s MHi; M ^ tut meo%fal &,^ O PRINCETON, N. J. «Cl5 BR 121 .M382 1879 Martineau, James, 1805-1900. Studies of Christianity V STUDIES OF CHRISTIANITY. STUDIES OF CHRISTIANITY: A SERIES OF PAPERS. BY JAMES ^MARTINEAU. LONDON: LONGMANS, G RE ION, and Co. 1879. LONDON : PRINTED Br WOODFALL AND KINDER, MILFORD LANE, STRAND, W.C. PEE FACE. The Volume here presented to the English Reader has been compiled^ primarily, for American use by the zealous hand of my friend, tlie llcv. W. 11. Alger, of Boston, U.S. With the exception of tlie hist piece but one, whicli is new, the papers comprised in it have been pubhshed before ; and have notliing to plead in excuse for their re- appearance, except that many of them, being either out of print or buried in reviews, had become prematurely inaccessible. For the friendly estimate to which they owe their preservation in a more permanent form, I desire to express my grateful acknowledgments. Whether ratified or not by a more public judgment, it gives assurance of that kind of sympathy which best delivers the sohtary student from his self-distrusts. The Reader will be at no loss how to divide the respon- sibility of this Volume between the Editor and myself. For the contents of the papers, taken separately, 1 alone am answerable. Their selection, their grouping, and the common title which brings them into a certain unity, are due to Editorial care. In the writings here strung upon a single thread, many repetitions, I am well aware— perhaps some inconsistencies — may be found. Brought together from dates scattered over nearly thirty years, they cannot all exhibit the same phase of opinion and feeling. Did they do so, they would only betray an insensibility, truly culpable in any public instructor, to the great movements of both historical criticism and philosophical thought during the last and present generation. It would be a strange result of a studious man's reading and reflection, did he find that he had nothing to learn, and n^ INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS, FUOM MR. MARTINEAU'S WRITINGS a y^\^^i i.ii J t Q., ?2iiTojJi?eiT \: INTEODUCTION. The American Unitarian Association in 1835 re- printed from the English edition, among tlieir Tracts, a Sermon on " The Existing State of Tlieology as an Intellectual Pursuit and of Religion as a Moral In- fluence." Its rare merits elicited great praise. Its author was the Rev. James Martineau, then a settled minister in Liverpool. Since that time, his occasional publications from year to year have been winning a wider audience, and awakening a deeper admiration. The history of his mind has been a broadening track of light. And now the Association feel that they cannot do a greater favor to the reading public, or better aid that cause of Liberal Christianity whose servants they are, than by printing a collection of the later writings of this gifted man, whom they first in- troduced to American Unitarians a quarter of a cen- tury ago. The list of works prefixed to the article here entitled " Distinctive Types of Christianity," as it appeared in the Westminster Review, and the opening sentence referring to them, have been accidentally omitted. Two or three of tlie papers belong to the autlior's earlier years, but are inserted here equally on account VIU INTRODUCTION. of their eminent ability, their special timeliness, and their striking adaptation to the general purpose of the work ; namely, to throw light on the true nature of Christianity. They will also be new to most of those whom they now reach. The last paper in the volume is one of the first its writer published, in his compara- tive youth. We shall be disappointed if the benignant wisdom and moral fidelity of its catholic lessons do not secure a sympathetic response in many a quarter once closed against such appeals. In selecting from Mr. Martineau's numerous inval- uable articles, not already published in book-form, the contents of the present work, llie rule has not been so much to choose the ablest productions, as to take those best fitted to meet the wants of the time, by diifusing among ministers, students of divinity, and the culti- vated laity a knowledge of the most advanced theologi- cal and religious thought yet attained. AVe regret that the necessary limits of the volume exclude several of the author's most instructive and inspiring essays ; particularly the magnificent one in the National Re- view upon " Newsman, Coleridge, and Carlyle " ; also the one upon " Lessing as a Theologian." We have called this volume " Studies of Christian- ity," simply as a convenient indication of the general character of its contents. In justice to the author, it should be borne in mind that the separate papers were prepared to meet various occasions, without a suspi- cion that they would ever be brought together to form a book. Of course they do not express his complete views of the mighty subject which they fragmentarily treat. The relative order and rank of his convictions, the interpretation of Christianity from its inner side, appear much better in his " Endeavors after the Chris- INTRODUCTION. IX tiaii Life," — by far the richest and noblest scries of sermons in the English language. Still, a kind of unity pervades the different pieces composing this col- lection. One Christ-like strain of sentiment breathes through them all. The same consecrating fealty to truth presides over them all. The same grand outline of principles and unvarying standard of judgment are constantly evident. The same marvellous acumen, breadth of learning, and exquisite culture, everywhere appear. Each article is more or less directly an illus- tration of Christianity, as something moral, spiritual, vital, dynamic, to be practically assimilated by the soul, in distinction from the common exposition of it, as something sacerdotal, dogmatic, formal, forensic, once enacted and now to be mimetically observed. The energetic patience of labor, the detersive intellect, the unalloyed devoutness of spirit, the telescopic range both of faculty and equipment, revealed even in these way- side products, awaken in us an unapi)easable desire for a more purposed and systematic work from the same mind, now in its fullest maturity. In the mean time we will express our grateful ap})reciation of the con- tributions already furnished, by giving tlicm furtlier circulation, assured that no truly pious and intelligent person, free from bigotry and shackles, can peruse them without receiving equal measures of delight and profit. Mr. Martineau is so thorouglity acquainted with the processes and results of spiritual experience, with the sciences of nature, and with the whole realm of met- aphysical philosophy, and his own wealtliy faculties are so tenacious in their activity and freshness, that every subject lie touches receives novelty, light, and ornament. He is emphatically a teacher for tho teachers, — a greater guide and master for the common X INTRODUCTION. guides and masters. Traversing the whole domain of human contemplation with the defining lines of analy- sis, clothing the severe materials of science with the colors of aesthetic art, he sheds on every theme the illu- mination of intellectual genius, and transfuses every thought with the distinctive sentiments of piety. Thus is afforded that rarest of all spectacles, — and the one now most needed by the cultivated religious world, — of a man who is greatly endowed at once as philoso- pher, poet, and Christian, and who with simultaneous earnestness in each capacity is devoted, by the whole labors of his life, to the instruction of mankind. For these reasons, we feel it a duty to attract as much attention as possible to Mr. Martineau's past and expected publications. The peerless intelligence, the bracing fidelity, the essential nobleness and cath- olicity, the tender beauty and reverence, of his utter- ances, his consummate mastery of the great topics he handles, seem to us fitted in a solitary degree to meet the highest wants of the age, — to do divine service in the conflict of scepticism, sensuality, and decay against all that is truest and purest in the religious faith and moral life of Christendom. Therefore, to persons who, unacquainted with the author's previous works, may read the papers here collected, we would recommend as the best books for educated and earnest Christian thinkers, Mr. Martineau's " Rationale of Religious In- quiry," the volume of his " Miscellanies " edited by the Rev. T. S. King, and the two series of " Endeav- ors after the Christian Life " recently republished in one volume by Messrs. Munroe and Company. We shall make up the rest of this introductory paper by quoting from some of Mr. Martineau's articles, not generally accessible, a few specimens of those thoughts INTRODUCTION. xi Trliicli, if freely received in these times of theological doubt and turmoil, would lead many a religious think- er towards the truth and peace he covets. How clearly the following passage shows the true RELATION BETWEEN NATURAL AND REVEALED RELIGION. The contempt with which it is the frequent practice of divines to treat the grounds of natural religion, betrays an ignorance both of the true office of revelation and of the true wants of the human heart. It cannot be justified, except on the supposition that there is some contradiction between the teachings of creation and those of Christ, with some decided preponderance of proof in favor of the latter. Even if the Gospel furnished a series of perfectly new truths, of which nature had been profoundly silent, it would be neither reason- able nor safe to fix exclusive attention on these recent and his- torical acquisitions, and prohibit all reference to those elder oracles of God, by which his Spirit, enshrined in the glories of his universe, taught the fathers of our race. And if it be the function of Christianity not to administer truth entirely new, but to corroborate by fresh evidence, and invest with new beauty, and publish to the milHons with a voice of power, a faith latent already in the hearts of many, and scattered through the speculations of the wise and noble few, — to erect into realities the dreams which had visited a half-in- spired philosophy, interpreting the life and lot of man ; — then there is a relation between the religion of nature and that of Christ, — a relation of original and supplement, — which renders the one essential to the apprehension of the other. Revelation, you say, has given us the clew by which to thread the labyrinth of creation, and extricate ourselves from its passages of mystery and gloom. Be it so ; still, there^ in the scene thus cleared of its perplexity, must our worship be paid, and the manifestations of Deity be soufrht. If the use of revelation be to explain the perplexities of Prov- Xii INTRODUCTION. idence and life, it would be a strange use to make of the ex- planation were we to turn away from the thing explained. "We hold the key of heaven in our hands. What folly to be for ever extolling and venerating it, whilst we prohibit all ap- proach to the temple whose gates it is destined to unlock. One would search long to find a finer illustration than is here given of the real NATURE OF DEVOTION. In Devotion there is this great peculiarity, — that it is nei- ther the work nor the play of our nature, but is something higher than either, — more ideal than the one, more real than the other. All human activities besides are one of these two things, — either the mere aim at an external end, or the mere outcome of an inner feeling. On the one hand, we plough and sow, we build and navigate, that we may win the adorn- ments and securities of life ; on the other hand, we sing and dance, we carve and paint, that we may put forth the pressure of harmony and joy and beauty breaking from within. Me- chanical Toil terminates in a solid product ; graceful Art is content with simple expression ; but Religion is degraded when it is reduced to either character. It is not a labor of utility ; and he who looks to it as a means of safety, to ingra- tiate himself with an awful God, and bespeak an interest in a hidden Future, is an utter stranger to its essence ; his habits and words may be cast in its mould, but the spark of its life is not kindled in his heart. When fed by the fuel of pru- dence, the fire is all spent in fusing it into form ; and the finished product is a cold and metal mimicry, that neither moves nor glows. Nor is Religion a simple gesture of pas- sion ; and to class it with mere natural language, to treat it as the rhythmical delirium of the soul working off an irre- pressible enthusiasm, is to empty it of its real meaning and contents, and sink it from a divine attraction to a human excitement. The postures and movements and tones which INTRODUCTION. Xlll simply manifest the impassioned mind are content to go off into space, and pass away ; tliey direct themselves nowhither ; they have no more object than a convulsion ; they ask only leave to be the last shape of a feeling that must have way ; and be the inspiration what it may, they close and consum- mate its history. But he who prays is at the beginning of aspiration, not at the evaporating end of impulse ; he is drawn, not driven ; he is not painting himself upon vacancy, but is surrendering himself to a Presence real and everlast- ing. If he flings out his arms, it is not in blind paroxysm, but that he may embrace and be embraced ; if he cries aloud, it is that he may be heard ; if he makes melody of the silent heart, it is no soliloquy flung into emptiness, but the low- breathing love of spirit to Spirit. Devotion is not the play even of the highest faculties, but their deep earnest. It is no doubt the culminating point of reverence ; but reverence is impossible without an object, and could never culminate at all, or pass into the Infinite, unless its object did so too. In every case we find that the faculties and susceptibilities of a being tell true, and are the exact measure of the outer life it has to live ; and just as many and as large proportions as it has, to just so many and so great objects does it stand relat- ed ; so that from the axis of its nature }ou may always draw the curve of its existence. Human worship, therefore, turn- ing to the living God as the infant's eye to light, is itself a witness to Him whom it feels after and adores ; it is " the image and shadow of heavenly things," the parallel cham- ber in our nature with that Holy of Holies whither its incense ever ascends. Ill a similar strain is this argument to show that DEVOTION IS NOT A MISTAKE. Be assured, all visible greatness of mind grows in looking at an invisible that is greater. And since it is inconceivable that what is most sublime in humanity should spring from vis- b XIV INTRODUCTION. ion of a thing that is not, that what is most real and com- manding with us should come of stretching the soul into the unreal and empty, that historic durability should be the gift of spectral fancies, we must hold these devout natures to be at one with everlasting Fact, — to feel truly that the august forms of Justice and Holiness are at home in heaven, the ob- ject there of clearer insight and more perfect veneration. There are those who please themselves with the idea that the world will outgrow its habits of worship ; that the newspaper will supersede the preacher and prophet ; that the apprehen- sion of scientific laws will replace the fervor of moral inspi- rations ; that this sphere of being will then be perfectly administered when no reference to another distracts attention. But, for my own part, I am persuaded, that life would soon become intolerable on earth, were it copied from nothing in the heavens ; that its deeper affections would pine away and its lights of purest thought grow pale, if it lay shrouded in no Holy Spirit, but only in the wilderness of space. The most sagacious secular voice leaves, after all, a chord untouched in the human heart : listening too long to its didactic monotone, we begin to sigh for the rich music of hope and faith. The dry glare of noonday knowledge hurts the eye by plying it for use and denying it beauty ; and we long to be screened behind a cloud or two of moisture and of mystery, that shall mellow the glory and cool the air. Never can the world be less to us, than when we make it all in all. Our author makes a striking reply to the common assertion that "THEOLOGY IS NOT A PROGRESSIVE SCIENCE." It may, however, be retrogressive ; and it is sure to repay flippant neglect by lending its empty space to mean delusions. To its great problems some answer will always be attempted ; and there is much to choose between the solutions, however imperfect,* found by reverential wisdom, and the degrading INTRODUCTION. XV falsehoods tendered in reply by the indifferent and superficial. Even in their failures, there is a vast difference between the explorings of the seeing and the blind. We deny, however, that Christian theology can assume any aspect of failure, except to those who use a false measure of success. It is not in the nature of religion, of poetry, of art, to exhibit the kind of progress that belongs to physical science. They dif- fer from it in seeking, not the phenomena of the universe, but its essence, — not its laws of change, but its eternal meanings, — not outward nature, in short, except as expressive of the in- ner thought of God ; and being thus intent upon the enduring spirit and very ground of things, they cannot grow by nu- merical accretion of facts and exacter registration of succes- sions. They are the product, not of the patient sense and comparing intelligence which are always at hand, but of a deeper and finer insight, changing with the atmosphere of the affections and will. Instead of looking, therefore, for perpet- ual advance of discovery in theology, we should naturally expect an ebb and flow of light, answering to the moral con- dition of men's minds ; and may be content if the divine truth, lost in the dulness of a material age, clears itself into fresh forms with the returning breath of a better time. Most readers will find suggestions of great freshness ill the passage next cited : — THE HEART OF CHRISTIANITY. To lose sight of this principle in estimating Christianity, and to insist on judging it, not by its matured character in Christendom, not by the unconscious spirit of its founders, but by their personal views and purposes, is to overlook the divine in it in order to fasten on the human ; to seek the winged creature of the air in the throbbing chrysalis ; and is like judging the place of the Hebrews in history by the court and the proverbs of Solomon, or the value of Puritan- ism by the sermon of a hill-preacher before the civil war. XVI INTRODUCTION. The primitive Christianity was certainly different from that of other ages ; but there is no reason for believing that it was better. The representation often made of the early Church, as having only truth, and feeling only love, and liv- ing in simple sanctity, is contradicted by every page of the Christian records. The Epistles are entirely occupied in driving back guilt and passion, or in correcting errors of be- lief; nor is it always possible to approve of the temper in which they perform the one task, or to assent to the methods by which they attempt the other. Principles and affections were indeed secreted in the heart of the first disciples, which were to have a great future, and to become the highest truth of the world. But it was precisely of these that they rarely thought at all. The Apostles themselves speak slightingly of them, as baby's food ; and the great faith in God, the need of repentant purity of heart, with the trust in immortality, — the very doctrines which we should name as the permanent essence of Christian faith, — are expressly declared by them to be the childish rudiments of belief, on which the attention of the grown Christian will disdain to dwell. And what did they prefer to these sublime truths, as the nutriment of their life and the pride of their wisdom ? Allegories about Isaac and Ishmael, parallels between Christ and Melchisedec, new readings of history and prophecy to suit the events in Pales- tine, and a constant outlook for the end of all things. These were the grand topics on which their minds eagerly worked, and on which they labored to construct a consistent theory. These give the form to their doctrine, the matter to their spirit. These are what you will get, if you go indiscrim- inately to their writings for a creed : and these are no more Christianity than the pretensions of Hildebrand or the visions of Swedenborg. The true religion lies elsewhere, just in the things that were ever present with them, hit never esteemecL Just as your friend may spend his anxiety on his station, his usefulness, his appearance and repute, and fear lest he should show nothing deserving your regard, while all the time you love him for the pure graces, the native wild-flowers, of his INTRODUCTION. Xvii heart ; so do the choicest servants of God ever think one thing of themselves, while they are dear to him and revered by us for quite another. " The weak things " in the Church not less than in "" the world hath he chosen to confound the mighty ; the simple, to strike dumb the wise ; and things that are not, to supersede the things that are." In rude ages, and amid feudal customs, it has perhaps been no unhappy thing that this image of servitude has been trans- mitted into the conceptions of faith : it may have touched with some sanctity an inevitable submission, and mingled a sentiment of loyalty with religion. But the external relation of serf and lord is no type of the internal relation of spirit to spirit, which alone constitutes religion to us. To God himself, with all his infinitude, we are not slaves ; we are not his property, hni his children; he regards us, not as things, but as persons ; he does not so much command us, as appeal to us ; and in our obedience, it is not his bidding that we serve, but that divine Law of Right of which he makes us conscious as the rule of His nature only more perfectly than of ours. To obey him as slaves, in fear, and with an e}e upon his power, is, with all our punctuality and anxiety, sim- ply and entirely to disobey him ; nor is anything precious in his sight, except the free consent of heart with which we apprehend what is holy to his thought and embrace what is in harmony with his perfection. Still less can we be slaves to Christ, who is no autocrat to us, but our freely followed leader towards God ; the guide of our pilgrim troop in quest of a holy land ; who gives us no law from the mandates of his will, but only interprets for us, and makes burn within us, in characters of fire, the law of our own hearts ; who has no power over us, except through the affections he awakens and the aspirations he sets upon the watch. We have emerfied from the Religion of Laiv, whose only sentiment is that of obedience to sovereignty, we have passed from the religion of Salvation, whose life consists in gratitude to a Deliverer ; and we are capable only of a religion of reverence^ which bows before the authority of Goodness. And in the infinite ranks b* XVIU INTRODUCTION. of excellence, from the highest to the lowest, there are no lords and slaves ; the dependence is ever that of internal charm, not of external bond ; the authority is but represented and impersonated in another and a better soul, but has its living seat within our own ; and in this true and elevating worship, the more we are disposed of bj another, the more do we feel that we are our own. This is a relation which the political terms of the expected theocracy are ill adapted to express ; and if we have requh-ed many centuries to grope our way to this clearest glory of religion, to disengage it from the impure admixture of servile fear and revolting pre- sumption ; if it has taken long for us to melt away in our imagination the images of thrones and tribunals, of prize- givings and prisons, of a police and assizes of the universe ; if only at the eleventh hour of our faith, the cloud has passed away, and shown us the true angel-ladder that springs from earth to heaven, the pure climax of souls whereon each be- low looks up and rises, yet each above bends down and helps ; — the discovery which brings such peace and freedom to the heart, has been delayed by the mistaken identification of the entire creed of the first age with the essence of Christianity. Now that God has shown us so much more, has tried the divine seed of the Gospel on so various a soil of history, and enabled us to distinguish its fairest blossoms and its choicest fruits, a much larger meaning than was possible at first must be given to the purpose of his revelation. Even to Paul, Christ was mainly the great representative of a theocratic idea ; and was in no other sense an object of spiritual belief, than that he was not on earth and mortal, but in heaven and immortal. That faith in Christ, which then prominently denot'ed belief in his appointed return, and allegiance to him as God's viceroy in this world, is now transferred into quite a different thincc- It is altogether a moral and affectionate sentiment : an acknowledgment of him as the highest imper- sonation of divine excellence and inspired insight yet given to the world ; a trust in him as the only realized type of per- fection that can mediate for us between ourselves and God ; INTRODUCTION. XIX a faithfulness to him, as making us conscious of Avhat we are and what God and our conscience would have us to be. It is vain to pretend that revelation is a fixed and stereotyped thing. It was born, as the divinest things must be, among human conditions ; and into it ever since human conditions have perpetually flowed. The elements of Hebrew thought surrounded the sacred centre at first, and have been errone- ously identified with it by all Unitarian churches in every age. The Hellenic intellect afterwards streamed towards the fresh point of life and faith, and gathered around it the met- aphysical system of Trinitarian dogma in which orthodox communions of all times have, with parallel error, sought the essence of the Gospel. The true principle of the religion has been secreted in both, and consisted in neither: it has lain unnoticed in the midst, in the silent chamber of the heart, around which the clamor of the disputatious intellect whirls without entrance. The agency of Christ's mind as the ex- pression of God's moral nature and providence, and as the realized ideal of beauty and excellence, — this is the power of God and the wisdom of God, which has made vain the counsels of the world, and baffled the foolishness of the Church. This is the Gospel's centre of stability, — " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." Few persons can be insensible to the sublimity of this expression upon the relation between CHRIST, NATURE, PROVIDENCE, AND GOD. In conclusion, then, I revert, with freshened persuasion, to the statement with which I commenced. Jesus Christ of Nazareth, God hath presented to us simply in his inspired humanity. Him we accept, not indeed as very God, but as the true image of God, commissioned to show what no writ- ten doctrinal record could declare, the entire moral perfections of Deity. We accept, not indeed his body, not the strug- gles of his sensitive nature, not the travail of his soul, but XX INTRODUCTION. his purity, his tenderness, his absolute devotion to the great idea of right, his patient and compassionate warfare against misery and guih, as the most distinct and beautiful expres- sion of the Divine mind. The peculiar office of Christ is to supply a new moral image of Providence ; and everything, therefore, except the moral complexion of his mind, we leave behind as human and historical merely, and apply to no re- ligious use. I have already stated in what way nature and the Gospel combine to bring before us the great object of our trust and worship. The universe gives us the scale of God, and Christ, his Spirit. We climb to the infinitude of his nature by the awful pathway of the stars, where whole forests of Avorlds silently quiver here and there, like a small leaf of light. We dive into his eternity, through the ocean waves of time, that roll and solemnly break on the imagination, as we trace the wrecks of departed things upon our present globe. The scope of his intellect, and the majesty of his rule, are seen in the tranquil order and everlasting silence that reign through the fields of his volition. And the spirit that animates the whole is like that of the Prophet of Naza- reth ; the thoughts that fly upon the swift light throughout creation, charged with fates unnumbered, are like the healing mercies of One that passed no sorrow by. The government of this world, its mysterious allotments of good and ill, its successions of birth and death, its hopes of progress and of peace, each life of individual or nation, is under the adminis- tration of One, of whose rectitude and benevolence, whose sympathy with all the holiest aspirations of our virtue and our love, Christ is the appointed emblem. A faith that spreads around and within the mind a Deity thus sublime and holy, feeds the light of every pure affection, and presses with omnipotent power on the conscience ; and our only prayer is, that we may walk as children of such hght. It seems as if no one capable of understanding could resist the convincing cogency of the following exhi- bition of INTRODUCTION. XXI THE IDEA OF VICARIOUS JUSTICE. It is only natural that the parable of the Prodigal Son should be no favorite with those who deny the unconditional mercy of God. The place which this divine tale occupies in the Unitarian theology appears to be filled, in the orthodox scheme, by the story of Zaleucus, king of the Locrians ; which has been appealed to in the present controversy by both the lecturers on the Atonement, and seems to be the only endurable illustration presented, even by Pagan history, of the execution of vicarious punishment. This monarch had passed a law condemning adulterers to the loss of both eyes. His own son was convicted of the crime ; and, to sat- isfy at once the claims of law and of clemency, the royal parent " commanded one of his own eyes to be pulled out, and one of his son's." Is it too bold a heresy to confess that there seems to me something heathenish in this example, and that, as an exponent of the Divine character, I more willingly revere the Father of the prodigal than the father of the adul- terer ? Without entering, however, into any comparison between the Locrian and the Galilean parable, I would observe, that the vicarious theory receives no illustration from this frag- ment of ancient history. There is no analogy between the cases, except in the violation of truth and wisdom which both exhibit ; and whatever we are instructed to admire in Za- leucus, will be found on close inspection to be absent from the orthodox representation of God. AYe pity the Grecian king, who had made a law without foresight of its application, and so sympathize with his desire to evade it, that any quibble which legal ingenuity can devise for this purpose passes with slight condemnation ; casuistry refuses to be severe with a man implicated in such a difficulty. But the Creator and Legislator of the human race, having perfect knowledge of the future, can never be surprised into a similar perplexity ; or ever pass a law at one time which at another he desires to XXU INTRODUCTION. evade. Even were it so, there would seem to be less that is unworthy of his moral perfection in saying plainly, with the ancient Hebrews, that he " repented of the evil he thought to do," and said, " It shall not be, " than in ascribing to him a device for preserving consistency, in which no one capable of appreciating veracity can pretend to discern any sincere ful- fihnent of the law. However barbarous the idea of Divine " repentance," it is at least ingenuous. Nor does this incident of Zaleucus and his son present any parallel to the alleged relation between the Divine Father who receives, and the Divine Son who gives, the satisfaction for human guilt. The Locrian king took a part of the penalty himself, and left the remainder where it was due ; but the Sovereign Lawgiver of Calvinism puts the whole upon another. To sustain the analogy, Zaleucus should have permitted an innocent son to have both his eyes put out, and the convicted adulterer to escape. The doctrine of Atonement has introduced among Trinita- rians a mode of speaking respecting God, which grates most painfully against the reverential affections due to him. His nature is dismembered into a number of attributes, foreign to each other, and preferring rival claims ; the Divine tranquil- lity appears as the equilibrium of opposing pressures, — the Divine administration as a resultant from the collision of hos- tile forces. Goodness pleads for that which holiness forbids ; and the Paternal God would do many a mercy, did the Sov- ereign God allow. The idea of a conflict or embarrassment in the Supreme Mind being thus introduced, and the believer being haunted by the feeling of some tremendous difficulty affecting the Infinite government, the vicarious economy is brought forward as the relief, the solution of the whole per- plexity ; the union, by a blessed compromise, of attributes that could never combine in any scheme before. The main business of theology is made to consist in stating the condi- tions and expounding the solution of this imaginary problem. The cardinal difficulty is thought to be the reconciliation of justice and mercy ; and, as the one is represented under the INTRODUCTION. XXlll image of a Sovereign, the other under that of a Father, the question assumes this form : How can the same being at every moment possess both these characters, without abandoning any function or feeling appropriate to either? how, especially, can the Judge remit ? — it is beyond his power ; yet how can the Parent punish to the uttermost ? — it is contrary to his nature. All this difficulty is merely fictitious, arising out of the determination to make out that God is both wholly Judge and wholly Father ; from an anxiety, that is, to adhere to two metaphors, as applicable, in every particular, to the Divine Being. It is evident that both must be, to a great extent, in- appropriate ; and in nothing, surely, is the impropriety more manifest, than in the assertion that, as sovereign, God is nat- urally bound to execute laws which, nevertheless, it would be desirable to remit, or change in their operation. What- ever painful necessities the imperfection of human legislation and judicial procedure may impose, the Omniscient Ruler can make no law which he will not to all eternity, and with entire consent of his whole nature, deem it well to execute. This is the Unitarian answer to the constant question, " How can God forgive in defiance of his own law ? " It is not in defiance of his laws : every one of which will be fulfilled to the uttermost, in conformity with his first intent ; but nowhere has he declared that he would not forgive. All justice con- sists in treating moral agents according to their character ; the inexorability of human law arises solely from the imper- fection with which it can attain this end, and is not the es- sence, but the alloy, of equity ; but God, who searches and controls the heart, exercises that perfect justice, which per- mits the penal suffering to depart only with the moral guilt ; and pardons, not by cancelling any sentence, but by olxning his eternal purpose to meet the wanderer returning home- ward, and give his blessing to the restored. Only by such restoration can any past guilt be effiiced. The thoughts, emo- tions, and sufferings of sin, once committed, are woven into the fabric of the soul ; and are as incapable of being abso- XXIV INTRODUCTION. lutely obliterated thence and put back into non-existence, as moments of being struck from the past, or the parts of space from infinitude. Herein we behold alike " the goodness and the severity of God " ; and adore in him, not the balance of contrary tendencies, but the harmony of consentaneous per- fections. How plainly does experience show that, if his per- sonal unity be given up, his moral unity cannot be preserved ! The author himself is the best exemplification of the man described in this account of the DIFFERENCE BETWEEN APPREHENSION AND INTERPRETATION. The difference between the ordinary visual gaze upon the external universe, and the interpreting glance of science, is felt by every cultivated understanding to be immeasurable ; — and the contrast is not less between that dull sense of what passes within him, which is forced upon a man by mere practical experience, and the exact consciousness, the discrim- inative perception, the easy comprehension of his own (and, so far as they are expressed by faithful symbols, of others') states and affections, possessed by the patient analyst of thoufrht and emotion, and careful collector of their laws. The mighty mass of human achievement and human failure, in intellectual research, in moral endeavor, in social economy and government, lapses into order before him, and distributes itself among the provinces of determinate laws. The struc- ture of a child's perplexity, and the fallacies of the most am- bitious hypothesis, lie open to him as readily, as to the artisan a flaw in the fabric of his own craft. The creations of art fall before him into their elements ; and, dissolving away their constitutent matter^ which is an accident of their age, leave upon his mind their permanent form of beauty, as his guide to a true and noble criticism. The progress and the aberrations of human reason, in its quest of truth, are as clearly appreciated by him, as the passages of happy skill or ignorant roving in some voyage of discovery, when the out- INTRODUCTION. XXV lines and relations of the sphere on which it is made become fully known. Discerning distinctly the different kinds of evidence appropriate to different departments of truth, and weighing the scientific value of every idea and metliod of thought, he is not at the mercy of each superficial impression and obtrusive phase presented to him by the subjects of his contemplation ; but he attains a certain rational tact and graduated feeling of certainty in abstract matters of opinion, by which he escapes alike the miseries of undefined doubt, and the passions of unqualified dogmatism. In short, the great idea of Science is applied by him to the complicated workings of the mind of man ; interprets the activities of his nature, and gives laws to the administration of his life ; and, with wonderful analysis, investigates the properties, and estab- lishes the equation, of their most labyrinthine curves. What a rebuke upon dogmatic sciolists, what a glorious invitatiou to study, are conveyed in the genial, broad, mental hospitality of the succeeding par- agraph ! NECESSITY OF LEARNING IN PHILOSOPHY. If there is one department of knowledge more than another in which a contemptuous disregard of the meditations and theories of distant periods and nations is misplaced, it is in the philosophy of man, — which can have no adequate breadth of basis till it reposes on the consciousness and covers the mental experience of the universal race ; and to construct Avhich out of purely personal materials, is like attempting to lay down the curves and finish the theory of terrestrial mag- netism on the strength of a few closet experiments. No man, however large-thoughted and composite his mind, can accept of himself as the type of universal human nature. It will even be a great and rare endowment, if, with every aid of exact learning and unwearying patience, he is able to pene- trate the atmosphere of others' understanding, and to observe c XXvi INTRODUCTION. the forms and colors which the objects of contemplation as- sume, when beheld through this peculiar medium. Simply to avail one's self of the experience of mankind, and know what it has really been, demands no little scope of imagination and versatility of intellectual sympathy. When these quali- ties are so deficient in a thinker that he cannot well achieve this knowledge, it is a great misfortune to his philosophy ; when the want is such that he does not even desire it, it amounts to an absolute disqualification. Without, therefore, pledging ourselves to the eclectic principles which prevail in the present school of philosophy in France, we must beware of the intolerant dogmatism of Bentham in England, sanc- tioned, as we have seen, by one of the masters of the antago- nist metaphysics in Germany. Indeed, it will be a chief purpose of all my lectures to enable you to profit by the light of other minds ; in every province of the vast region which we shall explore together, to indicate the paths which they have traversed before, nor ever to turn away from their points of discovery, without raising some rude monument at least of honest and commemorative praise. To introduce you to the works, to interpret the difficulties, to do honor to the labors, to review the opinions, of the great masters of specula- lative thought in every age and in many lands, will be an indispensable portion of my duty ; — a task most arduous indeed, but than which none can be more grateful to one who loves to trace, through all their affinities, the indestructible types of truth and beauty in the human mind ; and to mark the natural laws, connecting together the most opposite conti- nents and climes of thought, as parts, successively colonized and cultivated, of one great intellectual world. But in addi- tion to the study of the several classes of psychological and moral doctrine as they present themselves in the order of science, it will be important to spread out the literature of philosophy before us in the order of time ; to gain an insight into the natural development of successive modes of thought on epeculative subjects ; to notice the action and reaction of philosophy and practical life ; to ascertain whether opinion INTRODUCTION. XXvii on these abstract matters really advances into knowled'i^e and has any determinate progression, or whether it oscillates for ever on either side of some fixed idea, or line of mental grav- itation. In short, having surveyed our subject systematically, we shall go over it again chronologically ; and call upon phi- losophy, when it has recited its creed, and revealed its wisdom, to finish all by writing its history. The hints given in Mr. Martineau's frequent refer- ences to the bearing of scientific knowledge and laws upon theological speculations are very important. We adduce a single example. PHYSICAL SCIENCE AND RELIGION. An accomplished and thoughtful observer of nature — Hugh Miller, the geologist — has somewhere remarked, that religion has lost its dependence on metaphysical theories, and must henceforth maintain itself upon the domain of physical science. He accordingly exhorts the guardians of sacred truth to prepare themselves for the approaching crisis in its history, by exchanging the study of thoughts for the appre- hension of things, and carefully cultivating the habit of in- ductive research. The advice is excellent, and proceeds from one whose own example has amply proved its worth ; and unless the clergy qualify themselves to take part in the dis- cussions which open themselves with the advance of natural knowledge, they will assuredly be neither secure in their per- sonal convictions nor faithful to their public trust. Tlie only fault to be found with this counsel is, that in recommending one kind of knowledge it disparages another, and betrays that limited intellectual sympathy which is the bane of all noble culture. Geology, astronomy, chemistry, so far from succeed- ing to the inheritance of metaphysics, do but enrich its prob- lems with new conceptions and give a larger outline to its range; and should they, in the wantonness of their young ascendency, persuade men to its neglect, they will pay the XXVm INTRODUCTION. penalties of their contempt by the appearance of confusion in their own doctrine. The advance of any one line of human thought demands — especially for the security of faith — the parallel movement of all the rest ; and the attempt to substi- tute one intellectual reliance for another, mistakes for progress of knowledge what may be only an exchange of ignorance. In particular, the study of external nature must proceed pari passu with the study of the human mind ; and the errors of an age too exclusively reflective will not be remedied, but only reversed, by mere reaction into sciences of outward fact and observation. These physical pursuits, followed into their further haunts, rapidly run up into a series of notions com- mon to them all, — expressed by such words as Law, Cause, Force, — which at once transfer the jurisdiction from the provincial courts of the special sciences to the high chancery of universal philosophy. To conduct the pleadings — still more to pronounce the judgment — there, other habits of mind are needed than are required in the museum and the observatory ; and the history of knowledge, past and present, abounds with instances of men who, with the highest merit in particular walks of science, have combined a curious incom- petency of survey over the whole. Hence, very few natural philosophers, however eminent for great discoveries and dreaded by the priesthood of their day, have made any deep and durable impression on the religious conception of the universe, as the product and expression of an Infinite Mind ; and in tracing the eras of human faith, the deep thinker comes more prominently into view than the skilful interrogator of nature. In the history of religion, Plato is a greater fig- ure than Archimedes ; Spinoza than Newton ; Hume and Kant than Yolta and La Place ; even Thomas Carlyle than Justus Liebig. Our picture indeed of the system of things is immensely enlarged, both in space and duration, by the pro- gress of descriptive science ; and the grouping of its objects and events is materially changed. But the altered scene carries with it the same expression to the soul ; speaks the same language as to its origin ; renews its ancient glance with INTRODUCTION. XXIX an auguster beauty; and, in spite of all dynamic theories, reproduces the very modes of faith and doubt which belonged to the age both of the old Organon and of the new. The ultimate problem of all philosophy and all religion is this : " How are Ave to conceive aright the origin and first j)rinciple of things ? " The answers, it has been contended by a living author of distinguished merit, are necessarily re- ducible to two, between which all systems are divided, and on the decision of whose controversy, all antagonist speculations would lay down their arms. "In the beginning was Force," says one class of thinkers ; " force, singular or plural, split- ting int© opposites, standing off into polarities, ramifying into attractions and repulsions, heat and magnetism, and climbing through the stages of physical, vital, animal, to the mental life itself." " On the contrary," says the other class, " in the beginning was Thought ; and only in the necessary evolu- tion of its eternal ideas into expression does force arise, — self- realizing thought declaring itself in the types of being and the laws of phenomena." We need hardly say, that the former of these two notions coalesces with the creed of Athe- ism, and is most frequently met with upon the path of the physical sciences, while the latter is favored by the mathe- matical and metaphysical, and gives the essence of Pantheism. Each of them has insurmountable difficulties, with which it is successfully taunted by the other. Start from blind force; and how, by any spinning from that solitary centre, are we ever to arrive at the seeing intellect ? Can the lower create the hiirher, and the unconscious enable us to think ? Start from pure thinking, and how then can you get any force for the production of objective effects ? How metamorphose a passage of dialect into the power of gravitation, and a silent corollary into a flash of lightning ? In taking the intellect as the type of God, this ditficulty must always be felt. AVe are well aware that it is not in this endowment that our dynamic energy resides. The activitij which we ascribe to our intel- lect is not a power going out into external efficiency," but a mere passage across the internal field of successive thought<5 c* XXX INTRODUCTION. as spontaneous phenomena. Nor have we, as thinking beings only, any option with respect to the thoughts thus streaming over the theatre of rational consciousness ; our constitution legislates for us in this particular, and the order of sugges- tion is determined by laws having their seat in us. Finally, we are not, by mere thinking capacity, constituted persons, any more than a sleeper who should never wake, yet always be engaged with rational and scientific dreams, would be a person. Without some further endowment, we should only be a logical life and development. All these characters are imported into the conception of God, when he is represented as conforming to the type of reason. The activity of intel- lect being wholly internal, the phenomena of the Universe could not be referred to Him as a thinking being, were they not gathered up into the interior of his nature, and con- ceived, not as objective effects of his power, but as purely subjective successions within the theatre of his infinitude. Intellect again having no option, the God of this theory is without freedom, and is represented as the eternal necessity of reason. And lastly, in fidelity to the same analog}^. He is not a divine Person, but rather a Thinking Thing, or the thinking function of the universe ; we may say, universal science in a state of self -consciousness. The necessity under which Pantheism lies, of fetching all that is to be referred to God into the interior of his being, and dealing with it as not less a necessary manifestation of his mental essence than are our ideas of the mind that has them, explains the unwilling- ness of this system to allow any motives to God, any field of objective operation, any special relation to individuals, any revealing interposition, any supernatural agency. Is it however true, that human belief can only choose between these two extremes, and must oscillate eternally be- tween the Atheistic homage to Force, and the Pantheistic to Thought ? Far from it ; and it is curiously indicative of the state of the philosophic atmosphere in Germany, that one of her most discerning and wide-seeing authors should find no third possibiUty within the sphere of vision. In any latitude INTRODUCTION. XXxi except one in which moral science has altogether mehed away in the universal solvent of metaphysics, it would occur as one of the most obvious suggestions, that the intellect is not the only element of human nature which may be taken as type of the Divine, and as furnishing a possible solution to the problem of origination. Quitting the two poles of ex- treme philosophy, confessedly incompetent in their separation, we submit that Will presents the middle point which takes up into itself Thought on the one hand and Force on the other ; and which yet, so far from appearing to us as a com- pound arising out of them as an effect, is more easily con- ceived than either as the originating prefix of all phenomena. It has none of the disqualifications which we have remarked as flowing from the others into their respective systems of doctrine. It carries with it, in its very idea, the co-presence of Thought, as the necessary element within whose sphere it has to manifest itself. Its phenomena cannot exist alone ; it acts on preconceptions, which stand related to it, however, not as its source, but as its conditions, and are its co-ordinates in the effect rather than its generating antecedents. If there- fore all things are issued by Will, there is Mind at the foun- tain-head, and the absurdity is avoided of deriving intelli- gence from unintelligence. While it thus escapes the diffi- culty of passing from mere Force to Thought, it is equally clear of the opposite difficulty of making mere Thought sup- ply any Force. The activity of Will is not, like that of In- tellect, a subjective transit of regimented ideas, but an object- ive power going out for the production of effects ; nay, it is Vifree power, exercising preference among data furnished by internal or external conditions present in its field ; and it thus constitutes proper Causality^ which always implies control over an alternative. We need hardly add, that all the requi- sites are thus complete for the true idea of a Person ; and an Infinite Being contemplated under this type is neither a fateful nor a logical principle of necessity, but a living God, out of whose purposed legislation has sprung whatever neces- sity there is, except the self-existent beauty of his holiness. XXXU INTRODUCTION. Thus, between the Force of the physical Atheist, and the Thought of the metaphysical Pantheist, we fix upon the ful- crum of Will as the true balance-point of a moral Theism. It would be impossible, perhaps, to find anywhere a finer instance of perspicuity in condensation, than is given in the followmg reference to LESSING'S THEOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS. Lessing refused to surrender Christianity, on proof of error in its first teachers, uncertainty in its reported miracles, con- tradictions in its early literature, misapplication of Messianic prophecies. All these he regards as but the external acci- dents, ,the transitory media, of the religion, constituting, it may be, its support in one age and its weakness in another. They do not belong to its inner essence, in which alone the real evidence of spiritual truth is found ; and he who detects any- thing amiss with them may even render a service by driving men from sham-proofs, that really persuade no one, to true ones that lie at'the heart of things. Religious doctrine can- not be deduced from mere historical facts without a fierdlSacns 6ty 0)^X0 yeuos vitiating the whole process. Facts indeed may become the proper ground of moral and spiritual faith ; but then they must be facts which come over again and again, and betray an element that is permanent and eternal ; which form part of the experience and consciousness of humanity ; and ally themselves with the Divine by not losing their pres- ence in the world. But unrepeated facts, which limit them- selves to a moment, which are the incidents of a single personality, and are left behind quite insulated in the past, show — were it only by your not expecting them again — that they are detached from the persistent and essential life of the universe and humanity. They are but once and away ; and least of all, therefore, can testify of the untransi- tory and ever-living. The real can teach us only so far as it INTRODUCTION. XXXiii has an ideal kernel, redeeming it from the character of a solitary phenomenon. Among the various expositions and applications of this favorite theme of Lessing's, we select the following sentences from his Axiomata. 1. "The Bible evidently contains more than belongs to Religion." 2. " That in this ' more ' the Bible is still infallible, is mere hypothesis." 3. " The letter is not the spirit, and the Bible is not the Keligion." 4. " The objections therefore against the letter and against the Bible, are not on that account objections against the spirit and asrainst the Reli^rion." 5. " Moreover there was a religion ere there was a Bible." 6. "Christianity was in being before Evangelists and Apos- tles had written. Some time elapsed before the first of them wrote, and a very considerable time before the whole canon was constituted." 7. " However much, therefore, may depend on these writ- ings, it is impossible that the whole truth of the Christian re- ligion can rest upon them." 8. " If there was a period during which, diffused as the Christian religion already was, ;uid many as were the souls filled already with its power, still not a letter had yet been written of the records which have come down to us ; then it must be also possible for all the writings of Evangelists and Apostles to perish, yet the religion taught by them still to subsist." 9. " The religion is not true because Evangelists and Apos- tles taught it ; but they taught it because it is true." 10. " Its interior truth must furnish the interpretation of the writings it has handed down ; and no writings handed down can give it interior truth, if it has none." In his controversy with Goze, he illustrates this distinction between the essence and the historical form of Christianity, by a parable to the following effect. A wise king of a gi'eat realm built a palace of immense size and very peculiar archi- XXXIV INTRODUCTION. tecture. About this structure, there came from the very first a foolish strife to be carried on, especially among reputed connoisseurs, people, that is, who had least looked into the in- terior. This strife was not about the palace itself, but about various old ground-plans of it, and drawings of the same, very difficult to make out. Once, when the watchmen cried out " Fire," these connoisseurs, instead of running to help, snatched up their plans, and, instead of putting out the fire on the spot, kept standing with their plans in hand, making a hubbub all the while, and squabbling about whether this was the spot on fire, and that the place to put it out. Happily, the safety of the palace did not depend on these busy wran- glers, for it was not on fire at all ; the watchmen had been frightened by the Northern lights, and mistaken them for fire. It is impossible to convey by a clearer image Lessing's feeling, that a Christianity once incorporated in the very sub- stance of history and civilization, seated deep in human sen- timent and thought, and developed into literature, law, and life, subsists independently of critical questions, and is with us, not as the contingent vapor that a wind may rise to blow away, but as the cloud that has dropped its rain and mingled with the roots of things. Ill immediate contrast with the foregoing application of a critical method to the historic documents of Christianity, it is beautiful to see the same genius turned with eager joy to a practical recommendation of the experimental life of Christianity. THE REDEEMNG LAW OF SYMPATHY. It is quite true, that self-cure is of all things the most ar- duous ; but that which is impossible to the man within us, may be altogether possible to the God. In truth, the denial of such changes, under the affectation of great knowledge of man, shows an incredible ignorance of men. Why, the his- INTRODUCTION. XXXV tory of every great religious revolution, such as the spread of Methodism, is made up of nothing else ; the instances occur- ring in such number and variety, as to transform the character of whole districts and vast populations, and to put all scepti- cism at utter defiance. And if some more philosophic au- thority is needed for the fact, we may be content with the sanction of Lord Bacon, who observed that a man reforms his habits either altogether or not at all. Deterioration of mind is indeed always gradual ; recovery usually sudden ; for God, by a mystery of mercy, has established this distinction in our secret nature, — that, while we cannot, by one dark plunge, sympathize with guilt far beneath us, but gaze at it witli recoil till intermediate shades have rendered the degra- dation tolerable, we are yet capable of sympathizing with moral excellence and beauty infinitely above us ; so that, while the debased may shudder and sicken at even the true picture of themselves, they can feel the silent majesty of self- denying and disinterested duty. With a demon can no man feel complacency, though tlie demon be himself; but God can all spirits reverence, though his holiness be an infinite deep. And thus the soul, privately uneasy at its insincere state, is prepared, when vividly presented with some sublime object veiled before, to be pierced, as by a flash from heaven, with an instant veneration, sometimes intense enough to fuse the fetters of habit, and drop them to the earth whence they were forged. The mind is ready, like a liquid on the eve of crys- tallization, to yield up its state on the touch of the first sharp point, and dart, over its surface and in its depths, into bril- liant and beautiful forms, and from being turbid and weak as water, to become clear as crystal, and solid as the rock. One of the most elaborate and valuable productions from Mr. Martincau's pen, an article closely allied in all respects to the ensuing Studies of Christianity, is the one of some portions of which we herewith pre- sent an epitome. XXXVl INTRODUCTION. THE CHKISTIAN VIEW OF MORAL EVIL. The Divine sentiments towards right and wrong ever j man naturally believes to be a reflection of whatever is most pure and solemn in his own. We cannot be sincerely persuaded, that God looks with aversion on dispositions which we rev(3re as good and noble ; or that he regards with lax indifference the selfish and criminal passions which awaken our own dis- gust. We may well suppose, indeed, his scrutiny more searching, his estimate more severely true, his rebuking look more awful, than our self-examination and remorse can fitly represent ; but we cannot doubt that our moral emotions, as far as they go, are in sympathy Avith his ; that we know, by our own consciousness, the general direction of his approval and displeasure ; and that, in proportion as our perceptions of duty are rendered clear, our judgment more nearly ap- proaches the precision of the Omniscient award. Our own conscience is the window of heaven through which we gaze on God ; and, as its colors perpetually change, his aspect changes too ; — if they are bright and fair, he dwells as in the warm light of a rejoicing love ; if they are dark and turbid, he hides himself in robes of cloud and storm. When you have lost your self-respect, you have never thought yourself an object of Divine complacency. In moments fresh from sin, flushed with the shame of an insulted mind, when you have broken another resolve, or turned your back upon a noble toil, or succumbed to a mean passion, or lapsed into the sick- ness of self-indulgence, could you ever turn a clear and open face to God, nor think it terrible to meet his eye ? Could you imagine yourself in congeniality with him, when you gave yourself up to the voluble sophistry of self-excuse, and the loose hurry of forgetfulness ? Or did you not discern him rather in your own accusing heart, and meet him in the silent anguish of full confession, and find in the recognition of your alienation the first hope of return? To all unperverted minds, the verdict of conscience sounds with a preternatural INTRODUCTION. XXXVU voice ; it is not the homely talk of their own poor judgment, but an oracle of the sanctuary. There is something of anti- cipation in our remorse, as well as of retrospect ; and we feel that it is not the mere survey of a gloomy past with the slow lamp of our understanding, but a momentary piercing of the future with the vivid lightning of the skies. Our moral nature, left to itself, intuitively believes that guilt is an estrangement from God, — an unqualified opposition to his will, — a literal service of the enemy ; that he abhors it, and will give it no rest till it is driven from his presence, that is, into anni- hilation ; that no part of our mind belongs to him but the pure, and just, and disinterested affections which he fosters, the faithful will which he strengthens, the virtue, often damped, whose smoking flax he will not quench, and the good re- solves, ever frail, whose bruised reed he will not break ; and that he has no relation but of displeasure, no contact but of resistance, with our selfishness and sin. In the simple faith of the conscience it is no figure of speech to say, that God " is angry with the wicked every day," and is "of purer eyes than to behold iniquity." So long as the natural religion of the heart is undisturbed, to sin is, in the plainest and most positive sense, to set up against Heaven, and frustrate its will. Soon, however, the understanding disturbs the tranquillity of this belief, and constructs a rival creed. The primitive conception of God is acquired, I believe, without reasoning, and emerges from the affections ; it is a transcript of our own emotions, — an investiture of them with external personality and infinite magnitude. But a secondary idea of Deity arises in the intellect, from its reasonings about causation. Curi- osity is felt respecting the origin of things ; and the order, beauty, and mechanism of external nature are too con- spicuous not to force upon the observation the conviction of a great Architect of the universe, from whose designing reason its forces and its laws mysteriously sprung. Hence the intellectual conception of God the Creator, which comes into inevitable collision with the moral notion of God the holy d XXXVIU INTRODUCTION. watch of virtue. For if the system of creation is the pro- duction of his Omniscience ; if he has constituted human nature as it is, and placed it in the scene whereon it acts ; if the arrangements by which happiness is allotted, and char- acter is formed, are the contrivance of his thought and the work of his hand, — then the sufferings and the guilt of every being were . objects of his original contemplation, and the productions of his own design. The deed of crime must, in this case, be as much an integral part of his Providence, as the efforts and sacrifices of virtue ; and the monsters of licen- tiousness and tyranny, whose images deform the scenery of history, are no less truly his appointed instruments, than the martyr and the sage. And though we remain convinced that he does not make choice of evil in his government for its own sake, but only for ultimate ends worthy of his per- fections, still we can no longer see how he can truly hate that which he employs for the production of good. That which is his chosen instrument cannot be sincerely regarded as his everlasting enemy ; and only figuratively can he be said to repudiate a power which he continually wields. There must be some sense in which it appears, in the eye of Omniscience, to be eligible ; some point of view at which its horrors vanish ; and where the moral distinctions, which we feel ourselves impelled to venerate, disappear from the regards of God. Here, then, is a fearful contradiction between the religion of conscience and the religion of the understanding ; the one pronouncing evil to be the antagonist, the other to be the agent, of the Divine will. In every age has this difficulty laid a heavy weight upon the human heart ; in every age has it pointed the sarcasm of the blasphemer, mingled an occa- sional sadness with the hopes of benevolence, and tinged the devotion of the thoughtful with a somewhat melancholy trust. The Avhole history of speculative religion is one prolonged effort of the human mind to destroy this contrariety ; system after system has been born in the struggle to cast the op- pression ofJ*, — with what result, it will be my object at present INTRODUCTION. XXXIX to explain. The question which we have to consider is this, " How should a Christian think of the origin and existence of evil ? " I propose to advert, first, to the speculative ; secondly, to the scriptural ; thirdly, to the moral relations of the sub- ject ; to inquire what relief we can obtain from pliilosophical schemes, from biblical doctrine, and from practical Chris- tianity. . » • • Let us then, for final decision, consult the practical spirit of Christianity, and ascertain to what view of the origin of sin it awards the preference. Is it well for the consciences and characters of men, to consider God — either directly or through his dependant, Satan, either by his general laws or by vitiating the constitution of our first parents — as the primary source of moral evil ? or, on the contrary, to regard it as in no sense whatever willed by the Supreme Mind, and absolutely inimical to his Providence ? Are we most in har- mony with the characteristic spirit of the Gospel when we call sin his instrument, or when we call it his enemy ? For myself, I can never sit at the feet of Jesus, and yield up a reverential heart to his great lessons, without casting myself on the persuasion, that God and evil are everlasting foes ; that never, and for no end, did he create it ; that his will is utterly against it, nor ever touches it, but with annihilating force. Any other view appears to be injurious to the charac- teristic sentiments, and at variance with the distinguishing genius, of Christian morality. (1.) Christianity is distinguished by the profound senti- ment of individual responsibility which pervades it. All the arbitrary forms, and sacerdotal interpositions, and hereditary rights, through which other systems seek the Divine favor, are disowned by it. It is a religion eminently personal ; es- tablishing the most intimate and solitary dealings between God and every human soul. It is a religion eminently natural; eradicating no indigenous affection of our mind, distorting no primitive moral sentiment; but simj)ly conse- crating the obligations proper to our nature, and taking up Xl INTRODUCTION. with a divine voice the whispers, scarce articulate before, of the conscience within us. In this deep harmony with our inmost consciousness of dutj resides the true power of our rehgion. It subdues and governs our hearts, as a wise con- queror rules the empire he has won ; not by imposing a sys- tem of strange laws, but by arming with higher authority, and administering with more resolute precision, the laws already recognized and revered. To trifle in any way with this plain and solemn principle, to invent forms of speech tending to conceal it, to apply to moral good and ill language which assimilates them to phys- ical objects and exchangeable property, implies frivolous and irreverent ideas of sin and excellence. The whole weight of this charge evidently falls on the scheme which speaks of* human guilt as an hereditary entail ; a scheme which shocks and confounds our primary notion of right and wrong, and, by rendering them impersonal qualities, reduces them to empty names. No construction can be given to the system, which does not pass this insult on the conscience. In what sense do we share the guilt of our progenitor? His conces- sion to temptation did not occur within our mind, or belong in any way to our history. And if, without participation in the act of wrong, we are to have its penalties, crimes in the planet Saturn may be expected to shower curses on the earth ; for why may not justice go astray in space, as rea- sonably as in time ? If nothing more be meant, than that from our first parents we inherit a constitution liable to in- tellectual error and moral transgression, — still it is evident that, until this liability takes actual effect, no sin exists, but only its possibility ; and when it takes effect, there is just so much guilt, and no more, than might be committed by the individual's will: so that where there is no volition, as in infancy, cruelty only could inflict punishment ; and where there is pure volition, as in many a good passage of the foulest life, equity itself could not withhold approval. (2.) I submit as a second distinguishing feature of practical Christianity, that it makes no great, certainly no exclusive, INTRODUCTION. xli appeal to the prudential feelings, as instruments of duty ; treats them as morally incapable of so sacred a work ; and relies, chiefly and characteristically, on affections of the heart, which no motives of reward and punishment can have the smallest tendency to excite. The Gospel, indeed, like all things divine, is unsystematic and unbound by technical distinctions, and makes no meta- physical separation between the will and the affections. It is too profoundly adapted to our nature, not to address itself copiously to both. The doctrine of retribution, being a solemn truth, appears with all its native force in the teachings of Christ, and arms many of his appeals with a persuasion just and terrible. But never was there a religion (containing these motives at all) so frugal in the use of them ; so able, on fit occasions, to dispense with them ; so rich in those inimit% able touches of moral beauty, and tones that penetrate tlia conscience, and generous trust in the better sympathies, which distinguish a morality of the affections. In Christ himself, where is there a trace of the obedience of pious self-interest, computing its everlasting gains, and making out a case for compensation, by submitting to infinite wisdom ? In his character, which is the impersonation of his religion, we surely have a perfect image of spontaneous goodness, unhaunted by the idea of personal enjoyment, and, like that of God, un- bidden but by the intuitions of conscience and the impulses of love. And what teacher less divine ever made such high and bold demands on our disinterestedness ? To lend out our virtue upon interest, to " love them only who love us," he pronounced to be the sinners' morality ; nor was the feeling of duty ever reached, but by those who could " do good, hoping for nothing again," except that greatest of rewards to a true and faithful heart, to be " the children of the Highest," who " is kind unto the unthankful and the evil." In the view of Jesus, all dealings between God and men were not of bargain, but of aflfection. "We must surrender ourselves to him with- out terms ; must be ashamed to doubt him who feeds the birds of the air, and, like the lily of the field, look up to him with a xlii INTRODUCTION. bright and loving eye ; and he, for our much love, will pity and forgive us. In his own ministry, how much less did our Lord rely for disciples on the cogency of mere proof, and the inducements of hope and fear, than on the power of moral sympathy, by which every one that was of God naturally loved him and heard his words ; by which the good shepherd knew his sheep, and they listened to his voice, and followed him ; and without which no man could come unto him, for no spirit of the Father di-ew him. No condition of disci- pleship did Christ impose, save that of " faith in him " ; absolute trust in the spirit of his mind ; a desire of self- abandonment to a love and fidelity like his, without tamper- ing with expediency, or hesitancy in peril, or shrinking from death. There is, then, a wide variance between the genius of Christianity, and that philosophy which teaches that all men must be bouglit over to the side of goodness and of God, by a price suited to their particular form of selfishness and ap- petite for pleasure. Our religion is remarkable for the large confidence it reposes on the disinterested affections, and the vast proportion of the work of life it consigns to them. And in thus seeking to subordinate and tranquillize the prudential feelings, Christ manifested how well he knew what was in man. He recognized the truth, which all experience declares, that in these emotions is nothing great, nothing lovable, noth- ing powerful ; that their energy is perpetually found inca- pable of withstanding the impetuosity of passion ; and that all transcendent virtues, all that brings us to tremble or to kneel, all the enterprises and conflicts which dignify history, and have stamped any new feature on human life, have had their origin in the disinterested region of the mind, — in affec- tions unconsciously entranced by some object sanctifying and divine. He knew, for it was his special mission to make all men feel, that it is the office of true religion to cleanse the sanctuary of the secret affections, and effect a regeneration of the heart. And this is a task which no direct nisus of the will can possibly accomplish, and to which, therefore, all INTRODUCTION. xliii offers of reward and punishment, operating only on the will, are quite inapplicable. The single function of volition is to act ; over the executive part of our nature it is supreme, over the emotional it is powerless ; and all the wrestlings of desire for self-cure and self-elevation, are like the struggles of a child to lift himself. lie who is anxious to be a philanthropist, is admiring benevolence, instead of loving men ; and whoever is laboring to warm his devotions, yearns after piety, not after God. The mind can by no spasmodic bound seize on a new height of emotion, or change the light in which objects appear before its view. Persuade the judgment, bribe the self-in- terests, terrify the expectations, as you will, you can neither dislodge a favorite, nor enthrone a stranger, in the heart. Show me a child that flings an affectionate arm around a parent, and lights up his eyes beneath her face, and I know that there have been no lectures there upon filial love ; but that the mother, being lovable, has of necessity been loved ; for to genial minds it is as impossible to withhold a pure affec- tion, when its object is presented, as for the flower to sulk within the mould, and clasp itself tight within the bud, when the gentle force of spring invites its petals to curl out into the warm light. As you reverence all good affections of our nature, and desire to awaken them, never call them duties, though they be so ; for so doing, you address yourself to the will ; and by hard trying no attachment ever entered the heart. Never preach on their great desirableness and pro- priety ; for so doing, you ask audience of the judgment ; and by way of the understanding no glow of noble passion ever came. Never, above all, reckon up their balance of good and ill ; for so doing, you exhort self-interest ; and by that soiled way no true love will consent to pass. Nay, never talk of them, nor even gaze curiously at them ; for if they be of any worth and delicacy, they will be instantly looked out of countenance and fly. Nothing worthy of human ven- eration will condescend to be embraced, but for its own sake : grasp it for its excellent results, — make but the faintest offer to use it as a tool, and it slips away at the very conception of Xliv INTRODUCTION. such insult. The functions of a heaUhy body go on, not by- knowledge of physiology, but by the instinctive vigor of nature ; and you will no more brace the spiritual faculties to noble energy and true life by study of the uses of every feeling, than you can train an athlete for the race by lectures on every muscle of every limb. The mind is not voluntarily active in the acquisition of any great idea, any new inspira- tion of faith; but passive, fixed on the object which has dawned upon it, and filled it with fresh light. If this be true, and if it be the object of practical Chris- tianity, not only to direct our hands aright, but to inspire our hearts, then can its ends never be achieved by the mere force of reward and punishment ; then no system can prove its sufficiency by showing that it retains the doctrine of retribu- tion, and must even be held convicted of moral incompetency, if it trusts the conscience mainly to the prudential feelings, without due provision for enlisting the co-operation of many a disinterested affection. We cannot refrain from affording those into whose hands this volume will go, the pleasure and the lofty encouragement which they must derive from* the peru- sal of an extract on THE TRANS^IISSION OF SUPERIOR THOUGHTS. It is a law of Providence in communities, that ideas shall be propagated downwards through the several gradations of minds. They have their origin in the suggestions of genius, and the meditations of philosophy ; they are assimilated by those who can admire what is great and true, but cannot originate ; and thence they are slowly infused into the popu- lar mind. The rapidity of the process may vary in different times, Avith the facilities for the transmission of thought, but its order is constant. Temporary causes may shield the inferior ranks of intelligence from