be itself 
 unlike the common history of other peoples. 
 
 But there is yet another phenomenon which 
 the history of Israel must explain. The religion 
 of the Jews had this further peculiarity, that it 
 confessed its own incompleteness, and was always 
 looking forward to something better, which was to 
 follow it in due season. It had in possession much 
 more truth than was yet held by mankind in 
 general. It was perhaps at all times, certainly in 
 its later stages of growth, fully conscious of its 
 own superiority. Yet always, and most manifestly 
 in the last centuries before Christ came, it was 
 dwelling on the prospect of the coming of a de- 
 liverer, and an out-pouring of the Spirit of God 
 upon all flesh, in connexion with his coming. 
 Moses himself was believed to have foretold the 
 mission of successive prophets to complete what 
 he had begun. Through the Avhole period of the 
 monarchy, and that which followed its downfall, 
 the succession of prophets was believed to have 
 been almost unbroken. Each had added some- 
 
IV.] ITS OWN INCOMPLETENESS. 165 
 
 thing to the common stock of religious knowledge. 
 But each had still more distinctly pointed forward 
 to the coming of the King, and the day when the 
 earth should be full of the knowledge of the 
 Lord, and all the people should be fully taught of 
 God. 
 
 This conception of a progressive revelation of 
 God to man, through human instruments, men 
 like their brethren, each of whom hands on the 
 torch to another, who bears it still brightening, till 
 the day breaks and all is light, seems to me some- 
 thing quite singular in the history of the religions 
 of the earth. 
 
 Other nations in their religion most often have 
 lived looking backward regretfully to some past 
 time, when knowledge was fuller, and faith was 
 stronger, and God was more honoured. Even 
 Christian thought and feeling has often too much 
 of this vain wish to recall a past which has gone 
 irrevocably. The faithful Israelite, almost alone, 
 lived thankful for what had been already given 
 him, but ever more and more earnestly cherishing 
 
t66 the old testament must be [lect. 
 
 the thought of something more which would be 
 given in the latter days. Nothing but a very 
 remarkable history can have created in a whole 
 people so strange an expectation. 
 
 I do not wish to press these general considera- 
 tions too far. They will not of course enable us to 
 reconstruct the history of the people, if lost, or to 
 demonstrate the truth of the only account which 
 remains. They are only intended to meet the 
 tacit assumption which underlies a great deal of 
 the modern objections to the history of Israel ; the 
 assumption, namely, that any history which is unlike 
 that of other peoples in ordinary times must needs 
 be fabulous ; or at least can have no claim upon our 
 attention unless supported by external evidence 
 such both in amount and in kind as can scarcely 
 be attainable in any history of very ancient 
 times. 
 
 I have no right, nor do I wish, to deprecate the 
 most searching criticism of the Old Testament. I 
 only ask that it may be heard before it is struck. 
 I ask that the inquiry may be carried on fairly. 
 
IV.] JUDGED AS A COMPLEX WHOLE, 167 
 
 according to the laws which should regulate all 
 examination of writings so ancient, coming to us 
 from a people so singular. I ask that, before it is 
 criticized In detail, men shall read and read again 
 the volume as a whole ; and shall allow due effect 
 to the general impression made by the whole. 
 With great multiplicity and variety of parts, it has 
 yet undeniably a certain unity of moral and reli- 
 gious tone, which must be caught before any single 
 part can be rightly judged. We claim that this 
 necessary rule of all Intelligent criticism shall not 
 be broken in any investigation of this most re- 
 markable, all things considered, of all extant 
 volumes. We are quite willing to abide by the 
 results of inquiry so conducted. 
 
 I assume only what is undeniable, when I say 
 that the Old Testament comes down to us as a 
 whole made up, quite two thousand years ago, from 
 the surviving literature of a people which had 
 already grown old. 
 
 The Pentateuch, which forms the basis of the 
 collection, was certainly read, very nearly such as 
 
1 68 OF GREAT ANTIQUITY, CIAIMING [lect. 
 
 we read it now, in the age of the Macedonian con- 
 quest\ The same thing might be said of the 
 greater part of the prophetic books. The Jews 
 themselves seem to have beheved that even the 
 latest of the prophets had lived and died some four 
 hundred years before our era. 
 
 The prophetic gift was felt to have long since 
 ceased ^ The nation could only subsist upon its 
 accumulated stores ; the living power of production 
 was believed to have been lost. This evidence 
 may surely be accepted as sufficient to prove that 
 the most characteristic portions of the Old Testa- 
 ment were all in existence long before any light 
 from the West can have gleamed on Israel. And 
 none can doubt that the literature of which the 
 collection contains (we will suppose) the choicest 
 portion, was the slow growth of long ages before 
 that in which the volume took its present form. 
 Whatever else it may be, it is the record un- 
 
 1 The Septuagint version of the Pentateuch appears to have been 
 made under the early Ptolemies. 
 
 2 Malachi was probably a contemporary, or nearly so, of Nehe- 
 miah. See Mr Wright's article in Diet, of the Bible, vol. ii. p. 212. 
 
IV.] TO RECORD GODS REVELATION 169 
 
 deniably of the inner life of the nation during a 
 long history. 
 
 And what a record ! How unlike any other ! 
 I will raise no question now of poetical or oratori- 
 cal beauty. It is evident that any self-conscious 
 exercise of the artist's skill to produce beauty of 
 this sort, is quite alien from the whole volume. 
 Whether sublime, or beautiful, or pathetic, it is so 
 unconsciously, unintentionally. It has a far higher 
 aim. Its whole purpose and spirit breathe of God, 
 and of man's relations with God. This surely 
 must be felt to be its distinctive character. The 
 history purports to be a history of the way in 
 which God has governed the world, which He has 
 formed from nothing, and in which He has placed 
 man, and formed man into families and nations. 
 The one thought which is always present is that 
 God's will is being done everywhere ; that it is a 
 righteous will; and that in the end it will make 
 righteousness and peace prevail in the world. 
 God, and man as formed for the knowledge and 
 love of God ; the conflict between man's lawless 
 
I70 OF HIMSELF TO MAN, WITH [lect. 
 
 will and God's righteous will ; the final victory of 
 God's will over evil ; — these are, I repeat, the one 
 great subject of all law, of all history, of all poetry, 
 of all teaching, of all prophecy, in this great na- 
 tional literature. Does not this fact place it alone 
 in all extant literature ? 
 
 Elsewhere we may find indeed something which 
 aims to be theology ; something which is human 
 history, or human philosophy, or the skilful painting 
 of human action and emotion. But there what aims 
 to declare God, and what aims to paint man, are 
 kept almost always apart. Here, and here alone, 
 as far as I know, in any extensive literature, God 
 and man are ever present to each other, and in the 
 closest contact, and the lici-ht which comes from the 
 throne of God irradiates and fills the world of 
 human life. Here, and here alone, the divine and 
 the human element of life are found together and 
 in harmonious combination. The combination of 
 the large and tender human sympathy with the 
 over-mastering realization of God, is not met with 
 elsewhere. The people of which this is the litera- 
 
IV.] MAN'S RESPONSE THERETO. 171 
 
 ture must be one which has been placed under 
 some very special divine training. 
 
 Observe especially that the spirit of the Old 
 Testament touches the life of the individual soul 
 toward God quite as closely as it touches the 
 springs of national and family life. We often find 
 in it poetry, national odes of triumph, and pas- 
 sionate appeals for help in national dangers \ It 
 is indeed intensely national in all its remembrances 
 and aspirations. But we find in it far oftener the 
 agony of an individual soul in conflict with trouble, 
 or heavily burdened with sin^ ; or its joy when 
 pouring out its thanksgiving for peace with God 
 restored, after having been lost through sin^, or its 
 contemplation of the glory of the Righteous King 
 of kings, in whose light alone it sees light, in whose 
 heavenly sanctuary it finds its true home and 
 rest'. 
 
 This quality it is which has made the Book 
 of Psalms the Prayer-book and the Hymn-book 
 
 1 See e.g. Psalms xliv., xlvi., Ixviii. ^ Psalms xxv., li. 
 
 ^ Psalm xxxii. ^ Psalms viii., xvi., xix., Ixxiii., ciii. 
 
172 ITS DEVOTIONAL PARTS RECORD [lect. 
 
 of the universal Church. The prayers and hymns 
 which it contains are indeed the utterance of men 
 who lived far away, and from two to three thousand 
 years ago ; orientals, living in a state politically, 
 socially, intellectually, almost as unlike those of 
 Western Europe at any time, as unlike our own 
 present state in England, as any can be. In this 
 Book nevertheless, men have found words which 
 expressed the desire, and the sorrow, and the 
 thanksgiving of their own hearts, even better, far 
 better, than any which they could frame for them- 
 selves, or which others in their own days could 
 frame for them. And this, just because the authors 
 (speaking generally) of this one ancient book have 
 first penetrated to the very heart of the mystery 
 of the life of God in the soul of man — the com- 
 munion between the God of the spirits of all flesh, 
 and the spirit which He has made for Himself; 
 and they have then expressed its longings, and 
 its failures, and its triumphs, with the peculiar 
 simplicity and reality, which belongs to those who 
 are treading a path scarcely trodden yet, in the 
 
IV.] A REAL CONVERSE WITH GOD. 173 
 
 freshness of the early dawn of an experience which 
 is altogether new and unspoilt by any artificial 
 sentimentalism. 
 
 I should be well content to rest the main 
 question of the special divine education of Israel 
 on this one Book of Psalms alone. It is a record 
 so real, so simple, of the converse of innumerable 
 souls with God ; so strange, as coming from men 
 who lived under a system of most rigid form and 
 ritual in religion, and in a world almost given up 
 to the dominion of organized material force ; that 
 nothing but a very peculiar divine teaching can 
 account for its existence. Men could not thus 
 have conversed with God if He had not first spoken 
 very remarkably to them. 
 
 Even that which seems, at first sight, a defect 
 In this rich treasury of the expression of human 
 wants and hopes — I mean the want of much explicit 
 reference In it to life after death, or the resurrection 
 of the dead — is really rather to be regarded as a 
 token of the completeness with which the divine 
 trainlno; had done its work. If little seems to be 
 
174 ITS LEGISLATION IS NOT [lect. 
 
 desired or hoped in the unseen future, there is on 
 the other hand no fear, no doubt, with regard to 
 what it may bring. The sense of a present God, on 
 whom the soul may rest in perfect confidence for 
 the future, as for the present, supplies all the need 
 of his servants. "Though I walk through the 
 valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil ; 
 for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they 
 comfort meV Or again, "Whom have I in 
 heaven but Thee } and there is none upon earth 
 that I desire beside Thee. My flesh and my heart 
 faileth : but God is the strength of my heart, and 
 my portion for ever '^." 
 
 The same peculiar quality it is which gives 
 beauty and significance to a great deal of the 
 prophetic writings quite independently of their 
 predictive or historic value. Even when we set 
 these other elements aside, we leave in many of them 
 a large residue of matter which we may call de- 
 votional, like that of the Psalms ; for which nothing 
 but a special education, under divine guidance, can 
 
 1 Psalm xxiii. 4. ^ pg^ Ixxiii. 2$fl. 
 
IV.] UNWORTHY TO BE FROM GOD. 175 
 
 possibly account ; and of which no language can 
 state too strongly the importance. 
 
 In the same way, I think, we should give full 
 weight to the results of an examination of the 
 Mosaic Law, taken as a whole, without assuming 
 anything more as to its date and origirf than 
 merely that it is very ancient, and of native growth. 
 These are points as to which no doubt can be 
 fairly raised. It has evidently not been copied, as 
 a whole, from any system existing elsewhere. It 
 is evidently not the attempt of a speculative mind 
 to legislate for an imaginary commonwealth ; but 
 a code which has regulated, or been intended to 
 regulate, the conduct of men living in a definite 
 country ; partly embodying their ancient custo- 
 mary law ; partly correcting it ; partly altogether 
 new ; but always distinctly practical in its aim. 
 This being so, it is impossible not to be greatly 
 impressed by the general spirit of humanity, of 
 freedom, of good sense and fairness, which it 
 breathes. The wisdom of the whole, as a system 
 of rules intended to keep the children of Israel a 
 
176 THE HISTORY OF ISRAEL [lect. 
 
 separate people, devoted to the service of one God, 
 in well ordered simplicity of life, as a race of 
 peasant proprietors, is very remarkable. Thus, as 
 a whole, the IMosaic law certainly is not unworthy 
 to have been the work of one of the very greatest 
 of human legislators, under divine guidance. I do 
 not mean that we can thus prove the ' Divine 
 Legation' of Moses. But there is, to say the 
 very least, nothing in the law itself, fairly regarded, 
 which makes such a claim difficult to admit, if 
 otherwise well attested. 
 
 Thus prepared, I think we should approach the 
 examination of that history of Israel, and of God's 
 government ot man's world with special reference 
 to Israel, which the Old Testament, taken as a 
 whole, professes to be. 
 
 No believer, if he is wise, will attempt to give, 
 no fair historic enquirer will think himself entitled 
 to expect, the same degree or kind of proof of truth 
 which is reasonably required, and can be given, 
 with regard to the life of our Lord on earth, as 
 told in the New Testament. 
 
IV.] MUST HAVE BEEN UNIQUE. 177 
 
 The questions at issue in the two cases are 
 entirely different in kind. In the one case every- 
 thing turns upon the divine yet human Personality 
 of our Lord. Was Jesus of Nazareth indeed the 
 Son of God ? Was the Word indeed made flesh ? 
 And the great question of fact, on which our 
 behef in Jesus as the Son of God must depend, is 
 that of His resurrection from the dead. We are 
 reasonably asked to establish this fact by direct 
 evidence, which shall come as close as possible to 
 the time of the event itself ; and we believe that we 
 have such evidence in abundance. But the question 
 which we are now considering is wider. It does not 
 admit of being brought to any single issue equally 
 distinct and determinate ; nor will the evidence 
 which should decide our answer be of the same 
 quality with that which decides the other. With 
 regard to the Old Testament, it is afiirmed on the 
 one side, and denied on the other, that one people, 
 Israel, was placed under a moral and religious 
 discipline, altogether peculiar and exceptional, for 
 a season, in preparation for the coming of the Son 
 V. H. L. 12 
 
178 THE QUESTION AT ISSUE STATED, [lect. 
 
 of God on earth as the Saviour. No one single 
 miracle is in this case of absolutely vital import- 
 ance. If every physical miracle, so to speak, were 
 struck out of the record, the great spiritual truths of 
 the Old Testament history might remain almost 
 unaffected. God may have spoken to Moses, and 
 by Moses to Israel, even though we should be 
 unable to prove, by direct evidence, that the Red 
 Sea was dried up, or the manna fell in the wilder- 
 ness. The real question is, whether Israel was far 
 in advance in the knowledge of God and of duty, 
 as compared with other generally more enlightened 
 peoples ; and whether that surely undeniable fact 
 can be accounted for except by an entirely ex- 
 ceptional education divinely given to Israel ? This 
 question may be decided for practical purposes, 
 while we put aside any question as to the weight 
 of evidence for any particular miracle, as out of 
 place, until we have first come to a conclusion on 
 the general question. To us, it is not the miracles 
 which authenticate the revelation ; but the reve- 
 lation which makes the miracles credible. The 
 
IV.] HOW SHALL IT BE DECIDED? 179 
 
 revelation shines by its own light, and is its own 
 best evidence. 
 
 But it will be right to consider, as the last 
 stage of our present enquiry, how far the records 
 which remain to us will warrant us in inferring the 
 general truth of that history of Israel which Israel 
 itself believed, certainly, in the last ages before 
 Christ came, and has delivered to us. If the proof 
 so afforded is not absolutely complete, it may yet 
 be real and valuable as far as it goes. And, if so, 
 some inference may justly be drawn from the 
 preparatory training, in confirmation of the result 
 which we have obtained already from other evi- 
 dence, as to the dispensation for which it prepared 
 the way. 
 
 Our survey of the complex evidence of the 
 truth of the Old Testament history must necessarily 
 be retrogressive. We must take our stand on some 
 later time, as to which we have ample evidence, 
 and from thence attempt to survey and estimate 
 the earlier time, of which that later one was, in 
 some sense, the product. 
 
 12—2 
 
i8o UNDENIABLE TRUTH OF THE [lect. 
 
 No one can reasonably doubt the general truth 
 of the history of the Hebrew monarchy in its divided 
 state, or deny that we have considerable remains 
 of writings contemporary at least with the later 
 kings of the house of David. The second Book of 
 Kings, whenever put into its present shape, was 
 clearly drawn up in part from contemporary docu- 
 ments, in part from the independent traditions of 
 the prophetic and priestly orders. The same thing 
 may be said in part as to the second Book of 
 Chronicles. No one denies the authenticity of a 
 great deal of the earlier part of Isaiah, or of his 
 contemporaries, — in Israel, Hosea and Amos, and 
 Joel and Micah in Judah. From these sources, 
 checked by comparison with the records so strangely 
 disentombed in our own day on the banks of the 
 Tigris and Euphrates, we can gain almost as dis- 
 tinct and trustworthy a conception of the state 
 of Israel under Jeroboam the Second, and of 
 Judah under Hezekiah, as we have of Athens 
 in the days of Pericles, or of Rome in the age of 
 Scipio. 
 
IV.] LATER HISTORY OF ISRAEL. i8i 
 
 Any inquiry as to the truth of the earlier Jew- 
 ish history should set out from this firm basis of 
 reality. It should begin by realizing the state of 
 the two kingdoms, about the middle of the eighth 
 century B. C; when both were verging to their 
 decline, but the progress of decay in each, and 
 especially in Judah, was arrested by the govern- 
 ment of more than usually vigorous kings. How 
 can we picture to ourselves the condition of Israel 
 in that age } And does that condition correspond, 
 or is it at variance with, the preceding history as 
 we read it now } I can do little more of course 
 than sketch the answer to these questions, leaving 
 the outline to be filled up by personal study of 
 the books themselves. 
 
 We mark first the scene in which the history is 
 laid, and to which it corresponds with an accuracy 
 shewing at least that it is of native growth. 
 
 The land of Israel was, in its greater part, a 
 natural mountain-fortress, commanding the main 
 line of communication between the great monar- 
 chies of Babylon or Nineveh eastward, and of 
 
1 82 THE TRUTH OF THIS IMPLIES [lect. 
 
 Egypt to the South and West. This simple fact 
 is the clue to a great deal both of the later history 
 of the two kingdoms, and of the utterances of the 
 prophets of the period from which we take our de- 
 parture. Israel might be insignificant in wealth, 
 and numbers, and extent of soil ; yet the rival 
 empires were glad to buy its support whenever 
 they were at all evenly balanced ; because neither 
 could advance across the Syrian desert against the 
 other, leaving an enemy so strongly posted on the 
 flank of his march. But whenever either of the 
 two empires was disabled or indisposed for ag- 
 gression, Israel was almost helpless in the hands 
 of the other. And of course the division of Israel 
 itself into two separate and often hostile kingdoms 
 weakened its influence everywhere. Statesmen of 
 the ordinary type, in either kingdom, took the side 
 of the Assyrian or the Egyptian alliance; or sought 
 to bring about a closer union, in one way or other, 
 between the Northern and the Southern kingdoms 
 in Israel itself. The nobles and the people sided 
 with them, and the king was too often led by 
 
IV.] THAT OF MUCH OF THE EARLIER. 183 
 
 mere caprice or weakness to lend his name to 
 the prevailing faction. 
 
 But a voice was continually heard urging nobler 
 principles of action, even in the king's court. It 
 came sometimes from a simple herdsman or ripener 
 of sycomore fruit ^; sometimes from a member of 
 some priestly or noble family^ But whoever might 
 be the spokesman, the word spoken claimed to be 
 ' the word of the Lord.' And it was spoken with the 
 courage of one to whom God was everything, and 
 man nothing. The prophet feared none, flattered 
 and courted none. Sometimes he endured persecu- 
 tion from the great, sometimes was in danger from 
 the fury of the people. He met with no earthly 
 reward, except only, and this at rare intervals, the 
 homage won by long proved fidelity and wisdom. 
 
 The prophet's mission was to recall kings and 
 people to a truer view of the strength of Israel, 
 and the way of meeting the dangers and per- 
 plexities of an evil time. He claimed to have 
 been called by God Himself to remind his fellow- 
 ^ Amos u I, vii. 14. ^ Jerem. i. i. Ezek. i. 3, 
 
i84 THE PROPHETIC TEACHING IS [lect. 
 
 countrymen of the covenant between God and 
 Israel, by which He had bound Himself to be their 
 God and taken them to be His people. He traced 
 all troubles to their root in the unfaithfulness 
 of the people to that covenant. The northern 
 kingdom had been cradled in idolatry. Judah 
 had gone astray scarcely less than Israel. The 
 prophet, then, called men in either kingdom to 
 come back to God, not merely with outward 
 forms of worship, but with the reality of inward 
 obedience. This would be their true bond of union 
 with each other. This would be their real strength 
 against all foreign enemies. 
 
 The prophet is often thought of mainly as a 
 foreteller of things to come. In reality he was 
 something else far more than he was this, though 
 he was also this, when need required. He was 
 a witness of the reality of God's righteous govern- 
 ment over all the earth, and of the dependence 
 of Israel's well-being upon its fidelity to God, and 
 to God's great law of duty given to man. 
 
 The very existence of a succession of devoted 
 
IV.] PROOF OF A DEEPLY ROOTED 185 
 
 men having it as their one business to bear witness 
 for God against all human selfishness and world- 
 liness ; to plead with them in God's name for truth 
 and right ; and, in short, to act the part of an 
 embodied and impersonated conscience to the 
 nation ; — seems to me to be one of the most re- 
 markable facts in the history of the world. 
 
 But observe further that the prophetic office, 
 such as I have described it, necessarily supposes 
 a long previous recognition by the people of a 
 divinely given law. The prophet's aim was always 
 to bring the people back to the fulfilment of duties 
 to God and to each other which such a law had 
 long since marked out. His countrymen might 
 refuse to act as he bade them ; but they seem very 
 seldom to have denied the obligations of which he 
 reminded them. These obligations were indeed 
 first and chiefly those of the great principles of 
 moral truth and justice. But they were also in 
 part the special duties which resulted from a special 
 covenant divinely made with Israel, and of which 
 the terms were supposed to be embodied in a code 
 
1 86 BELIEF OF THE EARLY HISTORY, [lect. 
 
 of law, having its own very peculiar enactments. 
 Could the prophet have found a hearing if Moses 
 had not been believed in from of old ? 
 
 The evidence which I have assumed to be 
 virtually contemporary shews us that, in the later 
 days of the Jewish monarchy, the law and the 
 history w^iich were accepted by the people were 
 the same, at least in their general character and 
 substance, as we have them now in the Pentateuch. 
 Both the history and the law are alluded to by 
 Hosea and Amos and Isaiah, in a way which 
 shews that they must have been familiarly known 
 and believed. The birth of Jacob and Esau, Jacob's 
 sojourn in Syria, the redemption from Egypt, the 
 wandering in the wilderness, the solemn days of 
 festival, the sacrifices ordained by law, the gift of 
 a king in wrath, the promises of God to the house 
 of David, the apostasy of Jeroboam, the introduc- 
 tion of the idolatry of Baal and of Moloch, are 
 continually referred to, just as we refer to the 
 common facts of our own national law and history. 
 Just those parts of the law which seem least likely 
 
IV.] AND OF THE MISSION OF MOSES. 187 
 
 to have been the silent growth of natural causes ; — 
 its general spirit of justice and mercy to man ; 
 of liberty, fraternity, and equality, at least among 
 all the members of the commonwealth of Israel ; — 
 are those which give the key-note to the prophetic 
 teaching. The prophets are emphatically, in the 
 best sense of the word, men of the people, as truly 
 as they are men of God. Their sympathies are 
 given to the poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed. 
 The faults on which they are most severe are those 
 of the king and the nobles and the priests ; while 
 yet they have no false and unworthy excuses ready 
 to palliate the vices of the poor. 
 
 All these points in their teaching are strong 
 indications of the existence of a political ideal far 
 too high and holy to have been created by circum- 
 stances past or present. All is explained, if we 
 suppose the historic truth of the mission and legis- 
 lation of Moses, and the subsequent guidance of 
 the national history by God. And all seems in- 
 explicable without some such originating and sus- 
 taining cause. 
 
1 88 THE HISTORY MOST UNLIKELY [lect. 
 
 And when we look at the history, as we have it 
 now, certainly it is most unlike any merely legend- 
 ary history which ever obtained popular belief. 
 It is one record not of the exploits but of the sins 
 of the people which received and preserved it. No 
 doubt it tells of many heroic achievements. But 
 these come few and far between, are secondary and 
 subordinate, and are never told in a way to give 
 glory to the human hero, or to the nation. The 
 work and the workman are regarded always as 
 God's gift ; a gift usually very unthankfully re- 
 ceived. 
 
 I leave these considerations, not wishing to give 
 them more than their just weight. I am sure that 
 any theory like that which seemed a few years 
 ago to find some acceptance, ascribing the inven- 
 tion of the whole Mosaic legislation and history 
 to the creative faculty of Samuel, can never hold 
 its ground. Such an origin is, we may safely say, 
 impossible. Whatever the influence of one great 
 man may be upon his nation, he cannot make it 
 accept a purely fictitious history of itself, or per- 
 
IV.] TO HAVE BEEN INVENTED, 189 
 
 suade it (with no basis of fact) that it has long ago 
 received, and always possessed, a code of national 
 law. He must build at least upon an existing 
 tradition. And all I contend for at present is, first, 
 that the Biblical history of Israel, substantially as 
 we have it now, was believed in the days of Heze- 
 kiah, and, secondly, that it is, in the main, a true 
 history. In my last lecture I hope to shew ground 
 for a much fuller belief. 
 
 Like every other history of a people which has 
 greatly influenced the world, it has a leading idea 
 peculiar to itself To shew what that leading idea 
 was, and in what way it entered into the history, 
 will be the object of the remainder of the present 
 lecture. I have spoken of the ministry of the pro- 
 phets as one of the many considerations which 
 unite to shew the truth of the history. I wish now 
 to shew how that ministry gives unity and pur- 
 pose to the whole story of the national life. 
 
 The ministry of the prophets began in very 
 early times. It was believed that the great law- 
 giver himself, the revealer of God to Israel and 
 
I90 REAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE [lect. 
 
 organizer of the national life, had confessed the 
 incompleteness of his own work, and had foretold 
 that God would raise up prophets from time to 
 time to carry forward what he had begun \ Things 
 had scarcely settled down into their appointed 
 order, after the conquest of Palestine, when the 
 fulfilment of the promise began. The judges were 
 men and women, not holding any office defined by 
 the Mosaic constitution, but called by God Himself, 
 as the need of the times required, to be the leaders 
 of his people in war, and their advisers and teachers 
 in peace. The ministry of the judge passed gra- 
 dually into that of the prophet, of which indeed it 
 was a simpler and ruder form. The last of the 
 judges is always named as the first of the goodly 
 fellowship of the prophets. 
 
 From Samuel onward the series Is unbroken. 
 With him the childhood of the nation has ceased, 
 and its conscious and maturer life as God's people 
 is begun. Still, for some generations, the office 
 exists in a very simple form. The seer or prophet 
 
 1 See Deut. xviii. 15 — 19. 
 
IV.] MINISTRY OF THE PROPHETS, 191 
 
 is one conscious of a divine commission, and in- 
 trusted u^ith a divine message to Israel ; usually 
 some very simple message of reproof with regard 
 to present sins, or of direction about present duties; 
 enforced by the announcement of some almost in- 
 stant judgment or deliverance. 
 
 Even in these its imrnature beginnings, the 
 existence of the prophetic ministry is a most re- 
 markable fact. There is, on the one hand, a settled 
 order, believed to be divinely appointed, yet con- 
 fessing its own insufficiency. And in the midst of 
 this rigid framework of polity and ritual, provision 
 is made for an element apparently most alien, 
 entirely free and unfettered, the work of God's 
 Spirit breathing where and as He will, to reani- 
 mate, to guide, to correct the working of the com- 
 plex organism. 
 
 In a less mature shape then the prophetic office 
 had existed before and under the yet undivided 
 monarchy. But when the kingdom of Solomon had 
 been divided ; when its northern half had rooted 
 itself in idolatry, and the southern half was sinking 
 
192 REAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE [lect. 
 
 into formalism, or copying the idolatry of its neigh- 
 bours ; — then the prophetic gift assumed a more 
 ripe and perfect form. Elijah and Elisha^ in the 
 northern kingdom were but the successors of She- 
 maiah and Azariah ; even as they were the precur- 
 sors of the great prophets of the two kingdoms in 
 their decline, of those of the captivity and the return 
 from Babylon, whose writings yet remain with us. 
 
 The ministry of Isaiah and his older and 
 younger contemporaries could scarcely have been 
 so rich in matter, and so perfect in form, without a 
 long previous history of the same gift in a simpler 
 and less mature condition. 
 
 Let us endeavour to realize the conception of 
 the prophetic character as impersonated in Isaiah, 
 and his contemporaries and early successors. 
 
 The prophet was essentially the man whose 
 eyes had seen the King, the Lord of Hosts^ He 
 was the man who, under some special teaching of 
 
 ' No reasonable scepticism can refuse to admit the historic 
 reality of the men, and the general outline of their story. Their 
 very unlikeness to each other is a strong proof of tliis. 
 
 2 See Isaiah vi. Jerem. i. 5, 6. Ezek. i. ii. iii. 
 
IV.] MINISTRY OF THE PROPHETS. 193 
 
 God's own Spirit, had been brought into the very- 
 closest spiritual contact and communion with 
 God ; and had so been made to realize, with a 
 depth and vividness unknown to other men, both 
 the Divine Majesty, and his own unworthiness. 
 Through that vision of the Almighty, whether 
 given first in some one definite instant, or more 
 slowly opened to his sight through the discipline of 
 many years, all things in heaven and on earth 
 have been made new to him. He sees all things 
 as from the footstool of the throne of God. To 
 him the world is God's world. God is present 
 everywhere, sustaining all, controlling all, directing 
 all, in order to establish in the end His own 
 Kingdom of righteousness and peace. The changes 
 in the kingdoms of this world which perplex and 
 dismay worldly statesmen, are all seen by Him as 
 the working out in various ways of one unchanging 
 purpose, of justice always, and yet of mercy. 
 
 Thus the prophet stands above his fellows, and 
 is commissioned and enabled to tell them, on their 
 lower level, where the obstructions of earth conceal 
 V. H. L. 13 
 
194 REAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE [lect. 
 
 the heavenly realities, the things which he himself 
 can see because God has opened his eyes, and can 
 see without dismay, and with eye undimmed, be- 
 cause he sees God in all. 
 
 Yet he is one not separated from his brethren ; 
 far less is he one who prides himself on being lifted 
 above them. There is nothing in him of that 
 which the great philosophic poet of Rome re- 
 garded as the delight of knowledge ; — the looking 
 down on the wanderings of others, from the serene 
 temple of wisdom to which the wise man has made 
 his own way by the force of his own genius. The 
 feeling of all the Hebrew prophets is one of in- 
 tense sympathy with suffering and sinful men, 
 coupled with a burning love of truth and right. 
 The title which one of the noblest of the noble 
 band takes as his peculiar designation expresses 
 the common feeling of them all. He is the "son 
 of manV man from whom nothing human is 
 estranged ; the representative of those to whom he 
 speaks. His admission to God's presence; his 
 
 1 See Ezekiel ii. iii. zxi^ passim. 
 
IV.] MINISTRY OF THE PROPHETS. 195 
 
 deep sense of God's mercy in accepting and 
 enabling him a sinner; have so filled his soul 
 with devoted love to God, that he has surrendered 
 his whole being, — his will, his affections, his 
 thoughts, — to be a reasonable and willing instru- 
 ment, with and by which God shall work just 
 where and as He will. He may be living in a 
 court, accepted during some brief interval of sun- 
 shine, revered by kings and their counsellors, like 
 Isaiah under Hezekiah. Or he may be in a 
 dungeon, living day by day amongst enemies who 
 daily seek his life, like Jeremiah ; or like Hosea, 
 wounded in all his purest and tenderest affections, 
 by the task which he has to fulfil as God's minister 
 and witness. But everywhere, and in all things, 
 the prophet hears the Divine call, and asks no 
 more. His self-surrender is entire, lifelong, un- 
 flinching. To be faithful to the end, though it be 
 in poverty, in prison, in contempt, in desolation, in 
 death itself, is his only ambition. Where has 
 earth seen — save when the Son of Man Himself 
 came, and sometimes among those who derive 
 
 13—2 
 
196 THE PROPHETIC TEACHING [lect. 
 
 their inner life from Him, — where, I ask, has earth 
 seen so noble an ideal of human life even conceived? 
 Whence can it be that in Israel it was not only- 
 conceived, but acted out in reality, not once alone, 
 but often ? 
 
 And then the teaching of these prophets, how 
 manifestly does it shine by its own light, as from 
 the Great Source of all light. 
 
 Where shall we find any thought of the Being 
 and Character of God which can be compared with 
 theirs for purity and sublimity ? Not indeed that 
 this begins with the prophets, having been quite 
 unknown before. On the contrary, perhaps the 
 very noblest of all utterances upon it is found in 
 one memorable passage of Exodus\ evidently of 
 very early date, which has left its trace on pro- 
 phets and historic books, and psalms, almost 
 equally. But all the teaching of the prophets on 
 this subject agrees with the teaching of that vision 
 granted to Moses. I should be ashamed to spend 
 
 1 Ch. xxxiv. 6, 7. Comp. Psalm Ixxxvi. 15; ciii. 8. Jerem, 
 xxxii. 18. Neh. ix. 17, 
 
IV.] EVIDENTLY OF DIVINE ORIGIN. 197 
 
 words In proof of this. Every thoughtful reader of 
 the prophets must judge and feel for himself. 
 Even those least easily impressed have acknow- 
 ledged that it is so. 
 
 But I will notice one or two distinctive points 
 in the prophetic teaching on this vast subject. 
 
 The first of these is the tenderness which is 
 mingled in it everywhere with the just and holy 
 severity of the righteousness of God, even when it 
 deals with human sin. 
 
 There are two analogies under which especially 
 God's relation to His people Israel is set forth in 
 the prophetic scriptures ; that of the parent to the 
 child, and that of the husband to the wife\ " I am 
 a father to Israel and Ephraim is my firstborn I" 
 ^'I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by 
 their arms^" " Can a mother forg^et her suckincr 
 child, that she should not have compassion upon 
 the son of her womb '^. Yea, they may forget ; yet 
 
 ^ I think it may be said with general truth that in the Old Tes- 
 tament both these conceptions apply to the people collectively, not to 
 the individual as such. The rare exceptions (such as Mai. ii. 10) 
 really establish the principle. 
 
 2 Jerem. xxxi. 9. ^ Hos. xi. 3. 
 
198 ITS MORAL SEVERITY ALWAYS [lect. 
 
 will I not forget thee\" "My covenant they 
 brake, though I was an husband unto them, salth 
 the Lord I" " I will even betroth thee unto me in 
 faithfulness : and thou shalt know the Lord I" 
 
 The whole prophetic teaching is, we might 
 almost say, the amplification of these two leading 
 conceptions. To shew to God's chosen people 
 what He meant them to be when He brought 
 them into these peculiar relationships to Himself; 
 to shew them how they have forgotten, and in act 
 denied, all His bounties ; to plead with them as to 
 their unfaithfulness to God, which has been like 
 the wife's, who gives her affections to another than 
 her husband ; to shew them their folly, as well 
 as ingratitude, in forsaking the living fountain of 
 waters, for their own broken cisterns, which can 
 hold no water^ ; to awaken conscience, and deepen 
 the sense of sin, by flashing the light of the eternal 
 Holiness upon all their corrupt thoughts and doings 
 that are not good ; — this is the beginning of the 
 
 ^ Isai. xlix. 15. 2 Jer. xxxi. 32. Comp. iii. 20, 21. 
 
 3 Hos. ii. 20. * Jer. ii. 13. 
 
IV.] MINGLED WITH TENDERNESS, 199 
 
 prophet's work. And to this end he uses without 
 sparing the great truths of moral retribution. They 
 that have sown the wind must reap the whirlwind \ 
 But after, and even mingling with these notes of 
 wrath, there is always an undertone of mercy. 
 There is often an unspeakable tenderness in the 
 way in which God, by His prophet, pleads with 
 His people. ** O Israel, thou hast destroyed thy- 
 self, but in Me is thy helpV '' O Ephraim, what 
 shall I do unto thee.? O Judah, what shall I do 
 unto thee t for your goodness is as a morning 
 cloud, and as the early dew it goeth away I" 
 " How shall I give thee up, Ephraim t How shall 
 I deliver thee, Israel t How shall I make thee as 
 Admah t How shall I set thee as Zeboim } Mine 
 heart is turned within me, my repentings are 
 kindled together. I will not execute the fierce- 
 ness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy 
 Ephraim ; for I am God and not man ; the Holy 
 One in the midst of thee\" 
 
 ^ Hos. viii. 7. 2 Hos. xiii. 9. 
 
 3 Hos. vi. 4. * Hos. xi. 8, 9. 
 
200 THE PREDICTIVE EIEMENT [lect. 
 
 It seems to me that this tenderness, as of the 
 deeply loving husband, as of the compassionate 
 father, is something entirely peculiar to the He- 
 brew prophet, as existing in union and harmony 
 with the holiest displeasure against sin. 
 
 One other characteristic of the prophetic teach- 
 ing I must mention ; hoping earnestly that the 
 subject may be followed up in private study, from 
 which I hope far more than fromx any words of my 
 own. It is the reference of that teaching to the 
 hopes of the future. 
 
 I have already said that prediction was not the 
 chief element in the prophet's office. He is pri- 
 marily the spokesman for God, the witness for 
 God ; only secondarily, and just so far as that first 
 object requires, is he a foreteller of things to come. 
 This must be premised. But a rich vein of pre- 
 diction runs through the whole mine of the pro- 
 phetic scriptures, and gives them a great deal of 
 their significance. 
 
 This predictive matter is of various kinds. 
 There are passages in which (if we suppose them 
 
IV.] OF THE PROPHETIC TEACHING. 201 
 
 to have been really written or spoken when and 
 as alleged) we find distinct announcements before- 
 hand of events which no merely human foresight 
 could have discerned. No one who believes in the 
 absolute foreknowledge of God, and thinks it pos- 
 sible that God should speak to man, can think it 
 impossible that such predictions should exist. The 
 suppressed premiss which governs much of what 
 has been said in Germany, and lately in England, 
 is one which no religious mind can accept. But 
 the question is not of the possibility, but of the 
 actual fact of predictions having been given. And 
 while the question of the reality of the revelation 
 is still at issue, we cannot usually, at this dis- 
 tance of time, prove, beyond the possibility of 
 doubt, that the prophecy was given before the 
 event. We must therefore, for our present purpose, 
 put aside many apparent predictions of this sort ; 
 not as unreal, or of little value if proved real ; 
 but as not yet available for proof . 
 
 There are other cases, again, in which it can 
 scarcely be doubted that the prophecy was given 
 
202 PREDICTIONS OF THE MINISTRY [lect. 
 
 before the event ; for instance, that of the Baby- 
 lonian captivity, and the return. But here again it 
 might be alleged by an opponent, with some plausi- 
 bility, that the prediction was simply the natural 
 outgrowth of a firm faith at once in God's justice, 
 which must needs chastise the sins of His people, 
 and in God's fidelity to His covenant of mercy with 
 them, which must needs triumph in the end. Pre- 
 dictions of this class must not be lightly put aside. 
 Any fair examination of the correspondence be- 
 tween the 'prediction and the event will shew, I 
 believe, some points of agreement, after all allow- 
 ance made, which cannot be satisfactorily ex- 
 plained as either accidental coincidences, or mere 
 inferences from the great axioms of the faith of 
 Israel. 
 
 But there is one great theme of prophecy to 
 which none of these explanations apply. I mean, 
 the prediction of the coming King, and the Re- 
 demption which He is to accomplish. This runs 
 like a thread of gold through the whole texture 
 of the prophetic scriptures. It is possible, no 
 
IV 
 
 .] OF A SUFFERING REDEEMER-KING, 203 
 
 doubt, to find points in the history of the time 
 which may have afforded a foothold for the hope, 
 and sometimes an imperfect prefigurement of the 
 Redeemer and the Redemption. The glory of 
 the future kingdom is revealed to the prophet, 
 perhaps, who lives under the just and pious king 
 Hezekiah. The disappointment of earthly hopes 
 and the experience of suffering, help to deepen 
 and make welcome the conception of a suffering 
 Redeemer. But there is nothing in the prophet's 
 own time which could of itself give birth to the 
 anticipation. The deep sense of disappointment 
 in the best that the Kings of Judah could do to 
 realize the Divine ideal of the kingly office, could 
 never of itself have created the expectation of the 
 King whose name shall be called Wonderful, 
 Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Fa- 
 ther, the Prince of Peace^ ; — yet who shall feed His 
 flock like a Shepherd, and shall gather the lambs 
 in His arms, and carry them in His bosom, and 
 shall gently lead them that are with young I Nor 
 
 1 Isai. ix. 6, 7. ' Isai. xl. 10, 11. 
 
204 ONLY TO BE EXPLAINED AS [lect. 
 
 surely could the mere experience of the prophet, 
 even though it were Jeremiah, misunderstood, per- 
 secuted, despised by those whom he would fain 
 have saved from rushing upon their own ruin, have 
 created of itself that image of the suffering servant 
 of God which runs so remarkably through the 
 latter chapters of Isaiah. 
 
 When all is said which the most ingenious of 
 sceptics can say, the picture of One, guiltless Him- 
 self, suffering for the sins of His people, without 
 complaint ; and by His own death, as one numbered 
 with the transgressors, bearing the iniquity of all, 
 and making His soul an offering for sin ; through 
 whose stripes His people are healed^ ; remains a 
 most wonderful anticipation, fulfilled in Jesus of 
 Nazareth, and in Him alone. It remains an an- 
 ticipation, of which, even by itself, it is most diffi- 
 cult to explain the origin. And this most strange 
 anticipation is fulfilled, after some centuries have 
 passed with no semblance of its realization. It is 
 fulfilled, but not until the popular mind in Israel 
 
 ^ Isai. liii. throughout. 
 
IV.] FROM DIVINE REVELATION, 205 
 
 has formed a most opposite ideal of the coming 
 Saviour. And lastly, it is fulfilled in the most 
 wonderful of all histories, of all characters, of all 
 persons. 
 
 If we admit that a Divine Teacher first created 
 the expectation, and then in due time fulfilled it 
 by the gift of His own Son, all is explained. But 
 what other supposition can account, first, for the 
 hope so strangely awakened, then for the wonderful 
 Person and history which fulfilled that hope } 
 And this too when the desire and expectation 
 of Israel had come to concentrate itself almost 
 exclusively upon the hope of the Conqueror, who 
 should restore and enlarge the kingdom of David 
 and of Solomon, and place the oppressors of Israel 
 beneath its feet. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTIONS OF 
 
 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION, AND 
 
 SOME OF THE DIFFICULTIES INVOLVED 
 
 IN THEM. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 I Cor. XIII. 9, lo. 
 
 For we kuozv in part, and we propJiesy in part. But 
 when that zvhich is perfect is come^ then thatzvhich 
 is in part shall be done aivay, 
 
 I WISH to give this last Lecture to the considera- 
 tion of some difficulties involved in the Christian 
 conceptions of Revelation and Inspiration. 
 
 I apprehend that these really lie at the root 
 of a great deal of the unbelief which exists among 
 serious and thoughtful men. Behind any objections 
 of detail to Christian truth, and to the shape in 
 which our Creeds and Scriptures present it to us, 
 there lies very often a general unwillingness to ac- 
 knowledge that God has spoken any where or any 
 how to one man what shall in any way command 
 V. H. L. 14 
 
2IO 
 
 THE DIFFICULTIES OF OUR [lect. 
 
 or even warrant the belief of another. Men whose 
 life Is morally blameless, and their temper religious, 
 say sometimes that they cannot see why they 
 should regard the teaching of Prophets and Apostles 
 as something dijfercnt in kind from the teaching 
 of Plato or Socrates. They are prepared to accept 
 it, they say, as they do the teaching of Plato, just 
 in so far as it commends itself to their judgment by 
 its own intrinsic excellence. They are quite willing 
 to admit that it is a better moral teaching than any 
 which they can find in the ancient heathen world. 
 They admit that, historically speaking, it has been 
 the source from which whatever is truest and best 
 in the world of modern human life has flowed. 
 But they claim to be themselves the judges of all, 
 testing every part of every teaching by a verifying 
 faculty within themselves, and rejecting all, on 
 whatsoever authority presented to them, which 
 that faculty pronounces false or Imperfect. 
 
 A Christian, on the other hand, by whichever 
 of many paths he may have reached the conclusion, 
 is convinced that certain men have been chosen 
 
v.] PRESENT SUBJECT STATED. 211 
 
 by God to receive the knowledge of divine truth 
 by a special communication from Himself, not 
 vouchsafed to all men. He believes that, having 
 first been taught the truth for themselves, they 
 were then, in some way, called and enabled to 
 declare it to others. And he believes that the 
 utterances of these men do, in some way, and in 
 some parts at least, demand his acceptance, as 
 divinely authorized expressions of truth which it 
 is good for him to know, and wrong to neglect 
 or set aside. He believes that this is true, pre- 
 eminently and necessarily, of the teaching of his 
 divine Master; true also, more or less completely, 
 of what that Master's Apostles taught in his name. 
 We will leave for later consideration any question 
 which may have been raised between Christians as 
 to the precise grounds and measure of a Christian's 
 confidence in the teaching of the Apostles ; but 
 none who accept the teaching of the Master will 
 deny that his promises to them of divine guidance 
 give a very peculiar authority to the substance, at 
 least, of what they agreed in delivering for truth. 
 
 14 — 2 
 
2 12 ATTEMPT TO DEFINE THE [lect. 
 
 They claimed to speak with their Lord's sanction ; 
 and a Christian cannot but admit the claim. This 
 is the Christian's position, defined as simply and 
 clearly as we can, and as little encumbered with 
 theory as possible. 
 
 Just this it is which is primarily his opponent's 
 object of attack. He is unable to entertain the 
 conception that another, a fellow-man, has any 
 right to speak to him zvith authority in God's name 
 concerning God and man's relations with God. I 
 think that I have stated fairly the issue which 
 is thus raised. No one will deny its momentous 
 import. 
 
 I wish then to define the conceptions which 
 govern the question ; and to recognize, and as far 
 as possible to meet, the difficulties which they 
 involve. If we cannot hope to remove them alto- 
 gether, we may yet hope to shew that they form 
 no sufficient reason for thinking Revelation in 
 general impossible, or the Christian Revelation in 
 particular untrue. 
 
 The conception which lies at the foundation 
 
v.] MEANING OF REVELATION. 213 
 
 of our present question Is clearly that of Revela- 
 tion. That of what we call Inspiration depends 
 upon and follows this. It concerns the communi- 
 cation by one man to another of that which has 
 first been revealed to himself We take first, then, 
 the conception of Revelation ; afterward that of 
 Inspiration. 
 
 What do we mean by Revelation } — The word 
 itself may help us a little, if only a little, in fixing 
 the precise nature of the conception which we use 
 it to express. It is the unveiling of something ; — 
 the withdrawal of a screen which hides some ex- 
 ternal object, whether it be thing or person, from 
 our eye, so as to make that visible to us which 
 previously was not so. In the use of the word 
 which we are considering now, the object so dis- 
 covered, revealed, or made visible to the inward 
 eye of men generally, or of some favoured man, 
 is God Himself, or some procedure of God, past, 
 present, or future, in relation to man, or to the 
 world which He has created and sustains. It is 
 supposed that these objects of revelation are 
 
214 MUCH OF THIS CONCEPTION [lect. 
 
 beyond the attainment either of man universally, 
 or of the particular man to whom the revelation 
 is made ; but are brought within his ken by some 
 action of God Himself in man's behalf. This 
 seems to me to be what is Implied in the concep- 
 tion of religious Revelation, taken in its broadest 
 and most general form. 
 
 Is there in this general conception anything 
 which Is either self-contradictory, or at variance 
 with admitted truth ? 
 
 Let us try to fix the point at which our oppo- 
 nent's difficulty begins. There is clearly a great 
 deal of ground which ought to be in common 
 between all (whether at present Christians or not) 
 who believe in the existence of a personal God ; 
 in whose image we ourselves were made, and who 
 really cares for man. With such men, and such 
 only, we must reason in the present matter. Our 
 controversy with others must be conducted on a 
 different basis. 
 
 We believe in common then, I assume, that 
 communion between God and the spirit of man 
 
v.] OUGHT TO BE ADMITTED AS TRUE 215 
 
 is not a dream or a figment, but a reality. We 
 believe that God has made the soul of man for a 
 loving fellowship with Himself; and that in this 
 fellowship alone, or at least as its first and most 
 absolutely necessary element, the true dignity and 
 happiness of the soul of man is found. 
 
 A Christian believes further that the possibility 
 of this communion has its root in the Word of 
 God ; who was in the beginning with God, and was 
 God, and who, from the beginning, has been the 
 Light and Life of all men. He believes that its 
 actual exercise begins In a quickening of the soul 
 into spiritual life by the life-giving power of the 
 Holy Spirit of God, who comes forth from Him to 
 man through this divine Word. I do not think 
 that any person not yet a Christian, who thought 
 justly, and felt the reality of the life itself, would 
 find it peculiarly difficult to accept this additional 
 element ; — though of course the terms used would 
 have far less distinct meaning for him than they 
 have for a Christian. The life in which God and 
 man meet must surely have its ground and its 
 
2i6 BY ALL WHO BELLE VE LN A [lect. 
 
 beginning in God, and not in man ; in the self- 
 existent and absolute, not in the finite and de- 
 pendent being. 
 
 This life then, such in its nature and its com- 
 mencement, must depend for its continuance and 
 developement upon the knowledge of God, as a 
 necessary condition. 
 
 Communion presupposes some knowledge, and 
 tends to growth in knowledge. On our present 
 supposition, therefore, the knowledge of God will 
 be a part, and a condition, of the true life and 
 happiness of man. The knowledge which is vital 
 will indeed be something very different from, as 
 well as very much more than, the knowledge of 
 any number of propositions concerning Him. It 
 will be the knowledge of A PERSON ; one who 
 loves, and may be loved. Its shadow and earthly 
 counterpart is seen in the child's knowledge of its 
 parents, the friend's knowledge of his friend ; not in 
 the contemplation of the truths of a science. But it 
 will imply and presuppose the knowledge and con- 
 templation of truth concerning Him ; and certainly 
 
v.] PERSONAL GOD, WHO HAS ANY 217 
 
 cannot exist without something of true knowledge, 
 both as a foregoing condition, and as an inevitable 
 concomitant. 
 
 These things being so, the Christian believes 
 that God, having love to man, has made Himself 
 known to man, in sundry portions, and in divers 
 manners^ as it has seemed fit to Himself. He 
 includes in his conception of God's revelation of 
 Himself to man, that gradual disclosure of moral 
 and spiritual truth which is made to all men, 
 through conscience ; through observation of the 
 world which God has made and sustained ; through 
 the discipline given by the experience of human 
 life. He believes that the Father of spirits does 
 especially use the relationships of family life — in 
 a measure, too, those of national life, which is de- 
 veloped out of family life — as an instrument for 
 teaching men everywhere something of those divine 
 realities of which, as I have said, they are the 
 shadow, and for the apprehension of which they 
 
 ^ TroXvfieptZs Kal toXut/jo'twj, Heb. i. x. 
 
2i8 REAL CARE FOR MAN'S GOOD. [lect. 
 
 are a divinely intended discipline and preparation. 
 I think that any believer in a Personal God — that 
 is, in a Being who is conscious, perceives, wills, acts, 
 loves, has moral attributes, of which all that con- 
 science approves as good and right in man is the 
 imperfect image — ought to accept the Christian's 
 belief on these points as entirely true, so far as he 
 can attach meaning to its several terms. 
 
 Neither will the Christian, if he understands 
 his own principles, part company with the religious 
 theist, when the latter in his turn affirms that 
 moral and spiritual truth, — touching, as it does, all 
 the springs of human life, — is in its very nature 
 intended to be (it cannot be truly alleged that it is 
 in actual fact) the possession of every human being. 
 Nor yet, when it is alleged that such truth must 
 shine with its own light, and commend itself 
 to the conscience of every man, will the Christian, 
 if he is well instructed, refuse his assent ; though 
 he will think many limitations and qualifications 
 necessary. He will believe that ultimately, in pro- 
 portion as the soul grows ripe in spiritual wisdom 
 
v.] BUT THERE IS ALSO SOMETHING 219 
 
 and goodness, all which it has learnt will so be 
 seen to be consistent with itself, and to have a real, 
 though not always a manifest, unity of plan ; it 
 will be felt so to meet the wants of human nature, 
 and to explain the facts of human life, that the 
 persuasion of its truth will approach the certainty 
 of an intuition. But he well knows that this con- 
 viction must be of gradual growth, and can only 
 come to those who have first accepted the truth on 
 some other authority than that of their own intui- 
 tion ; and who have put themselves, perhaps by a 
 life-long discipline, into the position from which 
 alone the truth, in all its bearings, may be seen 
 and estimated aright. 
 
 But it is just here that the difference between 
 the Christian and the sound religious thinker who 
 is not yet fully a Christian, will first (if I see 
 rightly) make itself felt. 
 
 The Christian does and must believe, and one 
 who is not yet a Christian usually does not believe, 
 that, in order to know ultimately for ourselves, as 
 with intuitive certainty, we must have, — over and 
 
2 20 QUITE DISTINCTIVE OE THE [lect. 
 
 above that knowledge which is ideally possible for 
 all men, however difficult of practical attainment to 
 many, — some special disclosure made to us medi- 
 ately or immediately by God Himself; — a disclosure 
 of truth which did not and could not present itself 
 to our own minds, in the way of inference from the 
 facts of consciousness within, or of the world with- 
 out. He believes that God has been and is dealing 
 with men upon the ground of a redemption in 
 Christ Jesus. And though this redemption satisfies 
 wants lying deep in man's original constitution, 
 and is founded on, and in conformity with, rela- 
 tions which a Christian believes to be eternal, both 
 within the eternal Godhead, and between that God- 
 head and man, — yet he cannot but confess that the 
 knowledge of the redemption which God has 
 accomplished is beyond the attainment of man, 
 except through a certain history, which requires 
 external attestation, and must in the first instance 
 be received on historical evidence. He acknow- 
 ledges also that this history is in itself, when 
 accepted and understood, .a disclosure of truth 
 
v.] CHRISTIAN'S TRUE POSITION. 221 
 
 previously unknown, or most Imperfectly known, 
 to man ; and of relations such as can only be 
 made known to man through a divinely given 
 interpretation of that history which Is the basis 
 of Christian faith and hope. 
 
 A Christian and a truly religious deist then do 
 not necessarily differ on the question of revelation 
 absolutely . In its general sense, of a disclosure of 
 truth concerning God to man, they both confess 
 it. But a Christian truly feels that his own posi- 
 tion requires some special sense to be given to 
 the word, over and above its general one. He 
 believes that from the beginning of the world God 
 has taken men into friendship with Himself, en- 
 abling them to live the true life of man ; and that 
 to some of those who have lived this life He has 
 made communications, which added to the know- 
 ledge they had or could otherwise have had of 
 Himself; and that these communications were in- 
 tended to benefit, not themselves only, but others 
 through and with them. 
 
 He believes, in particular, that the Lawgivers 
 
2 22 TO THIS HIS OPPONENT OBJECTS [lect. 
 
 and Prophets who were raised up in Israel, had 
 special wisdom and grace given them ; enabling 
 them first to see, and then to teach to others, truth 
 which others did not see, and which they them- 
 selves could not have seen without a special divine 
 teaching. He believes that the light so given 
 shone more fully as the end of the exceptional posi- 
 tion of Israel approached; and that it gradually 
 disclosed more completely God's purpose to send a 
 Redeemer-King, of more than merely human birth, 
 who should become the Saviour of the world. He 
 believes that, in fulfilment of these promises, the 
 Son of God became man, and died and rose again, 
 revealing Himself, and his Father through the 
 revelation of Himself, in word and deed, in suf- 
 fering and in resurrection. 
 
 Believing Jesus to have been the Son of God 
 made man, he cannot but believe that all truth 
 concerning God, which man needs to know, or can 
 know, was known fully by Him. 
 
 He believes also that certain chosen friends 
 and companions of the Lord Jesus, before and 
 
v.] AS CONTRARY TO THE EQUITY 223 
 
 after His ascension, were chosen to receive throuo"h 
 His Spirit a special teaching, as to the facts of the 
 redemption, and the meaning of those facts, as a 
 revelation of God to man. 
 
 His opponent objects to the notion of Revela- 
 tion in this sense ; and that on two grounds chiefly. 
 
 He urges first generally that Revelation, in the 
 Christian's sense of the word, implies an inequality 
 in the dealings of God with men. There is a know- 
 ledge equally important to all men, by the sup- 
 position made, which yet is given to one man, and 
 not given to another ; — or is given more fully to 
 one man than to another; — without any thing in 
 the moral character or condition of the one to 
 make the distinction between the two an equitable 
 one. The Christian regards the recipient of a 
 revelation, in the sense in which he uses the word, 
 as placed thereby in a condition more favourable 
 to the true development of man's being, to say the 
 least, than that of the man who can only learn truth 
 in other ways. To suppose otherwise is to make 
 revelation altogether futile. But this favour shewn 
 
2 24 OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT, [lect. 
 
 to one man over another, without the latter's fault, 
 is thought to be at variance with the equity of 
 Him with whom there is no respect of persons, 
 as the Christian asserts nevertheless. 
 
 The difficulty Is no doubt a very real one. The 
 objector is quite right in saying that the very con- 
 ception of Revelation implies an advantage given 
 to those who have it over those who have it not. 
 But if we are asked to infer from this that Revela- 
 tion cannot be, we reply, first, by an appeal to 
 other indisputable facts in the method of God's 
 dealing with mankind. All men are not, as the 
 objector seems to suppose, placed in the same 
 position of advantage, physically, intellectually, 
 socially, and (above all) morally. The children, for 
 instance, of the depraved are not in the same posi- 
 tion of moral advantage with those of the virtuous; 
 nor men who live in a time of national decay with 
 those who are born into the midst of a generation 
 full of wholesome vigour, and disciplined by right- 
 eous institutions. In fact, the moral history of man- 
 kind is a record of inequality of moral surroundings, 
 
v.] ANSWER GIVEN BY ANALOGY. 225 
 
 of advantages wasted sometimes on the fa- 
 voured, redressed sometimes by the energy of 
 the unfortunate, but existing always and every 
 where. 
 