the influence of the supe- INTRODUCTION. xlv rior ; fanaticism may interpose for a while with success ; a want of the true spirit of sympathy between the instructors and the instructed may check by a moral repulsion the natural radiation of intellect ; — but, in the end, Providence will re-assert its rule ; and the conceptions born in the quiet heights of contemplation will precipitate themselves on the busy multitudes below. This principle interprets history and presages futurity. It shows us in the jDopular feeling and traditions of one age, a reflection from the philosophy of a preceding ; and from the prevailing style of sentiment and speculation among the cultivated classes now, it enables us to foresee the spirit of a coming age. Nor only to foresee it, but to exercise over it a power, in the use of which there is a grave responsibility. If we are far-sighted in our views of improvement ; if we are ambitious less of immediate and su})erficial effects than of the final and deep-seated agency of generous and holy principles ; if our love of opinions is a genuine expression of the disinterested love of truth ; — we shall remember who are the teachers of futurity ; we shall appeal to those, within whose closets God is already comput- ing the destinies of remote generations, — men at once erudite and free, men who have the materials of knowledge with which to determine the great problems of morals and religion, and the genius to think and imagine and feel, without let or hinderance of hope or fear. We linger over the pages from which the preceding selections have been made, unwilling to end onr grateful task of love. But one quotation more must be the last. With it w^e commend these Studies of Christianity, these timely thoughts for religious think- ers, to the candid and affectionate inquirers within all sects, confident that, so far as the work obtains a fit reception, it will exert that purifying, liberalizing, and sanctifying power which is the genuine influence of Christ. Xlvi INTRODUCTION. CHRISTIANITY AND SECTARIAN THEOLOGY. The sectarian state of theology in this country cannot but be regarded as eminently unnatural. Its cold and hard min- istrations are entirely alien to the wants of the popular mind, which, except under the discipline of artificial influences, is always most awake to generous impressions. Its malignant exclusiveness is a perversion of the natural veneration of the human heart, which, except where it is interfered with by narrow and selfish systems, pours itself out, not in hatred towards anything that lives, but in love to the invisible ob- jects of trust and hope. Its disputatious trifling is an insult to the sanctity of conscience, which, except where it is betrayed into oblivion of its delicate and holy office, suppli- cates of religion, not a new ferocity of dogmatism, but an enlargement and refinement of its sense of right. It is the temper of sectarianism to seize on every deformity of every creed, and exhibit this caricature to the world's gaze and aversion. It is the spirit of the soul's natural piety to alight on whatever is beautiful and touching in every faith, and take there its secret draught of pure and fresh emotion. It is the passages of poetry and pathos in a system, which alone can lay a strong hold on the general mind and give them permanence ; and even the wild fictions which have endeared Romanism to the hearts of so many centuries, possess their elements of tenderness and magnificence. The fundamental principle of one who would administer religion to the minds of his fellow-men should be, that all that has ever been extensively venerated must possess ingredients that are ven- erable. If, in the spirit of sectarianism, he sees nothing in it but absurdity, it only proves that he does not see it all ; it must have an aspect, which he has not yet caught, that awes the imagination, or touches the affections, or moves the conscience ; and those who receive it neither will nor should abandon it, till something is substituted, not only more con- sonant with the reason, but more awakening to these higher INTRODUCTION. Xlvu faculties of soul. Hence, a rigid accuracy and logical pene- tration of mind, the power of detecting and exposing error, are not the only quaUties needed by the religious reformer ; and in a deep and reverential sympathy with human feelings, a quick perception of the great and beautiful, a promptitude to cast himself into the minds of others, and gaze through their eyes at the objects which they love, he will find the instrument of the sublimest intellectual power. The precise logician may sit eternally in the centre of his own circle of correct ideas, and preach demonstrably the folly of the world's superstitions ; yet he will never affect the thoughts of any but marble-minded beings like himself. He disregards the fine tissue of emotions that clings round the objects which he so harshly handles ; and has yet to learn the art of pre- serving its fabric unimpaired, while he enfolds within it some- thing more worthy for it to foster and adore. As, then, it is to the moral and imaginative powers of the human mind that religion chiefly attaches itself, as it is by these that the %vant of it is most strongly felt, so is it to these that its ministrations should be, for the most part, addressed. While theologians are discussing the evidences of creeds, let teachers be conducting them to their applications. Let their respective resources of feehng and conception be unfolded before the soul of mankind ; let it be tried what mental en- ergy they can inspire, what purity of moral perception infuse, what dignity of principle erect, what toils of philanthropy sustain. Thus would arise a new criterion of judgment be- tween differing systems ; for that system must possess most truth which creates the most intelligence and virtue. Thus would the deeper devotional wants of society be no longer mocked by the privilege of choice among a few captious, verbal, and precise forms of belief Thus, too, would the alienation which repels sect from sect give place to an incip- ient and growing sympathy ; for when high intellect and excellence approach and stand in meek homage beneath the cross, how soon are the jarring voices of disputants hushed in the stillness of reverence ! Who does not feel the refresh- Xlviii INTRODUCTION. ment, when some stream of pure poetry, like Heber's, winds into the desert of theology ! when some flash of genius, like that of Chalmers, darts through its dull atmosphere ! some strains of eloquence, like those of Channing, float from a dis- tance on its heavy silence ! Such, then, are the objects which should be contemplated by those who, in the present times, aim at the reformation of religious sentiment ; — first, the elevation of theology as an intellectual pursuit ; secondly, the better application of re- ligion as a moral influence. Both these objects are directly or indirectly promoted by the Association whose cause I am privileged to advocate. It aids the first, by the distribution of many a work, the production of such minds as must redeem theology from contempt. It advances the second, by estab- lishing union and sympathy among those whose first princi- ples are in direct contradiction to all that is sectarian, and who desire only to emancipate the understanding from all that en- feebles, and the heart from all that narrows it. The triumph of its doctrines would be, not the ascendency of one sect, but the harmony of all. Let but the diversities which separate Christians retire, and the truths which they all profess to love advance to prominence, and, whatever may become of party names, our aims are fulfilled, and our satisfaction is complete. When faith in the paternity of God shall have kindled an affectionate and lofty devotion ; when the vision of immor- tality, imparted by Christ's resurrection, shall have created that spirit of duty which was the holiest inspiration of his life ; when the sincere recognition of human brotherhood shall have supplanted all exclusive institutions, and banded society together under the vow of mutual aid and the hope of ever- lasting progress, our Avork will be done, our reward before us, and our little community of reformers lost in the wide fraternity of enlightened and benevolent men. The day is yet distant, and can be won only by the toil of earnest and faithful minds. In the mean while, it is no light solace to see that the tendencies of Providence are towards its accelerated approach. And however dispiriting may INTRODUCTION. xlix sometimes be the variety and conflicts of human sentiment, — however remote the dissonance of controversy from that har- mony of will which would seem essential to perfected society, it is through this very process that the great ends of improve- ment are to be attained. Hereafter it will be seen, much more clearly than we can see it now, that opinion generates knowledge. Like the ethereal waves, whose inconceivable rapidity and number are said to impart the sensation of vis- ion, the undulations of opinion are speeding on to produce the perception of truth. They are the infinitely complex and delicate movements of that universal Human Mind, whose quiescence is darkness, — whose agitation, light. To the fit and numerous readers whom we trust they will find, these papers are now submitted, in the earnest hope that the author will at no distant day follow them with some more systematic and rounded survey of the same great subject, — the components and developments of Christianity. « W. R. A. STUDIES OF CHRISTIANITY. DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. If unity be the character of truth, no generation was ever so far gone in errors as our own : nor is the weariness sur- prising, with which statesmen and philosophers turn away from the Babel of Divinity, and, in despair of scaling the heavens, apply themselves to fouiid and adorn the politics of this world. But the confusion of tongues is too positive and obtrusive a fact to be escaped by mere retreat : it bids defi- ance to polite evasion : it pursues life into every public place and private haunt ; invades the home, the school, the college, the court, the legislature ; and, besides the problems which it fails to solve, constitutes in itself a new one, not undeserving the closest study and reflection. To the believers in doctrinal finality, who imagine the whole sacred economy to be settled by a documentary revelation, the reopening of every question, down to the very basis of religious faith, must be an appalling phenomenon, charging either failure on the presumed designs of God or a traitorous perversity on even the most gifted and upright of men. And not a whit better is the conclusion of a conceited illuminism, which, either boldly recalling the human mind to the sciences of induction, despises all faith as false alike ; or, conscious at least of its own incompetency, pleases itself with a more indulgent scepticism, and accepts them all as true. If no better revenge can be taken on pious dogma- tism than by falling into the cant of an eclectic neutrality or an impious despair, there is little encouragement for any high- 1 2 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. minded man to take part against the bigotries of the present on behalf of sickly negations in the future. The world is bet- ter left in the hands of the poorest interpreter of Paul, and most degenerate heirs of Augustine and Pascal, than trans- ferred to the dialectic of Proclus or the materialism of the liv- ing " Fondateur de la Religion de V Humanife" * There are those, however, who deny that we are left to any such alter- native ; who cannot conceive that human aspirations after divine reality shall for ever pine and sigh in vain ; who con- tend that objective truth in reference to morals and religion is attainable, and has been largely attained ; — and who, ac- cordingly, despairing of neither philosophy nor Christianity, require only the free intercommunion of the two to appreciate the contradictions of the present without foregoing the hope of greater unity in the future. The controversies of the hour are but ill understood by one who remains enclosed within them, and judges them only on their own assumptions. Like a village brawl, which, with only the sound of vulgar noise, may be the ripe fruit of oppression and the germ of revolu- tion, they have an assigned place in the unfolding of modern civilization ; and not till their place is computed in the life of the human race, and the law which brings them up in our age is observed, can their real significance be apprehended, and all anger at their clamorous littleness be lost in hope of their ulterior issues. Regarded from this higher point, the surface of religious belief in England, at first sight a mere troubled fermentation of struggling elements, betrays some organic principle of order, and many salient points of promise. We hazard no theory of religion in saying that there is a natural correspondence between the genius of a people and the form of their belief. Each mood of mind brings its own wants and aspirations, colors its own ideal, and interprets best that part of life and the universe with which it is in sympa- thy. John Knox would have been misplaced in Athens, and * The title which Auguste Comte gives himself in his *' Catechisme Posi- tiviste." — Preface, p. xl. DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. O Tauler could not have lived on the moralism of Kant. Ko doubt the ultimate seat of human faith lies deep down below the special propensities of individuals or tribes, — in a con- sciousness and faculty common to the race. But ere it comes to the surface, and disengages itself in a concrete shape, its type and color will be affected by the strata of thought and feeling through which it emerges into the light. Without pre- tending to an exhaustive classification, we find four chief tem- peraments of mind expressed in the theologies and scepticisms of civilized Europe : the quest of physical order, the sense of rigJit, the instinct of heauty, and the consciousness of tem- pestuous impulses carrying the will off its feet. Variously blend(!d in the characters of average persons, these tendencies are liable to separate their intensities, and severally dominate almost alone in minds of great force and periods of special action or reaction. Were each left to itself to form its own unaided creed, the doctrine of mere Science would be atheis- tic ; of Conscience, theistic ; of Art, pantheistic ; of Passion, sacrificial. The evidence of this distribution of tendencies is equally conclusive, whether we look to its rational ground or to its historical exemplification; and a few words on each head will suffice to clear and justify it. Notwithstanding some occasional attempts to exhibit natu- ral theology as a necessary extension of natural philosophy, it is plain that the maxims, which are ultimate for physical Sci- ence, stop short of contact with Religion ; that the final appeal of the two is carried to different faculties ; and that the scope and sphere of the one may be complete without bqrrowing any conception from the other. The assumption, for instance, that *' we can know nothing but phenomena," directly excludes all permanent and eternal Being as the possible object of rational thought. And as "phenomena" are apprehensible only by the observing faculties, whatever refuses to put in an appear- ance in their court is nonsuited as an unreality. And again, physical knowledge has accomplished its aim, as soon as it can predict all the successions that lie within its field of time and space ; and nowhere in this system of series, nor in the calcu- 4 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. lated forces which yield it to the view, does any divine Person look in upon the mind. Whoever, by the restraints of a hypo- thetical necessity, detains his intellect xoiihin nature, debars himself ipso facto from any faith that transcends nature, and recognizes no reserve of superivaXuvixX possibilities, hidden in a Mind of which the actual universe is but the finite expression. "We do not, of course, intend to affirm that scientific culture cannot coexist with religious belief; — so preposterous an as- sertion would be confuted by a manifold experience ; — but only that, where the canons of inductive knowledge are in- vested with unconditional universality, and are logically car- ried out as valid for all thought, they shut the door upon the sources of faith. It is the old battle, of which history supplies such abundant illustration ; which brought Parmenides and Protagoras upon the lists at opposite ends on the field of phi- losophy ; which Bacon profoundly avoided by assigning sepa- rate empires, without common boundary, to science and relig- ion ; but which his modern disciples have rashly renewed, by invading the realm left sacred by him. Uneasy relations have always subsisted in Christendom between the investiga- tors of nature and the trustees of the faith : the men of science rarely quitting, unless for signs of unequivocal aversion, the attitude of polite indifference to the Church ; and in their turn watched with the jealous eye of sacerdotal vigilance. It is no untrue instinct that has hitherto maintained them in this pos- ture of mutual suspicion : to exchange which for a hearty and intelligent reverence for each other is an achievement re- served for a higher philosophy than we yet possess. As Science pays homage to the force of nature, so Con- science enthrones the law of right. The conscious subject of moral obligation feels himself under a rule neither self-im- posed and fictitious, nor foreign and coercive ; — neither a home invention nor an outward necessity ; — a rule invisible, authoritative, awful ; carrying with it an alternative irreduci- ble to the linear dynamics of the physical world ; incapable of being felt but by a free mind, or of being given but by an- other. He is aware that his will follows a call of duty not at I DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 5 all as his body adapts itself to the force of gravitation ; and as within him the conscientious obedience wholly differs from the corporeal, so in the universe of realities beyond him does the moral legislation differ from the natural, and express the will of a person, not a mere constitution of things. No ethical conceptions are possible at all, — except as floating shreds of unattached thought, — without a religious background; and the sense of responsibility, the agony of shame, the inner rev- erence for justice, first find their meaning and vindication in a supreme holiness that rules the world. Nor can any one be penetrated with the distinction between right and wrong, with- out recognizing it as valid for all free beings, and incapable of local or arbitrary change. His feeling insists on its perma- nent recognition and omnipresent sway ; and this unity in the Moral Law carries him to the unity of the Divine Legislator. Theism is thus the indispensable postulate of conscience, — its objective counterpart and justification, without which its inspirations would be illusions, and its veracities themselves a lie. To adduce historical proofs of this conjunction is at once difficult and superfluous in a world whose theism is almost all of one stock. But it will not be forgotten that Socrates, in whom Greek religion culminated, avowedly based his reform on the substitution of moral for physical studies. It is unde- niable too that, in spite of their fatalism, the monotheistic Mo- hammedans have been surpassed by few nations in their sense of truth and fidelity ; and that wherever the same type of be- lief has been approached by Christian sects, the heresy has been said to arise from an exaggerated estimate of the moral law. Art, we have said, is pantheistic. Its aim, often uncon- sciously present, is to read off the expressiveness of things, and find what it is which they would speak with their silent look. To its perceptions, form, color, sound, motion, have a soul within them whose life and activity they represent : and even language, by flinging itself into the mould of rhythm and music, acquires, beyond its logical significance, a second meaning for the affections. As if waked up and tingling be- 1* 6 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. neatli the artist's loving gaze, matter lies dull and dead no more ; opens on him a responding eye ; communes with him from its steadfast brow ; and becomes instinct with grace or majesty. Instead of being the drag-weight and opposite of spiritual energies, it becomes to him their pliant medium, the docile clay for the shapes of finest thouglit, the brilliant pal- ette for the spread of inmost feeling. He melts the barrier away that hides from mere sense and intellect the interior sentiment — the formative idea — of all visible things ; and his glance of sympathy changes them not less than a burst of amber sunrise changes a leaden landscape and picks out the freshest smiles. Thus he finds himself in a living universe, ever striving to show him a divine beauty that lurks within and presses to the surface ; and he stands before a curtain only half opaque, -watching the lights and shadows thrown on it from behind by the ceaseless play of infinite thought. Not that the interpretation is by any means self-evident, or acces- sible except to the apprehensive instinct of sympathy. For it seems as though no form of being, no object in creation, could ever represent completely its own type : something is lost from its perfection in the realization ; and the actual, falling short of the ideal, can give it only to one for whom a hint suffices. This conception of the world as an incarnate divineness does not, we are well aware, amount to pantheism, unless it become all-comprehensive, so as to take in not simply physical nature, but the human life and will ; and there are numbers who are saved from this extreme, either by knowing where to draw the lines of philosophical distinction, or by the natural force of moral conviction restraining the absolutism of imagination. But so far forth as the tendency operates, it substitutes for the theistic reverence for a Holy Will the pan- theistic recognition of a Creative Beauty, and presents God to the mind less as the prototype of Conscience than as the apotheosis of Genius. The spontaneity of poetic action is supposed to illustrate His procedure better than the preferen- tial decisions of the moral sentiment; and the genesis of what- ever is good and fair is referred not so much to deliberate DISTINCTIVE TTPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 7 plan as to the eternal interfusion and circulation, through the great whole, of a Divine Essence, which flings off the universe and its history as a mere natural language. That this is the religion of art, is proved by the literature of every creative pe- riod, Greek, Italian, or Teutonic ; and negatively by the com- parative absence of artistic feeling and production in ages and nations that have most intensified at once the Unity and the Personality of God. Beauty was the Bible of Athens ; and Plato, its devoutest and most comprehensive expounder, shows everywhere, in his metaphysics, his morals, and his myths, the mould into which its faith inevitably falls. In passionate and impulsive natures there is a self-contra- diction which makes their religious tendency peculiarly diffi- cult to describe. They are not less conscious than others of moral distinctions, and own the sacred authority of the better invitation over the worse. Indeed, when surprised into a fall, their remorse shares the vehemence of all their emotions, and from the black shadow in which they sit, the sanctity of the law which they have violated looks ineffably bright ; and they speak of its holy requirements, and of the infinite purity of the Divine Legislator, in such fervid tone, that whatever else they may endanger, the perfection of God's character, you feel assured, and the obligations of human morality, are secure of reverential maintenance. Yet the truth is precisely the reverse. At the very moment that the law of duty is thus loftily extolled, it is on the point of total subversion ; lift- ed to a height precarious and unreal, it overbalances on the other side and disappears. For the very same stormy inten- sity which makes these men strong to feel the claim of good, makes them weak to obey it. Their personality wants solid- ity ; and an atmosphere of tempestuous affections sweeps over it like a hurricane on water. They can do nothing from out of their own resolves, and are for ever drawn or driven from the fortress they M'cre not to surrender. "Wliat remains for them, solicited thus by forces which are an overmatch for their just self-reliance ? Is it surprising that they no sooner confess liow they ought to obey, than they declare that they cannot 8 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. obey ? The thing is a contradiction ; but it all the better for this expresses what they are : ^Yith their centre of gravity in the Avrong place, they cannot but hold the truth in unstable equilibrium. Repose on contradiction is, however, impossi- ble ; and the necessary result of these co-existent feehngs of obhgation and incapacity is a substitute for obedience. The resort to sacrijjce which thus arose expressed no more, prior to the Christian era, than the sentiment, " Take this, O Lord, 't is all I have to give " ; and afforded but a fictitious re- lief to the laboring spirit. It acknowledged and attested the incompetency of the will, but made no use of the excess of the emotions. It was the Pauline doctrine of faith which first turned this great power to account; and virtually said, "Are you in slavery because you cannot manage your afi'ections ? turn their trust and enthusiasm on Christ in heaven, and let them manage you, and you shall be free." The soul that falls in love with immortal goodness rises above the region of in- effectual strife, and spontaneously offers what could never be extorted from the will by the lash of self-mortifying resolve. This is the truth which underlies the sacrificial doctrine in Christian times, — the emancipating power of great trusts and high inspirations ; and its very nature indicates its birth from impassioned temperaments, and its affinity with their special wants. The vicarious sacrifice is a mere plea, an ideal point of attraction, for a profound allegiance of heart ; which minds of this class would hardly yield without an intense appeal to their gratitude ; but which, if really awakened by a clear and tranquil moral reverence, would no less triumph over the gravitation of self. The one needful condition for the re- demption of these natures is the objective presence and action upon them of a divine person to lift them clear out of them- selves, and render back on the healing breath of trust the strength that only pants itself away in feverish effort. Every doctrine of sacrifice necessarily contradicts its own premises ; because for guilt, which is personal and inalienable, it offers a compensation which is foreign, and meets a moral ill with an unmoral remedy. True and sound as a mere confession of DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 9 weakness, it runs off from that point into mere confusion and morbidness. But add to it the doctrine of faith, and it ac- quires its proper complement ; bahmces its human disclaimer with a divine resource ; and instead of sending its captive through dark labyrinths of vain experiment, opens a direct way from the chambers of humiliation to the prophet's watch- tower of prayer and vision. Without this complement, the doctrine created priesthoods ; with it, destroys them. AVith- out it, men are caught up in their moments of helplessness, and handed over to ritual quackeries ; with it, they are seized in their hour of inspiration, and flung into the arms of God. The susceptibility for either treatment depends on the pre- dominance of impulse and passion over breadth of imagination and strength of will. In short, there are minds whose power is shed, if we may say so, in jorotension, precipitated forwards in narrow channels with impetuous torrent. There are others whose affluence is in cartension, and spreads out like a still lake to drink in light from the open sky, and reflect the look of wide-encircling hills. And there are others yet again, whose character is intension, and that move on in full volume, and with steady stream of tendency, rising and falling little with the seasons, and holding to the limits within which they are to go. The faith of the first is sacrijicial ; of the second, pantheistic ; of the third, theistic. Of the four cardinal tendencies we have named, the scien- tifc has never been provided for within the interior of Chris- tianity ; whose organic life and structure are complete without it. It remains, therefore, sullenly on the outside, without re- nouncing at present its atheistic propensions : and the part it has played, however important, has been that of external check and antagonism, in the assertion of neglected rights of knowledge, and slighted interests of mankind. Tliis cannot possibly continue for ever ; nor is it at all consistent with ex- perience to suppose, that either of the opponent influences will obtain a victory over the other. Their reconcilement, through the mediation and within the compass of some third and more comprehensive conception, is a task remaining for 10 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. the philosophy and charity of the future. We feel no doubt that it will be accomplished ; and will spare us that revolution- ary extermination of theology and metaphysics which is pro- claimed, on behalf of positive science, by the self-appointed Committee of the " Rcpublique Occidentale." The other three tendencies early Avorked their way into the Christian religion, and vindicated a place within its organism. Indeed, the his- torical genesis of the Catholic Church consists of little else, on the inner side of dogma and ethics, than the successive and successful self-assertion of each of these principles ; and, on the outer side of ecclesiastical polity, than the construction of a social framework which held them in co-existence till the sixteenth century. The genius of three distinct peoples con- spired to fill up the measure of the early faith ; and each brought with it a separate constituent. The Hebrew believer contributed his theistic conscience ; the Hellenic, his panthe- istic speculation ; the Romanic, his passionate appropriation of redemption by faith. The elements were, from the first, mixed and struggling together ; so that the phenomena of no period, probably of no place, serve to show them disengaged from one another and insulated. But the Ebionitish period, with its rigorous monachism, its historical and human Christ, its scrupulous asceticism, its sternness against wealth, represents the ethical principle in its excess. The Logos idea, and indeed the whole development of the Trinitarian doctrine, exhibits the effort of the Greek thought to obtain recognition, and qualify the Judaic. And the Augustinian theology, pleading the wants of fervid natures, on whose suiface the web of moral doctrines alights only to be shrivelled and dis- appear, completes the triad of agencies from whose confluence the faith of Christendom arose. In the Catholic system the three ingredients unite in one composite result ; and hence the tenacity with which that system keeps possession of the most various types of human character, and, baflled by the spirit of one age, returns with the reaction of another. The ethical feeling finds satisfaction in its theory of human nature ; the pantheistic, in its scheme of supernatural grace ; the sacrifi- DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 11 cial, in its conditions of redemption. Through the realism of the media3val schools, its eucharistic doctrine, which is only the theological side of that philosophical conception, becomes a direct transfusion of Hellenic influence into the Church. And its faith in perpetual inspiration, in the unbroken chain of physical miracle, in the ceaseless mingling of sacramental mystery with the very substance of this world, so far softens and diffuses the concentrated personality of the Divine Es- sence, as to indulge the free fancy of art. Nor can we deny the same capacity of beauty to its hierarchy of holy natures, — from the village saint, through the heavenly angels, to the Sou of God, — all blended in living sympathies that cross and recross the barriers of worlds. This comprehensive adap- tation to the exigencies of mankind is a reasonable object of admiration. But nothing can be more absurd than the appeal to it in proof either of preternatural guidance, or of human artifice, in the constitutive process of the Roman Church. There is nothing very surprising in the fact, that a system which is the product of three factors should contain them all. No doubt if these factors are, as we contend, primary and indestructible features of our unperverted nature, no religion can be divine and completely true which refuses to take any of them up ; and this one condition of the future faith we may learn from the Christendom of the past. The condition, how- ever, must be satisfied otherwise than by the strange congeries of profound truths and puerile fancies which is dignified by the name of " Catholic doctrine." For, be it observed, this system has no intrinsic and neces- sary unity, which would hold it together when abandoned to the free action of the mind, whose requirements it is said to meet. It has something for conscience, something for art, something for passion, each in its turn ; but it is not a whole that can satisfy all together. Its contents, gathered by successive experiences, cohere through the external grasp of a sacerdotal cor})oration ; and if that hand be paralyzed or ndaxed, it becomes evident at once liow little they have grown together. Hence the phenom- ena of the sixteenth century, whose revolt was the expression, 12 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. not of theological dissent, but of ecclesiastical disgust ; and in which doctrine only accidentally fell to pieces, because the authority that guarded and wielded it became too rotten to be believed in. The secondary revolution, however, was incom- parably more momentous than the primary. The treasured seeds that dropped from the shattered casket of the Church had to germinate again in the fresh soil of the richer Euro- pean mind ; and the great year of their development is still upon its round. The outward dictation of the Apostolic See being discarded, it became necessary to find another clew to divine truth ; and the inner wants of the human soul and the passing age came into play, with no restraint within the ample scope of Scripture. A reconstitution of Christianity began, — on the basis, no doubt, of materials already accumu- lated,— more eclectic, therefore, and less creative, than in the infancy of the religion ; but proceeding, nevertheless, by the same law, and commencing a similar cycle. The order of development in this second life of Christendom has not been the same as in the first ; but the stages, though transposed, do not differ taken one by one. It is only this, — that whilst in the formation of the faith the dominant influences Avere Conscience, Art, and Passion, in its Re-formation they are Passion, Conscience, Art. At the moment when Luther shat- tered the fabric of pretended unity, and compelled the husk to shed its kernels, the season and the field were unfavorable to two out of the three, and they lay dormant till more genial times. The vioral element had been discredited by the casu- istry of the confessional, the " treasure of the Church," and the trade in meritorious works ; and, decked in these vile trap- pings, was flung away in generous disgust. The aesthetic ele- ment had become so paganized in Italy, and was so identified with the reproduction of the very tastes and vices, the thought and style, nay, even the mythology itself, which the primitive religion had expelled as the work of demons, that the new piety shrank from it, and let it alone. In an age when epis- copates were won by an ear for hexameters or a Ciceronian Latinity, when priests defended materialism in Tusculan dis- DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 13 putations, •when popes frequented the comic theatre and Plau- tus was acted in the Vatican, when the proceeds of a purga- torial traffic were spent in destroying ancient basihcas and raising lieathenish temples over the sepulchres of saints, it was inevitable that beauty should become suspected by sanctity. There remained, yet unspoiled by the adoption of a corrupt generation, the impetuous devotion and tremendous theory of Augustine ; and this, accordingly, was the direction in which the whole early Relbrmation advanced. It was not the acci- dent that Luther was an Augustinian monk, which determined the character of his movement. The sickened soul of Europe could breathe no other air. Emaciated with the mockery of spiritual aliment, revolting at the chopped straw and apples of Sodom that had been given for fruit from the tree of life, it sighed for escape from this choking discipline into some region fresh with the mountain breath of faith and love, and not quite barren of "angels' food." The burdened moral sense, so long deluded and abused, reduced to self-conscious dotage by vain penances and vainer promises, flung away all belief in itself, asked leave to lay its freedom down, and went into captivity to Christ. So exclusively did the feeling of the time flow into this channel, that no doctrine which had an ethical groundwork, or attempted to soften in the least the implacable hostility of nature and grace, obtained any suc- cess ; wliile every enthusiastic excess of the anti-catholic ideas spread like wildfire. The irreproachable innocence and piety of the Salzbur<; Gdrtner-hruder did nothins: to save them from quick martyrdom to their Ebionitish faith ; wliile the atrocities and ravings of the Anabaptists of Munster scarcely sufficed to stop the triumph of their hideous kingdom of the saints. The movement of the brave Zvvingli, earlier and more mod(;rate than either Luther's or Calvin's, was easily restrained by them within the narrowest range, whilst the Genevan Reformer, cautious and ungenial, had but to collect his logical fuel, and kindle the terrible fire of his dogma, and it spread from the icy chambers of his own nature and wrapt whole kingdoms in its flames. That men without passion or 2 14 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. pathos themselves, who do their work by force of intellect and will, should be successful disseminators of a doctrine that can live in no cool air, only shows how wide was the prepara- tion of mind, and how the coming of this time fulfilled the long desire of nations. The first stage, then, of the new development of Christian- . ity was its Puritan period. The natural perdition of man, the radical corruption of his will, the religious indifference of all his states and actions, and the consequent worthlessness of his morality, except for civil uses and social police, con- stitute the fundamental assumptions of the system. From this basis of despair its doctrine of atonement comes to the rescue. The obedience of Christ is accepted in place of that which men cannot render, and his sacrifice instead of the penalty they deserve. Not, however, for all, but for those alone who may appropriate the deliverance by an act of faith, and present the merits of Christ as their offering to God, with full assurance of their sufficiency. Nothing but a divine and involuntary conversion can generate this faith, which follows no predisposition from the antecedent life, but the inscrutable decree of Heaven. Once transferred from the state of nature into that of grace, tiie disciple becomes, through the Holy Spirit, a new creature ; is conscious of a sacred revolution in his tastes and affections ; gives evidence of this by good works, which, now purified in their principle, are no longer unacceptable to God ; and knows that, though he is still liable to the sins, he is redeemed from the penalties, of a son of Adam. The Church is the body of the converted, and while the Sacrament of Baptism initiates the candidate, and provisionally secures him, the Communion seals his adoption afterwards ; the efficacy of both being conditional on the inner faith of the participant. The intense and unmediated antith- esis of nature and grace, and the gulf, impassable except by miracle, between their two spheres, may be regarded as the most characteristic feature of this scheme. Its text-book contains the Pauline Epistles, and opens most readily at the Romans or Galatians ; and its favorite writers are Augustine, DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 15 Luther, Calvin, and Edwards. With vast internal differences in their particular conceptions of Christian trutli and of eccle- siastical government, the so-called Evangelical sects retain the impress of their common origin in the dearth of any ethical or aesthetic element in their religion. From this alone must have resulted the fact which a plu- rality of causes has concurred in producing ; viz. that the Reformation soon (within a century and a half) reached its apparent limit of extent, and propagated itself only internally by further evolutions of thought. It had taken up and ex- hausted the class of minds to which it was specially adapted ; and after appropriating these, found itself arrested. Under the impulse of a newly-awakened piety men are disposed to feel that they cannot attribute too much to God ; and there will always be large numbers who, from the absorbing inten- sity of religious sentiment, or the dominance of predestinarian theory, or the ill balance of partial cultivation, abdicate all personal power of good in favor of irreversible decrees. But as the tension relaxes or the culture enlarges, the moral in- stincts reassert their existence ; and the monstrous distortions incident to any theory which denies their authority become too repulsive to be borne. Hence a reaction, in which the natural conscience takes the lead, and insists on obtaining that reconciliation with God which has already been conquered for the affections. Men in whom the sense of rijrht and wronn: is deep cannot divest themselves of reverence for it as au- thoritative and divine ; nor can they truly profess that it is to them an empty voice, which, venerable as it sounds, they are never able to obey. They know what a difference it makes to them, in the whole peace and power of their being, whether they are faithful or whether they are false ; that this differ- ence belonsjs alike to their state of nature and their state of grace; that it is as little ]iossible to withhold admiration from the magnanimity of the Pagan Socrates as from that of the Christian Paul ; and that the sentiment which compels homage to both is the same that looks up with trust and worship to the justice and holiness of God : how, then, can they consent to draw 16 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. an unreal line of impassable separation between ethical quali- ties before conversion and the very same qualities after, and abrogate in the one case the moral distinctions which become valid in the other ? The two lives, — of earth and heaven ; the two minds, — human and divine; the two states, — nature and grace ; which it is the impulse of enthusiasm to contrast, it is the necessity of conscience to unite. When Luther first blew up the sacerdotal bridge which had given a path across to the steps of centuries, the boldness of the deed and the inspiration of the time lightened the feet of men, and enabled them to spring over with him on the wing of faith. But when the van had passed, and the more equable and dis- ciplined ranks of another generation were brought to the brink, there seemed a needless rashness in the attempt, and foundations were discovered for a structure based on the rock of nature, and making one province of both worlds. Even Melancthon, long as he yielded to his leader's more powerful will, could not permanently acquiesce in the complete extinc- tion of human responsibility ; and vindicated for the soul a voluntary co-operation with divine grace. This semi-Pelagian example rapidly spread ; first among the later Lutherans, especially of Brunswick and Hanover ; next into the school of Leyden ; and finally into the Church and universities of England. Quick to seize the reaction in the temper of the times, the Jesuits put themselves at the head of the same tendency in their own communion ; defended against the Jan- senists a doctrine of free-will beyond even the limits of Catho- lic orthodoxy ; upheld Molina against Augustine, as among the Protestants Episcopius was gaining upon Calvin. Among patriotic theologians the authority of the Latin Church gave way in favor of the early Christian apologists and Greek Fathers, who knew nothing of the scheme of decrees. Di- vinity, under the guidance of More and Cudworth, no longer disdained to replenish her oil and revive her flame from the lamp of Athenian philosophy. And the conception of a uni- versal natural law was elaborately worked out by Grotius. As the sixteenth century was the period of dogmatic theology, DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 17 the seventeenth was that of ethical philosophy ; the whole modern history of which lies mainly within that limit and half a century lower ; and conclusively attests the decline of a scheme of belief incompatible with the very existence of such a science. When the Protestantism which had produced a Farel, a Beza, and a Whitgift, offered as its representatives Locke and Limborch, Tillotson and Butler, the nature of the chancre which had come over it declares itself. It was the revolt of moral sentiment against a doctrine that outraged it, — the re-development, under new conditions, of the ethical principle which had fallen neglected from the broken seed- vessel of the Catholic faith. The second season of the Reformation, though treated now with unmerited disparagement, was not less worthy of admira- tion than the first. High-Churchmen may be ashamed of an archbishop who proposed a scheme of comprehension ; Evan- gelicals, of a preacher who applauded the Socinians ; and Coleridgians, of a theologian who was no deeper in metaphys- ics than the " Grotian divines " ; but neither tlie Erastianism, the charity, nor the common sense of a Tillotson would be at all unsuitable at this moment to a church openly torn by dis- sensions and really held together only by dependence on the state. It has been a current opinion, perseveringly propa- gated by adherents of the Geneva theology, that the spread of Arminian sentiments was equivalent to a religious decline, and concurrent with the growth of a worldly laxity and selfish indifference of character. The allegation is absolutely false. In literature, in personal characteristics, and in public life, the Latitude-men and their associates in belief bear honorable comparison with their more rigorous forerunners. There is not only less of passionate intolerance, but a nol)ler freedom from an equivocal prudence, in the great writers of the second period, than in the Reformers of the first : and there is more to touch the springs of disinterestedness and elevation of mind in Cudworth and Clarke than in Calvin ajid Beza. Nor did the return of ethical theory weaken the sources of religious action. The very enterprises in which evangelical zeal most 2* 18 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. rejoices, — missions to the heathen, and the diffusion of the Scriptures, — were not only prosecuted but set on foot in new directions and with more powerful instrumentalities, in the very midst of this period, and by the very labors of its most distinguished philosophers. The Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge, and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, were both born with the eigh- teenth century ; and while the latter addressed itself to the natives and slaves of the American provinces, the former first made the Scriptures known on the Coromandel coast. It was Boyle who, of all men of his age, displayed the most generous zeal for the multiplication of the sacred writings, himself pro- curing their translation into four or live languages. For thirty years he was governor of a missionary corporation. Yet the complexion of his theology is sufficiently indicated by the fact that he bought up Pococke's Arabic translation of Grotius (De Yeritate Christianoe Religionis), and was at the cost of its M^ide distribution in the East. And who that has ever read it can forget Swift's letter to-the Irish viceroy (Lord Carteret), introducing Bishop Berkeley (then Dean of Der- ry), and his project for resigning his preferment at home in order that, on a stipend of £ 100 a year, he might devote him- self to the conversion of the American Indians ? The imper- turbable patience with which the good Dean prosecuted his object, the self-devotion with which he embarked in it his property and life, the gratefulness with which he accepted from the government the promise of a grant, and the treach- ery which broke the promise, and after seven years compelled his return, make up a story unrivalled for its contrast of saintly simplicity and ministerial bad faith. These and simi- lar features of the time superfluously refute the arbitrary and arrogant assumption, that no piety can be living and profound except that which disbelieves all natural religion, no gospel holy which does not renounce the moral law, no faith prolific in works unless it begins with despising them. There was, however, still a defect in this gospel of con- science. Regarding the world and life as the object of a DISTINCTIVE TYPKS OF CHRISTIANITY. 19 divine administration, and seeking to interpret them by a scheme of final causes, it was wholly occupied with the con- ception of God as proposing to himself certain ends, and ar- ranging tlie means for their accomplishment. In this light lie is a Being with moral preconceptions and an economy for bringing them to pass. Everything is for a purpose, and subsists for the sake of what is ulterior, and forms part of a mechanism working out a prescribed problem. The tendency of this way of thinking will inevitably be, to hunt for provi- dences. These the narrow mind will place in the incidents of individual life ; the comprehensive intellect, in the laws and relations of the universe ; not perhaps in either case without some danc^er from human ejijotism of referrin2: too much to the good and ill which is relative to man. The infinite perfec- tions of God will be concentrated, so to speak, too much in the notion of Ilis will, and the powers which subserve its designs ; and will in consequence be as much misapprehended as would be our own nature by an observer assuming that we jiut forth all its life and phenomena on ■purpose. Indeed, the exclusive and unbalanced ascendency of the moral faculty tempts a man to fancy this sort of existence the only right one for himself; to suspect every flow of unwatched feeling, and call himself to account for the burst of rincrintj lauj^hter, or the surprise of sudden tears, and aim at an autocratic command of liis own soul. It is not wonderful that liis ideal of human character should reappear in his representation of the Divine. The error deforms his faith as much as it tends to stiffen and constrict his life. Leading him always to ask what a thing is ybr, it hinders him from seeing what it is ; in search of the motive^ he misses the look ; and his interest in it being transi- tive, he sinks into it with no sympathy on its own account. This is only to say, in other words, that his prepossession de- tains him from the artistic contemplation of ol>jects and events ; for while it is the business of science to inquire their origination, and of morals to follow their drift, it remains for art to appreciate their nature. To feel the type of thought which they express, to recognize the idea which they invest 20 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. with form, the mind must rest upon them, not as products or as instruments, but as realities ; and their significance must not be imposed upon them, but read off from them. The meaning which art detects in hfe and the world is not a pur- pose, but a sentiment ; in its view the present attitudes and development of things are rather the out-coming of an inner feelins than the tools of a remoter end. To find room for this mode of conception something must be added to the ethical representation of God. He must be regarded as not always and throughout engaged in processes of intention and volition, but as having, around this moral centre, an infinite atmos- phere of creative thought and affection, which, like the native inspirations of a pure and sublime human soul, spontaneously flow out in forms of beauty, and movements of rhythm, and a thousand aspects of divine expression. Religion demands the admission of this free element : and without it, will cease to speak home to men of susceptible genius and poetic nature, and must limit itself more and more to the fanatical minds that have too little regulation, and the moral that have too much. A God who offers terms of communion only to the passionate and to the conscientious, will not touch the springs of worship in perceptive and meditative men. T?ieir prayer is less to know the published rules than to overhear the lonely whispers of the Eternal Mind, to be at one with His immedi- ate life in the universe, and to shape or sing into articulate utterance the silent inspirations of which all existence is full. Their pecuhar faculties supply them with other interests than about their sins, their salvation, and their conscience ; they feel neither sufficiently guilty, nor sufficiently anxious to be good, to make a religion out of the one consciousness or the other ; but if, indeed, it be God that flashes on them in so many lights of solemn beauty from the face of common things, that wipes off sometimes the steams of custom from the win- dow of the soul, and surprises it with a presence of tenderness and mystery, — if the tension of creative thought in themselves, which can rest in nothing imperfect, yet realize nothing per- fect, be an unconscious aspiration towards Him, — then there is DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 21 a way of access to their inner faith, and a temple pavement on which they will consent to kneel. It is, we believe, the in- ability of Protestantism, in either of its previous forms, to meet this order of wants, that has reduced it to its state of weakness and discredit ; and the struggle of thought, charac- teristic of the present century, is an unconscious attempt to supply the defect, and to vindicate, for the third element of Catholic Christianity, the possibility of development in the open air of Protestant belief. The change began, like both of the earlier ones, in Germany ; and it was from Plato that Schleiermacher learned where the weakness of Christian dog- ma lay, and in what field of thought he might create a diver- sion from the disastrous assaults of French materialism, and restore the balance of the fight. An Hellenic spirit was in- fused into the scientific theology of the Continent, and has never ceased to prevail there, though Aristotle has long suc- ceeded to Plato as the channel of influence. When Hegel, long the rival of Schleiermacher, triumphed over him, not only in the coteries of lierlin, but in the schools of Germany, he no doubt turned the philosophy which had been invoked to pre- serve the faith into a dialectic, at whose magic touch it deli- quesced ; and no one who has followed the application of his principles to history and dogma can be surprised at the antip- athy they awaken in the Church. But it would be a mistake to suppose that the step into Pantheism was made by Hegel, and that the opposing theologians raised up by the great preacher of Berlin occupy in this respect any different ground. Since the time of Jacobi theism proper has not been heard of in Germany : the very writers who mean to defend it, surrender it in the disguise of their definition of per- sonality ; and so steeped is the whole national mind in the colors of Hellenic thought, that from Neander to Strauss can be found, in our deliberate judgment, only different shades of the same pantheistic conception. AVhat does this denote but a universal sigh after a God, who shall be neither a Jehovah, a Judaic avTOKparapy nor a redeeming Deits ex ynachina^ super- vening upon the theatre of history, but a living and energizing 22 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. Spirit, quickening the very heart of to-day, and whispering round the dome of Herschel's sky not less than in the third story of Paul's heaven ? In some this feeling breaks out in devilish defiance, as in the unhappy Heinrich Heine's saying, " I am no child, I do not want a Heavenly Father any more": in others it breathes out, as with Novalis, in a tender mysti- cism, and is traceable by the reverent footfall and uncovered head with which they pace, as in a cathedral, the solemn aisles of life and nature. The expression of this tendency has passed into the literature of our own language, and every year is tinging it more and more with its characteristic hues. Emerson affords the purest and most unmixed example ; but perhaps the earlier writings of Carlyle, — before the divine thirst had advanced so much into a human rabies, — and more especially his Sartor Resartiis, may be taken as the real gos- pel of this sentiment. The intense operation of these essays, so entirely alien to the traditions of English thought and taste, is an evidence of something more than the genius of their au- thors ; it is proof of a certain combustible state of the English mind, prepared by di'ought and deadness to burst into the flame of this new worship. This feeling, diffused through the very air of the time, has unmistakably evinced its essential identity with the instinct of art ; in part, by a direct affluence and excellence of production unknown to the preceding age, but still more, in the wide extension of an appreciating love for the creations of artistic genius. The melancholy prophets who see in this spreading susceptibility only a morbid symp- tom of decadent civilization, are misled, we hope, by imperfect historical parallels. The flower, no doubt, both of Athenian and of Italian culture, was most brilliant just before it drooped. But the soil which bore it, and the elements that surrounded it, had no essential resemblance to the conditions of modern English society, in which, above all, there are the unex- hausted juices of a moral faith and a strenuous habit, not stim- ulant perhaps of hasty growth, but giving hardihood against the open air and the natural seasons. By the rules of technical theology, it may appear strange DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 23 to reckon the turn from theism to pantheism as a tJiird stage of the Reformation ; as if it could be at all included in the in- terior history of Christianity, instead of being treated as a direct apostasy. And it is in reality a very serious question, whether, without unfaithfulness to its essential character, the Christian religion can domesticate within it this new action of thought, or must from the first visit it with unqualified excom- munication. On the one hand, nothing can be more absurd than to suppose that a faith of Hebrew origin, a faith wiiose very hypothesis is sin, and whose aspiration is moral perfect- ness, can ever be reconciled with a thorough-going pantheism. On the other hand, nothing can be more gratuitous than to assume that the feeling which, on getting the whole mind to itself, generates a pantheistic scheme, has no legitimate exer- cise, and gains its indulgence altogether at the expense of Christian truth. If we mistake not, the pith of the matter lies in a small compass. Let Christian Theism heep Morals^ and Pantheism may have Nature. This rule is no mere com- promise or coalition of incongruous elements, but is founded, we are convinced, on distinctions real and eternal. So long as a holy will is left to God, and a power committed to man, free to sustain relations of trust and responsibility, room re- mains for all the conditions of Christianity, and the field be- yond may be open to the range of mystic perception, and railed off for the sacrament of beauty. But whether this or any Oiher be the just partition of territory between the two claimants, partition there must be, for the real truth of things must corres})ond, not to the hypothesis of any single human faculty, but to harmonized postulates of all. It is not surpris- ing that, on its first re-birth, the gospel of nature should deny the gospel of duty, or so take it up into its own fine essence as to volatihze all its substance away. This is but the natural revenge taken for past neglect, and the needful challenge to future attention. Each one of the three developments has in its turn run out beyond the limits of the Christian faith, and yet, hitherto, each has established a place within it. The He- gelian, or Emersonian, type of the third period is but the cor- 24 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. responding phenomenon to the Antinomianism of the first, and the Deism of the second. And as these have passed away, after surrendering into the custody of Christendom the princi- ples that gave them strength, so will the Pantheism of to-day, when it has provided for the safe-keeping of its charge, and seen the Church complete its triad of Faith, Holiness, and Beauty. This question, however, will be asked : If the Reformation only repeats, with some transposition, the cycle of the primi- tive development, how are we the better for having thus to do our work again ? Are we to end where the sixteenth century began, and to reproduce the Catholicism which was then re- solved into its elements ? And does some fatal necessity doom us to this wearisome periodicity ? Not in the least. Ho.w- ever little the seeds may be able to transgress the limits of species, and may remain indistinguishable from millennium to millennium, the conditions of growth are so different as practi- cally to cancel the identity in the result. Taken even one by one, the modern forms of doctrine are far nobler than their early prototypes. The narrow Ebionitism of the original Church is not comparable, as an expression of the conscience, w^ith the moral philosophy of Butler ; and the Greek element of thought, flowing by Berlin, has entered the Church in deeper channels than "when infiltrating through the theosophy of Alexandria. It is only in relation to the passionate ele- ment that the doubt can be raised, whether we have gained in truth and grandeur by passing the religion of Augustine throuo-h the minds of the modern reformers ; and whether the Jansenists Avithin the Church do not exhibit a higher phase of character than the Huguenots without it. But at any rate, the modern development, taken as a whole, is secure of an in- ner unity and completeness which before has been unattained. It is an obvious, yet little noticed, consequence of the inven- tion of printing, that no one mood of feeling or school of thought can tyrannize over a generation of mankind, and sweep all before it, as of old ; and then again, with change in the intellectual season, rot utterly away, and give place to a DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 25 successor no less absolute. Generations and ages now live in presence of each other; the impulse of the jiresent is re- strained by the counsels of the past, and, in fighting for the throne of the human mind, find>^ it not only strong in living prepossession, but guarded by shadowy sentinels, encircled by a band of immortals. Hence the histoiy of ideas can never be again so wayward and fitful as it was in the first centuries of our era ; losing all interest at one period in the questions which had maddened the preceding ; for a time covered all over with the pale haze of Byzantine metaphysics, and then suffused with red heats of African enthusiasm. New truth can no longer forget the old, and thrive wholly at its expense, or even make a compact with it to take turn and turn about, but must find an organic relation with it, so as to be its en- largement rather than its rival. The modern moralist already understands Augustine better than did the old Pelagians ; "P^vangelical" teachers begin to insist on Christian ethics; and the increasing disposition, even in heterodox persons, to dwell on the Incarnation as the central point of faith, shows how credible and welcome becomes the notion of the union of human Avith divine, and of the moral manifestation of God in the life and soul of man. The time, we trust, is gone, for the merely linear advancement of the European mind, with all its action and reaction propagated downwards, and wasting centu- ries on phenomena that miglit co-exist. Henceforth it may open out in all dimensions at once, and fill, as its own for ever, the whole space of true thought into which its past in- crements have borne it. Sects, no doubt, and schools, will continue to arise on the outskirts of the intellectual realm, possessed by partial inspirations ; but the world's centre of gravity will be more and more occupied by minds that can at once balance and retain these marginal excesses, that can round off the sphere by inner force of rea^^on, and, dispensing with the outer mould of sacerdotal compression, let the tides flow free, and the winds blow strong, without alarm for the eternal harmony. This is the form in which nature will re- store, and God approve, a Catholic consent. 3 26 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. The idea we have endeavored to give of tlie genesis of Christian doctrine, and tlie law of its vicissitudes, is offered only as conveniently distributing the subjective sources of faith. It cannot be applied to the phenomena of particular countries apart from ample historical knowledge of the con- current social and political conditions, Avithout which the most accurate clews to the natural history of thought can only mis- lead as the interpreter of concrete events. When, for instance, we look around us at home, and seek for the English repre- sentatives of the several tendencies explained above, we may, no doubt, find them here and there, but they are so far from exhausting the facts of our time, that some of the most con- spicuous parties — as the Anglicans — seem provided with no place at all. The obscurity first begins to clear away when we remember that in England Schism went before Reforma- tion. The aim of Henry VIII. was simply to detach and nationalize the Church in his dominions ; to give it insular integrity instead of provincial dependence ; and could this have been done without meddling with the system of Catholic doctrine at all, the scheme of faith would have been preserved entire. While Luther and the Continental opponents of Rome were faithful to the idea of the unity of Christendom, and were calling out for a general council to restore it by a verdict on doubtful points of faith, the English monarch, undisturbed by doubt or scruple, broke off from Rome, and destroyed the traditions of centralization by taking the ecclesi- astic jurisdiction into his own hands and stopping its passage of the seas. In the new movement of the time, England tended to become a petty papacy, still unreformed ; Europe sought a universal church reformed. Neither aim admitted of realization. To repudiate the supreme pontiff, and substi- tute a civil head, involved a fatal breach in the sacerdotal system, and carried with it inevitable departures from the integrity of Catholic dogma; so that reformation was found inseparable from schism. And when no council, acknowledged as universal, was called to give authoritative settlement, ar- rangements ad interim became consolidated, provisional rights DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 27 grew into prescriptive ; with tlie spectacle of variety, and the taste of freedom, the idea of unity faded away, till the co-existence of two churches within one land and one Christendom passed into a necessity, and reformation proved impossible without a schism. But, notwithstanding this par- tial approximation of the English and the Continental move- ments, the traces remain indelible that their point of departure was from opposite ends. In its origin and earliest traditions, in the basis of its constitution and worship, the Church of England has nothing whatever to do with Protestantism ; it is but the Westminster Catholic Church instead of the Roman Catholic Church. Authoritative doctrine, sacramental grace, sacerdotal mediation, are all retained ; and throughout the whole of Henry's reign, while the new laws were working themselves into habits, the seven sacraments, the communion in one kind, the Ave Maria, the invocation of saints, with the doctrines of transubstantiation and purgatory, remained within the circle of recognized orthodoxy. The impelling and regu- lative idea of the whole change was that of a nationalization of Catholicism. This original ascendency of the national over the theological feeling was never lost ; and thougli channels were more and more opened, through the sympathies of exiles and the intercourse of scholars, for the infusion of Continen- tal notions, yet the form given to the Church rendered it not very susceptible to the new learning; whose admission, so far as it took place, was rather induced by political conception than made in the interests of universal truth. Tlie present Anglicans represent the first type of the English schism ; and the High Church in general embodies the distinguishing national sentiment of the Reformation in this country, as com- pared with the cosmopolitan character of the Continental re- ligious change. Doctrine is universal, administration and jurisdiction are local. AVhere the former becomes the bond of sympathy, as among the Evangelic Protestants, it unites men together by ties that are irrespective of the limits of country, and subordinates special patriotisms to the interests of a more comprehensive fraternity. AVhere the latter be- 28 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. come the objects of zeal, a flavor of the soil mingles itself with the sentiments of honor, and a peculiar loyalty concen- trates itself on the inner circles of duty, often with the nar- rowest capacity of diffusion beyond. Hence the intensely English feeling which has always prevailed among the paro- chial— especially the rural — clergy of the Establishment, and the people who form their congregations. They constitute the very core of our insular society, and the retaining centre of our historical characteristics. Their admirations, their prejudices, their virtues, their ambitions, are all national. Their interest in dogma is not intellectually active, or pro- vocative of any proselyting zeal, and is subservient to the practical aim of giving territorial action to the religious in- stitutions under their charge. Their dealings are less with the individual's solitary soul, than with the several social classes in their mutual relations ; and to mediate between the gentry and the poor, to keep in order the school, the workhouse, and the village charities, — not forgetting the obligation to ward off Methodists and voluntaries,* — consti- tute the approved circle of clerical duties. Their very an- tipathies, unlike those of Protestant zealots, are less theo- logical than political; they hate Roman Catholics chiefly as a sort o^ foreigners, who have no proper business here, and Dissenters as a sort of rebels, who create disturbance with their discontents ; and were old England well rid of them both, the heart of her citizenship, they believe, would be * The zest with which this ecclesiastical garrison-duty is sometimes per- formed, hardly comports with the traditional dignity of the Anglican gentle- man and scholar. We remember an incident which occurred in a village situated among the hills of one of our northern dioceses. On a fine sum- mer evening we had gone, at the close of the afternoon service, for a stroll through the fields overlooking the valley. When we had walked half a mile or so, an extraordinary din arose from the direction of the village, sounding like nothing human or instrumental, larynx, catgut, or brass, though occa- sionally mingled with an undeniable note from some shouting Stentor. It was evident, through the trees, that a crowd was collected on the village green ; and not less so, that a farmer and his wife, who were looking on from a stile hard by, understood the meaning of the scene below. On asking what all the hubbub was about, we were told by the good woman : " It 's all of our DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 29 sounder. They stand, indeed, in a curious position, pledged to hold a proud Anglican isolation between two cosmopolitan interests, — the Popish theocracy and the Evangelical dogma, — refusing obedience to Rome, yet declining the alliance of foreign Protestants. Their enmity to the Papal system is quite a different sentiment from that which animates Exeter Hall ; they do not deny the absolute legitimacy of the elder corporation in general, but only its relative legitimacy here ; and Scottish ravings against it as " Babylon " and " Anti- christ " offend them more than the confessional and the mass. Twice in their history — under the Stuarts and in our own day — have they seemed to forget their destiny, and make overtures to the Vatican ; in both instances it was when Pu- ritanism had threatened to take possession of the Church, and reduce it to a federal member of an Evangelical alliance ; and if its separate integrity were in peril, they had rather fling it back into the Apostolic monarchy, than enroll it in the Genevan league. But the first real sight of danger from the Papal side has dissipated this reactionary 'inclination, and rekindled the instinct of local independence. Thus, in our Church, ideal interests and purely religious conceptions have held the second place to a predominating nationalism. The Church has embodied and handed down the leading sentiment of the Tudor times ; and though not guiltless of share in many a Stuart treachery, and often cruel to the stiff-necked recu- sant, has, on the whole, been true to the English feeling, that parson, that 's banging out the ^lethody -wi' the tae-board." Being cu- rious in ecclesiastical researches, we hastened down the hill, \n spite of the repulsion of increasing noise. On one side of the green was a deal table,' from which a field-preacher was holding forth with passionate but fruitless energy; for on the other side, and at the back of the crowd, was the paro- chial man of God, who had issued from his parsonage, armed with its largest tea-tray and the hall-door key, and was battering off the Japan in the ser- vice of orthodoxy. No military music could more efTectually neutralize the shrieks of battle. The more the evangelist bellowed, tlie faster went the parish gong. It was impossible to confute such a " drum ecclesiastic." The man was not easily put down; but the trium])!! was complete; and the " ^lethody's " brass was fairly beaten out of the field by the Churchmau'3 tin. 3 * 30 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. the Pope was too great a priest, and Calvin too long a preacher. The reason then is evident why the Church of England cannot be referred to any of the heads of classification we have given ; neither coinciding with Romanism, nor exem- plifying distinctively any of the tendencies springing succes- sively out of the disintegration of Catholic dogma. It arose out of an ecclesiastical revolt ; other communions, out of a theological aspiration. Its original conception involved no serious modification of belief, no invention or recovery of strange usages, but a mere separation of the island branch from the Roman stem, that it might strike root and be as a native tree of life. The first alterations in doctrine were slight, and merely incidental to this primary end : and the whole amount of change, instead of being determined by the intellectual dictatorship of a Luther or a Calvin, was the il- logical result of social forces, seeking the equilibrium of prac- tical compromise. The phenomenon therefore which we ob- served in the elder Church is repeated in this younger offshoot : the several elements of faith co-exist (though in greatly spoiled proportions) without unity or natural coherence ; and the English Church, as the depository of a creed, occupies no j)lace in the history of the human mind : its individual great men must be put here or there in the records of thought, with- out regard to the accident of their ecclesiastical position. The one real idea which has permanently inspired its clergy and supporters is that of nationalism in religion. To the time of the Restoration they attempted, since then they have pretended, to represent the nation in its faith and worship. Once, their aim appeared to be a noble possibility, struggling still and un- realized, but unrefuted. Now, thousands of Non-conformist chapels proclaim its meaning gone, and its language an affec- tation and an insolence. The English Church has become an outer reality without an inner idea. In contrast with the insidar feeling predominant in the English schism, we have placed the cosmopolitan zeal of the foreign Puritanism. With this, however, was combined the DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 31 reiy opposite pole of sentiment, — a certain egoism and lone- liness in religion, from which have flowed some of the most im- portant characteristics of Protestantism. Having flung away, as miserable quackeries, the hierarchical prescriptions for souls oppressed with sin, Luther fell back upon an act of subjective faith in place of the Church's objective works. For the cor- poration he substituted the individual : whom he put in im- mediate, instead of mediate, relation with Christ and God. Tlie Catholic's unbloody sacrifice had no efficacy, no existence, without the priest; the Lutheran's bloody sacrifice was a realized historical fact, to be appropriated separately by every believer's personal trust. It was not, therefore, the Church which, in its corporate capacity, occupied the prior place, and held the deposit of divine gi'ace for distribution to its mem- bers ; but it was the private person that constituted the sacred unit, find a plurality of believers supplied the factors of the Church. The grace which before could not reach the indi- vidual except by transit through accredited officials, now be- came directly accessible to each soul : and only after it had been received by a sufficient number to form a society, did the conditions of spiritual office and organization exist. This essential dejxindence of the whole upon the parts, instead of the parts u[)on the whole, is the most radical and powei-ful peculiarity of Protestantism. A system which raises the in- dividual to the primary i)lace of religious importance, places him nearest to the supernatural energy of God, and makes him the living stone without which temple and altar cannot be built, naturally draws to it minds of marked vigor, and trains men in self-subsisting habits. By giving scope to the forces of private cliaracter, it sets in action the real springs of healthy progress, and happily with such intensity as to defy the checks it often seeks to imjKjse in later moods of repentant alarm. This emancipation of the ]iersonal life from theocratic control, at first achieved in connection with the doctrine of justification, was sure to present itself in other forms. In its spiritual aj)- plication Protestant egoism assumes the shape of reliance on inner faith ; m \ii political, o^ voluntaryism ; in its intellect- ual, of free inquiry and private judgment. These several 32 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. directions may be taken separately or together, but ^vhere, as in the Church of England, not one of them is unambiguously marked, the very principle of reformed Cliristianity is unse- cured, and Protestantism is present, not by charter, but by social accident. Puritanism everywhere — conforming or non- conforming, English or Continental — exhibits the first direc- tion; "Evangelical" Dissenters add the second; while Uni- tarians occupy the third, — not perhaps completely, and not altogether exclusively, but characteristically nevertheless. For it is impossible to unite the orthodox with the intellectual egoism. So long as the inner faith, which is the presumed condition of justification, includes a controverted doctrine, like the scheme of Atonement, the need of faith imposes a limit on the right of judgment : and you are only free to think till you show symptoms of thinking wrong. But when the sac- rificial Christianity has passed into the ethical, and no other condition of harmony with God is laid down than purity of affection and fidelity of will, then honest thought can peril no salvation, and the devotion of the intellect to truth and the heart to grace is a divided allegiance no more. It was for some time doubtful how far this Protestant egoism was likely to go. Luther was clear and positive that it was faith that justified ; and fetching this doctrine out of a deep personal experience, he paid little respect to any one who contradicted it, and regulated by it his first choice of religious authorities. Led by this clew, he arrived at results strangely at variance with modern canons. Pie neither accepted as a standard the whole Bible, nor at first rejected the whole tra- dition of the Church ; loosely attempting to reserve the Au- gustinian authorities, and to repudiate the Dominican. "VYlien he had renounced altogether the appeal to councils and patris- tic lore, it was in favor, not of the external Scriptures, uncon- ditionally taken as the I'ule of faith, but of the private spirit of the Christian reader, who was himself "made king and priest," and could not only find the meaning, but pronounce upon the relative worth, of the canonical books. Accordingly, the Reformer made very free with portions of- the Old Testa- ment, and with the more Judaic elements of the New, — the DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. 33 Epistle to the Hebrews, that of Jame^;, and tlie Apocal}'pse ; and avowedly did this because he disliked the flavor of their doctrine, and felt its variance from the Pauline gospel. He thus tampered with his court before he brought forward his cause, and incapacitated the judges whose verdict he feared. In short, the religious life of his own soul was too intense and powerful to be prevailed over by any written word : he ap- propriated what was congenial, and threw away the rest. Uneasy relations were thus estabhshed between the subjective rule of faith found in the believer's own mind, and the objec- tive standard of a documentary revelation : they ^Vere soon constituted, and have ever since remained rival authorities, commanding the allegiance of different orders of minds. The vast majority of Protestants, of less profound and tumultuous inner life than Luther, and less knowing how to see their way through it, subsided into exclusive recognition of the sacred writings; denying alike the regulative authority either of church councils or of the private souk In every branch and derivative of the Genevan Reformation, throughout the whole range of both the Puritan and the Arminian Churches, a rig- orous Scripturalism prevails ; and the Bible is used as a code or legislative text-book, which yields, on mere interpretation, verdicts without appeal on every subject, whether doctrine or duty, of which it speaks. But Luther's spiritual enthusiasm kindled a Are that he scarce could quench ; and while he him- self, flung into perpetual conflicts with oi)ponents, was obliged more and more to refer to evidence external to his personal- ity, others had learned from him to look upon their own souls as the theatre of conscious strife between heaven and hell, and to recognize the voice of inspiration there. Carlstadt was the first to catch the flame of his teacher's burning experience, and, touched by prophetic consciousness, to set the Spirit above the Word. Luther, so often recalled from the tendencies of his own turbulent teaching by seeing their mischiefs realized in other men, instantly turned on Carlstadt with his overwhelm- ing scorn : " The spirit of our new prophet flies very high indeed : 't is an audacious spirit, that would eat up the Holy Ghost, feathers and all. * The Bible ? ' — sneer these fellows, 34 DISTINCTIVE TYPES OF CHRISTIANITY. — ' Bibel, Bubel, Babel ! ' And not only do they reject the ]5ible thus contemptuously, but they say they would reject God too, if he were not to visit them as he did his prophets." Carl- stadt had got hold of a doctrine that was too much for his ill- balanced mind, and Luther easily destroyed his repute. But a principle had been started which has never been dormant since ; the very principle which afterwards constituted the Society of Friends, and finds its best exposition in the writings of their admirable apologist, Barclay ; and which in our times reappears in more philosophic guise, and fights its old battles again as the doctrine of religious intuition. No period of awakened faith and sentiment has been without some increas- ing tincture of this persuasion ; and under modified forms, with more or less admixture of the ordinary Puritan elements, it has played a great part among tlie Quietists in France, the Moravians in Germany, and the Methodists in England. In all these, far as they are from being committed to the notion of an "inner light," spiritualism has predominated over Scrip- turalism, and permanent life in the Spirit has engaged the affections more than the transition into the adoption of faith. In this endeavor to lay out the ground-plan of modern Christian development, and trace upon it the chief lines both of psychological and of historical distinction, our design is to pre- pare the way for a series of sketches exhibiting the sects and types of religion in England. It is scarcely possible to notice the phenomena present here and to-day without referring to their antecedents in a prior age, their counterparts in other lands, and their permanent principles in human nature ; and if our chart be tolerably correct, our future course will be rendered less indeterminate by the relations and points of comparison which have been established. The age, and even the hour, is teeming with new interests and pregnant auguries in relation to the highest element of human well-being. From a desire to approach these in a temper of just and reverential appreciation, we have abstained from recording the first im- pression of them, and sought rather, by a preliminary disci- pline, to detect some criteria by which prejudices may be checked, tendencies be estimated, and criticism acquire a clew. CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST AND AYITHOUT RITUAL. " To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious ; 3^0 also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." — 1 Peter ii. 4, 5. The formation of human society, and the institution of priesthood, must be referred to the same causes and the same date. The earliest communities of the world appear to have had their origin and their cement, not in any gregarious in- stinct, nor in mere social affections, much less in any pruden- tial regard to the advantages of co-operation, but in a binding religious sentiment, submitting to the same guidance, and expressing itself in the same worship. As no tie can be more strong, so is nqne more primitive, than this agreement respecting what is holy and divine. In simple and patri- archal ages, indeed, when the feelings of veneration had not been set aside by analysis into a little corner of the char, acter, but spread themselves over the whole of life, and mixed it up with daily wonder, this bond comprised all the forces that can suppress the selfish and disorganizing passions, and compact a multitude of men together. It was not, as at present, to have simply the same opinions (things of quite modern growth, the brood of scepticism) ; but to have the same fathers, the same tradition, the same speech, the same land, the same foes, the same priest, the same God. Nothing 36 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST did man fear, or trust, or love, or desire, that did not belong, by some affinity, to liis faith. Nor had he any book to keep the precious deposit for him ; and if he had, he would never have thought of so frail a vehicle for so great a treasure. It was more natural to put it into structures hollowed in the fast mountain, or built of transplanted rocks which only a giant age could stir ; and to tenant these with mighty hie- rarchies, who should guard their sanctity, and, by an un- dying memory, make their mysteries eternal. Hence, the first humanizer of men was their worship ; the first leaders of nations, the sacerdotal caste ; the first triumph of art, the colossal temple ; the first effort to preserve an idea produced a record of something sacred ; and the first civilization was, as the last will be, the birth of religion. The primitive aim of worship undoubtedly was, to act upon the sentiments of God ; at first, by such natural and intelli- gible means as produce favorable impressions on the mind of a fellow-man, — by presents and persuasion, and whatever is expressive of grateful and reverential affections. Abel, the first shepherd, offered the produce of his flock ; Cain, the first farmer, the fruits of his land ;, and while devotion was so simple in its modes, every one would be his own pontiff, and have his own altar. But soon, the parent would inevi- tably officiate for his family ; the patriarch, for his tribe. With the natural forms dictated by present feelings, . tra- ditional methods would mingle their contributions from the past ; postures and times, gestures and localities, once indif- ferent, would become consecrated by venerable habit; and so long as their origin was unforgotten, they would add to the significance, while they lessened the simplicity, of wor- ship. Custom, however, being the groAvth of time, tends to a tyrannous and bewildering complexity : forms, originally natural, then symbolical, end in being arbitrary ; suggestive of nothing, except to the initiated ; yet, if connected with religion, so sanctified by the association, that it appears sacri- lege to desist from their employment ; and when their meaning is lost, they assume their place, not among empty gesticula- AND AV'ITIIOUT RITUAL. 37 tions, but among the mystical signs by wliich earth com- munes witli heaven. Tlie vivid picture-writing of the early worship, filled with living attitudes, and sketched in tlie freshest colors of emotion, explained itself to every eye, and was open to every hand. To this succeeded a piety, which expressed itself in symbolical figures, veiling it utterly fiom strangers, but intelligible and impressive still to the soul of national tradition. This, however, passed again into a lan- guage of arbitrary characters, in which the herd of men saw sacredness without meaning ; and the use of which must be consigned to a class separated for its study. Hence tlie origin of the priest and his profession ; the conservator of a worship no longer natural, but legendary and mystical ; skilful enactor of rites that spake with silent gesticulation to the heavens ; interpreter of the wants of men into the divine language of the gods. Not till the j^owers above had ceased to hold familiar converse with the earth, and in their distance had be- come deaf and dumb to the common tongue of men, did the mediating priest arise ; — needed then to conduct the finger- speech of ceremony, whereby the desire of the creature took shape before the eye of the Creator. Observe, then, the true idea of Priest and Ritual. The Priest is the representative of men before God ; commissioned on behalf of human nature to intercede witli the divine. He bears a message upivards, from earth to heaven ; his people beinfj below, his influence above. He takes the fears of the weak, and the cries of the perishing, and sets them with avail- ing supplication before Him that is able to help. He takes the sins and remorse of the guilty, and leaves them with ex- piating tribute at the feet of the averted Deity. He guards the avenues that lead from the mortal to the immortal, and without his interposition the creature is cut off from his Creator. Without his mediation no transaction between them can take place, and the spirit of a man must live as an out- law from tlie world invisible and holy. There are means of propitiation wdiich he alone has authority to employ ; powers of persuasion conceded to no other ; a mystic access to the 4 38 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST springs of divine benignity, hy outward rites which his ma- nipulation must consecrate, or forms of speech which his lips must recommend. These ceremonies are the implements of his office and the sources of his power ; the magic by which he is thought to gain admission to the will above, and really wins rule over human counsels below. As they are supposed to change the relation of God to man, not by visible or natural operation, not (for example) by suggestion of new thoughts, and excitement of new dispositions in the worshipper, but by secret and mysterious agency, they are simply spells of a dig- nified order. Were we then to speak with severe exactitude, we should say, a Ritual is a system of consecrated charms ; and the Priest, the great magician who dispenses them. 80 long as any idea is retained of mystically efficacious rites, consigned solely and authoritatively to certain hands, this definition cannot be escaped. The ceremonies may have rational instruction and natural worship appended to them ; and these additional elements may give them a title to true respect. The order of men appointed to administer them may have other offices and nobler duties to perform, render- ing them, if faithful, worthy of a just and reverential attach- ment. But in so fa?- as, by an exclusive and unnatural efficacy, they bring about a changed relation between God and man, the Ritual is an incantation, and the Priest is an enchanter. To this sacerdotal devotion there necessarily attach cer- tain characteristic sentiments, both moral and religious, which give it a distinctive influence on human character, and adapt it to particular stages of civilization. It clearly severs the worshippers by one remove from God. He is a Being, ex- ternal to them, distant from them, personally unapproachable by them ; their thought must travel to reach the Almighty ; they must look afar for the Most Holy ; they dwell themselves within the finite, and must ask a foreign introduction to the Infinite. He is not with them as a private guide, but in the remoter watch-towers of creation, as the public inspector of their life ; not present for perpetual communion, but to be AND WITHOUT lllTUAL. 39 visited in ab.'^enoe hy stated messages of form and prayer. And that God dwells in this cold and royal separation in- duces the feeling, that man is too mean to touch him ; that a consecrated intervention is required, in order to part Deity from the defiling contact of humanity. VTiiy else am I re- stricted from unlimited personal access to my Creator, and driven to another in my transactions with him ? And so, in this system, our nature appears in contrast, not in alliance, with the divine, and those views of it are favored which make the opposition strong ; its puny dimensions, its swift decadence, its poor self-flatteries, its degenerate virtues, its giant guilt, become familiar to the thought and lips ; and life, cut off from sympathy with the godlike, falls towards the level of melancholy, or the sink of ei)icurism, or the abject- ness of vicarious reliance on the priest. Worship, too, must have for its chief aim, to throw off the load of ill; to rid the mind of sin and shame, and the lot of hardship and sorrow ; for principally to these disburdening oifices do priests and rituals profess themselves adapted ; — and who, indeed, could pour forth the privacy of love, and peace, and trust, through the cumbrousness of ceremonies, and the pompousness of a sacred officer ? The piety of such a religion is thus a refuge for the weakness, not an outpouring of the strength, of the soul : it takes away the incubus of darkness, without shed- ding the light of heaven ; lifts off the nightmare horrors of earth and liell, without opening the vision of angels and of God. Nay, for the spiritual bonds which connect men with the Father above, it substitutes material ties, a genealogy of sacred fires, a succession of hallowed buildings, or of priests having consecration by pedigree or by manual transmission ; so that qualities belonging to the soul alone are likened to forces mechanical or chemical ; sanctity becomes a physical property ; divine acceptance comes by bodily catenation ; re- generation is degraded into a species of electric shock, which one only method of experiment, and the links of but one conductor, can convey. And, in fine, a priestly system ever abjures all aim at any higher perfection ; boasts of being im- 40 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST mutable and unimprovable ; encourages no ambition, breathes no desire. It holds the appointed methods of influencing Heaven, on which none may presume to innovate ; and its functions are ever the same, to employ and preserve the ancient forms and legendary spells committed to its trust. Hence all its veneration is antiquarian, not sympathetic or prospective ; it turns its back upon the living, and looks straight into departed ages, bowing the head and bending the knee ; as if all objects of love and devotion were there, not here ; in history, not in life ; as if its God were dead, or otherwise imprisoned in the Ptlst, and had bequeathed to its keeping such relics as might yield a perpetual benediction. Thus does the administration of religion, in proportion as it possesses a sacerdotal character, involve a distant Deity, a mean humanity, a servile worship, a j^hysical sanctity, and a retrospective reverence. Let no one, however, imagine that there is no other idea or administration of religion than this ; that the priest is the only person among men to whom it is given to stand between heaven and earth. Even the Hebi-ew Scriptures introduce us to another class of quite different order ; to whom, indeed, those Scriptures owe their own truth and power, and perpe- tuity of beauty : I mean the Prophets ; whom we shall very imperfectly understand, if we suppose them mere historians, for whom God had turned time round the other way, so that they spoke of things future as if past, and grew so dizzy in their use of tenses, as greatly to incommode learned gram- marians ; or if we treat their writings as scrap-books of Prov- idence, with miscellaneous contributions from various parts of duration, sketches taken indifferently from any point of view within eternity, and put together at random and without mark, on adjacent pages, for theologiciil memories to identify ; first, a picture of an Assyrian battle, next, a holy family ; now, of the captives sitting by Euphrates, then, of Paul preaching to the Gentiles ; here, a flight of devouring locusts, and there, the escape of the Christians from the destruction of Jeru- salem ; a portrait of Hezekiah, and a view of Calvary ; a AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 41 march through tlie desert, and John the Baptist by the Jor- dan ; tlie day of Pentecost, and tlie French Kevohition ; Nebuchadnezzar and Mahomet ; Cahgula and the Pope, — following each other with picturesque neglect of every rela- tion of time and place. No, the Prophet and his work alwajs indeed belong to the future ; but far otherwise than thus. MeanAvhile, let us notice how, in Israel, as elsewhere, he takes his natural station above the priest. It was Moses the prophet who even made Aaron the priest. And who cares now for the sacerdotal books of the Old Testament, comi)ared with the rest ? Who, having the strains of David, would pore over Leviticus, or would weary himself with Chronicles, when he might catch the insj)iration of Isaiah ? It was no priest that wrote, " Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it ; thou delightest not in burnt-offering: the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a contrite heart, 0 God, thou wilt not despise." It was no pontifical spirit that ex- claimed, " Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomi- nation to me ; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting : your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth ; they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear them.'* " Wash you, make }'ou clean." Whatever in these venerable Scriptures awes us by its grandeur and pierces us by its truth, comes of the prophets, not the priests ; and from that part of their writings, too, in which they are not con- cerned with historical prediction, but Avith some utterance deeper and greater. I do not deny them this gift of occa- sional intellectual foresight of events. And doubtless it was an honor to be permitted to speak thus to a portion of the future, and of local occurrences unrevealed to seers less priA i- leged. But it is a glory far higher to speak that which be- longs to all time, and finds its interpretation in every j)lace ; to penetrate to the everlasting realities of things ; to disclose, not when this or that man will appear, but how and wherefore .all men appear and quickly disai)pear ; to make it felt, not in what nook of duration such an incident will happen, but from 4* 42 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST what all-embracing eternity the images of historj emerge and are swallowed up. In this highest faculty' the Hebrew seers belong to a class scattered over every nation and every period ; which Providence keeps ever extant for human g(X)d, and especially to furnish an administration of religion quite anti-sacerdotal. This class we must proceed to characterize. The Prophet is the representative of God before men, com- missioned from the Divine nature to sanctify tlie human. He bears a message downwards, from heaven to earth ; his inspirer being above, his influence below. He takes of the holiness of God, enters with it into the souls of men, and heals therewith the wounds, and purifies the taint, of sin; He is charged with the peace of God, and gives- from it rest to the weariness and solace to the griefs of men. Instead of carry- ing the foulness of life to be cleansed in heaven, he brings the purity of heaven to make life divine. Instead of inter- posing himself and his mediation between humanity and Deity, he destroys the whole distance between them ; and only fulfils his mission, when he brings the finite mind and the infinite into immediate and thrilling contact, and leaves the creature consciously alone with the Creator. He is one to whom the primitive and everlasting relations between God and man have revealed themselves, stripped of every disguise, and bared of all that is conventional ; who is possessed by their simi^licity, mastered by their solemnity ; who has found the secret of meeting the Holy Spirit witliin, rather than without ; and knows, but cannot tell, how, in the strife of genuine duty, or in moments of true meditation, the Divine immensity and love have touched and filled his naked soul ; and taught him by Vhat fathomless Godhead he is folded round, and on what adamantine manhood he must take his stand. So far from separating others from the heavenly communion vouchsafed to himself, he necessarily believes that all may have the same godlike consciousness ; burns to impart it to them ; and by the vivid light of his own faith speedily creates it in tho: e who feel his influence, drawing out and freshening the faded colors of the Divine image in their souls, till they too become visibly AND WITHOUT KIT UAL. 43 the seers and the sons of God. Ills instruments, like the objects of his mission, are human ; not mysteries, and mum- meries, and such arbitrary things, by which others may pre- tend to be talkina: with the skies ; but the natural lansruaije wliich interprets itself at once to every genuine man, and goes direct to the living point of every heart. An earnest speech, a brave and holy life, truth of sympathy, severity of conscience, freshness and loftiness of faith, — these natural sanctities are his implements of power ; and if heaven be pleased to add any other gifts, still are they weapons all, — not the mere tinsel of tradition and custom, — but forged in the inner workshop of our nature, where the fire glows be- neath the breath of God, framing things of ethereal temper. Thus armed, he lays undoubting siege to the world's con- science ; tears down every outwork of pretence ; forces its strong-holds of delusion ; humbles the vanities at its centre, and proclaims it the citadel of God. The true prophet of every age is no believer in the temple, but in the temple's Deity; trusts, not rites and institutions, but the heart and soul that fill or ought to fill them ; if they si)eak the truth, no one so reveres them ; if a lie, they meet with no contempt like his. lie sees no indestructible sanctuary but the mind itself, wherein the Divine Spirit ever loves to dwell ; and whence it will be sure to go forth and build such outward temple as may suit tlie season of Provid(Mice. lie is conscious tliat there is no devotion like that which comes spontaneously from the secret places of our humanity, no orisons so true as those which rise from the common platform of our life. lie de- sires only to throw himself in faith on the natural piety of the heart. Give him but that, and he will find for man an everlasting worship, and raise for God a cathedral worthy of his infinitude. It is evident tliat one thoroughly possessed with this spirit could never be, and could never make, a priest ; nor frame a ritual for ])riests already made. He is destitute of the ideas out of which alone these things can be created. His mission is in the opposite direction : he interprets and reveals God to 44 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST men, instead of interceding for men with God. In this office sacerdotal rites have no function and no place. I do not say that he must necessarily disapprove and abjure them, or deny that he may directly sanction them. If he does, however, it is not in his capacity of prophet, but in conformity with feel- ings which his ^jroper office has left untouched. His tendency will be against ceremonialism ; and on his age and position will depend the extent to which this tendency takes effect. Usually he will construct nothing ritual, will destroy much, and leave behind great and growing ideas, destructive of much more. But ere we quit our general conception of a prophet, let us notice some characteristic sentiments, moral and re- ligious, which naturally connect themselves with his faith ; comparing them with those wliich belong to the sacerdotal influence. In this faith, God is separated by nothing from his wor- shippers. He is not simply in contact with them, but truly in the interior of their nature ; so that they may not only meet him in the outward providences of life, but bear his spirit with them, when they go to toil and conflict, and find it still, when they sit alone to think and pray. He is not the far observer, but the very present help, of the faithful will. No structure made with hands, nay, not even his own ar- chitecture of the heaven of heavens, contains and confines his presence : were there any dark recess whence these were hid, the blessed access would be without hinderance still ; and the soul would discern him near as its own identity. No mean and ignoble conception can be entertained of a mind which is thus the residence of Deity ; — the shrine of the Infinite must have somewhat that is infinite itself. Thus, in this system, does our nature appear in alliance with the Di- vine, not in contrast with it ; inspired with a portion of its holiness, and free to help forward the best issues of its provi- dence. Human life, blessed by this spirit, becomes a minia- ture of the work of the great Ruler : its responsibilities, its difficulties, its temptations, become dignified as the glorious theatre whereon we strive, by and with the good Si^irit of AND AVITIIOUT RITXTAL. 45 Gocl, for the masteiy over evil. Worship, issuing from a nature and existence thus consecrated, is not the casting off of guilt and terror, but the glad unburdening of love, and trust, and aspiration, the simple speaking forth, as duty is the acting forth, of the divine -within us; not the prostration of the slave, but the embrace of the child ; not the plaint of the abject, but the anthem of the free. Is it not private, individual ? And may it not by silence say what it will, and intimate the precise thing, and that only, which is at heart? — whence there grows insensibly that firm root of excellence, truth with one's own self. The priestly fancy of an hereditary or lineal sacredness can have no place here. The soul and God stand directly related, mind with mind, spirit with spirit : from our moral fidelity to this relation, from the jealousy with which we guard it from insult or neglect, does the only sanc- tity arise ; and herein there is none to help us, or give a vicarious consecration. And, finally, the spirit of God's true prophet is earnestly prospective ; more filled with the con- ception of what the Ci'eator ivill make his world, than of wliat he has already made it : detecting great capacities, it glows with great hopes ; knowing that God lives, and will live, it turns from the past, venerable as that may be, and reverences rather the promise of the present, and the glories of the future. It esteems nothing unimprovable, is replete with vast desires ; and amid the shadows and across the wilds of existence chases, not vainly, a bright image of perfection. The golden age, which priests with their tradition put into the past, the prophet, with his faith and truth, transfers into the future ; and while the former pines and muses, the latter toils and prays. Thus does the administration of religion, in proportion as it partakes of the prophetic or anti-sacer- dotal cliaracter, involve the ideas of an interior Deity, a noble humanity, a loving worship, an individual holiness, and a prospective veneration. We have found, then, two opposite views of religion : that of the Priest with his Ritual, and that of the Propliet with his Faith. I propose to show that the Cliurcli of England, 46 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT TRIKST in its doctrine of sacraments, coincides Avith the fonner of these, and sanctions all its objectionable sentiments ; and that Christianity, in every relation, even with respect to its reputed rites, coincides with the latter. The general conformity of the Church of England with the ritual conception of religion will not be dcmied by her own members. Their denial will be limited to one point : they w^ill protest that her formulas of doctrine do not ascribe a charmed efficacy, or any operation upon God, to the two sacraments. To avoid verbal disputes, let us consider what we are to understand by a spell or charm. The name, I ap- prehend, denotes any material object or outward act, the pos- session or use of which is thought to confer safety or blessing, not by natural operation, but by occult virtues inherent in it, or mystical effects appended to it. A mere commemo- rative sign, therefore, is not a charm, nor need there be any superstition in its employment : it simply stands for certain ideas and memories in our minds ; re-excites and freshens them, not otherwise than speech audibly records them, except that it summons them before us by sight and touch, instead of sound. The effect, whatever it may be, is purely natural, by sequence of thought on thought, till the complexion of the mind is changed, and haply suffused with a noble glow. But in truth it is not fit to speak of commemorations, as things having efRcacy at all ; as desirable observances, under whose action we should put ourselves, in order to get up certain good dispositions in the heart. As soon as we see them ac- quiesced in, with this dutiful submission to a kind of spiritual operation, we may be sure they are already empty and dead. An expedient commemoration, deliberately maintained on util- itarian principles, for the sake of warming cold affections by artificial heat, is one of the foolish conceptions of this mechan- ical and sceptical age. It is quite true, that such influence is found to belong to rites of remembrance ; but only so long as it is not privately looked into, or greedily contemplated by the staring eye of prudence, but simply and unconsciously received. No ; commemorations must be the spontaneous AND WITHOUT KITUAL. 47 fruit and outburst of a love already kindled in the soul, not the factitious contrivance for forcing it into existence. Thej are not the lighted match applied to the fuel on an altar cold ; but the shapes in which the living flame aspires, or the fretted lights thrown hy that central love on the dark temple-walls of this material life. It is not pretended that the sacraments are mere com- memorative rites And nothing, I submit, remains, but that they should be pronounced charms. It is, of little purpose to urge, in denial of this, that the Church insists upon the necessity of faith on the part of the recipient, without which no benefit, but rather peril, will accrue. This only limits the use of the charm to a certain class, and establishes a pre- requisite to its proper elhcacy. It simply conjoins the out- ward form Avith a certain state of mind, and gives to each of these a participation in the effect. If the faith be insufficient Avithout the ceremony, then some efficacy is due to the rite ; and this, being neither the natural operation of the material elements, nor a simple suggestion of ideas and feelings to the mind, but mystical and preternatural, is no other than a channed efficacy. Nor will the statement, that the effect is not upon God, but upon man, bear examination. It is very true, that the ulti- mate benefit of these rites is a result reputed to fall upon the worshipper;. — regeneration, in the case of baptism ; partici- pation in the atonement, in the case of tlie Lord's Supper. But by what ste})S do these blessings descend ? Not by those of visible or perceived causation ; but through an express and extraordinary volition of God, induced by. the ceremonial form, or taking occasion from it. The sacerdotal economy^ therefore, is so arranged, that, Avhenever the priest dispenses the water at the font, the Holy Spirit follows, as in instan- taneous compliance Avith a suggestion ; and AvhencAer he spreads his hands OA'er the elements at the communion, God immediately establishes a preternatural relation, not subsisting the moment before, betAveen the substances on the table and the souls of the faithful communicants : so that every partaker 48 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST receives, either directly or through supernatural increase of faith, some new share in the merits of the cross. Whatever subtleties of language then may be employed, it is evidently conceived that the first consequence of these forms takes place in heaven ; and that on this depends whatever benediction they may bring : nor can a plain understanding frame any other idea of them than this ; first, they act upwards, and suggest something to the mind of God, who then sends down an influence on the mind of the believer. . From this concep- tion no figures of speech, no ingenious analogies, can deliver us. Do you call the sacraments " pledges of grace " ? A pledge means a promise ; and how a voluntary act of ours, or the priest's, can be a promise made to us by the Divine Being, it is not easy to understand. Do you call them "seals of God's covenant," — the instrument by which he engages to make over its blessings to the Christian, like the signature and completion of a deed conveying an estate ? It still perplexes us to think of a service of our own as an assurance received by us from Heaven. And one would imagine that the Divine promise, once given, were enough, without this incessant bind- ing by periodical legalities. If it be said, " The renewal of the obligation is needful for us, and not for him " ; then call the rites at once and simply, our service of self-dedication, the solemn memorial of our vows. And in spite of all metaphors, the question recurs. Does the covenant stand without these seals, or ai'e they essential to give possession of the privileges conveyed ? Are they, by means preternatural, procurers of salvation ? Have they a mystical action towards this end ? If so, we return to the same point ; they have a charmed efficacy on the human soul. In order to establish this, nothing more is requisite than a brief reference to the language of the Articles and Liturgical services of the Church respecting Baptism and the Com- munion. Baptism is regarded, throughout the Book of Common Prayer, as the instrument of regeneration : not simply as its sign, of which the actual descent of the Holy Spirit is inde- AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 49 pendent ; but as itself and essentially the means or indispen- sable occasion of the -washing away of sin. That this is regarded as a mystical and magical, not a natural and spirit- ual effect, is evident from the alleged fact of its occurrence in infiints, to whom the rite can suggest nothing, and on whom, in tlie course of nature, it can leave no impression. Yet it is declared of the infant, after the use of the water, " Seeing now, dearly beloved brethren, that this child is re- generate^' &c. : at the commencement of the service its aim is said to be that God may " grant to this child that thing which by nature he cannot have," — " would wash him and sanctify him with the Holy Ghost," that he may be " deliv- ered from God's wrath." Nothing, indeed, is so striking in this office of the national Church, as its audacious trifling with solemn names, denoting qualities of the soul and Avill; the ascription of spiritual and moral attributes, not only to the child in whom they can yet have no development, but even to material substances ; the frivolity with which engage- ments with God are made by deputy, and without the con- sent or even existence of the engaging will. Water is said to possess sanctity, for " the mystical washing away of sin." Infants, destitute of any idea of duty or obligation to be re- sisted or obeyed, are said to obtain " remission of their sins " ; — to " renounce the Devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world " ; " steadfastly to believe " in the Apostles' Creed, and to be desirous of "baptism into this faitli." Belief, desire, resolve, are acts of some one's mind: the language of this service attributes them to the personality of the infant (/renounce, /believe, /desire) ; yet there they cannot possibly exist. If they are to be und(;rstood as af- firmed by the godfathers and godmothers of themselves, the case is not improved : for how can one person's state of fiiitli and conscience be made the condition of tlie regeneration of^ another ? What intelligible meaning can be attaclied to these phrases of sanctity applied to an age not responsible? In what sense, and by what indication, are these children holier than others ? And with what reason, if all this be Cliris- 5 50 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST tianity, can we blame the Pope for sprinkling holy water on the horses ? The service appears little better than a profane sacerdotal jugglery, by which material things are impregnated with divine virtues, moral and spiritual qualities of the mind are sported with, the holy spirit of God is turned into a physical mystery, and the solemnity of personal responsibihty is insulted. That a superstitious value is attributed to the details of the baptismal form, in the Church of England, appears from certain parts of the service for the private ministration of the rite. If a child has been baptized by any other lawful min- ister than the minister of the parish, strict inquiries are to be instituted by the latter respecting the correctness with which the ceremony has been performed ; and should the prescribed rules have been neglected, the baptism is invalid, and must be repeated. Yet great solicitude is manifested, lest danger should be incurred by an unnecessary repetition of the sacrament : to guard against which, the minister is to give the following conditional invitation to the Holy Spirit ; saying, in his address to the child, " If thou art not already baptized, I baptize thee," &c. It is worthy of remark, that the Church mentions as one of the essentials of the service, the omission of which necessitates its repetition, the use of the formula, " In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." By this rule, every one of the apos- tolic baptisms recorded in Scripture must be pronounced in- valid ; and the Church of England, were it possible, would perform them again : for in no instance does it aj)pear that the Apostles employed either this or even any equivalent form of words. That this sacrament is regarded as an indispensable channel of grace, and positively necessary to salvation, is clear from the provision of a short and private form, to be used in cases of extreme danger. The prayers, and faith, and obedience, and patient love, of parents and friends, — the dedication and heart-felt surrender of their child to God, the profound appli- cation of their anxieties and grief to their conscience and AND WITHOUT KITUAL. Ol inward life, — all this, we are tokl, will be of no avail, with- out the water and the priest. Archbishop Laud says : " That baptism is necessary to the salvation of infants (in the or- dinary way of the Church, without binding God to the use and means of that sacrament, to which he hath bound us), is expressed in St. John iii., ' Except a man be born of water,' &c. So, no baptism, no entrance ; nor can infants creep in, any other ordinary way." * Bishop Bramhall says : " Wilful neglect of baptism we acknowledge to be a damnable sin; and, without repentance and God's extraordinary mercy, to exclude a man from all hope of salvation. But yet, if such a person, before his death, shall repent and deplore his neg- lect of the means of grace, from his heart, and desire with all his soul to be baptized, but is debarred from it invincibly, we do not, we dare not, pass sentence of condemnation upon him ; not yet the Roman Catholics themselves. The ques- tion then is, whether the want of baptism, upon invincible necessity, do evermore infallibly exclude from heaven." f Singular struffde here, between the merciless ritual of the priest, and the relenting spirit of the man ! The office of Communion contains even stronger marks of the same sacerdotal superstitions ; and, notwithstanding the Protestant horror entertained of the mass, approaches it so nearly, that no ingenuity can exhibit them in contrast. Near doctrines, however, like near neighbors, are known to quarrel most. The idea of a physical sanctity, residing in solid and liquid substances, is encouraged by this service. The priest conse- crates the elements, by laying his hand upon all the bread, and upon every flagon containing the wine about to be dis- pensed. If an additional quantity is required, this too must be consecrated before its distribution. And the sacredness thus imparted is represented as surviving the celebration of * Conference with Fisher, § 15 ; quoted in Tracts for the Times, No. 76. Catena Patrum, No. II. p. 18. t Of Persons dying without Baptism, p. 979 ; quoted in loc. cit. pp. 19, 20. 52 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST the Supper, and residing in the substances as a permanent quality : for in the disposal of the bread and wine that may remain at the close of the sacramental feast, a distinction is made between the consecrated and the unconsecrated portion of the elements ; the former is not permitted to quit the altar, but is to be reverently consumed by the priest and the communicants ; the latter is given to the curate. What the particular change may be, which the prayer and manipulation of the minister are thought to induce, it is by no means easy to determine ; nor would the discovery, perhaps, reward our pains. It is certainly conceived, that they cease to be any lonsrer mere bread and wine, and that with them thence- forth co-exist, really and substantially, the body and blood of Christ. Respecting this Real Presence with the elements, there is no dispute between the Romish and the English Church ; both unequivocally maintain it : and the only ques- tion is, respecting the Real Absence of the original and cu- linary bread and wine ; the Roman Catholic believing that these substantially vanish, and are replaced by the body and blood of Christ ; the English Protestant conceiving that they remain, but are united with the latter. The Lutheran, no less than the British Reformed Church, has clung tenaciously to the doctrine of the real presence in the Eucharist. Luther himself declares : " I would rather retain, with the Romanists, ojili/ the body and blood, than adopt, with the Swiss, the bread and wine, without the real body and blood of Christ." The catechism of our Church affirms that '' the body and blood of Christ are verily and indeed taken and received by the faithful in the Lord's Supper." And this was not in- tended to be figuratively understood, of the spiritual use and appropriation to which the faith and piety of the receiver would mentally convert the elements : for although here the body of Christ is only said to be " taken " (making it the act of the communicant), yet one of the Articles speaks of it as '•'given'' (making it the act of the officiating priest), and im- plying the real presence before participation. However anxious, indeed, the clergy of the " Evangelical " school may AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 53 be to disguise the fact, it cannot be doubted that their Church has always maintained a supernatural change in the elements themselves, as well as in the mind of the receiver. Cosin, Bishop of Durham, says, " We own the union between the body and blood of Christ, and the elements, whose use and otRce we hold to be changed from what it was before " ; " we confess the necessity of a supernatural and heavenly change, and that the signs cannot become sacraments but by the infinite power of God." * In consistency with this preparatory change, a charmed efficacy is attributed to the subsequent participation in the elements. Even the body of the communicant is said to be under their influence : " Grant us to eat the flesh of thy dear Son, and drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean thi-ough his body, and our soids washed through his most precious blood " ; and the unworthy recipients are said " to provoke God to plague them with divers diseases and sundry kinds of death." Lest the worshipper, by pre- senting himself in an unqualified state, should " do nothing else than increase his damnation," the unquiet conscience is directed to resort to the priest, and receive the benefit of ab- solution before communicating. Can we deny to the Oxford divines the merit (whatever it may be) of consistency with the theology of their Church, when they applaud and recom- mend, as they do, the administration of the Eucharist to in- fants, and to persons dying and insensible ? Indeed, it is difficult to discover why infant Communion should be thought more irrational than infant Baptism. If, as I have endeav- ored to show, the primary action of these ceremonies is con- ceived to be on God, not on the mind of their object, why should not the Divine blessing be induced upon the young and the unconscious,- as well as on the mature and capable soul? And were any further eviden(;e required than I have hitherto adduced, to show on whom the Communion is con- * History of Popish Transubstantiation, Chap. IV. ; printed in the Tracts for the Times, No. XXVII. pp. 14, 15. 5* 54 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST ceived to pperate in the first instance, it ■would surely be afforded by this clause in the Service : by not partaking, " Consider how great an injury ye do unto God^ The only thing wanted to complete this sacerdotal system, is to obtain for a certain class of men the corporate posses- sion, and exclusive administration, of these essential and holy mysteries. This our Church accomplishes by its doctrine of Apostolical Succession ; claiming for its ministers a lineal official descent from the Apostles, which invests them, and them alone within this reahn, with divine authority to pro- nounce absolution or excommunication, and to administer the Sacraments. They are thus the sole guardians of the chan- nels of the Divine Spirit and its grace, and interpose them- selves between a nation and its God. " Receive the Holy Ghost," says the Service for Ordination of Priests, " for the office and work of a priest in the Church of God, now com- mitted unto thee by the imposition of hands. Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven ; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained." " They only," says the present Bishop of Exeter, " can claim to rule over the Lord's house- hold, whom he has himself placed over it ; they only are able to minister the means of grace, — above all, to present the great commemorative sacrifice^ — whom Christ has appointed, and whom he has in all generations appointed in unbroken succession from those, and through those, whom he first or- dained. ' Ambassadors from Christ ' must, by the very force of the term, receive credentials from Christ : ' stewards of the mysteries of God ' must be intrusted with those mysteries by him. Remind your people, that in the Church only is the promise of forgiveness of sins ; and though, to all Avho truly repent, and sincerely believe, Christ mercifully grants forgive- ness, yet he has, in an especial manner, empowered his minis- ters to declare and pronounce to his people the absolution and remission of their sins : ' Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.' This was the awful authority given to his first ministers, and in them, and through them, to all their sue- AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 65 cessors. This is the awful authority we have received, and tliat we must never be ashamed nor afraid to tell the people that we have received. " Having shown to the people your commission, show to them how our own Church has framed its services in accord- ance with that commission. Show this to them not only in the Ordinal, but also in the Collects, in the Communion Ser- vice, in the Office of the Visitation of the Sick ; show it, es- pecially, in that which continually presents itself to their no- tice, but is commonly little regarded by them ; show it in the very commencement of Morning and Evening Prayer, and make them understand the full blessedness of that service, in which the Church thus calls on them to join. Let them see that there the minister authoritatively pronounces God's pardon and absolution to all them that truly repent, and un- feignedly believe Christ's holy Gospel ; that he does this, even as the Apostles did, with the authority and by the appoint- ment of our Lord himself, who, in commissioning his Apos- tles, gave this to be the never-failing assurance of his co- operation in their ministry : * Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world ' ; a promise which, of its very nature, was not to be fulfilled to the persons of those whom he addressed, but to their office, to their successors therefore in that office, ' even unto the end of the world.' Lastly, remind and warn them of the awful sanction with which our Lord accompanied his mission, even of the second order of the ministers whom he appointed : ' He that heareth you, heareth me ; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me ; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.' " That this high dignity may be clearly understood to balong in this country only to the Church of England, the Bishop proposes the question, " What, then, becomes of those who are not, or continue not, members of that (visible) Cimrch ? " and replies to it by saying, that though he "judges not them that are without," yet " he who wilfully and in despite of due warning, or through recklessness and worldly-mindedness, sets at naught its ordinances, and despises its ministers, has no right to 56 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST promise to himself any share in the grace which they are appointed to convey." * " Why," says one of the Oxford divines, who here undeniably speaks the genuine doctrine of his Church, — " Why should we talk so much of an Establish- ment, and so little of an Apostolic Succession ? Why should we not seriously endeavor to impress our people with this plain truth, that, by separating themselves from our com- munion, they separate themselves not only from a decent, orderly, useful society, but from the only Church in this realm which has a right to be quite sure THAT SHE HAS THE LoRD's BODY TO GIVE TO HIS PEO- PLE ? " t Of course this divine authority has been received through the Church of Rome, so abominable in the eyes of all Evan- gelical clergymen ; and through many an unworthy link in the broken chain. The Holy Spirit, it is acknowledged, has passed through many, on whom, apparently, it was not pleased to rest ; and the right to forgive sins been conferred by those who seemed themselves to need forgiveness. A writer in the Oxford Tracts observes : " Nor even though we may admit that many of those who formed the connecting links of this holy chain were themselves unworthy of the high charge reposed in them, can this furnish us with any solid ground for doubting or denying their power to exercise that legiti- mate authority with which they were duly invested, of trans- mitting the sacred gift to worthier followers." j In its doctrine of Sacraments, then, and in that of eccle- siastical authority and succession, the Church of England is thoroughly imbued with the sacerdotal character. It doubt- less contains far better elements and nobler conceptions than those which it has been my duty to exhibit now ; and sol- emnly insists on faith of heart, and truth of conscience, and Christian devotedness of life, as well as on the observance of * Bishop of Exeter's Charge, delivered at his Trienuial Visitation in August, September, and October, 1836, pp. 44-47. t Tracts for the Times, No. IV. p. 5. X Ibid., No. V. pp. 9, 10. AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 57 its ritual ; with the external it unites the internal condition of sanetification. But insisting on the theory of a mystic efficacy in the Christian rites, it necessarily fails to reconcile these with each other : and hence the opposite parties within its pale ; the one magnifying faith and personal spirituality, the other exalting the sacraments and ecclesiastical communion. They represent respectively the two constituent and clashing powers, which met at the formation of the English Churcli, and of which it effected the mere compromise, not the recon- ciliation ; I mean, the priestliness of Rome, and the prophetic spirit of the Reformers. Never, since apostolic days, did Heaven bless us with truer prophet than Martin Luther. It was his mission (no modern man had ever greater) to substi- tute the idea of personal faith for tliat of sacerdotal reliance. And gloriously, with bravery and truth of soul amid a thou- sand hinderances, did he achieve it. But though, ever since, the priests have been down, and faith has been up, yet did the hierarchy unavoidably remain, and insisted that something should be made of it, and at least some colorable terms pro- posed. Hence, every reformed church exhibits a coalition between the new and the old ideas : and combined views of religion, which must ultimately prove incompatible with each other ; the formal with the spiritual ; the idea of worship as a means of propitiating God, with the conception of it as an expression of love in man ; the notion of Church authority with that of individual freedom ; the admission of a license to think, with a prohibition of thinking wrong. In our na- tional Church the old spirit was ascendant over the new, though long forced into quiescence by the temper of modern times. Now it is attempting to reassert its power, not with- out strenuous resistance. Indeed, the present age seems destined to end the compromise between the two principles, from the union of which Protestantism assumed its estab- lished forms. The truce seems everywhere breaking up : a general disintegration of churches is visible ; tradition is ran- sacking the past for claims and dignities, and canvassing present timidity for fresh authority, to withstand the wild 58 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST forces born at the Reformation, and hurrying us fast into an unknown future. Let us now turn to the primitive Christianity ; which, I submit, is throughout wholly anti-sacerdotal. Surely it must be admitted that the general spirit of our Lord's personal life and ministry was that of the Prophet, not of the Priest ; tending directly to the disparagement of whatever priesthood existed in his country, witliout visibly preparing the substitution of anything at all analogous to it. The sacerdotal order felt it so ; and, with the infallible instinct of self-preservation, they watched, they hated, they seized, they murdered him. The priest in every age has a natural antipathy to the prophet, dreads him as kings dread revolution, and is the first to detect his existence. The solemn moment and the gracious words of Christ's first preaching in Nazareth, struck with fate the temple in Jerusalem. To the old men of the village, to the neighbors who knew his childhood, and companions who had shared its rambles and its sports, he said, with the quiet flush of inspiration : " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor : he hath sent me to heal the broken- hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recover- ing of sight to the blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." The Spirit of the Lord in Galilee ! speaking with the peasantry, dwelling in villages, and wandering loose and where it listeth amonor the hills ! This would never do, thouo-ht the white- robed Levites of the Holy City ; it w^ould be as a train of wildfire in the temple. And were they not right? When it was revealed that sanctity is no thing of place and time, that a way is open from earth to heaven, from every field or mountain trod by human feet, and through every roof that shelters a human head ; that, amid the crowd and crush of life, each soul is in personal solitude Avith God, and by speech or silence (be they but true and loving) may tell its cares and find its peace ; that a divine allegiance might cost nothing^ but the strife of a dutiful will and the patience of a filial AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 59 heart, — how could any priesthood hope to stand? See how Jesus himself, when the temple was close at hand, and the sunshine dressed it in its splendor, yet withdrew his prayers to the midnight of Mount Olivet. He entered those courts to teach, rather than to worship ; and when there, he is felt to take no consecration, but to give it ; to bring with him the living spirit of God, and spread it throughout all the place. "When evening closes his teachings, and he returns late over the Mount to Bethany, did he not feel that there was more of God in the night-breeze on his brow, and the heaven above him, and the sad love within him, than m the place called " Holy " which he had left ? And when he had knocked at the gate of Lazarus the risen and become his guest, — when, after the labors of the day, he unburdened his spirit to the affections of that family, and spake of things divine to the sisters listening at his feet, — did they not feel, as they retired at length, that the whole house was full of God, and that there is no sanctuary like the shrine, not made with hands, within us all ? In childhood, he had once preferred the temple and its teachings to his parents' home : now, to his deeper expe- rience, the temple has lost its truth ; while the cottage and the walks of Nazareth, the daily voices and constant duties of this life, seem covered with the purest consecration. True, he vindicated the sanctity of the temple, when he heard within its enclosure the hum of trafhc and the chink of gain, and would not have the house of prayer turned into a place of merchandise : because in this there was imposture and a lie, and ]\Iammon and the Lord must ever dwell apart. In nothing must there be mockery and falsehood ; and while the temple stands, it must be a temple true. • Our Lord's whole ministry, then, (to which we may add that of his Apostles,) was conceived in a spirit quite opposite to that of priesthood. A missionary life, without fixed lo- cality, without form, without rites ; with teaching free, oc- casional, and various, Avith sympathies ever with the people, and a strain of speech never marked by invective, except against the ruUng sacerdotal influence ; — all these characters 60 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST proclaim him, purely and emphatically, the Prophet of the Lord. It deserves notice that, unless as the name of his enemies, the word " Priest " {ifp(vs) never occurs in either the historical or epistolary writings of the New Testament, except in the Epistle to the Hebrews. And there its applica- tion is not a little remarkable. It is applied to Christ alone ; it is declared to belong to him only after his ascension ; it is said that, while on earth, he neither was, nor could be, a priest ; and if it is admitted that he holds the office in heaven, this is only to satisfy the demand of the Hebrew Christians for some sacerdotal ideas in their religion, and to reconcile them to having no priest on earth. The writer acknowledges one great pontiff in the world above, that the whole race may be superseded in the world below ; and banishes priesthood into invisibility, that men may never see its shadow more. All the terms of office which are given to the first preachers of the Gospel and superintendents of churches, — as Deacon, Elder or Presbyter, Overseer or Bishop, — are lay terms, be- longing previously, not to ecclesiastical, but to civil life ; an indication, surely, that no analogy was thought to exist be- tween the Apostohc and the Sacerdotal relations.* I shall, no doubt, be reminded of the words, in which our Lord is supposed to have given their commission to his first repre- sentatives : " Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven ; and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven " ; and shall be asked whether this does not con- vey to them and their successors an official authority to * Archbishop Whately, speaking of the word iepevs and its meaning, says : " This is an office assigned to none under the Gospel scheme, except the ONE great High-Priest, of whom the Jewish priests were types." (p]le- ments of Logic. Appendix : Note on the word " Priest.") Of the " Oos- 2)el scheme " this is quite true ; of the Church-of- En gland scheme it is not. There lies before me Duport's Greek version of the Prayer-Book and Offices of the Anglican Church : and turning to the Communion Service, I find the officiating clergyman called Upevs throughout. The absence of this word from the records of the primitive Gospel, and li?, presence in the Praj^er-Book, is perfectly expressive of the difference in the spirit of the two systems ; — the difference between the Church with, and the " Christianity without Priest." AND WITHOUT KITUAL. 61 forgive sins, and dispense the decrees of the unseen world. I reply briefly : — 1st. That the power here granted does not relate to the dispensations of the future life, but solely to what would be termed, in modern language, the allotment oi church-mem- hership. The previous verse proves ihis, furnishing as it does a })articular case of the general authority here assigned. It directs the Apostles under what circumstances they are to remove an offender from a Christian society, and treat him as an unconverted man, as a heathen man and a publican. Having given them their rule, he freely trusts the application of it to them : and being about to retire erelong from per- sonal intervention in the affairs of his kingdom, he assures them that their decisions shall be his, and that he may be considered as adopting in heaven their determinations upon earth. He simply " consigns to his Apostles discretionary power to direct the affairs of his Church, and superintend the diffusion of the glad tidings : they may bind and loose, that is, open and shut the door of admission to their community, as tlieir judgment may xletermine ; employing or rejecting applicants for the missionary office ; dissociating from their assemblies obstinate delinquents ; receiving with openness, or dismissing with suspicion, each candidate for instruction, ac- cording to their estimjite of his qualifications and motives." 2dly. It is to be observed, that there is no appearance of any one being in the contemplation of our Lord, beyond the per- sons immediately addressed. Not a word is said of any official successor or any distant age. No indication is afforded, that any idea of futurity was present to the mind of Jesus : and a title of perpetual office, an instrument creating and endow- ing an endless priesthood, ought, it will be admitted, to be somewhat more explicit than this. But where the power has been successfully claimed, the title is seldom difficult to prove. The alleged ritual of Christianity, consisting of the sacra- ments of Baptism and the Communion, will be found no less destitute of sanction from the Scriptures. The former we 6 62 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST shall see reason to regard as simply an initiatory form, ap- plicable only to Christian converts, and limited therefore to adults ; the latter as purely a commemoration : neither there- fore having any sacramental or mystical efficacy. For baptism it is impossible to establish any supernatural origin. It is admitted to have existed before the Christian era ; and to have been employed by the Jews on the admis- sion of proselytes to their religion. It is certain that it is not an enjoined rite in the Mosaic dispensation ; and, though prevalent before the period of the New Testament, is nowhere enforced or recognized in the writings of the Old. It arose therefore in the interval between the only two systems which Christians acknowledged to be supernatural ; and must be considered as of natural and human origin, invested, thus far, with no higher authority than its own a2:)propriateness may confer. There seem to have been two modes of construing the symbol : the one founded on the cleansing effect of the water on the person of the baptized himself; the other, on the appearance of his immersion (which was complete) to the eye of a spectator. The former was an image of the heathen convert's purification from a foul idolatry, and his transition to a stainless condition under a divine and justifying law. The latter represented him, when he vanished in the stream, as interred to this world, sunk utterly from its sight ; and when he reappeared, as emerging or born again to a better state ; the " old man " Avas " buried in baptism," and when he " rose again," he had altogether " become new." * The * See Rom, vi. 2 - 4 : " How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any- longer therein V Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death ? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death ; that, like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." Mr. Locke observes of " St. Paul's argument," that it " is to show in what state of life we ought to be raised out of baptism, in similitude and con- formity to that state of life Christ was raised into from the grave." See also Col. ii. 12 : " Ye are .... buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead." The force of the image clearly depends on the sinking and rising in the water. AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 63 ceremony then was appropriately used in any case of tran- sition from a depressed and corrupt state of existence to a hopeful and blessed one ; from a false or imperfect religion to one true and heavenly. But it will be said, whatever the origin of baptism, it was employed and sanctioned by our Lord, who commissioned his Apostles to go and baptize all nations. True ; but is there no difference between the adoption of a practice already ex- tant, — of a practice which was as much the mere institutional dress of the Apostles' nation, as the sandals whose dust they were to shake off against the faithless were the customary clothing of the Apostles' feet, — and the authoritative appoint- ment of a sacrament ? They were going forth to make con- verts : and why should they not have recourse to the form familiarly associated with the act ? Familiar association rec- ommended its adoption in that age and clime ; and the ab- sence of such association elsewhere and in other times may be thought to justify its disuse. At all events, a ceremony thus taken up must be presumed to retain its acquired sense and its established extent of ajiplication : and if so, baptism must be strictly limited to the admission of proselytes from other faiths. This accords with the known practice of the Apostles, who cannot be shown to have baptized any but those whom they had personally, or by their missionaries, persuaded to become Cliristians. Not a single case of the use of the rite with children can be adduced «from Scripture ; and the only argument by which such employment of it is ever justified is this : that a household is said to have been baptized, and all nations were to receive the offer of it ; and that the household inay^ the nations must, have contained chil- dren. It is evident that such reasoning could never have been propounded, unless the practice had existed first, and the defence had been found afterwards. With the system of infant baptism vanish almost all the ideas which the prevalent theology has put into the rite ; and it becomes as intelligible and expressive to one who believes in the good capacities of human nature, as to those who 64 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST esteem it originally depraved. " How unmeaning," say our Orthodox opponents, " is this ceremony in Unitarian hands, denying, as they do, the doctrines which it represents ! Of what regeneration can they possibly suppose it the symbol, if not of the washing away of that hereditary sin which they refuse to acknowledge ? for when the infant is brought to the font, he can as yet have no other guilt than this." I reply, the objection has no force except against the use of infant baptism in our churches, — which I am not anxious to defend ; but of course those Unitarians who employ it conceive it to be the token, not of any sentiments which they reject, but of truths and feelings Avhich they hold dear. For myself, I believe, with our opponents, that the doctrine of original sin and the 'practice of infant baptism do belong to each other, and must stand or fall together ; and therefore deem it a fact very significant of the Apostles' theology, that no infant can be shown ever to have been " brought to the font " by these first true missionaries of Christianity. And as to the new birth which baptism (i. e. recent and genuine discipleship to Jesus) may give to the maturely convinced Christian, he must have a great deal to learn, not only of the Hebrew concep- tions and language in relation to the Messiah, but of the spirituality of the Gospel, and of the fresh creations of char- acter which it calls up, who can be much puzzled about its meaning. In Christian baptism, then, we have no sacrament with mystic power ; but an initiatory form, possibly of consuetu- dinary obligation only ; but if enjoined, applicable exclusively to proselytes, and misemployed in the case of infants ; a sign of conversion, not a means of salvation ; confided to no sa- cerdotal order, but open to every man fitted to give it an appropriate use. I turn to the Lord's Supper ; with design to show what it is not, and what it is. It is not a mystery, or a sacrament, any more than it is an expiatory sacrifice. To persuade us that it has a ritual character, we are first assured that it is clearly the successor in the Gospel to the Passover under the AND \\n[THOUT RITUAL. 65 Law. Well, even if it were so, it would still be simply commemorative, and without any other efficacy than a festi- val, tilled with great remembrances, and inspired with re- ligious joy. Such was the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem ; the annual gathering of families and kindred, a sacred carnival under the spring sky and in sight of unreaped fields, when the memory was recalled of national deliverance, and the tale was told of traditional glories, and the thoughts brought back of bondage reversed, of the desert pilgrimage ended, of the promised land possessed. The Jewish festival was no more than this ; unless, with Archbishop Magee and others, we erroneously conceive it to be a proper sacrifice. So that those who would interpret the Lord's Supper by the Pass- over have their choice between two views : that it is a simple commemoration ; or that it is an expiatory sacrifice : in the former case they quit the Church of England ; in the latter, they fall into the Church of Rome. But, in truth, there is no propriety in applying the name " Christian Passover " to the Communion. The notion rests entirely on this circumstance : that the first three Evangelists describe the last Supper as the Paschal Supper. But the in- stitutional part of that meal was over before the cup was dis- tributed, and the repetition of the act enjoined. Nor is there the slightest trace, either in the subsequent Scriptures, or in the earliest history of the Church, that the Communion was thoudit to bear relation to the Passover. The time, the fre- quency, the mode, of the two were altogether different. In- deed, when we observe that not one of these particulars is prescribed and determined by our Lord at all, when we no- tice the slight and transient manner in which he drops his wish that they would " do this in remembrance of" him, when we compare these features of the account with the elaborate precision of Moses respecting hours, and materials, and dates, and places, and modes in the establishment of the Hebrew festivals, it is scarcely possible to avoid the impression, that we are reading narrative, not law ; an utterance of personal affection, rather than tlie legislative enactment of an ever- 6* 66 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST lasting institution. However this may be, no importance can be attached to the reported coincidence in the time of that meal with the day of Passover ; for the Apostle John, who gives by far the fullest account of what happened at that table (yet never mentions the institution of the Supper), states that this was not the paschal meal at all, which did not occur, he says, till the following day of crucifixion. " But," it will be said, " the Gospels are not the only parts of Scripture whence the nature of the Eucharist may be learned. Language is employed by St. Paul in reference to it, which cannot be understood of a mere memorial, and im- plies that awful consequences hung on the worthy or unwor- thy participation in the rite. Does he not even say, that a man may ' eat and drink damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body'?" The passage whence these words are cited certainly throws great light on the institution of which we treat ; but there must be a total disregard to the whole context and the gen- eral course of the Apostle's reasoning before it can be made to yield any argument for the mystical character of the rite. It would appear that the Corinthian church was in the habit of celebrating the Lord's Supper in a way which, even if it had never been disgraced by any indecorum, must have struck a modern Christian with wonder at its singularity. The members met together in one room or church, each bringing his own supper, of such quantity and quality as his opulence or poverty might allow. To this the Apostle does not object, but apparently considers it a part of the established arrange- ment. But these Christians were divided into factions, and had not learned the true uniting spirit of their faith ; nor do they seem to have acquired that sobriety of habit and sanc- tity of mind which their profession ought to have induced. When they entered the place of meeting, they broke up into groups and parties, class apart from class, and rich deserting poor : each set began its separate meal, some indulging in luxury and excess, others with scarce the means of keeping the commemoration at all ; and, infamous to tell, the blessed AND AVITIIOUT lilTUAL. 