 And how then does the moralist who believes 
 in a Righteous Governor of the world reconcile 
 liimself to this experience ? — Not by attempting to 
 explain It away ; but by believing that, in the eye 
 of the all-seeing Judge, men are estimated not ac- 
 cording to their actual condition, taken by itself, 
 but by that condition in combination with the 
 circumstances in which it has been attained. And 
 even so the Christian believes that all men will be 
 judged, not by what they knew, but by the use 
 they made of what they knew. He has his Lord's 
 warrant for so believing. "That servant which 
 knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, 
 neither did according to his will, shall be beaten 
 with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did 
 commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten 
 with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is 
 given, of him shall be much required ; and to whom 
 V. H. L. 15 
 
2 26 OBJECTION, THAT 'REVELATION [lect. 
 
 men have committed much, of him they will ask 
 the more\" 
 
 But another objection is urged. The Christian 
 notion of revelation, it is truly said, implies that 
 God reveals truth to one man not for himself only, 
 but that that one man may teach it to others. 
 God is supposed to reveal Himself to many men 
 through some one or more chosen instruments. 
 Now all truth concerning God must from its very 
 nature, it is urged, be known to all to whom it is 
 known at all, by what may be called intuition; 
 that is, by a knowledge which comes to each man 
 within his own soul. So long, it is urged, as I be- 
 lieve truth of this sort only because another tells me 
 that he knows it, I do not really know it. I attach 
 no meaning, or a wrong, or a very imperfect mean- 
 ing, to the symbols in which it is supposed to be 
 expressed. It is only when I see it in its own light, 
 as self-evident, that I really grasp or know it, in 
 any worthy meaning of the word ' to know '. And 
 
 1 St Luke xii. 47, 48. 
 
v.] MADE TO ONE MAN THROUGH 227 
 
 in the moment in which I begin so to know it, 
 all dependence on another's assertion of it is cast 
 aside as outgrown and useless. The notion that I 
 can ever learn any truth concerijing God except by 
 an inward effort of my own, or a disclosure of it to 
 myself which comes to me directly and imme- 
 diately from God, is entirely a mistake. I cannot 
 sit at the feet of any human teacher, as a learner 
 of divine truth ; not though he were a John or a 
 Paul ; some would add, not even though he were 
 Jesus Christ Himself. 
 
 There is much in this would-be reasoning which 
 seems to me very loose assumption. Yet I think 
 that it expresses fairly the spirit of a great deal of 
 the existing unbelief in religious matters. I hope 
 bye and bye to recognize, and put into its proper 
 place, what there is of truth in the assumption 
 which underlies the argument. But for the present, 
 I think, the sufficient answer lies rather in a con- 
 sideration of the concrete form of revelation which 
 a Christian believes, than in any attempt to grapple 
 with the conception in its abstract shape. 
 
 15-2 
 
2 28 ANOTHER, IS IMPOSSIBLE; [lect. 
 
 We believe that the Son of God did Himself 
 become man, and live on earth a life which was at 
 once human and divine. Our whole faith, in so far 
 as it is distinctively Christian, rests fundamentally, 
 as we have before shown, on the truth of a certain 
 history. History can never be known intuitively. 
 All knowledge of it, except by eye-witnesses of the 
 whole, if such there be, must depend, in the first 
 instance, on testimony. Those whom I believe to 
 have witnessed and related the history, do, to me, 
 reveal truth which I could not otherwise know, for 
 they reveal a Person whom I could not otherwise 
 know. Persons can only be made known to us in 
 two ways ; by actual intercourse or communion ; 
 and by their acts. It Is in the second of these ways 
 that our knowledge of the Saviour, and of God 
 through Him, must usually begin. It will after- 
 wards be made real, and living, and personal, by 
 actual communion. 
 
 I may verify ultimately, by an experience of 
 my own, much of the truth which I have learnt 
 about Him. But it was as truly learnt from 
 
v.] ANSWERED FROM ANALOGY 229 
 
 others, in the first instance, as any other scries of 
 facts can be. And further, if I beUeve that the 
 Word and Son of God became man, I cannot but 
 beheve that what He said of His Father in heaven 
 was truth, which He indeed knew intuitively, but 
 which I must beheve because He has told it to me. 
 
 Let the objector shew me if he can that the 
 history is not proved true. But I can see plainly 
 that the general proposition on which he founds 
 his argument is neither self-evident, nor proved 
 with sufficient clearness to supersede the necessity 
 of an examination of the evidence for the history. 
 
 But it is objected again, that it is strange that 
 God should teach truth concerning Himself through 
 human instruments. Yet to suppose God to reveal 
 Himself to certain selected men, and through them 
 to so many of the rest of mankind as receive their 
 testimony, is but to suppose that God deals with us, 
 in making spiritual truth known, on the very same 
 general plan on which He does indisputably deal 
 with us, in making almost all other truth known. 
 How is it that any new portion of truth in physical, 
 
230 WITH THE USUAL PROCESS OF [lect. 
 
 or even mathematical or moral science, has been 
 made known ? By a process of what we call dis- 
 covery ; which is really only another word for 
 revelation. God has formed the mind of the man 
 of genius whom we call the discoverer, and has 
 placed him in the circumstances which have made 
 the discovery possible. God has led him to per- 
 ceive the truth, to verify his perception of it, and 
 then to proclaim it. Other men had the same out- 
 ward facts, perhaps, before them, but had not seen 
 the truth which underlay them. The man of genius, 
 in the appointed hour, penetrates within the veil, 
 and comes forth again to tell what he has seen 
 within it. The world is astonished, doubts, dis- 
 believes, for a while. A few other minds qualify 
 themselves, by a laborious process of self-discipline, 
 to stand where the discoverer stood, and to testify 
 that they have seen again what it was given him to 
 see before others. At last the truth obtains ac- 
 ceptance, and is added to the sum of recognized 
 human knowledge. 
 
 True, in scientific discovery, when it has been 
 
v.] DISCOVERY IN SCIENCE. 231 
 
 once made, it is usually possible for any man, who 
 will comply with certain conditions, to test its 
 truth by an experience of his own. Not perhaps 
 always so. For even in science it may be given to 
 one man to observe a crucial fact, or make an ex- 
 periment, which no other person will ever be able 
 to see or make again in precisely the same circum- 
 stances. 
 
 And even so it is in the disclosure of divine 
 truth. There are some parts of it, and many parts 
 of the history that reveals it, which cannot be 
 m.ade the objects of direct experience in ourselves. 
 With regard to these we must continue to depend 
 (as we seldom need to do in science) on the 
 testimony of others, whom we believe to have been 
 placed by God under special conditions, expressly 
 in order that they might learn it for themselves, 
 and witness of it to us. 
 
 But there is much, with regard to the Divine 
 Persons, and the divine life in man, which, though 
 revealed at first through some special human ex- 
 perience, and learnt from the testimony of the seer, 
 
2 3 2 IVHA T O THERS TEA CH US, WE MA Y [lect. 
 
 or prophet, or apostle, to whom it was revealed, 
 niay yet afterwards be verified by our own experi- 
 ence ; if we will first accept the truth provisionally 
 on the revealer's testimony, and then put ourselves 
 under the conditions in which alone the experience 
 is possible \ The Samaritans said of old^, "Now 
 we believe, not because of thy saying ; for we have 
 heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed 
 the Christ, the Saviour of the world." And even 
 so may we say, with regard to all which directly 
 concerns the divine life in our own souls, 'I once 
 believed, on the testimony of the Apostles, that 
 these things were given. I believe it now, because 
 I have found that they are given to myself, and 
 may be enjoyed in reality.' Thus it is indeed that, 
 in all human learning the pupil must believe that 
 he may know. In science, or in natural history, 
 he accepts the truth provisionally, on the authority 
 of his teacher ; and so, and only so, qualifies him- 
 self to see, to verify, to extend, to correct. 
 
 ^ This is the meaning of Augustine's Crcdt\ id scias, 
 '^ John iv. 42. 
 
y.] AFTER WARD VERIFY FOR OURSEL VES, 233 
 
 Another point requires notice. The Christian's 
 supposition is that God has revealed truth to 
 the one man, that through that one man He 
 may lead others into the apprehension of it. 
 It is surely involved in this conception, that re- 
 velation must be gradual, and in all but its last 
 stage, if not even in that, be very imperfect. St 
 Paul tells us so in the text. *'VVe know in 
 part." 
 
 We may or may not be able to see why God 
 so reveals Himself. We have seen that there is a 
 close analogy between this way of revealing spirit- 
 ual truth, and the way in which almost all other 
 truth has been made known. But what I want 
 to notice now is, that this method of revelation 
 implies necessarily a double limitation of the dis- 
 closure of divine truth. It must be limited, first, 
 by the mind of the first recipient. He cannot know 
 the whole of the truth as it is in itself. It can only 
 be made visible to any man, in so far as the finite 
 mind can grasp the infinite and eternal reality ; 
 which is most imperfectly. It may be further 
 
234 REVELATION ALWAYS GRADUAL [lect. 
 
 limited by the special conditions of his own cir- 
 cumstances and character. And it must be limited, 
 secondly, by the power of the recipient to utter 
 what he himself has learnt. It is through human 
 language, and this instrument wielded by one man, 
 who has his own ways of thought and speech, that 
 the truth is to be gathered by those who sit at the 
 seer's or prophet's feet. 
 
 Remembering this fundamental conception, we 
 shall no longer be startled or perplexed, if we find 
 that the revelation made to men in the early and 
 rude times of the world's history, was very simple 
 in its form, very limited in its scope, very imperfect 
 in its expression. If we find (as we do find) that 
 in the Bible we have the record of a progressive 
 revelation ; and that this revelation is one made at 
 first to rude men, through men of like passions 
 with themselves, though placed under a special 
 divine teaching ; we shall not wonder if many 
 things in its early stages seem to us now only 
 very imperfect representations, or foreshadowings, 
 of the fuller truth made known later. Nor shall 
 
v.] AND OFTEN INCOMPLETE. 235 
 
 we wonder if even the later teaching of the 
 prophets — 
 
 "Last in the train of night, 
 If rather they belonged not to the dawn," — 
 
 seems but rudimentary, when compared with the 
 teaching of the Son of Man Himself, and of those 
 to whom He promised that his Spirit should lead 
 them into all the truth which man need know, both 
 concerning God and concerning man's own being. 
 This, instead of a stumblingblock, as it has 
 often been made, will only be what we should 
 have expected ; if we have once apprehended 
 duly the conception of a disclosure to man as 
 limited necessarily by the receptive and com- 
 municative power of the divinely chosen human 
 instrument. 
 
 This brings us to the other part of the subject 
 of the present Lecture ; — the question namely, of 
 what it has been agreed to call Inspiration. 
 
 I think the simplest account we can give of the 
 conception which that word is meant to express is 
 the following. 
 
236 INSPIRATION DEFINED. [lect. 
 
 We assume that God, when revealing truth 
 to men by one or more of themselves, does in 
 some way and in some degree guide his chosen 
 instruments in their attempts to communicate to 
 others the truth which they have learnt. 
 
 Something of the kind seems implied in our 
 notion of revelation. St Paul seems to refer to it, 
 under the word prophesy, in our text. The prophet, 
 as we have seen, is the man whom God makes his 
 own spokesman. He has learnt truth by a dis- 
 closure to himself. He is enabled to utter that 
 truth to others. God in some way guides him in 
 so doing, that his own work may not be wholly 
 in vain. What the nature of the guidance may be ; 
 whether it has any and what limits ; are questions 
 open to inquiry, evidently subject to doubt ; and, on 
 ^/r/^r/ ground, full of difficulty ; perhaps not to be 
 solved definitively. But, with whatever limits, it 
 may be fairly alleged that something of the kind 
 is almost necessarily presupposed in such a reve- 
 lation as the Christian acknowledges. 
 
 It seems to me that so far the universal belief 
 
v.] PERFECT IN OUR LORD HIMSELF; 237 
 
 of the Christian Church in all ages has gone ; and 
 that it has refused to go beyond this very general 
 and limited statement, on any a priori ground, or 
 as a matter essential to Christian belief But it 
 may be well to examine the subject rather more 
 closely; only let it be with all sobriety; tentatively, 
 not dogmatically. 
 
 We will speak at present of the ISIew Testament 
 alone. 
 
 All Christians have agreed, in the first place, 
 to believe that their Lord, — being the Truth itself; 
 knowing, as the Son of God must know, all things 
 in heaven and earth, — spake, as never man spake, 
 truth with no admixture of error, with only such 
 limitation as might be required by his perfect 
 knowledge of what man could bear and profit by. 
 They have believed that the only begotten Son 
 who is in the bosom of the Father, the Word who 
 was from the beginning the life and light of men, 
 has declared^, or set forth, or revealed, the Father 
 
 ^ i^VyW^'-TO' Jolin i. 18. 
 
238 SUFFICIENT FOR THEIR NEED, [lect. 
 
 to men, unerringly ; but only so far forth as those 
 whom He intended to teach could receive it. They 
 have been warned against hasty inferences on 
 this point, by His own declaration, that in his 
 voluntary humiliation there was that which He 
 knew not^; and that all His communications of 
 truth, even to the chosen Twelve, while He was 
 with them, were very incomplete ; much being left 
 for the future teaching of His Spirit ; both in un- 
 folding the meaning of that which He had said, 
 but they had failed to understand ; and also in the 
 communication of further truth which they were 
 not able, while He was yet with them, to receive 
 at alP. None ever dared to question the truth of 
 that which the Lord Jesus was believed to have 
 said, or the completeness of his teaching, when 
 taken in conjunction with that of His Apostles; 
 so far forth as in our present state we need know, 
 or it would be good for us to know, the truth of 
 God. This all Christians believed, it may be said 
 
 1 Mark xlii, 32. ^ John xvi. 13, 13, 25. 
 
v.] IN THE CASE OF HIS APO STIES. 239 
 
 with approximate truth, everywhere and at all 
 times. It will be seen at once that this statement 
 falls very short of those which theorists in later 
 times have sometimes propounded, and which some 
 good men have been far too ready to suppose 
 essential to their faith. 
 
 Then as to the means of knowing what the 
 Lord or His Apostles taught, which remain to the 
 Church of after times. For a generation or two 
 the Church depended, partly at least, on oral testi- 
 mony. But this gradually ceased, or became un- 
 trustworthy. Long before the end of the second 
 century the record contained in certain books was 
 almost universally regarded as the only source* of 
 authentic information. Very early in the second 
 century, nay, in the Epistle of Clement, written 
 probably before the end of the first, we have the 
 clearest evidence of a consciousness in the greatest 
 of then living teachers that they were themselves 
 
 ^ The two or three sayings of our Lord not recorded in our Gos- 
 pels, for which the authority of early tradition has been pleaded, 
 seem very like developments of, or refinements upon, something 
 contained in our Gospels. 
 
240 THEIR WRITINGS WERE ALWAYS [lect. 
 
 only learners from the far greater teachers of a 
 former day. All refer to Apostolic teaching as the 
 rule of their own. 
 
 There were certain books, it is confessed, which 
 were either little known, or regarded with doubt, 
 in the second century, as to their claim to be 
 Apostolic. But there were others which had ob- 
 tained acceptance everywhere, as representing 
 faithfully what the Apostles taught. These were 
 studied, quoted, explained, as having authority for 
 Christians who wished to know the truth. There 
 was a general acceptance of the teaching of these 
 books, only to be explained by their being regarded 
 as the fruits of that full measure of the Spirit's power 
 and guidance, which had been given for this special 
 purpose to the Apostles and their chosen asso- 
 ciates. Any one who will turn for a moment from 
 one of the Apostolic Epistles to any writing of the 
 sub-apostolic age, will be able to estimate the force 
 and the ground of this feeling for himself 
 
 Still, no theory was formed on the subject. A 
 true instinct taught Christians to believe that those 
 
v.] RECEIVED AS HAVING EULL 241 
 
 who were brought into immediate contact with our 
 Lord's personal ministry, and were chosen by Him 
 to carry on his w^ork, by planting and guiding his 
 Church after his Ascension, stood in a position 
 for knowing the truth, to which no man in a later 
 generation could have any pretension. 
 
 St Paul's case was justly felt to be altogether 
 exceptional. He had not been an eye-witness or 
 minister of the Word on earth ; but he had seen 
 Him in glory, and had been specially called by 
 Him to be the Apostle of the Gentiles. He had 
 been acknowledged as their own equal by the 
 chiefest of the original Twelve. The whole Gen- 
 tile Church was the seal of his apostleship. This 
 was enough. 
 
 We may observe further that men felt very 
 early the presence of a human element, along with 
 the divine, in the men, and in their writings. The 
 difference of style, and of the special aspect given 
 to truth, were recognized. Even the titles given to 
 the Gospels witness this : one Gospel, for instance, 
 
 was the Gospel according to Matthew;— the on^ 
 V. H. L. 16 
 
242 AUTHORITY, THOUGH WITHOUT [lect. 
 
 truth as viewed on the special side which St Mat- 
 thew was led to contemplate. But no attempt 
 was made to trace the manner or define the limits 
 of the guidance which all, for practical purposes, 
 Avere agreed to recognize. 
 
 We accept their belief entirely. To us, as to 
 them, the writings recognized by them as apostolic 
 come with authority, as depositories of the one 
 truth which our Lord taught, and commissioned 
 his Apostles to teach. 
 
 It would have been well if the Church of later 
 acres had been content with the humbler wisdom 
 of the earliest generations. Men have been far too 
 ready in modern times to frame a theory of the 
 way in which the Holy Spirit guided the apostolic 
 writers in their work. These theories have done 
 infinite harm to the cause which they were meant 
 to serve. We dare not reason a priori on such a 
 subject. Our only safe and reverent course is to 
 study the Scriptures themselves of the New Testa- 
 ment, which come to us with authority so distinctly 
 recognized by the Church of all ages since the first ; 
 
v.] AlVV THEORY OF INSPIRATION. 243 
 
 and to learn, from a patient and honest study of 
 themselves, what they may tell us, be it more or 
 less, as to the way in which they were composed, 
 and the consciousness which their authors may 
 have had of a divine guidance, its nature, and its 
 limits. 
 
 The result of such an examination will make 
 some important points sufficiently clear. 
 
 We take first the Gospels ; since the record of 
 our Lord's own earthly life and teaching is the 
 basis of all Christian faith. What the preface to 
 the third Gospel expressly tells us about that one 
 Gospel, agrees with what we should infer from any 
 fair examination of the three separately and to- 
 gether. Any guidance given did not supersede 
 the labour of careful inquiry\ St Luke does not 
 claim to be himself an eye-witness ; but to have 
 carefully collected, combined, and arranged the 
 testimony of others, who were eye-witnesses and 
 ministers of the word. He is attempting only what 
 others are attempting, to whom he does not claim 
 
 ^ See Luke i. i — 4. 
 
 16—2 
 
244 WHAT THEIR INSPIRATION [lect. 
 
 for himself to be supenor\ The authors of the 
 first and second Gospels may possibly have been 
 among those to whom he refers ; but we have 
 certainly no proof that it was so ; and no reason 
 whatever to suppose that he refers to them ex- 
 clusively. He does claim to have inquired for him- 
 self, and formed an independent judgment, not 
 to be the mere copyist of what others have written. 
 When we compare his Gospel with the other 
 two, we find how completely the view of their 
 origin, which St Luke's account of his own intended 
 work suggests, appears to be borne out by the facts. 
 The accounts are, as we have seen, independent of 
 each other, though containing much matter derived 
 from some common source, either written or oral. 
 The accounts bear every mark of simple honesty 
 in themselves. The story which they tell us is the 
 same in its main points. The character of Him 
 who is the centre of all, is one and the same in 
 each. But there is great variation in detail, both 
 as to the facts and discourses selected, and as to 
 
 •^ ^Go^e Kciixol, i. 3. 
 
v.] JFAS, CAN ONLY BE LEARNT 245 
 
 the minor circumstances of what is told. There 
 are even apparent inconsistencies, and sometimes 
 discrepancies which, with our present knowledge, 
 we cannot reconcile ; shewing that, as the guidance 
 given did not supersede inquiry, or annihilate the 
 human individuality of the writer, so neither did it 
 exempt him from all possibility of error in points 
 of detail comparatively unimportant. Had It done 
 so we should have lacked the Invaluable proof 
 given by these very discrepancies of the independ- 
 ence and the truthfulness of our narrators. There 
 is no sufficient foundation in these simple facts for 
 any theory of inspiration ; but there is the firmest 
 foundation for confidence in the truth of the history ; 
 in the representation of the character and teaching 
 of the Saviour; and in the revelation of His 
 Person. 
 
 The case Is not very different when we pass on 
 to the fourth Gospel. I must not tread again 
 ground already trodden in a former Lecture. I will 
 notice only the one or two passages in which the 
 writer himiself tells us something as to his own 
 
246 BY INDUCTION FROM THE [lect. 
 
 view of his own purpose and position. The narra- 
 tion is everywhere that of an eye-witness ; — vivid, 
 picturesque in circumstances, full of feeling, as of 
 one who had lived through the story which he tells, 
 though of feeling restrained usually from expres- 
 sion. He distinctly claims to be an eye-witness\ 
 He tells us that he has given but a selection from 
 the words and works of Jesus in presence of His 
 disciples; and he tells us what has been the guiding 
 principle of the selection. " These are written that 
 ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son 
 of God ; and that believing ye might have life 
 through His NameV There can be no doubt that 
 the writer meant us to understand that he was one 
 of those to whom he tells us that the promise was 
 given, "When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He 
 will guide you into all the truthl" He believed, 
 doubtless, that the promise was one which could 
 not fail of its fulfilment to himself, in recording the 
 Lord's life, or in unfolding the truth concerning 
 
 1 John xix. 35. * John xx. 30, 3 
 
 3 John xvi. 13, Tracrai' rqv d\T]6eiav. 
 
v.] JVEJV TESTAMENT ITSELF. 247 
 
 His Person as the Word made flesh. But nothing 
 is said as to the manner in which that guidance 
 was given ; nor can any one fail to recognize the 
 human element, the character and feeHng of the 
 writer, as colouring the record and giving it a dis- 
 tinctive quality of its own, 
 
 I pass to the acknowledged apostolic Epistles. 
 I say ' acknowledged/ not as myself doubting the 
 right of the rest to a place in the Canon of the 
 New Testament ; but because I wish to touch no 
 ground of which the solidity can be fairly ques- 
 tioned. The general fact is clear, that all the 
 writers speak with undoubting confidence of the 
 truth of what they say. Whether they speak of 
 God, or of our Lord's life on earth, or of the bear- 
 ing of those truths on human life, they always speak 
 as with authority. They are not merely reasoning 
 out conclusions for themselves, as to which they 
 are conscious that they may possibly be in error. 
 They have a commission to speak in their Lord's 
 name, and are sure that He is fulfilling, in a 
 wider sense, His own promise to guide them when 
 
248 THE FACTS OF SCRIPTURE SHEW\y^Qi:, 
 
 brought before kings and rulers for His sake\ 
 But they lay no claim to omniscience. They are 
 evidently men of like passions with ourselves. We 
 \xd.ZQ progress (in St Paul at least) in the apprehen- 
 sion and the power of unfolding truth. We find 
 them reasoning now and then, after the manner of 
 their time and country, in a way which to ns (it 
 may be through our own short-sightedness) is apt 
 to seem inconclusive. St Paul tells us that he him- 
 self knew but in part, and prophesied in part. He 
 knew that his fullest apprehensions of truth were 
 still imperfect. There are some subjects^ on which 
 he tells us expressly that he gives his own judg- 
 ment, as one who has received mercy of his Lord 
 to be faithful; but not as intending to bind the 
 conscience of those to whom he writes, as by a 
 divine command. Even this limitation, so forcibly 
 expressed, only gives greater force to our con- 
 viction of the reality of the guidance, and of 
 its completeness as to all which concerned the 
 
 1 Matt. X. 19, 20. Mark xiii. 11. Luke xii. 11, 12; xxi. 15. 
 - See 1 Cor. vii. 25. • 
 
v.] THAT INSPIRATION, THOUGH NOT 2 ^c) 
 
 revelation of needful truth, and of universal 
 Christian duty\ 
 
 These results leave us certainly without any 
 theoretic definitions of the nature or the limits of 
 that guidance of a writer by the Holy Spirit which 
 we call inspiration. They are completely at vari- 
 ance with any theory of what would be fitly called 
 verbal dictation, rather than inspiration. They shew 
 that the guidance varied in its manner and degree, 
 according to the subject-matter on which the writer 
 was employed; — that it left him to exercise his 
 natural faculties and use with diligence all his op- 
 portunities of knowledge ; and to be (in all which 
 concerned the form of setting out the truth) in- 
 fluenced largely by his own habits of thought and 
 feeling. They shew that the guidance was always 
 such as to secure that the truth concerning God, 
 with its moral and spiritual consequences, should 
 be taught as completely as the divine purpose 
 required. But they shew also that the guidance 
 
 ^ A few remarks on the meaning of i Cor. vii. 25 will be found 
 in a note at the end of the volume. 
 
250 OMNISCIENT, WAS COMPIETE [lect. 
 
 did not always, if ever, give an absolute complete- 
 ness to the disclosure of the truth, or a perfect 
 infallibility in all his utterances to him who was its 
 subject. 
 
 Stephen spoke In the full experience of the 
 fulfilment of the promises : "I will give you a mouth 
 and wisdom w^hich all your adversaries shall not 
 be able to gainsay or reslst\" "It is not ye that 
 speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh 
 in you^" Yet Stephen on more than one matter 
 of no spiritual import, contradicts the indubitable 
 meaning of the Old Testament history of the 
 event to which he refers ^ Let us rather confess 
 this frankly than resort to artificial interpretations, 
 in order to evade the admission. 
 
 Our inductive conclusions differ widely, no doubt, 
 from those of the theorist. They do not satisfy 
 the exigencies of a dogmatism, which would fain 
 substitute the absolute infallibility of Scripture in 
 
 1 Luke xxi. 15. ^ Matt. x. 10. 
 
 " Compare Acts vii. 16, with Gen. xxiii. 19, ao; xxxiii. 19; 
 1. 13; Josh. xxiv. 32. 
 
v.] FOR ALL ITS PRACTICAL USES. 251 
 
 its every letter, for that of Councils and Popes, or 
 the supposed consensus of a yet undivided Christen- 
 dom. But they do meet, I believe, the real wants 
 of the soul which craves for the knowledge, not so 
 much of propositions, as of the Divine Persons 
 whom to know is life eternal. 
 
 Such a soul is delivered from all fear lest the 
 writings so accredited should deceive or mislead 
 him as to anything which it is of spiritual concern 
 to him to know. Assured of this, we may well 
 leave it to theologians to adjust, if they can, in 
 the ripeness of time, the conception of inspiration 
 which shall satisfy reason, and accord with all the 
 facts of revelation, and of the Scriptures which are 
 its depository. 
 
 Prepared by the study of the New Testament, 
 we come, as the last part of our inquiry, to the 
 Scriptures of the Old. It is only thus that a 
 Christian can rightly and wisely approach the 
 question of their inspiration. He must not wonder 
 if he finds that his conclusions with regard to the 
 Old Testament depend entirely upon a conviction 
 
252 THE AUTHORITY OF THE OLD [lect. 
 
 previously formed with regard to the Divine autho- 
 rity of Christ's own teaching, and that of His 
 Apostles as guided by Him. I have shewn in a 
 former Lecture, as I believe, weighty reasons drawn 
 from an examination of the Old Testament itself, 
 and of unquestioned facts learnt elsewhere, for 
 believing that Israel was in fact placed under a 
 special system of divine discipline, of which the 
 Old Testament Scriptures are at once the record 
 and the outgrowth. The substantial truth of the 
 history, and the reality of a divine Revelation to 
 Israel, can I think be shewn independently of any 
 attestation of either in the New Testament. — This 
 I must simply assume, with my present purpose in 
 view. 
 
 Many will think, and I am content they should 
 think, that they need no more than this to make 
 them reverent students of the Old Testament. I 
 am sure that any real study will end in giving the 
 strongest possible confirmation to the persuasion in 
 which it was begun. 
 
 But for external testimony to the divine authority 
 
v.] TESTAMENT RESTS FOR US 253 
 
 of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, we must 
 look, I think, simply to the attestation of that 
 authority furnished by the New. This is conspicu- 
 ous and unquestionable. The Jews in our Lord's 
 time, we know, regarded their Scriptures with the 
 deepest reverence as God's word. Their Canon of 
 the Old Testament was the same as ours. The 
 text in which they read their Scriptures was sub- 
 stantially the same then as now\ When our Lord 
 quoted Scripture He referred to the same collection 
 of writings which we ourselves have in our hands. 
 Now it is impossible to deny that all which our 
 Lord says on the subject, directly or indirectly, 
 ratifies and confirms, instead of correcting or 
 modifying, the Jewish belief as to the divine 
 authority of these Scriptures. On innumerable 
 points He does correct the teaching of the Scribes ; 
 
 1 On the ancient Jewish Canon I must be content simply to refer 
 to Dr Westcott's invaluable little book, 'The Bible in the Church.' 
 Jerome's Latin version and the Greek version of the LXX. shew 
 the substantial agreement of the ancient with the present text. 
 Considerable as the variations of the Septuagint are, they do not 
 affect any matters of real importance. 
 
254 ON ITS RECOGNITION BY [lect. 
 
 and shock, sometimes apparently of set purpose, 
 the prejudices of his countrymen. But on this 
 point, all that He says, and all that He implies, 
 tends in one direction only. He assumes every- 
 where, He implies everywhere. He affirms when 
 occasion arises, that these Scriptures are His 
 Father's gift to them, designed to bear testimony 
 to Himself. ''Search the Scriptures, for in them 
 ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they 
 which testify of me\" "All things must be ful- 
 filled which are written in the Law of Moses, and 
 in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning 
 me^" His Apostles in this, as in all else, followed 
 their Master's teaching. They quote, they allude 
 to, they appeal to those Scriptures, as indeed the 
 word of the same God who had sent His Son into 
 the world and given His Spirit to themselves. — 
 *' Whatsoever things were written aforetime," St Paul 
 says', ''were written for our learning, that we through 
 patience and comfort of the scriptures might have 
 
 1 John V. 39. ' Luke xxiv. 44. ' Rom. xv. 4. 
 
v.] OUR LORD AND HIS APOSTLES. 255 
 
 hope." *'A11 scripture is given by inspiration of 
 God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for 
 correction, for instruction in righteousness : that 
 the man of God may be perfect, throughly fur- 
 nished unto all good Avorks\" 
 
 Surely we have in this fact all the external testi- 
 mony we can want. !No question arises as to the 
 authorship of this or that Book. The ratification 
 is given to the collection as a zvhole. This is rati- 
 fied and assured to us by the sanction of the 
 Son of God, not with any reference to the human 
 authorship of this or that part, but as a complex 
 whole, which teaches truly concerning God, and 
 God's preparation of the world for His Son's 
 coming. "They are they which testify of me," is 
 the stamp which authenticates the whole collection 
 to us, as the depository of God's own revelation 
 of Himself, to Israel, and to the world, before 
 Christ came. 
 
 We are left free to examine any question as to 
 the authorship, integrity, and date, of particular 
 
 ^ 2 Tim. iii. 16, 17. 
 
256 IT RECORDS A REVELATION, [lect. 
 
 books and parts of books ; and as to the correctness 
 of the details of the physical history of the world, 
 and of the dealings of nations with each other. 
 Oar Lord uses the whole as the depository of 
 truth concerning God, and man's relations with 
 God. We have no right to extend His sanction 
 equally to such matters of detail, which in no way 
 affect the value of the whole collection, as a revela- 
 tion of God to man, and of man's spiritual being 
 to himself. This is what the whole purports to 
 be, and what our Lord declares that it truly claims 
 to be. 
 
 The whole too, we must observe, evidently tells 
 the story of a progressive revelation of God. It is 
 the history of His revelation of Himself, first to 
 the childhood, then to the youth, then to the early 
 manhood of the world. Even where the Old Tes- 
 tament is in itself, and for its own purposes, com- 
 plete, it still confesses itself to be, in another aspect, 
 incomplete. It contains the promise, not the 
 fulfilment of the promise, of a perfect knowledge 
 of God. 
 
v.] GRADUAL AND INCOMPLETE, 257 
 
 We will not hesitate, then, to confess that the 
 revelation in its early stages was but rudimen- 
 tary ; fit for, as it was addressed to, the childhood 
 of our race. Nor will we deny that, where It pur- 
 ports to relate the natural or civil history of the 
 world, it may have been liable to error, and must 
 needs bear marks of the imperfect knowledge of 
 those to whom and through whom it was given. 
 Let criticism, and natural science, and comparative 
 history, do their best to give definite meaning to 
 our acknowledgment that the Old Testament 
 need not be in every part free from error ; — that 
 it was given for one purpose of supreme import- 
 ance ; — to make God known to man ; — and that, 
 when Ave will insist upon using it for another, 
 namely to teach natural or civil history, we may 
 possibly be misled ; as a man might be who should 
 take a map given him to be a guide on his own 
 journey, as necessarily a perfect and complete map 
 of the unknown country. 
 
 Let us above all be honest, be fearless, in our 
 investigation of all difficulties arising from sup- 
 V. H. L. 17 
 
258 YET ADEQUATE TO ITS PURPOSE, [lect. 
 
 posed conflict with science, or with history as 
 learnt elsewhere. If we cannot fairly reconcile the 
 alleged contradiction, we simply learn that God 
 has not willed that His own Word should be with- 
 out some such traces of the human hand which held 
 the pen, and has sometimes failed to copy the 
 divine archetype unerringly. We will not settle 
 for ourselves what Scripture ought to be ; but will 
 reverently inquire what it is in fact, and abide by 
 the result. 
 
 So much I think may be truly said 011 external 
 proof about the divine authority of the Old Testa- 
 ment. But let me add in conclusion, that there is 
 another, and a continually growing proof of the 
 same truth ; which every patient and religious 
 student of the Old Testament may have within 
 himself, if he will. 
 
 From the first, we read these Scriptures with 
 the reverence exacted by our Lord's acknowledg- 
 ment of their value. But those who read and 
 re-read, living the life of God, and seeking contact 
 with God in prayer, come gradually to khow the 
 
v.] AIVD ATTESTED BY CONSCIENCE 259 
 
 Old Testament for themselves, as a book which 
 bears the mark of a divine origin witJiin itself. 
 Read as saints and martyrs and simple men and 
 women have read it ; seeking to acquaint them- 
 selves with God, and be at peace, and grow in 
 holiness ; it becomes radiant with divine light. 
 Men learn to feel truly that it is the mirror which 
 at once reflects God to them, and sends the light 
 from His presence into their own hearts. All that 
 is low and selfish and sensual within them it so 
 rebukes ; — all that is good and pure within them 
 it so stimulates ; — all that yearns after God it so 
 draws forth in desire toward Him, and so satisfies 
 with His presence and love ; — it so deepens tlie 
 sense of sin, and the longing for holiness, and the 
 faith which overcomes temptation ; — it so explores 
 every depth of the soul of man, and reveals him to 
 himself; — it so sets forth the truth and purity and 
 loving kindness of the Eternal Father; — that one 
 who has meditated on it day and night, and 
 drunk deep of its living waters, no longer needs 
 any external proof that it is indeed a river of 
 
 17—3 
 
26o AS BEING INDEED FROM GOD. [lect. v. 
 
 the water of life, coming forth from the throne of 
 God. 
 
 Such an one has indeed entered within the 
 curtains of God's own presence, and is in safety 
 there. He Hstens calmly to the storms of con- 
 troversy, and the freezing blasts of critical inquiry. 
 They may rage without ; but they cannot touch 
 him ; — he is in safety there from the strife of 
 tongues. "Thy word," he can say with full con- 
 viction, "is tried to the uttermost, and thy servant 
 loveth it\" He needs no theories of Inspiration. 
 The difficulties which perplexed him once have 
 vanished in the light of the infinite and eternal 
 truth, which shines around him, enlightening all 
 things. He feels it to be a lantern to his feet, 
 and a light to his path I This is enough for him. 
 A time may come when he shall know fully. He 
 feels that even his present imperfect knowledge 
 gives him a firm resting place, an unfailing refuge. 
 He can find none elsewhere. 
 
 ^ P-alm cxix. 140. ^ Psalm cxix. 105. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 Note I. pp. 34, 57. O71 the use of the word ' Chin-ch* 
 
 I quote the following from Field's valuable old Treatise 
 ' Of the Church.' 
 
 The Church is the multitude and number of those M^hom 
 Almighty God severeth from the rest of the world by the worke 
 of his Grace, and calleth to the participation of eternall happinesse, 
 by the knowledge of such supernaturall verities as concerning 
 their everlasting good hee hath revealed in Christ his sonne, 
 and such other pretious and happy meanes, as hee hath appointed 
 to further and set forward the worke of their salvation. So that 
 it is the worke of Grace, and the heavenly calling, that give being 
 to the Church, and make it a different societie from all other 
 companies of men in the world, that have no other light of 
 knowledge, nor motion of desire, but that which is naturall ; 
 whence, for distinction from them, it is named Ecdesia, a multi- 
 tude called out. (Booke I. chap. 6. p. 11. Ed. 1628.) 
 
 They that are partakers of the heavenly calling, and sanctified 
 by the profession of divine truth, and the use of the meanes of 
 salvation, are of very divers sorts. For there are some that 
 professe the truth delivered by Christ the Sonne of God, but 
 not wholly, and entirely, as Heretiques ; some that professe the 
 whole saving truth, but not in unity, as Schismatickes ; some 
 that professe the whole saving truth in unity, but not in sincerity 
 and singlenesse of a good and sanctified minde, as Hypocrites 
 and wicked men, not outwardly divided from the people of God, 
 and some that professe the whole saving truth in unity, and 
 sincerity of a good and sanctified heart. 
 
262 NOTES. 
 
 All these are partakers of the heavenly calling, and sanctified 
 by the pi-ofession of the tiiith, and consequently are all in some 
 degree and sort of that society of men, whom God calleth out 2into 
 hiniselfe, and separateth from Infidels, tvhich is rightly named 
 the Chii7'ch. (Chap. 7. p. ii, 12,) 
 
 The above extract will shew that I have not gone beyond 
 the limits of allowed Anglican theology in the wide meaning 
 which I have given to the word Church. I believe that 
 Field's statement expresses exactly the intention of the 
 description rather than definition given in the first sentence 
 of Art. XIX. 
 
 Note II. p. 43. 
 
 Much valuable thought on the practical development of 
 the law of Christ in its application to political and social 
 questions will be found in the second part of Ecco Homo. 
 I refer to this remarkable book the more gladly because the 
 great defects and errors which disfigure its first part seem 
 to have lost it the place which it deserved in the estimation 
 of Christians. On its first appearance it was perhaps unduly 
 praised in some quarters ; as it was certainly denounced 
 without discrimination in others. The second part especially 
 should be read and meditated by all who wish to estimate 
 the value of Christianity as a spring of social and political 
 amelioration. 
 
 Note III. p. 44. 
 
 I have not attempted to deal with the dark and difficult 
 question of the possibiHty of repentance after death. The 
 truth of what I have said in the text, however painful it may 
 be, is undeniable. That innumerable human beings waste 
 their lives and die without visible ground of Christian hope 
 is certain. Scripture simply recognizes the fact ; it does not 
 create it ; or tell us much more about it than we can see for 
 ourselves. It declares to us in the amplest possible terms 
 
NOTES. 263 
 
 the atonement made for all ; the certainty of pardon to 
 all who repent, of grace to strengthen all who seek from 
 God the renewal of their moral being. It proclaims a gospel 
 to the lost and degraded^ so full and free that our faithless 
 timidity almost prevents us from uttering it, lest it give en- 
 couragement to carelessness. But it nowhere asserts or plainly 
 implies that repentance or renewal to holiness are possible 
 after death to those who have thrown away the opportunities 
 given of seeking them in this life. Clearly the practical result 
 of the whole teaching of Scripture, direct and indirect, upon 
 this subject, is the extreme wiportance of the use of oppo?'- 
 t unity ill this life. It adds to, rather than diminishes, the 
 force of that inference from the actual facts of human life, 
 which Bishop Butler has drawn out with such terrible force 
 and earnestness in his Analogy^ Part I. chap. 5. 
 
 The silence of Scripture as to future opportunities given 
 to those who have failed to use this life, may not be con- 
 clusive speculatively, but is practically most significant. It 
 should clearly determine the action of all who believe ; both 
 towards themselves and towards others. 
 
 Note IV. p. 55. 
 I would refer especially to the profound discussion of this 
 question in Professor Westcott's Gospel of the Resurrection, 
 which I have read since the above was first written. 
 
 Note V. p. 56. 
 On the meaning of ^ Laws of Nature? 
 I quote the following from Lord Bacon's Confession of 
 Faith, which will be found in Vol. IV. of his works, London, 
 1740, pp. 453—457- 
 
 That God created spirits, . . .he created heaven and earth, and all 
 their armies and generations, and gave unto them constant and ever- 
 lasting laws, which we call nature ; which is nothing but the laws of 
 the creation; which laws nevertheless have had three changes or 
 
264 NOTES. 
 
 times, and are to have a fourth or last so as the laws of nature, 
 
 which now remain and govern inviolably till the end of the world, 
 began to be in force when God first rested from his works, and 
 ceased to create ; but received a revocation in part by the curse ; 
 since which time they change not. 
 
 That notwithstanding God has rested and ceased from creating 
 since the first sabbath, yet nevertheless, he doth accomplish and ful- 
 fil his divine will in all things, great and small, singular and general, 
 as fully and exactly by providence as he could by miracle and new 
 creation, though his working be not immediate and direct, but by 
 compass ; not violating nature, which is his own law upon the crea- 
 ture. 
 
 That at the first, the soul of man was not produced by heaven or 
 earth, but was breathed immediately from God : so that the ways 
 and proceedings of God with spirits are not included in nature ; that 
 is, in the laws of heaven and earth ; but are reserved to the law of his 
 secret will and grace : wherein God worketh still, and resteth tiotfrom 
 the work of redemption, as he resteth from the woj-k of creation ; but 
 contimieth zuorking till the end of the world : what time that work 
 also shall be accomplished, and an eternal Sabbath shall ensue. 
 Likewise, that whensoever God doth transcetid the law of nature by 
 miracles {which may ever seem as new creations), he never cometh to 
 that point or pass, but in regard of the work of redemption, zvhich is 
 the greater, and whereto all God's signs and miracles do refer. 
 
 Note VI. p. Z-j. 
 Letter of Pliny to Trajan. [Epp. x. 97.) 
 Pliny became governor of Bithynia (a province which 
 then included apparently almost the whole of the southern 
 shore of the Black Sea) in a.d. 103, and remained there less 
 than two years. The subjoined letter to the Emperor Trajan 
 was written probably in A.D. 104.1 
 
 It is usual with me. Sir, to refer all matters on which I have 
 doubt to yourself. For who is better able to guide my hesitation, 
 or inform my ignorance ? 
 
 ^ This seems a more likely date than a.d. 103, as given in p. 87, note i. 
 
NOTES. 265 
 
 I have never taken part in judicial inquiries about Christians ; 
 consequently I do not know what are, according to usual practice, 
 the subject or the limits of the inquiry or the punishment. And I 
 have been not a little perplexed by the question whether any distinc- 
 tion is to be made by age, or those of the tenderest years are to be 
 treated exactly as older people ? Whether indulgence is to be shewn 
 to repentance, or he who has been a Christian at all is to gain 
 nothing by having ceased to be so ? Whether it is the name itself, 
 even though it be free from moral wickedness, or the moral wicked- 
 ness that may be attached to the name, that is punished ? 
 
 In the meantime, in the case of those who were accused before 
 me as Christians, I have acted as follows. I asked the accused them- 
 selves whether they were Christians. If they confessed it, I asked 
 them a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment. 
 If they persisted, I ordered them to execution. For I did not doubt 
 that, whatever was the character -of the thing confessed, obstinacy 
 and inflexible persistency ought at any rate to be punished. There 
 were others similarly crazed, whom, because they were Roman citi- 
 zens, I marked down to be sent to Rome. 
 
 After a time, since the charge (as usual) extended itself more 
 widely the more the question was dealt with, many different forms 
 of it came before me. A paper of accusation was posted up, with- 
 out the accuser's name, containing the names of many, who deny 
 that they are or ever were Christians. As they offered prayers to 
 the Gods in words dictated by me, and offered their devotions, in 
 frankincense and wine, to your likeness, which for this purpose I 
 had ordered to be brought with the images of the gods ; and as 
 moreover they reviled Christ ; — no one of which things, it is said, can 
 those be compelled to do who are really Christians ; — I therefore 
 thought it right to discharge them. Others, named by an informer, 
 said they were Christians ; and presently denied it ; said they had 
 been so indeed, but had ceased to be, some of them three years ago, 
 some many years, a few even more than twenty years ago. All of 
 them too worshipped your likeness and the images of the Gods ; 
 these also reviled Christ. But they affirmed that this had been the 
 whole of their guilt or error, whichever it is to be called ; that they 
 had been accustomed to meet on a regular day before dawn, and in 
 response to each other to repeat a hymn {carmen) to Christ, as to 
 
266 NOTES. 
 
 their God, and to bind themselves by an oath of allegiance [sacra- 
 mento), not to any crime, but never to commit thefts, or robberies, 
 or adulteries, not to break their word, not to deny money entrusted 
 to them when called on to account for it. They said that, when 
 this was over, their custom had been to break up, and to assemble 
 again for a meal, but one open to all, and innocent ; and that even 
 this they had ceased to do since my edict M'as issued, in accordance 
 with your instructions, forbidding fraternities. 
 
 The more necessary therefore did I think it to make inquiry, 
 and that by tortures, of two female slaves who were called 
 deaconesses [ministrcE), what was the truth of the matter. I dis- 
 covered nothing else but a perverse and excessive superstition. 
 
 Therefore, deferring the trial, I have taken refuge in consulting 
 yourself. The matter seemed to me worthy of mature deliberation, 
 especially on account of the number of those who are in jeopardy. 
 For many of all ages, of all ranks, of both sexes too, are and 
 will be brought into danger. Nor is it the cities only, but the 
 villages, and the open country, that the contagion of this superstition 
 has pervaded. And yet it seems possible that it may be stayed 
 and cured. At any rate it is certain that the temples which 
 were almost abandoned have begun to be frequented, and the 
 accustomed sacred rites, long intermitted, have been renewed ; and 
 that victims for sacrifice find a ready sale, whereas hitherto they 
 found very few buyers. From which one may easily surmise what 
 a multitude of people may be brought to a better mind, if room 
 for repentance be given. 
 
 The Ejnpefor Trajan replied as follows. 
 
 My dear Secundus, You have followed the proper course in 
 examining the cases of those who had beep accused before you 
 as Christians. Nothing can be laid down as a universal rule, 
 having one invariable shape. They must not be sought for ; 
 if they are accused, and the charge made good against them, 
 they must be punished ; yet with this limitation, that any one 
 who denies that he is a Christian and makes it manifest that this 
 is so by act, that is by offering prayer to our Gods, however sus- 
 pected he may be with regard to the past, must obtain pardon on 
 
NOTES. 267 
 
 the ground of his repentance. But papers of accusation posted 
 up without the name of the informer ought not to be admitted 
 in the case of any criminal charge ; for the practice is a bad 
 precedent, and unsuitable to our time. 
 
 The letter and its answer sufficiently explain themselves. 
 Nothing can be more striking than the spirit of good sense, 
 fairness and humanity, shewn generally by both the eminent 
 men between whom the correspondence passes. Evidently 
 the wish of both is to deal as indulgently as they can even 
 with Christians. It is against their will that the traditions 
 of Roman law and government compel them to persecute. But 
 they do not hesitate for an instant to inflict death upon 
 people innocent of everything but an 'excessive superstition.' 
 Such was the resistance against which Christianity had to 
 make its way. 
 
 Yet the letter shews that, within about seventy years of 
 the Ascension, and almost within the lifetime of St John, the 
 Christian society had rooted itself so firmly as to empty the 
 temples and compel the unwilling notice of a Roman 
 governor, in a province remote from Judasa, far out of the line 
 of communication between Juda;a and Italy ; and that its cha- 
 racter and usages as seen from without correspond entirely 
 with the view given of them from within by the Book of Acts 
 and the Apostolic Epistles, one of which (i Pet.) is addressed 
 partly to Christians of Bithynia and Pontus. The well-known 
 passage of Tacitus {A fin. xv. 44) was probably written ten 
 years later than Pliny's letter, but relates events of the year 
 A.D. 65, about two years before the death of Nero. It is as 
 follows : 
 
 But no relief given by human means, no bounties of the prince, 
 no ceremonies intended to appease the Gods, got rid of the infamy, or 
 prevented men from believing that Rome had been set on fire 
 by orders from Nero. Therefore to put an end to the evil report, 
 he substituted for himself as accused, and punished with most 
 exquisite cruelty, the people whom the commonalty hated for their 
 
268 NOTES. 
 
 crimes and called Christians. The author of that name, Christus, 
 had been put to death during Tiberius's reign by Pontius Pilate ; 
 and though checked for the moment, the fatal superstition broke 
 forth again, not only throughout Judaea, the source of the mischief, 
 but throughout the capital also, whither all things atrocious and 
 shameful flow together from all quarters and are accumulated. 
 
 Those then were seized first who confessed (the crime) ; after- 
 wards, on their information a great number were convicted, not so 
 much on the charge of setting fire to the city, as for their hatred 
 of mankind. Mockery too was added to their sufferings ; that 
 namely of dying covered with the skins of wild beasts, and torn 
 by dogs ; or else either crucified or kept to be set on fire, and after 
 dark to be burnt for lights by night. Nero had offered his gardens 
 for the show, and exhibited the games of the circus, mixing with 
 the common people, or standing on his chariot in the dress of a 
 charioteer. Guilty as they were, and deserving the extremest 
 punishment, compassion was stirred towards the victims, as if they 
 were being destroyed, not for the public advantage, but to gratify 
 the cruelty of one man. 
 
 It is clear from Tacitus's expression in ch. 38, foj-te an 
 dolo principis mcei^fuin,t\\2i\.)\Q did not himself believe the 
 Christians guilty of causing the fire, however badly he 
 thought of them in other ways. 
 
 There is a passing notice of the persecution in the life of 
 Nero by Tacitus's contemporary Suetonius ; who mentions, 
 apparently as one of Nero's better deeds, that 'the Chris- 
 tians were punished, a race of men of strange and noxious 
 superstition.' (Suet. AWo, ch. 16.) 
 
 Note VII. p. 102. 
 
 The importance of the questions of the (approximate) 
 date of the Book of Acts, and of its authorship by a com- 
 panion of St Paul, make some further remarks desirable. 
 
 Some able German writers (including even Bleek, who 
 nevertheless believes St Luke to be the author of the book 
 as we now have it) maintain the strange theory that the pas- 
 
NOTES. 269 
 
 sages in which the writer uses the first person plural in speak- 
 ing of St Paul and his companions are not St Luke's own, 
 but extracts from journals or letters written by some other 
 companion of St Paul, which the author of the book has 
 simply copied into his own work without the necessary gj'ain- 
 matical alteratioii. Any careful reader can judge for himself 
 of the violent improbability that an educated and intelligent 
 man, capable of compiling the whole work and of writing 
 the Greek of the prefaces to the Gospel and the Acts, should 
 be guilty of such extreme carelessness. The supposed paral- 
 lels from barbarous mediseval chroniclers entirely fail. The 
 mere statement of the theory seems enough to prove it un- 
 tenable. 
 
 The only excuse for its invention is that the Book of 
 Acts omits, or relates only cursorily, many events of St 
 Paul's ministry, and sometimes is difficult to reconcile in 
 minute particulars with statements or allusions in St Paul's 
 Epistles. Allowing the utmost possible weight to the diffi- 
 culty, the proposed solution may safely be pronounced an 
 impossible one. The true solution will be found to lie partly 
 in a more careful examination of the alleged discrepancies, 
 which are often much exaggerated, if not altogether imagin- 
 ary ; and partly in a truer conception of the meaning of the 
 book as a whole. Its object certainly is not to give a com- 
 plete history of the Apostolic Church, but to mark the lead- 
 ing points of its outward extension and inward development, 
 as the promised result of the work of the Holy Spirit 1. 
 Beside this general purpose of the whole, the writer has 
 evidently been influenced in the latter part of his narrative 
 by some special personal interest in St Paul, as well as by 
 his sense of the importance of St Paul's peculiar share in the 
 extension and development of the Church. But no one who 
 enters into the real design of the book will v/onder at its incom- 
 pleteness if regarded as a biography of St Paul. I\or is it 
 
 1 See Acts i. 5, 8. 
 
2 70 NOTES. 
 
 likely that St Paul, ever engrossed with "the care of all the 
 Churches," and forgetting himself in his work, would indulge 
 the mere curiosity of a biographer by narratives of his own 
 adventures and sufferings in days long past. 
 
 Bleek himself however, it must be noticed, concedes all 
 which is really important to the historical value of the Gospel 
 and of the Acts. He ascribes both to St Luke, the friend 
 and physician of St Paul, at least in his Roman imprisonment. 
 If so, they are still contemporary history. The difference 
 between the dates resulting from his view and that which I 
 believe the true one, lies within the compass of some ten 
 years more or less. 
 
 Some EngHsh writers to whom 1 owe much question the 
 truth of the inference drawn in p. loo from Acts xxviii. 30, 31 
 as to the date of the book. They think that "the success of 
 St Paul's preaching in Rome is a fitter termination of the his- 
 tory than any other incident which could have been chosen^." 
 Even if this were conceded, we might reply first that what is 
 recorded of the preaching at Rome is scarcely success^. He 
 preached ciKoiKirios, but the acceptance of the Gospel was still 
 matter of prediction^, rather than of history. It might be 
 answered secondly, as I have already urged in p. 100, that 
 the same pen which recorded the two years of outwardly 
 uneventful imprisonment would surely have mentioned its 
 prolongation to a third year, or its termination by trial and 
 acquittal or condemnation, or by death in prison, if any one 
 of these events had occurred before the publication of the 
 narrative. 
 
 Note VUl. p. 131. 
 
 The question of the quotations of, or allusions to St 
 John's Gospel in the writers of the second and third quarters 
 of the second century (during the last quarter of which 
 there can be no doubt that it was universally accepted) has 
 been carefully and candidly examined (to mention no other 
 
 1 Dr Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 3, note 2. 2 gg^, j,j^_ 2^ — 27. 3 ^ 28. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 27 
 
 names) by Meyer (in the introduction to his Commentary 
 on St John, § 2, 1—7 of the 5th edition), and by Professor 
 Westcott (On the Canon, Part I. ch. ii.) ; though of course the 
 latter has only considered it as part of the wider question of 
 the history of the Canon generally. Any reader who wishes 
 to study the question for himself should avail himself of 
 their guidance to the original passages. The conclusion to 
 which Meyer comes is ^p. 19) that "The continuity of the 
 testimony in its favour, and the range of that testimony, 
 widening as it does wiih that of Church hterature, is as 
 complete as ever is or can be required by way of exiejiial 
 proof of a New Testament writing." Block's examination of 
 the evidence will be found in his Introduction to the New 
 Test. vol. I. pp. 236—251 of the Enghsh translation. The 
 statement in p. 130 of my third Lecture does not, I feel 
 persuaded, at all go beyond the evidence. 
 
 Note IX. p. 140. 
 The difficulty referred to in the text is the following : 
 In each of the first three Gospels there is a perfectly 
 distinct statement that our Lord ate the last Passover with 
 his disciples on the first day of the feast of unleavened 
 bread; i.e. evidently on the day kept as such by the Jews. 
 St Matthew says r^ Trpcorj] tcov d^vixcov ; St Mark adds, ore to 
 7ra.cr)(a edvov ; St Luke, ev ^ edei dveirdai to Ttaaxa ', shewing con- 
 clusively that the day meant is the 14th day of Abib or Nisan ; 
 in the afternoon of which (Exod. xii. 6) the law required the 
 paschal lamb to be slain ; — and on the evening of which, ac- 
 cording to our reckoning, being the first hours of the 15th 
 according to that of the Jews, the paschal supper was to I e 
 eaten. Nothing can be clearer than these statements. Their 
 existence in each one of the three Gospels seems to shew 
 that a similar statement had formed part of the original oral 
 narrative. 
 
 On the other hand, there are statements in St John which 
 lead naturally to the conclusion that the Last Supper was 
 
272 NOTES. 
 
 eaten on the previous evening., and that the day of the Cru- 
 cifixion was the 14th of Nisan; our Lord dying before the 
 sunset of the 14th, and being entombed before the com- 
 mencement of the 15th. The passages which seem to lead 
 to this conclusion are mainly these : 
 
 (i) Joh. xiii. 29 seems to shew that "the feast" was 
 still future. 
 
 (2) Joh. xviii. 28. On the morning of the Crucifixion the 
 Jews " went not into the judgment hall lest they should be 
 defiled, but that they might eat the Passover;" suggesting 
 the same inference. 
 
 (3) Joh. xix. 14. The day of the crucifixion is expressly 
 said to be " the p?'eparation of the Passover^'' which seems 
 naturally to mean the 14th of Nisan. 
 
 Clearly if we had no other account than St John's we 
 should do right to take all these passages in their most 
 obvious meaning. One or two other passages have been 
 alleged, but seem much less strong than these. 
 
 But when we observe that this interpretation brings the 
 three Gospels into direct contradiction with St John upon a 
 very simple matter of fact, as to which it is scarcely con- 
 ceivable that any confusion could exist within the lifetime of 
 the first generation of Jewish Christians, it does seem worth 
 while to reconsider the passages in St John ; remember- 
 ing that he wrote, as we believe, with a full knowledge, if 
 not of the text of our present Gospels, yet of that oral 
 Gospel which in this instance they-represent. 
 
 When we write (as St John did) to those who already 
 know much about the history we have to tell, we often use 
 language inaccurately, because we know that it will be read 
 in the light of that previous knowledge, and for this reason 
 will not mislead. 
 
 Will the passages in St John fairly bear any meaning 
 consistent with the date of our Lord's paschal supper which 
 we obtain from the three earlier Gospels? 
 
NOTES. 273 
 
 I think that (i) may without much difficulty be under- 
 stood of the preparations for the remaining seven days of the 
 Feast ; in which even then it would seem that the " days of 
 unleavened bread/' with their multiplied and repeated sacri- 
 tices, had become the prominent feature, rather than the 
 original paschal supper. 
 
 (2) It has been shewn that there are real difficulties in 
 the supposition that any ceremonial defilement incurred could 
 have debarred a Jew from the paschal supper on that 
 evening, after sunset. It seem& not impossible to suppose 
 the eating meant to be that of the feasts of the festal sacri- 
 fices of that day, the 15th. 
 
 (3), though seeming to suggest the day on which the 
 Passover was prepared^ Ti\3.y possibly mean (the preparation 
 being = Friday ; see Joh. xix. 42, and the similar passages 
 in the other Gospels) the Friday which fell during the Pass- 
 over festival, and which, being the day of preparation for a 
 peculiarly important sabbath, would be observed with pecu- 
 liar care. 
 
 These explanations, though not free from difficulty, seem 
 fairly admissible, and enable us to read St John's narrative 
 as consistent on this point with that of the three. 
 
 If they are not accepted, we can only admit frankly the 
 conflict between the statements of date in the three Gospels 
 and in St John. The current of recent opinion, even in 
 England, is in favour of St John's statement, and against 
 any attempt at reconciliation which our present knowledge 
 can enable us to suggest. If it be necessary to choose, we 
 must follow St John. But I am, on the whole, inclined to 
 accept the above solution. 
 
 Note X. p. 249. 
 
 On some passages in i Cor. vii. in connexion with the 
 
 question of hispiration. 
 
 It has been supposed that when St Paul says, in i Cor. 
 