67 Supper of the Lord was sunk into a tavern meal. So gross and habitual had the abuse become, that the excesses had affected the health and life of tliese guilty and unworthy par- takers. They had made no distinction between the Com- munion and an ordinary repast, had lost all perception of tlie memorial significance of their meeting, had not discrimi- nated or " discerned the Lord's body " ; and so they had eaten and drunk judgment (improperly rendered " damnation " in the English Version) to themselves ; and many were weak and sickly among them, and many even slept. Well would it be, if they would look on this as a chastening of tlie Lord ; in which case they might take warning, and escape being cast out of the Church, and driven to take their chance with the unbelieving and heathen world. *' When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world." In order to remedy all this corruption, St. Paul reminds them, that to eat and drink under the same roof, in the church, does not constitute proper Communion ; that, to this end, they must not break up into sections, and retain their property in the food, but all participate seriously together. He directs that an absolute separation shall be made between the occasions for satisfying hunger and thirst, and those for observing tliis commemorative rite, discriminating carefully the memorial of tlie Lord's body from everytliiag else. He refers them all to the original model of the institution, the parting meal of Cln-ist before his betrayal ; and by this ex- ample, as a criterion, he would have every man examine him- self, and after tliat pattern eat of the bread and drink of the cup. Hence it appears, — That the unworthy partaker was the riotous Corinthian, who made no distinction between the sacred Communion and a vulgar meal : That the judgment or damnation which such brought on themselves, was sickliness, weakness, and premature but nat- ural death ; That the self-examination which the Apostle recommends 68 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST to the communicant is a comparison of his mode of keeping the rite with the original model of the last Supper : That in the Corinthian church there was no Priest, or officiating dispenser of the elements ; and that St. Paul did not contemplate or recommend the appointment of any such person. The Lord's Supper, then, I conclude, was and is a simple commemoration. Am I asked : " Of what ? Why, accord- ing to Unitarian views, the death on the cross merits the memorial more than the remaining features of our Lord's history, — -more even than the death of many a noble martyr, who has sealed his testimony to truth by like self-sacrifice " ? The answer will be found at length in the Lecture on the Atonement, where the Scriptural conceptions of Christ's death are expounded in detail. Meanwhile, it is sufficient to recall an idea, which has more tlian once been thrown out during this course; that, if Jesus had taken up his Messianic power without death, he would have remained a Hebrew, and been limited to the people amid whom he Avas born. He quitted his mortal personality, he left this fleshly tabernacle of existence, and became immortal, that his na- tionality might be destroyed, and all men drawn in as sub- jects of his reign. It was the cross that opened to the nations the blessed ways of life, and put us all in relations, not of law, but of love, to him and God. Hence the memo- rial of his death celebrates the universality and spirituality of the Gospel ; declares the brotherhood of men, the fatherhood of providence, the personal affinity of every soul with God. That is no empty rite which overflows with these concep- tions. Christianity, then, I maintain, is without Priest and with- out Ritual. It altogether coalesces with the prophetic idea of religion, and repudiates the sacerdotal. Christ himself was transcendently the Prophet. He brought down God to this our life, and left his spirit amid its scenes. The Apostles were prophets ; they carried that spirit abroad, re- vealing everywhere to men the sanctity of their nature, and AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 69 the proximity of their heaven. Nor am I even unwilling to admit an apostolic succession, never yet extinct, and never more to be extinguished. But then it is by no means a rec- tilinear regiment of incessant priests ; but a broken, scattered, yet glorious race of prophets ; the genealogy of great and Christian souls, through whom the primitive conceptions of Jesus have propagated themselves from age to age ; mind producing mind, courage giving birth to courage, truth de- veloping truth, and love ever nurturing love, so long as one good and noble spirit shall act upon another. Luther surely Avas the child of Paul ; and what a noble offspring has risen to manhood from Luther's soul, whom to enumerate were to tell the best triumphs of the modern world. These are Christ's true ambassadors ; and never did he mean any fol- lower of his to be called a priest. He has his genuine mes- senger, wherever, in the Church or in the world, there toils any one of the real prophets of our race ; any one who can create the good and great in other souls, whether by truth of word or deed, by the inspiration of genuine speech, or the better power of a life merciful and holy. And here, my friends, with my subject might my Lecture close, were it not that we are assembled now to terminate this controversy ; and that a few remarks in reference to its whole course and spirit seem to be.rt^quired. That the recent aggression upon the principles of Unita- rian Christianity was prompted by no unworthy motive, in- dividual or political, but by a zeal, Christian so far as its spirit is disinterested, and unchristian only so far as it is ex- clusive, has never been doubted or denied by my brother ministers or myself. That much personal consideration and courtesy have been evinced towards us during the controversy, it is so grateful to us to acknowledge, that we must only re- gret the theological obstructions in the way of tliat mutual knowledge which softens the prejudices and corrects the errors of the closet. From such errors, the lot of our follible nature, we are deeply aware that we cannot be exempt, and 70 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST profoundly wish that, by others' aid or by our OAvn, we could discover them. Meanwhile, we do not feel that our oppo- nents have been successful in the offer which they have made, of help towards this end. They are too little acquainted with our history and character, and have far too great a horror of us, to succeed in a design demanding rather the benevo- lence of sympathy and trust than that of antipathy and fear. Hence have arisen certain complaints and charges against our system and its tendencies, which, having been reiterated again and again in the Christ Church Lectures, and scarcely noticed in our own, claim a concluding observa- tion or two now. 1. We are said to be infidels in disguise, and our system to be drifting fast towards utter unbelief. At all events, it is said we make great advances that way. It is by no means unusual to dismiss this charge on a whirl- wind of declamation, designed to send it and the infidel to the greatest possible distance. My friend who delivered the first Lecture noticed it in a far different spirit ; and in a dis- cussion where truth and wisdom had any chance, his reply would have prevented any recurrence to the statement. Let me try to imitate him in the testimony which I desire to add upon this point. Every one, I presume, who disbelieves anything^ is, with respect to that thing, an injidel. Departure from any prev- alent and established ideas is inevitably an approach to in- fidelity ; the extent of the departure, not the reasonableness or propriety of it, is the sole measure of the nearness of that approach ; which, however wise and sober, when estimated by a true and independent criterion, will appear, to persons strongly possessed by the ascendant notions, nothing less than alarming, amazing, awful. In short, the average popu- lar creed of the day is the mental standard, from which the stadia are measured off towards that invisible, remote, nay, even imaginary place, lodged somewhere within chaos, called utter unbelief. Christianity at first was blank infidelity ; and disciples, being of course the atheists of their day, were AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 71 thought a fit prey for the wild beasts of the amphitheatre. Every rejection of tradition, again, is unbelief with respect to it ; and to those who hold its authority, it is the denial of an essential. It is too evident to need proof, that the average popular belief cannot be assumed, by any considerate per- son, as a standard of truth. To make it an objection against any class of men, that they depart from it, is to prove no error against them ; and no one, who is not willing to call in the passions of the multitude in suffrage on the controversies of the few, will condescend to enforce the charge. But only observe how, in the present instance, the matter stands. In the popular religion we discern, mixed up to- gether, two constituent portions : certain peculiar doctrines which characterize the common Orthodoxy ; and certain uni- versal Christian truths remaining, Avhen these are subtracted. The infidel throws away both of these ; we throw away the former only ; and thus far, no doubt, we partially agree with him. But on what grounds do we severally justify this rejec- tion ? In answer to this question, compare the views, with respect both to the authority and to the intei-pretation of Scripture, held by the three parties, the Trinitarian, the Unbeliever, the Unitarian. The Unbeliever does not usually find fault with the Orthodox interpretation of the Bible, but allows it to i)ass, a^ probably the real meaning of the book, only he altogether denies the divine character and authority of the whole religion ; he therefore agrees with the Trinita- rian respecting interpretation, disagrees with him respecting authority. The Unitarian, again, admits the divine character of Christianity, but understands it difierently from the Trini- tarian ; he therefore reverses the former case, agrees with the Orthodox on the authority, disagrees respecting inter- pretation. It follows, that with the Unbeliever he agi'ees t'^i neither^ and is therefore farther from him than his Trini- tarian accuser. I have given this explanation from regard simply to logi- cal truth. I have no desire to join in the outcry against even the deliberate unbeUever in the Gospel, as if he must 72 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST necessarily be a fiend. Profoundly loving and trusting Chris- tianity myself, I yet feel indignant at the persecution which theology, policy, and law inflict on the many who, with un- deniable exercise of conscientiousness and patience of re- search, are yet unable to satisfy themselves respecting its evidence. The very word " injidel,'^ implying not simply an intellectual judgment, but bad moral qualities, conveys an un- merited insult, and ought to be repudiated by every generous disputant. The more deeply we trust Christianity, the more should we protest against its being defended by a body-guard of passions, willing to do for it precisely the services w^hich they might equally render to the vulgarest imposture. 2. We were recently accused, amid acknowledgments of our honesty, with want of anxiety about spiritual truth ; and the following justification of the charge was oflfered : " The word of God has informed us, that they who seek the truth shall find it ; that they who ask for holy wisdom shall re- ceive it ; but it must be a really anxious inquiry, — a heart- felt desire for the blessing. ' If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.' Such promises are express, — they cannot be broken, — God will give the blessing to the sincere, anxious inquirer. But the two qualities must go together. A man may be sin- cere in his ignorance and spiritual torpor ; but let the full desire for God's favor, his pardoning mercy, and his en- lightening grace spring up in the heart, and we may rest assured that the desire will soon be accomplished. Admit- ting, then, the sincerity of Unitarians, we doubt their anxiety, for we are well persuaded from God's promises, that, if they possessed both, they would be delivered from their miserable system, and be brought to the knowledge of the truth." * The praise of our " sincerity^^ conveyed in these bland sentences, we are anxious to decline : not that we undervalue * Mr. Dalton's Lecture on the Eternity of Future Rewards and Punish- ments, p. 760. AND WITHOUT KITUAL. 73 the quality ; but becau>e we fiiifl, on near inspection, that it has all been emptied out of the word before its presentation, and the term comes to us hollow and worthless. It affords a specimen of the mode in which alone our opponents appear able to give any credit to heretics : many phrases of appro- bation they freely apply to us ; but they take care to draw off the whole meaning first. We must reject these " Greek presents " ; and we are concerned that any Christian divine can so torture and desecrate the names of virtue, as to make them instruments of disparagement and injury. This play with words, which every conscience should hold sacred, and every lip pronounce with reverence, — this careless and un- meaning application of them in discourse, — indicates a loose adhesion to the mind of tlie ideas denoted by them, which we regard with unfeigned astonishment and grief. What, let me ask, can be the " sincerity " of an inquirer, who is not " anxious " about the truth ? How can he be " sincerely " per- suaded tlint he sees, who voluntarily shuts his eyes ? Unless this word is to be degraded into a synonyme for indolence and self-complacency, no professed seeker of truth must have the praise of sincerity, who does not abandon all worship of his own state of mind as already perfect, who is not ready to listen to every calm doubt as to the voice of heaven, — to un- dertake with gratitude the labor of reaching new knowl- edge,— to maintain his faith and his profession in scrupulous accordance with his perception of evidence ; and, at any mo- ment of awakening, to spring from his most brilliant dreams into God's own morning light, with a matin hymn upon his lips for his new birth from darkness and from sleep. The earnestness implied in this state of mind is perhaps not pre- cisely the same as that with which our Trinitarian opponents seem to be familiar. Tiie " anxiety " which they a[)pcar to feel for themselves is, to keep their existing state of belief: the "anxiety" which they feel for us is, that we should have it. We are to hold ourselves ready for a change ; they are not to be expected to desire it. If a doubt of our opinions should occur to us, we are to foster it carefully, and follow it 7 74 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST out as a beckoning of the H0I7 Spirit : if a doubt of their sentiments should occur to them, they are to crush it on the spot, as a reptile-thought sent of Satan to tempt them. " Our aim," says the concluding Lecturer again, " has been to beget a deep spirit of inquiry " ; * and so has ours, I would reply : only you and we have severally prosecuted this aim in dif- ferent ways. We have personally listened, and personally inquired, and earnestly recommended all whom our influence could reach, to do the same : and few indeed will be the Unitarian libraries containing one of these series of Lectures that will not exhibit the other by its side. You have entered this controversy, evidently strange to our literature and his- tory ; and any deficiency in such reading before, has not been compensated by anxiety to listen now. Your people have been warned against us, and are taught to regard the study of our publications as blasphemy at second hand ; and were they really so simple as to act upon your avowed wish " to beget a deep spirit of inquiry," and plunge into the in- vestigation of Unitarian authors, and judge for themselves of Unitarian worship, they would speedily hear the word of recall, and discover that they were practically disappointing the whole object of this controversy. Having said thus much respecting the unmeaning use of language in the Lecturer's disparaging estimate of Unitarian " anxiety," we may profitably direct a moment's attention to the reasoning which it involves. It presents us with the standing fallacy of intolerance, which is sufficiently rebuked by being simply exhibited. Our opponents reason thus : — God will not permit the really anxious fatally to err : The Unitarians do fatally err : Therefore, The Unitarians are not really anxious. Now it is clear that we must conceive our opponents to be no less mistaken than they suppose us to be. They are as * Mr. Daltoii's Lecture, p. 760. AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 75 far from us, as we from them ; and from either point, taken as a standard, the measure of error must be the same. More- over, we cannot but eagerly assent to the principle of the Lecturer's first premise, that God will never let the truly anxious fatally miss their way. So that there is nothing, in the nature of the case, to prevent our turning this same syllo- gism, with a change in the names of the parties, against our opponents. Yet we should shrink, with severe self-reproach, from drawing any such unfavorable conclusion respecting them, as they deduce of us. Accordingly, we manage our reasoning thus : — God will not permit the really anxious fatally to err : The Trinitarians show themselves to be really anxious : Therefore, The Trinitarians do not fatally err. Our opponents are more sure that their judgment is in the right, than that their neighbors' conscience is in earnest. They sacrifice other men's characters to their own self-con- fidence : we would rather distrust our self-confidence, and rely on the visible signs of a good and careful mind. We honor other men's hearts, rather than our own heads. How can it be just, to make the agreement between an opponent's opinion and our own the criterion of his proper conduct of the inquiry ? Every man feels the injury the moment the rule is turned against himself; and every good man should be ashamed to direct it against his brother. 3. Our reverend opponents affect to have labored under a great disadvantage, from the absence of any recognized standard of Unitarian belief. " AYe give you," they say, " our Articles and Creeds, which we unanimously undertake to defend, and which expose a definite object to all heretical attacks. In return, you can furnish us with no authorized exposition of your system, but leave us to gather our knowl- edge of it from individual writers, for whose opinions you refuse to be responsible, and whose reasonings, when re- futed by us, you can conveniently disown." 76 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST Plausible as this complaint may appear, I venture to affirm, that it is vastly easier to ascertain the common belief of Uni- tarians, than that of the members of the Established Church ; and for this plain reason, that with us there really is such a thing as a common faith, though defined in no confession ; in the Anglican Church there is not, though articles and creeds profess it. The characteristic tenets of Unitarian Christianity are so simple and unambiguous, that little scope exists for variety in their interpretation : to the propositions expressing them all their professors attach distinct and the same ideas ; — so far, at least, as such accordance is possible in relation to subjects inaccessible both to demonstration and to experience. But the Trinitarian hypothesis, venturing with presumptuous analysis far into the Divine psychology, presents us with ideas confessedly inapprehensible ; propounded in language which, if used in its ordinary sense, is self-contradictory, and if not, is unmeaning, and ready in its emptiness to be filled by any arbitrary interpretation ; — and actually understood so variously by those who subscribe to them, that the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Tritheist and the Sabellian, unite to praise them. Indeed, in the history of the English Church, so visible is the sweep of the centre of Orthodoxy over the whole space from the confines of Romanism to the verge of Unitarianism, that our ecclesiastical chronology is measured by its oscillations. Our respected opponents know full well, that it is not necessary to search beyond the clergy of this town, or even beyond the morning and afternoon preaching in one and the same church, in order to encounter greater contrasts in theology, than could be found in a whole library of Unitarian divinity. What mockery, then, to refer us to these articles as expositions of clerical belief, when the mo- ment we pass beyond the words, and address ourselves to the sense, every shade of contrariety appears ; and no one definite conception can be adopted of such a doctrine as that of the Trinity, without some church expositor or other starting up to rebuke it as a misrepresentation ! How poor the pride of uniformity, which contents itself with lip-service to the sym- bol, in the midst of heart-burnings about the reality ! AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 77 In order to test the force of the objection to which I am referring, let us advert, in detail, to the topics which exhibit the Unitarian and Trinitarian theology in most direct oppo- sition. It will appear that the advantage of unity lies, in this instance, on the side of heresy ; and that, if multiformity be a prime characteristic of error, there is a wide difference between orthodoxy and truth. There are four great subjects comprised in the controversy between the Church and our- selves : the nature of God ; of Christ ; of sin ; of punishment. On these several points (which, considered as involving on our part denials of previous ideas, may be regarded as con- taining the negative elements of our belief) all our modern writers, without material variation or exception, maintain the following doctrines : — Unitarian Doctrines, opposed to Church Doctrines. 1. The Personal Unity of God. 1. The Trinity in Unity. 2. The Simplicity of Nature in 2. Two Distinct Natures in Christ. Christ. 3. The Personal Origin and 3. The Transferable Nature Identity of Sin. and Vicarious Remov- al of Sin. 4. The Finite Duration of Fu- 4. The Eternity of Hell ture Sufferins'. Torments. Now no one at all fiimiliar with polemical literature can deny tluit the modes and ambiguities of doctrine comprised in this Trinitarian list are more numerous than can be de- tected in the parallel '' heresies." I am willing, indeed, to admit an exception in respect to the last of the topics, and to allow that the belief in the finite duration of future punishment has opposed itself, in two forms, to the single doctrine of everlasting torments. But when the systems are compared at their other corresponding points, the boast of orthodox uniformity instantly vanishes. Since the primitive jealousy between the Jewish and Gentile Christianity, the rivalry be- tween the " Monarchy " and the " Economy," the believers 7* 78 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST in the personal unity of God, though often severed by ages from each other, have held that majestic truth in one un- varied form. Never was there an idea so often lost and re- covered, yet so absolutely unchanged : a sublime but occa- sional visitant of the human mind, assuring us of the perpetual oneness of our own nature, as well as the Divine. We can point to no unbroken continuity of our great doctrine : and if we could, we should appeal with no confidence to the evidence of so dubious a phenomenon ; for if a system of ideas once gains j)ossession of society, and attracts to itself complicated interests and feelings, many causes may suffice to insure its indefinite preservation. But we can point to a greater phenomenon : to the long and repeated extinction of our favorite belief, to its submersion beneath a dark and restless fanaticism ; and its invariable resurrection, like a necessary intuition of the soul, in times of purer light, with its features still the same ; stamped with imperishable identity of truth, and, like him to whom it refers, without variableness or shadow of a turning. Meanwhile, who will undertake to enumerate and define the succession of Trinities by which this doctrine has been bewildered and banished ? Passing by the Aristotelian, the Platonic, the Ciceronian, the Carte- sian Trinity, — quitting the stormy disputes and contradictory decisions of the early councils, shall we find among even the modern fathers of our National Church any approach to unanimity ? Am I to be content with the doctrine of Bishop Bull, and subordinate the Son to the Father as the sole foun- tain of divinity ? Or must I rise to the Tritheism of Water- land and Sherlock ? or, accepting the famous decision of the University of Oxford, descend, with Archbishop Whately, to the modal Trinity of South and Wallis ? Are we to understand the phrase, three persons, to mean three beings united by " perichoresis," three " mutual inexistences," three " modes," three " differences," three " contemplations," or three " somewhats " ; or, being told that this is but a vain prying into a mystery, shall we be satisfied to leave the phrase without idea at all ? It is to the last degree astonish- AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 79 ing to hear from Trinitarian divines the praises of uniformity of belief; seeing that it is one of the chief labors of eccle- siastical history to record the incessant effort, vain to the present day, to give some stability of meaning to the funda- mental doctrines of their faith. The same remark applies, with little modification, to the opposite views respecting the person of the Saviour. It is true, that Unitarians, agreed respecting the singleness of nature in Chris-^t, differ respecting the natural rank of that nature, whether his soul were human or angelic. But, for this solitary variety among these heretics, how many doc- trines of the Logos and the Incarnation does Orthodox literature contain ? Can any one affirm, that, when the Coun- cil of Ephesus had arbitrated between the Eutychian doc- trine of absorption, and the Nestorian doctrine of separation, all doubt and ambiguity was removed by the magic phrase " hypostatic union " ? Since the monophysite contest was at its height, has the Virgin Mary been left in undisputed possession of her title as " JMother of God " ? Has the Eter- nal Generation of the Son encountered no orthodox sus- picions, and the Indwelling scheme received no orthodox support ? And if we ask these questions : " What respec- tively happened to the two natures on the cross ? what has become of Christ's human soul now ? is it separate from the Godhead, like any other immortal spirit, or is it add(?d to the Deity, so as to introduce into his nature a new and fourth element ? " shall we receive from the many voices of the Church but one accordant answer ? Nav, do the authors of this controversy suppose that, during its short continuance, they have been able to maintain their unanimity ? If they do, I believe that any reader who thinks it worth while to register the varieties of error, would be able to undeceive them. If the diversities of doctrine cannot easily and often be shown to amount to palpable inconsistencies, this must be ascribed, I believe, to the mystic and technical phraseology, the substitute rather than the expression for precise ideas, — which has become the vernacular dialect of orthodox divinity. 80 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST The jargon of theology affords a field too barren to bear so vigorous a weed as an undisputed contradiction. It is needless to dwell on the numerous forms under which the doctrine of Atonement has been held bj those who sub- scribe the articles of our National Church ; while its Unitarian opponents have taken their fixed station on the personal character and untransferable nature of sin. One writer tells us that only the human nature perished on the cross ; another, that God himself expired : some say, that Christ suffered no more intensely, but only more " meritoriously," than many a martyr; others, that he endured the whole quantity of tor- ment due to the wicked whom he redeemed : some, that it is the spotlessness of his manhood that is imputed to believers ; others, that it is the holiness of his Deity. From the high doctrine of satisfaction to the very verge of Unitarian heresy, every variety of interpretation has been given to the language of the established formularies respecting Christian redemp- tion. Nor is it yet determined whether, in the lottery of opinion, the name of Owen, Sykes, or Magee shall be drawn for the prize of orthodoxy. And if, from those parts of our belief to which the acci- dents of their historical origin have given a negative char- acter, we turn to those which are positive, not the slightest reason will appear for charging them with uncertainty and fluctuation. All Unitarian writers maintain the Moral Per- fection and Fatherly Providence of the Infinite Ruler ; the Messiahship of Jesus Christ, in whose pei'son and spirit there is a Revelation of God and a Sanctification for Man ; the Responsibility and Retributive Immortality of men ; and the need of a pure and devout heart of Faith, as the source of all outward goodness and inward communion with God. These great and self-luminous points, bound together by natural affinity, constitute the fixed centre of our religion. And on subjects beyond this centre we have no wider divergences than are found among those who attach themselves to an opposite system. For example, the relations betAveen Scrip- ture and Reason, as evidences and guides in questions of doc- AND WITHOUT RITUAL. 81 trine, are not more unsettled among us, than are the relations between Scripture and Tradition in the Church. Nor is the perpetual authority of the " Christian rites " so much in debate among our ministers, as the efficacy of the sacraments among the clergy. In truth, our diversities of sentiment affect far less ivhat we believe, than the question why we believe it. Different modes of reasoning, and different results of interpretation, are no doubt to be found among our several autliors. We all make our appeal to the records of Chris- tianity ; but we have voted no particular commentator into the seat of authority. And is not this equally true of our opponents' Church ? Their articles and creeds furnish no textual expositions of Scripture, but only results and deduc- tions from its study. And so variously have these results been elicited from the sacred writings, that scarcely a text can be adduced in defence of the Trinitarian scheme, which some witness unexceptionably orthodox may not be summoned to prove inapplicable. In fine, we have no greater variety of critical and exegetical opinion than the divines from whom we dissent ; while the system of Christianity in which our Scrip- tural labors have issued, has its leading characteristics better determined and more apprehensible than the scheme which the articles and creeds have vainly labored to define. The refusal to embody our sentiments in any authoritative formula appears to strike observers as a whimsical exception to the general practice of churches. The peculiarity has had its origin in hereditary and historical associations ; but it has its defence in the noblest principles of religious freedom and Christian communion. At present, it must suffice to say, that our societies are dedicated, not to theological opinions, but to religious worship ; that they have maintained the unity of the s])irit, without insisting on any unity of doc- trine ; that Christian liberty, love, and piety are their essen- tials in perpetuity, but their Unitarianism an accident of a few or many generations, — which has arisen, and might vanish, without the loss of their identity. We believe in the mutability of religious systems, but the imperishable char-r 82 CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT PRIEST, ETC. acter of the religious affections ; — in the progressiveness of opinion within, as well as without, the limits of Christianity. Our forefathers cherished the same conviction ; and so, not having been born intellectual bondsmen, we desire to leave our successors free. Convinced that uniformity of doctrine can never prevail, w^e seek to attain its only good — peace on earth and communion with Heaven — without it. We aim to make a true Christendom, - — a commonwealth of the faithful, - — by the binding force, not of ecclesiastical creeds, but of spiritual wants and Christian sympathies ; and indulge the vision of a Church that " in the latter days shall arise," like " the mountain of the Lord," bearing on its ascent the blos- soms of thought proper to every intellectual clime, and withal massively rooted in the deep places of our humanity, and gladly rising to meet the sunshine from on high. And now, friends and brethren, let us say a glad farewell to the fretfulness of controversy, and retreat again, with thanksgiving, into the interior of our own venerated truth. Having come forth, at the severer call of duty, to do battle for it, with such force as God vouchsafes to the sincere, let us go in to live and worship beneath its shelter. They tell you it is not the true faith. Perhaps not; but then you think it so ; and that is enough to make your duty clear, and to draw from it, as from nothing else, the very peace of God. May be, we are on our way to something better, unexistent and unseen as yet, which may penetrate our souls with nobler affection, and give a fresh spontaneity of love to God and all immortal things. Perhaps there cannot be the truest life of faith, except in scattered individuals, till this age of conflicting doubt and dogmatism shall have passed away. Dark and leaden clouds of materialism hide the heaven from us ; red gleams of fanaticism pierce through, vainly striving to reveal it ; and not till the weight is heaved from off the air, and the thunders roll down the horizon, will the serene li2;ht of God flow upon us, and the blue infinite embrace us again. Mean- while we must reverently love the faith we have ; to quit it for one that we have not, were to lose the breath of life and die. INCONSISTENCY OF THE SCHEME OF YICA- RIOUS REDEMPTION. " Neither is there salvation in any other ; for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved." — Acts iv. 12. The scene which we have this evening to visit and explore, is separated from us by the space of eighteen centuries ; yet of nothing on this earth has Providence left, within the shadows of the past, so vivid and divine an image. Gently rising above the mighty " field of the world," Calvary's mournful hill appears, covered with silence now, but dis- tinctly showing the heavenly light that struggled there through the stormiest elements of guilt. Nor need we only gaze, as on a motionless picture that closes the vista of Chris- tian ages. Permitting history to take us by the hand, we may pace back in pilgrimage to the hour, till its groups stand around us, and pass by us, and its voices of passion and of grief mock and wail upon our ear. As we mingle with the crowd which, amid noise and dust, follows the condemned prisoners to the place of execution, and fix our eye on the faint and panting figure of one that bears his cross, could we but whisper to the sleek priests close by, how might we startle them, by telling them the future fate of this brief tragedy, — brief in act, in blessing everlasting; that this Galilean convict shall be the world's confessed deliverer, while tliey that have brought him to this shall be the scom and by-word of the nations ; that that vile instrument of tor- ture, now so abject that it makes the dying slave more servJf^, 84 INCONSISTENCY OF THE shall be made, by this victim and this hour, the symbol of whatever is holy and sublime ; the emblem of hope and love ; pressed to the lips of ages ; consecrated by a veneration which makes the sceptre seem trivial as an infant's toy. Meanwhile, the sacerdotal hypocrites, unconscious of the part they play, watch to the end the public murder which they have pri- vately suborned ; stealing a phrase from Scripture, that they may mock with holy lips ; and leaving to the plebeian soldiers the mutual jest and brutal laugh, that serve to beguile the hired but hated work of agony, and that draw forth from the sufferer that burst of forgiving prayer, which sunk at least into their centurion's heart. One there is, who should have been spared the hearing of these scoffs ; and perhaps she heard them not ; for before his nature was exhausted more, his eye detects and his voice addresses her, and twines round her the filial arm of that disciple, who had been ever the most loving as well as most beloved. She at least lost the religion of that hour in its humanity, and beheld not the prophet, but the son : — had not her own hands wrought that seamless robe for which the soldiers' lot is cast ; and her own lips taught him that strain of sacred poetry, " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " but never had she thought to hear it thus. As the cries become fainter and fainter, scarcely do they reach Peter standing afar off. The last notice of him had been the rebuking look that sent him to weep bitterly ; and now the voice that alone can tell him his forgiveness will soon be gone ! Broken hardly less, though without remorse, is the youthful John, to see that head, lately resting on his bosom, drooping passively in death ; and to hear the involun- tary shriek of Mary, as the spear struck uix)n the lifeless body, moving now only as it is moved ; — whence he alone, on whom she leaned, records the fact. Well might the Galilean friends stand at a distance gazing ; unable to depart, yet not daring to approach ; well might the multitudes that had cried " Crucify him ! " in the morning, shudder at the thought of that clamor ere nis^ht ; " beholding the thinors that had come to pass, they smote their breasts and returned." SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 85 This is the scene of which we have to seek the interpreta- tion. Our first natural impression is, that it requires no in- terpretation, but speaks for itself; that it has no mystery, except that which belongs to the triumphs of deep guilt, and the sanctities of disinterested love. To raise our eye to that serene countenance, to listen to that submissive voice, to note the subjects of its utterance, would give us no idea of any mystic horror concealed behind the human features of the scene ; of any invisible contortions, as from the lash of demons, in the soul of that holy victim ; of any sympathetic connection of that cross with the bottomless pit on the one hand, and the highest heaven on the other; of any moral revolution throughout our portion of the universe, of which this public execution is but the outward signal. The his^ torians drop no hint that its sufferings, its affections, its re- lations, were other than human, — raised indeed to distinction by miraculous accompaniments ; but intrinsically, however signally, human. They mention, as if bearing some appre- ciable proportion to the whole series of incidents, particulars so slight, as to vanish before any other than the obvious his- torical view of the transaction ; the thirst, the sponge, the rent clothes, the mingled drink. They ascribe no sentiment to the crucified, except such as might be expressed by one of like nature with ourselves, in the consciousness of a fin- ished work of duty, and a fidelity never broken under the strain of heaviest trial. The narrative is clearly the produc- tion of minds filled, not with theological anticipations, but with historical recollections. With this view of Christ's death, which is such as might be entertained by any of the primitive churches, having one of the Gospels only, without any of the Epistles, we are content. I conceive of it, then, as manifesting the last degree of moral perfection in the Holy One of God ; and believe that, in thus being an expression of character, it has its pri- mary and everlasting value. I conceive of it as the needful preliminary to his resurrection and ascension, by which the severest diilicultics in the theory of Providence, life, and 8 86 INCONSISTENCY OF THE duty are alleviated or solved. I conceive of it as imme- diately procuring the universality and spirituality of the Gospel ; by dissolving those corporeal ties which gave nation- ality to Jesus, and making him, in his heavenly and immortal form, the Messiah of humanity ; blessing, sanctifying, regen- erating, not a people from the centre of Jerusalem, but a world from his station in the heavens. And these views, under unimportant modifications, I submit, are the only ones of which Scripture contains a trace. All this, however, we are assured, is the mere outside aspect of the crucifixion ; and wholly insignificant compared with the invisible character and relations of the scene ; which, localized only on earth, has its chief efi'ect in hell ; and, though presenting itself among the occurrences of time, is a repeal of the decretals of Eternity. The being who hangs upon that cross is not man alone ; but also the ever- lasting God, who created and upholds all things, even the sun that now darkens its face upon him, and the murderers who are waiting for his expiring cry. The anguish he endures is not chiefly that which falls so poignantly on the eye and ear of the spectator ; the injured human affections, the dreadful momentary doubt ; the pulses of physical torture, doubling on him with full or broken wave, till driven back by the overwhelming power of love disinterested and divine. But he is judicially abandoned by the Infinite Father ; who ex- pends on him the immeasurable wrath due to an a})Ostate race, gathers up into an hour the lightnings of Eternity, and lets them loose upon that bended head. It is the moment of retributive justice ; the expiation of all human guilt : that open brow hides beneath it the despair of millions of men ; and to the intensity of agony there, no human wail could give expression. Meanwhile, the future brightens on the elect ; the tempests that hung over their horizon are spent. The ven- geance of the lawgiver having had its way, the sunshine of a Father's grace breaks forth, and lights up, with hope and beauty, the earth, which had been a desert of despair and sin. According to this theory, Christ, in his death, was a SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 87 proper expiatory sacrifice ; he -turned aside, by enduring it for them, the infinite punisliment of sin from all past or future believers in this efficacy of the cross ; and trans- ferred to them the natural rewards of his own righteous- ness. An accejitance of this doctrine is declared to be the prime condition of the Divine forgiveness ; for no one who does not see the pardon can have it. And this pardon, again, this clear score for the past, is a necessary preliminary to all sanctification ; to all practical opening of a disinterested heart towards our Creator and man. Pardon, and the perception of it, are the needful preludes to that conforming love to God and men, which is the true Christian salvation. The evidence in support of this theory is derived partly from natural appearances, partly from Scriptural announce- ments. Involving, as it does, statements respecting the ac- tual condition of human nature, and the world in which we live, some appeal to experience, and to the rational interpre- tation of life and Providence, is inevitable ; and hence cer- tain propositions, affecting to be of a philosophical character, are laid down as fundamental by the advocates of this system. Yet it is admitted, that direct revelation only could have ac- quainted us, either with our lost condition, or our vicarious recovery ; and that all we can expect to accomplish -with nature, is to harmonize what we observe there with what we read in the written records of God's will ; so that the main stress of the argument rests on the interpretation of Scrip- ture. The princijdes deduced from the nature of things, and laid down as a basis for this doctrine, may be thus repre- sented : — • That man needs a Redeemer ; having obviously fallen, by some disaster, into a state of misery and guilt, from which the worst penal consequences must be apprehended ; and were it not for the probability of such la})se from the condition in which it was fashioned, it would be impossible to reconcile the phenomena of the world with the justice and benevolence of its Creator. That Deity only can redeem ; since, to preserve veracity, 88 INCONSISTENCY OF THE the penalty of sin must be inflicted ; and the diversion only, not the annihilation of it, is possible. To let it fall on angels would fail of the desired end ; because human sin, having been directed against an Infinite Being, has incurred an in- finitude of punishment ; which on no created beings could be exhausted in any period short of eternity. Only a nature strictly infinite can compress within itself, in the compass of an hour, the woes distributed over the immortality of man- kind. Hence, were God personally One, like man, no re- demption could be effected ; for there would be no Deity to suffer, except the very One who must punish. But the tri- plicity of the Godhead relieves all difficulty ; for, while one Infinite inflicts, another Infinite endures ; and resources are furnished for the atonement. Amid a great variety of forms in which the theory of atone- ment exists, I have selected the foregoing ; which, if I un- derstand aright, is that which is vindicated in the present controversy. I am not aware that I have added anything to the language in which it is stated by its powerful advocifte, unless it be a few phrases, leaving its essential meaning the same, but needful to render it compact and clear. The Scriptural evidence is found principally in certain of the Apostolical Epistles ; and this circumstance will render it necessary to conduct a separate search into the historical writings of the New Testament, that we may ascertain how they express the corresponding set of ideas. Taking up suc- cessively these two branches of the subject, the natural and , the Biblical, I propose to show, first, that this doctrine is in- consistent with itself; secondly, that it is inconsistent with the Christian idea of salvation. I. It is inconsistent with itself. (1.) In its manner of treating the principles of natural religion. Our faith in the infinite benevolence of God is represented as destitute of adequate support from the testimony of na- ture. It requires, we are assured, the suppression of a mass of appearances, that would scare it away in an instant, were SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 89 it to venture into their presence ; and is a dream of sickly and effeminate minds, whose belief is the inward growth of amiable sentimentality, rather than a genuine production from God's own facts. The appeal to the order and mag- nificence of creation, to the structures and relations of the inorganic, the vegetable, the animal, the spiritual forms, that fill the ascending ranks of this visible and conscious universe ; — to the arran";ements which make it a blessins; to be born, far more than a suffering to die, — which enable us to extract the relish of life from its toils, the affections of our nature from its sufferings, the triumphs of goodness from its temp- tations ; — to the seeming plan of general progress, which elicits truth by the self-destruction of error, and by the ex- tinction of generations gives perpetual rejuvenescence to the world ; — this appeal, which is another name for the scheme of natural religion, is dismissed with scorn ; and sin and sorrow and death are flung in defiance across our path, — barriers which we must remove, ere we can reach the presence of a benignant God. Come with us, it is said, and listen to the wail of the sick infant ; look into the dingy haunts where poverty moans its life away ; bend down your ear to the ac- cursed hum that strays from the busy hives of guilt ; spy into the hold of the slave-ship ; from the factory follow the wasted child to the gin-shop first, and then to the cellar called its home ; or look even at your own tempted and sin- bound souls, and your own perishing race, snatched off into the dark by handfuls through the activity of a destroying God ; and tell us, did our benevolent Cremator make a crea- ture and a world like this ? A Calvinist who puts this ques- tion is playing with fire. But I answer the question ex- plicitly : All these things we have met steadily, and face to face ; in full view of them, we have taken up our faith in the goodness of God ; and in full view of them we will hold fast tliat faith. Nor is it just or true to affirm, that our system hides these ev.ls, or that our practice refuses to grapple with them. And if you confess that these ills of life would be too much for }'our natural piety, if you declare, that these rugged 8* 90 INCONSISTENCY OF THE foundations and tempestuous elements of Providence would starve and crush jour confidence in God, while ours strikes its roots in the rock, and throws out its branches to brave the storm, are you entitled to taunt us with a faith of puny- growth ? Meanwhile, we willingly assent to the principle which this appeal to evil is designed to establish ; that, with much apparent order, there is some apparent disorder in the phenomena of the world ; that from the latter, by itself, we should be unable to infer any goodness and benev- olence in God; and that, were not the former clearly the predominant result of natural laws, the character of the Great Cause of all things would be involved in agonizing gloom. The mass of physical and moral evil we do not profess fully to explain ; we think that in no system whatever is there any approach to an explanation ; and we are accus- tomed to touch on that dread subject with the humility of filial trust, not with the confidence of dogmatic elucidation. Surely the fall of our first parents, I shall be reminded, gives the requisite solution. The disaster which then befell the human race has changed the primeval constitution of things ; introduced mortality and all the infirmities of M'hich it is the result ; introduced sin, and all the seeds of vile affec- tions which it compels us to inherit ; introduced also the penalties of sin, visible in part on this scene of life, and de- veloping themselves in another in anguish everlasting. Fresh from the hand of his Creator, man was innocent, happy, and holy ; and he it is, not God, who has deformed the world with guilt and grief. Now, as a statement of fact, all this may or may not be true. Of this I say nothing. But who does not see that, as an explanation, it is inconsistent with itself, partial in its application, and leaves matters incomparably worse than it found them? It is inconsistent with itself; for Adam, per- fectly pure and holy as he is reputed to have been, gave the only proof that could exist of his being neither, by succumb- ing to the first temptation that came in his way ; and though finding no enjoyment but in the contemplation of God, gave SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 91 himself up to the first advances of the Devil. Never surely was a reputation for sanctity so cheaply won. The canoniza- tions of tlie Romish Calendar have been curiously bestowed on beings sufficiently remote from just ideas of excellence ; but usually there is something to be affirmed of them, legen- dary or otherwise, which, if true, might justify a momentary admiration But our first parent was not laid even under this necessity, to obtain a glory greater than canonization ; he had simply to- do nothing, except to fall, in order to be esteemed the most perfectly holy of created minds. Most partial, too, is this theory in its application ; for disease and hardship, and death unmerited as the infant's, afflict the lower animal crea- tion. Is this, too, the result of the fall ? If so, it is an un- redeemed effect ; if not, it presses on the benevolence of the Maker, and, by the physical analogies which connect man with the inferior creatures, forces on us the impression, that his corporeal sufferings have an original source not dissimilar from theirs. And again, this explanation only serves to make matters worse than before. For how puerile is it to suppose that men will rest satisfied with tracing back their ills to Adam, and refrain from asking who was Adam's cause ! And then comes upon us at once the ancient dilemma about evil ; was it a mistake, or was it malignity, that created so poor a creature as our progenitor, and staked on so precarious a will the blessedness of a race and the well-being of a world ? So far, this theory, falsely and injuriously ascribed to Christianity, Avould leave us wliere we were : but it carries us into deeper and gratuitous difficulties, of which natural religion knows nothing, by appending eternal consequences to Adam's trans- gression ; a large portion of which, after tlie most sanguine extension of the efficacy of the atonement, must remain unre- deemed. So that if, under the eye of naturalism, tlie Avorld, with its generations dropping into the grave, must appear (as we heard it recently described *) like the populous precincts * See Rev. H. M'Neile's Lecture, The Proper Deity of our Lord the only Ground of Consistency in the Work, of Redemption, pp. 339, 340. 92 INCONSISTENCY OF THE of some castle, whose governor called liis servants, after a brief indulgence of liberty and peace, into a dark and inscru- table dungeon, never to return or be seen again, the only new feature which this theory introduces into the prospect is this : that the interior of that cavernous prison-house is dis- closed; and while a few of the departed are seen to have emerged into a fairer light, and to be traversing greener fields, and sharing a more blessed liberty than they knew before, the vast multitude are discerned in the gripe of everlasting chains and the twist of unimaginable torture. And all this infliction is a penal consequence of a first ancestor's transgression ! Singular spectacle to be offered in vindication of the character of God! We are warned, however, not to start back from this repre- sentation, or to indulge in any rash expression at the view which it gives of the justice of the Most High ; for that, beyond all doubt, parallel instances occur in the operations of nature ; and that, if the system deduced from Scripture accords with that which is in action in the creation, there arises a strong presumption that both are from the same Author. The arrangement which is the prime subject of ob- jection in the foregoing theory, viz. the vicarious transmission of consequences from acts of vice and virtue, is said to be familiar to our observation as a fact ; and ought, therefore, to present no difficulties in the way of the admission of a doc- trine. Is it not obvious, for example, that the guilt of a parent may entail disease and premature death on his child, or even remoter descendants ? And if it be consistent with the Divine perfections that the innocent should suffer for others' sins at the distance of one generation, why not at the distance of a thousand? The guiltless victim is not more completely severed from identity with Adam, than he is from identity with his own father. My reply is brief: I admit both the fact and the analogy ; but the fact is of the excep- tional kind, from which, by itself, I could not infer the justice or the benevolence of the Creator; and which, were it of large and prevalent amount, I could not even reconcile with SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 93 these perfections. If then you take it out of the list of ex- ceptions and difficulties, and erect it into a cardinal rule, if you interpret by it the whole invisible portion of God's gov- ernment, you turn the scale at once against the character of the Supreme, and plant creation under a tyrant's sway. And this is the fatal principle pervading^ all analogical arguments in defence of Trinitarian Christianity. No resemblances to the system can be found in the universe, except in those anomalies and seeming deformities which perplex the student of Providence, and which would undermine his faith, were they not lost in the vast spectacle of beauty and of good. These disorders are selected and spread out to view, as speci- mens of the Divine government of nature ; the mysteries and horrors which offend us in the popular theology are extended by their side ; the comparison is made, point by j)oint, till the similitude is undeniably made out ; and when the argument is closed it amounts to this : Do you doubt whether God could break men's limbs ? You mistake his strength of character ; only see how he puts out their eyes ! What kind of impres- sion this reasoning may have, seems to me doubtful even to agony. Both Trinitarian theology and nature, it is trium- phantly urged, must proceed from the same Authqr ; ay, but what sort of author is that ? You have led me, in your quest after analogies, tlirougli the great infirmary of God's creation ; and so haunted am I by tlie sights and sounds of the lazar- house, that scarce can I believe in anything but pestilence ; so sick of soul have I become, that the mountain breeze has lost its scent of health ; and you say, it is all the same in tlie other world, and wlierever the same rule extends : then I know my fate, that in this universe Justice has no throne. And thus, my friends, it comes to pass, that these reasoners often gain indeed their victory ; but it is known only to tlie Searcher of Hearts, whether it is a victory against natural religion, or in favor of revealed. For this reason I consider the "Analogy" of Bishop Butler (one of the profoundest of thinkers, and on purely moral subjects one of the justest too) as containing, with a design directly contrary, the most terrible 94 INCONSISTENCY OF THE persuasives to Atheism that have ever been produced. The essential error consists in selecting the difficulties, — which are the rare, exceptional phenomena of nature, — as the basis of analogy and argument. In the comprehensive and gener- ous study of Providence, the mind may, indeed, already have overcome the difficulties, and, with the lights recently gained from the harmony, design, and order of creation, have made those shadows pass imperceptibly away; but when forced again into their very centre, compelled to adopt them as a fixed station and point of mental vision, they deepen round the heart again, and, instead of illustrating anything, become solid darkness themselves. I cannot quit this topic Mathout observing, however, that there appears to be nothing in nature and life at all analo- gous to the vicarious principle attributed to God in the Trinitarian scheme of Redemption. There is nowhere to be found any proper transfer or exchange, either of the qualities, or of the consequences, of vice and virtue. The good and evil acts of men do indeed affect others as well as themselves ; the innocent suffer ivith the guilty, as in the case before ad- duced, of a child suffering in health by the excesses of a parent. But there is here no endurance for another, similar to Christ's alleged endurance in the place of men ; the in- fliction on the child is not deducted from the parent ; it does nothing to lighten his load, or make it less than it would have been, had he been without descendants ; nor does any one suppose his guilt alleviated by the existence of this in- nocent fellow-sufferer. There is a nearer approach to anal- ogy in those cases of crime, where the perpetrator seems to escape, and to leave the consequences of his act to descend on others ; as when the successful cheat eludes pursuit, and from the stolen gains of neighbors constnicts a life of luxury for himself; or when a spendthrift government, forgetful of its high trust, turning the professions of patriotism into a lie, is permitted to run a prosperous career for one genera- tion, and is personally gone before the popular retribution falls, in the next, on innocent successors. Here, no doubt, SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 95 the harmless suffer by the guilty, in a certain sense in the place of the guilty : but not in the sense which the analogy requires. For there is still no substitution ; the distress of the unoffending party is not struck out of the offender's pun- ishment ; does not lessen, but rather aggravates, his guilt; and, instead of fitting him for pardon, tem^^ts the natural sentiments of justice to follow him Avith severer condemna- tion. Nor does the scheme receive any better illustration from the fact, that whoever attempts the cure of misery must himself suffer; must have the shadows of ill cast upon his spirit from every sadness he alleviates ; and interpose himself to stay the plague which, in a world diseased, threatens to pass to the living from the dead. The parallel fails, because there is still no transference : the appropriate sufferings of sin are not given to the philanthropist ; and the noble pains of goodness in him, the glorious strife of his self-sacrifice, are no part of the penal consequences of others' guilt ; they do not cancel one iota of those consequences, or make the crimes which have demanded them, in any Avay, more ready for forgiveness. Indeed, it is not in the good man's suffer- ings, considered as such, that any efficacy resides ; but in his efforts J which may be made with great sacrifice or with- out it, as the case may be. Nor, at best, is there any proper annihilation of consequences at all accruing from his toils ; the past acts of wrong which call up his resisting energies are irrevocable, the guilt incurred, the penalty indestructible ; the series of effects, foreign to the mind of the perpetrator, may be abbreviated ; prevention applied to new ills which threaten to arise ; but by all this the personal fitness of the delinquent for forgiveness is wholly unaffected ; the volition of sin has gone forth, and on it flies, as surely as sound on a vibration of the air, the verdict of judgment. Those who are affected by slight and failing analogies like these, would do well to consider one, sufficiently obvious, which seems to throw doubt upon their scheme. The atone- ment is thought to be, in respect to all believers, a reversal of the fall : the effects of the fall are partly visible and 96 INCONSISTENCY OF THE temporal, partly invisible and eternal ; linked, however, to- gether as inseparable portions of the same penal system. Now it is evident, that the supposed redemption on the cross has left precisely where they were all the visible effects of the first transgression : sorrow and toil are the lot of all, as they have been from of old ; the baptized infant utters a cry as sad as the unbaptized ; and between the holiness of the true believer and the worth of the devout heretic, there is not discernible such a difference as there must have been between Adam pure and perfect and Adam lapsed and lost. And is it presumptuous to reason from the seen to the unseen, from the part Avliich we experience to that which we can only conceive ? If the known effects are unredeemed, the suspicion is not unnatural, that so are the unknown. I sum up, then, this part of my subject by observing, that, besides many inconclusive appeals to nature, the advocates of the vicarious scheme are chargeable with this fundamental inconsistency. They appear to deny that the justice and benevolence of God can be reconciled with the phenomena of nature ; and say that the evidence must be helped out by resort to their interpretation of Scripture. When, having heard this auxiliary system, we protest that it renders tlie case sadder than before, they assure us that it is all benevo- lent and just, because it has its parallel in creation. They renounce and adopt, in the same breath, the religious appeal to the universe of God. (2.) Another inconsistency appears, in the view which this theory gives of the character of God. It is assumed that, at the era of creation, the Maker of mankind had announced the infinite penalties which must follow the violation of his law ; and that their amount did not exceed the measure which his abhorrence of wrons: re- quired. " And that which he saith, he would not be God if he did not perform : that which he perceived right, he would be unworthy of our trust, did he not fulfil. His veracity and justice,, therefore, were pledged to adhere to the word that had gone forth ; and excluded the possibility of any free and SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 97 unconditional forgiveness." Now I would note, in passing, that this announcement to Adam of an eternal punishment impending over his first sin, is simply a fiction ; for the warn- ing to him is stated thus : " In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die " ; from which our progenitor must have been ingenious as a tlieologian, to extract the idea of endless life in hell. But to say no more of this,- what notions of ve- racity have we here ? When a sentence is proclaimed against crime, is it indifferent to judicial truth upon whom it falls ? Personally addressed to the guilty, may it descend without a lie upon the guiltless ? Provided there is the suffering, is it no matter where ? Is this the sense in which God is no re- specter of persons ? O what deplorable reflection of human artifice is this, that Heaven is too veracious to abandon its proclamation of menace against transgressors, yet is content to vent it on goodness the most perfect ! No darker deed can be imagined, than is thus ascribed to the Source of all perfec- tion, under the insulted names of truth and holiness. What reliance could we have on the faithfulness of such a Being? If it be consistent with his nature to punish by substitution, what security is there that he will not reward vicariously ? All must be loose and unsettled, the sentiments of reverence confused, the perceptions of conscience indistinct, where the terms expressive of those great moral qualities which ren- der God himself most venerable are thus sported with and profaned. The same extraordinary departure from all intelligible meaning of words is api)arent, when our charge of vindictive- ness against the doctrine of sacrifice is repelled as a slander. If the rigorous refusal of pardon till the whole penalty has been inflicted, (when, indeed, it is no pardon at all,) be not vindictive, we may ask to be furnished with some better definition. And though it is said, that God's love was mani- fested to us by the gift of his Son, this does but change the object on which this quality is exercised, without removing the quality itself; putting us indeed into the sunshine of his grace, but the Saviour into the tempest of his wrath. Did " 9 98 INCONSISTENCY OF THE we desire to sketch the most dreadful form of character, what more emphatic combination could we invent than this, — rigor in the exaction of penal suffering, and indifference as to the person on whom it falls ? But in truth this system, in its delineations of the Great Ruler of creation, bids defiance to all the analogies by which Christ and the Christian heart have delighted to illustrate his nature. A God who could accept the spontaneously re- turning sinner, and restore him by corrective discipline, is pro- nounced not worth serving, and an object of contempt.* If so, Jesus sketched an object of contempt when he drew the father of the prodigal son, opening his arms to the poor penitent, and needing only the sight of his misery to fall on his neck with the kiss of welcome home. Let the assertions be true, that sacrifice and satisfaction are needful preliminaries to pardon, that to pay any attention to repentance without these is mere weakness, and that it is a perilous deception to teach the doctrine of mercy apart from the atonement, and this parable of our Saviour's becomes the most pernicious * " Either he " (" the Deity of the Unitarians ") " must show no mercy, in order to continue true ; or he must show no truth, in order to exercise mercy. If he overlook man's guilt, admit him to the enjoyment ofhisfavor^ and j)roceedhy corrective discipline to restore his character, he unsettles the foundations of all equitable government, obliterates the everlasting distinc- tions between right and wrong, spreads consternation in heaven, and pro- claims impunity in hell. Such a God would not be worth serving. Siuh tenderness, instead of inspiring filial affection, would lead only to reckless contempt." — Mr. M'Ntile"s Lecture, p. 313. Surely this is a description, not of the Unitarian, but of the Lecturer's own creed- It certainly is no part of his opponents' belief, that God first admits the guilty to his favor, and Oien "■proceeds'" "to restore his character." This arrangement, by which pardon 7?;-€cec?€s moral restoration, is that feature in the Orthodox theory of the Divine dealings against which Unitarians protest, and which Mr. ]\I'Neile himself insists upon as essential throughout his Lecture. " We think," he says, " that before man can be introduced to the only true process of improvement, he rtm?>i first have for- giveness of his guilt." What is this " first " step, of pardon, but an " over- looking of man's guilt " ; and what is the second, of " sanctification," but a " restoring of character " ; whether we say by " corrective discipline," or the " influence of the Holy Spirit," matters not. Is it said that the guilt is not overlooked, if Christ endured its penalty ? I a^ again, whether justice SCHEME OF VICARIOUS RKDEMrTION. 99 instrument of delusion, — a statement, absolute and unqualified, of a feeble and sentimental heresy. Who does not see what follows from this scornful exclusion of corrective punishment ? Suppose the infliction not to be corrective, that is, not to be designed for any good, what then remains as the cause of the Divine retribution ? The sense of insult offered to a law. And thus we are virtually told, that God must be regarded with a mixture of contempt, unless he be susceptible of per- sonal affront. (3.) The last inconsistency with itself, which I shall point out in this doctrine, will be found in the view which it gives of the work of Christ. Sin, we are assured, is necessarily infinite. Its infinitude arises from its reference to an Infinite Being, and involves as a consequence the necessity of re- demption by Deity himself. The position, that guilt is to be estimated, not by its amount or its motive, but by the dignity of the being against whom it is directed, is illustrated by the case of an insubor- dinate soldier, whose punishment is increased according as regards only the injliclioii of suffering, or its quantity, without caring about its direction f Was it innpossible for the stern righteousness of God freely to forgive the penitent ? And how was 'the injustice of liberating the guilty mended by the torments of the innocent ? Here is the verdict against sin : "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." And how is this verdict executed? The soul that had sinned does not die ; and one " that knew no sin " dies instead. And this is called a divine union of truth and mercy ; being the most precise negation of both, of which any conception can be formed. First, to hang the destinies of all mankind upon a solitary volition of their first parents, and then let loose a diabolic power on that volition to break it down ; to vitiate the human constitution in punishment for the fall, and yet continue to demand obedience to the original and perfect moral law ; to assert the absolute inflexibility of that holy law, yet all the while have in view for the offenders a method of escape, which violates every one of its provisions, and makes it all a solemn pretence ; to forgive that which is in itself unpardonable, on condition of the suicide of a God, is to shock and confound all notions of rectitude, without affording even the sublimity of a savage grandeur. This will l)e called " blasphemy "; and it is so; but the blasphemy is not in the irorrh, but in the thivfj. Unitarians are falsely accused of representing God as " overlooking man's guilt." They hold, that no guilt is overlooked till it is eradicated from the soul; and that pardon proceeds pari passu with sanctification. 100 INCONSISTENCY OF THE his rebellion assails an equal or any of tlie many grades amongst his superiors. It is evident, however, that it is not the dignity of the person, but the magnitude of the effect, which determines the severity of the sanction by which, in such an instance, law enforces order. Insult to a monarch is more sternly treated than injury to a subject, because it in- curs the risk of wider and more disastrous consequences, and superadds to the personal injury a peril to an official power which, not resting on individual superiority, but on conven- tional arrangement, is always precarious. It is not indeed easy to form a distinct notion of an infinite act in a finite agent ; and still less is it easy to evade the inference, that, if an immoral deed against God be an infinite demerit, a moral deed towards him must be an infinite merit. Passing by an assertion so unmeaning, and conceding it for the sake of progress in our argument, I would inquire what is intended by that other statement, that only Deity can redeem, and that by Deity the sacrifice was made ? The union of the divine and human natures in Christ is said to have made his sufferings meritorious in an infinite degree. Yet we are repeatedly assured, that it was in his manhood only that he endured and died. If the divine nature in our Lord had a joint consciousness with the human, then did God suffer and perish ; if not, then did the man only die. Deity being no more affected by his anguish, than by that of the malefactors on either side. In the one case the perfections of God, in the other the reality of the atonement, must be relinquished. No doubt, the popular belief is, that the Creator literally expired ; the hymns in common use de- clare it ; the language of pulpits sanctions it ; the consistency of creeds requires it ; but professed theologians repudiate the idea with indignation. Yet by silence or ambiguous speech, they encourage, in those whom they are bound to enlighten, this degrading humanization of Deity ; which renders it im- possible for common minds to avoid ascribing to him emo- tions and infiraiities totally irreconcilable with the serene perfections of the Universal Mind. In his influence on the sche:he of vicarious redemption. 101 worshipper, He is no Spirit, who can be invoked by his agony and bloody sweat, his cross and passion. And the piety that is thus taught to bring its incense, however sincere, be- fore the mental image of a being with convulsed features and expiring cry, has little left of that which makes Christian devotion characteristically venerable. 11. I proceed to notice the inconsistency of the doctrine under review with the Christian idea of salvation. There is one signijicant Scriptural fact^ which suggests to us the best mode of treating this part of our subject. It is this : that the language supposed to teach the atoning efficacy of the cross does not appear in* the New Testament till the Gentile controversy commences, nor ever occurs apart from the treatment of that subject, under some of its relations. The cause of this phenomenon will presently appear; mean- while I state it, in the place of an assertion sometimes incor- rectly made, viz. that the phraseology in question is confined to the Epistles. Even this mechanical limitation of sacrificial passages is indeed nearly true, as not above three or four have strayed beyond the epistolary boundary into the Gospels and the book of Acts ; but the restriction in respect of subject, which I have stated, will be found,* I believe, to be absolutely exact, and to furnish the real interpretation to the whole system of language. (1.) Let us then first test the vicarious scheme by refer- ence to the sentiments of Scripture generally, and of our Lord and his Apostles especially, where this controversy is out of the way. Ai-e their ideas respecting human character, the forgiveness of sin, the terms of everlasting life, accordant with the cardinal notions of a behever in the atonement ? Do they, or do they not, insist on the necessity of a sacri- fice for human sin, as a preliminary to pardon, to sanctifi- cation, to the love of God? Do they, or do they not, direct a marked and almost exclusive attention to the cross, as the object to wliicli, far more than to the life and resurrection of our Lord, all faithful eyes should be di- rected ? 9* 102 INCONSISTENCY OF THE (a.) Now to the fundamental assertion of the vicarious system, that the Deitj cannot, without inconsistency and im- perfection, pardon on simple repentance, the whole tenor of the Bible is one protracted and unequivocal contradiction. So copious is its testimony on this head, that if the passages containing it were removed, scarcely a shred of Scripture re- lating to the subject would remain. " Pardon, I beseech thee," said Moses, pleading for the Israelites, " the iniquity of this people, according to the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt even until now. And the Lord said, / have pardoned according to thy ivord." Will it be affirmed, that this chosen people had their eyes perpetually fixed in faith on the great propitiation, which was to close their dispensation, and of which their own cere- monial was a type ? — that whenever penitence and pardon are named amongst them, this reference is implied, and that as this faith was called to mind and expressed in the shedding of blood at the altar, such sacrificial offerings take the place, in Judaism, of the atoning trust in Christianity ? AYell, then, let us quit the chosen nation altogether, and go to a heathen people, who were aliens to their laws, their blood, their hopes, and their religion ; to whom no sacrifice was appointed, and no Messiah promised. If we can discover the dealings of God with such a people, the case, I presume, must be deemed conclusive. Hear, then, what happened on the banks of the Tigris. " Jonah began to enter into the city," (Nineveh,) " and he cried and said, yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even unto the least of them." " Who can tell," (said the decree of the king ordaining the fast,) " if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil w^ay ; and God repented of the evil that he had said he would do unto them ; and he did it not." And when the prophet was offended, first at this clemency to Nineveh, and afterwards that the canker was sent to destroy SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 103 his own favorite plant, beneatli whose shadow he sat, what did Jehovah say ? ^' Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow ; which came up in a night and perished in a night ; and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six- score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand ? " — and who are not likely, one would think, to have discerned the future merits of the Ivedeemer, In truth, if even the Israelites had any such prospective ^iews to Calvary, if their sacrifices conveyed the idea of the cross erected there, and were established for this purpose, the fact must have been privately revealed to modern theologians ; for not a trace of it can be found in the Hebrew writings. It must be thought strange, that a prophetic reference so habit- ual should be always a secret reference ; that a faith so fun- damental should be so mysteriously suppressed ; that the uppermost idea of a nation's mind should never have found its way to lips or pen. " But if it were not so," we are re- minded, " if the Jewish ritual prefigured nothing ulterior, it was revolting, trifling, savage ; its worship a butchery, and the temple courts no better than a slaughter-house." And were they not equally so, though the theory of types be true? If neither priest nor people could see at the time the very thing which the ceremonial was constructed to reveal, what advantage is it that divines can see it now ? And even if the notion was conveyed to the Jewish mind, (which tlie whole history shows not to have been the fact,) was it necessary that hecatombs should be slain, age after age, to intimate obscurely an idea, which one brief sentence might have lucidly expressed? The idea, liowever, it is evident, slipped through after all ; for when Messiah actually came, the one great thins: which the Jews did not know and believe about him was, that he could die at alL So much for the preparatory discii)line of fiftecni centuries! There is no reason, then, why anything should be supplied in our thoughts, to alter the plain meaning of the announce- 104 INCONSISTENCY OF THE ments of prophets and holy men, of God's unconditional for- giveness on repentance. " Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it ; thou delightest not in burnt-offering ; the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ; a broken and a con- trite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." " Wash you, make you clean," says the prophet Isaiah in the name of the Lord ; " put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do well ; seek judgment, re- lieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord ; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow ; though tliey be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Once more, "When I say unto the wicked, thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right ; if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he hath robbed, walk in the statutes of life without comraittincr in- iquity ; he shall surely live, he shall not die." Kor are the teachings of the Gospel at all less explicit. Our Lord treats largely and expressly on the doctrine of forgiveness in several parables, and especially that of the prodigal son ; and omits all allusion to the propitiation for the past. He furnishes an express definition of the terms of eternal life : " Good master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? And he said unto him. Why callest thou me good ? there is none good save one, that is God ; but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments." And Jesus adds, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." This silence on the prime condition of pardon cannot be explained by the fact, that the crucifixion had not yet taken place, and could not safely be alluded to, before the course of events had brought it into prominent notice. For we have the preaching of the Apostles, after the ascension, recorded at great length, and under very various circum- stances, in the book of Acts. We have the very "words whereby," according to the testimony of an angel, " Cornelius and all his house shall be saved " ; these, one would think, SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 105 would be worth hearing in this cause : " God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost, and with power ; wlio went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the Devil, for God was with him. And we are witnesses of all things which he did, both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem ; whom they slew and hanged on a tree. Him God raised up the third day, and showed openly ; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is he who was ordained of God to be the judge of quick and dead. To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins." Did an Evangelical missionary dare to preach in this style now, he would be immediately disowned by his employers, and dismissed as a disguised Socinian, who kept back all the " peculiar doctrines of the Gospel." (b.) The emphatic mention of the resurrection by the Apostle Peter in this address, is only a j)articular instance of a system which pervades the whole preaching of the first missionaries of Christ. This, and not the cross, with its sup- posed effects, is the grand object to which they call the atten- tion and the faith of their hearers. I cannot quote to you the whole book of Acts ; but every reader knows, that " Jesus and the resurrection " constitutes the leading theme, the cen- tral combination of ideas in all its discourses. This truth was shed, from Peter's tongue of fire, on the multitudes that heard amazed the inspiration of the day of Pentecost. Again, it was his text, when, passing beneath the beautiful gate, he made the cripple leap for joy ; and then, with the flush of this deed still fresh upon him, leaned against a pillar in Solo- mon's porch, and spake in explanation to the awe-struck people, thronging in at the hour of prayer. Before priests and rulers, before Sanhedrim and populace, the same tale is told again, to the utter exclusion, be it observed, of the essential doctrine of the cross. The authorities of the temple, 106 INCONSISTENCY OF THE we are told, were galled and terrified at the Apostle's preach- ing ; " naturally enough," it will be said, " since, the real sacrifice having been offered, their vocation, which was to make the prefatory and typical oblation, was threatened with destruction." But no, this is not the reason given : " They were grieved because they preached, through Jesus, the resur- rection from the dead." Paul, too, while his preaching was spontaneous and free, and until he had to argue certain con- troversies which have long ago become obsolete, manifested a no less remarkable predilection for this topic. Before Felix, he declares what was the grand indictment of his countrymen against him : " Touching the resurrection of the dead, I am called in question of you this day." Follow him far away from his own land ; and, with foreigners, he harps upon the same subject, as if he were a man of one idea ; which, in- deed, according to our opponents' scheme, he ought to have been, only it should have been another idea. Seldom, how- ever, can we meet with a more exuberant mind than Paul's ; yet the resurrection obviously haunts him wherever he goes : in the synagogue of Antioch you hear him dweUing on it with all the energy of his inspiration ; and, at Athens, it was this on which the scepticism of Epicureans and Stoics fastened for a scoff. In his Epistles, too, where he enlarges so much on justification by faith, when we inquire what precisely is this faith, and what the object it is to contemplate and embrace, this remarkable fact presents itself: that the one only im- portant thing respecting Christ, which is nevei' once mentioned as the object of justifying faith, is his death, and hlood, and cross. " Faith " by itself, the « faith of Jesus Christ," " faith of the Gospel," " faith of the Son of God," are expressions of constant occurrence ; and wherever this general description is replaced by a more specific account of this justifying state of mind, it is faith in the resurrection on which attention is fastened. " It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again.'