 V. H. L. 18 
 
2 74 NOTES. 
 
 vii. lo, ovK iya>, ak\a 6 Kvpioy, he refers directly and exclu- 
 sively to words known by him to have been spoken by our 
 Lord when on earth, such as those recorded in Matt. v. 31, 
 32, xix. I — 9 and the parallel passages in Markx. i — 12, Luke 
 xvi. 18. Again, when he says {v. 12) Xf-yco eyw, ovx o Kupios, 
 and {v. 25) eTrtrayrjv Kvpiov ovk ex<o, he has been supposed to 
 mean simply that he knew of no similarly explicit saying of 
 our Lord upon the point in question. And as there is cer- 
 tainly a marked contrast in the Apostle's language between - 
 what he says on the two questions, it has been sometimes 
 inferred from this exposition that, in the absence of any 
 express declaration of our Lord, St Paul remained in doubt, 
 or was less confident in his judgment as to matters of 
 Christian truth and duty than in matters on which our Lord 
 had spoken expressly. From this inference again another 
 has been drawn, namely that St Paul was aware that the 
 ^(uidaHce given to himself in matters of truth and duty was 
 not always complete. 
 
 Many of those who understand St Paul's words as above 
 earnestly disclaim the inferences drawn from them. But our 
 first object must be to ascertain the real meaning of the 
 Apostle's language. If the interpretation is a mistaken one, 
 the inferences will fall with it. 
 
 It is important to notice carefully the general drift of the 
 whole chapter. The Corinthians, or a portion of them, have 
 asked St Paul's opinion and direction both upon the 
 general question of the comparative advantages of the mar- 
 ried and the unmarried state, in a religious view ; and also 
 upon many of those practical difficulties in the relations be- 
 tween the sexes, which were inevitable when Christianity 
 made its way where an almost unrestrained liberty of divorce 
 existed by law, and by prevailing usage. On some points 
 his answer is perfectly clear. Whatever the abstract advan- 
 tage of one state over the other may be, there are many for 
 whom the question is foreclosed. There are those for whom 
 
NOTES. 
 
 275 
 
 marriage is a necessary safeguard. And the married are no 
 longer free to choose. They must fulfil the obligations which 
 they have undertaken. The tie once formed is by the law of 
 Christ indissoluble. If indeed the 7inbelieving party in a 
 'mixed marriage' will exercise the hberty of repudiation 
 allowed by human law, the conscience of the Christian hus- 
 band or wife is no longer bound. The liberty given by the act 
 of the other may be lawfully and even thankfully used. But 
 the believer must not procure freedom by his own act. Let 
 him remember that the true freedom is that of the spirit. 
 The service to Christ makes us really free, whatever the 
 apparent bondage of our outward circumstances. Where 
 God's grace has found us, there it can enable us to abide with 
 God {vv. I — 24). 
 
 Having thus dealt with the case in which alone there was 
 a7i absolute right and wrongs namely the case in which 
 marriage had been already contracted, the Apostle proceeds 
 {vv. 25 — 38) to give his advice with reference to cases where 
 the tie did not exist. In the circumstances of the then pre- 
 sent time {^la Tr]v eveo-raxrav dvdyKijVj V. 26) he considers the 
 unmarried state freer from worldly care, and more favourable 
 to energetic and single-minded Christian service. But he 
 explicitly declares that the whole question is not one of 
 absolute duty {ovx ^fxapres v. 28, ovx dfjLapTavei v. 36) ; but 
 only of Christian wisdom and prudence (AcaXcoy Trotet, KpfiQ- 
 (Tou TToiel, V. 38), to be determined one way or the other 
 according to the circumstances of each particular case {npus 
 TO o-vix(f)€pov V. 35). A second marriage is perfectly lawful, 
 where death has dissolved the former {v. 39), though the 
 Apostle would think it generally inexpedient {v. 40), and 
 would require that, if formed, it should be with a Christian. 
 
 It will be seen at once that there is nothing of doubt or hesi- 
 tation here ; no consciousness whatever of imperfect guidance 
 as to his Lord's will. The Apostle lays down with a bold 
 and firm hand the hnes of Christian duty, and the principles 
 
2 76 NOTES. 
 
 which should guide a Christian in his judgment on questions 
 of Christian expediency. His decision is perfectly clear, as 
 to the boundary line between the provinces of absolute duty 
 and of expediency. Any inference which has been drawn 
 from his language as to the limitation of inspiration with 
 reference to questions of Christian duty is quite at variance 
 with the general meaning of the whole passage. 
 
 The expressions which have given colour to the misun- 
 derstanding are all capable, as it seems to me, of a perfectly 
 different meaning, entirely consistent with the authoritative 
 tone of the Apostle's teaching here and elsewhere. The 
 ovK ey&t, aKKa 6 Kuptos oi V. lo is but the application to his 
 apostolic teaching of that which he has said elsewhere (Gal. 
 ii. 20) of his whole life as a Christian, ^c3 h\ ovkctl eya, ^t} de 
 'p €/xot XpLCTTos, or of his whole apostolic activity (i Cor. xv, 
 10), OVK e-yco, dXXa ^ x^P'-^ "^^^ Qeoii aiiv efioi. The words need 
 not refer to any saying of our Lord when on earth ; though 
 they may refer in part to those which had in fact been utter- 
 ed, and which may probably have been known to St Paul. 
 Still less do the words emTayrjv Kvpiov ovk e\(o, in v. 25, ex- 
 press a doubt, founded on the absence of any such remem- 
 bered words of our Lord. The word eTriTayrj, according to 
 its use elsewhere (see e.g. v. 6), does not even suggest naturally 
 (as ePToXfj might have done) such a reference to a specific 
 command. They seem to me to express naturally the Apo- 
 stle's confidence that our Lord's will is to leave His people 
 entirely free to exercise their discretion in the matter in 
 question, as one in which there is no absolute right and wrong 
 tor His Apostle to declare. 
 
 If I am right, the exposition is a mistaken one, and 
 the inferences drawn from the passage are as entirely un- 
 supported by it, as they are inconsistent with the Apostle's 
 habitual language elsewhere. 
 
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 proximate u7tion." — Saturday Review "^ well timed, learned^ and 
 thoughtful book. " 
 
 Davies. — Works by the Rev. J. Llewelyn Davies, M.A., 
 Rector of Christ Church, St. Marylebone, etc. : — 
 THE WORK OF CHRIST; or, the World Reconciled to 
 God. With a Preface on the Atonement Controversy. Fcap. 
 8vo. (>s. 
 
 SERMONS on the MANIFESTATION OF THE SON 
 OF GOD. With a Preface addressed to Laymen on the present 
 Position of the Clergy of the Church of England ; and an Ap- 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Davies (Rev. J. Llewelyn) — continued. 
 
 pendix on the Testimony of Scripture and the Church as to the 
 possibiHty of Pardon in the P'uture State. Fcap. 8vo. 6^. dd. 
 *^' This iwhmie, both in its substance, prefix, and suffix, represents the 
 noblest type of theology noiv preached in the English Church.'''^ — Spectator. 
 
 BAPTISM, CONFIRMATION, AND THE LORD'S 
 SUPPER, as Interpreted by their Outwai'd Signs. Thi-ee Ex- . 
 pository Addresses for Parochial use. Fcap. 8vo., Hmp cloth. 
 \s. 6d. 
 
 The method adopted in these addresses is to set forth the natitral and 
 historical meaning of the signs of the tivo Sacraments and of Confirma- 
 tion, and thus to arrive at the spiritual realities which they symbolize. 
 The work touches on all the pri?zcipal elements of a ChHstian man^ s faith. 
 
 THE EPISTLES of ST. PAUL TO THE EPHESIANS, 
 THE COLOSSIANS, and PHILEMON. With Introductions 
 and Notes, and an Essay on the Traces of Foreign Elements in 
 the Theology of these Epistles. 8vo. 7^. dd. 
 
 THE GOSPEL AND MODERN LIFE; with a Preface 
 on a Recent Phase of Deism, Second Edition. To which is 
 added Morality according to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, 
 or Three Discourses on the Names Eucharist, Sacrifice, and Com- 
 munion. Extra fcap. 8vo. ds. 
 
 WARNINGS AGAINST SUPERSTITION IN FOUR 
 SERMONS FOR THE DAY. Extra fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d 
 
 '■'We have seldom read a wiser little book. The Sermons are short, 
 terse, and full of true spiritual wisdom, expressed with a lucidity and a 
 moderation that ?nust give them zueight even zuith those who agree least 
 
 with their author Of the volume as a zahole it is hardly possible to 
 
 speak with too cordial an appreciation.^^ — Spectatoi*. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CALLING. Sermons. Extra fcap. 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 De Teissier.— Works by G. F. De Teissier, B.D.:— 
 VILLAGE SERMONS, First Series. Crown 8vo. 9j-. 
 This volume contai^ts fifty four short Sermons, embracing many subjects 
 
 of practical importance to all Christians. The Guardian says they are 
 
 *'« little too scholarlike in style for a coimtTy village, but sound and 
 
 practical.''^ 
 
 VILLAGE SERMONS, Second Series. Crown 8vo. 8^.6^. 
 
 * ' This second volume of Parochial Sej-mons is given to the public in 
 the humble hope that it may afford many seasonable thotights for such as 
 are Mourners iti Zion.^' There are in all fifty-tiuo Sermons embi'acing a 
 wide variety of subjects connected zuith ChHstian faith and practice. 
 
lo THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 
 
 Donaldson — THE APOSTOLICAL FATHERS: a Critical 
 
 Account of their Genuine Writings and of their Doctrines. By 
 James Donaldson, LL.D. Crown 8vo. ']s.^d. 
 This book %oas p2iblished in 1864 as tJie first volume of a ^Critical 
 History of Christian Literature and DoctHne from tJie death of the 
 Apostles to tJte Nicene Council.'^ The intention was to ca7'ry daivn the 
 history continitously to the time of Eusebius, and this intention has not 
 been abandoned. But as the writei'S can be sometimes grouped more easily 
 according to subject or locality than according to time, it is deemed ad- 
 visable to publish tJie history of each g?'oup separately. The Introduction 
 t^ the present volume sej"ves as an introdiiction to the whole period. 
 
 Drake.— THE TEACHING of the CHURCH DURING 
 THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES ON THE DOCTRINES 
 OF THE CHRISTIAN PRIESTHOOD AND SACRIFICE. 
 By the Rev. C. B. Drake, ]\I.A., Warden of the Church of Eng- 
 land Hall, Manchester. Crown 8vo. 4^. 6d. 
 
 Ecce Homo. A Survey of the Life and Work of 
 Jesus Christ. Eleventh Edition. Crown 8vo. 6j. 
 "^ veiy 07'iginal and rejuarkable book, full of st7-iking thought and 
 delicate perception ; a book ivhich has realised 7vith wonderful vigour and 
 freshness tlie histo7-ical magnitude of Christ's 7i>ork, and which here and 
 tJure gives us I'cadings of t)ie finest kind of the pi'obable jitotive of His indi- 
 vidual words and actiofis.'''' — Spectator. " The best and most established 
 believer will find it adding sonie fresh buttresses to his faith." — Literary 
 Churchman. ^^ If we have fwt misunderstood him, we have befo7'e us a 
 W7'iter ivho has a right to claim defererue f'orji those wJw thi7ik deepest 
 and know most. " — Guardian. 
 
 Faber.— SERMONS AT A NEW SCHOOL. By the Rev. 
 
 Arthur Faber, M.A., Head Master of Malvern College. Cr. 
 
 8vo. 6s, 
 *' These a7'e high-to7ied, ea7'7iest Ser77i07is, o7'thodox and scholai'like, arid 
 lade7i with ertcouragejuent and war7ii7ig, wisely adapted to the 7ieeds of 
 school-life.''^ — Literary Churchman. '^Ad77ii7'ably realizirig that covi- 
 hi7iatio7t offi-esh vigorous thought a7id sirnple expressio7i of wise par£7ital 
 i\ncnsel, with brother-ly sy77ipathy and 7-espect, which are essential to tJie 
 success of such ser 7710ns, arid to whieh so few attairi." — Bi'itish Quarterly 
 Review. 
 
 Farrar. — Works by the Rev. F. W. Farrar, M.A., F.R.S., 
 Head Master of Marlborough College, and Hon. Chaplain to the 
 Queen : — 
 
 THE FALL OF MAN, AND OTHER SERMONS. 
 Third Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. /[s. 6d. 
 
 TJds volume contains twe7zty Sermo7ts. No attempt is made i7i these 
 
 1 
 I 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. n 
 
 Farrar (Rev. F. W.) — continued. 
 
 Sermons to develope a system of doctrine. In each discourse so?)ie one 
 aspect of truth is taken up, the chief object being to point 07it its bearings on 
 practical religivns life. The Nonconformist says of these Sermons, — 
 ''^ Air. Farrar'' s Sermons are ahnost perfect specimens of one type of Ser- 
 mons, which we may concisely call beautifid. The style of expression is 
 beautiful — there is beauty irz the thoughts, the illusti-ations, the allusions — 
 they are expressive of genuinely beautiful perceptions and feelings." The 
 British Quarterly says, — ''^Ability, eloquence, scholarship, and practical 
 usefulness, are in these Sermons combined in a very unusual degree. " 
 
 T?IE WITNESS OF HISTORY TO CHRIST. Being 
 
 the Hulsean Lectures for 1870. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 5^. 
 The following are the subjects of the Five Lectures : — /. " The Ante- 
 cedent Credibility of the Miraculous." II. " The Adequacy of the Gospel 
 Records." III. ^'' The Victories of Christianity.'''' IV. ^^Christianity and 
 the Individual." V. '■^Christiaitity and the Race." The subjects of tli£ 
 four Appendices are: — A. " The Diversity of Christian Evidences." 
 B. ''Confucius." C. ''Buddha." D. " Comte." 
 
 SEEKERS AFTER GOD. The Lives of Seneca, Epictetus, 
 and Marcus AureHus. See Sunday Library at end of Catalogue. 
 
 THE SILENCE AND VOICES OF GOD : University 
 and other Sermons. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 "We can most cordially recommend Dr. Farrar'' s singularly beautiful 
 
 volume of Sermons For beauty of diction, felicity of style, aptness of 
 
 illustration and earnest loving exhortation, the vohime is without its 
 parallel. " — ^John Bull. " They are marked by great ability, by an honesty 
 which does not hesitate to acknozuledge difficulties and by an earnestness 
 which commands respect." — Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 Fellowship : Letters Addressed to my Sister 
 Mourners. Fcap. 8vo. cloth gilt. 3^. dd. 
 ' 'A beautiful little volume, zuritten with genuine feeling, good taste, and 
 a right appreciation of the teaching of Scripture relative to sorrow and 
 suffering." — Nonconformist. "A very touching, and at the same time a 
 very sensible book. It breathes throughout the truest Christian spirit. " — 
 Contemporary Review. 
 
 Forbes.— THE VOICE OF GOD IN THE PSALMS. 
 By Granville Forbes, Rector of Broughton. Cr. 8vo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 Gifford.— THE GLORY OF GOD IN MAN. By E. H. 
 GiFFORD, D.D. Fcap. 8vo., cloth. 3J-. 6d. 
 
 Golden Treasury Psalter. See^. 27. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Hardwick. — Works by the Ven. ARCHDEACON Hardwick : 
 CHRIST AND OTHER MASTERS. A Historical Inquiry 
 into some of the Chief ParalleKsms and Contrasts between Christ- 
 ianity and the Religious Systems of the Ancient World. New 
 Edition, revised, and a Prefatoiy Memoir by the Rev. Francis 
 Procter, M. A. Third and Cheaper Edition. Cr, 8vo. los.dd. 
 
 The plan of the work is boldly and almost nobly conceived. . . . We com- 
 mend it to the pei'-usal of all those who take interest in the study of ancient 
 mythology^ tvithout losing thei>- reverence for the supreme authority of the 
 oracles of the living God." — Christian Observer. 
 
 A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. Middle 
 Age. From Gregory the Great to the Excommunication of Luther, 
 Edited by William Stubbs, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern 
 History in the University of Oxford. With Four Maps constructed 
 for this work by A. Keith Johnston. New Edition. Crown 
 8vo. \os. 6d. 
 
 For this edition Professor Stubbs has carefully rroised both text and 
 notes, making such corrections of facts, dates, and the like as the restilts of 
 recent research warrant. The doctrinal, historical, and generally specula- 
 tive vieius of the late author have been preserved intact. '■'As a Manual 
 for the student of ecclesiastical history in the Middle Ages, we knoiv no Eng- 
 lish work which can be compared to Mr. Hardwick' s book. " — Guardian. 
 
 A HISTORY of the CHRISTIAN CHURCH DURING 
 THE REFORMATION. New Edition, revised by Professor 
 Stubbs. Crown 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 T7iis volume is intended as a sequel and companion to the ''History 
 of the Christian Church during the Middle Age.'' 
 
 Hare.— THE VICTORY OF FAITH. By Julius Charles 
 Hare, M.A., Archdeacon of Lewes. Edited by Prof Plumptre. 
 With Introductory Notices by the late Prof. Maurice and Dean 
 Stanley. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d. 
 
 Harris. — SERMONS. By the late George Collyer 
 Harris, Prebendary of Exeter, and Vicar of St. Luke's, Torquay. 
 With Memoir by Charlotte M. Yonge, and Portrait. Extra 
 fcap. Svo. 6s. 
 
 Hervey.— THE GENEALOGIES OF OUR LORD AND 
 SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, as contained in the Gospels of 
 St. Matthew and St. Luke, reconciled with each other, and shown 
 to be in harmony with the true Chronology of the Times. By Lord 
 Arthur Hervey, Bishop of Bath and Wells. Svo. los. 6d. 
 
 I 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 13 
 
 Hymni Ecclesise.— Fcap. 8vo. 7^.6^. 
 
 This collection was edited by Bj\ Newjuan while he lived at Oxford. 
 
 Hyacin the.— CATHOLIC REFORM. By Father 
 
 Hyacinthe. Letters, Fragments, Discourses. Translated by 
 Madame Hyacinthe-Loyson. With a Preface by the Very Rev. 
 A. P. Stanley, D.D., Dean of Westminster. Cr. 8vo. 7^-. 6d. ' 
 ''A valuable contrihutio7i to the religious literature of the day, and is 
 especially opporttine at a time when a controversy of no ordinary import- 
 ance upon the veiy subject it deals with is engaged in all over Europe. " 
 
 Daily Telegraph. 
 
 Imitation of Christ. — Four Books. Translated from the 
 
 Latin. With Preface by the Rev. W. Benham, B.D., Vicar of 
 Margate. Printed with Borders in the Ancient Style after Holbein, 
 Diirer, and other Old Masters. Containing Dances of Death, Acts 
 of Mercy, Emblems, and a variety of cui'ious ornamentation. Cr. 
 8vo. gilt edges, ^s. 6d. 
 
 Jennings and Lowe.— THE PSALMS, with Introduc- 
 tions and Critical Notes. By A. C. Jennings, B.A., Jesus Col- 
 lege, Cambridge, Tyrwhitt Scholar, Crosse Scholar, Hebrew 
 University Scholar, and Fry Scholar of St. John's College ; and 
 W. H. Lowe, M.A., Hebrew Lecturer and late Scholar of Clyist's 
 College, Cambridge, and Tyrwhitt Scholar. Books III. and IV. 
 (Psalm Ixxiii. to cvi.) Crown Bvo. 6s. 
 
 Kempis, Thos. A. — DE IMITATIONE CHRISTI. 
 
 LiBRi IV. Borders in the Ancient Style, after Holbein, Durer, 
 and other Old Masters, containing Dances of Death, Acts of 
 Mercy, Emblems, and a variety of curious ornamentation. In 
 white cloth, extra gilt. 7^-. 6d. 
 
 Kingsley. — W^orks by the late Rev. Charles Kingsley, 
 M. A. , Rector of Eversley, and Canon of Westminster. 
 
 THE WATER OF LIFE, AND OTHER SERMONS. 
 
 Second Edition. Fcap. Bvo. 3^. 6d. 
 
 VILLAGE SERMONS. Seventh Edition. Fcap. 8vo. y.6d. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH. Second 
 Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3^-. 6d. 
 
 GOOD NEWS OF GOD. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 
 
 3J. 6d. 
 This volume contains thirty-nine short Sermons, preached in the 
 ordinary couj'se of the author' s parochial ministrations. 
 
14 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Kingsley (Rev. C.) — conii72ued. 
 
 SERMONS FOR THE TIMES. Third Edition. Fcap. 
 8vo. 3^. (id. 
 
 Het'e are twenty-two Sennons, all bearing more or less on the every-day 
 life of the present day, including such subjects as these: — ^^ Fathers and 
 Children f "^ Good Conscience f^ "JVatnes;" ^^Sponsorship;" ^^Duty 
 and Superstition f^ ^'■England's Strength f^ '■^ The Lord's Prayer;" 
 ' ^ Shame; ' ' * ^Forgiveness ;" ' ' The True Gentleman ; " ' ^Public Spirit. " 
 
 TOWN AND COUNTRY SERMONS. Second Edition. 
 Extra fcap. 8vo. 3J-. 6d. 
 
 Some of these Sermons ztjere preached before the Queen, and so7?ie in the 
 performance of the writer's ordinary parochial duty. Of these Sermons 
 the Nonconformist says, ' ' They are warm zaith the fervour of the preacher'' s 
 ozon heart, and strong from the force of his own convictions. There is 
 nozvhere an attempt at display, and the clearness and simplicity of the 
 style i7iake them suitable for the youngest or most unintelligent of his 
 hearers." 
 
 SERMONS on NATIONAL SUBJECTS. Second Edition. 
 Fcap. 8vo. y. dd. 
 
 THE KING OF THE EARTH, and other Sermons, 
 a Second Series of Sermons on National Subjects. Second 
 Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3J-. 6d. 
 The follozving extract from the Preface to the ind Series tuill explain 
 
 the preacher' s aim in these Sermons: — '■'■ I have tried to proclai?n the 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ, as the Scnptures, both in their strictest letter and in 
 their general method, from Genesis to Revelation, seem to me to pi'oclaim 
 Him ; not fuerely as the Saviour of a few elect souls, but as the light and 
 life of every human being who enters into the world; as the sotirce of 
 all reason, strength, and virtue in heathen or i?i Christian; as the King 
 and Rider of the zvhole universe, and of every nation, farnily, and man on 
 earth ; as the Redeemer of the zvhole earth and the zuhole human race. . . 
 His death, as a ftdl, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satis- 
 faction for the sins of the zvhole zuorld, by which God is reconciled to the 
 zohole human race." 
 
 DISCIPLINE, AND OTHER SERMONS. Fcp. 8vo. 33-. 6^. 
 
 The Guardian says, — '■^ There is much thought, tenderness, and devout- 
 ness of spirit in these Serrnons, and some of them are ?nodels both in 
 matter and expressiori." 
 
 DAVID. Five Sermons. Second Edition, enlarged. Fcap. 
 8vo. is. 6d. 
 
 These Sermons zvere preached before the University of Cambridge, 
 and are specially addressed to young men. Their titles are, — '■'' David's 
 Weakness;" '■'' David's Strength;" "■David's Anger ;" ^'■David's Deserts." 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 15 
 
 Kingsley (Rev. C)—conti?med, 
 WESTMINSTER SERMONS, 8vo, \os.(,d. 
 These Sej-mons were preached at Westminster Abbey or at one of the 
 Chapels Royal. Their subjects are : — The Mystery of the Cross : The Per- 
 fect Love : The Spirit of Whitsuntide : Prayer : 7he Deaf and Dumb : 
 The Fruits of the Spirit: Confusion : The Shaking of the Heavens and 
 the Earth: The Kingdotn of God: The Lazu of the Lord: God the 
 Teacher : T7ie Reasonable Pray a- : The One Escape : The Woi-d of God: 
 I: The Cedars of Lebanon : Life: Death: Signs and Wonders : The 
 J-udgments of God : The War in Heaven: Noble Company : De Pro- 
 fundis : The Blessing and the Curse : The Silence of Faith : God and 
 Alammon : The Beatific Vision. 
 
 Lightfoot.— Works by J. B. LiGHTFOOT, D.D., Hulsean 
 Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge : Canon of 
 St. Paul's. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. A Re- 
 vised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. Fourth 
 Edition, revised. 8vo. cloth, 12s. 
 
 While the Atithor's object has been to make this commentary genej-ally 
 complete, he has paid special attention to enerything relating to St. Pauls 
 personal history and his intercourse with the Apostles and Church of the 
 Circumcision, as it is this feature in the Epistle to the Galatians which 
 has given it an overwhelming interest in recent theological controversy. 
 The Spectator says '■'there is no commentator at once of sounder Judg- 
 nient and more liberal than Dr. Lightfoot. '' 
 
 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS. A 
 
 Revised Text, with Introduction, Notes, and Dissertations. Third 
 
 Edition. 8vo. 12s. 
 
 ' '■N'o commentary in the English language can be compared with it in 
 
 regard to fulness of information, exact scholarship, and laboured attempts 
 
 to settle everything about the epistle on a solid foundation." — Athenseum, 
 
 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES TO THE COLOSSIANS AND 
 PHILEMON. A Revised Text with Introduction, Notes, etc. 
 
 Svo. \2S. 
 
 ST. CLEMENT OF ROME, THE TWO EPISTLES TO 
 
 THE CORINTHIANS. A Revised Text, with Introduction 
 
 and Notes. Svo. 8^. (id. 
 
 Ihis volume is the first part of a co7nplete edition of the Apostolic 
 
 Fathers. The Introductions deal zoith the questions of the genuineness and 
 
 authenticity op' the Epistles, discuss their date and character, and analyse 
 
 their contents. An account is also giz'en of all the different epistles which 
 
 bear th^ name of Clement of Rome. '"'By far the most copiously annotated 
 
i6 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 
 
 Lightfoot (Dr. J. B.) — continued. 
 
 edition of St. Clement which we yet possess, and t/ie uiost convenient in 
 every way for the English reader. " — Guardian. 
 
 ON A FRESH REVISION OF THE ENGLISH NEW 
 TESTAMENT. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6^. 
 
 The Author shews in detail the necessity for a fresh revisiort of the 
 authorized version on the following grouitds: — I. Ealse Readings. 2. 
 Artificial distinctions created. 3. Real distinctions obliterated, 4. Faults 
 of Grammar. 5. Faults of Lexicography. 6. Treatment of Proper 
 Nanus, ofiicial titles, etc. 7. Archaisms, defects in the English, errors 
 of the press, etc. " The book is marked by careful scholarship, familiarity 
 with the subject, sobriety, and circumspection.'''' — Athenseum. 
 
 Luckock.— THE TABLES OF STONE. A Course of 
 Sermons preached in All Saints' Church, Cambridge, by H. M. 
 Luckock, M.A., Vicar, Canon of Ely. Fcap. 8vo. 3^-. 6^. 
 
 Maclaren.— SERMONS PREACHED at MANCHESTER. 
 By Alexander Maclaren. Fifth Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4^. dd. 
 These Sermons represent no special school, but deal zvith the broad prin- 
 ciples of Christian truth, especially in their bearing on practical, roeiy day 
 life. A few of the titles are: — ''''The Stone of Stumbling," ''Love and 
 Forgiveness," "The Living Dead," "Memory in Anothei' World," 
 Faith in Christ," " Love and Fear " '■'The Choice of Wisdom " "The 
 Food of the World." 
 
 A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS. Third Edition. 
 
 Fcap. Svo. 4s. 6d. 
 The Spectator charactei'ises them as "vigorous in style, fdl of thought, 
 rich in illustration, and in an unustcal degree interesting. " 
 
 A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS. Second Edition. 
 
 Fcap. Svo. 4^. dd. 
 Sermons more sober and yet more forcible, and with a certain wise and 
 p'actical spii'ituality about them it would not be easy to find." — Spectator. 
 
 Maclear. — Works by the Rev. G. F. Maclear, D.D., Head 
 Master of King's College School : — 
 
 A CLASS-BOOK OF OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 With Four Maps. Eighth Edition. I Brno. /^. 6d. 
 
 "The present volume," says the Preface, "for 7ns a Class- Book of Old 
 Testament Histoiy fro?n the Earliest Times to those of Ezra and Nehe- 
 tniah. In its preparation the most recent authorities have been consulted, 
 aud wherever it has appea^'ed usefid, Notes have been subjoined illustra- 
 tive of the Text, and, for the sake of more advanced students, references 
 added to larger works. The Index has been so arranged as to form a 
 concise Dictionary of the Pe^'sons and Places mentioned in the course of the 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Maclear (G. F.) — contmued. 
 
 Auirrative." The Maps, prepared by Stanford, materially add to the 
 value and iisefiihiess of the book. The British Quarterly Review rrt;//j- it 
 "^ careful and elaborate, though brief conipendiuni of all that modern 
 research has done for the illuslration of the Old Testamejit. We knon) of 
 no zaork which contains so much important hiformation in so small a 
 compass.''^ 
 
 A CLASS-BOOK OF NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 Including the Connexion of the Old and New Testament. Fifth 
 Edition. i8mo, 5^. dd. 
 
 The present volume forms a sequel to the Author'' s Class-Book of Old 
 Testament History, and continues the narrative to the close of St. Paul's 
 second imprisonment at Rome. The work is divided into three Books — 
 /. The Connection betzveen the Old and Nezo Testaments. II. The 
 Gospel History. III. The Apostolic History. In the Appendix ai-e given 
 Chronological Tables The Clerical Journal says, "It is not often that 
 such an amount of useful and interesting matter on biblical subjects, is 
 found in so convenient and sjnall a compass, as in this tvell-arranged 
 volume. " 
 
 A CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF THE 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. New and Cheaper Edition. 
 i8mo. \s. 6d. 
 
 The present work is intended as a sequel to the tzvo preceding books. 
 ' ' Like them, it is furnished with notes and references to larger works, 
 and it is hoped that it may be found, especially in the higher forms of our 
 Public Schools, to supply a suitable manual of instruction in the chief 
 doctrines of our Church, and a tiseful help in the preparation of Can- 
 didates for Confirmation.^'' 77/^ Literary Churchman j-^jj, " It is indeed 
 the zuork of a scholar and divine, and as such, though extremely simple, it 
 is also extremely instructive. There are few clergy who tvaidd not find 
 it useful in preparing candidates for Confij-mation ; and the7'e are not a 
 few who zuould find it useful to themselves as well. " 
 
 A FIRST CLASS-BOOK OF THE CATECHISM OF 
 
 THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, with Scripture Proofs for 
 
 Junior Classes and Schools. New Edition. i8mo. 6d. 
 
 This is an epitome of the larger Class-book, meant for junior students 
 
 and elementary classes. The book has been carefully condensed, so as to 
 
 contain clearly and fdly, the most i7nportant part of the contents of the 
 
 larger book. 
 
 A SHILLING-BOOK of OLD TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 
 New Edition. i8mo. cloth limp. is. 
 This Manual bears the same relation to the larger Old Testament Hist' 
 ory, that the book just mentioned does to the larger zvoi'k on the Catechism. 
 It consists of Ten Books, divided into short chapters, and subdivided iiito 
 
 2 
 
i8 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. V 
 
 Maclear (G. F.) — continued. 
 
 sections, each section treating of a single episode in the history, the title of 
 %vhich is given in hold type. 
 
 A SHILLING-BOOK of NEW TESTAMENT HISTORY. 
 New Edition. i8mo, cloth limp. \s. 
 
 A MANUAL OF INSTRUCTION FOR CONFIRMA- 
 TION AND FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devo- 
 tions. 32mo. cloth extra, red edges, 2s. 
 This is an enlarged and improved edition of ' The Order of Confirma- 
 tian.^ To it haz'e been added the Cojnnmnion Office, with Notes and 
 Explanations, together with a brief form of Self Examination and De- 
 votions selected from the works of Cosin, Ken, Wilson, and others. 
 
 THE ORDER OF CONFIRMATION, with Prayers and 
 Devotions. 32mo. cloth. 6d. 
 
 THE FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devotions 
 for the Newly Confirmed. 32mo. 6d, 
 
 THE HOUR OF SORROW ; or, The Order for the Burial 
 
 of the Dead. With Prayers and Hymns. 32mo. cloth extra. 2s. 
 
 Macmillan. — Works by the Rev. Hugh Macmillan, LL.D., 
 F. R. S. E. (For other Works by the same Author, see Catalogue 
 OF Travels and Scientific Catalogue). 
 
 THE TRUE VINE; or, the Analogies of our Lord's 
 Allegory. Third Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 This work is not merely an exposition of the fifteenth chapter of St. 
 John^s Gospel, bitt also a general parable of spiritual truth fro?n the world 
 of plants. It describes a few of the points in which the varied i-ealm of 
 vegetable life cofiies into contact with the higher spiritual realm, and shews 
 how rich afield of projnise lies before the analogical mind in this direction. 
 The Nonconformist says, ^^ It abounds in exquisite bits of description, and 
 in striking facts clearly stated.''' The British Quarterly says, "■Readers 
 and preachers who are unscientific will find many of his ilhistrations as 
 valuable as they are beautiful. " 
 
 BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. Ninth Edition. 
 Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 In this vohime the author has endeavoured to shezo that the teaching of 
 nature and the teaching of the Bible are directed to the sar?ie great end : 
 that the Bible contains the spiritual truths which are necessary to make us 
 wise tmto salvation, and the objects and scenes of nature are the pictures 
 by which these ti'uths are illustrated. "He has made the world more 
 beautiftd to us, and unsealed our ears to voices of praise and messages of 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS, 19 
 
 Macmillan (H.) — continiced. 
 
 love that 7night othei-^vise have been unheard.'^ — British Quarterly Review. 
 "T^/r. Macmillan has prodtued a book which may be fitly described as one 
 of the happiest effoi-ts for enlisting physical science in the direct service of 
 religioji. " — Guardian. 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF NATURE. Third Edition. Globe 
 8vo. 6s. 
 
 In this volume the Author attempts to interpret Nature on her religious 
 side in accordance %vith the most recent discoz'eries of physical science, and 
 to shnv hozv much greater significance is imparted to many passages oj 
 Scripture and many doctrines of Christianity whejt looked at in the light 
 of these discoveries. Instead of 7'egarding Physical Science as antagonistic 
 to Christianity, the Author believes and seeks to shew that euery nrw dis- 
 covery tends more strongly to prove that Nature and the Bible have One 
 Author. " Whether the reader agree or not with his conchtsions, he will 
 acknozuledge he is in the presence of an original and thoughtful writer.^'' — 
 Pall Mall Gazette. " There is no class of educated men and itmnen that 
 will not profit by these essays.'''' — Standard. 
 
 M'Clellan.— THE NEW TESTAMENT OF OUR LORD 
 AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST, a New Translation on the 
 Basis of the Authorised Version, from a Critically revised Greek Text. 
 Newly arranged in Paragraphs with Analyses, copious References 
 and Illustrations from original authorities, New Chronological and 
 Analytical Harmony of the Four Gospels, Notes and Dissertations. 
 A contribution to Christian Evidence. By John Brown M'Clel- 
 LAN, M.A., Vicar of Bottisham,. Rural Dean of North Camps, and 
 late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. In Two Vols. 
 Vol. I. The Four Gospels with the Chronological and Analytical 
 Harmony. 8vo. 30^. 
 
 Maurice. — Works by the late Rev. F. Denison Maurice, 
 M.A., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cam- 
 bridge. 
 The Spectator says — ^^Teiv of those of our otun genei-ation whose 7iames 
 ivill live in English history or literature have exerted so profound and so 
 permanent an infiuence as Mr. Maurice.''' 
 
 THE PATRIARCHS AND LAWGIVERS OF THE 
 OLD TESTAMENT. Third and Cheaper Edition. Crown 
 
 8V0. <yS. 
 
 The Nineteen Discourses contained in this volume were pi'eached in the 
 chapel of Lincoln' s Inn during the year 1851. The texts are taken from 
 the books of Genesis, Exodtis, Nu?nbers, Dmteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 
 and Samuel, and involve some of the most interesting biblical topics dis- 
 cussed in recent times. 
 
20 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Maurice (F. D.) — conthmed. 
 
 THE PROPHETS AND KINGS OF THE OLD TES- 
 TAMENT. Third Edition, with new Preface. Crown 8vo. 
 loj-. 6(f. 
 
 M7'. Maurice, in the spirit which anifnated the compilers of the Church 
 Lessons, has in these Ser?/ions regai'ded the Prophets more as p7-eachers of 
 righteousness than as mere predictors — an aspect of their lives zvhich, he 
 thinks, has been greatly overlooked in our day, and than ivhich, there is 
 none %ve have jnore need to contemplate. He has found that the Old 
 Testa7nent Prophets, taken in their simple natural sense, clear up many 
 of the difficulties which beset us in the daily work of life ; make the past 
 intelligible, the present endurable, and the future real and hopeful. 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. 
 A Series of Lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke. Crown 8vo. 9^. 
 
 Mr. Maurice, in his Preface to these Twenty-eight Lectures, says, — 
 "/;? these Lectures I have endeavoured to ascertain what is told 71s respect- 
 ittg the life of Jesus by o/te of those Eva7tgelists who p7'oclaim Hi77i to be 
 the Christ, zvho says that He did co77ie f7-077i a Father, that He did baptize 
 with the Holy Spii'it, that He did 7'isefro77i the dead. I have chosen the 
 one who is 77iost di/rctly con7tected with the later history of the Chuixh, 
 ivho was not ati Apostle, who p7-ofessedly w7'ote for the use of a ??ia7t 
 ah'eady inst/'ucted in the faith of the Apostles. I have followed the course 
 of the W7'ite7''s 7iarrative, not changing it 74,nder a77y pretext. I have 
 adhe7-ed to his phraseology, st/'ivi/ig to avoid the substitiitio/i of any other 
 for his:' 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. A Series of Discourses. 
 Third and Cheaper Edition. Crown 8vo. 6^-. 
 
 These Discourses, t%ue7ity -eight m nu77iber, are of a nature si77iilar to 
 those 071 the Gospel of St. Luke, a7id will be found to i-ender valuable 
 assista7tce to a7iy one a7ixious to U7idersta7id the Gospel of the beloved dis- 
 ciple, so diffe7'ent iit 77iany I'espects fi'om those of the other three Evafigelists. 
 Appe7ided are eleve7i 7totes illust7'ating va7-ious poi/its which occur th7-07igh- 
 out the discourses. The Literary Churchman tJiiis speaks of this volu7ne : 
 — '■'• Thoroitgh ho7iesty, reve7'e7ice, and deep tho7ight pe7'vade the work, 
 which is eve7y way solid and philosophical, as well as theological, a7td 
 abou7idi7ig with s7iggestio7is which the patie/it st7ide7it 77iay d7-aw out 77iore 
 at le7tgtJifor hi7nself'' 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. A Series of Lectures 
 on Christian Ethics. Second and Cheaper Edition. Cr. Svo. 6j-. 
 
 These Lectu7'es on Ch7'istian Ethics wei-e delive7'ed to the stude7its of the 
 Working Men's College, G7'eat 07-77io7id St7'cet, London, 07i a se7-ies of 
 Sunday 77iornings. Mr. Mau7'ice believes that the questioft in which we 
 are 7nost i7ite7'ested, the question which 77iost affects our studies a7id our daily 
 lives, is the question, whether there is a fou7idatio7i for hu77ian 7?iorality, 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Maurice (F. D.) — continued. 
 
 or zvbether it is dependent upon the opinions and fashions of different ages 
 and countries. This important question %vill be found ajnply and fairly 
 discussed in this vohane, zuhich the National Review calls ^^ Mr. 
 Maurice's most effective and instructive work. He is peculiarly fitted 
 by the constitutioft of his mind, to throw light on St. yohn''s writins^s.'^ 
 Appended is a note on ^^ Positivism arul its Teacher.^'' 
 
 EXPOSITORY SERMONS ON THE PRAYER-BOOK. 
 
 The Prayer-book considered especially in reference to the Romish 
 
 System. Second Edition, Fcap. 8vo. ^s. 6d. 
 
 After an Introductory Sermon, Mr. Afaicrice goes over the various parts 
 
 of the Church Service, expounds in eighteen Sermons, their intention, and 
 
 significance, and sheius how appi'opriate they are as expressions of the 
 
 deepest longings and xvants of all classes of men. 
 
 LECTURES ON THE APOCALYPSE, or Book of the 
 Revelation of St. John the Divine, Crown 8vo, los. 6d. 
 
 Air. Maurice, instead of trying to find far-fetched allusions to great 
 historical events in the distant fiiture, endeavours to discover the plain, 
 literal, obvious meaning of the words of the writei', and shews that as 
 a ride these refer to events contemporaneous with or immediately succeeding 
 the time zvhen the book was written. At the sa?ne time he shews the 
 applicability of the contents of the book to the circumstances of the present 
 day and of all times. ^^ Never," says the Nonconformist, '''' has Mr. 
 Maza'ice been more rez>erent, more careful for the letter of the Sci-ipture, 
 more discerning of the purpose of the Spirit, or moi'e sober and practical 
 in his leaching, than in this volume on the Apocalypse." 
 
 WHAT IS REVELATION? A Series of Sermons on the 
 
 Epiphany; to which are added, Letters to a Theological Student 
 
 on the Bampton Lectures of Mr, Mansel. Crown 8vo, \os. bd. 
 
 Both 'Sermons and Letters zvere called forth by the doctrine maintained 
 
 by Mr. Mansel in his Bampton Lectui-es, that Revelation cannot be a direct 
 
 Manifestation of the Infinite N'ature of God. Mr. Maurice maintains 
 
 the opposite doctrine, and in his Sermons explains why, in spite of the high 
 
 authorities on the other side, he must still assert the principle which he 
 
 discovers in the Services of the Church and throughout the Bible. 
 
 SEQUEL TO THE INQUIRY, "WHAT IS REVELA- 
 TION ?" Letters in Reply to Mr, Mansel's Examination of 
 *' Strictures on the Bampton Lectures." Crown Svo. 6s. 
 This, as the title indicates, was called forth by Mr. MansePs Examina- 
 tion of Mr. Maurice^ s Strwt-ures on his doctrine of the Infinite. 
 
 THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. Third Edition. Crown Svo. 
 IOJ-. 6d. 
 
 " TJiebook" says Mr. ]\Iaurice, ^^ expresses thoughts zuhich have been 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Maurice (F. D.) — continued. 
 
 zvorking in my 7?iind for years ; the method of it has not been adepted 
 carelessly ; even the composition has imdergone frequent revision.'''' There 
 are seventeen Essays in all, and although meant primarily for Unitarians, 
 to quote the words of the Clerical Journal, "?V leaves untouched scarcely 
 any topic which is in agitation in the religious zvorld ; scarcely a moot 
 point between our various sects ; scarcely a plot of debateable ground be- 
 tween Christians and Tif dels, between Romanists and Protestants, betzueen 
 Socinians and other Christians, bettveen English Churchmen and Dis- 
 senters on both sides. Scarce is there a misgiving, a difficulty, an aspira- 
 tion stirring amongst MS now, — now, when men seem in earnest as hardly 
 ever before about religion, and ask and demand satisfaction tvith a feai'- 
 lessness lahich seems almost awful when one thinks what is at stake — which 
 is not recognised and grappled with by Mr. Maurice." 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE DEDUCED FROM 
 THE SCRIPTURES. Crown 8vo. 7^. (yd. 
 
 Throughout the Nineteen Ser??ions contained in this volume, Mr. 
 Maurice expounds the ideas ivhich he has formed of the Doctrine of 
 Sacrifice, as it is set forth in various parts of the Bible. 
 
 THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD, AND THEIR 
 
 RELATIONS TO CHRISTIANITY. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 
 
 8vo. 5j. 
 
 These Eight Boyle Lectures are divided into two parts, of four Lectures 
 
 each. In the first pai't Mr. Maurice examines the great Religious systems 
 
 which present themselves in the history of the world, with the purpose of 
 
 inquiring zvhat is their main characteristic principle. The second four 
 
 Lectures are occupied with a discussion of the questions, "/?« zvhat relation 
 
 does Christianity stand to these different faiths ? If there he a faith zvhich 
 
 is meant for jnankind, is this the one, or must we look for another .?" 
 
 ON THE LORD'S PRAYER. Fourth Edition. Fcap. 
 8vo. 2,9. dd. 
 
 In these N'ine Serinons the successive petitions of the Lord^s Prayer are 
 take7i tip by Mr. Maurice, their significance expounded, and, as zvas usual 
 zvith him, connected zvith the every-day lives, feelings, and aspij'ations of 
 the ?nen of the present time. 
 
 ON THE SABBATH DAY ; the Character of the Warrior, 
 and on the Interpretation of History. Fcap. Svo. 2.s. 6d. 
 
 THE GROUND AND OBJECT OF HOPE FOR 
 
 MANKIND. Four Sermons preached before the University of 
 
 Cambridge. Crown Svo. y. 6d. 
 
 In these Four Serjnons Mr. Maurice viezvs the subject in four aspects : 
 
 —I. The Hope of the Missionary. II. The Hope of the Patriot. III. 
 
 The Hope of the Churchman. IV. The Hope of Man. 77/^ Spectator 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 23 
 
 Maurice (F. D.) — continued. 
 
 says, ^^ It is impossible to find anyzuhej'e deeper teaching than this f and 
 the Nonconformist, '■^We thank him for the manly, noble, stirring words 
 in these Sermons — words fitted to quicken thoughts, to azvakcn high aspira- 
 tion, to stitmdate to lives ofi goodness.'''' 
 
 THE LORD'S PRAYER, THE CREED, AND THE 
 COMMANDMENTS. A Manual for Parents and Schoolmasters. 
 To which is added the Order of the Scriptures, i8mo. cloth 
 limp. i^. 
 This book is not written for clergyinen, as such, but for parents and 
 teac^urs, who are often either prefidiced against the contents of the Cate- 
 chism, or regard it peculiarly as the clergyman's book, but, at the same 
 time, have a general notion that a habit of prayer ought to be cultivated, 
 that there are some things %vhich ought to be believed, and some things 
 which ought to he done. It will be found to be peculiarly valuable at the 
 present time, when the question of religious education is occupying so jnuch 
 attention. 
 
 THE CLAIMS OF THE BIBLE AND OF SCIENCE. 
 
 A Correspondence on some Questions respecting the Pentateuch. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 4>y. ^d. 
 
 This volume consists of a series of Fifteen Letters^ the first and last 
 
 addressed by a ' Layman ' to Air. Maurice, the intei'^ening thij'teen written 
 
 by Air. Aliurice himself. 
 
 DIALOGUES ON FAMILY WORSHIP. Crown 8vo. 6^. 
 
 " The parties in these Dialogues^" says the Preface, ^^ are a Clergyman 
 who accepts the doctrines of the Church, and a Layman tuhose faith in 
 them is nearly gone. The object of the Dialogues is not confutation, but 
 the discovery of a ground on whieh two Englishmen and tzuo fathers may 
 stand, and on which their country and their children may stand ivhen 
 their places know thetn no more." 
 
 THE COMMANDMENTS CONSIDERED AS IN- 
 STRUMENTS OF NATIONAL REFORMATION. Crown 
 Svo. ^. 6d. 
 The author endeavours to shew that the Commandmejits are nozv, and 
 ever have been, the great protesters against Presbyteral and Prelatical 
 assujuptions, and that ifiae do not receive them- as Cofnmandments of the 
 Lord God spoken to Israel, and spoken to eveiy people under heaven now, 
 ive lose the greatest 7uitnesses we possess for national jnorality and civil 
 fi-eedom. 
 
 MORAL AND METAPHYSICAL PHILOSOPHY. Vol. 
 I. Ancient Philosophy from the First to the Thirteenth Centuries. 
 Vol. II. Fourteenth Century and the French Revolution, with a 
 Glimpse into the Nineteenth Century. Two Vols. Svo. 25J. 
 
 This is an edition in two volumes of Professor Maurice's History of 
 
24 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Maurice (F. D.) — continued. 
 
 Philosophy from the earliest period to the present time. It luas formerly 
 issued in a number of separate volitmes, and it is believed that all ad?nirers 
 of the author and all students of philosophy 7vill tvelcome this conipact 
 edition. In a lo7ig introduction to this edition, in the form of a dialogue. 
 Professor Mazirice justifies his 07.vn views, and touches upon some of the 
 ?nost impo7'tant topics of the time. 
 
 SOCIAL MORALITY. Twenty-one Lectures delivered in 
 the University of Cambridge. New and Cheaper Edition. Cr. 
 8vo. los. 6d. 
 
 ^^ Whilst reading it tue are chartned by the freedom f7'o??i exclusiveness 
 and prejudice, the large chaHty, the loftiness of thought, the eagej-ness to 
 recognise and appreciate luharevej' there is of real worth extant in the 
 world, which animates it from one end to the other. We gain nezv 
 thoughts and ne^v ways ofviezving things, eveti more, pei'haps, fv?n being 
 brought for a time tinder the in flueiice of so noble and spiritual a mind.'" 
 — Athenaeum. 
 
 THE CONSCIENCE: Lectures on Casuistry, delivered in 
 the University of Cambridge. Second and Cheaper Edition. 
 Ci'own 8vo. 5^. 
 
 In this series of nine Lectures, Professor Maurice, endeavours to settle 
 what is meant by the word ^^ Cofiscience," and discusses the most i??iportaj?t 
 questions ijumediately connected with the subject. Taking ^^ Casuistry 
 in its old sense as being the ^' study of cases of Conscience," he endeavours 
 to show in what way it may be brought to bear at the present day upon 
 the acts and thoughts of our ordiiiary existence. He shoius that Con- 
 science asks for la%us, not rules ; for freedom, not chains ; for education, 
 not suppression. He has abstained f 7-0 m the use of philosophical ter7ns, 
 and has touched on philosophical syste77is 07ily whe7i he fa/tcied '■^ they 
 7vere inte7j'eri7tg with the rights and duties of wayfarers. " The Saturday 
 Review says: " We 7'ise fv/n the pe7-usal of these lectures with a detesta- 
 tion of all that is selfish a7id 77iean, a7tdwith a livi/igi77ipressio7i that there 
 is such a thing as goodness after all." 
 
 LECTURES ON THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 
 OF THE FIRST AND SECOND CENTURIES. 8vo. \os. 6d. 
 
 In the first chapter on '■^The jfewish Calling," besides expou7tdi?ig his 
 idea of the true natu7'e of a ^^ Chu7'ch," the author gives a brief sketch of 
 the positio7i and econof?zy of the yews ; while i7i the second he poi7its cntt 
 their 7-elati07i to ^Uhe other N'atio7ts." Chapter Thij-d contains a succiytt 
 account of the va7-ious Jewish Sects, while in Chapter Fou7-th a7-e briefly 
 set f 01-th Mr. Maurice's ideas of the character of Christ and the 7iature of 
 His 77iission, and a sketch of ez'ents is given ttp to the Day oj Peittecost. 
 The 7'e77iaining Chapters, exte7idi7ig fro77i the Apostles^ pe7-sonal Mi7iistry 
 to the end of the Second Ce7ttury, co7ttain sketches of the character and 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 25 
 
 Maurice (F. D.) — continued. 
 
 work of all the prominent men in any xvay connected with the Early 
 Church, accounts of the arigin and nature of the various doctrines ortho- 
 dox and heretical which had their birth during the period, as tvell as of 
 the planting and early histoiy of the Chief Churches in Asia, Africa and 
 Europe. 
 
 LEARNING AND WORKING. Six Lectures delivered 
 in AVillis's Rooms, London, in June and July, 1854. — THK 
 RELIGION OF ROME, and its Influence on Modern Civilisa- 
 tion. Four Leetiu-es delivered in the Philosophical Institution of 
 Edinburgh, in December, 1854. Crown 8vo. ^s. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED IN COUNTRY CHURCHES. 
 Crown 8vo. \os. 6d. 
 
 ''^Earnest, practical, and extremely simple.^'' — Literary Churchman. 
 ''^ Good specimejis of his simple and earnest eloquence. The Gospel inci- 
 dents are realized with a vividness which ive can well believe made the 
 co7nmon people hear him gladly. Aloreover they are sermons tuhich must 
 have done the hearers good.'''' — John Bull. 
 
 Moorhouse. — Works by James Moorhouse, M.A., Vicar 
 
 of Paddington : — ■ 
 
 SOME MODERN DIFFICULTIES RESPECTING the 
 FACTS OF NATURE AND REVELATION. Fcap. 8vo. 
 2J-. (id. 
 
 The first of these Fozcr Discourses is a systematic reply to the Essay of 
 the Rez>. Baden Po%vell on Christian Evidetices in ^'^ Essays and Reviews.'^'' 
 The fourth Ser?non, on " The Resurrection," is in some measure com- 
 plementary to this, and the two together are intended to furnish a tolerably 
 complete vieio of modern objections to Rez'elation. In the second and third 
 Sennofis, on the '■^Temptation'''' and '•'' Passion,'''' the author has en- 
 deavoured '■'to exhibit the paiver and 7V07ider of those great facts within 
 the spiyitual sphere, which modern theorists have especially sought to dis- 
 credit." 
 
 JACOB. Three Sennons preached before the University of 
 Cambridge in Lent 1870. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3^. dd. 
 
 THE HULSEAN LECTURES FOR 1865. Cr. 8vo. 5^-. 
 "■Eezo more vahcable works have come into our hands for many years. . . 
 a most fruitftd and welcome volume.'''' — Church Review. 
 
 O'Brien.— AN ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN and ESTAB- 
 LISH THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION by FAITH 
 ONLY. By James Thomas O'Brien, D.D,, Bishop of Ossory. 
 Third Edition. 8vo. \zs. 
 This luork consists of Ten Sermons. The first four treat of the nature 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 and mutual relatiom of Faith and Justificatwn ; the fifth and sijcth 
 €xa77iine the corruptions of the doctrine of Jjutification by Faith only, and 
 the objections -which have been urged against it. The four concluding ser- 
 mons deal xuith the moral effects of Faith. Vai'ious Notes are added 
 explanato?y of the Azithor''s reasoning. 
 
 Palgrave.— HYMNS. By Francis Turner Palgrave. 
 
 Third Edition, enlarged. i8mo. is. 6d. 
 This is a collection of twenty original Hymns., which the Literaiy 
 Churchman speaks of as '^ so choice, so perfect, ajid so refined, — so tender 
 in feeling, and so scholai'ly in exp-ession.^^ 
 
 Paul of Tarsus. An Inquiry into the Times and the 
 Gospel of the Apostle of the Gentiles. By a Graduate. 8vo. 
 \os. 6d. 
 
 The Author of this tvork has attempted, out of the materials which 
 were at his disposal, to construct for himself a sketch of the time in which 
 St. Paul lived, of the religious systems with which he zuas brought in 
 contact, of the doctrine which he taught, and of the work tvhick he ulti- 
 mately achieved. " Turn where zve will throughout the volume, we find 
 the best fruit of patient inquiry, sound scholarship, logical argu7nent, and 
 fai?'ness of conclusion. No thoughtful reader will rise ftofu its perusal 
 without a real and lasting profit to himself and a sense of permanent 
 addition to the cause of truth.'" — Standard. 
 
 Picton.— THE MYSTERY OF MATTER; and other 
 Essays. By J. Allanson Picton, Author of *'New Theories 
 and the Old Faith." Crown 8vo, lO^. dd. 
 Contents — The Mystery of Matter : The Philosophy of Ignorance : The 
 
 Antithesis of Faith and Sight: The Essential Nature of Religion: 
 
 Christian Pantheisni. 
 
 Prescott.— THE THREEFOLD CORD. Sermons preached 
 before the University of Cambridge. By J. E. Prescott, B.D. 
 Fcap. Svo. 3J-. dd. 
 
 Procter.— A HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON 
 
 PRAYER: With a Rationale of its Offices. By Francis 
 
 Procter, M.A, Twelfth Edition, revised and enlarged. Crown 
 
 Svo. 10J-. dd. 
 
 Tfie Athenaeum says : — " The origin of ez-rry part of the Prayer-hook 
 
 has been diligently investigated, — and there arefeza questions or facts con- 
 
 fiected zaith it which are not either sufiiciently explained, or so referred to, 
 
 that persons interested may zoork out the truth for themselves.'" 
 
 Procter and Maclean — AN ELEMENTARY INTRO- 
 DUCTION TO THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. 
 Re-arranged and Supplemented by an Explanation of the Morning 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 27 
 
 and Evening Prayer and the Litany. By F. Procter, M. A. and 
 G. F. Maclear, D.D. New Edition. i8mo. 2s. 6d. 
 This book has the same object and follows the sa?ne plan as the Manuals 
 already noticed tinder Mr. Maclear''s name. Each book is subdivided 
 into chapters and sections. In Book I. is given a detailed History of the 
 Book of Co7ninon Prayer dozun to the Attempted Revision in the Reign of 
 Williajn III. Book II., consisting of four Parts, treats in oi-der the 
 va7-ious parts of the Prayer Book. N'ofes, etymological, histo7'ical, and 
 critical, are given thronghout the book, taJiile the Appendix co)itains sez'eral 
 articles of much interest and importance. Appended is a General Index 
 and an Index of Woi'ds explained in the Notes. The Literary Church- 
 man characterizes it as " by far the cojnpletest and most satisfactory book 
 of its kind we know. We wish it were in the hands of eveiy schoolboy 
 and ez'ery schoolmaster in the kingdo?n.''^ 
 
 Psalms of David CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED. 
 An Amended Version, with Historical Introductions and Ex- 
 planatory Notes. By Four Friends. Second and Cheaper 
 Edition, much enlarged. Crown 8vo. 8j-. 6d. 
 One of the chief designs of the Editors, in preptiring this voliune, was 
 to restore the Psalter as far as possible to the order in which the Psahns 
 were written. They give the division of each Psalm into strophes, and 
 of each strophe into the lines which composed it, and a?nend the errors of 
 translation. The Spectator calls it '■^One of the most instructive and 
 valuable books that have been published for many years.'''' 
 
 Golden Treasury Psalter. — The Student's Edition. 
 
 Being an Edition with briefer Notes of the above. iSmo. 3^. 6a'. 
 This vohwie will be found to meet the requirements of those who wish 
 for a smaller edition of the larger work, at a lozver price for fa^nily ttse, 
 and for the use of younger pupils in Public Schools. The short notes 
 which are appended to the volume will, it is hoped, suffice to make the 
 meaning intelligible throughout. The aim of this editioii is sijuply to put 
 the reader as far as possible in possession of the plain meaning of the 
 wj'iter. ^^ It is a gem,''^ the Nonconformist says. 
 
 Ramsay.— THE CATECHISER'S MANUAL; or, the 
 Church Catechism Illustrated and Explained, for the Use of 
 Clergymen, Schoolmasters, and Teachers. By Arthur Ramsay, 
 M.A. Second Edition. iSmo. ij-. dd. 
 
 Rays of Sunlight for Dark Days. A Book of Selec- 
 tions for the Suffering. With a Preface by C. J. Vaughan, D.D. 
 iSmo. New Edition. 3^'. dd. Also in morocco, old style. 
 Dr. Vaughan says in the Preface, after speaking of the general run of 
 Books of Comfort for JSIoui'iiers, '^It is because I think that the little 
 volume fioiv offered to the Christian stifferer is one of greater wisdom and 
 of deeper experience, that I have readily consented to the reqtiest that I 
 
28 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 would inti-oduce it by a few zuords of Pi-efaceJ^ The book consists of a 
 series of veiy brief extracts froju a great variety of authors, in prose and 
 poetry, suited to the many moods of a mournijig or sufferijtg ?}iind. 
 "■Mostly gems of the first water.'" — Clerical Journal. 
 