* " He was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification'* " Faith shall be imputed to us for righteousness, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 107 Lord from the dead.'' Hear, too, the Apostle's definition of saving faith : " If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." The only instance in which the writings of St. Paul appear to associate the word faith with the death of Christ, is the following text : " Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood " ; and in this ease the Apostle's meaning would, I con- ceive, be more faithfully given by destroying this conjunction, and disposing the words thus : " Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation by his blood, through faith." The idea of his blood, or death, belongs to the word propitiation, not to the word faith. To this translation no Trinitarian scholar, I am per- suaded, can object ; * and when the true meaning of the writer's sacrificial language is explained, the distinction will appear to be not unimportant. At present I am concerned only with the defence of my position, that the death of Christ is never mentioned as the object of saving faith ; but that his resur- rection unquestionably is. This phenomenon in Scripture phraseology is so extraordinary, so utterly repugnant to every- thing which a hearer of orthodox preaching would expect, that I hardly expect my affirmation of it to be believed. The two ideas of faith, and of our Lord's death, are so naturally and perpetually united in the mind of every believer in the atonement, that it must appear to him incredible that they should never fall together in the writings of the Apostles. However, I have stated my fact ; and it is for you to bring it to the test of Scripture. (c.) Independently of all written testimony, moral reasons, we are assured, exist, which render an absolute remission for the past essential to a regenerated life for the future. Our human nature is said to be so constituted, that the burden * Jlr. BiuWicom has the followincj note, intimating his approbation of this rendering : " Some of the best commentator^ have connected tv tc5 avTov alfxarii not with 5ta T^y TriVrfcoy, but with iXaa-Trjpiou • and, accordingly, Bisliop Bull renders the passage, ' Quern proposuit Deus placamentum in sanguine sue per fidem.' " — Ltcture on Atonement, p. 496. 108 INCONSISTENCY OF THE of sin, on the conscience once awakened, is intolerable ; our spirit cries aloud for mercy ; yet is so straitened by the bands of sin, so conscious of the sad alliance lin^-erino: still, so full of hesitancy and shame when seeking the relief of prayer, so blinded by its tears when scanning the heavens for an opening of light and hope, that there is no freedom, no unrestrained and happy love to God ; but a pinched and anxious mind, bereft of power, striving to work with bandaged or paralytic will, instead of trusting itself to loosened and self-oblivious affections. Hence it is thought, that the sin of the past must be cancelled, before the holiness of the future can be com- menced ; that it is a false order to represent repentance as leading to pardon, because to be forgiven is the prerequisite to love. We cannot forget, however, how distinctly and emphatically he who, after God, best knew what is in man, has contradicted this sentiment ; for when that sinful woman, whose presence in the house shocked the sanctimo- nious Pharisee, stood at his feet as he reclined, washing them with her tears, and kissing them with reverential lips, Jesus turned to her and said, " Her sins, which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved much." From him, then, we learn, what our own hearts would almost teach, that love may be the prelude to forgiveness, as well as forgiveness the preparative for love. At the same time let me acknowledge, that this statement respecting the moral effects of conscious pardon, to which I have invoked Jesus to reply, is by no means an unmixed error. It touches upon a very profound and important truth ; and I can never bring myself to regard that assurance of Divine forgiveness, which the doctrine of atonement imparts, as a demoralizing state of mind, encouraging laxity of con- science and a continuance in sin. The sense of pardon, doubt- less, reaches the secret springs of gratitude, presents the soul with an object, strange before, of new and divine affection, and binds the child of redemption, by all generous and filial . obligations, to serve with free and willing heart the God who hath gone forth to meet him. That the motives of self- SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTIOIST. 109 ' interest are diminished in such a case, is a trifle that need occasion small anxiety. For the human heart is no laborer for hire ; and, where there is opportunity afforded for true and noble love, will thrust away the proffered wages, and toil rather in a free and thankful spirit. If we are to compare, as a source of duty, the grateful with the merely prudential temper, rather may we trust the first, as not the worthier only, but the stronger too ; and till we obtain emancipation from the latter, — forget the computations of hope and fear, and precipitate ourselves for better or for worse on some object of divine love and trust, — our nature will be puny and weak, our wills will turn in sickness from their duty, and our affec- tions shrink in aversion from their heaven. But though per- sonal gratitude is better than prudence, there is a higher service still. A more disinterested love may spring from the contemplation of what God is in himself, than from the rec- ollection of what he has done for us : and when this mingles most largely as an element among our springs of action ; when, humbled indeed by a knowledge of dangers that await us, and thankful, too, for the blessings spread around us, we yet desire chiefly to be fitting children of the everlasting Father and the holy God ; when we venerate him for the graciousness, and purity, and majesty of his spirit, imper- sonated in Jesus, and resolve to serve him truly, before he has granted the desire of our heart, and because he is of a nature so sublime and merciful and good ; — then are we in the condition of her who bent over the feet of Christ; and we are forgiven, because we have loved much. (2.) Let us now, in conclusion, turn our attention to those portions of the New Testament wdiich speak of the death of Christ as the means of redemption. I have said, that these are to be found exclusively in pas- sages of the sacred writings which treat of the Gentile con- troversy, or of topics immediately connected with it. This controversy arose naturally out of the design of Providence to make the narrow, exclusive, ceremonial system of Judaism give birth to the universal and spiritual religion of the Gos- 10 110 INCONSISTENCY OF THE pel ; from God's method of expanding the Hebrew Messiah into the Saviour of humanity. For this the nation was not prepared ; to this even the Hebrew Christians could not easily conform their faith ; and in the achievement of this, or in persuading the world that it was achieved, did Paul spend his noble life, and write his astonishing Epistles. The Jews knew that the Deliverer was to be of their peculiar stock, and their royal lineage ; they believed that he would gather upon him- self all the singularities of their race, and be a Hebrew to intensity ; that he would literally restore the kingdom to Israel ; ay, and extend it too, immeasurably beyond the bounds of its former greatness ; till, in fact, it swallowed up all existing principalities, and powers, and thrones, and do- minions, and became coextensive Avith the earth. Then in Jerusalem, as the centre of the vanquished nations, before the temple, as the altar of a humbled world, did they expect the Messiah to erect his throne ; and when he had taken the seat of judgment, to summon all the tribes before his tribunal, and pass on the Gentiles, excepting the few who might submit to the law, a sentence of perpetual exclusion from hii? realm ; while his own people would be invited to the seats of honor, occupy the place of authority, and sit down with him (the greatest at his right hand and his left) at his table in his kingdom. The holy men of old were to come on earth again to see this day. And many thought that every part of the realm thus constituted, and all its inhabitants, would never die : but, like the Messiah himself, and the patriarchs whom he was to call to life, would be invested with immortality. None were to be admitted to these golden days except them- selves ; all else to be left in outer darkness from this region of light, and there to perish and be seen no more. The grand title to admission was conformity with the Mosaic law ; the most ritually scrupulous were the most secure ; and the care- less Israelite, who forgot or omitted an offering, a tithe, a Sabbath duty, might incur the penalty of exclusion and death : the law prescribed such mortal punishment for the smallest offence ; and no one, therefore, could feel himself ready with SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. Ill his claim, if he had not yielded a perfect obedience. If God were to admit him on any other plea, it -would be of pure grace and goodness, and not in fulfilment of any promise. The Jews, being scattered over the civilized world, and having synagogues in every city, came into perpetual contact with other people. Nor was it possible that the Gentiles, among whom they lived, should notice the singular purity and simplicity of the Israelitish Theism, without some of them being struck with its spirit, attracted by its sublime prin- ciples, and disposed to place themselves in religious relations with that singular people. Having been led into admiration, and even profession, of the nation's tlieology, they could not but desire to share their hopes ; which indeed were an in- tegral part of their religion, and, at the Christian era, the one element in it to which they were most passionately attached. But this was a stretch of charity too great for any Hebrew ; or, at all events, if such admission were ever to be thought of, it must be only on condition of absolute submission to the requirements of the law. The Gentile would naturally plead, that, as God had not made him of the chosen nation, he had given him no law, except that of conscience ; that, being without the law, he must be a law unto himself; and that, if he had lived according to his light, he could not be justly excluded on the ground of accidental disqualification. Possibly, in the provocation of dispute, the Gentile might sometimes become froward and insolent in his assertion of claim ; and, in the pride of his heart, demand as a right that which, at most, could only be humbly hoped for as a priv- ilege and a free gift. Thus were the parties mutually placed to whom the Deliv- erer came. Thus dense and complicated was the web of prejudice which clung round the early steps of the Gospel ; and which must be burst or disentangled ere the glad tidings could have free course and be glorified. How did Providence develop from such elements the divine and everlasting truth ? Not by neglecting them, and speaking to mankind as if they had no such ideas ; not by forbidding his messengers and 112 INCONSISTENCY OF THE teachers to have any patience with them ; but, on the con- trary, by using these very notions as temporary means to his everlasting ends ; by touching this and that with light before the eyes of Apostles, as if to say, there are good capabilities in these ; the truth may be educed from them so gently and so wisely, that the world will find itself in light, without per- ceiving how it has been quitting the darkness. So long as Christ remained on earth, he necessarily con- fined his ministry to his nation. He would not have been the Messiah had he done otherwise. By birth, by lineage, by locality, by habit, he was altogether theirs. Whoever, then, of his own people, during his mortal life, believed in him and followed him, became a subject of the Messiah; ready, it was supposed, even by the Apostles themselves, to enter the glory of his kingdom, whenever it should please him to assume it ; qualified at once, by the combination of pedigree and of belief, to enter into life, to become a mem- ber of the kingdom of God, to take a place among the elect ; for by all these phrases was described the admission to the expected realm. If, then, Jesus had never suflfered and died, if he had never retired from this world, but stayed to fulfil the anticipations of his first followers, his Messianic kingdom might have included all the converts of the Israehtish stock. From the exclusion which fell on others, they would have obtained salvation. Hence, it is never in connection with the first Jewish Christians that the death of Christ is mentioned. It was otherwise, however, with the Gentiles. They could not become his followers in his mortal lifetime ; and had a Messianic reign then been set up, they must have been ex- cluded ; no missionary would have been justified in addressing them with invitation ; they could not, as it was said, have entered into life. The Messiah must cease to be Jewish, before he could become universal ; and this implied his death, by which alone the personal relations, which made him the property of a nation, could be annihilated. To this he sub- mitted ; he disrobed himself of his corporeality, he became SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 113 an immortal spirit ; thereby instantly burst his religion open to the dimensions of the world ; and, as he ascended to the skies, sent it forth to scatter the seeds of blessing over the field of the world, long ploughed with cares, and moist with gi'iefs, and softened now to nourish in its bosom the tree of Life. Now, how would the effect of this great revolution be de- scribed to the proselyte Gentiles, so long vainly praying for admission to the Israelitish hope. At once it destroyed their exclusion ; put away as valueless the Jewish claims of cir- cumcision and law ; nailed the handwriting of ordinances to the cross ; reconciled them that had been afar off; redeemed them to God by his blood, out of every tongue, and kindred, and people, and nation ; washed them in his blood ; justified them hy his resurrection and ascension ; an expression, I would remark, unmeaning on any otlier explanation. Even during our Lord's personal ministry his approach- ing death is mentioned as the means of introducing the Gen- tiles into his Messianic kingdom. He adverts repeatedly to his cross, as designed to widen, by their admission, the ex- tent of his sway ; and, according to Scripture phrase, to yield to him " much fruit." He was already on his last fatal visit to Jerusalem, when, taking the hint from the visit of some Greeks to kim, lie exclaimed : '• The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Yerily, verily, I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it hrinyeth forth much fruit." He adds, in allusion to the death he should die : " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." It is for this end that he resigns for a while his life, — that he may bring in the wanderers who are not of the common- wealth of Israel : " Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice ; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd : there- fore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again." INIany a parable did Jesus utter, pro- claiming his Father's intended mercy to the uncoveuanted 10* 114 INCONSISTENCY OF THE nations : but for himself personally he declared, " I am not sent, but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." His advent Avas a promise of their economy ; his office, the tra- ditionary hope of their fathers ; his birth, his life, his person, were under the Law, and excluded him from relations to those who were beyond its obligations. On the cross, all the connate peculiarities of the Nazarene ceased to exist : when the seal of the sepulchre gave way, the seal of the law was broken too ; the nationality of his person passed away ; for how can an immortal be a Jew ? This, then, was the time to open wide the scope of his mission, and to invite to God's acceptance those that fear him in every nation. Though, be- fore, the disciple might " have known Christ after the flesh," and followed his steps as the Hebrew Messiah, " yet now henceforth was he to know him so no more " ; these " old things had passed away," since he had " died for all," — died to become universal, — to drop all exclusive relations, and " reconcile the world," the Gentile world, to God. Observe to whom this " ministry of reconciliation " is especially con- fided. As if to show that it is exclusively the risen Christ who belongs to all men, and that his death was the instrument of the Gentiles' admission, their great Apostle was one Paul, who had not known the Saviour in his mortal life ; who never listened to his voice till it spake from heaven ; who himself was the convert of his ascension ; and bore to him the rela- tion, not of subject to the person of a Hebrew king, but of spirit to spirit, unembarrassed by anything earthly, legal, or historical. Well did Paul understand the freedom and the sanctity of this relation ; and around the idea of the Heavenly Messiah gathered all his conceptions of the spirituality of the Gospel, of its power over the unconscious affections, rather than a reluctant wiU. His believing countrymen were afraid to disregard the observances of the law, lest it should be a disloyalty to God, and disqualify them for the Messiah's welcome, when he came to take his power and reign. Paul tells them, that, while their Lord remained in this mortal state, they were right ; as representative of the law, and fiUing SCHEME OF VICARIOUS llEDiniPTIOX. 115 an office created by the religion of Judaism, he could not but have held them then to its obligations ; nor could they, without infidelity, have neglected its claims, any more than a wife can innocently separate herself from a living husband. But as the death of the man sets the woman free, and makes null the law of their union, so the decease of Christ's body emanci- pates his followers from all legal relations to him ; and they are at liberty to wed themselves anew to the risen Christ, Avho dwells where no ordinance is needful, no tie permitted but of the spirit, and all are as the angels of God. Surely, then, this mode of conception explains why the death of Jesus constitutes a great date in the Christian economy, especially as expounded by the friend and Apostle of those who were not " Jews by nature, but sinners of the Gentiles." Had he never died, they must have remained aliens from his sway ; the enemies against whom his power must be directed ; with- out hope in the day of his might ; strangers to God and his vicegerent. But, while thus they " were yet without strength, Christ died for '* these " ungodly " ; died to put himself into con- nection with them, else impossible ; and, rising from death, drew them after him into spiritual existence on earth, analo- gous to that which he passed in heaven. " You," says their Apostle, " being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him " ; giving you, as " risen with him," a life above the world and its law of exclusion, — a life not " subject to ordinances," but of secret love and hoavenl}-- faith, " hid with Christ in God " ; " blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and taking it out of the way, nailing it to his cross." God had never intended to per- petuate the division between Israel and the world, receiving the one as the sons, and shutting out the other as the slaves of his household. If there had been an appearance of such j)artiality, he had always designed to set these bondmen free, and to make them " heirs of God through Christ " ; " in whom they had redemption through liis blood " from their 116 INCONSISTENCY OF THE servile state, the forgiveness of disqualifying sins, according to the riches of his grace. Though the Hebrews boasted that '•' theirs was the adoption," and till Messiah's death had boasted truly ; yet in that event God, " before the foun- dation of the w^orld," had " blessed us " ( Gentiles) " with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places " ; " having predesti- nated us unto the adoption of children, by Jesus Christ, ac- cording " (not indeed to any right or promise, but) " to the good pleasure of his will," " and when we were enemies, having reconciled us, by the death of his Son *' ; " that in the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ" ; "by whom we " (Gentiles) " have now received this atonement " (reconciliation) ; that he might have no partial em|)ire, but that " in him might all fulness dwell." " "Where- fore," says their Apostle, " remember that ye, Gentiles in the jiesh^ were in time past without Messiah, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world ; but now in Christ Jesus, ye, who sometime were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us " (not between God and man, but between Jew and Gentile) ; " having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments, contained in or- dinances ; for to make in himself, of twain, one new man, so making 'peace ; and that he might reconcile both unto God, in one body, by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby ; and came and preached peace to you who were afar off, as well as to them that were nigh. For through him we both have an access by one spirit unto the Father." The way, then, is clear and intelligible, in which the death and ascension of the Messiah rendered him universal, by giving spirituality to his rule ; and, on the simple condition of faith, added the uncovenanted nations to his dominion, so far as they w^ere willing to receive him. This idea, and this only, will be found in almost every passage of the New Testa- ment (excepting the Epistle to the Hebrews) usually adduced SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 117 to prove the doctrine of tlie Atonement. Some of the strongest of these I have already quoted ; and my readers must judge whether they have received a satisfactory mean- ing. There are others, in which the Gentiles are not so dis- tinctly stated to be the sole objects of the redemption of the cross ; but with scarcely an exception^ so far as I can discover, this limitation is implied, and either creeps out through some adjacent expression in the context, or betrays itself, when we recur to the general course of the Apostle's argument, or to the character and circumstances of his correspondents. Thus Paul says, that Christ " gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time " ; the next verse shows what is in his mind, when he adds, " whereiinto I am ordained a preacher, and an Apostle, a teadier of the Gentiles in faith and verity " ; and the whole sentiment of the context is the Uni- versality of the Gospel, and the duty of praying for Gentile kings and people, as not abandoned to a foreign God and another Mediator ; for since IMessiah's death, to us all " there is but One God, and One Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus " : wherefore the Apostle wills, that for all '• men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting," — without wrath at their admission, or doubt of their adoption. And wherever emphasis is laid on the vast number benefited by the cross, a contrast is implied with the few (only the Jews) who could have been his sub- jects liad he not died : and when it is said, " he gave his life a ransom for many " / his blood was " shed for many, for the remission of sins " ; " thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people^ and nation, and hast made us unto our God kinjrs and priests, and we shall reign on the earth " ; " behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world " ; * — * John i. 29. For an example of the use of the word " world"" to denote the Gentiles, see Rom. xi. 12-15; where St. Pan), speakinn; of the rejection of the Messiah by the Jews, declares that it is only temporary; and as it has given occasion for the adoption of the Gentiles, so will this lead, by ultimate reaction, to the readmission of Israel ; a consummation in which the Gentiles 118 INCONSISTENCY OF THE by all these expressions is still denoted the efficacy of Christ's death in removing the Gentile disqualification, and making his dispensation spiritual as his celestial existence, and uni- versal as the Fatherhood of God. Does Paul exhort certain of his disciples " to feed the church of the Lord, which he hath purchased with his own blood " ? * We find that he is speaking of the Gentile church of Ephesus, whose elders he is instructing in the management of their charge, and to which he afterwards wrote the well-known Epistle, on their Gentile freedom and adoption obtained by the Messiah's death. AVlien Peter says, " Ye know that ye were not re- deemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation, received by tradition from your fathers ; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot," — we must inquire to whom he is addressing these words. If it be to the Jews, the interpre- tation which I have hitherto given of such language will not apply, and we must seek an explanation altogether different. But the whole manner of this Epistle, the complexion of its phraseology throughout, convinces me that it was addressed especially to the Gentile converts of Asia Minor; and that the redemption of which it speaks is no other than that which is the frequent theme of their own Apostle. In the passage just quoted, the form of expression itself suggests the idea, that Peter is addressing a class which did not include himself : " Ye were not redeemed," &c. ; farther on, in the same Epistle, the same sentiment occurs, however, should rejoice without boasting or high-mindedness. " If," he says, " the fall of them (tlie Israelites) be the riches of the world (the Gentiles), and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness! For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the Apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify my office; if, by any means, I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh (the Jews), and save some of them; for if the casting away of them be the I'econciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead? " * Acts XX. 28. It is hardly necessary to say, that the reading of our common version, " church of God,''' wants the support of the best authorities; and that, with the general consent of the most competent critics, Griesbach reads " church of the Loi'd,^' SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 119 without any such visible restriction. Exhorting to patient suffering for conscience' sake, he appeals to the example oi Christ ; "' who, when he suffered, threatened not, but conv mitted himself to Him that judgeth righteously ; who, his own self, bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness " : yet, with instant change in the expression, revealing his corre- spondents to us, the Apostle adds, " by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray ; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." "\Yith the instinct of a gentle and generous heart, the writer, treating in plain terms of the former sins of those whom he addresses, puts himself in with them ; and avoids every ap- pearance of that spiritual pride by which the Jew constantly rendered himself offensive to the Gentile. Again, in this letter, he recommends the duty of patient endurance, by appeal to the same consideration of Christ's disinterested self-sacrifice. " It is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil-doing : for Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." And who are these " un- just" that are thus brought to God? The Apostle instantly explains, by describing how the " Jews by nature " lost j)OS- session of Messiah by the death of his person, and " sinners of the Gentiles " gained him by the resun-ection of his im- mortal nature; "being put to death in flesh, but quickened in spirit; and therehy he went and preached unfo the spirits in prison, who formerhj were without faiths This is clearly a description of the heathen world, ere it was brought into relation to the Messianic promises. Still further confirmation, however, follows. The Apostle adds : " Forasmuch, then, as Clirist hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves like- wise with the same mind ; for the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles ; when ice walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries" If we cannot admit this to be a just description of the holy Apostle's former life. 120 INCONSISTENCY OF THE we must perceive that, writing to Pagans of whom it was all true, he beautifully withholds from his language every trace of invidious distinction, puts himself for the moment into the same class, and seems to take his share of the distressing recollection. The habitual delicacy with which Paul, likewise, classed himself with every order of persons in turn, to whom he had anything painful to say, is known to every intelligent reader of his Epistles. Hence, in his writings too, we have often to consider with whom it is that he is holding his dialogue, and to make our interpretation dependent on the answer. When, for example, he says, that Jesus *'was delivered for our bffences. and was raised again for o?^r justification" ; I ask, " For whose ? — was it for everybody's ? — or for the Jews', eince Paul was a Hebrew?" On looking closely into the argument, I find it beyond doubt that neither of these answers is correct ; and that the Apostle, in conformity with his fre- quent practice, is certainly identifying himself, Israelite though he was, with the Gentiles, to whom, at that moment, his rea- soning apphes itself. The neighboring verses have expres- sions which clearly enough declare this : " when we were yet without strength,'' and " ^vhile we were yet sinners,'' Christ died for us. It is to the Gentile church at Corinth, and while expatiating on their privileges and relations as such, that Paul speaks of the disqualifications and legal unholiness of the heathen, as vanishiiTg in the death of the Messiah ; as the recovered leper's uncleanness was removed, and his banish- ment reversed, and his exclusion from the temple ended, when the lamb without blemish, which the law prescribed as his sin-offering, bled beneath the knife, so did God provide in Jesus a lamb without blemish for the exiled and unsancti- fied Gentiles, to bring them from their far dwelling in the leprous haunts of this world's wilderness, and admit them to the sanctuary of spiritual health and worship : " He hath made him to be a sin-offering for us (Gentiles), who knew no sin ; that Ave might be made the justified of God in him " ; entering, under the Messiah, the community of saints. That, SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 121 in this sacrificial allusion, the Gentile adoption is still the A})Ostle's only theme, is evident hence : that twice in this very passafre he declares that he is speaking of that peculiar "reconcilialion," the word and ministry of wliich have been committed to himself; he is dwelling on the topic most natural to one who " magnified his office," as " Apostle of the Gen- tiles." To the same parties was Paul writing, wdien he said, " Christ, our jjass^over, is sacrificed for us." . Frequently as this sentence is cited in evidence of the doctrine of Atone- ment, there is hardly a verse in Scrij^ture more utterly inap- plicable ; nor, if the doctrine were true, could anything be more inept than an allusion to it in this place. I do not dwell on the fact that the paschal lamb was neither sin-offer- ing nor proper sacrifice at all: for the elucidation of the death of Jesus by sacrificial analogies is as easy and wel- come as any otlier mode of representing it. But I turn to the whole context, and seek for its leading idea, before multi- plying inferences from a subordinate illustration. I find the author treating, not of the deliverance of believers from curse or exclusion, but of their duty to keep the churches cleansed, by the expulsion of notoriously profligate members. Such j^ersons they are to cast from them, as the Jews, at the pass- over, swe[)t from their houses all the leaven they contained ; and as for eight days, at that season, only pure unleavened bread was allowed for use, so the Church must keep the Gospel festival free from the ferment of malice and wicked- ness, and tasting nothing but sincerity and truth. This com- parison is the primary sentiment of the whole passage ; under cover of which the Apostle is urging the Corinthians to expel a certain licentious offender : and only because the feast of unleaven(!d bread, on which his fancy has alighted, set in with the day of passover, does he allude to this in completion of the figure. As his correspondents were Gentiles, their Chris- tianity commenced with the death of Christ ; with him, as an immortal, their spiritual relations commenced ; when he rose, they rose with him, as by a divine attraction, from an earthly 11 122 INCONSISTENCY OF THE to a heavenly state ; their old and corrupt man had been buried together with him, and, with the human infirmities of his person, left behind for ever in his sepulchre ; and it be- came them " to seek those things which are above," and to " yield themselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead." This period of the Lord's sequestration in the heavens Paul represents as a festival of purity to the disciples on earth, ushered in by the self-sacrifice of Christ. The time is come, he says ; cast away the leaven, for the passover is slain, blessed bread of heaven to them that taste it ! let nothing now be seen in all the household of the Church, but the un- leavened cake of simplicity and love. Paul again appears as the advocate of the Gentiles, when he protests that now between them and the Jews " there is no diff'erence, since all have sinned and come short of the glory of God " ; that ^the Hebrew has lost all claim to the Messianic adoption, and can have no hope but in that free grace of God, which has a sovereign right to embrace the heathen too ; and which, in fact, has compassed the Gentiles within its redemption, by causing Jesus the Messiah to die ; " by whose blood God hath set forth a propitiation, through faith ; to evince his justice, while overlooking, with the for- bearance of God, transgressions past ; — to evince his justice in the arrangements of the present crisis ; which preserve his justice (to the Israelite), yet justify on mere discipleship to Jesus." The great question which the Apostle discusses throughout this Epistle is this : " On what terms is a man now admitted as a subject to the Messiah, so as to be ac- knowledged by him, when he comes to erect his kingdom .'' " " He must be one of the circumcised, to whom alone the holy law and promises are given,** says the Jew. " That is well," replies Paul; "only the promises, you remember, are con- ditional on obedience ; and he who claims by the law must stand the judgment of the law. Can your nation abide this test, and will you stake your hopes upon the issue ? Or is there on record against you a violation of every condition of your boasted covenant, — wholesale and national transgression, SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 123 which your favorite code itself menaces with ' cutting off' ? Have you even rejected and crucified the very Messiah, who was tendered to you in due fulfilment of the promises ? Take your trial by the principles of your law, and you must be cast off, and perish, as certainly as the heathen whom you despise ; and whose rebellion against the natural law, gross as it is, does not surpass your own offences against the tables of Moses. You must abandon the claim of right, the high talk of God's justice and plighted faith ; — which are alike ill suited to you both. The rules of law are out of the ques- tion, and would admit nobody; and we must ascend again to the sovereign will and free mercy of Ilim who is the source of law ; and who, to bestow a blessing which its resources cannot confer, may devise new methods of beneficence. God has violated no pledge. Messiah came to Israel, and never went beyond its bounds ; the uncircumcised had no part in him ; and every Hebrew who desired it was received as his subject. But when the people would not have him, and threw away their ancient title, Avas God either to abandon his vicegerent, or to force him on the unwilling? No: rather did it befit him to say : ' If they will reject and crucify my servant, — why, let him die, and then he is Israelite no more ; I will raise him, and take him apart in his immortality ; where his blood of David is lost ; and the holiness of his humanity is glorified ; and all shall be his, who will believe, and love him, as he there exists, spiritually and truly.' " Thus, ac- cording to Paul, does God provide a new method of adoption or justification, without violating any promises of the old. Thus he makes Faith in Jesus — a moral act, instead of a genealogical accident — the single condition of reception into the Divine kingdom upon earth. Thus, after the passage of Christ from this world to another, Jew and Gentile are on an equality in relation to the Messiah ; the one gaining nothing by his past privileges ; the other, not visited with exclusion for past idolatry and sins, but assured, in Messiah's death, that these are to be overlooked, and treated as if cleansed away. He finds himself invited into the very penetralia of 124 INCONSISTENCY OF THE e that sanctuary of pure faith and hope, from which before he had been repelled as an unclean thing ; as if its ark of mercy had been purified for ever from his unworthy touch, or he himself had been sprinkled by some sudden consecration. And all this was the inevitable and instant effect of that death on Calvary, which took Messiah from the Jews and gave him to the world. With emphasis, not less earnest than that of Paul, does the Apostle John repudiate the notion of any claim on the Divine admission by law or righteousness ; and insist on humble and unqualified acceptance of God's free grace and remission for the past, as the sole avenue of entrance to the kingdom This avenue was open, however, to all " who confessed that Jesus the Messiah had come in the flesh " ; in other words, that, during his mortal life, Jesus had been indicated as this future Prince ; and that his mimstry was the Messiah's preliminary visit to that earth on which shortly he would reappear .to reign. The great object of that visit was to prepare the world for his real coming ; for as yet it was very unfit for so great a crisis ; and especially to open, by his death, a way of admission for the Gentiles, and frame, on their behalf, an act of oblivion for the past. " If," says the Apostle to them, " we walk in the light, as he is in the light " (of love and heaven), "we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin " : the Israelite will embrace the Gentiles in fraternal re- lations, knowing that the cross has removed their past un- holiness. Nor let the Hebrew rely on anything now but the Divine forbearance ; to appeal to rights will serve no longer : *' If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Nor let any one despair of a reception, or even a restoration, because he has been an idolater and sinner : " Jesus Christ the righteous " is " an advocate with the Father " for admitting all who are willing to be his ; " and he is the propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only (not merely for our small portion of Gentiles, already converted) ; but also for the whole world," if they will but accept him. SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 125 lie died to become universal ; to make all his own ; to spread an oblivion, wide as the earth, over all that had embarrassed the relations to the Messiah, and made men aliens, instead of Sons of God. Yet did no spontaneous movement of their good affections solicit this change. It was " not that we (Gentiles) loved God; but that he loved us, and sent his Son, the propitiation for our sins " ; " he sent his only-begot- ten Son into the world, that we might live through him." That this Epistle was addressed to Gentiles, and is therefore occupied with the same leading idea respecting the cross which pervades the writings of Paul, is rendered probable by its concluding words, which could hardly be appropriate to Jews : " Keep yourselves from idols." How little the Apostle associated any vicarious idea even with a form of phrase most constantly employed by modern theology to express it, is evident from the parallel which he draws, in the following words, between the death of our Lord and that of the Chris- tian martyrs : " Hereby perceive we love, because Christ laid down his life for us ; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.^* Are, then, the Gentiles alone beneficially affected by the death of Christ ? and is no wider efficacy ever assigned to it in Scripture ? The great number of passages to which I have already applied this single interpretation will sliow that I consider it as comprising the great leading idea of the Apos- tolic theology on this subject; nor do I think that there is (out of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which I shall soon no- tice) a single doctrinal allusion to the cross, from which this conception is wliolly absent. At the same tinie, I am not prej)ared to maintain, that tliis is the only view of the cruci- fixion and resurrection ever present to the mind of the Apostles. Jews themselves, they naturally inquired, how Israel^ in particular, stood affected by the unanticipated death of its IMessiah ; in what way its relations were changed, when the offered Prince became the executed victim ; and how far matters would have been different, if, as had been expected, the Anointed had assumed his rights and taken 11* 126 INCONSISTENCY OF THE his power at once ; and, instead of making his first advent a mere preliminary and warning visit " in the flesh," had set up the kingdom forthwith, and gathered with him his few followers to " reign on the earth." Had this — instead of submission to death, removal, and delay — been his adopted course, what would have become of his own nation, who had rejected him, — who must have been tried by that law which was their boast, and under which he came, — who had long been notorious offenders against its conditions, and now brought down its final curse by despising the claims of the accredited Messiah ? They must have been utterly " cut off," and cast out among the " aliens from the commonwealth of Israel," " without Messiah," " without hope," " without God " ; for while " circumcision profiteth, if thou keep the law ; yet if thou be a breaker of the laiv, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision." Had he come then " to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe," — had he then been " revealed with his mighty angels " (whom he might have summoned by "legions"), — it must have been " in flaming fire, taking vengeance on tliem that knew not God, nor obeyed the glad tidings of the Lord Jesus Christ " ; to " punish with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power." The sins and prospects of Israel being thus terrible, and its rejection imminent (for Messiah was already in the midst of them), he withheld his hand ; refused to precipitate their just fate ; and said, " Let us give them time, and wait ; I will go apart into the heavens, and peradventure they will repent ; only they must receive me then spiritually, and by hearty faith, not by carnal right, admitting thus the willing Gentile with themselves." And so he prepared to die and retire ; he did not permit them to be cut off, but was cut off himself in- stead ; he restrained the curse of their own law from falling on them, and rather perished himself by a foul and accursed lot, which that same law pronounces to be the vilest and most polluted of deaths. Thus says St. Paul to the Jews : " He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 127 a curse for us ; for it is written, * Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.' " * In this way, but for the death of the Messiah, Israel too must have been lost ; and by that event they received time for repentance, and a way for remission of sins ; found a means of reconciliation still ; saw their providence, which had been lowering for judgment, opening over them in propitiation once more ; the just had died for the unjust, to bring them to God. What was this delay, — this suspension of judgment, — this opportunity of return and faith, — but an instance of " the long-suffering of God," with which " he endures the vessels of wrath (Jews) fitted to destruction, and makes known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory " ? If Christ had not withdrawn awhile, if his power had been taken up at once, and wielded in stern and legal jus- tice, a deluge of judgment must have overwhelmed the earth, and swept away both Jew and Gentile, leaving but a remnant safe. But in mercy was the mortal life of Jesus turned into a preluding message of notice and warning, like the tidings which Noah received of the flood ; and as the ffrowins: frame of the ark gave signal to the world of the coming calamity, afforded an interval for repentance, and made the patriarch, as he built, a constant " preacher of righteousness " ; so the increasing body of the Ciuirch, since the warning retreat of Christ to heaven, proclaims the approaching " day of the Lord," admonishes that " all should come to repentance," and fly betimes to that faith and baptism which Messiah's death and resurrection have left as an ark of safety. '' Once, in the days of Noah, the long-suffering of God waited while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water : a representation, this, of the way in which baptism (not, of course, carnal washing, but the engagement of a good conscience with God) saves us now, by the resur- rection of Jesus Christ ; who is gone into heaven, and is on * Gal. iii. 13. Kven here the Apostle cannot refrain from adverting to his Gentile interpretation of the cross; for he adds, — "that the blessing of Abraham might come ou the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ." 128 INCONSISTENCY OF THE the right hand of God ; angels, and authorities, and powers, being made subject to him." Yet "the time is short," and must be " redeemed " ; " it is the last hour " ; " the Lord," " the coming of the Lord," " the end of all things," are " at hand." I have described ojie aspect, which tlie death of tlie Mes- siah presented to the Jeivs ; and, in this, we have found another primary conception, explanatory of the Scriptural language respecting the cross. Of the two relations in which this event appeared (the Gentile and the Israelitish), I believe the former to be by far the most familiar to the New Testa- ment authors, and to furnish the true interpretation of almost all their phraseology on the subject. But, as my readers may have noticed, many passages receive illustration by reference to either notion ; and some may have a meaning compounded of both. I must not pause to make any minute adjustment of these claims, on the part of the two interpreting ideas : it is enough that, either separately or in union, they have now been taken round the whole circle of apostolic language re- specting the cross, and detected in every diincult passage the presence of sense and truth, and the absence of all hint of vicarious atonement. It was on the unhelieving portion of the Jewish people that the death of their Messiah conferred the national blessings and opportunities to which I have adverted. But to tJie con- verts who had been received by him during his mortal life, and who would have been heirs of his glory, had he assumed it at once, it was less easy to point out any personal benefits from the cross. Tliat the Christ had retired .from this world was but a disappointing postponement of their hopes ; that he had perished as a felon was shocking to their pride, and turned their ancient boast into a present scorn ; tiiat he had become spiritual and immortal made him no longer theirs " as concerning the flesh," and, by admitting Gentiles with themselves, set aside their favorite law. So offensive to them was this unexpected slight on the institutions of Moses, immemorially reverenced as the ordinances of God, that it . SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 129 bcjcamc important to give some turn to the death of Jesus, by ^vhich that event might be harmonized with the national system, and be shown to effect the abrogation of the law, on principles strictly legal. This was the object of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews ; who thus gives us a third idea of the relations of the cross, — bearing, indeed, an essential resemblance to St. Paul's Gentile view, but illustrated in a manner altogether different. No trace is to be observed here of Paul's noble glorying in the cross : so studiously is every allusion to the crucifixion avoided, till all the argumentative part of the Epistle has been completed, that a reader finds the conclusion already in sight, without having gained any notion of the mode of the Lord's death, whether even it was natural or violent, — a literal human sacrifice, or a voluntary self- immolation. Its ignominy and its agonies are wholly un- mentioned; and his mortal infirmities and sufferings are explained, not as the spontaneous adoptions of previous com- passion in him, but as God's fitting discipline for rendering him " a merciful and faithful high-priest." They are re- ferred to in the tone of apology, not of pride ; as needing rather to be reconciled w^ith his office, than to be boldly expounded as its grand essential. The object of the author clearly is, to find a place for the death of Jesus among the Messianic functions ; and he persuades the Hebrew Chris- tians that it is (not a satisfaction for moral guilt, but) a com- mutation for the Mosaic Law. In order to understand his argument, w^e must advert for a moment to the prejudices which it was designed to conciliate and correct. It is not easy for us to realize the feelings with which the Israelite, in the yet palmy days of the Levitical worship, would hear of an abrogation of the Law ; — the anger and contempt with which the mere bigot would repudiate the suggestion; — the terror with which the new convert would make trial of his freedom; — the blank and infidel feeling with which he would look round, and find himself drifted away from his anchorage of ceremony ; — the sinking heart with which he would hear the reproaches of his countrymen 130 INCONSISTENCY OF THE against his apostasy. Every authoritative ritual draws to- wards itself an attachment too strong for reason and the sense of right ; and transfers the feehng of obligation from realities to symbols. Among the Plebrews this effect was the more marked and the more pernicious, because their ceremonies were in many instances only remotely connected with any important truth or excellent end ; they were sepa- rated by several removes from any spiritual utility. Rites were enacted to sustain other rites ; institution lay beneath institution, through so many successive steps, that the crown- ing principle at the summit easily passed out of sight. To keep alive the grand truth of the Divine Unity, there was a gorgeous temple worship ; to perform this worship there was a priesthood ; to support the priesthood there were (among other sources of income) dues paid in the form of sacrifice ; to provide against the non-payment of dues there were penal- ties ; to prevent an injurious pressure of these penalties, there were exemptions, as in cases of sickness ; and to put a check on trivial claims of exemption, it must be purchased by sub- mission to a fee, under name of an atonement. Wherever such a system is received as divine, and based on the same authority with the great law of duty, it will always, by its definiteness and precision, attract attention from graver moral obligations. Its materiality renders it calculable : its account with the conscience can be exactly ascertained : as it has little obvious utility to men, it appears the more directly paid to God : it is regarded as the special means of pleasing him, of placating his anger, and purchasing his promises. Hence it may often happen, that the more the offences against the spirit of duty, the more are rites multiplied in propitiation ; and the harvest of ceremonies and that of crimes ripen to- gether. At a state not far from this had the Jews arrived when Christianity was preached. Their moral sentiments were so far perverted, that they valued nothing in themselves, in com- parison with their legal exactitude, and hated all beyond themselves for their want of this. They were eagerly ex- SCIIEilE OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 131 pecting the Deliverer's kingdom, nursing up tlieir ambition for his triumphs ; curling the lip, as the lash of oppression fell upon them, in suppressed anticipation of vengeance ; sa- tiating a temper, at once fierce and servile, with dreams of Messiah's coming judgment, when the blood of the patri- archs should be the title of the world's "'nobles, and the ever- lasting reign should begin in Jerusalem Why was the hour delayed ? they impatiently asked themselves. Was it that they had offended Jehovah, and secretly sinned against some requirement of his law ? And then they set themselves to a renewed precision, a more slavish punctiliousness than be- fore. Ascribing their continued depression to their imper- fect legal obedience, they strained their ceremonialism tighter than ever ; and hoped to be soon justified from their past sins, and ready for the mighty prince and the latter days. What, then, must have been the feeling of the Hebrew, when told that all his punctualities had been thrown away, — that, at the advent, faith in Jesus, not obedience to the law, was to be the title to admission, — and that the redeemed at that day would be, not the scrupulous Pharisee, whose dead works would be of no avail, but all who, with the heart, have worthily confessed the name of the Lord Jesus ? What doctrine could be more unwelcome to the haughty Israelite ? it dashed his pride of ancestry to the ground. It brought to the same level with himself the polluted Gentile, — whose presence would alone render all unclean in the Messiah's kingdom. It proved his past ritual anxieties to have been all wasted. It cast aside for the future the venerated law ; lefl it in neglect to die ; and made all the apparatus of Provi- dence for its maintenance end in absolutely nothing. Wjis then the Messiah to supersede, and not to vindicate, the law ? How different this from the picture which prophets had drawn of his golden age, wlien Jerusalem was to be the pride of the earth, and her temple the praise of nations, souglit by the feet of countless pilgrims, and decked with the splendor of their gifts ! How could a true Hebrew be justified in a life without law ? How think himself safe in a profession, 132 INCONSISTENCY OF THE which was without temple, without priest, without ahar, without victim? Not unnaturally, then, did the Hebrews regard with re- luctance two of the leading features of Christianity ; the death of the Messiah, and the freedom from the law. The Epistle addressed to them was designed to soothe their un- easiness, and to show that, if the Mosaic institutions were superseded, it was in conformity with principles and analogies contained within themselves. With great address, the w^riter links the two difficulties together, and makes the one exjilain the other. He finds a ready means of effecting this, in the sacrificial ideas familiar to every Hebrew ; for by represent- ing the death of Jesus as a commutation for legal observ- ances, he is only ascribing to it an operation acknowledged to have place in the death of every lamb slain as a sin-offering at the altar. These offerings were a distinct recognition, on the part of the Levitical code, of a principle of equivalents for its ordinances ; a proof that, under certain conditions, they might yield : nothing more, therefore, was necessary, than to show that the death of Christ established those conditions. And such a method of argument was attended by this ad- vantage, that, while the practical end would be obtained of terminating all ceremonial observance, the law was yet treated as in theory perpetual ; not as ignominiously abrogated, but as legitimately commuted. Just as the Israelite, in paying his offering at the altar to compensate for ritual omissions, recognized thereby the claims of the law, while he obtained impunity for its neglect ; so, if Providence could be shown to have provided a legal substitute for the system, its authority was acknowledged at the moment that its abolition was se- cured. Let us advert, then, to the functions of the Mosaic sin- offerings, to which the writer has recourse to illustrate his main position. They were of the nature of a mulct or ac- hnoivledgment rendered for unconscious or inevitable disregard of ceremonial liabilities^ and contraction of ceremonial un- cleanness. Such uncleanness might be incurred from various SCHEMK OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 1C3 causes ; and, while unremoved by the appointed methods of purification, disquahfied from attendance at the sanctuary, and " cut off" " the guilty " " from among the congregation." To touch a dead body, to enter a tent where a corpse lay, rendered a i^erson '* unclean for seven days " ; to come in contact Avith a forbidden animal, a "bone, a grave, to be next to any one struck with sudden death, to be afflicted with certain kinds of bodily disease and infirmity, unwittingly to lay a finger on a person unclean, occasioned defilement, and necessitated a purification or an atonement. Independently of these offences, enforced upon the Israelite by the accidents of life, it was not easy for even the most cautious worshipper to keep pace with the complicated series of petty debts which the law of ordinances was always running up against him. If his offering had an invisible blemish ; if he omitted a tithe, because " he wist it not " ; or inadvertently fell into arrear, by a single day, with respect to a known liability ; if absent from disease, he was compelled to let his ritual account accu- mulate ; " though it be hidden from him," he must "be guilty, and bear his iniquity," and bring his victim. On the birth of a child, the mother, after the lapse of a prescribed pe- riod, made her pilgrimage to the temple, presented her sin- offering, and " the priest made atonement for her." The poor leper, long banished from the face of men, and unclean by the nature of his disease, became a debtor to the sanctuary, and on return from his tedious quarantine brought his lamb of atonement, and departed thence, clear from neglected obli- gations to his law. It was impossible, however, to provide by S[)ecific enactment for every case of ritual transgression and impurity, arising from inadvertence or necessity. Scarcely could it be expected that the courts of worship themselves would escape defilement, from imperfections in tiie offerings, or unconscious disqualification in people or in priest. To clear off the whole invisible residue of such sins, an annual " day of atonement" was appointed; the people thronged the ave- nues and approaches of the tabernacle ; in their presence a kid was slain for their own transgressions, and for the high- 12 134 INCONSISTENCY OF THE priest the more dignified expiation of a heifer; charged with the blood of each successively, he sprinkled not only the exterior altar open to the sky, but, passing through the first and holy chamber into the Holy of Holies (never entered else), he touched, with finger dipped in blood, the sacred lid (the Mercy-seat) and foreground of the Ark. At tliat mo- ment, while he yet lingers behind the veil, the purification is complete ; on no worshipper of Israel does any legal unholi- ness rest ; and were it possible for the high-priest to remain in that interior retreat of Jehovah, still protracting the expia- tory act, so long would this national purity continue, and the debt of ordinances be effaced as it arose. But he must re- turn ; the sanctifying rite must end ; the people be dismissed ; the priests resume the daily ministrations ; the law open its stern account afresh ; and in the mixture of national exacti- tude and neglects, defilements multiply again till the recurring anniversary lifts off the burden once more. Every year, then, the necessity comes round of " making atonement for the holy sanctuary," " for the tabernacle," '" for the altar," " for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation." Yet, though requiring periodical renewal, the rite, so far as it went, had an efficacy which no Hebrew could deny ; for cere- monial sins, unconscious or inevitable (to which all atonement was limited *), it was accepted as an indemnity ; and j)ut it beyond doubt that Mosaic obedience was commutable. Such was the system of ideas, by availing himself of which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews would persuade his correspondents to forsake their legal observances. " You can look without uneasiness," he suggests, " on your ritual omis- * In three or four instances, it is true, a sin-offering is demanded from the perpetrator of some act of moral wrong. But in all these cases a suitable punishment was ordained also; a circumstance inconsistent with the idea, that the expiation procured remission of guilt. The sacrifice appended to the penal injlicdon mdicates the twofold character of the act, — at once a ceremonial dejilement and a crime ; and requiring, to remedy the one, an atoning rite, — to chastise the other, a judicial penalty. See an excellent tract by Rev. Edward Higginson, of Hull, entitled, " The Sacrifice of Christ scripturally and rationally interpreted," "particularly pp. 30 -3-i. ^ SCHEME OF VICARIOUS IIEDEIMPTION. 135 sions, when the blood of some victim has been presented in- stead, and tlic penetralia of your sanctuary liave been sprin- kled with the offering: well, on no other terms would I soothe your anxiety ; precisely such equivalent sacrifice does Cliris- tianity exhibit, only of so peculiar a nature, that, for all cere- monial neglects, intentional no less than inadvertent, you may rely upon indemnity." The Jews entertained a belief respect- ing their temple, which enabled the writer to give a singular force and precision to his analogy. They conceived that the tabernacle of their worship was but the copy of a divine structure, devised by God himself, made by no created hand, and preserved eternally in heaven : this was " the true taber- nacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man " ; which no mortal had beheld, except Moses in the mount, that he might " make all things according to that pattern " ; within whose Holy of Holies dwelt no emblem or emanation of God's presence, but his own immediate Spirit ; and the celestial furniture of which required, in proportion to its dignity, the purification of a nobler sacrifice, and the ministrations of a diviner priest, than befitted the " worldly sanctuary " below. And who then can mistake the meaning of Christ's departure from this world, or doubt what ofiice he conducts above? He is called by his ascension to the pontificate of heaven ; consecrated, " not after the law of any carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life " ; he drew aside the veil of his mortality, and passed into the inmost court of God : and as he must needs " have somewhat to offer," he takes the only blood he had ever shed, — Avhich was his own, — and, like the High-Priest before the Mercy-seat, sanctifies therewith the people that stand without, " redeeming the transgressions " which " the first covenant " of rites entailed. And he has not returned ; still is he hid within that holiest place ; and still tlie multitude he serves turn thitlicr a silent and expec- tant gaze ; he prolongs the purification still ; and while he appears not, no other rites can be resumed, nor any legal defilement be contracted. Thus, meanwhile, ordinances cease their obligation, and the sin against them has lost its power. 136 INCONSISTENCY OF THE # How different this from the offerings of • Jerusalem, whose temple was but the " symbol and shadow " of that sanctuary- above. In the Hebrew " sacrifices there was a remembrance again made of sins every year " ; " the high-priest annually entered the holy place " ; being but a mortal, he could not go in with his own blood and remain, but must take that of other creatures and return ; and hence it became " not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins," for instantly they began to accumulate again. But to the very nature of Christ's offering a perpetuity of efficacy belongs ; bearing no other than " his own blood," he was immortal when his ministration began, and " ever liveth to make his intercession " ; he could " not offer himself often, for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world," — and " it is appointed unto men only once to die " ; so that " once for all he entered into the holy place, and obtained a redemption that is perpetual " ; " once in the end of the world hath he appeared, and by sacrificing himself hath absolutely put away sin " ; " this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of God," " for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." The ceremonial, then, with its periodical transgressions and atonements, is suspended ; the services of the outer tabernacle cease, for the holiest of all is made manifest ; one who is " priest for ever " dwells therein ; — one " consecrated for evermore," " holy, harmless, undefiled, in his celestial dwelling quite separate from sinners ; who needeth not daily, as those high-priests, to offer up sacri- fice, first for his own sins, and then for the people's ; for this he did once for all when he offered up himself." * * Heb. vii, 27. Let the reader look carefully again into the verbal and logical structure of this verse ; and then ask himself whether it is not as plain as words can make it, that Christ " once for all " offered up " a sacrifice ^?'st Jor HIS ows si^s, and then for the j^^opW's. The argument surely is this: " He need not do the daily thing, for he has done it once for all; the never-finished work of other pontiffs, a single act of his achieved." The sentiment loses its meaning, unless that which he did once is the selfsame thing which they did always : and what was that ? — the offering by tho SCHEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 137" Nor is it in its perpetuity alone that the efficacy of the Christian sacrifice transcends the atonements of the law ; it removes a higher order of ritual transgressions. It cannot be supposed, indeed, tliat Messiah's life is no nobler offering than that of a creature from the herd or flock, and will confer no more immunity. Accordingly, it goes beyond those " sins of ignorance," those ceremonial inadvertences, for which alone there was remission in Israel ; and reaches to voluntary/ neg- lects of the sacerdotal ordinances ; insuring indemnity for legal omissions, when incurred not simply by the accidents of the flesh, but even by intention of the conscience. This is no greater boon than the dignity of the sacrifice requires ; and does but give to his people below that living relation of soul to God which he himself sustains above. " If the blood of bulls and of goats .... sanctifieth to the purifying of the high-priest of a sacrifice first for his own sins, and then for the people's. With what propriety, then, can Mr. Buddicom aslc us this question: " Why- is he said to have excelled the Jewish high-priest in not ofiering a sacrifice for himself? " I submit, that no such thing is said ; but that, on the con- timry, it is positively affirmed that Christ dUl offer sacrifice for his own sins. So plain indeed is this, that Trinitarian commentators are forced to slip in a restraining word and an additional sentiment into the last clause of the vei*se. Thus Pierce: '' Who has no need, like the priests under the law, from time to time to offer up sacrifice first for his own sins, and after that for the peo- ple's. For this latter he did once for all when he offered up himself; niul as to the Jbi'mer, he had no occasion to do it at alV And no doubt the writer of the Epistle oufjht to have said just this, if he intended to draw the kind of contrast which orthodox theology requires, between Jesus and the Hebrew priests. He limits the opposition between them to one particular; — the Son of Aaron made offering daihj^ — the Son of God once for all. Divines must add another particular; — that the Jewish priest atoned for two classes of sins, his own and the people's, — Christ for the people's only. Suppose for a mo- ment that this was the author's design ; that the word " this,'' instead of hav- ing its proper grammatical antecedent, may be restrained, as in the commen- tary cited above, to the sacrifice for the jyeople's sins; then the word " diiily " may be left out, without disturbance to the other substantive particular of the contrast: the verse will then stand thus: "Who needeth not, as those high-priests, to offer up sacrifice for his own sins; for he offered up sacrifice for the people's sins, when he offered iip himself." Here, all the reasoning is obviously gone, and the sentence becomes a mere inanity: to make sense, we want, instead of the latter clause, the sentiment of Tierce, — for " he had no occasion to do this at all." This, however, is an invention of the exposi- 12* 138 INCONSISTENCY OF THE flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purify (even) your conscience from dead works (ritual observances) to serve the living God ! " Let then the ordinances go, and the Lord " put his laws into the mind, and write them in the heart " ; and let all have " boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by this new and living way which he hath consecrated for us " ; " provoking each other to love and to good works." See, then, in brief, the objection of the Hebrews to the Gospel ; and the reply of their instructor. They said : " AVhat a blank is this ; you have no temple, no priest, no ritual ! How is it that, in his ancient covenant, God is so strict about ceremonial service, and permits no neglect, however inciden- tal, without atonement ; yet in this new economy throws the whole system away, letting us run up an everlasting* debt to a law confessedly unrepealed, without redemption of it or atonement for it ? " tor, more jealous for his author's orthodoxy than for his composition. I think it necessary to add, that, by leaving out the most emphatic word in this verse (the word once) ^Ir. Buddicom has suppressed the author's antithesis, and favored the suggestion of his own. I have no doubt that this was uncon- sciously done ; but it shows how system rubs off the angles of Scriptural difficulties. — I subjoin a part of the note of John Crell on the passage: " De pontifice Christo loquitur. Quid vero fecit semel Christus? quid aliud, quam quod Pontifex antiquus stata die quotannis * faciebat ? Principaliter autem hie non de oblatione pro peccatis populi; sed de oblatione pro ipsius Pontificis peccatis agi, ex superioribus, ipsoque rationum contextu mani- festum est." The sins which his sacrifice cancelled must have been of the same order in the people and in himself; certainly therefore not moral in their character, but ceremonial. His death was, for himself no less than for his Hebrew dis- ciples, a commutation for the Mosaic ordinances. Had he not died, he must have continued under their power; "were he on earth, he would not be a priest," or have " obtained that more excellent ministry," by which he clears away, in the courts above, all possibilities of ritual sin below, and himself emerges from legal to spiritual relations. * This is obviously the meaning of Kaff rjfiepav in this passage ; yro»» time to time^ and in the case alluded to, yearly ; not, as in the common ver- sion, daily. SCHEME OF VICAIIIOUS REDEMPTION. 139 "Not without redemption and atonement," replies their evangelical teacher ; temple, sacrifice, priest, remain to us also, only glorified into proportions worthy of a heavenly dispensation ; our temple, in the skies ; our sacrifice, Messiah's mortal person ; our priest, his ever-living spirit. How poor the efficacy of your former offerings ! year after year, your ritual debt bej^ran again: for the blood dried and vanished from the tabernacle which it purified ; the priest returned from the inner shrine ; and when there, he stood, with the interceding blood, before the emblem, not the reality, of God. But Christ, not at the end of a year, but at the end of the great world-era of the Lord, has come to offer up himself, — no lamb so unblemished as he ; his voluntary and immortal spirit, than which was nothing ever more divinely consecrate, becomes officiating priest, and strikes his own person with immolating blow ; it falls and bleeds on earth, as on the outer altar, standing on the threshold of the sanctuary of heaven : thither he ascends with the memorials of his death, vanishes into the Holy of Holies of the skies, presents himself before the very living God, and sanctifies the temple there and worshippers here ; saying to us, ' Drop now for ever the legal burdens that weigh you down ; doubt not that you are free, as ray glorified spirit here, from the defilements you are wont to dread ; I stay behind this veil of visible things, to clear you of all such taint, and put away such sin eternally. Trust, then, in me, and take up the freedom of your souls : burst the dead works, that cling round your conscience like cerements of the grave ; and rise to me, by the living power of duty, and a loving allegiance to God.' " So far, then, as the death of Christ is treated in Scripture dogmatically, rather than historically, its effects are viewed in contrast with the different order of things which must have been expected, had he, as Messiah, not died. And thus regarded, it presented itself to the minds of the Apostles in three relations : — First, to the Gentiles, whom it drew in to be subjects of the Messiah, by breaking down the barriers of his Ho 140 INCONSISTENCY OF THE brew personality, and rendering him spiritual as well as immortal. Secondly, to the unbelieving Jews ; whom his retirement from this world delivered from the judgment due to them, on the principles of their own law, both for their general viola- tion of the conditions of their covenant, and for their positive rejection of him. His absence reopened their opportunities ; and to tender them this act of long-suffering, he took on him- self the death which had been incurred by them. Thirdly, to the believing Jews ; the terms of whose disci- pleship the Messiah's death had changed, destroying all the benefits of their lineage, and substituting an act of the mind, the simpler claim of faith. It was therefore a commutation for the Ritual Law, and gave them impunity and atonement for all its violations. With the last two of these relations, beyond their remark- able historical interest, we have no personal concern. The first remains, and ever will remain, worthy of the glorious joy with which Paul regarded and expounded it. God has com- mitted the rule of this world to no exclusive prince, and no sacerdotal power, and no earthly majesty ; but to one whose spirit, too divine to be limited to place and time, broke through clouds of sorrow into the clearest heaven; and thither has since been drawing our human love, though for ages now he has been unseen and immortal. An impartial God, a holy and spiritual law, an infinite hope for all men, are given to us by that generous cross. It is evident that all three of the relations which I have described belonged to the death of Jesus, in his capacity of Messiah ; and could have had no existence if he had not borne this character, but had been simply a private martyr to his convictions. The foregoing exposition gives a direct answer to the inquiry, pressed without the slightest perti- nence upon the Unitarian, why the phraseology of the cross is never found applied to Paul or Peter, or any other noble confessor, who died in attestation of the truth ; why " no record is given that we are justified by the blood of Stephen ; SCHEME OF VICARIOUS KI.DKMPTION. 1-11 or that he bare our sins in his own body, and made reconcilia- tion for us." * I know not why such a question should be submitted to us ; we have assuredly no concern with it > having never dreamt that the Apo.-^tles could have written as they did respecting the death on Calvary, if they had thought of it only as a scene of martyrdom. We have passed under review the whole language of the New Testament on this subject ; and in the interpretation of it have not even once had recourse to this, which is said to be our only view of the cross. We have seen the Apostles justly announcing their Lord's death as a proper propitiation ; because it placed whole classes of men, without any meritorious change in their character, in saving relations : declaring it a strict substitute for others' punishment ; on the ground that there were those who must have perished, if he had not ; and that he died and retired, that they might remain and live : describing it as a sacrifice luhich put away sin ; because it did that for ever, which the Levitical atonements achieved for a day : but we have not found them ever appealing to it either as a satisfac- tion to the justice of God, or an example of martyrdom to men. The Trinitarians have one idea of this event them- selves ; and their fancy provides their opponents with one idea of it ; of the former not a trace exists, on any page of Scripture ; and of the latter the Unitarian need not avail himself at all, in explaining the language whereof it is said to be his solitary key. Nowhere, then, in Scripture do we meet with anything corresponding with the prevailing notions of vicarious re- demption ; everywhere, and most emphatically in the per- sonal instructions of our Lord, do we find a doctrine of forgiveness, and an idea of salvation, utterly inconsistent with it. lie s})ake often of the unqualified clemency of God to his returning children ; never once of the satisfaction demanded by his justice. He spake of the joy in heaven over one sinner that repcnteth; but was silent on the sacri- * Mr. Bufldicom's Lecture on the Atonement, p. 471. 142 INCONSISTENCY OF THE ficlal faith, without which penitence is said to be unavailing. Nor did he, hke his modern disciples, teach that there are two separate salvations, which must follow each other in a fixed order : first, redemption from the penalty, secondly, from the spirit, of sin ; pardon for the past, before sanctifica- tion in the present ; a removal of the " hinderance in God," previous to its annihilation in ourselves. If indeed there were in Christianity two deliverances, discriminated and suc- cessive, it would be more in accordance with its spirit to invert this order ; — to recall from alienation first, and an- nounce forgiveness afterwards ; to restore from guilt, before cancelling the penalty ; and permit the healing to anticipate the pardoning love. At least, there would seem, in such arrangement, to be a greater jealousy for the holiness of the divine law, a severer reservation of God's complacency for those who have broken from the service of sin, than in the system which proclaims impunity to the rebel will, ere yet its estrangement is renounced. If the outward re- mission precedes the inward sanctification, then does God admit to favor the yet unsanctified; guilt keeps us in no exile from him : and though the Holy Spirit is to follow afterwards, it becomes the peculiar office of the cross to lift us as we are, with every stain upon the soul and every vile habit unretraced, from the brink of perdition to the assur- ance of glory : the divine lot is given to us, before the divine love is awakened in us ; and the heirs of heaven have yet to become the children of holiness. With what con- sistency can the advocates of such an economy accuse its opponents of dealing lightly with sin, of deluding men into a false trust, and administering seductive flatteries to human nature ? * What ! shall we, Avho plant in every soul of sin a liell, whence no foreign force, no external God, can pluck us, any more than they can tear us from our identity, — we, who hide the fires of torment in no viewless gulf, but make them ubiquitous as guilt, — we, who suffer no outward agent * See Mr. M'Neile's Lecture, pp. 302, 311, 328, 340, 341. SCFIEME OF VICARIOUS REDEMPTION. 143 from Eden, or the Abyss, or Calvary, to encroach upon the solitude of man's responsibility, and confuse the simplicity of conscience, — we, who teach that God will not, and even cannot, spare the froward, till they be froward no more, but must permit the burning lash to fall, till they cry aloud for mercy, and throw themselves freely into his embrace ; — shall we be rebuked for a lax administration of peace, by those who think that a moment may turn the alien into the elect ? It is no flattery of our nature, to reverence deeply its moral capacities : we only discern in them the more solemn trust, and see in their abuse the fouler shame. And it is not of what men arc, but of what they might he, that we encourage noble and cheerful thoughts. Doubtless, we think exaggera- tion possible (which our opponents apparently do not) even in the portraiture of their actual character : and perhaps Ave are not the less likely to awaken true convictions of sin, that we strive to speak of it with the voice of discriminative jus- tice, instead of the monotonous thunders of vengeance ; and to draw its image in the natural tints provided by the con- science, rather than in the preternatural flame-color mingled in the crucibles of hell. In making penal redemption and moral redemption sep- arate and successive, the vicarious scheme, we submit, is inconsistent with the Christian idea of salvation. Not that we take the second, and reject the first, as our Ti'initarian friends imagine ; nor that we invert their order. AVe accept them both ; putting them, however, not in succession, but in super-position, so that they coalesce. The power and the punishment of sin perish together ; and together begin the holiness and the bliss of heaven. Whatever extracts the poison cools t'lie sting : nor can the divine vigor of spiritual health enter, without its freedom and its joy. That there can be any separate dealings with our past guilt and with our present character, is not a truth of God, but a fiction of the schools. The sanctification of the one is the redemption of the other. The mind given up to passion, or chained to self, or anyhow alienated from the love and life divine, h and nice grammar. It despises the graces of carnal literature, and treats all the color and music of lan- guage as the Roundheads treated a cathedral, silencing the "box of whistles" and smashing the "mighty big angels in glass." And yet, if you can get over its grating way of de- livering itself, you will find it no barbaric product, but the utterance of a deep and practised thinker, charged with the richest experiences of the Christian life, and resolute to clear them from every tangle of fiction or pretence. Beneath the uncouth form there is not only severe truth, but great tender- ness and beauty, — a fine apprehension of the real inner strife of tempted men, and an intense faith in an open way of es- cape from it, without compromise of any sanctity. The author, though not tuneful in his speech, has the gifts of a true proph- et ; and often enables one to fancy what Isaiah might have 148 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. been if he had heard nothing but the bagpipe, and had set his " burdens " to its drone. Whether Mr. Campbell's style has been formed north of the Tweed, we know not. In any case, it is trained in the school of Calvinism ; is untouched there- fore by any feeling for art ; and runs on with a sort of ex- temporaneous habit, insufficiently relieved by occasional flashes of grotesque and forcible expression. It is only in exterior aspect, however, that he presents the features of the rugged old Calvinism : and though the first-born of that system and its younger sons are distinguished like Isaac's children, " Esau is a hairy man, and Jacob is a smooth man," yet no true pa- triarch of the school can be so blind as not to see beneath our author's goat-skin dress, and know that he is other than the heir. In fact, the peculiarity of this work as a theological phenomenon is, that it is a destruction of Calvinism without any revolt from it, — an escape from it through its own in- terior. Its postulates are not denied. Its phraseology is not rejected. Its statement of the problem of redemption is in the main accepted. Its provision for the solution, — the In- caniation of the Son, — is sacredly preserved. Yet these elements are put into such play as to make it checkmate itself on its own area. Its definitions are shown to be suicidal ; and its sharp-edged logic is used to cut through the ligaments that constrain and shape it. We have spoken first of the style of this book, because it strikes the reader at the outset, and is not unlikely to repel him if he is not warned. Of one other feature, derived from the same school, we must say a word, to qualify the admiration and gratitude which we shall then ungrudgingly tender to the author. In common with all the great masters of the " Evan- gelical " school, he is too much at home with the Divine econ- omy ; knows too well how the same thing appears from the finite and the infinite point of view ; can tell too surely how a mixed nature, both divine and human, would feel on look- ing from both ends at once ; and altogether goes with too close a search to the " secret place of the Most High." Not that he speaks unworthily on these high themes ; we have MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 149 nothing truer to suggest, except more silence. But we must confess that when a teacher lays down the conditions of divine possibility, expatiates psychologically on the sentiments of the Father and the Son, and seems as though he had been al- lowed a peep into the autobiography of God, we shrink from the sharp outlines, and feel that Ave shall believe more if we are shown less. "With so many soundings taken, and so many channels buoyed, the sense of the shoreless sea is gone, and we find only a jiort of traffic, with coast-lights instead of stars. The temptation to this theological map-making has always proved peculiarly strong among the disciples of Geneva : and the reason is to be found in the very nature of the problem they have attempted to resolve. Religion has two foci to de- termine,— the divine nature and the human. Athanasius and the Greek influence fixed the doctrine of the Godhead: Au- gustine and the Latin Church defined the spiritual state of man. The one, it has been said, produced a theology ; the other, an anthropology. In the construction of the former, it is obvious tliat the a[)peal could be made only to positive au- thority, Avhether of Scripture or the Church. On the Nicene question no one could pretend to have personal insight or scientific data : it must be decided by arbitrary vote on im- pressions of testimony. But for establishing a doctrine of humanity, the living resources of consciousness and experience were present with perpetual witness ; every proposition ad- vanced could be confronted Avith its corresponding reality: the disciple could not help carrying the dogma inward to the test of his self-knowledge. Tlie scheme of the Trinity partook of the nature of a Gnosis, which dwelt apart from the stir of l)henomena, and, having once set and crystallized, could only be hung up for preservation. The dogmas of human deprav- ity and helplessness partook of the nature of a Science, com- ing in contact with the facts of life and character at every point. Moral experience had something to say to them : and unless they could keep good terms with it, they could not hope to hold their ground. Hence the Augustinian divines have been constrained to seek a philosop/it/ of religion, and 13* 150 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. to collate the text of their Scriptural system with the running paraphrase of actual life. Ko writers have contributed so much to lay bare the inmost springs of human action and emotion ; have tracked with so much subtilty the windings of guilty self-deception, or so found the secret sorrow that lies at the core of every unconsecrated joy. If we must con- cede to the Roman Catholic casuists and the problems of the confessional the merit of creating an ethical Art embodied in systems of rules, we owe to the deeper Evangelical spirit, Avhether in its action or its reaction, the ground-lines of an eth- ical Philosophy ; — or, if you deny that such a thing as yet exists, at least the true idea and undying quest of it. The disciples of Augustine, belonging to an anthropological school, have been naturally distinguished by a reflective and psycho- logic habit. If it was the function of the Greek period to settle the doc- trine of God, and of its Latin successor to define the nature of man, it was the aim of the Reformation, leaving these two extremes undisturbed, to find the way of mediation between them. So long as the great sacerdotal Church, living continu- ator of Christ's presence, was intrusted with the business, pri- vate Christians wanted no theory on the subject ; all nice questions went into the ecclesiastical closet and disappeared. But as soon as ever the hierarchy fell out of this position, there was an immense void left to be filled. On the one hand. Infinite Holiness, quite alienated ; on the other. Human Pravity, quite helpless : how was any approximation to be rendered conceivable ? True, the great original Mediation on Calvary, which the papal priesthood pretended to prolong, re- mained ; for it was fixed in history. But it lay a great way off, a fact in the old past ; and its intervention was required to-day by Melancthon, and Carlstadt, and a whole generation quite remote from it. How was its power to be fetched into the present? how applied to men walking about in Witten- berg or Zurich ? This was the problem which flew open by the cancelling of the Romish credentials : and the various an- swers to it constitute the body of Protestant theology. In MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 151 one point they all agree, that, to replace the priestly media that are thrust out. Personal Faith is the element that must be brought in. In what way this subjective state of the indi- vidual mind draws or appropriates the efficacy of the Incar- nation; in what order the redeeming process runs among the three given terms, — the alienated Father, the mediating Son, the believing disciple ; whether any part of the process is moral and real, or {dl is legal and virtual ; — these are ques- tions which the Reformation has found it easier to open than to close. But answer them as you will, they entangle your thouglits in the mutual relations and sentiments of three per- sons ; and cannot be discussed without establishing some prin- ciples of moral psychology, as the common grounds of inter- communion between minds finite and infinite, and dealing with hypothetical problems of divine as well as human casuistry. Hence the inevitable tendency of the doctrine of Mediation to venture on a natural history of the Divine Mind, — to con- struct a drama of Providence and Grace, with plot too artful- ly wrought for the free hand of Heaven, and traits too spe- cific and minute for reverent contemplation- It is deeply instructive to observe the pulsation of religious thought in men. Revealed religion is ever passing into natu- ral, and natural returning to re-interpret the revealed. We can ahno'st see the steps by which sacred history was convert- ed into dogma; while dogma, assumed in turn as the starting- point, is ever producing new readings of the history. This world may be regarded as a human theatre, where the Wills of men perform the })arts ; or as the stage of Divine agency, using the visible actors as the executants of an invisible thought. Its vicissitudes, presented in the former aspect, yield only history; in the latter, give rise to doctrine. No- ticed by Tacitus, the life of Christ is a provincial incident of Tiberius's reign, and his deatli a judicial act of Pontius Pi- late's government. In tlie three first Gospels and the book of Acts, the crucifixion is still tlie act of wicked or misguided men, inflicted on an expostulating victim ; not, however, with- out being foreseen as the ap[)ointed precursor of a resurrec- 152 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. tion. The event is thus in the main simply historical; hut with a divine comment which gives it an incipient theological significance. It appears under another aspect in the Gospel of John ; there, Christ not only foresaw, but determined his own death : his hfe " no man taketli it from him," but he " lajs it down of himself"; he is not merely the submissive medi- um, but the spontaneous co-agent of a Divine intent. Final- ly, in St. Paul, — to whom the person and ministry of Christ were unfamiliar, who, as a disciple of his heavenly life, looked back upon them from a higher point, — the historical aspect almost wholly disappears in the ideal ; and the cross becomes the Gospel, the wisdom of God and the power of God, the self-sacrifice of the Son the reconciling Avay to the Father, the very focus and symbol of all the mystery and mercy com- prised in humanity. The movement of thought through these successive stages is obvious. An event is at first accepted as it arises. But in proportion as its concrete impression retires, the need becomes more urgent to find its function : instinctive search is made for all those elements, accessories, and effects of it, which promise to bring out its meaning and idea, until at last its doctrine absorbs itself, and enters the human mind as a permanent factor of positive religion. It is thus that the great antitheses, of Law and Gospel, of the Natural and the Spiritual man, of dead Works and living Faith, of self- seeking enmity and self-surrendering reconciliation with God, have settled upon the consciousness of Christendom, and grown into the very substance of its experience. They have become part of its natural religion. But in this character they may, conversely, be taken as the initiative of a new ver- sion of the history whence they sprung. They could not be bom into unmixed and formed existence at once ; but, like all new affections, must feel their way out of an early indetermi- nate state, into clear self-apprehension and settled purity. The testimony of the Christian conscience needs time to be- come articulate and collected. Tlie shadow of human guilt may lie so dark upon the mind, the dawn of the divine holi- ness may so dazzle the inward vision, that blindness in part MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 153 may linger for a while ; and the eye, in very opening to Christ's healing touch, may fail to see. Once accustomed to the new light of life, men are no longer occupied with it alone, but find in it a medium for truer discernment of ol)jects around. The special sentiments awakened by the Gospel test themselves afresh, like any other theory, by being fully lived out, and tried as experiments upon the soul. The type of character, — the edition of human nature, — in which they take embodiment, becomes a distinct object of critical appre- ciation ; and while all its deep expressive traits speak for the inner truth whence they are moulded, every mixture of dis- harmony or defect calls for some revision of idea. In the thirsty spiritual state to which men were reduced on the eve of the Reformation, they drank up with intense eagerness the most turbid supplies of evangelical doctrine. With purer health and finer perception they become aware that not all was water of life ; and that coarse notions of the nature of justice, the conditions of mercy, and the measurement of sin, were intermix(^d and must become mere sediment. Cleared of these, the theory is taken back to the facts of revelation, and so washed through them, that they may also emerge as from a sprinkling of regeneration. Through such re-baptism does our author, furnished with a purified conception of " atonement," pass the history of Christ. In lookinir for the whereabouts of the atonement, we are guided, as in search for the jwle-star, by two pointers whose indications we are to follow. Its function was double, — to cancel a guilty past, to make a holy future : and it must be of such a nature as to disappoint neither of these conditions. In determining its form, the great anxiety of theologians liitli- erto has been to lit it for its retrospective action, and disembar- rass the problem of salvation of the burden of accumulated sin. It is Mr. Campbell's distinction that he lays the superior stress on its prospective action, and requires that it shall jjos- itively heal the sickness of our nature, and evolve thence a real and living righteousness. God's moral pei-fectness could be satisfied with nothing less. If, indeed, He looked on our 154 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. guilt merely as an obstacle to our " salvation," and desired to remove it as a hinderanee out of the way, — if He rather sought a pretext for making us happy than a provision for drawing us to goodness, — tlien the work of Christ might be so devised as simply to tear out the defiled page of the past, and register an infinite credit not our own, without inherent care for ulterior personal holiness. But were it so, the divine love would amount only to an unrighteous desire for our hap- piness, and the divine righteousness to an unloving repulsion from our sin. Such spurious analysis corresponds with no reality ; and in the truth of things there can be no heavenly affection that is not holy, nor any holiness that is not affec- tionate. " While in reference to the not uncommon way of regard- ing this subject which represents righteousness and holiness as opposed to the sinner's salvation, and mercy and love as on his side, I freely concede that all the Divine attributes were, in one view, against the sinner, in that they called for the due expression of God's wrath against sin in the history of re- demption : I believe, on the other hand, that the justice, the righteousness, the holiness of God, have an aspect according to which they, as well as his mercy, appear as intercessors for man, and crave his salvation. Justice may be contemplated as according to sin its due ; and there is in righteousness, as we are conscious to it, wliat testifies that sin should be miser- able. But justice, looking at the sinner not simply as the fit subject of punishment, but as existing in a moral condition of unrighteousness, and so its OAvn opposite, must desire that the sinner should cease to be in that condition ; should cease to be unrighteous, should become righteous : righteousness in God craving for righteousness in man, with a craving which the realization of righteousness in man alone can satisfy. So also of holiness. In one view it repels the sinner, and would ban- ish him to outer darkness, because of its repugnance to sin. In another, it is pained by the continued existence of sin and unholiness, and must desire that the sinner should cease to be sinful. So that the sinner, conceived of as awakening to the MEDIATOKIAL RKLIGION. 155 consciousness of his own evil state, and saying to himself, * By sin I have destroyed myself. Is there yet hope for me in God ? ' — should hear an encouraging answer, not only from the love and mercy of God, but also from his very righteous- ness and holiness. We must not forget, in considering the response that is in conscience to the charge of sin and guilt, that, though the fears which accompany that response are partly the effect of a dawning of light, they also in part arise from remaining darkness. He who is able to interpret the voice of God within him truly, and with full spiritual intelli- gence will be found saying, not only, * There is to me cause for fear in the righteousness and holiness of God,' but also, ' There is room for hope for me in tlie Divine righteousness and holiness.' And when gathering consolation from the med- itation of the name of the Lord, that consolation will be not only, ' Surely the Divine mercy desires to see me happy rath- er than miserable,' but also, ' Surely the Divine righteousness desires to see me righteous, — the Divine hoHness desires to see me holy, — my continuing unrighteous and unholy is as grieving to God's righteousness and holiness as my misery through sin is to his pity and love.' * Good and righteous is the Lord, therefore will he teach sinners the way which they should choose.' ' A just God and a Saviour ' ; not as the harmony of a seeming opposition, but ' a Saviour, because a just God.' " — p. 29. From this justly-conceived passage the characteristics of Mr. Campbell's theory may already be divined. He sets his faith on a concrete, living, indivisible God, wliom you can never understand by laying out His abstract attributes one by one, with their separate requirements, and then putting tliem together again to compute the resultant. He insists on the absolute dominance of a moral and spiritual idea throughout the reveahnl economy : of this nature is the evil to be met, — sin and estrangement; of this nature is tlie good to be reached, — righteousness and reconciliation ; anh judge and tlie voice of an awakened conscience on the subject of sin. It is just because he has sinned and deserves punishment, and not because he says to himself that God is a moral governor, and must punish him 14* 1G2 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. to deter others, that the wrath of God against sin seems so terrible, — and as just as terrible." — p. 79. Even were the expression backed up by reality, we cannot but ask about the fitness of the medium for the thought to be conveyed. God's horror at guilt is publicly proclaimed by the most awful crime in human history ! To explain the difficulty of lettinof off the offender, he exhibits the an<2;uish of the inno- cent ! The spectacle would seem in danger of suggesting the wrong lesson to the terrified observer, — of raising to intensity the doubt whether, in a world that gives its silver to a Judas, its judgment-seat to a Pilate, and the cross to the Son of God, any Providence can care for rectitude at all. Even when the death of Christ is contemplated exclusively as a self-sac- rifice, without remembering the guilt which compassed it, we are at a loss to understand how it could be " an honorable ground for remitting punishment." Wliat difference did it make in the previous reasons of the Divine government, so that penalties right before should be less right afterwards? If Catiline were undergoing his just retribution at the date of the Last Supper, what plea was there for releasing him at or before the date of the resurrection ? That obedience ren- dered and suffering endured by one soul should dispense with the liabilities of another, is a supposition at variance with the personal and inalienable nature of all sin ; and to say that God " imputes the effects " of Christ's holiness to those who are not partakers in the cause, is to accuse the Divine gov- ernment of total disregard to character and evasion of moral reality. The old Calvinism represents the Father as having an illusory perception of men, as if they were clad in a divine righteousness. The new Calvinism represents him as having indeed a true perception of their unrighteousness, but, notwith- standing this, falsifying the truth in action^ and proceeding as if the facts were quite other than they are. Inasmuch as un- veracious vision is intellectual, while unveracious practice is moral, the younger doctrine appears to us a positive degrada- tion of the elder, not only in logical completeness, but in re- ligious worth. Both of them make the redeeming economy MEDIATORIAL IlKLIGION. '^ 163 proceed upon ajiction; but tiiere i.s all the difference between unconscious and conscious fiction ; between an inner " satis- faction " brought about by an optical displacement of merit, and an outward " exhibition " set up for the sake of impres- sion. The theory of Owen, stern as it is, bears the stamp of resolute meaning consistently carried through into the inmost recess of the Divine nature. The newer doctrine is the pro- duction of a platform age, which obtrudes considerations of e^cct even into its thouglits of God and his government, and can scarce refrain from turning the universe itself into a thea- tre for rhetorical pathos and ad captandum disj)lay. \Yith good reason, therefore, does our author feel that this whole subject is in need of reconsideration. His own doctrine diverges from its predecessors at a very early point, and is seen at its source in the following proposition of Edwards, as cited by Mr. Campbell : — " In contending that sin must be pUtiished with an infinite punishment, President Edwards says, ' that God could not be just to himself without this vindication, unless there could be such a tiling as a repentance, humiliation, and sorrow for this (viz. sin) proportionable to the greatness of the Majesty de- spised,' — for that there must needs be ' cither an equivalent punishment, or an equivalent sorrow and repentance ' ; ' so,' he proceeds, ' sin must be punished with an infinite punishment ' ; thus assuming that the alternative of * an equivalent sorrow and repentance * was out of the question. But, upon the as- sumption of that identification of himself with those whom he came to save, on the part of the Saviour, which is the founda- tion of Edwards's whole system, it may at the least be said, that the Mediator had the two alternatives open to his choice, — either to endure for sinners an equivalent punishment, or to exi)erience in reference to their sin, and present to God on their behalf, an adequate sorrow and repentance. Eitlier of these courses should be regarded by Edwards as equally se- curing the vindication of the majesty and justice of God in pardoning sin," — p. 130. The side of the alternative which Edwards abandoned, our 164 * MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. author takes np and follows out. The work of Christ, as a ground of remission, consisted in the offering on behalf of humanity of an adequate repentance. Adequate it could not have been but for his Divine nature ; which attaches to his holy sorrow an infinite moral value, to balance the infinite heinousness of the sin deplored. The only reason why hu- man penitence does not in itself avail to restore, lies in its im- perfect purity and depth. Through the cloud of evil, and with the eye of self, we are disqualified for true discernment of sin as it is ; both the limits of a finite nature, and the delu- sions of a tempted and fallen one, hinder us from appreciat- ing the measure of our guilt and misery. Even when our better mind reasserts itself, our very compunction carries in it many a speck of ill, and our repentance needs to be repent- ed of. But were it not for this, there would be " more aton- ing worth in one tear of the true and perfect sorrow which the memory of the past would awaken," " than in endless ages of penal woe." It is not the inefficacy, but the impossibility, of due penitence that constitutes our fatal disability ; to be re- lieved from which we need to be taken out of ourselves, to be identified with a perfect spirit ; our humanity must cease to be human, and become one with the Divine nature. This is precisely the condition which realized itself in Christ. As God in humanity, he had perfect sympathy with the holiness of one sphere, and the infirmities of the other ; he saw the whole amount of the world's moral estrangement, not only with infinite pity for its misery, but with infinite horror at its guilt. He could both make a plenary confession for us, and respond unreservedly to the Father's righteous judgment; could bear our burden on his heart before heaven, and utter the Miserere of holy sorrow, which our most plaintive cry can never approach. This is the true nature of his sufferings. He "made his soul an offering for sin," yielded it up to be filled with a sense of our real aspect beneath the Omniscient eye, and an Amen to its condemning look. Hence his sor- rows had nothing penal in them, any more than the tears of a devout parent over a prodigal child are penal. They are MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. IGo incident to that attitude of soul which a perfect nature cannot but have in the presence of a brother's sin. They are alto- gether moral and spiritual ; and their efficacy as an expiation is that of true repentance ; expressing at once our entire con- fession, acceptance of the Father's just displeasure, and sym- pathy with his compassionate grieving at our alienation. At the same time, this mere retrospective confession Avould not of itself avail, were there no better hope for the future of mankind. But our Mediator's own experience in humanity, his consciousness of intimate peace and communion with the Father, opened to him the other side of our nature, assured him of its secret capacity for good, and filled him with hope in the very moment of contrition. As his sympathy could have fellowship with our temptations, so could ours have fel- lowship with his righteousness ; and the light of Divine love that rested actually on himself was thereby a possibility for the universal human soul, and Avas already hovering round with longing to descend. It was on the strength of this as- surance that his intercession on our behalf was presented ; it would never have pleaded for indemnity in relation to the past, but as the prelude to a real righteousness, a true partner- ship in his life of filial harmony with God. The validity of liis transaction on our behalf consisted in its perfect seizure of the whole reality, its entire " response to the mind of the Father in relation to men " ; sorrow for their estrangement, conviction of their possible return, and desire to draw them into the spirit of genuine Sonship. It was needful, then, — so we conceive our author's mean- ing,— that the sentiments of God towards the world's sin and misery should quit their absolute position, and should come and take their station in humanity ; and from that field should turn their gaze and expression upward to meet the Father's downward and accordant look. As this " Amen of the Son to the mind of the Father " constitutes the essence of the atonement on the Divine side, so does it consist on the human side in "the Amen of each individual soul to the Amen of the Son." The reproduction in us of the filial spirit of 166 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. Christ, — his confession, his pleading, his trust, — is our fel- lowship with him and reconciliation with God. "This is saving faith, — true righteousness, ^ being the living action, and true and right movement of the spirit of the individual mim in the light of eternal life. And the certainty that God has accepted that perfect and divine Amen as ut- tered by Christ in humanity is necessarily accompanied by the peaceful assurance that, in uttering, in whatever feeble- ness, a true Amen to that high Amen, the individual who is yielding himself to the spirit of Christ to have it uttered in him is accepted of God. This Amen in man is the due response to that word, ' Be ye reconciled to God ' ; for the gracious and Gospel character of which word, as the tenderest pleading that can be addressed to the most sin-burdened spirit, I have contended above. Tliis Amen is sonship ; for the Gos- , pel call, ' Be ye reconciled to God,' when heard in the light of the knowledge that ' God made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him,' is understood to be the call to each one of us on the part of the Father of our spirits, ' My son, give me thine heart,' addressed to us on the ground of that work by which the Son had declared the Father's name, that the love where- with the Father hath loved him may be in us, and he in us. In the lisfht itself of that Amen to the mind of the Father in relation to man which shines to us in the atonement, we see the righteo7isness of God in accepting the atonement, and in that same light the Amen of the individual human spirit to that divine Amen of the Son of God is seen to be what the Divine righteousness will necessarily acknowledge as the end of the atonement accomplished^ — p. 225. In this view, it is not the rescue from punishment, not any favorable change in our legal standing, not any imputed right- eousness, that Christ's mediation obtains, but a real transfor- mation of soul and character through the divine infection and infusion of his own filial spirit. Only in so far as his mind thus spreads to us are we united to him, or in any way par- takers of his gift of life. Personal alienation can have no MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 167 reversal but in personal return ; nor can anything " extra- neous to the nature of the Divine will itself, to which we are to be reconciled, have part in reconcihng us to that will." The fear of hell is not repentance ; the assurance of heaven is not salvation; nor under any modification can the desire of safety, or the consciousness of its attainment, constitute the least approach to holiness. The good alone can touch the springs of goodness ; and the divine and trustful life of Christ must speak to us on its own account, and win us by its own power, or not at all. Not that it acts on us merely in the way of example. "\Ve do not so stand apart from him in our independent individuality, that by an external imitation we can copy him, and become, as it were, each another Christ, repeating in ourselves his offering of propitiation. He is the Yine, of which we are the branches. Tke sap is from him, drawn through the eternal root of righteousness, and does but flow as a derived life into us. The Son of God is not a mere historical personage, to be contemjDlated at a distance in the past, but ever with us in the power of an endless life ; still succoring us when we are tempted, and ministering to con- science a jiresent help and peace. It is not, therefore, by following him, but by abiding in him, that we have our fel- lowship in his harmony with God. The essence, then, of the scheme of redemption, in the view of our author, seems to be this ; that the Divine nature entered humanity to open the Fatherliness of God by living the life of perfect Sonship ; and that, having awakened that life in us by this its visible realization, he sustains it by the inner presence of his Spirit. It is one of the obvious conse- quences of this doctrine, that no exclusive or exceptional value is to be ascribed to the death of Christ. It is simply the final and crowning expression of the same filial mind which is the continuous essence of his whole existence upon earth. Nor does the theory attach importance to any sufferings of Christ, as such ; but only as media and measures of moral expression. Had men sinned as spirits, his reconciling work would not have involved death at all : but since in our constitution mor- 1C8 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. tality is " the wages of sin," his response to the Divine mind in regard to sin would have been incomplete, had he not honored this law and tasted its realization. Not to lose sight of the main features of the doctrine in pursuit of details, we must j)ass without notice many curious and subtle thoughts of our author on this part of his subject. Indeed, everywhere the reader who has patience with the entangled style will find deep hints and delicate turns of reflection. But we must withdraw to a little distance from his system, and endeavor to look at it as a whole ; fixing attention especially on the central j)oint of all, — the mediatorial provision^ which replaces the penal " satisfaction " of the elder Calvinism, and the " exhi- bition of rectoral justice " of the modern divines. Instead of an infinite punishment endured or represented, the theory offers us an infinite repentance performed. Repent- ance for what ? — for human sin. Repentance by whom ? — by Ilim " who knew no sin." Is this a thing that can be ? Is vicarious contrition at all more conceivable than vicarious retribution? It is surely one and the same difficulty that meets them both. On what ground is the transfer of either moral qualities or their effects regarded by our author as impossible ? — because at variance with our consciousness of the personal and inalienable nature of sin. But not less is this truth contradicted when we say that the guilt may be incurred by one person, and the availing repentance take place in another. Nor can any imagination of Christ's state of mind identify it with penitence. Mr. Campbell himself describes it (p. 135) as having "all the elements of a perfect repentance in humanity for all the sin of man — a perfect sorrow — a perfect contrition, — all the elements of such a repentance, and that in absolute perfection — all — excepting the personal consciousness of sinr This exception, however, contains just the essential element of the whole. Penitence without any personal consciousness of sin is a contradiction in terms ; and the requisition of the Divine law is, that the sinner shall turn from the evil of his heart, not that the righteous shall make confession for him. The entire moral value of MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 1C9 contrition belongs to it as the sign of inner change of char- acter from prior evil to succeeding good ; and it admits of no transplantation from the identical personality which has been the seat of the evil and is the candidate for the good. Further, it seems a paradox to say, with our author, that true repentance is impossible to man, who alone needs it ; and can be realized only by the Son of God, in whom there is no room for it. It would indeed be a hopeless realm to live in, which should annex to all sins both an imperative demand and an absolute disqualification for adequate contrition, and first open the fountain of availing tears in holy natures that have none to shed. It is, in truth, of the very essence of repent- ance to have its seat in mixed and imperfect moral beings : and our author lays upon it quite an arbitrary requisition, when he insists tliat, to pass as adequate, it must contain a perfect appreciation of the sin deplored, — a view of it coinci- dent with that of God. Under such an aspect as this it could never have appeared to us, though we had remained guiltless of it, and recoiled from it : and we can hardly be required to reach, in the rebound of recovery, a point beyond the station which would have prevented the fall. Many errors in theol- ogy arise from applying absolute conceptions to relative con- ditions, and forgetting that religion, as realized in us, is a life, a movement, a progress, and not an ultimate limit of perfec- tion. Repentance is a transitional state, to which it is absurd to apply an infinite criterion : it is a change from the worse to the better mind, and cannot need the resources or belong to the experience of the best. To pronounce it impossible to the wandering and fallen, and make it the exclusive function of the All-holy, implies the strangest metamorphosis of its meaning. But how, it may be asked, could a paradox so violent find favor with an autlior everywhere intent on the exclusion of fiction from Christian theology ? To refer a moral act to the wrong personality, to toss about a solemn change like penitence between guilty and innocent, as if its particular seat were a matter of mdifference, is so serious an error, that it 15 170 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. could never enter a mind like Mr. Camj^bell's, unless under some plausible disguise. Can we find the shape under which it has recommended itself to his approval ? The sentiment ascribed to the Son of God in regard to sin, — wanting as it does the essential penitential element of personal compunction, — is simple sorrow for others' guilt, founded on perfect apprehension of its nature. But this attitude of soul in him awakens the conscience of his disci- ples, and is reproduced in them bj fellowship. Spread into their consciousness, it is no longer clear of the immediate presence of sin, but, falling in with it, assumes the missing element, and becomes repentance. When the Christian sense of evil, which ever partakes of true contrition, is thus contem- plated as a transmigration of the Mediator's own spirit into the soul, the two are so identified in thought, that what is true only of the human effect is referred to the Divine cause ; and the moral sorrow of Christ is regarded as potentially equiva- lent to repentance, because that is actually the form of the corresjionding phenomenon in us. If this, however, explains our author's position, it hardly justijies it. Intercession for others in their guilt may move them to remorse for their own, but is a fact of quite different nature. As attributes and ex- pressions of character, the two phenomena are not to be con- founded ; and as affecting our relation to God, there is the obvious and admitted distinction, that intercession avails not for those who remain impenitent, and would not be needed for the spontaneously penitent. The sorrowful expostulations of the Son of God have only so far a reconciling effect as they become the medium, in the hearts of men, of an awak- ened contrition, aspiration, and faith. We cannot conceive them to have immediately altered — as repentance does — the personal relation between God and the transgressors of His will ; else the change would be a change in the Divine sentiment whilst its objects still remained unchanged. The effect loaits for its development in souls melted and renewed. And thus the atoning sorrow of Christ becomes simply a provision for a healing penitence in men. MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 171 The ascription of " repentance " to Christ is curious in another point of view. It arises from a blending together of his consciousness and Ms disciples'' ; from slurring the hues of personality between them ; from regarding their spiritual state as an organic extension of his, and his as the vital root of theirs. In his endeavor to recommend it to us, our author instinctively runs into abstract expressions in speaking of mankind ; fusing down concrete men into " humanity " ; re- ferring to the Mediator as " God in humanity'' ; and so, deal- ing with our nature as if it were a single existence, carrying or turning up all its individuals as partial phenomena of one essence. On the other hand, in our endeavor to correct his doctrine, M^e have had to lay stress on the inalienable and separate character of all particular persons, taken one by one ; to insist on the solitude of each responsible agent, and the impassable barriers which forbid the transference of moral attributes from mind to mind. Which of these two modes of conception is the truer ? For according as we incline to the one or the other, — according as we treat humanity as the organic unit of which individual samples of mankind are nu- merical accidents, or take each man as an integer, of which the race is a multiple, — shall we lean towards mediatorial or towards direct religion. We are firmly convinced that no doctrine of mediation — in the strict sense implying trans- actions with God on behalf of men, as xoell as in the opposite direction — can be liarmonized with the modern individual- ism ; and that it is precisely in the attempt to unite these in- compatibles, that the forensic fictions to which Mr. Cam])bell objects, and the moral fiction in his own theory to which we ol)ject, have had their origin. They are mere artificial devices to compensate the loss of that realistic mode of conception in which alone a true atoning doctrine can rest in peace. So long as you contemplate the Redeemer as a detached i)erson, not less insulated in his integrity of being than angel from archangel or from man, the diiliculty will remain insuperable of making his moral acts avail for other human individuals^ unless by a fictitious transference, against which conscience 172 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. protests. Punishment by substitute, righteousness by deputy, vicarious repentance, are notions at variance with the funda- mental postuUites of the Moral Sense : and in the attempt to defend them we are liable to lose the solemn, living, face-to- face reality of the strife within us, and to weave around us a web of legal and formal relations, as little like any heart-felt veracity as a chancery decree to a law of nature. In pro- portion as the soul is pierced with a sharper contrition, and attains a deeper and clearer insight into her own unfaithful dis- order, will the inherent impossibility of any foreign exchange of righteousness become apparent, and the desire to be shielded from punishment will pass away : nor is the conscience truly awakened which does not rather rush into the arms of its just anguish than start back and fly away. And the more you hold up to view the holiness of Christ, the darker will the personal past appear to grow; for self-reproach will say: " Yes, I see him as the holy Son of God ; the guiltier am I that the vision did not keep me from my sin." Talk to such a one of Christ's transactions on our behalf, as ^^ federal head " of a redeemed people ; and his misery will take no notice of the cold pretence, unless to think, " Whatever engagements he made fonne, I have broken them all." In short, while Christ is regarded simply as an historical individual, with the chasm of an incommunicable personality between him and us, no ingenuity can construct, except from the ruins of moral law, any other bridge of mediation than the suasion of natural reverence, by which his image passes into the heart of faith. It is otherwise when we break through the restraints of the modern individualism, and strive to enter into that literal identification of Christ with Christians which is so frequent with St. Paul. If, instead of saying that Christ had our human nature, we could put our thought into this form, — "He ivas (and is) our human nature," — if we could suppose our type of being not merely represented in him as a sample, but concentrated in him as a whole, — we should read its essentials and destination in his biography : his predicates would be its predicates : and in his sorrows and sanctity it MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 173 might undergo purification. Humanity thus made into a person would then be the corresponding fiict to Deity em- bodied in a person : both would be Incarnations, — essential Manhood and essential Godhead, — co-present in the same manifested life. In the ordinary conception of the doctrine of two natures, Christ is represented, we beheve, as a man ; in the mode of thought to which we now refer, he appears as Man. The difficulties which arise in the attempt to carry out this form of thinking are evident enough, even to those who know nothing of the Parmenides of Plato. Indeed, they are rendered so obtrusive by our modern habits of mind, that even a momentary seizure, for mere purposes of interpreta- tion, of that older intellectual posture, scarcely remains possi- ble to us. The apprehension of it, however, is indispensable to one who Avould appreciate the mediatorial theology of Christendom, — a theology which never could have sprung up if our present conceptualist and nominalist notions had always prevailed, and which, ever since their ascendency in Europe, has been driven to deplorable shifts of self-justification. The parallel between the first and second Adam, the fall and the restoration, the death incurred and the life recovered, acquire new meaning for those who thus think, — that as the incidents of Adam's existence become generic by descent, so the inci- dents of Christ's existence are generic by diffusion ; that if in the one we see humanity at head-quarters in time, in the other we see it at head-quarters in compreliension ; so that, like an atmosphere wliich, purified at nucleus, has the taint drawn off from its margin, our nature is freed from its sickli- ness in him. It becomes intelligible to us in what sense we are to take refuge in him as our including term, to find in him an epitome of our true existence, to die (even to have died) with him, to suffer with him, to be risen with him, to dwell above in him. On tlie assumption of such a union, his life ceases to be an individual biography ; Avhat is manifested in him personally, becomes true of us universally ; and it is as if we were all — like special examples in a general rule, or undeveloped truths in a parent principle — virtually present 15* 174 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. in his dealings with evil and with God. It is evident, that in this view his mediation has no chasm to cross, no foreign region to enter, but is an inseparable predicate of his own personal acts. The facility of conception afforded by this method is betrayed by Mr. Campbell's resort to an analogous hypothesis as a mere illustrative help to the mind. Witness the following striking passage : — " That we may fully realize what manner of equivalent to the dishonor done to the law and name of God by sin an adequate repentance and sorrow for sin must be, and how far more truly than any })enal infliction such repentance and con- fession must satisfy Divine justice, let us suppose that all the sin of humanity has been committed by one human spirit, on whom is accumulated this immeasurable amount of guilt ; and let us suppose this spirit, loaded with all this guilt, to pass out of sin into holiness, and to become filled with the light of God, becoming perfectly righteous with God's own righteousness, — such a change, were such a change possible, would imply in the spirit so changed a perfect condemnation of the past of its own existence, and an absolute and perfect repentance, a con- fession of its sin commensurate with its evil. If the sense of personal identity remained, it must be so. Now, let us con- template this repentance with reference to the guilt of such a spirit, and the question of pardon for its past sin and admis- sion now to the light of God's favor. Shall this rej^entance be accepted as an atonement, and, the past sin being thus con- fessed, shall the Divine favor flow out on that present perfect righteousness which thus condemns the past, or shall that repentance be declared inadequate ? Shall the present perfect righteousness be rejected on account of the past sin, so abso- lutely and perfectly repented of? and shall Divine justice still demand adequate punishment for the past sin, and refuse to the present righteousness adequate acknowledgment, — the favor which, in resjDect of its own nature, belongs to it ? It appears to me impossible to give any but one answer to these questions. We feel that such a repentance as we are suppos- ing would, in such a case, be the true and proper satisfaction MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. 175 to offended justice. Now, with the difference of personal identity, the case I have supposed is the actual cSse of Christ, the holy one of God, bearing the sins of all men on his spirit, — in Luther's words, ' the one sinner,' — and meeting the cry of these sins for judgment, and the wrath due to them, absorb- ing and exhausting that Divine wrath in that adequate con- fession and perfect response on the part of man which was possible only to the infinite and eternal righteousness in hu- manity." — p. 143. The case which our author here presents as an aid to the imagination was to Luther the literal reality ; to whom, ac- cordingly, Christ was " the one sinner," without " the differ- ence of personal identity," which is here so innocently slipped in, as if it were of no consequence. Christ, in the Reformer's view, ivas humanity, our humanity ; and the grand function and triumph of faith is to feel ourselves included in him, to merge our individuality, sins and all, in his comprehending manhood and atoning obedience. Hence the stress which Luther lays on " the well-applying the pronoun " our, in the phrase, " wlio gave himself for our sins " ; " that this one syllable being believed may swallow up all thy sins." The effect of this realism on the theology of Luther has not been sufficiently remarked. We believe it to be the key to much that is obscure in his writings, and the secret source of his antipathy to the Calvinistic type of the Reformation. Ab- sorption of Manhood into Christ, — distribution of Godhead into humanity, — these were the correlative parts of his objec- tive belief, — Atonement and Eucharistic Real Presence : and neither in them-elves nor in their correspondence can they be appreciated, without standing with him at the point of view which we have endeavored to indicate. Whether mediatorial religion shall continue to include in its scheme some provision for dealing with God on heJudfofmcn, will mainly depend on the successful revival or the final aban- donment of the old realistic modes of thought. ^Ir. Camp- bell's compromise with tliem, taking refuge with them for Illustration while disowning them in substance, answers no 176 MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. logical or theological purpose at all. If he follows out the natural tendtjncies and affinities of his faith, he must rest exclusively at last in the other half of the doctrine, wliich exhibits the dealing with man on hehalf of God. In this best sense mediatorial religion is imperishable, and imperishably identified with Christianity. The Son of God, at once above our life and in our life, morally divine and circumstantially human, mediates for us between the self so hard to escape, and the Infinite so hopeless to reach ; and draws us out of jOur mournful darkness without losing: us in excess of li":ht. He opens to us the moral and spiritual mysteries of our existence, appealing to a consciousness in us that was asleep before. And though he leaves whole worlds of thought approachable only by silent wonder, yet his own Avalk of heavenly com- munion, his words of grace and works of power, his strife of divine sorrow, his cross of self-sacrifice, his reappearance behind the veil of life eternal, fix on him such holy trust and love, that, where we are denied the assurance of knowledge, we attain the repose of faith. PIYE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN PAITH. It is at all times difficult, even for the wisest, to describe aright the tendencies of the age in which they live, and lay down its bearings on the great chart of human affiiirs. Our own sensations can give us no notice whither we are going; and the infinite life-stream on which we ride, restless as it is with the surface-waves of innumerable events, reports noth- ing of the mighty current that sweeps us on, except by faint and silent intimations legible only to the skilled interpreter of heaven. It is something, however, to have the feeling that we are moving, and to be awake and looking out ; and perhaps there never was a period in which this consciousness was more diffused throughout society than in our own. No one can look up and around at the religious and social phenomena of Christendom, without the persuasion that we are entering a new hemisphere of the world's history, — a persuasion cor- roborated even by those who disclaim it, and who insist on still steering by lights of tradition now sinking into the mists of the receding horizon. "Wherever Ave turn our eye, we dis- cover some symptom of an impending revolution in the forms of Christian faith. The gross materialism and absolute unbe- lief diffused for the first time among vast masses of our popu- lation ; the fast-spreading (and, as it appears to us, morbid) dislike to look steadily at anything miraculous ; the extensive renunciation, even among the religious classes on the Continent, of historical Christianity ; the schisms and ever-new peculiar- 178 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. ities wliic-i are weakening all sects, and, like seedlings of the Heformation, are obscuring the species, by multiplying the va- rieties, of opinion ; the revived controversies, penetrating all the great political questions of the age, between the ecclesi- astical and civil powers, — are not the only indications of approaching theological change. That very conservatism and recoil upon the high doctrine of an elder time, which is manifest in every section of the Christian world, is a confes- sion by contrast of the same thing. For opinion does not turn round and retreat into the past, till it has lost its natural shelter in the present, and dreads some merciless storm in the future. Tlie outward strength which the older churches of our country seem to be acquiring arises from the rallying of alarm and the herding together of trembling sympathies ; and though fear may unite men against external assaults upon in- stitutions, it cannot stop the decay of inward doubt. It Avould seem as if Christianity was threatened by the mental activity which it has itself created ; as if the intellectual weapons which have been forged and tempered by its skill were treach- erously turned against its life. It is vain, however, to strike a power that is immortal ; nothing will fall but the bodily form cast for a season around the imperishable spirit. Protestantism, with all its blessings, has after all greatly disfigured Christianity, by constructing it into a rigid meta- physical form, and setting it up on a narrow pedestal of anti- quarian proof; — by dcotroying its infinite character through definitions, and developing it dogmaticallj" rather than spiritu- ally;— by treating it, not as an ideal glory around the life of man, but a logical incision into the psychology of God. The wreck of systems framed under this false conception will but leave the pure spirit of our religion in the enjoyment of a more sacred homage; — }'ou may dash the image, but you cannot touch the god. In the following remarks we shall seek to make this evi- dent;— to show what princijdes of religion in general, and of Christianity in particular, may be pronounced safe from the shocks of doubt. In times of consternation and uncertainty, FIVK POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 179 it behooves eacli one to look Avithiii him for the heart of cour- age, and around him for the pUice of sheker, and to single out, amid countless jwints of danger, some refuge immutable and eternal. "With this view, we propose to trace an outline of Christian truths which we consider secure and durable as our very nature ; — a chain of granite points rising, like the rock of ages, above the shifting seas of human opinion. In doing so, we shall be simply delineating Unitarian Christian- ity, according to our conception of it ; — expounding it, not as a barren negation, but as a scheme of positive religion ; ex- hibiting both its characteristic faiths, and something of the modes of thought by which they are reached. I. In the jirst place, We have faith in the Moral Per- ceptions of Man. The conscience with which he is endowed enables him to appreciate the distinction between right and wrong ; to understand the meaning of " ougJtt" and " ought not "; to love and revere whatever is great and excellent in character, to abhor the mean and base ; and to feel that in the contrast between these we have the highest order of differen- ces by which mind can be separated from mind. And on this consciousness, — the basis of our whole responsible existence, — no suspicion is to be cast ; no lamentation over its fallibil- ity, no hint of possible delusion, is to pass unrebuked ; it is worthy of absolute reliance as the authoritative oracle of our nature, supreme over all its faculties, — entitled to use sense, memory, understanding, to register its decrees, without a mo- ment's license to dispute them. That Justice, Mercy, and Truth are good and venerable, is no matter of doubtful o})in- ion, in which peradventure an error may be hid; — is not even a thing of certain inference, recommended to us by the force of evidence; — is not an empirical judgment, depen-tling on the pleasurableness of these qualities, and capable of re- versal, if, under some tyrant sway, tliey were to be rendered sources of misery. The approval whicli we award to them is quite distinct from assent to a scientific probability ; the ex- cellence which we ascribe to them is not identical with their 180 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. command of happiness, but altogether transcends this, pre- cedes it, and survives it ; the obligation they lay upon us is not the consequence of positive law, human or divine, or in any way the creature of superior will ; for all free-will must itself possess a moral quality, — can never stir without exer- cising it, — and cannot therefore give rise to that which is a prior condition of its own activity. And if (to pursue the thought suggested above) we could be snatched away to some distant world, some out-pro^dnce Cf the universe, abandoned by God's blessed sway to the absolutism of demons, where selfishness and sensuality, and hate and falsehood, were pro- tected and enjoined by public law, it is clear that, by such emigration, our interests only, and not our duties, would be reversed; and that to rebel and perish were nobler than to comply and live. The discernment of moral distinctions, then, belongs to the very highest order of certainties ; it has its seat in our deepest reason, among the j^rimitive strata of thought, on which the depositions of knowledge, and the accu- mulations of judgment, and the surface growths of opinion, all repose. As experience in the past has not taught it, experi- ence in the future cannot unteach it. The difference between good and evil we cannot conceive to be merely relative, and incidental to our point of view, — variable with the locality and the class in which a being happens to rest, — an optical caprice of the atmosphere in which we live; — but rather a property of the very light itself, found everywhere out of the region of absolute night ; or, at least, a natural impression, belonging to that perceptive eye of the soul, through which alone we can look out, as through a glass, upon all beings and all worlds ; and if any one will say that the glass is colored, it is, at all events, the tint of nature, shed on it by the inefface- able art of the Creator. The modes in which we think of moral qualities are not terrestrial peculiarities of idea, like foreign prejudices ; the terms in which we speak of them are not untranslatable provincial idioms, vulgarities of our plan- etary dialect, but are familiar, like the symbols of a divine science, to every tribe of souls, belonging to the language of FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 181 the universe, and standing defined in the vocabulary of God. The laws of right are more necessarily universal than the physical laws of force ; and if the same agency of gravitation that governs the rain-drop determines the evolutions of the sky, and the Principia of Newton would be no less intelligible and true on the ring of Saturn than in the libraries of this earth, — yet more certain is it that the principles of moral excellence, truly expounded for the smallest sphere of respon- sibility, hold good, by mere extension, for the lai'gest, and that those sentiments of conscience which may give order and beauty to the life of a child, constitute the blessedness of immortals, and penetrate the administration of God. This is what we intend, when we insist on implicit faith in the moral perceptions of man. They are to be assumed by us as the fixed station, the grand heliocentric position, whence our sur- vey of the spiritual universe must be made, and our system of religion constructed. Whatever else may move, here, as in creation's centre of gravity, we take our everlasting stand. Whatever else be doubtful, these are to be simply trusted. The force of certainty by which nature and God give them to the conscience exceeds any by which, either through tlie un- derstanding or through external supernatural communication, they might seem to be drawn away. No revelation could per- suade me that what I revere as just, and good, and holy, is not venerable, any more than it could convince me that the midnight heavens are not sublime. There is notliing to move us from this position, in the ob- jection, that diifercnt men have different ideas of right and wrong, and that the heroic deeds of one latitude are regarded as the crimes of another. This moral discrepancy is, in the first place, infinitely small in proportion to the^ moral agree- ment of mankind, so that it is even difficult to find many striking examples of it ; and when the subject is mentioned, everybody expects to hear the self-immolation of the Indian widow, and other superstitions of the Ganges, adduced as the standing illustrations. What, after all, are these eccentricities of the moral sense, compared with the scale of its common 16 182 FIVE POINTS OF CIIKISTIAN FAITH. consent ? As well miglit you deny the existence of an at- mosphere, because you have found the air exhausted from a pump ! Where is the nation or the individual, without the rudi- ments, however imperfectly unfolded, of the same great ideas of duty which we possess ourselves ? — where the language, in which there are no terms to denote good and evil, — the just, the brave, the merciful? — where the tribe so barbarous as not to listen, with earnest eye, to the story of the good Samaritan ? And if such there were, should we not call them a people but little human (inhuman), and deem them, not the specimens, but the outlaws of our nature ? Moreover, the variances of moral judgment are usually only apparent and external. The action which one man pronounces wrong and another right, is not the same, except upon the lips : enter the minds of the two disputants, and you will find that it is only half taken into the view of each, and presents to them its opposite hemispheres ; no wonder that it shows the darkness of guilt to the one, and the sunshine of virtue to the other. And accordingly, these differences actually vanish as the faculty of conscience unfolds itself, and the scope of the mind is enlarged. Like the discrepancies in the ideas which men have of beauty, they exist principally between the un- cultivated and the refined: and the well-developed percep- tions of the best in all ages and countries visibly agree. Nay, while yet the discordance lasts, it introduces no real doubt : for heaven has established a moral subordination among men, which reveals the real truth of our own nature. Do we not always see, that the lower conscience bows before the higher ; — that the heart, without light or heat itself, may be pierced, as with a flash, by a sentiment darted from a loftier soul, and own it to be from above ; — that, simply by this natural allegiance of the lesser to the nobler, classes and nations and sects are raised in dignity and moral greatness ; — that they, and they only, have had any grand and sublime exist- ence in the history of the world, who have been gifted with power to create a new religion, — a fresh development of what is holy and divine ; — and that every one so endowed FIVE I'OINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 183 has always gathered around hiin the muhitudes ever praying to be lifted above the level of their lil'e, and blessins: the benefactor who wakes up the consciousness of their higher nature ? And if so, the general direction of the moral senti- ment is the same, however its intensity may vary : and the irregular indications which it gives are not due to any inherent vacillation, but to the disturbing causes Avhich deflect it from the celestial line of simplicity and truth. We keep our foot, then, on this primitive foundation, — faith in the moral perceptions of man. We say, that we know what we mean, when we affirm that a being is just, pure, disinterested, merciful ; that these terms describe one particular kind of character, and one only ; that they have the same sense to whomsoever they are applied, and are not to be juggled with, so as to. denote quite opposite forms of action and disposition, according as our discourse may be of heaven or of earth ; that whenever they lose their ordinary and intelligible signification, they become senseless ; and that what would be 'wrong and odious in any one moral agent, can be, under similar relations, right and lovely in no other. These positions, which we take to be fundamental, are in direct contradiction to the theological maxims with wliich most churches begin ; — viz. that human nature is so depraved that its conscience has lost its discernment, sees everything througli a corrupted medium, and deserves no trust ; that it may surrender its convictions to anything which can bring fair historical evidence of its being a revela- tion ; — in other words, that it may be right to throw away our ideas of right, and, in obedience to anti(piarian witnesses, suj)j)ose it holy in God to design and execute a scheme which it would be a crime in man to imitate. These prin- ci})les are defended by the assertion, that the relations of the Divine and the human being are so different as to de- stroy all the analogies of character between them. The only tendency, both of this defence and of the principles them- selves, is to absolute scepticism ; — to atheistical scepticism, inasmuch as our proi)ositions respecting God, if not true in 184: FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. the plain human sense, are to us true in no other, and repre- sent nothing ; to moral scepticism, inasmuch as, the sentiments of conscience being exposed to distrust, and all its language rendered unsettled, the very ground on which human char- acter must plant itself is loosened ; the rock of duty melts into water beneath our feet, and we are cast into the waves of impulse and caprice. II. We have Faith in the Jloral Perfection of God. This indeed is a plain consequence of our reliance on the natural sentiments of duty For it is not, we apprehend, by our logical, but by our moral faculty, that we h^e our knowledge of God ; and he who most confides in the instructor will learn the sacred lesson best. That one whom we may call the Holiest rules the universe, is no discovery made by the in- tellect in its excursions, but a revelation found by the con- science on retiring into itself; and though we may reason in defence of this great truth, and these reasonings, when constructed, may look convincing enough, fliey are not, we conceive, the source, but rather the effect, of our belief, — not the forethought which actually precedes and introduces the Faith, but the afterthought by which Faith seeks to make a friend and an intimate of the understanding. Does any one hesitate to admit this, and think that our conceptions of the Divine chai'acter are inferences regularly drawn from observation, — not indeed observation on the mere physical arrangements, but on the moral phenomena, of our world, — from the traces of a regard to character in the administration of human life ? We will not at present dispute the conclu- sion; but, observing that the jDremises which furnish it are certain moral experiences, we remark that the very power of receiving and appreciating these, of knowing what they are worth, belongs not to our scientific faculty, but to our sense of justice and of right. On a being destitute of tlys they would make no impression ; and in precise proportion to the intensity of this feeling will be the vividness and force of their per- suasion. And is it not plain in fact, that it is far from being FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 185 the clear and acute intellect, but rather the pure and trans- parent heart, that best discerns God ? How many strong and sagacious judgments, of coolest capacity for the just estimate of argument, never attain to any deep conviction of a perfect Deity ! Nay, how much does scepticism on this great matter seem to be proportioned, not to the obtuseness, but rather to the subtlety and searchingness of the mere understanding? But when was it ever known that the singularly pure and simple heart, the earnest and aspiring conscience, the lofty and disinterested soul, had no faith in the " First fair and the First good " ? Philosophy at its ease, apart from the real responsibilities and strong battle of life, loses its diviner sympathies, and lapses into the scrupulosity of doubt, and from the centre of comfort weeps over the miseries of earth, and the questionable benevolence of heaven ; while the prac- tically tried and struggling, with moral force growing beneath the pressure of crushing toil, look up with a refreshing trust, and with Avorn and bleeding feet pant happily along to the abodes of everlasting love. The moral victor, flushed with triumph over temptation, feels that God is on his side, and that the spirit of the universe is in sympathy with his joy. Never did any one spend himself in the service of man, and yet despair of the benignity of God. Our faith, then, in the Divine perfection, forms and disengages itself from the deeps of conscience : and the Holiest that broods over us solemnly rises — the awful spirit of eternity — from the ocean of our moral nature. It is in conformity with this doctrine of the moral origin of our belief in the first principles of religion, that to every man his God is Jtis best and highest, the embodiment of that which the believer himself conceives to be tlie greatest. The image which he forms of that Being may indeed be gross and terrible ; and others may be shocked, and exclaim that he trusts, not in a Divinity, but in a Fiend : but will the wor- shipper himself perceive and acknowledge this ? — will he not indignantly deny it? — will he not eagerly vindicate the per- fection of the Deity he serves ? He can do no otherwise ; for IG* 186 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. he discerns nothing more sublime, and cannot be convinced that that is low which stands at the summit of his thoujrhts. This uniform phenomenon in the history of religion could not exist, if human faith were an inference of intellectual origin. There would be nothing then to prevent some men, in their reasonings on the probable character of God, from assigning to that character a place heneath their own con- ceptions of what is most excellent ; and amid the infinite varieties of speculation, many forms of this opinion would undoubtedly arise. Let any one, then, who dissents from the account which we have given, ask himself this question : Why is it, that to discover a blemish in a divinity is the same thing as to renounce faith in him ; and that, even in pagan times, to assail the character of the gods was the constant mark of an unbelieving age? Is it not clear that, by a constraining necessity of our being, we are compelled to regard the godlike and the perfect as identical, and to look to heaven through the eye of our moral nature ? The Intellect alone, like the telescope waiting for an observer, is quite blind to the celestial things above it, — a dead mechanism dipped in night, — ready to serve as the dioptric glass, spreading the ima2:es of lio;ht from the Infinite on the tender and livinsr retina of Conscience. If, then, there is no discernment of Deity except through our moral sens'e, the importance of confiding in the percep- tions of that sense, — of rendering our consciousness of them vivid and distinct, — and the corresponding mischief of dis- trusting and repudiating these our appointed instructors, — become evident. Faith in the human conscience is neces- sary to faith in the Divine perfection : and this again is the needful prelude to the belief in any special revelation. For, unless we are first assured of the truth and excellence of God, we cannot tell that his communications may not de- ceive us, giving us false notices of things, and agitating us with illusory hopes and fears. This might be apprehended from a Being of undetermined benevolence and integrity: and that this idea of a mendacious revelation has never se- FIVE rOINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 187 riously entered the minds of men, is a strong proof of their natural and necessary faith in tlie rectitude and goodness of tlie Divine Administrator of creation. This Moral Perfec- tion of God being assumed as a postulate in the very idea of a Revelation, no system of religion which contradicts it can be admitted as credible on any terms. Now the whole scheme of Redemption, as it is represented in the popular theology, appears to us to fall under this condemnation. Under the riames of Justice, Sanctity, Mercy, it ascribes to the All-perfect a course of sentiment and of practice which — it is undeniable — no other moral agent, placed in analogous relations, could adopt without the deepest guilt. The Holiness of God, so often adduced to justify the severities of this scheme, we would yield to no one in ear- nestly maintaining ; believing, as we do, that his abhorrence of moral evil is absolute and everlasting, his resistance to it real and true, and his love of excellence simply infinite as his nature. But purity of mind does not exj)ress itself by implacable vengeance against the impure, or oblige its pos- sessor to engage himself in physically smiting them, — nuK-h less limit him through all eternity to this mode of adminis- tration. Rather does it incline away from a treatment which too often adds only torment, and removes no guilt, — which makes no advance towards the blessed dispositions it loves, — which fevers and parches instead of cooling and melting the passions of a culprit nature. It is a coarse and wretched error to suppose that anguish is a specific for sin, to the incessant infliction of which the Sinless is bound. God never departs indeed from his devotion to the laws of goodness, and his design of calling wider and wider virtue into existence : but he pursues them with the fertility of his infinite free-will ; — now by the severities of his disi)leasure, — now by the openness of his forgiveness, — now by the solicitations of his love. His purpose, as one whose perfection is not merely spotless, but active and productive, cannot be, as some Chris- tians seem to say, the ])enal pid)lication of his personal ofience against the insulters of his law, but the spread and cultivation 188 FIVE rOINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. throughout liis spiritual universe of pure and high afFections : and whenever the new germs of these appear in the garden of the Lord, no vernal sunshine or summer dews can more gently cherish the bursting flower, than does his mercy foster the fair and early growth. The assertion that God cannot pardon and recall to goodness till he has expended his tor- tures upon the evil, seems to us a plain denial of his moral excellence. Theologians sj)eak as if there were some crime, or at least some weakness, in the clemency which freely receives a repentant creature into favor ; as if the mercy which exacts no penalty, when penalty is no longer needed, were an amiable imbecility of human nature, which only a loose-principled and unholy being can exercise ! as if absolute unforgiveness were the perfection of sanctity ! True, this is disclaimed in words ; and the Eternal Father is called merciful, for remitting the sinner's doom and transferring the burden of his guilt to a victim divine and pure. But surely this disclaimer is more insulting to our moral sense than the accusation. For, either this transference of righteousness and guilt is a mere figure of speech, denoting only that, from the death on Calvary, God took chronological occasion to pass his own spontaneous pardon, and set up" the cross to mark the date of his volition ; or else, if the vicariousness be not this mere pretence, it describes an outrage upon the first principles of rectitude, a reckless disregard of all moral con- siderations, from the thought of which we are astonished that all good men do not recoil. We press once more the question which has never been answered : How is the alleged immorality of letting off the sinner mended by the added crime of penally crushing the Sinless? Of what man — of what angel — could such a thing be reported, without raising a cry of indignant shame from the universal human heart ? "What should we think of a judge who should discharge the felons from the prisons of a city, because some noble and generous citizen offered him- self to the executioner instead ? And if this would be bar- barity below, it cannot be holiness above. Moral excellence FIVE rOINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 189 and beauty, we repeat, are no local growths, clianging their species with every clime ; nor are the poisonous weeds of this outer region the chosen adornments of paradise. The prin- ciples of Justice and Right embrace all beings and all times, and, like the indestructible conception of space, attach them- selves to our contemplation of objects within the remotest infinitude. It is no more possible tliat what would be evil in man should be good in' God, than that a circle on eartli should be a square in heaven. Having faith, then, in the absolute perfection of our Creator, we dare ascribe to Him nothing which revolts the secret conscience He has given us. III. The relation which thus subsists between the human conscience and the Divine excellence leads us to avow, in the next place, a faith in the strictly Divine and Insjnred Character of our own highest Desires and best Affections, We do not mean bj this, that these affections are of miracu- lous origin ; that their appearance breaks through any regular law ; or that they do not belong to our own nature so as to form an integrant part of its history ; or that they do not arise spontaneously within it, but require to be precipitated upon it from without. They are as much properties of our own minds, as our selfishness and sin : we are conscious of them, and so they cannot but be parts of our j)ersonahty.