 Reynolds.— NOTES OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. A 
 Selection of Sermons by Henry Robert Reynolds, B.A., 
 President of Cheshunt College, and Fellow of University College, 
 London. Crown 8vo. 7^. dd. 
 TJiis work may be taken as representative of the mode of thotight and 
 feeling zvhich is most popular amongst the freer and more cultivated Non- 
 conformists. '"''It is lojig," says the Nonconformist, ''^ since 7ue have 
 met with any published serjnons better calculated than these to stimulate 
 dez'out thought, and to bring hojne to the soul the reality of a spiritual life.^^ 
 
 Roberts.— DISCUSSIONS ON THE GOSPELS. By the 
 Rev. Alexander Roberts, D.D. Second Edition, revised and 
 enlarged. 8vo. i6s. 
 " The author brings the valuable qualifications of learning, temper, and 
 an independent judgment.'''' — Daily News. 
 
 Robertson.— PASTORAL COUNSELS. Being Chapters 
 on Practical and Devotional Subjects. By the late John Robert- 
 son, D.D. Third Edition, with a Preface by the Author of 
 " The Recreations of a Country Parson." Extra fcap. 8vo. ds. 
 These Sermons are the free utterances of a strong and independent 
 thinker. He does not depart from the essential doctrines of his Church, 
 but he expounds them in a spirit of the widest charity, and ahvays having 
 7nost prominently in vieiv the requireinents of practical life. ' ' The seriiions 
 are admirable specitnens of a practical, earnest, and instructive style of 
 pulpit teaching. " — Nonconformist. 
 
 Romanes.— CHRISTIAN PRAYER AND GENERAL 
 LAWS, being the Burney Prize Essay for 1873. With an Ap- 
 pendix, examining the views of Messrs. Knight, Robertson, Brooke, 
 Tyndall, and Galton. By George J. Romanes, M.A. Crown 
 Bvo. Ss. 
 
 RowselL— MAN'S LABOUR AND GOD'S HARVEST. 
 
 Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge in Lent, 
 
 1 86 1. Fcap. 8vo. 3^-. 
 ^'' We strongly recommend this little volume to young ?nen, and especially 
 to those who are contet/iplatvig working for Christ in Holy Orders." — 
 Literary Churchman. 
 
 Salmon.— THE REIGN OF LAW, and other Sermons, 
 preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin. By the Rev, 
 George Salmon, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity in the 
 University of Dublin. Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 *''lVell considered, learned, and powerful discourses." — Spectator. 
 
THEOLOGICAL ^BOOKS. 29 
 
 Sanday.— THE AUTHORSHIP AND HISTORICAL 
 CHARACTER OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL, considered in 
 reference to the Contents of the Gospel itself. A Critical Essay. 
 By WiLLiAxM Sanday, M.A., Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. 
 Crown 8vo. %s. 6d. 
 
 ' ' T/ie Essay is not only most valuable in itself, but full of promise /oj- 
 the future.''^ — Canon Westcott in the Academy. 
 
 Selborne.— THE BOOK OF PRAISE : From the Best 
 English Hymn Writers. Selected and arranged by Lord Selborne. 
 With Vignette by Woolner. i8mo. 4^-. 6d. 
 
 It has been the Editor's desire and aifu to adhere strictly, in all cases in 
 which it could be ascertained, to the genuine uncorriipted text of the authors 
 themselves. The names of the authors and date of composition of the 
 hymns, when knoivn, are affixed, while notes are added to the volume, 
 giving further details. The Hymns are arranged according to subjects. 
 " There is not room for tzvo opinions as to the value of the ^Book of Praise. ' " 
 — Guardian. '•''Approaches as nearly as one can conceive to peifectionj'^ 
 — Nonconformist. 
 
 BOOK OF PRAISE HYMNAL. See end of this Catalogue. 
 Sergeant.— SERMONS. By the Rev. E. W. Sergeant, 
 
 M.A., Balliol College, Oxford; Assistant Master at Westminster 
 College. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 Shipley.— A THEORY ABOUT SIN, in relation to some 
 Facts of Daily Life. Lent Lectures on the Seven Deadly Sins. 
 By the Rev. Orby Shipley, M.A. Crown Svo. "js. 6d. 
 '■^Two things Mr. Shipley has done, and each of them is of considerable 
 
 worth. He has grouped these sins afresh on a philosophic principle 
 
 and he has applied the touchstone to the facts of our moral life. . . so wisely 
 and so searchingly as to cojistitute his treatise a powerful antidote to self- 
 deception. " — Literary Churchman. 
 
 Smith.— PROPHECY A PREPARATION FOR CHRIST. 
 
 Eight Lectures preached before the University of Oxford, being the 
 Bampton Lectures for 1869. By R. Payne Smith, D.D., Dean 
 of Canterbuiy. Second and Cheaper Edition. Crown Svo. 6s. 
 
 The author'' s object in these Lectures is to sheiu that the7'e exists in the 
 Old Testafjient an element, which no criticism on naturalistic principles 
 can either account for or explain away: that element is Prophecy. The 
 author endeavours to prove that its force does not consist merely in its 
 predictions. ' ' These Lectures overflow zuith solid learning. " — Record. 
 
30 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Smith. — CHRISTIAN FAITH. Sermons preached before 
 
 the University of Cambridge. By W. Saumarez Smith, M.A., 
 
 Principal of St. Aidan's College, Birkenhead. Fcap. 8vo. 3^. bd. 
 
 ^^AppT0p7'iate and earnest sei'mons, stilted to the practical exhortation of 
 
 an educated congregation.'''' — Guardian. 
 
 Stanley. — Works by the Very Rev. A. P. Stanley, D.D., 
 Dean of Westminster. 
 
 THE ATHANASIAN CREED, with a Preface on the 
 General Recommendations of the RiTUAL Commission. Cr. 
 8vo. 2s. 
 
 The object of the zvork is not so micch to urge the omission or change of 
 the Athanasian Creed, as to shezu that such a relaxation ought to give 
 offence to no reasonable or religious mind. With this view, the Dean of 
 Westjuinster discusses in succession — ( I ) the Authorship of the Creed, 
 (2) its Internal Characteristics, (3) the Peculiarities of its Use in the 
 Church of England, (4) its Advantages and Disadvantages, (5) its 
 various Interpretations, and (6) the Judg7nent passed upon it by the Rittial 
 Commission. In conclusion, Dr. Stanley maintaijis that the use of the 
 Athanasian Creed should no longer be made cotnpulsory. ^'Dr. Stanley 
 puts with adfuirable force the objections which ?nay be made to the Creed : 
 equally adfnirable, we think, in his statement of its advantages. " — Spectator. 
 
 THE NATIONAL THANKSGIVING. Sermons preached 
 in Westminster Abbey. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 2j. dd. 
 
 These Sermons are (i) '■'■Death and lifej'' preached December 10, 
 1871 ; (2) " The Trumpet ofFatmos,'' December 17, 1871 ; {3) " The 
 Day of Thanksgivittg,^^ March 3, 1872. ^' In point of fei'vour and 
 polish by far the best specimens in print of Dean Stanleys eloqtient style. " — 
 Standard. 
 
 Sunday Library. See end of this Catalogue. 
 
 Swainson. — Works by C. A. Swainson, D.D., Canon of 
 
 Chichester : — 
 
 THE CREEDS OF THE CHURCH IN THEIR RE- 
 LATIONS TO HOLY SCRIPTURE and the CONSCIENCE 
 OF THE CHRISTIAN. 8vo. cloth. 9^. 
 The lectures 7uhich cojnpose this vohtme discuss, amongst others, the 
 follozuing subjects : * ' Faith in God, " " Exercise of our Reason, " " Origin 
 ami Authority of Creeds,'^ and '■^ Frivate yudgment, its use and exercise. " 
 ' ' Treating of abstruse points of Scripture, he applies them so forcibly to 
 Christian duty and pj-actice as to prove emijiently serviceable to the 
 Church:'— ]o\i\\ Bull. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 31 
 
 Swainson (C. A.) — contiimed. 
 
 THE AUTHORITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, 
 and other LECTURES, delivered before the University of Cam- 
 bridge. 8vo. cloth. \2s. 
 
 The first series of Lectures in this work is on " The Words spoken by 
 the Apostles of Jesus," *' The Inspiration of God's Servants" " The 
 Hitman Character of the Inspired Writers" and " TJie Divine Charadei' 
 of the Word %(j7'itten." The second embraces Lectui-es o.n '•^ Sin as Im- 
 perfection," ^^ Sin as Self-zvill," '■'■Whatsoec'er is not of Faith is Sin," 
 " Christ the Savioiir," and " The Blood of the A^eiv Coz'enant." The 
 third is on ''''Christians One Body in Christ," " The One Body the Spouse 
 of Christ," '"'■ Christ'' s Prayer for Unity," '■'■ Our Reconciliation should be 
 manifested in common Worship," and " Ambassadors for Christ." 
 
 Taylor.— THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. New and 
 Revised Edition. By Isaac Taylor, Esq. Crown 8vo. %s. dd. 
 The earlier chapters are occupied with an examination of the primitive 
 history of the Christian Religian, and its relation to the Ro?)ian goz'ern- 
 ment; and here, as loell as in the remainder of the zvork, the author shews 
 the bearing of that history on some of the difficult and interesting questions 
 xvhich have recently been claiming the attentioyi of all earnest men. The 
 last chapter of this Nnv Edition treats of " The Present Position of the 
 Argument concerning Christianity," tvith special reference to AI. Renan's 
 Vie de Jesus. 
 
 Temple.— SERMONS PREACHED IN THE CHAPEL 
 of RUGBY SCHOOL. By F. Temple, D.D., Bishop of Exeter. 
 New and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. 
 This volume contains Thirty five Sermons on topics more or less inti- 
 mately connected with every-day life. The following are a few of the 
 subjects discoursed upon: — "-Love and Duty:" ''Coming to Christ;'^ 
 "Great Men;" "Faith;" "Doubts;" "Scruples;" "Original Sin;" 
 "Friendship;" "Helping Others;" "The Discipline of Temptation;" 
 "Strength a Duty;" " V/orldliness ;" "III Temper;" " The Bitrial of 
 the Past." 
 
 A SECOND SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN 
 THE CHAPEL OF RUGBY SCHOOL. Second Edition. 
 Extra fcap. Svo. 6s. 
 
 This Second Series of Forty -two brief, pointed, practical Sermons, on 
 topics intimately connected with the every-day life of young and old, will be 
 acceptable to all who are acquainted ivith the First Series. The following 
 are a feiv of the subjects treated of: — "Disobedience" "Almsgiving," 
 "The Unknozvn Guidance of God," " Apathy one of our Trials," "High 
 Aims in Leaders," "Doing our Best," " The Use of Knowledge " "Use 
 of Observances," "Martha and Mary," "John the Baptist," '■'Severity 
 
32 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Temple (F., Vi.i:i.)--coiiti?2ued. 
 
 before Mercy,'''' '•'■Even Mistakes Punished,'^ ^'•Morality and Religion ^^'' 
 ''Children'' "-Action the Test oj Spi^'itual Life," ''Self Respect," "Too 
 Late," "'The Tercentenary." 
 
 A THIRD SERIES OF SERMONS PREACHED IN 
 
 RUGBY SCHOOL CHAPEL IN 1867— 1869. Extra fcap. 
 
 8vo. 6^-. 
 
 This third series of Bishop Temple's Rugby Sermons, contains thirty-six 
 
 brief discourses, including the " Good-bye" sermon preached on his leaving 
 
 Rugby to enter on the office Jie nozu holds. 
 
 Thring. — Works by Rev. Edward Thring, M.A. 
 
 SERMONS DELIVERED AT UPPINGHAM SCHOOL. 
 Crown 8vo. ^s. 
 
 In this volume are contained Forty-seven brief Sermons, all on subjects 
 more or less intimately connected %aith Public-school life. ' ' We desire very 
 highly to commend these capital Sermons which treat of a boy's life and 
 trials in a thoroughly practical way and with great simplicity and im- 
 pressiveness. They deserve to be classed zvith the best of their kind."— 
 Literary Churchman. 
 
 THOUGHTS ON LIFE-SCIENCE. New Edition, en- 
 larged and revised. Grown 8vo. 7^-. 6d. 
 Ln this volume are discussed in a fafniliar manner so7?ie of the most 
 interesting problems betzveen Science and Religion, Reason and Feeling. 
 
 Tracts for Priests and People. By Various 
 Writers, 
 
 The First Series. Crown 8vo. 8j-. 
 The Second Series. Grown 8vo. %s. 
 The whole Series of Fifteen Tracts may be had separately, price 
 One Shilling each. 
 
 Trench. — Vv^orks by R. Chenevix Trench, D.D., Arch- 
 bishop of Dublin. (For other Works by the same author, see 
 Biographical, Belles Lettres, and Linguistic Cata- 
 logues). 
 NOTES ON THE PARABLES OF OUR LORD. 
 
 Twelfth Edition. 8vo. lis. 
 This zvork has taken its place as a standard exposition and interpreta- 
 tion of Christ's Parables. The book is prefaced by an Lntroductory Essay 
 in four chapters : — /. On the definition of the Parable. II. On Teach- 
 ing by Parables. III. On the Interpretation of the Parables . IV. On 
 otJier Parables besides those in the Scriptures. The author then proceeds 
 to take up the Parables one by one, and by the aid of philology, history. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Tre n ch — contmiied. 
 
 antiquities, and the researches of travellers, shews forth the significance, 
 beauty, and applicccbility of each, concluding xvith what he deans its true 
 moral interpretation. In the munerous N'otes are many valuable references, 
 illustrative quotations, critical and philological annotations, etc, and ap- 
 pended to the volume is a classified list of fifty-six works on the Parables. 
 
 NOTES ON THE MIRACLES OF OUR LORD. 
 Tenth Edition. 8vo. \2s. 
 
 In the ^Preliminary Essay ^ to this work, all the viomentous and in- 
 teresting questions that have been raised in connection with Miracles, are 
 discussed ivith considerable fulness. The Essay consists of six chapters : — 
 /. On the Names of Miracles, i. e, the Greek %uords by zvhich they are 
 designated in the New Testament. II. The Miracles and N^ature — What 
 is the difference between, a Miracle and any event in the ordinary course 
 of N'ature? III. The Authority of Miracles — Is the Miracle to command 
 absolute obedience ? IV. The Evangelical, compared zuith the other cycles 
 of Miracles. V. The Assaults on the Miracles — i. The Jewish. 2. The 
 Heathen ( Celsus etc.). 3. The Pantheistic (Spinosa etc.). 4. 77^1? 
 Sceptical (Hume). 5, The Miracles only relatively miraculous ( Schleier- 
 macher). 6. The Rationalistic (Paulus). 7. The Ilistorico- Critical 
 (Woolston, Strauss). VI. The Apologetic Worth of the Miracles. The 
 author then treats the separate Miracles as he does the Parables. 
 
 SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. New 
 Edition, enlarged. 8vo. cloth. \2.s. 
 
 The study of synonyms in any language is valuable as a discipline for 
 training the mind to close and accurate habits of thought ; more especially 
 is this the case in Greek — " a language spoken by a people of the finest and 
 subtlest intellect ; who saw distinctions where others sazv none ; zaho di- 
 vided out to different ivords what others often were content to huddle con- 
 fusedly under a com77ion term. . . . Where is it so desirable that we should 
 miss nothing, that zve should lose no finer intention of the zvriter, as in 
 those zuords which are the vehicles of the very mind of God Himself?'''' 
 This Edition has been carefully revised, and a considerable number of nezu 
 synonyms added. Appended is an Index to the Synonyms, and an 
 Index to many other zuords alluded to or explained throughout the zuork. 
 ^^Heis,'^ the Athenseum says, ^' a guide iit this departf?ient of knozvledge 
 to zvhom his readers 77iay i7ttrust the77iselves zuith coiifide7tce. His sober 
 judg77ie7tt a7id sound se/ise are ba7'ricrs agai7ist the 7nisleading i77flue7ice of 
 arbit7'a7y hypotheses. " 
 
 ON THE AUTHORIZED VERSION OF THE NEW 
 TESTAMENT. Second Edition. 8vo. 7^. 
 
 After so77ie l7itroducto7y Remarks, iiz zuhich the propriety of a I'eznsion 
 is briefly discussed, the whole question of the 77ie]'its of the prese7it version 
 is gone into i/i detail, in eleven chapters. Appe/uled is a chronological list 
 
 3 
 
34 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Tre n ch — contmued. 
 
 of 1007'ks beiwing on the subject, an Index of the p]-ineipal Texts con- 
 sidered, an Index of Greek Words, an.d an Index of other Words re- 
 ferred to throughout the book. 
 
 STUDIES IN THE GOSPELS. Third Edition. Svo. 
 IOJ-. ()d. 
 
 This book is piblished under the conviction that the assertion often 
 made is tmtrue, — viz. that the Gospels are in the main plain and easy, 
 and that all the chief difficulties of the New Testament are to be found 
 in the Epistles. These ^^ Studies,'''' sixteen in number, are the fruit of a 
 much largei' scheme, and each Study deals with some important episode 
 fnentioned in the Gospels, in a critical, philosopJiical, and practical man- 
 ner. Many references and quotations are added to the Notes. Among 
 the subjects treated are: — The Temptation ; Christ and the Samaritan 
 Woman; The Three Aspirants ; The Transfiguration ; Zacchceus ; The 
 True Vine; The Penitent Malefactor ; Christ and the Two Disciples on 
 the way to Emmaus. 
 
 COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLES to the SEVEN 
 CHURCHES IN ASIA. Third Edition, revised. Svo. 8j. U. 
 
 The prresent work consists of an Introduction, being a commentary on 
 Rev. i. 4 — 20, a detailed examination oj each of the Seven Epistles, in all 
 its bearhtgs, and an Excursus on the Ilistorico- Prophetical Intejpreta- 
 tion of the Epistles. 
 
 THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT. An Exposition 
 drawn from the writings of St. Augristine, with an Essay on his 
 merits as an Interpreter of Holy Scripture. Third Edition, en- 
 larged. Svo. IOJ-. 6(/. 
 
 The first half of the present work consists of a dissertation in eight 
 chapters on ^^ Augustine as an Interpreter of Scrijiture," the titles of the 
 several chaptas being as follow : — /. Augttstine's Genei-al Viezvs of Scrip- 
 ture and its Interpretation. II. The Extei-nal Helps for the Interpreta- 
 tion of Scripture possessed by Augustine. III. Augustine's Principles 
 and Canons of Inter pretatioti. IV. Augustinis Allegorical Interpretation 
 of Scripture. V. Illusti-ations of Augustine' s Skill as an Interpi-eter of 
 Scripture. VI. Augustine on John the Baptist and on St. Stephen. 
 VII. Augustine on the Epistle to the Romans. VIII. Miscellaneous 
 Examples of Augustini s Interpretation of Scripture. The latter half of 
 the work consists of Augustine^ s Exposition of the Sermon on the Mount, 
 not however a mere series of quotations from Ai4gustine, but a connected 
 account of his sentiments on the various passages of that Se>-mo}i, inter- 
 spersed ivith criticisms by Archbishop Trench. 
 
 SERMONS PREACHED in WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 
 Second Edition. Svo. \os. 6d. 
 
 These Sermons embrace a wide variety of topics, and are thoroughly 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 35 
 
 Tre n ch — continued. 
 
 practical, earnest, and evangelical, and simple in style. The following 
 are a fezu of the subjects: — ^^Tercentenary Celebration of Queen Eliza- 
 bcth''s Accession;''^ '■''Conviction and Conversion f^ ^' The Incredulity oj 
 Thomas f " The Angels'' Hymn;'" "Counting the Costf' " The Holy 
 Trinity in Relation to our Prayers f "On the Death of General Havc- 
 lockf "Christ Weeping over Jerusalem f '''Walking with Christ in 
 White.'' 
 
 SHIPWRECKS OF FAITH. Three Sermons preached 
 before the University of Cambridge in May, 1867. Fcap. 8vo. 
 2s. 6d. 
 These Sermons are especially addressed to young men. The subjects 
 are '''Balaam,'" " Satil," and "fudas Iscariot,'''' These lives are set 
 forth as beacon-lights, ' ' to warn us off from perilous reefs and quick- 
 sands, zvhich have been the destruction, of many, and tuhich might only too 
 easily be ours.'" 77/^ John Bull says, "they are, like all he zvrites, af- 
 j'cctionate and earnest discourses." 
 
 SERMONS Preached for the most part in Ireland. 8vo. 
 loj. dd. 
 
 This volume consists of Thirty-t%vo Sermons, the greater part of which 
 tuere preached in Ireland ; the subjects are as follo7us : — Jacob, a Prince 
 w'lth God and zuith Men — Agrippa — The Woman that was a Sinner — 
 Secret Faults — The Seven Worse Spirits — Freedom in the Truth — Joseph 
 and his Brethren — Bca7'ing one another'' s Burdens — Chris fs Challenge to 
 the World — 71ie Love of Money — The Salt of the Earth — The Armour of 
 God — Light in the lord — The Jailer of Philippi — The Thorn in the Flesh 
 — Isaiah'' s Vision — Selfishness — Abraham interceding for Sodom — Vain 
 Thoughts — Pontius Pilate — The Brazen Serpent — The Death and Burial 
 of Moses — A Word from the Cross — The ChwcJi's Woj'ship in the 
 Beauty of Holiness — Every Good Gift from Above — On the Hearing of 
 Prayer — The Kingdom zvhich comet h not zuith Observation — Pressing 
 tozoards the Mark — Sazd — The Good Shepherd — The Valley of Dry Bones 
 — All Saints. 
 
 Tudor.— The DECALOGUE VIEWED as the CHRIST- 
 IAN'S LAW. With Special Reference to the Questions and 
 Wants of the Times. By the Rev. Rich. Tudor, B.A. Crown 
 Svo. lOi-. 6d. 
 The author's aim is to bring out the Christian sense of the Decalogue 
 in its application to existing needs and questions. The tvork will be found 
 to occupy ground which no othe^- single zuork has hitherto filled. It is di- 
 vided into Two Parts, the First Part consisting of three lectures on 
 "Duty," and the Second Part of twelve lectures on the Ten Command- 
 ments. The Guardian says of it, "His volume throughout is an outspoken 
 and sou7id exposition of Christian morality, based deejyly upon triie founda- 
 tions, set forth systematically, and forcibly and plainly expressed — as good 
 a specimen of zv hat pulpit lectjires ought to be as is often to befoimd." 
 
36 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Tulloch.— THE CHRIST OF THE GOSPELS AND 
 THE CHRIST OF MODERN CRITICISM. Lectures on 
 M, Renan's "Vie de Jesus." By John Tulloch, D.D., 
 Principal of the College of St. Mary, in the University of St. 
 Andrew's. Extra fcap. 8vo. 4^'. 6d. 
 
 Unseen Universe (The) : or, Physical Speculations 
 on Immortality. 8vo. \os. 6d. 
 
 Vaughan. — Works by Charles J. Vaughan, D.D., Master 
 of the Temple : — 
 CHRIST SATISFYING THE INSTINCTS OF HU- 
 MANITY. Eight Lectures delivered in the Temple Church. 
 New Edition. Extra fcp. 8vo. y. 6d. 
 ''''We are convinced that thei-e are congi'egations, in mnnber unmistakeably 
 increasing, to xvhom such Essays as these, full of thought and learning, 
 are infinitely more beneficial, for they are more acceptable, than the recog- 
 nised type of sermons. '''' — ^John Bull. 
 
 MEMORIALS OF HARROW SUNDAYS. A Selection 
 
 of Sermons preached in Harrow School Chapel. With a View 
 
 of the Chapel. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. \os. 6d. 
 
 ' ''Discussing, " says the John Bull, ' ' those fiorms of evil and impediments 
 
 to duty which peculiarly beset the young. Dr. Vaughan has, with singular 
 
 tact, blended deep thought and analytical investigation of principles with 
 
 interesting earnestness and eloquent simplicity. '^^ The Nonconformist 
 
 says '''' the volume is a precious one for family reading, and for the hand 
 
 of the thoughtful boy or young f?tan entering life.''^ 
 
 THE BOOK AND THE LIFE, and other Sermons, 
 preached before the University of Cambridge. New Edition. 
 Fcap. 8vo. 4J-. 6d. 
 
 These Sermons are all of a thoroughly practical nature, and some of 
 them are especially adapted to those tvho are in a state of anxious doubt. 
 
 TWELVE DISCOURSES on SUBJECTS CONNECTED 
 WITH THE LITURGY and WORSHIP of the CHURCH 
 OF ENGLAND. Fcap. 8vo. 6^-. 
 
 Four of these discourses jvere published in i860, in a work entitled 
 Revision of the Liturgy; four others have appeared i^i the form of separate 
 sa-mons, delivered on various occasions, and published at the time by re- 
 quest ; and four are n-eiv. The Appendix contains two articles, — one on 
 ^''Subscription and Scruples,'''' the other on the '''' Rubric and the Burial 
 Service.''^ The Press characterises the volume as ^''eminently wise and 
 temperate. " 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 37 
 
 Vaughan (Dr. C. I.)— continued. 
 
 LESSONS OF LIFE AND GODLINESS. A Selection 
 of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Fourth 
 arid Cheaper Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 3i-. dd. 
 
 This volinne consists of N'ineteen Serj?iOHs, mostly on subjects connected 
 with the every-day walk and conversation of Christians. They bear such 
 titles as " The Talebearer,''' '■'■Features of Charity,'' " The Danger of Re- 
 lapse,'" '' The Secret Life and the Outward," ''Family Prayer," '■'■Zeal 
 -without Consistency," '■'The Gospel an Incentive to Industry in Business," 
 "■Use and Abuse of the World." The Spectator styles them, "earnest 
 and human. They are adapted to every class and order in the social 
 system, and will be read with wakeful interest by all zvho seek to amend 
 zvhatezier ?nay be amiss in their natural disposition or in their acquired 
 habits." 
 
 WORDS FROM THE GOSPELS. A Second Selection 
 of Sermons preached in the Parish Church of Doncaster. Second 
 Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 4^. 6c/. 
 
 The Nonconformist characterises these Ser?7ions as ' ' of practical earnest- 
 ness, of a thoughtfulness that peneti-ates the common conditions and ex- 
 periences of life, and biings the truths and examples of Scripture to bear 
 on them zvith singular force, and of a style that owes its real elegance to 
 the simplicity and directness which have fine culture for their roots." 
 
 LESSONS OF THE CROSS AND PASSION. Six 
 
 Lectures dehvered in Hereford Cathedral during the Week before 
 
 Easter, 1869. Fcap. 8vo. 2J-. 6^. 
 The titles of the Ser?nons are : — /. " Too Late" (Matt. xxvi. 45^. //. 
 " The Divine Sacrifice and the Human Priesthood. " ///. "love not the 
 World. " IV. " The Moral Glory of Christ. " V. " Christ made perfect 
 through Sufifei'ing." VI. "Death the Remedy of Christ's Loneliness." 
 " This little volume," the Nonconformist says, "exhibits all his best cha- 
 racteristics. Elevated, calm, and clear, the Sermons o%ve much to their 
 force, and yet they seem literally to ozue nothing to it. They are studied, 
 but their grace is the grace of perfect simplicity. " 
 
 LIFE'S WORK AND GOD'S DISCIPLINE. Three 
 
 Sermons. New Edition. Fcap. 8vo. 2.s. 6d. 
 The Three Ser?nons are on the following subjects: — /. "The Work 
 burned and the Workmen saved." II. ' ' The Individual Hiring. " ///. 
 ' ' The Re?nedial Discipline of Disease and Death. " 
 
 THE WHOLESOME WORDS OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 Four Sermons preached before the University of Cambridge in 
 November 1866. Second Edition. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 35-. 6d. 
 
 Dr. Vaughan uses the word "Wholesome" here in its literal and 
 original sense, the sense in ivhich St. Paul uses it, as meaning healthy, 
 
38 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Vaughan (Dr. C. J.) — continued. 
 
 sound, conducing to right living ; and in these Sermons he points ont 
 and illustrates several of the ^^ zvholesojne^' characteristics of the Gospel, 
 — the Words of Christ. The John Bull says this volume is '■'■replete with 
 all the author'' s zvell-knozim vigour of thought and richness of expression. ^^ 
 
 FOES OF FAITH. Sermons preached before the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge in November 1868. Fcap. 8vo. 3^-, dd. 
 
 The "Foes of Faith^'' preached against in these Four Sermons are: — 
 /. "'Unreality.''' II. "Indolence.'''' III. "Irreverence.'''' IV. "Incon- 
 sistency.'''' " They are 7uritten,'' the London Review says, " xvith cultzire 
 and elegance, and exhibit the thoughtful ear nest }iess, piety, and good sense 
 of their author.'''' 
 
 LECTURES ON THE EPISTLE to the PHILIPPIANS. 
 Third and Cheaper Edition. Extra fcap. 8vo. 5^. 
 
 Each Lecture is prefaced by a literal translation from the Greek of 
 the paragraph ivhich forms its subject, contains first a minute explanation 
 of the passage on ivhich it is based, and then a practical application of 
 the vei'se or clause selected as its text. 
 
 LECTURES ON THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN. 
 Fourth Edition. Two Vols. Extra fcap. 8vo. 9^-. 
 