* * Perhaps we should rather say, " they cannot be alien to our nature." The word personality is used by philcsophiciil writers to denote that wiiich is y^et«/trt/-, as well as essential, to our individual self. In this strict sense the moral and spiritual aflections are impersonal, according to the doc- trine of the context, which treats them as constituting a participation in the Divine nature. The metaphysical reader will perhaps perceive here a re- semblance to the theory of Victor Cousin, who maintains that the icill — the free and voluntary activity — of the human being is the specific faculty in which alone consists his personality ; and that the intuitive reason by which we have knowledge of the unlimited and absolute Cause, as well as of oui-selves and the universe as related effects, is independent and imper- sonal,— a faculty not peculiar to tlie subject, but " from the bosom of con- sciousness extending to the Infinite, and reaching to the Being of beings." *' Reason," observes this philosopher, *' is intimately connected with person- ality and sensibility, but it is neither the one nor the other: and precisely because it is neither the one nor the other, because it is in us without being 190 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. But in admitting them to be human, I do not deny that they are divine : in regarding them as indigenous to our created spirit, I do not treat them as foreign to the Creator's ; nor is there any inconsistency in believing them to be simuUaneously domesticated with both. That which is included within the mind of man, is not therefore excluded from tlie mind of God ; much less is it true that occurrences agreeable to the order of nature are, by that circumstance, disqualified from being held the immediate j^roducts of the Heavenly Will. The Supreme Cause, so far from being shut out by his own secondary causes and natural laws, has now at least no residence, no activity, no existence, except within them ; He covers, penetrates, fills them ; thinks, speaks, executes, through them, as the media of his volition : and His energy and theirs not only may coincide, but even must coalesce He is not to be brought down from his universal dominion to the rank of one of the physical causes active in creation, doing that only which the others have left undone. Will any one stand with me by the mid- night sea, and, because the tides in the deep below hang upon the moon in the heavens above, forbid me to hear in their sweep the very voice of God, and tell me that, while they ourselves, does it reveal to us that which is not ourselves, — objects beside the subject itself, and which lie beyond its sphere." At the opposite pole to this doctrine, which makes the perceptions of " Reason " a part of tlie ac- tivity of God, lies the system of Kant and Fichte, which represents God as an ideal formation, — it may be, therefore, ajjctlon, — arising from the ac- tivity of the " Reason." This faculty is treated by these German philoso- phers as merely subjective and personal ; its perceptions, even when they seem to go beyond itself, are known only as internal conditions and results of self-activity; its beliefs, though inevitable to itself, are simply relative, and have no objective validity. The faiths and affections which this system regards as purely human, are considered by the other as divine. The doc- trine maintained above, though resembling that of Kant in one or two of its phrases, far more nearly approaches that of Cousin in its spirit. It is scarcely necessary to observe that, in this note, the word " Reason " is used, not as equivalent to " Understanding," but in the German sense so long ren- dered familiar to the English reader by the writings of Air. Coleridge. It includes, therefore, (in its two senses of" Speculative " and " Practical,'^) the " ]\Ioral Perceptions " and " Primitive Faiths of the Conscience," spoken of in the text. fivp: points of christian faith. 191 roll untired on, lie sleeps through the silent vault around me ? It is by the law of gravitation that the planet.s find an un- erring track in the de^^ert space ; and is it false, tlien, that lie " leadeth them forth with his finger," and bids us note, in pledge of his punctuality, that " not one faileth " ? Is there any error in ascribing the very same event at one time to gravitation, at another to God ? Certainly not ; for this is but one of the forms of his personal activity. And it is the same in the world of Mind ; its natural laws do not exclude, but, on the contrary, include, the direct Divine agency : and though my thought, or hope, or love, cannot be yours, they may yet be God's ; not emanations from the God without us, but inspirations of the God within. Why should we start to think that there is a part of us which is divine? — why image to ourselves a distant, external, contem[)lative God, seeing all things and touching nothing, gazing on the unconscious evolutions of things, as the retired Mechanist of nature ? — why enthrone Him in the inertness of dead space, without even a sacred function there, and exclude Him from the tried, and tempted, and ever-trembling soul of Man ? If we found Him not at home in the secret places of strife and sorrow, vainly should we wander to seek Him in the colder regions of nature abroad. We have no sympathy with any system which denies the doctrine of a Holy Spirit; which discerns nothing divine in the higher experiences of human nature ; which owns no black abyss and no heavenly heights in the soul of man, but only a flat, connnon, midway region, neither very foul nor very fair, — Avell enough for the streets of traffic, but without a mount of vision and of prayer. Noth- ing noble, nothing great, lias ever come from a faith which did not deeply reverence the soul, and stand in awe of it as the seat of God's own dwelling, the presence-chamber of his sanctity, — the focus of that infinite whispering-gallery which the universe spreads around us. Nor can we doubt at what point of our own nature we must stand, in order to hear the voice and feel the inspira- tion of the Eternal. The pure in heart — each in propor- 192 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. tion to Ills purity — see Ilim. Our Conscience, our Moral Perceptions, as we have seen, are our only revealers of God. In proportion to their clearness do we discern Him ; and behind the clouds that obscure them. He becomes dim, and vanishes away. The aspirations of duty, the love of excel- lence, the disinterested and holy affections, of Avhich every good heart is conscious, constitute our affniity with Him, — by which we know Him, as like knows like : they are the expression of his mind, the pencil of rays by which He paints his image on our spiritual nature. God is related to our soul, like the sun in a stormy sky to the windowed cells in which mortals live ; and as we sit at our work in the cham- ber of conscience or of love, the burst of brilliancy or the sudden gloom within reports to us the clear-shining or the cloud of the heaven without. Nor can any philosophy, falsely so called, permanently expel this conviction from the Christian heart. Every devout and earnest mind naturally feels that its selfishness and sin are of the earth, earthy, — the most offensive of all attitudes to God, — the infatuated turning of the back to Him : and, on the other hand, wel- comes the fresh glow of pure Resolve, the heart-felt sob of Penitence, the glorious Courage that slays Temptation at his feet, — each as the gracious gift of a divine strength, and the authentic voice of the Inspirer, God. By this natural faith (natural, however, only to the Christian mind) we are pre- pared to abide ; and, with the Apostle Paul, to own ourselves, not without deep awe, the very temple of the Holiest. IV. We have said, that in the Conscience and Moral Af- fections we have our only revealers of God. Let it be un- derstood that we mean our only internal revealers of Him ; the only faculty of our nature capable of furnishing us with the idea and belief of Him, with any perception of his char- acter, and allegiance to his will. We mean to state that, without this faculty, the bare intellect, the mere scientific and reasoning power, could make no way towards the knowl- edge of divine realities ; could never, by any system of helps FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 193 whatsoever, be trained or guided into this knowledge, any- more than, in tlie absence of the proper sense, the ear of the blind can be taught to see ; and that nature, life, history, miracle, notwithstanding their most sedulous discipline, would leave us utterly in the dark about religion, except so far as they addressed themselves to our consciousness of what is holy, just, beautiful, and great. But we do not mean to state that the Moral Sense can stand alone, dispense with all out- ward instruction, and supply a man with a natural religion ready made. Nor do we mean that the every-day experience of man, and the ordinary providence of God, are enough, without special revelation, to lead us to heavenly truth. And we are therefore prepared to advance another step, and to say, that, while regarding the human conscience as the only inward revealer of God, we have faitii in Christ as his perfect and transcendent outward revelation. We conceive that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died, not to persuade the Father, not to appease the Father, not to make a sanguinary purchase from the Father, but simply to " show us the Father " ; to leave upon the human heart a new, deep, vivid impression of what God is in himself, and of what he designs for his creature, man ; to become, in short, the accepted interpreter of heaven and life. And this he achieved, in the only way of which we can conceive as practicable, by a new disclosure in his own person of all that is holy and godlike in character, — startling the human soul with the sudden apparition of a being diviner far than it had yet beheld, and lifting its faith at once into quite another and purer region. If it be true, as we have ventured to affirm, that to every man his God is his best, you can by no means give to his faith a higher God, till you have given to his heart a better best, — till you have touched him with a profounder sense of sanctity and excellence, and puri- fied and enlarged the perceptions of his conscience. Nor can you do this, except by presenting him with nobler models, with the living form of a fairer and sublimer goodness, visibly transcending every object of his previous reverence. No verbal teaching, no didactic rules, oan transform any man's 17 194 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. moral taste, and place before his mental view a lovelier and truer image of perfection : as well might you hope, by defi- nition, and precept, and book-wisdom, to train an artist with a soul like Raffaelle, or an eye like Claude. But only give the glorious model to the mind, produce the most finished excel- lence and harmony, and our instinctive sympathy with good- ness feels and discerns it instantly, and, though unable to conceive it inventively beforehand, recognizes it reverently afterwards. And so Christ, standing in solitary greatness, and invested with unapproachable sanctity, opens at once the eye of conscience to perceive and know the pure and holy God, the Father that dwelt in him and made him so full of truth and grace. Him that rules in heaven we can in no wise believe to be less perfect than that which is most divine on earth ; of anything 7nore perfect than the meek yet majestic Jesus, no heart can ever dream. And, accordingly, ever since he visited our earth with blessing, the soul of Christendom has worshipped a God resembling him, — a God of whom he was the image and impersonation ; — and, therefore,, not the God of which philosophy dreams, — a mere Infinite physical Force, without spirituality, without love, chiefly engaged in whirling the fly-wheel of nature, and sustaining the material order of the heavens, and weaving in the secret workshop of creation new textures of life and beauty ; not the God of which natural theology speaks, the mere chief of ingenious mechanicians, more optical, and dynamical, and architec- tural, than our most skilful engineers, — a cold intellectual Being, in the severe immensity and immutability of whose mind all warm emotions are absorbed and dissolved ; not the God of Calvinism, creating a race with certain foresight of the eternal damnation of the many, and against the few re- fusing to relax his frown except at the spectacle of blood ; — but the Infinite Spirit, so holy, so affectionate, so pitiful, whom Jesus felt to be in him as his Inspirer ; who passes by no wounds of sin or sorrow ; who stills the winds and waves of terror, to the perishing that call on him in faith ; who stops the procession of our grief, and bids bereaved affection weep FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 105 no more, but wait upon the voice that even the dead obey ; Avho scathes the hypocrite with the lightning of conviction, and permits the penitent to wash his feet with tears ; who reckons most his own the gentlest follower, that rests the head and turns up the trustful eye on him ; and bends that look of piercing love upon the guilty which best rebukes the guilt. Jesus has given us a faith never held before, and still too much obscured, in the affectionateness of the Great Ruler ; has made Ilim our own domestic God, whose ample home encircles all, leaving not the solitary, the sinner, or the sad witliout a place in the mansions of his house ; has wrapped us in the Divine immensity without fear, and bid us claim the warm sun in heaven as our Paternal hearth, and the vault of the pure sky as our protecting roof. We have spoken of Christ's personal representation, in his own character and practical life, of the spirit of the Di- vine JNIind, and have explained how in this way we believe that he has " shown us the Father." This, however, is not all. His direct teachings, perfectly in harmony with his life, confirm and extend its lessons ; and we listen, with venerat- ing faith, to his inimitable exposition of all divine truth. Purity of soul makes the most wonderful discoveries in heav- enly things, and is indeed the pellucid atmosphere through which the remoter lights of God are " spiritually discerned." As we have said, the knowledge of him which any mind (be it of man or of angel) may possess, is just proportioned to its sanctity : and our Messiah, having the very highest sanc- tity, was enabled to speak with the highest and most au- thoritative knowledge, and was inspired to be our infallible guide, not perhaps in trivial questions of literary interpre- tation, or scientific fact, or historical expectation, but in all the deep and solemn relations on which our sanctification and immortal blessedness depend. And both to his person and to his teachings do the miracles of his life, the tragedy of his crucifixion, and tlie glory of his resurrection, articu- lately call the attention of all ages, as with the voice of God. In every way we discern in Christ the transcendent 196 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. revelation of the Most High. We are told, that this is to dishonor Christ. We think it, however, a more glorious honor to him, to be thus indissolublj folded within the in- timacy of the Father's love, than to be blasted by the tempest of his wrath ; nor could we ever trust and venerate a God who — like the barbarians in the judgment-hall — could smite that meek lamb of heaven with one rude blow of vengeance. V. But we hasten to observe, finally, that vte have faith in Human Immortality, as exemplified in the heavenly life to which Jesus ascended. To assure us of this great truth, it were enough that Jesus assumed and taught it ; that it was his great postulate, essential to the development of his own character, and to all his views of the purposes of life, — an integrant part of his insight into human responsibility and his version of human duty. For if he did not teach the reality of God in this matter, sure Ave are that none else has ever done so ; and most of all, that the sceptics who doubt the heavenly futurity have no claim to take his place as our instructors. For if this hope were a delusion, who would the mistaken be ? Will any one tell me, that the voluptuary, who, from abandonment to the body, cannot imagine the perpetuity of the spirit ; — that the selfish, who, looking at the meanness of his own nature, sees nothing worth immor- talizing ; — that the contented Epicurean, who, in prudent quietude of sense and sympathy, finds adequate satisfaction in this mortal life ; — that the cold speculator, who looks at the fouler side of human nature, and, showing us on its features the pallor of sensualism or the hard lines of guilt, deems it less fit for the duration of the angel than for the extinction of the brute ; — that these men are right; while Christ, who walked without despair through the deepest haunts of sin, with faith that succumbed not to wretchedness and wrong, but stood up and conquered them ; who em- braced our whole nature in his love, and displayed it in its perfectness ; who lived and died' in its utmost service, with FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 197 prayers and tears and blood ; to whom our most binding affections cling almost with worship as the holiest glory of our world ; — tliat he could be under a delusion here'^ — that when, sinking in trustful death, he laid his meek head to rest on the bosom of the Father, he was cast off, and dropped on the cold clod ? — that he sobbed into the Infinite by night with a vain love that met no answer ? — that God rather takes part in his providence with the mean-souled, the cynic, the morbid, the selfish? There is no greater impos- sibility than this, on which evidence can fall back. Nay, we confess that, even apart from his doctrine, the mere mortal history of Christ would have settled with us the ques- tion of futurity. For the great essential to this belief is a sufficiently elevated estimate of human nature : no man will ever deny its immortality who has a deep impression of its capacity for so great a destiny. And this impression is so vividly given by the life of Jesus, — he presents an image of the soul so grand, so divine, — as utterly to dwarf all the dimensions of its present career, and to necessitate a heaven for its reception. At all events, it is allowable to feel this, when we see that this natural sequel was actually and per- ceptibly appended ; that this " Holy One of God could not see corruption," but rose, above the reach of mortal ill, to the world where now he welcomes the souls of the sainted dead. That other life we take to be a scene for the mind's ann)ler and ampler development, apart from those animal and selfish elements which now deform and degrade it by their excess. And this alone, if there were nothing else, would render it a life of awful retribution. For to the wicked, what is this loss of " the natural man," but total bereavement and utter death of joy ? — what to the good, but a glad and sacred birth ? — to tlie one, a Promethean exile on a mid-rock in the ocean of night, under the bite of a remorse that gnaws impal})ably, felt always, but never seen, — to the other, a welcome to the loving homes of the blest, amid the sunshine of the everlasting hills ? Yet precisely because we believe in Retribution, do we trust in Restoration, 17* 198 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. The very abhorrence with which a man's better mind ever looks upon his worse, while it inflicts his punishment, begins his cure : and we can never allow that God will suspend this natural law impressed by himself on our spirituaL constitu- tion, merely in order to stop the process of moral recovery, and specially enable him to maintain the eternity of torment and of sin. And so, beyond the dark close of life rise before us the awful contrasts of retribution ; and in the farther dis- tance, the dim but glorious vision of a purified, redeemed, and progressive universe of souls. Here, then, are our Five Points of Christianity, considered as a system of positive religious doctrine, viz.: — 1st. The truth of the Moral Perceptions in man, — not, as the de- generate churches of our day teach, their pravity and blind- ness ; 2dly. The Moral Perfection of the character of God, — in opposition to the doctrine of his Arbitrary Decrees and Absolute Self-will ; 3dly. The Natural awakening of the Divine Spirit within us, — rather than its Preternatural communication from without ; 4thly. Clirist, the pure Image and highest Revelation of the Eternal Father, — not his Vic- tim and his Contrast ; 5thly. A universal Immortality after the model of Christ's heavenly life ; an immortality not of capricious and select salvation, with unimaginable torment as the general lot, but, for all, a life of spiritual development, of retribution, of restoration. To the Moral doctrine which, in our view, the Gospel conjoins with this religious system, it is impossible for us at present to advert. Suffice to say that, with Paul, we ex- claim, " not Law, but Love " ; — love to God, to Christ, not simply for what they have done for us, but chiefly for what they are in themselves ; — nothing like the narrow-hearted gratitude for an exclusive salvation, but a moral affection awakened by their holiness, rectitude, truth, and mercy, — by the sublimity and spirituality of their designs, and the sanctity and fidelity of their execution : love also to man, looking to him not merely as a sentient being who is to FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. 199 be made happy, but as a child of God, who is to be raised into some likeness to the Divine image ; as a brother spirit, noble in nature, even though sinful in fact, glorious as an immortal in the eye of God, though disfigured by this world's hardship or contempt. Does any one ask, where we get our system of faith and morals ? What are the principles of reasoning which we apply to nature and Scripture to extract it thence ? The reply would require a volume of exposition. Suffice it to say, that we think we have full warrant for this belief from the Scriptures of the New Testament, with which alone we conceive that Christians have any practical concern; that, in interpreting these Scriptures, we follow the same rules which we should apply to any other books ; that not even could their instructions make us false to that sense of right and wrong which God has breathed into us ; that if they taught respecting him anything unjust or unholy, we should not accept it, but reject them ; and that, as to the points of faith on which we have dwelt, some receive these truths because they were taught by Christ ; others receive Christ because he taught these truths. On this faith we desire to take our stand, with the firmness, but without the ferocity, of the first Reformers. Opposing churches tell us, we " are so frigid " ! Why, it is the very thing our own hearts had often said tp us ; for there is noth- ing tliat so promptly rebukes the coldness of our nature as the warmth of our faith. We do not, however, much ad- mire this mutual criticism of each other's temperature ; and strongly suspect the reality of that earnestness which prides itself on its own intensity. We must not propose to assume any artificial heats, in order to spite and disprove this fre- quent accusation ; but be resolved, in an age diseased with pretence, to remain realities, to profess nothing which we do not believe, to withhold nothing whereon we doubt, to affect nothing which we do not feel, to promise nothing which we will not do ; holding, with Paul, that simplicity and sincerity are truly the godliest of things. With Heaven's good help, 200 FIVE POINTS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH. may we bear our testimony thus ; deeming it a small thing to be judged by man's judgment ; and, with such light and heat as God shall put into our hearts, delivering over our portion of truth to generations that will give it a more genial welcome. There is greatness in a faith, when it can win a wide success or make rapid conquest over submissive minds. There is a higher greatness in a faith that, when God ordains, can stand up and do without success ; — unmoved amid the pitiless storms of a fanatic age ; with foot upon the rock of its own fidelity, and heart in the serene Lifinite above the canopy of cloud and tempest. CREED AND HERESIES OF EARLY CHRIS- TIANITY. 1. Qpiyevovs ^i\ocro(l)ov^cva 1/ KaTa iraaoiv aipecrfoiv eXey^os. Origenis Philosophumena sive omnium hceresium refutatlo. JE codice Parisino nunc primum edidit Emmanuel Miller. Oxonii : e Typographeo Academico. 1851. 2. Hippolytus and his Age ; or the Doctrine and Practice of the Church of Rome under Commodus and Alexander Se- verus ; and Ancient and Modern Christianity and Divinity compared. By Christian Charles Josias Bunsen, D.C.L. In Four Volumes. London. 1852. When a stranger knocks at the gate of the Clarendon Printing-house, and presents his petition for aid, the Univer- sity of Oxford maintains its national character for good-na- tured opulence, — gives its money and signs its name, without very close inquiry into the case. The documents are really so respectable that there cannot be much amiss ; and a vener- able institution, well known to be fond of the house, cannot be expected to go trudging through the back-lanes of history, and exposing its nostrils in the purlieus of heresy, in order to identify a literary petitioner, evidently above all common im- posture. So it supplies all his wants upon the spot, dresses him handsomely, and sends him out into the world as its wor- thy (though eccentric) friend, the catechist of Alexandria. The introduction, being left at the Prussian Legation, falls 202 CREED AND HERESIES into the hands of no stay-at-home benefactor, but of one who knows the by-ways of human life, and has an ear for the di- alects of many a place. M. Bunsen — as Oxford might have remembered — is not unacquainted with Egypt ; and no soon- er does he raise his eyes from the credentials to the person of the stranger, than he discovers him to be no disciple of the Alexandrine Clement ; recognizes the accent of the West ; is reminded of the voice of Irenoeus ; and, finally, being even more familiar with the Tiber than the Nile, detects a Roman beneath the mask of Origen. We do not in the least grudge the friend of Niebuhr the honor of a discovery which no one could turn to more effectual account ; but every English schol- ar must feel mortified that the Imprimatur of our great Ec- clesiastical University should appear on a title-page manifestly false ; that the first reader should see at a glance what the learned proprietors had missed ; and that their Editio Prin- cess of a recovered monument of Church antiquity should be superseded within a year or two of its publication. They are not principals, it is true, but only secondaries to the Editor, in the commission of this error : still, a lay bibliographer might reasonably expect, in resorting for aid to so renowned and reverend a body, that his own judgment would be kept in check ; and their very consent to issue the work implies some critical opinion of its value, as derived from age and author- ship. Whether they are called upon to adopt at once M. Bunsen's proposed title-page, and substitute the name of Hip- polytus for that of Origen, we will not say ; but that the pres- ent title gives the book to the wrong author, seems placed beyond the reach of doubt. M. Emmanuel Miller, one of the curators of the National Library in Paris, was the first to make himself acquainted •with the contents of this work, and to appreciate their impor- tance. Among the manuscripts under his care was one on cotton paper of the fourteenth century, which had been brought from Mount Athos in 1842, by M. Mynoides Mynas, a Greek agent employed by the French government to search the neglected treasures of that celebrated spot. The OF EAIILY CIIRISTIAXITY. 203 superscription, "On all Heresies," was not inviting; but on turning over the leaves, some lines, unknown before, of Pin- dar and of another lyric poet, were found and copied ; and the value of these excerpts being ascertained, M. Miller's atten- tion was directed to the body of the treatise containing them. The treatise had already been described, in the Moniteur of the 5th of January, 1844, as a Refutation of all Heresies, in ten books, but with the first three missing, as well as the con- clusion of the whole ; and he soon became aware, that, of the three missing books, the first already existed, and had been printed under the name of " Philosophumena," in the edi- tions of Origen's works. Its very title is found in the manu- script at the end of the fourth book, and denotes that the por- tion of the work there concluded completes the sketch of phi- losophical systems, which the author prefixes to his account of ecclesiastical aberrations ; and there are mutual references, backwards and forwards, between the printed book and the manuscript, which leave no doubt that the latter is a sequel to the former. The Editor, therefore, has very properly re- printed the " Philosophumena " as the commencement of the newly recovered work; which thus exhibits a regular plan, and consists of two parts, viz.: first, four books, — of which the second and third are lost, — expounding the Pagan phi- losophies, especially the Greek, from which, the author con- tends, the various heresies of Christendom are mere plagia- risms ; then six books, containing an account, in an order pre- vailingly historical, of thirty or thirty-two heresies, supported by extracts from their standard writings, and wound up in the recapitulary book at the end by the writer's own profession of faith. Now who is the author ? Not Origcn ; for, as Huet had already remarked respecting the " Philosophumena," the writer speaks of himself in t(M'ms implying an episcopal position ; and, in the ninth book, he gives an account of transactions in Rome, extending over many years, in which he was evidently an eyewitness and an actor. Wliile the scene is thus laid at a distance from Ori- gen's sphere, and the date also of the personal matter runs 204 CREED AND HERESIES back into his boyhood, the cast of the theological doctrine is wholly different from his ; for instance, in a certain " Treatise on the Universe," to which the author refers as his own, and of which a fragment is preserved, the penal condition of the wicked after death is said to be immutable ; * but Origen, it is well kno^vn, taught a doctrine of final restoration. Add to this, that no such work as the present is attributed to Origen by any ancient witness, and the case against his name may be regarded as complete. The evidence which disappoints this claim narrows also our choice of others. The personal transactions to which we have referred took place at Rome, while Zephyrinus and his successor, Callistus, presided over the Christian community there, that is, during the first twenty years of the third cen- tury. We must, therefore, look for our author among the metropolitan clergj^men of that period. Still closer is the cir- cle drawn by the fact, that the writer largely borrows from the treatise of Irenoeus on the same subject; and, though vast- ly improving on that foolish production, and copiously contrib- uting fresh materials, betrays the general afliinity of thought which unites the stronger disciple with the feebler master. The problem then being to find a pupil of the Bishop of Lyons among the ecclesiastics of Rome, at the beginning of the third century, two names are given in as answering the conditions, — those of Hippolytus, a suburban clergyman, and of Caius, whose charge lay within the city itself. In order to vindicate the claim of the first, it has been necessary for M. Bunsen to prove that his locality is right ; and that the " Tor- tus Romse," of which he was bishop, was not, as Le Moyne * Tois fiev cv TTpd^aaL biKaiays rfjv atSiov dnoKavcriv Trapacrxovros, Tois de TOiV (f>av\v p.fcriTcv(rdvT(ov oinjaet. S. Hippol. adv. Graecos. Fabricii Hipp. Op. p. 222, OF EARLY CIIUISTIANITY. 205 and Cave had groundlessly supposed, the Arabian " Portus Romanus " of the district of Aden, but the new harbor made, or at least enlarged, by Trajan, on the northern bank of the Tiber, immediately opposite to Ostia. That he suffered mar- tyrdom there, and was buried in a cemetery on the Tiburtine road, is generally admitted, on the evidence of Prudentius, who has left a poem describing his memorial chapel on that spot, and of a statue of him, seated in a cathedra, which was dug up there three hundred years ago, and now stands in the library of the Vatican. It is certainly perplexing to find Je- rome avowing ignorance of the see over which he presided, if, for a quarter of a century, he was active at the centre of the Christian world ; and not less so to discover in Rome itself, nay, in a Pope, or his transcriber, at the end of the fifth cen- tury, the impression that liis scene of labor had been in Ara- bia ; and under the influence of these facts it has been sup- posed that though, coming to Italy, he had fallen among the martyrs of the West, he ought to be reckoned among the bishops of the East. On the whole, however, the reasons preponderate in favor of his residence, as " Episcopus Portu- ensis," within the presbytery of Rome. The title itself is an old one, still always assigned to some dignitary of the curia, and, no doubt, deriving its origin from the time when the Northern Harbor of the Tiber — of which in the ninth cen- tury, scarce a trace was left — was a flourishing emporium. The name of Hippolytus is associated by tradition with the spot ; it is given, our author assures us, to a certain tower, near Fiumicino ; and in the eighth and ninth centuries, a basil- ica of St. Hippolytus was restored at Portus by Leo III. and IV. An episcopal palace still remains. By acute and skilful combinations, effected with evidence scanty as a whole, and suspicious in every part, M. Bunsen has endeavored to re- produce the historical image of Hippolytus. His olfice of " bishop " implied simply the charge of the single congrega- tion at Portus ; the members of that congregation were the " plebs " committed to his supervision; the city or village in which they Uved was his diocese. His vicinity to the great 18 206 ■ CREED AXD HERESIES capital drew him, however, into a wider circle of duties. For while Rome itself was divided into several ecclesiastical dis- tricts, each of which had its own clergyman and lay deacons, the suburban bichops were associated with these officers to form a committee of management, or j^resbytery, presided over by the metropolitan. By his seat at this board, he was kept in living contact with all the most stirring interests of Christendom, which, wherever their origin might be, found their way to the imperial city, and more and more sought their equilibrium there. At a commercial seaport, his own congregation would largely consist of temporary settlers and mercantile agents, Greek brokers, Jewish bankers, African importers, to whom Italy was a lodging-house rather than a home ; and by the continual influx of foreigners he would hear tidings of the remotest churches, and carry to the cleri- cal meetings in the city the newest gossip of all the heresies. Possibly this position, with its opportunities of various inter- course, may have contributed to form in him the agreeable ad- dress, and faculty of eloquent speech, which tradition ascribes to him ; and induced him to commence the practice of writing with studious care the homilies which were to be delivered in the congregation. At all events he is the first of whom we distinctly hear as a great preacher. His period extends, it is supposed, from the reign of Commodus (180 — 193) to the first year of Maximin (235 — 6) ; and so brought him into the same presbytery-room with five popes, — Victor (187 — 198) ; Zephyrinus (201-218); Callistus (219-222); Urbanus (223 - 230) ; and Pontianus (230 - 235) ; with the last of whom he shared, in the last year of his life, a cruel exile to Sardinia, and returned only to fall a victim to fresh informa- tions, and suffer martyrdom by drowning in a canal. It can- not be denied that, in order to recover this picture of Hip- polytus, and still more in order to fix his literary position, the materials of evidence have to be dealt with in somewhat arbitrary fashion, and their lacunce to be filled by conjecture. Prudentius, for instance, is called as an historical witness, yet convicted of fable in much of what he says. His poem OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 207 declares that at one time Illppolytus had supported NoVatus in his attempt to close the gates of repentance against the Lapsi, but had been reconciled to the catholic doctrine before he died. lie must in this case have joined in the opposition raised by Novatianus (in 251) to the election of Cornelius to the papacy, and have died in the Decian ''persecution, Avhich continued till the year 257. Moreover, the painting seen by the Spanish versifier on the walls of the memorial chapel introduces us to so ridiculous a story, as only to show how completely the martyrological legends had already escaped all the restraints of history. In this fresco the mythical fate of Ilippolytus, the son of Theseus, is transferred to the Roman presbyter : he is represented as torn to pieces by horses ; while the faithful follow to pick up his limbs and hair, and sponge away the blood upon the ground. If the sanctuary exhibiting this scene received the martyr's remains from their original resting-place as early as the time of Constantine, — and such is our author's opinion, — into what a state of degra- dation had the history of Hippolytus sunk in three quarters of a century ! And if already memorial painting could thus impudently lie, how can we better trust the statue, admitted to be later still ? Yet this statue, on whose side is a list of the writings of Ilippolytus, is appealed to in determining the martyr's written productions, as the painted chapel in evidence of facts in his personal career. We fully admit the success of INI. Bunsen in eliciting a possible result from a mass of intricate and tangled conditions, and presenting us with a highly interesting personage. But perhaps, as the venerable image of the good bishop has grown in clearness before his eye, and attracted his affection more and more, the very vividness of the conception may have rendered him insensible to the prccariousness of the proof Ecclesiastical fancy, in its unrestrained career, has toni his personality to pieces, and left the disjecta membra so rudely scattered on the strand of history, that we almost doubt tlie power of any critical -^scu- lapius to restore him to the world again. At the same board of church councillors with Ilippolytus 208 CREED AND HERESIES sat another XoyiaraTos dvrjp* the presbyter Caius ; and as an urban clergyman, he would be more constantly there than his suburban brother, separated by a distance of eighteen miles. To form any living image of him from the scanty notices of him which begin with Eusebius and end with Photius, is quite impossible. In one respect only do the personal character- istics attributed to him distinguish him from the bishop of Portus. He was a strenuous opponent of the peculiarities favored by the Christians of Lesser Asia, and especially of the claims to prophetic gifts, and the appeal to clairvoyant skill, by Montanus and his followers. With one of these, by name Proclus, he held a disputation ; from which Eusebius has preserved a passage or two, showing, in conjunction with the title, not very intelligibly assigned to him, of " Bishop of the Gentiles," that he belonged to the most advanced anti- Jewish party in the Church, lamented the grossness of the popular millenarian dreams, vindicated the apostolic dignity of the Roman against the pretensions of the Eastern Chris- tianity, and disowned the Epistle to the Hebrews. Tliis feature in the figure of Caius, though constituting the distinc- tion, does not, however, necessarily oppose him to Hippolytus, whose attitude towards the Montanists may not have been very different, but only less positively marked. Still the suspicions directed against the two men are of an opposite kind : with Hippolytus, the difficulty is to set him clear of sympathy with Montanism ; f with Caius, to prevent his being classed with its unmeasured opponents, the Alogi.J And a report even reaches us, that among the Chaldean Christians there exists, or did exist in the fourteenth century, a con- troversial treatise of Hippolytus against Caius. § * Euseb. H. E., VI. 20. t Attributed to him by Neander, Kirch. Geschichte, I. iii. 1150; and Schwegler, Montanismus, p. 224. J Storr places him at their head, Zweck der Evang. Geschichte, p. 63; and Eichhorn associates him with them, Einleitung in das N. T., II. 414. ^ See the notice of the Nestorian Ebed Jesu, in Asseman's Bibl. Orient. III. i. ap. Gieseler, k. 9, § 63. OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 209 Between these two men, so similar in po>:ition, and not, perhaji.s, unused to sharp argument face to face, springs up, at the end of all these ages, a rival claim to j^roperty in the " Refutation of all the Heresies." The chief counsel for Hippolytus, besides our author, are the eminent Professors Jacobi, Duncker, and Schneidewin, — all, we believe, belong- ing to the Neander school of theology ; and as the last two are about to edit the work anew, and probably to give it its final form, their opinion of its authorship may be expected to prevail. The other side, however, advocated by Dr. Fessler, is sustained by perhaps the greatest of living historical critics, F. C. Baur, representative of the much-abused Tubingen school. Into so intricate a question we might be excused for inviting our readers, had Ave anything fresh to offer towards its solution ; but the chief impression we have brought from its study is one of astonishment at the extreme positiveness with which the learned men on either side affirm their own conclusion. A more equal balance of evidence we never remember to have met with in any similar research ; and the faint and slender preponderance which alone the scale can ever exhibit, amusingly contrasts with the triumphant asser- tion, of both sets of disputants, that not a reasonable doubt remains. The leading points of M. Bunsen's case are these. A work " On all Heresies " is attributed to Hippoly tus, and in no instance to Caius, by Eusebius, Jerome, E[)i})hanius, and Peter of Alexandria, at the beginning of the fourth century. Such a book was still extant in the ninth century ; for Pho- tius, the celebrated patriarch of Constantinople, has given us an account of its contents in the journal and epitome of his studies which he has left us. On comparing his report with the newly discovered book, the identity of the two works is established in some important respects : the number and con- cluding term of tlie series of heresies are the same ; they both of them include materials taken from Irenii3us, while reversing his order of treatment. Furtlier, in tlie newly found treatise reference is made by the autlior to other works of his, in which lie has discussed certain points of early Ile- 18* 210 CREED AND HERESIES brew chronology in proving the antiquity of the Abrahamic race. Now, Eusebius was acquainted with a certain " Chroni- cle " of Ilippolytus, "brought down to the first year of Alex- ander Severus ; and such a chronicle, in a Latin translation, is found in Fabricius's edition of Hippolytus, only that its list of Roman emperors terminates, not with the beginning, but with the end, of Severus's reign. It has, however, in common with our work, a peculiar number of tribes, — viz. seventy- two, derived from Noah. Thus, the author of the " Here- sies " and of the " Chronicle " would appear to be the same, and, according to Eusebius, to be Hippolytus. Lastly, both in our new work, and also in a book called the " Labyrinth," written against some Unitarians of the second century, refer- ence is made to a treatise " On the Universe," which the author mentions as his own production. By printing a frag- ment of this last in his edition of " Hippolytus," Fabricius has shown to what name all three should, in his judgment, be set down ; and that they cannot be given to Caius is rendered evident by the occurrence, in the fragment, of certain Apoca- lyptic fictions inconsistent with his rejection of the Book of Revelations. Moreover, the list of works on the statue of Hippolytus includes a disquisition " Against the Greeks and against Plato, or Respecting the Universe." What can be said to weaken so strong a case? Two doubts at once arise upon it, which we find it by no means easy to set aside. Granted, Hippolytus wrote a book " On all Heresies "; is it the same which is now delivered into our hands ? One medium of comparison we possess, enabling us to place the original and the present book, for a short space, side by side. The very Peter of Alexandria who is one of the early witnesses called on Hippolytus's behalf has handed down to us a passage or two (preserved in the Paschal Chron- icle) from the book which he attests, with a distinct reference to the place where they are to be found. We turn to the right chapter, and the passages are not there. Nor is it a mere want of verbal agreement which we have to regret ; the same topic — the controversy about the time of Easter — is OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 211 treated ; the same side — that of the "Western Church — is taken, in both instances ; but the arguments are different, and so far irreconcilable, tliat no one who had command of that which Peter gives would ever resort to the feebler one which our work contains. With the dauntless ingenuity of German criticism M. Bunsen makes a virtue of necessity, and en- deavors to convert this unfortunate discrepancy into a fresh proof of identity. lie thinks that, in this and some other parts, our work is but a clumsy abstract of liippolytus's original, which the citations of Peter enable us to recover and complete. This, however, is a plea which, it strikes us, damages his case as much by success as it could by failure. For if the book presented to us by the Clarendon Press reflects the orighial no better than would appear from this only sample which it is in our power to test, it may indeed be a degenerate descendant from the pen of Hippolytus ; but all reliable identity is lost, and the traces of his hand are no longer recoverable. The second doubt is this : — Is the work which Photius read the same that has now been rescued ? Of the few descriptive marks supplied by the patriarch, there are as many absent from our work as present in it. The treatise which he read was a " little hook " or " tract^' as Lardner calls it {^L^Xibapiov), a word which can scarcely apply to a volume extending (as ours would, if complete) to four hundred and twenty octavo pages. M. Bunsen cuts down this number to two hundred and fifty, by supposing Photius to have only the last six books, containing tlie historical survey, without the groundwork of the philosophical deduction, of the heresies. The curtailment, if conceded, seems scarcely adequate to its purpose, and appears to us a very questionable conjecture. The manuscript, stripped of the first four books, would want the very basis of the whole argument; and, if such a mutila- tion were conceivable, it is impossible that Photius should fail to observe and mention it; for the fifth book o})ens, not like an independent treatise, but with a summary statement of what has ])een accomplished " in the four boohs preceding this.^ Again, Photius mentions the Dosit/ieans as the first 212 CREED AND HERESIES set of heretics discussed ; whereas their name does not occur at all, if we remember right, in our work, and their place is occupied by the " Ophites." M. Bunsen treats this as a mere inaccuracy of expression on the part of Photius, who meant, by the name " Dositheans," to indicate the same " earliest Judaizing schools" that are better described as "Ophites." The name, however, is so unsuitable to this purpose, that it would be a strange wilfulness in the learned patriarch to sub- stitute it for the language of the author he describes. He could not be ignorant that Dositheus, Simon, Menander, were the three founders of the Samaritan sect, exponents of the same doctrine, if not even reputed avatars of the same divine essence ; * and if he had applied the name Dositheans to any of the heretics enumerated in our work, it would assured- ly have been to the followers of Simon, who stand fowrtli ifi the series of thirty-two, and not to Phrygian serpent-worship- pers, who commence the list. Further, the author whom Photius read stated that his book was a synopsis of the Lec- tures of Irenseus. In our work no such statement occurs; and the use made of IrenaBus does not agree, either in quan- tity or character, with the substance of the assertion. And, lastly, the patriarch's Hippolytus said " some things which are not quite correct; for instance, that the Epistle to the Hebrews is not by the Apostle Paul." In our work there is no such assertion ; and when M. Bunsen suggests that per- haps its place might be in the lost books, he forgets that, according to his own conjecture, these books were no more in Photius's hands than in ours, and that he cannot first cut them off in order to make a ^i^Xiddpiov, and then restore them, to provide a locus for a missing criticism on the Epistle to the Hebrews. The identity of our " Philosophumena " with the treatise which Photius i-ead and Hippolytus wrote, appears, therefore, to be extremely problematical. One fixed point, however, is gained in the course of the argument, and gives an acknowledged position from which the * On their relation, and the doctrine connected with their names, see Baur's " Cliristl. Gnosis," p. 310. OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 213 opposite opinions arc willing to set out. Whoever wrote the disquisition " On the Universe " wrote al.-o our work» This fact rests on the assertion of the author liimself ; yet, if the author be Hippolytus, and our " PhiIo.sophiT»»3r.j. ** hi his " Refutation of all Heresies," it is strange that no list of his writings mentions both books : the cataloj]jues of Eusebius and Jerome naming the " Heresies " without the essay " On the Universe " ; and the engraving on tlie statue giving the essay " On the Universe " without the " Heresies." How can we ex- plain it, that these ecclesiastical writers, in knowing our work, did not know what is contained in it about the authorship of the other book ; and that this book should have wandered anonymously about down to the ninth century, side by side with an acknowledged writing of Hippolytus, which all the while was proclaiming the solution of the question ? We should certainly expect that the book of avowed authorship would convey the name of Hippolytus to the companion pro- duction for which it claims the same paternity ; but, instead of this, it not only leaves its associate anonymous for six hundred years, but afterward assumes the modest fit, and becomes anonymous itself. Even if no previous reader had sense enough to put the two things together, and pick out the testimony of the one book to the origin of the other, are we to charge the same stupidity on the erudite Photius, Avho had both books in his hand, and has given his report of both ? In his account of Hippolytus's treatise, he nowhere tells us that it contains a reference to the essay " On the Universe," as being from the same pen ; and that he found no such reference is certain ; for he actually discusses the question, " Who wrote the essay on the Universe ?" without ever mentioning Hij)po- lytus at all. Just such a reference, however, as he did not find in Hippolytus, he did find in another work, of which he speaks under the title of " The Labyrinth " ; and, strange to say, it was at the end of the work,* precisely where it stands in our * Phot. Biblioth., cod. 48. o)? Koi avTOS (i. e. Tatos) cV T6) rcXfi rov \a^vpiu$ov BiffuipTvpaTo, cauToO dual tov Trepi rf/y rov navros ovaias \6yov. 214 CREED AND HERESIES " Philosopliumena. " Who can resist the suspicion, tiiat the anonymous " Labyrinth " of Photius is no otlier than our anonymous " Philosophumena " ? This conviction forced itself upon us on first weighing the evidence collected by M. Bunsen, in support of his different conclusion ; and we observe that it is the opinion sustained by the great authority of Baur,* who even finds a trace in our work of tiie very title given by Photius ; the writer observing, at the beginning of the tenth book, " The Labyrinth of Heresies we have not broken through by violence, but have resolved by reiuiation alone with the force of truth ; and now we come to me posi- tive exposition of the truth." At all events, the difterence of title in the case of a work having probably more names than one, is of no weight in disproof of identity. With this new designation in our possession, we may return to search for our book in the records of ecclesiastical antiquity ; and we have not far to go, before we alight on traces affording hopes of a result. No " Labyrinth," indeed, turns up in the literary history of earlier centuries than Photius ; but a " Little Laby- rinth " is mentioned by Theodoret,t as sometimes ascribed to Origen, but as evidently not his ; and from his account of it, confirmed by the matter which he borrows from it, we learn that it was a controversial book, against a set of Unitarians in Rome, followers of Theodotus. It so happens that the very passage from this tract which Theodoret has used appears also, with others from the same source, in Eusebius, only quoted under another title, — the book being called a " Work against the Heresy of Artemon " (who was another teacher of the same school in the same age). The extracts thus pre- served to us are not found in our work ; which, therefore, if it be the " Labyrinth," is a distinct production from the " Little Labyrinth " ; but they are so manifestly from the same pen, * Theologische Jahrbucher, 12er Band, I. 1853, p. 154. t Hasret. Fab. II. c. 5. Kara ttjs tovtcov 6 CfjiiKpos (rvveypa(f>T) Xa/3u- pivdos, OP Tivcs ^piyevovs vnoKap.^auov(TL noiTjpu • aXX' 6 ^apaKrfjp iXeyX^ei tovs Xeyovras. OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 215 occupied in tlie same task, as to render it perfectly conceiv- able that the two books might receive the same name, with only a diminutive epithet to distinguish the lesser from the greater. Nor are we left, as Baur has shown, without a dis- tinct assertion by our " great unknown," that he had already composed a smaller treatise on the same subject ; for, in the introduction to the " Philosophumena,'' he says of the here- tics, " We have before given a brief exposition of their opin- ions, refuting them in the gross, without presenting them in detail." This shorter work would naturally treat of the par- ticular forms of error most immediately present and mischiev- ous before the author's eyes ; and if he dwelt especially on the doctrines of Theodotus and Artemon, it is just what we should expect from an orthodox Roman. This essay, on a limited range of heresy, would naturally be issued at first with the special title by which Eusebius refers to it. But if it led the author to execute afterwards a much enlarged design, to which, from its intricate extent, he gave, on its completion, the fanciful designation of " The Labyrinth," he might naturally carry the name back to the earlier production, and, to mark the relation between the two, issue this in future as " The Little Labyrinth." Photius speaks of the tract against the heresy of Artemon as a separate work from "The Labyrinth,"* and says the same thing of the latter f that Theodoret had remarked of the former, that by some it was ascribed to Origen. The result to which we are thus led is the following. Our newly found work is not Ilippolytus's /3t/3Xt5apioi/ "■ On all Heresies," but the book known to Pliotius as " The Labyrinth " ; the author of which had previously produced two other works, viz. " The Little Labyrinth " men- tioned by Theodoret, and quoted under another name by Eusebius, and the " Treatise on the Universe," whose contents * Ho also doseribes its exact relation to the other, when he calls it a special work (t 8 i s KaTaTfjs*ApTefi(ovos atpeVftus. Cod. 48. t Ibid, oxnrep koi top Aa^vpivOov rives irr€ypa\l/'aif ^Q.piy(.vovs. 216 CREED AND HERESIES Photius reports. Whatever, therefore, fixes the authorship of any of these, fixes the authorship of alL Notwithstanding, however, our threefold chance, we have only a solitary evidence on this point. Attached to Photius's copy of the " Treatise on the Universe " was a note, to the effect that the book was not (as had been imagined) by Jo- sephus, but by Caius, the Roman presbyter, who also com- posed the "Labyrinth."* In the absence of other external testimony, this judgment appears entitled to stand, unless the books themselves disclose some features at variance with the known character of Caius. But, it is said, such variance we do actually find. For while our work expressly appeals to the Apocalypse as the production of John, we know from Eusebius that Caius ascribed it to Cerinthus, and, in opposing himself to Monta- hism, rejected the millenarian doctrine which is taught in the Revelations. This argument, we admit, would be decisive if its allegations were indisputable. It is curious, however, that *Jie one locus classicus,f from which is inferred the presbyter's repudiation of the Apocalypse, is confessedly ambiguous ; and the charge it prefers against Cerinthus may amount to either of these two propositions ; that he had composed the Book of Revelations and palmed it on the world as the production of * Biblioth. cod. 48; Lardner's "Credibility," Part 11. ch. xxxii.; Bun- sen's Hippolytus, I. p. 150. t Euseb. H. E., III. 28. dWa Koi KrjpivOos^ 6 bi drroKaXv'^ecav a)S vno dnocTToXov fieyaXov yeypa/x/xeVtoi/ TeparoXoyias Tjyuv fos hi dyyeXoiU avra dedeiyfj-euas y^evbofievos eTretcrayet, Xeyav, fxera rrjv dvdorraaiu eiriyciov dvai to ^aaiXciov tov Xpiarov, koi rrdXiv eTriBvfiiais Koi t]8o- vals €V 'l€pov(Ta\r]p. ttjv aapKU TroXiTevofisvrjv dovXeveiv. Koi ^xOpos VTrdp)(^a>v rals ypaf^ais rov 6fov dpi6p.ov ^iKiovraeTias ev yajuw ioprijs BeXcov Trkavav Xfyei yiueaOai. The passage, preserving its obscurities, seems to run thus: "Cerinthus too, through the medium of revelations written as if by a great Apostle, has palmed off upon us marvellous accounts, pretending to have been shown him by angels ; to the effect that, after the resurrection, the kingdom of Christ will be an earthly one, and that the flesh will again be at the head of affairs, and serve in Jerusalem the lusts and pleasures of sense. And with wilful misguidance he says, setting himself in OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 217 the Apostle John ; or, that he had given himself the air of a great Apostle, and published accordingly some revelations affecting to be imparted, like those of John, by angels. Ac- cording to this last interpretation, the work of Cerinthus would be a book distinct from our Apocalypse, written in imitation of it, and seeking to share its authority. The con- tents of the production are briefly described by Caius ; but they present such a mixture of agreement and disagreement with our canonical book, as to leave the ambiguity unresolved. They affirm, that after the resurrection will follow an earthly kingdom of Christ, in which the lower nature of man will, in Jerusalem, be again in servitude to passion and pleasure ; and that the number of a thousand years are to be spent in the indulgence of sense. So far as the place and the duration of the kingdom are concerned, our Apocalypse might here be referred to ; but it has nothing answering to the description of a gross and luxurious millennium. Taking the passage in conjunction with the similar statement of Theodoret, that " Cerinthus invented certain revelations, pretending that they were given in vision to himself," we think it unlikely that our Apocalypse can be meant ; and conceive the indictment to be, that Cerinthus had put forth a set of apocryphal visions, in which he abused the style and corrujited the teachings of a great Apostle to the purposes of a sensual fanaticism. This opposition to the Scriptures of God, that a period of a thousand years will be spent in nuptial festivities." On this much-controverted passage, Lardner (Cred., P. II. oh. xxxii.) suspends his judgment, rather inclining to doubt whether our Apocalypse is referred to; Hug (Einl. ^ 176), Paulus (Hist. Cerinth., P. I. § 30), with T wells and Hartwig (whose criticisms we have not seen), deny that the Apocalypse is meant; while Eichhorn (Einl. in das N. T., M. V. § 194. 2), De Wette (Lehrbuch der Einl. in d. X. T., § 192 a), Liicke (Commentar lib. d. Schrifren des Ev. Johannes, Offenb. ^ .33), and Schwegler (Das nachapost. Zeitalter, 2er B. p. 218), take the other side. It must be confessed also, that, till the rise of the present discussion about the "Philosophoumena," Baur agreed with these last writers. (See his Christl. Lehre v. d. Dreieinigkeit, ler B. p. 283.) He now urges, however, that, in a case already so doubtful, the discovery of a lost book, which we have good reason to ascribe to Caius, necessarily brings in new evidence, and may turn the scale between two balanced interpretations. (Theol. Jahrb., p. 157.) 19 218 CREED AND HERESIES is a charge which Cains might bring, in consistency with the fullest acceptance of the Apocalypse as authentic and true. It was not the doctrine of a reign of Christ on earth, not the millenarian period assigned to it, to which he objected in Cerinthus ; but the coarse and demoralizing picture given of its employments and delights. In proportion to his respect for the real Apocalypse and its teachings, would he be likely to resent such a miserable parody on its lofty theocratic visions. His opposition to the Montanists in no way pledged him to renounce the eschatological expectations which they were dis- tinguished from other Christians not by entertaining, but by exaggerating. If our work, in its notice of their heresy, passes by in silence this particular element of the system, and treats their claim to special gifts of prophecy with less contemptuous emphasis than might be looked for in the an- tagonist of Proclus, there is nothing that ought really to sur- prise us in this. It does not follow that, because in our scanty knowledge we have only one idea about an historical person- age, the man himself never had another. Caius did not live in a perpetual platform disputation with Proclus ; and either before that controversy had waked him up, or after it was well got over, he might naturally enough dismiss the Mon- tanists with very cursory notice ; in the one case, because they had not yet adequately provoked his antipathy ; in the other, because they had already had enough of it.* Nothing therefore presents itself in our work which should deter us from attributing it to Caius ; and the more we ponder the evidence, the more do we incline to believe it his. This * Baur explains the slight treatment of the Montanist heresy in the " Philosophumena " by the intention which Caius already had of writing a special book against them; and contends that this intention is announced expressly in the words (p. 276), ntpl tovtoou av6ii 'Xf7rTOfj.€p€(TT€pou eKSrj- (TOfiai' TToWois yap d(f)opnij KaKU>v ycyevrjrat f] rovrav alpfcris. These words, however, do not refer, as the connection evidently shows, to the ^lon- tanists generally; but only to a certain class of them who fell in with the patripassian doctrine of Noetus. The Noetian scheme Caius was going to discuss further on in this very book: and it is evidently to this later chapter, not to any separate work against Montanism, that he alludes. OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. . 219 result is to us an unwelcome one ; both because we know how strong the presumption must be against a critical judgment condemned by the masterly genius of M. Bunsen, and because he has really made us in love with his ecclesiastical hero, — has put such an innocent and venerable life into that old effigy, that after wandering with him about the quays of Portus, and entering with listening fancy into the Basilica* where he preached, it is hard to return him into stone, and think of him only as a dead bishop who made a bad almanac. Should our readers have contracted no such ideal attachment, Ave fear that this discussion of authorship may appear as trivial as it is tedious. Somebody wrote the " Philosophumena/' and wheth- er we call him Ilippolytus or Caius, whether we lodge him on the Tiber within sight of the Pharos, or of the Milliariuin Aureitm, may seem a thing indifferent, so long as the elements of the personal image do not materially change. This utilita- rian impression is by no means just, and indeed is at variance with all true historical feeling. But it is time that we should give it its fair rights, and turn from the name upon our new book to its substances and significance. Many sensible persons are at a loss, we believe, to under- stand why this refutation of thirty-two extinct heresies should be regarded with so much interest. Is it so well done, then ? they ask. Far from it : better books are brought out every year; and such a controversial argument offered in manu- script to Mr. Longman or Mr. Parker to-morrow, would hard- ly be deemed worth the cost of printing. Does it add materi- ally to our knowledge of the early heresies ? Something of this kind it certainly contributes ; but the gain is not large, and will make no essential change in the conclusions of any competent historical inquirer. Is any light thrown by it on the authenticity of our canonical books ? Tliis can hardly be expected from a production of the third century ; and M. Bunsen's application of it to this purpose appears to us, for * The word is perhaps not allowable in speakinp; of the earliest time (the reign of Alexander Severns) assiornable for the erection of separate build- ings appix)priate to Christian worship. 