 In this Edition of these Lectures, the literal translations of the passages 
 expounded will be found interwoven in the body of the Lectures themselves. 
 In attempting to expound this most-hard-to-miderstand Book, Dr. Vaughan, 
 while taking from others what assistance he required, has not adhered to 
 any particular school of interpretation, but has endeavoured to shtiv forth 
 the significance of this Revelation by the help of his strong co7nmon sense, 
 critical acumen, scholarship, and reverent spirit. "Dr. Vaughan' s Ser- 
 mons,'' the Spectator says, '■'■are the most practical discourses on the 
 Apocalypse with zvhich we are acquainted. " Prefixed is a Synopsis of the 
 Book of Revelation, and apperuied is an Index of passages illustrating 
 the language of the Book. 
 
 EPIPHANY, LENT, AND EASTER. A Selection of 
 Expository Sermons. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. \os. 6d. 
 
 The first eighteen of these Sermons were preached during the seasons of 
 i860, indicated in the title, and are practical expositions of passages taken 
 from the lessons of the days on which they were delivered. Each Lecture is 
 p}-efaced with a careful and literal rendering of the original of the passage 
 of which the lectjire is an exposition. The Nonconformist says that 
 "in simplicity, dignity, close adherence to the words of Scripture, insight 
 into ' the mind of the Spirit,' a7id practical thoughtfulness, they are models 
 of that species of pulpit instructio7i to which they belong." 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL. For English Readers. 
 Part L, containing the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. 
 Second Edition. 8vo. \s. 6d. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 39 
 
 Vaughan (Dr. C. J.) — continued. 
 
 It is the object of this zvork to enable English readers, jinacqiiainted 
 zvith Greeks to enter zvith intelligence into the j?ieaning, connection, and 
 phraseology of the writings of the great Apostle. 
 
 ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. The Greek 
 Text, with English Notes. Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 7^. bd. 
 
 This volume contains the Greek Text of the Epistle to the Romans as 
 settled by the Rev. B. F. Westcott, D.D., for his complete recension of the 
 Text of the New Testa ?nent. Appended to the text are copious critical and 
 exegetical Notes, the result of almost eighteen years' stiuly on the part of 
 the author. The ' 'Index of Words illustrated or explained in t/ie Notes " 
 zuill be found, in some considerable degree, an Index to the Epistles as a 
 whole. Prefixed to thevohune is a discourse on '''St. PaiWs Conversion 
 and Doctrine,''^ suggested by some recent piiblications on St. Taurs theo- 
 logical standing. The Guardian says of the zuork, — ^'For educated young 
 7nen his co?nmentary seems to fill a gap hitherto unfilled. . . . As a whole, 
 Br. Vaughan appears to us to have given to the woj'ld a valuable book 0/ 
 original and careful and earnest thought bestowed 07i the accomplishmoit 
 of a work zuhich tuill be of much service and which is much needed."" 
 
 THE CHURCH OF THE FIRST DAYS. 
 
 Series I. The Church of Jerusalem. Third Edition. 
 " XL The Church of the Gentiles. Third Edition. 
 "III. The Church of the World. Second Edition. 
 Fcap. 8vo. cloth, ^s. 6d. each. 
 Where necessary, the Authorized 'Version has been departed frojn., and 
 a netv literal translation taken as the basis of exposition. All possible 
 topographical and historical light has been brought to bear on the subject ; 
 and while thoroughly practical in their aim., these Lectures will be found 
 to afford a fair notion of the history and condition of the Primitive 
 Church. The British Quarterly says, — '■''These Sermons are worthy of 
 all praise, and are models of pulpit teaching.^' 
 
 COUNSELS for YOUNG STUDENTS. Three Sermons 
 
 preached before the University of Cambridge at the Opening of 
 
 the Academical Year 1870-71. Fcap. 8vo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 The titles of the Three Sermons contained in this volume are: — /. 
 
 '' The Great Becision.'" II '' The House and the Builder:' III ''The 
 
 Prayer and the Counter-Prayer.'" They all bear pointedly, earnestly, and 
 
 sympathisingly upon the conduct and pursuits of young students and 
 
 young men generally. 
 
 NOTES FOR LECTURES ON CONFIRMATION, 
 with suitable Prayers. Eighth Edition, Fcap. 8vo. is. 6d. 
 
 In preparation for the Confirmation held in Harroiu School Chapel, 
 Br. Vaughan was in the habit of printing zveek by zoeek, and distributing 
 ajuong the Candidates, someivhat full notes of the lecture he purposed to 
 
40 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Vaughan (Dr. Q,.^.)~contimied. 
 
 deliver to tke?)i, together zmth a fortn of Frayed' adapted to the particular 
 subject. He has collected these loeekly Notes and Prayers into this little 
 volume, in the hope that it may assist the labours of those who are engaged 
 in preparing Candidates for Confir?jiation, and who find it difficult to lay 
 their hand upon any one book of suitable instruction. 
 
 THE TWO GREAT TEMPTATIONS. The Tempta- 
 tion of Man, and the Temptation of Christ. Lectures delivered in 
 the Temple Church, Lent 1872. Extra fcap. 8vo. y. 6d. 
 
 Vaughan. — Works by David J. Vaughan, M.A., Vicar of 
 
 St. Martin's, Leicester : — 
 SERMONS PREACHED IN ST. JOHN'S CHURCH, 
 LEICESTER, during the Years 1855 and 1856. Cr. 8vo. 5^. 6d. 
 
 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES AND THE BIBLE. New 
 
 Edition, revised and enlarged. Fcap. 8vo. cloth. 5j-. 6d. 
 ''''This little volume" the Spectator says, "is a jnodel of that honest 
 and reverent criticisju of the Bible which is not only right, but the duty of 
 English cla'gy7)ien in such ti?nes as these to piit forth frofn the pulpit." 
 
 Venn.— ON SOME OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF 
 BELIEF, Scientific and Religious. Being the Hulsean Lectures 
 for 1869. By the Rev. J. Venn, M.A. 8vo. 6^. dd. 
 These discourses are intended to illustrate, explain, and work out into 
 
 some of their consequences, certain characteristics by zuhich the attainment of 
 
 religious belief is protninently distinguished fro f?i the attainment of belief 
 
 upon ?nost other subjects. 
 
 ^Varington.— THE WEEK OF CREATION ; or, THE 
 COSMOGONY OF GENESIS CONSIDERED IN ITS 
 RELATION TO MODERN SCIENCE. By George War- 
 INGTON, Author of "The Historic Character of the Pentateuch 
 Vindicated." Crown 8vo. ^.6d. 
 The greater part of this zuork is taken up with the teaching of the 
 Cosmogony. Its purpose is also investigated, and a chapter is devoted to 
 the consideration of the passage in which the difficulties occur. "A very 
 able vindication of the Mosaic Cosmogony by a tvriter who unites the ad- 
 vantages of a critical knoxvledge of the Hebrew text and of distinguished 
 scientific attainments. " — Spectator. 
 
 Westcott. — Works by BROOKE Foss Westcott, D.D., 
 Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge ; 
 Canon of Peterborough : — 
 The London Quarterly, speaking of Mr. Westcott, says, — " To a learn- 
 ing and accuracy which conunand respect and confidoice, he unites what 
 are not always to be found in union zoith these (jualities, the no less valuable 
 faculties of lucid arrangejucnt and graceful and facile expression.'''' 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 41 
 
 Westcott (Dr. B. ¥ .)—conthmed. 
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE 
 GOSPELS, Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. los. dd. 
 
 The author's chief object in this zoork has been to sheiu that there is 
 a true ?nean betiveen the idea of a formal harmonization of the Gospels 
 and the abandonment of their absolute truth. After an Introdttction on 
 the General Effects of the course of Modern Philosophy on the popular 
 vietvs of Christianity, he proceeds to deter fuine in what way the principles 
 therein indicated may be applied to the study of the Gospels. The treatise 
 is divided into eight Chapters : — /. The Preparation for the Gospel. II. 
 The Jeivish Doctrine of the Messiah. III. The Origin of the Gospels. 
 IV. The Characteristics of the Gospels. V. The Gospel of St. John. 
 VI. and VII. The Differences in detail and of arrangement in the 
 Synoptic Evangelists. VIII. The Difficulties of the Gospels. The Ap- 
 pendices contain nmch valuable stibsidiary matter. 
 
 A GENERAL SURVEY OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT DURING THE 
 FIRST FOUR CENTURIES. Fourth Edition, revised, with 
 a Preface on "Supernatural Religion." Crown 8vo. loj-. 6d. 
 The object of this tj-eatise is to deal with the A^ezo Testament as a whole^ 
 and that on purely historical grounds. The separate books of which it is 
 composed are considered not individually, but as claiming to be parts of the 
 apostolic heritage of Christians. The Author has thus endeavoured to con- 
 nect the history of the New Testament Canon with the grozvth and con- 
 solidation of the Catholic Church, and to point out the relation existing 
 between the amount of evidence for the authoiticity of its component parts 
 and the ivhole mass of Christian literature. ''''The treatise,'''' says the 
 British Quarterly, "is a scholarly perj'ortnance, learned, dispassionate, 
 discriminating, woi'thy of his subject and of the present state oj Christian 
 literature in relation to it.''^ 
 
 THE BIBLE IN THE CHURCH. A Popular Account 
 of the Collection and Reception of the Holy Scriptures in the 
 Christian Churches. New Edition. i8mo. ^. 6d. 
 
 The present volu?ne has been wHtten under the ifnpression that a 
 History of the tvhole Bible, and not of the N'ezv Testa?nent only, would 
 be required, if those unfafuiliar with the subject tuere to be efiabled to learn 
 in tuhat manner and zuith zvhat consent the collection of Holy Scriptures 
 zvas first ??iade and then enlarged and finally closed by the Chu?'ch. 
 Though the zt'ork is intended to be simple and popular in its method, the 
 author, for this very reason, has aimed at the sti'ictest acctiracy. 
 
 A GENERAL VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE 
 
 ENGLISH BIBLE. Second Edition. Crown Svo. 10s. 6d. 
 In the Intf'oducti&n the author notices briefly the earliest vernacular 
 versions of the Bible, especially those in Anglo-Saxon. Chapter I. is oc- 
 
42 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Westcott (Dr. B. F.) — continued. 
 
 cupied zvith an accounl of the Manuscript English Bible from the i^h 
 century downwards ; and in Chapta' II. is narrated^ zvith many interest- 
 ing personal and other details, the Exte)-nal History of the PHnted Bible. 
 In Chapter III is set forth the Internal History of the English Bible, 
 shezuingto what extent the various English Translations 7vere independent, 
 and to what extent the translators xvere indebted to earlier English anjd 
 foreign versions. In the Appendices., among other interesting and valuable 
 ■matter, will be found ^''Specimens of the Earlier and later Wycliffite 
 Versions f ^''Chronological list of Bibles f '■'■An Examination of Air. 
 Fronde's History of the English Bible.'" The Pall Mall Gazette calls 
 the work "^ brief scholarly, and, to a great extent, an original contribu- 
 tion to theological literature.'''' 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN LIFE, MANIFOLD AND ONE. 
 Six Sermons preached in Peterborough Cathedral. Crown 8vo. 
 2s. 6d. 
 
 The Six Sertnons contained in this volume are the first preached by 
 the author as a Canon of Peterborough Cathedral. The subjects are : — 
 /. ^^life consecrated by the Ascension.^^ II *■'■ Many Gifts, One Spirit. ''' 
 III ''The Gospel of the Resurrection." IV. ''Sufficiency of God.'" V. 
 "Action the Test of Faith.'" VI. " Progress fro7n the Confession of God.'" 
 The Nonconformist calls them "Beautiful discourses, singularly devout 
 and tender. " 
 
 THE GOSPEL OF THE RESURRECTION. Thoughts 
 on its Relation to Reason and History. Fourth Edition. Crown 
 8vo. ds. 
 
 The present Essay is an endeavour to consider some of the elementary 
 truths of Christianity, as a miraculous Revelation, from the side of History 
 and Reason. The author endeavours to shetu that a devout belief in the 
 Life of Christ is quite co?npatible with a broad view of the course of hu?7ian 
 progress and a frank trust in the laws of our 07vn minds. In the third 
 edition the author has carefully reconsidered the zvhole argument, and by 
 the help of several kind critics has been enabled to correct some faults and 
 to remave some ambiguities, which had been overlooked before. He has 
 not however made any attempt to alter the general character of the book. 
 
 ON THE RELIGIOUS OFFICE OF THE UNIVER- 
 SITIES. Crown 8vo. /^. 6d. 
 
 " There is certainly, no man of our time — no man at least who has ob- 
 tained the command of the public ear — zuhose utterances can compare with 
 those of Professor Westcott for largeness ofviezvs and comprehensiveness of 
 
 grasp There is %visdo7n, and truth, and thought enough, and a 
 
 harmo}iy and mutual connection running through them all, tuhich makes 
 the collection of moi'e real value than many an ambitious treatise''' — 
 Literary Churchman. 
 
THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 43 
 
 Wilkins.— THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. An Essay, 
 by A.S. Wilkins, M.A., Professor of Latin in Owens College, 
 Manchester. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. t^s. 6d. 
 This is the Hulsean Prize Essay for 1869. The sjibject proposed by 
 the Trustees was, ''The Distinctive Features of Christian as compared 
 xvith Pagan Ethics.''^ The author has tried to show that the Christian 
 ethics so far transcend the ethics of any or all of the Pagan systems in 
 method, in ptirity and in potver , as to compel us to assume for them an 
 origin, differing in kind from the origin of any purely human system. 
 ' ' // %vould be difficult to praise too highly the spirit, the burden, the con- 
 clusions, or the scholarly finish of this beautiful Essay.^^ — British Quarterly 
 Review. 
 
 Wilson.— RELIGIO CHEMICL With a Vignette beauti- 
 fully engraved after a Design by Sir NoEL Paton. By George 
 Wilson, M.D. Crown 8vo. 8j\ 6^^. 
 
 ''■George Wilson, ^^ says the Preface to this volume, "had it in his heart 
 for many years to write a book correspo7tding to the Religio Medici of Sir 
 Thomas Bro^une, zaith the title Religio Chemici. Several of the Essays in 
 this volume were intended to form chapters of it, but the health and leisure 
 necessary to carry out his plans zvere never attainable, and tJnis fragments 
 only of the designed zuork exist. These frag?nents, however, being in most 
 cases like finished ge??is zuaiting to be set, some of them are nozu given in 
 a collected form to his friends and the public.'''' — -"A more fascinating 
 volume,''' the Spectator says, "has seldom fallen into our hands." 
 
 Wilson.— THE BIBLE STUDENT'S GUIDE TO THE 
 MORE CORRECT UNDERSTANDING of the ENGLISH 
 TRANSLATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, BY RE- 
 FERENCE TO THE ORIGINAL HEBREW. By William 
 Wilson, D.D., Canon of Winchester. Second Edition, carefully 
 revised. 4to. 25^'. 
 
 " The author believes that the present zvork is the tiearest approach to 
 a complete Concordance of every zuord in the original that has yet been 
 made: and as a Concordance, it may be found of great use to the Bible 
 student, zuhile at the same time it serves the important object of furnishing 
 the means of co77ipariiig synonymous zvords, and of eliciting their precise 
 and distinctive meaning. The knozvledge of the Hebrezu language is not 
 absolutely necessary to the profitable use of the zuork. The plan of the 
 work is simple: every zuord occurj-ing in the English Version is arranged 
 alphabetically, and tinder it is given the Hebrezv wo7'd or words, zvith a 
 full expla)iation of their meaning, ofzohich it is meant to be a translation, 
 and a complete list of the passages where it occurs. Follozaing the general 
 zuork is a complete Hebrew and English Index, zuhich is, in effect, a 
 Hebre^iU- English Dictionary. 
 
44 THEOLOGICAL BOOKS. 
 
 Worship (The) of God and Fellowship among 
 
 Men. Sermons on Public Vv'orship, By Professor Maurice, 
 and others. Fcap. 8vo. 3J-. dd. 
 This volume consists of Six Ser?}ions preached by various clergymen, 
 and although not addressed specially to any class, were suggested by recent 
 effoj'ts to bring the membei's of the Working Class to our Churches. The 
 preachers zuere — Professor Maurice, Rev. T. J. Rowsell, Rev. J. LI. 
 Davies, Rev. D. J. Vaughan. 
 
 Yonge (Charlotte M.)— SCRIPTURE READINGS for 
 
 SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES. By Charlotte M. Yonge, 
 
 Author of "The Hek of Redclyffe. " Globe 8vo. \s. (yd. With 
 
 Comments, y. 6d. 
 
 Second Series. From Joshua to Solomon. Extra fcap. 8vo. 
 
 is. 6d. With Comments. 3^. 6d. 
 
 Third vSeries. The Kings and Prophets. Extra fcap. 8vo. , 
 
 I J. 6c/., with Comments, 2>^.6d. 
 Actual need has led the author to endeavour to prepare a reading book 
 convenient for study with children, containing the very tvords of the 
 Bible, zoith only a fetv expedient omissions, and arranged in Lessons of 
 such length as by expeHence she has found to suit with children's oi-dinary 
 power of accurate attentive interest. The verse forin has been retained be- 
 cause of its convenience for children reading in class, and as more re- 
 sembling their Bibles ; but the poetical portions have been given in their 
 lines. Professor Huxley at a meeting of the London School-board, par- 
 ticularly 7nentioned the Selection made by Miss Yonge, as an exanple of 
 hozu selections might be ??iade for School reading. '■'■Her Comments are 
 models of their kind.''' — Literary Churchman. 
 
 In crown 8vo. cloth extra, Illustrated, price 45-. (id. each Volume ; also 
 
 kept in morocco and calf bindings at moderate prices, and in 
 
 Ornamental Boxes containing Four Vols., 2.\s. each, 
 
 MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY. 
 
 A Series of Original Works by Eminent Authors. 
 
 The Guardian says — '■''All Christian households oive a debt of gratitude 
 to Mr. Macmillati for that useful ' Sunday Library.' " 
 
 THE FOLLOWING VOLUMES ARE NOW READY:— 
 
 The Pupils of St. John the Divine. — By Charlotte 
 
 M. Yonge, Author of "The Heir of Redclyffe. " 
 
 The author first gives a full sketch of the life and zvork of the Apostle 
 
 himself, drawing the material from all the most trustwo?-thy autliorities, 
 
 sacred a7id profane ; then follow the lives of his immediate disciples, Ignatius, 
 
MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY. 45 
 
 Qnadratus, Polycarp, and others ; tvhich ai'e succeeded by the lives of jnany 
 of their pupils. She then proceeds to sketch from their foundation the 
 history of the many churches planted or superifitended by St. John and 
 his pupils, both in the East and West. In the last chapter is given an 
 account of the present aspect of the Churches of St. John^ — the Seven 
 Churches of Asia 7nentio)ied in Revelations ; also those of Alliens, of 
 Ninies, of lyons, and others in the West. " Young and old will be 
 equally refreshed and taught by these pages, in which nothing is dull, and 
 nothing is far-fetched. " — Churchman. 
 
 The Hermits. — By Canon Kingsley. 
 
 The volume contains the lives of some of the most remarkable early 
 Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, and Western hermits. The lives are mostly 
 translations fro7n the original biographies. ''''It is from first to last a 
 production full of interest, written zvith a liberal appreciatioit ofzuhat is 
 vmnor able for good in the lives of the IIer?)iits, and zvith a wise forbear- 
 ance towards legends which may be due to the ignorance, and, no doubt, 
 also to the strong faith of the early chroniclers.^^ — London Review. 
 
 Seekers after God. — Lives of Seneca, Epictetus, and 
 Marcus Aurelius. By the Rev. F. W. Farrar, M.A., F.R.S., 
 Head Master of Marlborough College. 
 In this volume the author seeks to record the lives, and gives copnous 
 sa?nples of the almost Christ-like utterances of, with perhaps the exception 
 of Socrates, ^^ the best and holiest characters presented to us in the records 
 of antiquity.''^ The volume contains p07-tr aits of Aurelius, Seneca, and 
 Antoninus Pius. ''''We can heartily recommend it as healthy in tone, 
 instructive, interesting, mentally and sph'itually stimulating and nu- 
 tritious.'''' — Nonconformist. 
 
 England's Antiphon. — By George Macdonald. 
 
 This volume deals chiefly zuith the lyric or song-form of English re- 
 ligious poetry, other kinds, hozvever, being not infrequently introduced. 
 The author has sought to trace the course of our religious poetry from the 
 x-^yth to the i^th centuries, f-om before Chaucer to Tennyson. He en- 
 deavours to accomplish his object by selecting the men zvho have produced 
 the finest religious poetry, setting forth the circumstances in zvhich they 
 zvere placed, characterising the men themselves, critically estimating their 
 productions, and giving ample specimens of their best religious lyrics, and 
 quotations frof?i larger poems, illustrating the religious feeling of the poets 
 or their times. ''''Dr. Macdonald has very successfully endeavoured to 
 bring together in his little book a zvhole series of the szvect singers of Eng- 
 land, and makes them raise, one after the other, their voices in praise of 
 God. " — Guardian. 
 
 Great Christians of France : St. Louis and Calvin. 
 
 By M. GuizoT. 
 From among French Catholics, M. Guizot has, in this vobune, selected 
 
46 MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY. 
 
 Louis, King of France in the lyh century, and among Protestants, Caknn 
 the Refoi'fuer in the l6th centwy, ^^ as tivo earnest and illustrious repre- 
 sentatives of the Christian faith and life, as well as of the loftiest thought 
 and purest morality of their country and generation." In setting forth 
 "with considerable fulness the lives of these pi'omineitt and representative 
 Christian men, M. Guizot necessarily introduces much of the political and 
 religious histojy of the periods during zohich they lived. "^ very interest- 
 ing book,''' says the Guardian. 
 
 Christian Singers of Germany. — By Catherine 
 
 WlNKWORTH. 
 In this vohune the authoress gives an account of the principal hymn- 
 zvriters of Germany fro7n the ()th to the l()th centuiy, introducing ample 
 speci?7iens from their best productions. In the translations, while the 
 English is peifectly idiomatic and harmonious, the characteristic differ- 
 ences of the poems have been carefully imitated, and the general style and 
 metre retained. ^'■JMiss Winkivorth's volume of this series is, according to 
 our view, the choicest pj'oductiort of her pen." — British Quarterly Review. 
 
 Apostles of Mediaeval Europe. — By the Rev. G. F. 
 Maclear, D.D., Head Master of King's College School, London. 
 In tzuo Introductory Chapters the author notices some of the chief cha- 
 racteHstics of the mediceval period itself; gives a graphic sketch of the de- 
 vastated state of Europe at the beginning of that period, and an interesting 
 account of the religions of the three great groups of vigorous barbarians^ 
 the Celts, the Imtons, and the Sclavcs — who had, wave afier wave, over- 
 fowed its surface. He then proceeds to sketch the lives and work of the 
 chief of the courageous men who devoted themselves to the stupendous task 
 of their conversion a^id civilization, during a period extending froju the 
 $th to the 13M century ; such as St. Patrick, St. Columba, St. Colum- 
 banus, St. Augustine of Canterbmy, St. Boniface, St. Olaf St. Cyril, 
 Raymond Sull, and others. '■''Mr. Maclear will have done a great wo7'k 
 if his adjnirable little volujue shall help to break up the dense ignorance 
 which is still prevailing ajnong people at large." — Literary Churchman. 
 
 Alfred the Great. — By Thomas Hughes, Author of "Tom 
 
 BroMai's School Days." Third Edition. 
 " The ti?ne is come when we English can no longer stand by as in- 
 terested spectators only, but in which every one of our institutions will be 
 sifted zuith rigour, and will have to shezv cause for its existence. .... 
 As a help in this search, this life of the typical English King is here 
 offered. " Besides other illustrations in the volume, a Map of England is 
 prefixed, shelving its divisions abozit 1 000 A.D., as tvell as at the present 
 time. ^^Mr. Hughes has indeed zaritten a good book, bright and readable 
 we need hardly say, and of a very considerable historical value.''' — 
 Spectator. 
 
 Nations Around. — By Miss A. Keary. 
 
 This volume contains many details concerning the social and political 
 
MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY. 47 
 
 lift\ the religion, the superstitions, the literature, the architecture, the coin- 
 vicrce, the industry, of the Nations around Palestine, an acquaintance with 
 "cuhich is necessary in order to a clear and fidl understanding of the history 
 of the Hebreiv people. The authoress has brought to her aid all the most 
 recent investigations into the early history of these nations, referiing fre- 
 quently to the fruitful excavations which have brought to light the ruins 
 and hieroglyphic writings of many of their buried cities. ^^Afiss Keary 
 has skilfully availed herself of the opportunity to xvrite a pleasing and in- 
 structive book." — Guardian, "yi valuable and interesting volume." — 
 Illustrated Times. 
 
 St. Anselm. — By the Very Rev. R. W. CHURCH, M.A., Dean 
 
 of St. Paul's. Second Edition. 
 In this biography of St. Anselm, wJiile the story of his life as a 7nan, a 
 Christian, a clergyman, and a politician, is told impartially ajzd ftdly, 
 much light is shed on the ecclesiastical and political history of the tifne 
 during which he lived, and on the internal economy of the monastic estab- 
 lishments of the period. The author has drawn his materials from con- 
 temporary biographers and chroniclers, while at the same time he has 
 consulted the best recent authors luho have treated of the man and his 
 time. ' ' // is a sketch by the hand of a master, zuith eziery line marked 
 by taste, learning, and 7-eal apprehension of the subject." — Pall Mall 
 Gazette. 
 
 Francis of Assisi. — By Mrs. Oliphant. 
 
 The life of this saint, the founder of the Franciscan order, and one of 
 the most remarkable men oj his time, illustrates some of the chief cha- 
 racteristics of the religious life of the Middle Ages. Much infortnation is 
 given concerning the missionary labours of the saint and his companions, 
 as well as concerning the religious and monastic life of the time. Many 
 graphic details are introduced f^om the saint'' s contemporary biographers, 
 ivhich shew forth the prevalent beliefs of the period ; and abundant samples 
 are given of St. Francis's own sayings, as well as a fezv specimens of his 
 simple tender hymns. '■^We are grateful to Mrs. Oliphant for a book of 
 much interest and pathetic beauty, a book which none cati read zuithout 
 being the better for z/."— John Bull. 
 
 Pioneers and Founders ; or, Recent Workers in the 
 Mission Field. By Charlotte M. Yonge, Author of "The 
 Heir of Redclyfife." With Frontispiece, and Vignette Portrait of 
 Bishop Heber. 
 
 The missionaries whose biographies are here given, are — John Eliot, 
 the Apostle of the Red Indians ; David Brainerd, the Enthusiast ; Christ- 
 ian F. Schwartz, the Councillor of Tanjore; Henry Marty n, the Scholar- 
 Missionary ; William Carey and Joshua Marshman, the Serampore Mis- 
 sionaries; the Judson Family; the Bishops of Calcutta, — Thomas 
 Middleton, Reginald Hebe)-, Daniel Wilson; Samuel Marsden, the Aus- 
 tralian Chaplain and Friend of the Maori ; John Williams, the Martyr 
 
48 MACMILLAN'S SUNDAY LIBRARY. 
 
 of Erro mango ; Allen Gardener, the Sailor Martyr; Charles Frederick 
 Mackenzie, the Martyr of Zainbesi. ^^ Likely to be one of the most popular 
 of the ^ Szinday Libra fy^ voliwies.'''' — Literaiy Churchman. 
 
 Angelique Arnauld, Abbess of Port Royal. By 
 
 Frances Martin, Crown 8vo. ^s. 6d. 
 This nezv volume of the ''Sunday Librai^ con taints the life of a very 
 retnarkable isjoman founded on the best authorities. She was a Roman 
 Catholic Abbess who lived more than 200 years ago, whose life contained 
 much struggle and siiffei'ing. But if we look beneath the suiface, %ve find 
 that sublime virtjies are associated with her errors, there is S07nethi7ig 
 admirable in everything she does, and the study of hei' history leads to a 
 continual enlargement of our own range of thought and syfnpathy. 
 
 THE "BOOK OF PRAISE" HYMNAL, 
 
 COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY 
 
 LORD SELBORNE. 
 
 In the folhming four for/ns : — 
 
 A. Beautifully printed in Royal 32nio., limp cloth, price 6d. 
 
 B. ,, ,, SmalllSmo., larger type, cloth limp, Is. 
 
 C. Same edition on fine paper, cloth, Is. 6d. 
 
 Also an edition with Miisic, selected, harmonized, and composed 
 by JOHN HTJL.LAH, in square 18mo., cloth, 3s. 6d. 
 
 The large acceptance zuhich has been given to " The Book of Praise'''' 
 by all classes of Cliristian people encourages the Publishers in entertaining 
 the hope that this Hymnal, luhich is mainly selected from it, may be ex- 
 tensively used in Congregations, and in some degree at least fneet the 
 desires of those who seek uniformity in common worship as a means 
 towards that unity which pious souls yearn after, and which our Lord 
 prayed for in behalf of his Church. "The office of a hyjnn is not to 
 teach controversial Theology, but to give the voice of song to practical 
 religion. No doubt, to do this, it must embody sound doctrine ; hit it 
 ought to do so, not after the manner of the schools, but with the bi'eadth, 
 freedojn, and simplicity of the Fountain-head.''^ On this pHnciple has 
 Sir R. Palmer proceeded in the preparation of this book. 
 
 The arrangement adopted is the following : — 
 
 Part I. consists' of Hymns arranged according to the subjects of the 
 Creed — "God the Creator,^' "Christ Incarnate,'' "Christ Crucified," 
 "Christ Risen,'" "Christ Ascended," "Christ's Kingdom and Judg- 
 ment," etc. 
 
 Part II. comprises IIy?nns arranged according to the subjects of the 
 Lord's Prayer. 
 
 Part III. Hymns for 7tatural and sacred seasons. 
 There are 320 Hymns in all. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: — PRINTED BY J. PALMER. 
 

 
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