220 CREED AND HERESIES reasons which we shall assign, extremely precarious. Per- haps it supplies the want which every student of that period must have felt, and organically joins ecclesiastical to civil his- tory, so that they no longer remain apart, — the one as the stage for saints and martyrs, bishops and books, the other for soldiers and senators, emperors and paramours, — but min- gle in the common life of humanity. When we think how the author was placed, it is impossible not to go to him with an eager hope of this nature. He lived at the centre of the vast Roman world, and felt all the pulsations and paroxysms of that mighty heart. He witnessed the ominous decline of every traditional maxim and national reverence in favor of imported superstitions and degenerate barbarities. Under Commodus he saw the ancient Mars superseded by the Gre- cian Hercules, and Hercules represented by an emperor who sunk into a prize-fighter, and the administration of the empire in the wanton hands of a Phrygian slave, who was only less brutal than his master. In the midst of pestilence, which had become chronic in Italy from the time of M. Antoninus, and of which a Christian bishop could not but know more than others, the city was still adding to its semblance of splendor and salubrity ; and the magnificent baths and gi^ounds that were opened to tiie public service at the Porta Capena, with the multiplied festivities and donatives, attested how little mere physical attention to the people can arrest the miseries of a moral degradation. Nor could the Christians of that age be wholly without insight into the habits of the highest class in Rome, for, in that great colluvies of heterogeneous faiths, the caprice of taste, if not some better impulse, deter- mined now and then an inmate of the palace to favor the re- ligion of Christ ; and the favorite mistress of Commodus, who ruled him while she could, and then had him druo-ojed and strangled in his sleep, is the very Marcia whom our presbyter describes as (fiiXodeos, and at whose intervention the Christian exiles were released from their banishment in Sardinia. If he was at home when the excellent Pertinax was murdered, and cared to know what tyrant was to have the world instead, he OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 221 was perhaps in the throng that ran to the Quirinal, and heard the Prajtorians shout from their ramparts that the empire was for sale, and saw the bargain with the foolish senator below, who bought it with his money, and paid for it with his head. Caius and his people had reason to tremble when they saw in Septimius Severus not only the implacable conqueror who suffered no political opponent to live, but the worshipper of demons, the gloomy and fitful devotee of astrology and magic, phant only to sacerdotal hate ; and when the young Origen came to be their guest awhile, and told of the terror in Alex- andria which had joined his father to the band of martyrs, the post that just then brought the news of the Emperor's death in Britain would seem to take off a weight of fear ; especially as one son at least of the two inheritors of the empire had in childhood been committed to a Christian nurse, and been said to shrink and turn away from the savage spectacles of the am- phitheatre. They were doomed to be disappointed, if they had placed any hope in Caracalla, and to find that what they had taken in the boy for the nobleness of grace, was but the timidity of nature ; the murder, before his mother's face, of his only brother, and then of his best counsellor, for refusing to justify the fratricide, would soon make them ashamed of remembering that he had ever heard the name of Christ. It would be curious to know how the Christians comported them- selves when the Priest of the Sun became monarch of the world, and seemed intent on dethroning every divinity to en- rich the homage to his own. The grand temple on the Pal- atine, which he built for the god of Emesa, every passer-by must have seen as it rose from its foundations. And when the black stone was paraded on its chariot through the streets, and the elder deities were compelled to leave their shrines and attend in escort to the Eastern idol, or when the nuptials were celebrated between the Syrian divinity and the goddess of Carthage, and Baal-peor and Astarte succeeded to the hon- ors of Jove, no Christian presbyter could fail to witness the gorgeous and humiliating procession, — renewed as it was year by year, — or to ask himself into what deeper abomina- 19* 222 CREED AND HERESIES tion the city of the Scipios must sink, ere the catastrophe of judgment made a sudden end. The orgies of Helagabalus were more insulting to the elder Paganism of Rome than in' jurious to the new faith, which equally detested both ; and the offended moral feeling of the city reacted perhaps in favor of the Christian cause, and prepared the way for that more pub- lic teaching of the religion, in buildings avowedly dedicated to the purpose, which was first permitted in the succeeding reign. The natural recoil in the imperial family itself from the degradation of the court tended, perhaps, in the same di- rection, and drove the astute Mamnea to seek, amid the univer- sal corruption, for some school of discipline which might save the young Alexander Severus from the ignominy of her sis- ter's son. Whether from this motive, or from suspicion of the growing force of Christianity as a social power, she had sent for Origen, and had an interview with him at Antioch ; and the Roman disciples had reason to rejoice that her intellectual impressions of their system should have been derived from such a man, and her political estimate of it formed in the East, where the crisis of conflict between the dying and the living faiths was more advanced than in the West, and afford- ed a less disguised augury of the result. From their fellow- believers trading with the Levant, or arriving thence, the pas- tors of the metropolis would learn the propitious temper of the young Caesar and his mother ; and would feel no surprise, when he succeeded to the palace of his cousin, that he not only swept out the ministers of lust and luxury, but in his pri- vate oratory enshrined, among the busts of Pagan benefactors, the images also of Abraham and of Christ. They could not, however, but observe how little the morals of the court and the wisdom of the government could now avail to arrest the progress of decay, and reach in detail the vices and miseries of a degenerate state. When they passed the door of the palace, they heard the public crier's voice proclaim, " Let only purity and innocence enter here " ; they visited a Christian tradesman in a neighboring street, and found him just seized by a nobleman whom he had dunned for an outstanding debt, OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 223 charged with magic or poisoning, doomed to pine in prison till he gave release, and no redress or justice to be had. The Em- peror who, gazing in his chapel on the features of Christ, rec- ognized a religion human and universal, was the first under whom a visible badge was put upon the slave, and a distinc- tive servile dress adopted ; the slave markets were still in con- secrated spots, the temple of Castor and the Via Sacra ; and if ever some captive Onesimus, recommended by letters from the East to the brethren in Rome, was brought to the metrop- olis for sale, thither must the deacon or the pastor go to find how the auction disposes of their charge, and learn which among the chalked feet it is that are " shod with the prepa- ration of the Gospel of peace." The commonwealth had never boasted of so many great jurists as in the age of Papin- ian and Paulus ; but as the science of Law was perfected, the power of Law declined ; and Alexander Severus, the justest of emperors, was unable to protect Ulpian, the greatest of civilians, from military assassination in the palace itself, or to punish the perpetrators of this outrage on popular feeling as well as public riglit. The three days' tumult, in which this master of jurisprudence fell the victim of Praetorian licen- tiousness, our presbyter Caius must have witnessed ; and countless other momentous scenes, during a generation pain- fully affluent in vicissitude, must have passed before his eyes ; and had he but known of what value his reports would be to this age of ours, he would have said more of the life he saw, and less of the speculations he denounced. To us it would have been worth anything to know just what was too close to liim to catch his eye; — how the Christians lived in such a world ; what thoughts stirred in them as they walked the streets and heard the news ; what happened and was said when they met togetlier, and how this could adjust itself with the real facts of an inconsistent and tyrannical present ; and how, as the corrupted State became ever more incapable of vindicating moral ends, the rising Church undertook the secret governance of life, and penetrated with its authority into re- cesses beyond the reach, not of the arm of administration 224: CREED AND HERESIES onlj, but of the definitions of the widest code. But in this respect also our author fails to realize our hopes. lie gives us a book of fancies rather than of facts, and instead of paint- ing existence, which is transient, and must be caught as it flies, occupies himself in describing nonsense, which is always to be had. The enormities of Helagabalus, thou 226 CREED AND HERESIES with whom alone is vested the duty and the power of stating and defining them. They are not indeed all stated and de- fined in their last amplitude at once ; for definition is always an enclosure of the true by exclusion of the false ; and it is only in proportion as the dreaming perversity of men throws forth one delusive fancy after another, that the Church draws line after line to shut the intrusion out. If the creeds seem to enlarge as the centuries pass, it is not that they have more truth to give, but only more error to remove. The divine facts were conceived aright and conceived complete in the minds of Apostles and Evangelists, but they were not contem- plated then as against the follies and contradictions opposed to them in later times ; but as soon as the hour came for this antagonism to be felt, the infallible perception secured in per- petuity to the living hierarchy supplied the due verdict of re- jection. To the Catliolic, therefore, Christianity was made up and finished, its treasury was full, in the first generation; its power of development is only the refusal of deviation ; and its intellectual life is tame as the story of some perfect hero, who does nothing but stand still and repel temptations. The history of doctrines thus becomes a history of heresies ; the primitive stock of tradition and Scripture must, on the one hand, be maintained entire in the face of all possible expos- ures by critical research ; and, on the other, remain in eternal barrenness and produce no more. Natural knowledge, wheth- er of the world or of humanity, may grow continually, but the new thoughts it may lead us to entertain of God are ei- ther not new, or not true ; and every pretended enrichment of truth is nothing but evolution of falsehood. This removal of all variety from religion, this expulsion of life and change into the negative region of aberration and denial, eviscerates the past of its devout interest, rests the study of it on con- tempt instead of reverence for man ; with all its pious air, it simply betrays history with a kiss, and delivers it over for scribes to buffet and chief priests to crucify. Short work is made in this way of any fresh witness, like the author of our book^ who turns up unexpectedly from an early age. Does OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 227 he speak in agreement with the hierarchical standards ? He only flings another voice into the consensus of obedient behev- ers. Does he say anything at variance with the regula jideil Then have we only to see in what class of heretics he stands. His testimony is either superfluous or misleading. The Protestant, of the approved English type, arrives, under guidance of a different thought, at the same flat and in- different result. Though he gives a more subjective charac- ter to divine truth than the Roman Catholic, and brings both the want and the sui)ply of it more within the attestation of consciousness, he puts its discovery equally beyond the reach of our ruined faculties, and equally cuts it oiF from all rela- tion to philosophy and the natural living exercise of reason and conscience. He further agrees that his foreign gift of revelation was imported all at once, and all complete, into our world, within the Apostolic age ; that the conceptions of that time are an authoritative rule for all succeeding centuries ; and that every newer doctrine is to be regarded as a false accretion, to be flung off into the imcompetent and barren spaces of human speculation. He denies, however, the two- fold vehicle of this precious gift ; and, cancelling altogether the oral tradition and indeterminate Christian consciousness of the early Church, shuts up the whole contents of religion within the canonical Scriptures. The guardianship of un- written tradition being abolished, and the canon requiring no guardianship at all, the trust deposited with the hierarchy disappears ; and no permanent inspiration, no authoritative judicial function, in matters of faith, remains. Whatever Holy Spirit continues in the Church is not a progressively teaching spirit, which can ever impart thoughts or experiences unknown to the first believers ; but a personally comforting and animating spirit, whose highest climax of enlightenment is the exact reproduction of the primitive state of mind. The apprehension of Divine truth is thus reduced to an affair of verbal interpretation of documents ; and though in this pro- cess there is room for the largest play of subjective feeling, so that dilfereut minds, diflferent nations, different ages, will 228 CREED AND HERESIES unconsciously evolve very various results ; these are not to be regarded as possible Divine enrichments of the faith, but to be brought rigidly to the standard of the earliest Church, and disowned wherever they include what was absent there. This view is less mischievous than the Roman Catholic, only because it is more inconsequent and confused. The canon which you take as sacred was selected and set in authority by the unwritten consciousness and tradition which you reject as profane. The Church existed before its records ; ex- pressed its life in ways spreading indefinitely beyond them ; and neither was exempt from human elements till they were finished, nor lost the Divine spirit when they were done. So arbitrary a doctrine corrupts the beauty of Scripture, and deadens the noblest interest of history. If the New Testa- ment is to serve as an infallible standard, it is thus committed to perfect unity and self-consistency ; and you are obliged to contend that the various types of doctrine found within its compass — the Messianic conceptions of Matthew and John, the " Faith " of Paul and James, the eucharistic conceptions of the first Evangelists and the last, the eschatology of the Apocalypse and the Epistles — are only different sides of one and the same belief, colored with the tints and shadings of several minds. How utterly inadequate such an hypothesis is to the explanation of the Scri2:)tural phenomena, what a distorted and absurd representation it gives of the sacred writ- ers, and their mode of thought, is best known to those who have honestly tried to deal with the fourth Gospel, for instance, as historically the supplement of the others, and dogmatically of the Book of Revelation ; to suppose the Logos-doctrine tacitly present in the speeches of Peter; to detect the pre- existence in Mark, or remove it from John ; or to identify the Paraclete with the gifts of Pentecost. All feeling of liv- ing reality is lost from our picture of the Apostolic time, when its outlines are thus blurred, its contrasts destroyed, its grouped figures effaced, and the whole melted away by the persever- ing drizzle of a watery criticism into a muddy glory round the place where Christ should be. If, moreover, we are to OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 229 find everything in the first age, then the second, and the third, and all others, must be worse, just in so far as they dif- fer from it ; and the whole course of succeeding thought, the widening and deepening of the Christian faith and feeling, the swelling of its stream by the lapse into it of Oriental Gnosis and Hellenic Platonism and the Western Conscience, must be a ceaseless degeneracy. Thus to the Bibliolater as to the Romanist, Divine truth has no history among men, unless it be the history of decline, or of recovery purchased by decline. He also will accordingly care nothing about what the people of Caius or Hippolytus thought. Is it in the Bible ? If so, he knew it before. Is it not in the Bible ? Then he has noth- ing to do with it but throw it away. By a fitting retribution, this moping worship of the letter of a book and the creed of a generation brings it to pass that both are lost to the mind in a dismal haze of ignorance and misconception ; and if the " Evangelical " believer could be transported suddenly from Exeter Hall into the company of the twelve in Jerusalem, or the Proseucha which Paul enters on the banks of the Stry- mon, or the room where the Agape is prepared at Rome, we are persuaded that he would find a scene newer to his ex- pectations than by any other migration into a known time and place. But now let us abolish this isolation from the rest of human existence of the incunabula of our faith, and throw open that time to free relation with the whole providence of humanity. Suppose Christianity to be the influence upon the world of a Divine Person, — in quality divine, in quantity human, — whose Epiphany was determined at a crisis of ripe conditions for the rescue, the evolution, the spread of holy and sanctify- ing truth. What are those conditions ? They consist mainly in the co-presence, within the embrace of one vast state, of two opposite races or types of men, both having a partial gift of divine apprehension, and holding in charge an indispensa- ble element of truth ; both with their spiritual lite verging to exhaustion and capable of no separate effort more ; and each unconsciously pining away for want of the complement of 20 230 CREED AND HERESIES thought which the other only could supply. The Hebrew brought his intense feeling of the Personality of God ; con- ceiving this in so concentrated a form as to exclude the proper notion of infinitude, and render Him only the most powerful Being in the Universe, its Monarch, — wielding the creatures as his puppets, — acting historically upon its scenes as objec- tive to Him, and by the annals of his past agency supplying to the Abrahamic family a religion of archives and documents. The sovereignty of Jehovah raised him to an immeasurable height above his creation ; dwarfed all other existence ; placed him by nature at a distance from men, and only by conde- scension allowing of approximation. And hence his worship- pers, in proportion as they adored his greatness, felt the little- ness of all else ; acquired a temper towards their fellow-men, if not severe and scornful, at least not reverent and tender ; and regarded them as separate in kind from Him, mere dust on the balance or locusts in the field. The religion of the Hellenic race began at the other end, — from the midst of human life, its mysteries, its struggles, its nobleness, its mix- ture of heroic Free-will and awful Destiny ; and their deepest reverence, their quickest recognition of the Divine, was di- rected towards the soul of a man vindicating its grandeur, though it should be against superhuman powers. In propor- tion as men were great, beautiful, and good, did they appear to be as lesser gods, and earth and heaven to be filled with the same race. Thought, conscience, admiration in the hu- man mind were not personal accidents separately originat- ing in each individual ; but the sympathetic response of our common intellect, standing in front of Nature, to the kindred life of the Divine intellect behind Nature, and ever passing into expression through it. When this feeling of the Hellenic race became reflective, and organized itself into philosophy, it represented the universe as the eternal assumption of form by the Divine thought, which we were enabled to read off by our essential identity of nature. Hence a whole series of conceptions quite different from the Hebrew representations ; instead of Creation, Evolution of being ; instead of Interposi- OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 231 tion from without, Incarnation operating from within ; instead of Omnipotent AVill, Universal Thought ; assigning as the ideal of man's perfection, not so much obedience to Law, as similitude of Mind to God ; and tending predominantly not to strength in Morals, but to beauty in Art. These two opposite tendencies had run tlieir separate course, and expended their proper history ; and were talking wildly, as in the approach- ing delirium of death. But they are the two factors of all religious truth : and to fuse them together, to make it impos- sible that either should perish or should remain alone, the Christ was given to the world, so singularly balanced between them, that neither could resist his power, but both were drawn into it for the regeneration of mankind. In the accidents of his lot given to the one race, and only baffling the visions of prophets to transcend them ; in the essence of his nature, so august and attractive to the other that the faith in Incarna- tion was irresistible ; presented to the Hebrews by his mortal birth, and snatched from them by his immortal ;' stopping by his holiness the mouth of Law, and carrying it up into the higher region of Faith and Love ; in the Temple wishing the Temple gone, that there might be open communion, Spirit with Spirit ; translating sacrifice into self-sacrifice ; — he had every requisite for conciliating and blending the separated elements of truth which, for so many ages, had been converg- ing towards him. But if this was the function providentially assigned to him, and for which the divine and human were so blended in him, it is a function which could not be accom- plished in a moment, in a generation, in a century. It is an historical function, freely demanding time for its theatre ; and as the separate factors had occupied ages in attaining their ripeness for combination, so must their fusion consume many a lifetime of effervescing thought, ere the homogeneous truth appeared. The words of Christ are not in this view the end in which Revelation terminates ; but the means given to us of knowing himself, contributions to the j)icture we form of his personality. Nor are the sentiments of his immediate followers about his office and position in the scheme of Prov- 232 CREED AND HERESIES idence anything more authoritative to us than the incipient attempts made, when his influence was fresh, to grasp the whole of his relations while only a part was to be seen. The records of the great crisis are no doubt of superlative value, as the vehicles by which alone we understand and feel its power ; but their value is lost if they are to dictate truth to our passive acceptance, instead of quickening our reason and conscience to find it : they stop in this way the very develop- ment which they were to lead, and disappoint Christ of the very work he came to achieve. Human elements were in- evitably and fully present in the first age and its Scriptures, as in every other ; and the transitory ingredients they have left, it is a duty to detach from the eternal truth. And as conditions of finite imperfection cannot be banished from the central era, neither can the guidance of the Infinite Spirit be denied, whether among the Hebrew, the Hellenic, or the Christian people, in the ages before and after. In that new development of human consciousness and knowledge in regard to God, which we call Christianity, all the requisite condi- tions — viz. the factors taken up, the Person who blends them, and the continuous product they evolve — include Divine Inspiration as well as Human Reflection, — the living pres- ence and communion of the Eternal with the Transitory Mind, of the perfectly Good with the good in the Imperfect. To disengage the one from the other, to treasure up the true and holy that is born of God, and let fall the false and wrong that is infused by man, is possible only to Reason and Con- science, is indeed the perpetual work in which they live ; the denial of which is not merely Atheism, but Devil-worship, — not the bare negation, but the positive reversal, of religion, — the virtual affirmation that God indeed exists^ but exists as t^i-reason and t//i-good. No mechanical, no chronological separation can be effected of the Divine from the Human, the Revealed from the Unrevealed, in faith ; there is no person, no book, no age, no Church, in which both do not meet, and require to be disentangled the one from the other ; but the perseverance of God's living and self-harmonious Spirit OF EARLY CnRISTIA:NITY. 233 througliout the discordant errors of dying generations enables the men most apt and faithful to his voice to know more and more what his reality is, and drop the semblances by which it is disguised. The effect of this view on our estimate of ecclesiastical literature is evident. As, according to it, the Apostolic period is not exempted from critical judgment, so neither are succeeding times to be without their claim on re- ligious reverence. The canonical books of the New Testa- ment fall back into the general mass of literature recording the earliest knowledge and consciousness of the disciples, neither detached, as a mysterious whole, from other produc- tions of their time, nor excluding the greatest diversities of value among themselves. They exhibit the first struggling efforts — not always concurrent in their direction — of an awakening spiritual life, to interpret a recent Divine manifes- tation, and to solve by it the problem of the world's Provi- dence. Their very freshness and proximity to the great fig- ure of Christ was by no means an unmixed advantage to these efforts ; and they were not so complete and successful as to supersede their continuance in the next and following gener- ations, which lay under no incompetency for their prosecution, and are as likely, so far as antecedent probability goes, to have enriched and improved, as to have impoverished and si)oiled, the earlier doctrine of Christ's relation to God ami to mankind. The chasm thus disappears between the A[)ostolic age and its successor ; the products of the first are not to be accepted simply because they are there, nor those of the sec- ond rejected because tliey are absent from the first ; nor is everything to be admitted on showing that it stands in both, and even had a tenure long enough to become the prescriptive occupant of the Cliurch. The CathoHc is riglit in clinging to the continuous thread of Divine Inspiration binding the cen- turies of Christendom together ; and in maintaining that the expression of true doctrine grows fuller with time. He is wrong in making the Si)irit over to an hierarchical corpora- tion ; and in treating the ostensible growth of doctrine as the mere negation of heresies. The Protestant is right in rescu- 20* 234 CREED AND HERESIES in2 from the haze of uncertain tradition the real historical ground of his religion, and setting it in the focus of an intense reverence ; and in rejecting whatever cannot be adjusted with the clear facts and essential Spirit of that primitive Gospel- He is wrong in his insulation of that time as a sole authorita- tive age of golden days, in which the faith had neither error nor defect, and from which it must be copied, with daguerreo- type exactitude, into every disciple's mind. Keep the positive elements, destroy the negative limitations of both these sys- tems, and the true conception of Christianity emerges. As a system of self-conscious doctrine, it is a religious Philosophy, starting from the historical appearance of Christ as an ex- pression of God in human life, and always detained around this one object as its centre ; and in its development consult- ing not the idiosyncrasies and conceits of private and personal reflection, but the devout consciousness and spiritual consensus of all Christian ages and all holy men. All religion is the product of an action of the Infinite mind upon the finite : in the Christian religion that action takes place upon souls en- gaged in the contemplation of Christ as the manifestation of God's moral nature. This given object remaining the same, there is room for indefinite expansion and variety ; and every developed form is to be tried, not by its date, but by the tests of truth relevant to religious philosophy. How far M. Bunsen would recognize his own doctrine in this exposition we cannot say ; but without intending in the least to make him responsible for it, we think it does not es- sentially deviate from his scheme of thought. The philosoph- ical aphorisms in which he has embodied his speculative faith follow an order which we should have spoiled, had we, for our present purpose, so brought them together as to make them speak for themselves. And though they display the same astonishing command of our language, in which the author never fails, the cast of the thoughts is so Teutonic, that few English readers, it is to be feared, will appreciate their depth and richness. The complaint, which we have heard and seen, that they are wholly unintelligible, is indeed purely ridiculous, OF KARLY CHRISTIANITY. 235 except that it s«idly illustrates the extent to which reflection, and even feeling, on such subjects has ceased in England. M. Bunsen, we can assure our readers, knows what he means, and lucidly states what he means ; and those who miss his meaning have for the most part no slight loss. The following sentences, which the greatest sufferer from philosophobia may drink in without convulsions, will explain his idea of Revela- tion, in its bearing upon the use of written records. The mere " Natural Religion " of the Deist, he observes, was — " The negative reaction against the equally untenable, un- philosophical, and iiTational notion, that revelation was noth- ing but an external historical act. Such a notion entirely loses siiiht of the infinite or eternal factor of revelation, found- ed both in the nature of the infinite and that of the finite mind, of God and man. " This heterodox notion became still more obnoxious, by its imagininjj somethinij hijiher in the manifestation of God's will and being than the human mind, wdiich is the divinely- appointed organ of divine manifestation, and in a double man- ner; ideally in mankind, as object, historically in the individ- ual man, as instrument. "The notion of a merely historical revelation by written records is as unhistorical as it is unintellectual and materialis- tic. It necessarily leads to untruth in philosophy, to unreality in religious thought, and to Fetichism in worship. It misun- derstands the process necessarily implied in every historical representation. The form of expressing the manitestation of God in the mind, as if God was himself using human speech "to man, and was thus himself finite and a man, is a form in- lierent in the nature of human thought as embodied in lan- guage, its own rational expression. It was originally never meant to be understood materialistically, because the religious consciousness which produced it was essentially spiritual; and, indeed, it can only l)e thus misunderstood by those who make it a rule {\nd criterion of faith, never to connect any thought whatever with what they are expected to believe as divinely true. 236 CREED AND HERESIES " Every religion is positive. It is, therefore, justly called a religion ' made manifest ' (ofFenbart), or, as the English term has it, revealed ; that is to say, it supposes an action of the in- finite mind, or God, upon the finite mind, or man, by which God, in his relation to man, becomes manifest or visible. This can be mediate, through the manifestation of God in the Universe of Nature ; or a direct, immediate action, through the religious consciousness. " This second action is called revealed, in the strictest sense. The more a religion manifests of the real substance and na- ture of God, and of liis relation to the universe and to man, the more it deserves the name of a divine manifestation, or of Revelation. But no religion which exists could exist without something of truth, revealed to man, through the creation, and through his mind. " Such a direct communication of the Divine mind as is called Revelation has necessarily two factors, which are unit- edly w^orking in producing it. The one is the infinite factor, or the direct manifestation of eternal truth to the mind, by the power which that mind has of perceiving it ; for human perception is the correlate of divine manifestation. There could be no revelation of God if there was not the corre- sponding faculty in the human mind to receive it, as there is no manifestation of light where there is no eye to see it. " This infinite factor is, of course, not historical ; it is inhe- rent in every individual soul, only with an immense difference in the degree. " The action of the Infinite upon the mind, is the miracle of history and of religion, equal to the miracle of creation. " Miracle, in its highest sense, is therefore essentially and undoubtedly an operation of the Divine mind upon the human mind. By that action the human mind becomes inspired with a new life, which cannot be explained by any precedent of the selfish (natural) life, but is its absolute contrary. This mira- cle requires no proof; the existence and action of religious life is its proof, as the world is the proof of creation. " The second factor of revelation is the finite or external. OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 237 This means of divine manife?;tation is, in tlie first place, a uni- versal one, the Universe or Nature. But, in a more special sense, it is a historical manifestation of divine truth through the life and teaching of higher minds among men. These men of God are eminent individuals, who communicate some- thing of eternal trtfth to their brethren ; and, as far as they themselves are true, they have in them the conviction, that what they say and teach of things divine is an objective truth. They therefore firmly believe that it is independent of their individual personal opinion and impression, and will last, and not perish, as their personal existence upon earth must. " The difference between Christ and other men of God is analogous to that between the manifestation of a part, and of the totality and substance, of the divine mind." — Vol. II. p. 60, seq. The newly-found work, like other productions of the same period, can have only a disturbing interest for the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Protestant. For, in conjunction with previous evidence, it shows that the unbroken unity of teach- ing is altogether a fiction ; that Avhat afterwards became here- sy was, in the latter part of the second century, held in the church of the primacy itself, and by successors of St. Peter ; that the clergy of Rome, so far from owning the apostolic au- thority of their chief, could resist him as heterodox ; and that the contents of the Catholic system, far from appearing as an invariable whole from the first, were a gradual synthesis of elements flowing in from new channels of influence brought into connection with the faith ; and as against the approved type of Protestant, it shows that his favorite scheme of dog- ma was still in a very unripe state, and that further back it had been still more so; so tliat if he binds himself to the ear- liest creed, he may probably have to accept a profession which he hardly regards as Christian at all. But from the third point of view, which assumes that development is an in- herent necessity in a revelation, and may add to its truth, in- stead of subtracting from it, tiie monuments of Christian liter- ature from the secondary period have a positive interest, free 238 CREED AND HERESIES from all uneasiness and alarm. They arrest for us, in the midst, the advance of theological belief towards the form ulti- mately recognized in the Church, and expressed in the estab- lished creeds ; they render visible the beautiful features and expanded look of the faith, when its Judaic blood had been cooled by the waters of an Hellenic baptism ; and though they leave many undetermined problems as to the successive steps by which the original Hebrew type of the Gospel in Je- rusalem was metamorphosed into the Nicene and hierarchical Christianity, they fix some intermediate points,- and make us profoundly conscious of the greatness of the change. The author of the " Philosophumena," for instance, would be stopped at the threshold of every sect in our own country, and excluded as heterodox. He crosses the lines of our theo- logical definitions, and trespasses on forbidden ground, in every possible doctrinal direction. Cardinal Wiseman would have nothing to say to him ; for he is insubordinate to the " Vicar of Christ," and profanely insists that a pope may be deposed by his own council of presbyters. The Bishop of Exeter would refuse him institution ; for his Trinity is imper- fect, and he allows no Personality to the Holy Ghost. The Archbishop of Dublin might probably think him a little hard upon Sabellius ; but, if he would quietly sign the Articles, (which, however, he could by no means do,) might abstain from retaliation, and let him pass. At Manchester, Canon Stowell would keep him in hot water for his respectable opin- ion of human nature, and his lofty doctrine of free-will. In Edinburgh, Dr. Candlish would not listen to a man who had nothing to say of reliance on the imputed merits of Christ. The sapient board at New College, St. John's Wood, would expel him for his loose notions of Inspiration. And the Uni- tarians would find him too transcendental, make no com- mon sense out of his notions of Incarnation, and recommend him to try Germany. This fact, that a bishop of the second and third centuries would be ecclesiastically not a stranger only, but an outcast among us, is mo^^t startling ; and ought surely to open the eyes of modern Christians to the false and OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 239 dangerous position into which their churches have been brought by narrow-heartedness and insincerity. It will not be I\I. Bunsen's fault if our Churchmen remain insensible to the national peril and disgrace of maintaining unreformed a sys- tem long known to have no heart of modern reality, and now seen to have as little ground of ancient authority. Again and again he raises his voice of earnest and affectionate w arn- ing. As a foreigner domesticated among us, as a scholar of wide historical view, as a philosophical statesman who, amid the diplomacy of the hour, descends to the springs of peren- nial life in nations, as a Christian who profoundly trusts the reality of religion, and cannot be dazzled by the pretence, he sees, with a rare clearness and breadth, both the capabilities and the dangers of our social and spiritual condition. He sees that God has given to the English people a moral mas- si veness and veracity of character which presents the grand- est basis of noble faith ; while learned selfishness and aristo- cratic apathy uphold in the Church creeds which only stupid- ity can sign without mental reservations, — -a Liturgy that catches the scruple of the intellectual without touching the enthusiasm of the popular heart, — a laity without function, — a clergy without unity, — and a hierarchy without power. He sees that our insular position has imparted to us a distinc- tive nationality of feeling, supplying copious elements for coa- lescence in a common religion ; while obstinate conservatism has permitted our Christianity to become our great divisive power, and to disintegrate us through and through. He re- spects our free institutions, which sustain the health of our political life ; but beside them he finds an ecclesiastical sys- tem either imposed by a dead and inflexible necessity, or left unguided to a whimsical voluntaryism, which separates the combinations of faith from the relations of neiiiliborhood, of municipality, of country. With noble and richly-endowed universities at the exclusive disposal of the Church, he finds the theological and philosophical sciences so shamefully neg- lected, that Christian faith notoriously does not hold its intel- lectual ground, and in its retreat does nothing to reach a firm- 240 CREED AND HERESIES er position ; but only protests its resolution to stand still, and raise a din against the critic or metaphysic host that drives it back. Is there no one in this great and honest country that has trust enough in God and truth, foresight enough of ruin from falsehood and pretence, to lay the first hand to the work of renovation? Is statesmanship so infected with negligent contempt of mankind, that no high-minded politician can be found to care for the highest discipline of the people, and re- organize the institutions in which their conscience, their rea- son, their upward aspirations, should find life? Has the Church no prophet with faith enough to fling aside creed and college, and fire within him to burn away media3val pedantries, and demand an altar of veracity, that may bring us together for common work and " common prayer " ? Or is it to be left to the strong men, exulting in their strength, and storming with the furor of honest discontent, to settle these matters with the sledge-hammer of their indignation? Miserable hypocrisy ! to open the lips and lift the eyes to heaven, while beckoning with the finger of apathy to these pioneers of Ne- cessity ! Would that some might be found to lay to heart our author's warning and counsel in the following sentences : — " While we exclude all suggestions of despair, as being equally unworthy of a man and of a Christian, we estabhsh two safe principles. The first is, that, in all congregational and ecclesiastical institutions, Christian freedom, within limits conformable to Scripture, constitutes the first requisite for a vital restoration. The second fundamental principle is, that every Church must hold fast what she already possesses, in so far as it presents itself to her consciousness as true and effi- cacious. In virtue of the first condition, she will combine Reason and Scripture in due proportions ; by virtue of the second, she will distinguish between Spirit and Letter, be- tween Idea and Form. No external clerical forms and me- diaeval reflexes of bygone social and intellectual conditions can save us, nor can sectarian schisms and isolation from national life. Neither can learned speculations, and still less the incomparably more arrogant dreams of the unlearned. OF EARLY CnniSTIANITY. 241 Scientific consciousness must dive into real life, and refresh itself in tlie feelings of the people, and that no one will be able to do without having made himself thoroughly conver- sant Avith the sufferings and the sorrows of the lowest classes of society. For out of the feeling of these sufferings and sorrows, as being to a great degree the most extensive and most deep-seated product of evil, — that is, of selfishness, — arose, eigliteen hundred years ago, the divine birth of Christi- anity. The new birth, however, requires new pangs of labor, and not only on the part of individuals, but of the whole na- tion, in so far as she bears within her the germs of future life, and possesses the strength to bring forth. Every nation must set about the work herself, not, indeed, as her own especial exclusive concern, but as the interest of all mankind. Every people has the vocaHon to coin for itself the divine form of Humanity, in the Church as well as in the State ; its life de- pends on this being done, not its reputation merely ; it is the condition of existence, not merely of prosperity. " Is it not time, in truth, to withdraw the veil from our mis- ery ? to point to the clouds which rise from all quarters, to the noxious vapors which have already well-nigh suffocated us ? to tear off the mask from hypocrisy, and destroy that sham which is undermining all real ground beneath our feet? to point out tiie dangers which surround, nay, threaten already to engulf us ? Is the state of things satisfactory in a Chris- tian sense, whore so much that is unchristian predominates, and where Christianity has scarcely begun here and there to penetrate the surface of the common life .'' Shall we be sat- isfied with the increased outward respect paid to Christianity and the Church ? Shall we take it as a sign of renewed life, that the names of God and Christ have become the fashion, and are used as a party badge? Can a society be said to be in a healthy condition, in which material and selfish interests in individuals, as well as in the masses, gain every day more and more the upper hand ? in which so many thinking and educated men are attached to Christianity only by outward forms, maintauied either by despotic power, or by a not less 21 242 CREED AND HERESIES despotic, half-superstitious, half-hypocritical custom ? when so many churches are empty, and satisfy but few, or display more and more outward ceremonials and vicarious rites ? when a godless schism has sprung up between spirit and form, or has even been preached up as a means of rescue ? when gross ignorance or confused knowledge, cold indiffer- ence or the fanaticism of superstition, prevails as to the un- derstanding of Holy Scripture, as to the history, nay, the fun- damental ideas of Christianity ? when force invokes religion in order to command, and demagogues appeal to the rehgious element in order to destroy ? when, after all their severe chastisements and bloody lessons, most statesmen base their wisdom only on the contempt of mankind? and when the prophets of the people preach a liberty, the basis of which is selfishness, the object libertinism, and the wages are vice ? , And this in an age the events of which show more and more fatal symptoms, and in which a cry of ardent longing pervades the people, re-echoed by a thousand voices ! " — III. xv. Sorry, however, as we should be to see our Roman presby- ter disconsolately wandering from fold to fold in modern England, and dismissed as a black sheep from all, we should not like to find him metamorphosed into chief shepherd ei- ther, and invested with the guidance of our ecclesiastical affairs. Thou2:h he is above imitatinsr the feeble railinsj of Irenjieus at the heresies, he deals with them in the true clerical style ; often missing their real meaning, he does not spare them his bad word ; and fancies he has killed them before he has even caught them. He has an evident relish also for a tale of scandal, as a make-weight against a theological opponent. In the " Little Labyrinth," he had told us a story about a Unita- rian minister, who, for accepting his schismatical office, had been horsewhipped by angels all night ; so that he crawled in the morning to the metropolitan, and gave in his penitential recantation. And now, in the larger work, the author flies at higher game, and makes out that Pope Callistus was an in- corrigible scamp ; originally a slave in the household of a wealthy Christian master, Carpophorus, whose confidence he OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 243 abused in every possible way. First, having been intrusted with the management of a bank in the Piscina publica, he swindled and runied the depositors, and decamped, with the intention of sailing from Portus, but was found on board ship ; and, though he jumped into the sea to avoid capture, was picked up, and condemned by his master to the hand-mill. Next, being allowed to go out, on the plea of collecting some debts which would enable him to pay a .dividend to the de- positors, he created a riot in a Jews' synagogue, and, being brought before the prefect, was sentenced to be flogged and transported to Sardinia. Thence he escaped by passing him- self off among a number of Christians, released from their exile through the influence of the Emperor's concubine, Mar- cia, and on the recommendation of Victor, the Pope. As he was not included in the list of pardons, he no sooner made his appearance in Rome than his master sent him off to live on a monthly allowance at Antium. On the death of Carpophorus, he seems to have attained his freedom by bequest ; and his fertility of resource having made him useful to the new Pope Zephyrinus, he acquired influence enough to succeed him in the Primacy. We must confess that the evident gitsto with which our presbyter tells this scandal, the animus with which he accuses Zephyrinus also of stupidity and venality, and the predominance in his narrative of theological antipathy over moral disgust, leave a painful impression on the reader re- specting the spirit then at work in the Apostolic See. And thougli his scheme of belief, especially in relation to the per- son of Christ, was more rational than the definitions of more modern creeds, yet we fear that he would be not less nice about its shape, and intolerant of those who move about in freer folds of thought, than a divine of the Canterbury clois- ters or the Edinburgh platform. His quarrel with the two popes whom he abuses shows pretty clearly the stage of de- velopment which the Christian theology had then reached. On this matter we must say a few words. Whatever may have been the precise order of combination which brought the Hebrew and Hellenic ideas of God into 244 CREED AND HERESIES union, there can be no doubt about the two termini of the pro- cess. It started from the monarchical conception of Jehovah, as a Unity without plurahty ; and it issued in the Athanasian Trinity, with its three hypostases in one essence. Of these, the Father expressed the Absolute existence, the Son the Objective manifestation, the Holy Spirit the Subjective reve- lation of God. In the presbyter's creed, the third term was not yet incorporated, but still floated freely, diffused and im- personal. Leaving this out of view, we may observe, in the remaining part of the doctrine, two principal difficulties to be surmounted, arising from th.e double medium of divine objec- tive manifestation, — Nature, always proceeding, — and Christ, historically transient. Tlie first problem is. How to pass at all out of the Infinite existence into Finite phenomena, and conceive the relation between the Father and the Son ; thje second, How to pass from Eternal manifestation through all phenomena into temporary appearance in an Individual, so as to conceive the relation between the Son and the Galilean Christ. Thus, excluding all reference to the Holy Spirit, there were, in fact, four objects of thought, w^hose relations to one another were to be adjusted ; viz. the Father, the Son evolving all things, the Christ or divine individualization in the Gospel, and Jesus of Nazareth, the human being with whose hfe this individualization concurred. Among all these there were, so to speak, two clearly distinct Wills to dispose of; that of the man Jesus at the lowest extremity, and that of the Supreme God, Avhich the Jew, at least, would fix at the upper. These two Wills act, in the whole development of doctrine on this subject, as the secret centres of Personality ; and the remaining elements obtain or miss a hypostatic character ac- cording as they are drawn or not into coalescence with the one or the other. The volitional point of the Divine Agency being once determined, it may be regarded as enclosed be- tween the Thought, or intellectual essence out of which it comes, and the Execution by which it is realized ; or it may be left undistinguished from these, and may be made to coin- cide with either. According to these variable conditions arise OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 245 the several modes of doctrine in reference to the Divine ele- ment in God's Objective manifestation. The differences, for instance, between our presbyter's doctrine and Origen's, will be found to depend on the different points which they seize as the seat of divine volition, and the germ of their logical de- velopment. Our author, exemplifying the Hebrew tendency, seeks his initiative up at the fountain-head, and puts himself back before the first act of creation ; he starts from the One God, with whom nothing was co-present, and fixes in Him the seat of the primeval AVill. There, however, it would remain, a mere potentiality, did not the Eternal Mind, by reflection in itself, pass into self-consciousness,' and give objectivity to its own thought. This primary expression of his essence, in which it enters into relation, but relation only to itself, is the Logos, or Son of God, the agent in the production of all things. The potentiality is thus reserved to the Father ; the effectuation is given to the Son ; who, coming in at a point lower down than the seat of Will, and simply bridging over the interval that leads to accomplishment, is felt without the essential condition of a numerically distinct subsistence ; and has either the instrumental and subordinate personality of a dependent being, or is imperfectly hypostatized.* In this im- personal character does the Logos manifest the Divine thought in the visible universe ; in the minds of godly men, which are the source of law ; in the glance of prophets, which catches and interprets the divine significance of all times ; and first assumes a full personality in the Incarnation. Having left the primary Will behind in the Father's essence, the Logos remains but an inchoate hypostasis, till alighting, in the human nature, on another centre of volition. As if our author were half conscious, in reaching this point, of relief from an ante- cedent uneasiness, he now holds fast to the personality which lias been realized, represents it as not dissolved by the death * To Hippolytus and the writers of his period, Dorner ascribes tlie latter, preponderantly over the former, side of this alternative ; while Hiinell charges their view with Sabellianism. See Dorner's " Entwickelungsgeschichte der Lehre vou der Person Christi," I. p. 611, seq. 21* 246 CREED AND HERESIES on the cross, but taken up into heaven, and abiding for ever. It is, in this view, the two extreme terms that supply the hy- postatizing power ; of the others, the Logos has no personal- ity but by looking back to the Father ; nor the Christ, but by going forward to the Son of Mary. This shows the yet pow- erful influence of the Judaic Monarchianism, and the embar- rassment of a mind, setting out from that type of faith, to provide any plurality within the essence of God. Origen, on the other hand, yielded to the Hellenic feeling, and, instead of going back to any absolute commencement, looked for his Divine centre and starting-point further down; and took thence whatever upward glance was needful to complete his view. As the Greek reverence was not touched but by the Divine embodied in concrete life and form, so the Alexan- drine catechist instinctively fixed upon the Sox, the objective Thought of God, proceeding, not once upon a time or ever Jirst, but eternally, from Him, as the initiative position for his doctrine. Here wils placed the clearest and intensest focus of Will; and only in this ever-evolving efficient were the full conditions of personality realized. The Father was conceived more pantheistically, as the universal vovs, the intellectual background, whence issued the acting nature of the Son. In meditating on them in their conjunction, Origen would think of the relation between thought and volition ; our author, of that between volition and execution. Both doctrines show the imperfect fusion of Hebrew and Hellenic elements, and illustrate the characteristic effect of an excessive proportion of each. Where the Hebrew element prevails, the personality of the Son is endangered ; where the Hellenic, the personality of the Father. Even our presbyter's doctrine of the Son, however, gave too strong an impersonation to Him for the party in Rome who sided with Zephyrinus and Callistus. These popes accused him, it seems, of being a Ditheist ; and themselves maintained that the terms Father and Son denoted only different sides and relations of one and the same Being, — nay, not only of the same Being, but of the same Trpoaanrou ; and that the spirit that dwelt in Christ was the Father,- of OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 247 whom all things are full. For this opinion the two popes are angril}^ dealt with by our author, and charged with being half Sabellian, half humanitarian. His rancor justifies the sus- picion, that, though he represents the party which triumphed at Rome, his opponents had been numerous and powerful, as, indeed, their election to the primacy would of itself show, and that even his own imperfect dogma was superinduced, not without a protracted struggle, upon an earlier faith yet remote from the Nicene standard. And this brings us at once to a question of historical re- search, which, though far too intricate and extensive to be dis- cussed here, we feel bound to notice, as fiir as it is affected by the newly discovered work. How long did it take for the Christian faith to assume the , leading features of its orthodox and catholic form, and especially to work itself clear of Juda- ism ? It is an acknowledged fact, that the earliest disciples, including at the lowest estimate all the converts of the first seven years from the ascension, not only were born Hebrews, but did not regard their baptism as in any way withdrawing them from the pale of their national religion ; that, on the con- trary, they claimed to be the only true Jews, differing from others simply by their belief in a personally appointed, in- stead of a vaguely promised Messiah ; that they aimed at no more than to bring over their own race to this conviction, and persuade them that the national destinies were about to be consummated, and, so far from relaxing the obligations of their Law, adhered with peculiar rigor to its, ritual and its exclusiveness. So long as none but the twelve A[)ostles had charge of its diffusion, Christianity was only a particular mode of Judaism, and its whole discu^^sion a (fjTrjais Ts ; Ffyd'e, (Prjalv, e^ ovie ovTvov TO (TTTSppa TOV Kocpov, 6 Xoyos 6 \(\^d(ls yevrjBr)TU> (^tof, Kai ToGro, (j)T]alu} «(rri ro Xeyopevov ev to7s EvayyeXiois ' " Hv to (jxHi 256 CREED AND HERESIES same remark applies to the use of John's Gospel by the Ophites. That they did use it is evident ; that they existed as far back as the time of Peter and Paul is certainly probable ; yet it does not follow that the fourth Gospel was then extant. For they continued in existence through two or three centuries, dating, as Baur has shown, from a time anterior not only to the Christian heresies, but to Christianity itself, and extending down to Origen's time ; and to what part of this long period the writings belonged which the author of the " Philosophu- mena" employed, we are absolutely unable to determine. We do not know why M. Bunsen has not appealed also to a quo- tation from the Gospel which occurs (p. 194) in an account of. the Yalentinian system. If, as he affirms (I. 60), this account were really in " ValeiUinus' s own loords," the citation would be of particular value in the controversy. For it has always been urged by the Tubingen critics as a highly significant fact, that while the followers of Valentinus showed an especial eagerness to appeal to the Gospel of John, and one of the e£*r- liest, Heracleon, wrote a commentary upon it, no trace could be found of its use by the heresiarch himself. From this cir- cumstance, they have inferred that the Gospel was not avail- able for him, and first appeared after his time. A single clause cited by him from the Gospel would demolish this argu- ment at once. But the assertion that we have here "full eight pages of Valentinus's own words " appears to us quite groundless. No such thing is affirmed by the writer of the eight pages. He promises to tell us how the strict adhe- rents to the original principle of the sect expounded their doc- trine (a)ff eneii/oL diddaKovaL) ; and then passes over, as usual, to the singular (f)T)ai, returning, however, from time to time, to the plural forms, — BeXovcri, Xeyova-i, &c., — and thus leaving no pretext for the assumption that Valentinus is before us in person. The later Gnostics indisputably resorted to the Gos- To oXtjOluou, o (pcoTL^et Travra avdpoiTTov €p)(o^ei>ou els top KOdfxov." — p. 232. Now can any one decide whether this comment on tlie '• Let there t>e light, and there was light," with its applicatioua to Johu i. 9, proceeds from " Basilides " or from " these men " ? OF EARLV CIIlilSTIAXITY. 257 pel of John with especial zeal and preference; and if their predecessors, Basilides and Yalentinus, were acquainted with the book, it is surprising that no trace of their familiarity with it has been found ; and that the former should have sought to authenticate the secret doctrine he professed to have received by the name of Matthew or Matthias instead of John. It de- serves remark, that the citations preserved by our author are made, like those of Justin Martyr, as from an anon^-mous writ- ing, without mentioning the name of the Evangelist ; a cir- cumstance less surprising in reference to the Synoptics alone, which present only varieties of the same fundamental tradi- tion, than when the fourth Gospel, so evidently the independent production of a single mind, is thrown into the group. The Epistles of Paul and the books of the Old Testament are fre- quently quoted by name ; and why this practice should inva- riably cease whenever the historical Avork of an Apostle was in the hand, it is not easy to explain. The Apocalypse is men- tioned not without his name.* For these reasons we are of opinion that the question about the date and authenticity of the fourth Gospel is wholly unaf- fected by the newly-discovered work. On this side, no new facilities are gained for confuting the Tubingen theory. The most positive and startling fact against it is presented from another direction. We know that the system of Theodotus," which was Unitarian, was condemned by Victor in the last decade of the second century.f Now Victor was the very pope to the end of whose period, according to the followers of Artemon, their monarchian faith was upheld in the Roman Church, and in the time of whose successor was the first im- portation of the higher doctrine of the Logos. On this com- ])laint of the Artemonites, Baur and Schwegler lay great stress; but is it not refuted by Victor's orthodox act of expelling a Unitarian ? Undoubtedly it would be so, if Theodotus were excommunicated precisely for his belief in the uni-personality of God. But his scheme included many articles ; and we * Piige 528. t Euseb. 11. E., V. 28. 22 * 258 CREED AND HERESIES know nothing of the ground taken in the proceedings against him. There was one question, however, which, however in- different to us, was evidently very near to the leehngs of the early Church, and on which Theodotus separated himself from the prevailing conceptions of his time, — viz. At what date did the Clii'ist, the Divine principle, become united with Je- sus, the human being ? " At his baptism," replied Theodo- tus.* " Before his birth," said the general voice of the Chris- tians. We are disposed to think this was the obnoxious tenet which Victor construed into heresy ; and if so, the strife had no bearing upon the doctrine of the personality of the Logos, which the pope and the heretic might both have rejected. Of the Unitarianism of that time, it was no essential feature to postpone till the baptism the heavenly element in Christ. We remember no reason for supposing that the Artemonites did so, though Theodotus did ; and if they knew that the ob- jection which had been fatal to him did not apply to them, their claim of ancient and orthodox sanction for what they held in common with him was not answered by pointing to his condemnation for what was special to himself. But is there, it will be asked, any evidence that the Roman Church attached importance to this particular ingredient of the The- odotian scheme, so that their bishop might feel impelled to visit it with ecclesiastical censure ? We believe there is, and that too in the " Philosophumena." In the author's confession of faith occurs a passage which produces at first a strange impression upon a modern reader, and appears like a violence done to the Gospel history. It affirms that Christ passed through every stage of human life, that he might serve as the model to all. Nor is this idea a personal whim of the writer ; but is borrowed from his master, Irenasus, who gives it in more detail, and winds it up with the assertion, that Christ lived to be jifty years old.\ Irenaeus thus falsifies the history to make good the moral ; our presbyter, by respecting the history, apparently invalidates the moral : for it can scarcely * " Philosophumena," p. 258. f Iren. Lib. II. c. 39. OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 259 be said of a life closed after thirty-one or thirty-two years, that it supplies a rule Trdcra fjXiKirj ; at least it would seem more natural to apologize for its premature termination, than to lay stress on its absolute completeness The truth is, there was a certain obnoxious tenet behind, which these writers were anxious to contradict, and which their assertion exactly meets, — viz. the very tenet of Theodotus, that the Divine nature did not unite itself witli tlie Saviour till his baptism. Ire- naeus and his pupil could not endure this limitation of what was highest in Christ to the interval between his first public preaching and his crucifixion. They thought that in this way it was reduced to a mere official investiture, not integral to his being, but externally superinduced ; and that such a conception deprived it of all its moral significance. The union of the Logos with our nature was not a provision for temporary in- spiration or a forensic redemption ; but was intended to mould a life and shape a personal existence, according to the im- maculate ideal of humanity. To accomplish this intention it was necessary that the Logos should never be absent fi-om any part of his earthly being; but should have claimed his person from the first, and by preoccupation have neutralized the action of the natural (or psychic) element, throughout all the years of his continuance among men. The anxiety of Irena3us's school to put this interpretation on the manifestation of the Logos, their determination to distinguish it, on the one hand, from the mediate communication of prophets as an im- mediate presentation (avro^eX cpauepcod^vai), and, on the other, from the transient occupancy of a ready-made man, as a per- manent and thorough-going incarnation {crapKcoOrjvai in oppo- sition to (fyauraaia or rpoTrr]), is apparent in their whole lan- guage on tliis subject. In the Son, we are carried to the fresh fountain-head of every kind of perfection, and find the unspoiled ideal of heavenly and terrestrial natures. In one of the fragments of Ilij^polytus, published by Mai, and noticed in INI. Bunsen's A])pen(lix, this notion is conveyed by the re- mark, that lie is first-born of God's own essence, that he may have precedence of angels ; first-born of a virgin, that he may 260 CREED AND HERESIES be a fresh-created Adam ; first-born of death, that he might become the first fruits of our resurrection.* This doctrine it is, we apprehend, which amphfies itself into the Irennean state- ment, that the divine and ideal function of Christ coalesced wdth the historical throughout, so that to infants he was a con- secrating infant ; to little cliildren, a consecrating child ; to youth, a consecrating model of youth ; and to elders, a still consecrating rule, not only by disclosure of truth, but by ex- hibiting the true type of their perfection.f The teaching of Theodotus, that the heavenly ehoiv remained at a distance till the baptism, was directly contradictory of this favorite notion ; and might well produce hostile excitement, and provoke con- demnation, in a church where the Irentean influence is known to have been powerful. The attitude that Victor assumed towards the Theodotians is thus perfectly compatible with Monarchian opinions, and with an attitude equally hostile, in the opposite direction, towards the advancing Trinitarian claims of a distinct jDcrsonality for the Logos. Though orily the one hostility is recorded of Victor, the other is ascribed, as we have seen, to his immediate successors, Zephyrinus and Callistus, who maintained that it was no other person than the Father that dwelt as the Logos in the Son. The facts taken together, and spreading as they do over the periods of three popes, afford undeniable traces of a struggle at the turn of the second century, between a prevalent but threatened Monarchianism, and a new doctrine of the Divine Personal- ity of the Son. After all, why is M. Bunsen so anxious to disprove the late appearance of the fourth Gospel ? Did he value it chief- ly as a biographical sketch, and depend upon it for concrete * L p. 341. t The words of the author of the " Philosophumena " are these: Tovrov eyvco^fv (k wapBevov acofia a.v€i,\r](f>ora koL tov naXaiov avdpoaTroi^ 8ia Kaivrjs TrXdcrecoff n€7rois eTTLdei^ji napoou, koL 5i avrov eXey^rj on firjbiu eTroiTjcrev 6 Oeos 7rovT]p6if. — p- 337. OB^ EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 2GI facts, a first-hand authentication of its contents would be of primary moment. But his interest in it is evidently specula- tive rather than historical, and centres upon its doctrinal thought, not on its narrative attestation ; and especially singles out the proem as a condensed and perfect expression of Chris- tian ontology. The book speaks to him, and finds him, out of its mystic spiritual depths ; sanctifies his own philosophy ; glorifies with an ideal haze the greatest reality of history ; blends with melting tints the tenderness of the human, and the sublimity of the divine life ; and presents the Holy Spirit as immanent in the souls of the fiiithful and the destinies of humanity. But its enunciation of great truths, its penetration to the still sanctuary of devout consciousness, will not cease to be facts, or become doubtful as merits, or be changed in their endearing power, by an alteration in the superscription or the date. These rehgious and philosophical features con- verse directly with Reason and Conscience, and have the same significance, whatever their critical history may be ; and are not the less rich as inspirations from having passed for mter- pretation through more minds than one. There is neither common sense nor piety, as M. Bunsen himself, we feel cer- tain, will allow, in the assumption that Revelation is neces- sarily mo>t perfect at its source, and can only grow earthy and turbid as it flows. Were it something entirely foreign to the mind, capable of holding no thought in solution, but inevita- bly spoiled by every abrasion it effects of philosophy and feeling, this mechanical view would be correct. But if it be the intcnser presence, the quickened percei)tiou of a Being absent from none ; if it be the infinite original of which phi- losophy is the finite reflection ; if thus it speaks, not in the unknown tongue of isolated ecstasy, but in the expressive music of our common consciousness and secret prayer ; — then is it so little unnatural, so related to the constitution of our faculties, that the mind's contiiuious reaction on it may bring it more clearly out; and, after being detained at first amid sluggish levels and unwholesome growths which mar its di- vine transparency, it may percolate through finer media, drop 262 CREED AND HERESIES its accidental admixtures, and take up in each stratum of thought some elements given it by native affinity, and become more purely the spring of life in its descent than in its source. If, before the fourth Gospel was written, the figure of Christ, less close to the eye, was seen more in its relations to human- ity and to God ; if his deep hints, working in the experience of more than one generation, had expanded their marvellous contents ; if, in a prolonged contact of his religion with Hel- lenism, elements liad disclosed themselves of irresistible sym- pathy, and the first sharp boundary drawn by Jewish hands had melted away ; if his concrete history itself was now sub- ordinate to its ideal interpretation ; — the book will present us still with a Christianity, not impoverished, but enriched. In proportion as its thoughts speak for themselves by their depth and beauty, may all anxiety cease about their external legiti- mation ; their credentials become eternal instead of individ- ual ; and where the Father himself thus beareth witness, Christ needeth not the testimony of man. It cannot be, there- fore, any religious issue that depends on the date of this Christian record; it cannot make truth, it can only awaken the mind to discern it ; and whether it has this power or not, the mind can only report according to its consciousness of quickening hght or stagnant darkness. The interest of this question cannot surely be more than a critical interest, to one who can feel and speak in this noble strain : — " No divine authority is given to any set of men to make truth for mankind. The supreme judge is the Spirit in the Church, that is to say, in the universal body of men profess- ing Christ. The universal conscience is God's hij^hest inter- preter. If Christ speaks truth, his words must speak to the human reason and conscience, whenever and wherever they are preached : let them, therefore, be preached. If the Gos- pels contained inspired wisdom, they must themselves inspire with heavenly thoughts the conscientious inquirer and the serious thinker : let them, therefore, freely be made the object of inquiry and of thought. Scripture, to be believed true with full conviction, must be at one with reason : let it, there- OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. ' 263 fore, be treated rationally. By taking this course, we shall not lose strength; but we shall gain a strength which no church ever had. There is strength in Christian discipline, if freely accepted by those who are to submit to it ; there is strength in spiritual authority, if freely acknowledged by those who care for Christ ; there is strength unto deaih in the en- thusiasm of an unenlightened people, if sincere, and connected with lofty moral ideas. But there is no strength to be com- pared with that of a faith wdiich identifies moral and intel- lectual conviction with religious belief, with that of an au- thority instituted by such a faith, and of a Christian life based upon it, and striving to Christianize this world of ours, for Avhich Christianity was j^roclaimed. Let those who are sin- cere, but timid, look into their conscience, and ask themselves whether their timidity proceeds from faith, or whether it does not rather betray a want of faith. Europe is in a critical state, politically, ecclesiastically, socially. Where is the power able to reclaim a world, which, if it be faithless, is become so under untenable and ineffective ordinances, — which, if it is in a state of confusion, has become confused by those who have spiritually guided it ? Armies may subdue liberty ; but ar- mies cannot conquer ideas : much less can Jesuits and Jesuiti- cal principles restore religion, or superstition revive faith. I deny the prevalence of a destructive and irreligious spirit in the hearts of the immense majority of the people. I believe that the world wants, not less, but more religion. But how- ever this be, I am firmly convinced that God governs the world, and that he governs it by the eternal ideas of truth and justice engraved on our conscience and reason ; and I am sure that nations, who have conquered, or are conquering, civil liberty for themselves, will sooner or later as certainly demand liberty of religious thought, and that those whose fathers have victoriously acquired religious liberty will not fail to demand civil and i)olitical liberty also. With these ideas, and with the present irresistible power of communicat- ing ideas, what can save us except religion, and therefore Christianity ? But then it must be a Cliristianity based upon 264 CREED AND HERESIES that which is eternally God's own, and is as indestructible and as invincible as he is himself: it must be based upon Reason and Conscience, I mean reason spontaneously em- bracing the faith in Christ, and Christian faith feeling itself at one with reason and with the history of the world. Civilized Europe, as it is at present, will fall ; or it will be pacified by this liberty, this reason, this faith. To prove that the cause of Protestantism in the nineteenth century is identical with the cause of Christianity, it is only necessary to attend to this fact ; that they both must sink and fall, until they stand upon their indestructible ground, which, in my inmost conviction, is the real, genuine, original ground upon which Christ placed it. Let us, then, give up all notions of finding any other basis, all attempts to prop up faith by effete forms and outward things : let us cease to combat reason, whenever it contradicts conven- tional forms and formularies. We must take the ground pointed out by the Gospel, as well as by the history of Chris- tianity. We may then hope to realize what Christ died for, to see the Church fulfil the high destinies of Christianity, and God's will manifested by Christ to mankind, so as to make the kingdoms of this earth the kingdoms of the Most High.'* — p. 172. We have given our readers no conception of the variety and richness of M. Bunsen's work ; having scarcely passed beyond the limits of the first volume. It was impossible to pass by, without examination, the recovered monument of early Christianity, whence his materials and suggestions are primarily drawn ; and it is equally impossible to pass beyond it, without entering on a field too wide to be surveyed. We can only record that, in the remaining volumes, which are, in fact, a series of separate productions, the early doctrine of the Eucharist is investigated, and the progress of its corruptions strikingly traced ; the primitive system of ecclesiastical rules or canons, and the " Church-and-House Book," or manual of instruction and piety in use among the ante-Nicene Chris- tians, are carefully and laboriously restored ; and genuine Liturgies of the first centuries are reproduced. In this ar- OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY. 2G5 duous work of recovery, there is necessarily much need of critical tact, not to say much room for critical conjecture. But the one our author exercises Avith great felicity ; and th« other he takes all possible pains to reduce to its lowest amount by careful comparison of Syrian, Coptic, and Abyssinian texts. The general result is a truly interesting set of sketches for a picture of the early Church ; which rises before us with no 2)riestly pretensions, no scholastic creeds, no bibliolatry, dry and dead ; but certainly with an aspect of genuine piety and affection, and with an air of mild authority over the whole of hfe, which are the more winning from the frightful corruption and dissolving civilization of the Old AV^orld around. That our author should be fascinated with the image he has re- created, and long to see it brought to life, in place of that body of death on which we hang the pomps and titles of our nominal Christianity, is not astonishing. But a greater change is needed — though a far less will be denied — than a return to the type of faith and worship in the second century. To destroy the fatal chasm between profession and conviction, and bring men to live fresh out of a real reverence instead of against a pretended or a fancied one, a greater latitude and flexibility must be given to the forms of spiritual culture than was needed in the ancient world. The unity of system which was once possible is unseasonable amid our growing varieties of condition and culture ; and the methods which were natural among a people closely thrown together and constructing their life around the Church as a centre, would be highly artificial in a state of society in which the family is the real unit, and the congregation a precarious aggregate, of existence. Noth- ing, however, can be finer or more generous than the spirit of our author's suggestions of reform ; and we earnestly thank him for a profusion of pregnant thoughts and faithful warn- ings, the application of one half of which would change the fate of our churches, — the destiny of our nation, — the courses of the world. 23 THE CREED OE CnRISTENDOM. 1. The Creed of Christendom ; its Foundations and Super- structure. By William Rathbone Greg. London : Chapman. 1851. 2. St. Paul's Epistles to the Corinthians ; an Attempt to convey their Spirit and Signijicance. By John Hamil- ton Thom. London: Chapman. 1851. These two books are placed together without the least in- tention to intimate a resemblance between them, or to repre- sent either author as sharing in the conclusions of the other. They are, indeed, concerned with opposite sides of the same subject; viewed, moreover, from the separate stations of the layman and the divine ; and are the expression of strongly contrasted modes of thought. Mr. Greg deals principally with the external vehicle of the primitive Christianity ; Mr. Thom with its internal essence. The one seeks in vain for any outward title in the records to suppress the operations of natural reason ; the other clears away from the interior every interference with the free action of conscience and affection. The one, in the name of science, demolishes the outworks of ecclesiastical logic with which the shrine of faith has been dangerously guarded : the other, in the name of Christ, ex- pels both priest and dogma from the sanctuary itself. The one, selecting deep truths from the words of Jesus, would construct religion into a philosophy ; the other, with eye upon THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 2G7 His person as an image of perfect goodness, would develop it from a sentiment. As all opposites, however, are embraced in the circumference of the same circle, so are these works complements of each other Mr. Greg, in common with the Catholics and the Unitarians, evidently looks for the strength of Christianity in the Gospels ; Mr. Tliom, with the majority of Protestants, in the Epistles. For want of some mediating harmony between the two, each perhaps requires some cor- rection : the historical picture of Christ saved by the former is but a pale and meagre outline ; while the Pauline ideal presented by the latter is a glow of rich but undefined color- ing. ]Mr. Greg, who, in spite of particular errors, manifests a large knowledge and a masterly judgment in his criticism of the Evangelists, appears to have, in his own sympathies, no way of access to a mind like that of Paul, and to be much at fault in estitnating the place of the Apostle both as a witness and a power in the organization of Christian tradition and doctrine. Had the acuteness and severity of his understand- ing been a little more qualified by such reflective depth and moral tenderness as Mr. Thorn brings to the work of interpre- tation, his religion, we fancy, would have retained a less slender remnant of the primitive Christianity. Measured by the standard of common Protestantism, there can be no doubt that the second of these books would be condemned for heresy, and the first for unbelief These ugly words, however, have been too often applied to what is fullest of truth and faith, to express more than a departure, which weak men feel to be irritating, from a favorite type of thought. They have lost their effect on all who are competent to medi- tate on the great problems of religion, and are fast taking their place in the, scandalous vocabulary of professional po- lemics. It is a thing offensive to just men when divines, who have succeeded in smothering, or been too dull to entertain, doubts which rend the soul of genius and faithfulness, and insist on a veracious answer, meet them, not with sympathy, still less with mastery, but with the commonplaces of incom- petent pity and holy malediction. And the offence is doubled 268 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. in the eyes of instructed men, who know the state to which Bibhcal criticism has brought the theology of the Reformation. It is notorious that, in the revolt from Rome, the Scriptures — like a dictator suddenly created for the perils of a crisis — were forced into a position where it was impossible for them permanently to repose ; that they cannot be treated as infalli- ble oracles of either fact or doctrine, and were never meant to bear the weight of such unnatural claims ; that the authority once concentrated in them, and held even against the reason and conscience, must now be distributed, and ask their con- currence. These are not questionable positions, but so irre- sistibly established, that learning of the highest order would no more listen to an argument against them, than Herschel or Airy to a disquisition against the rotation of the earth. When a clergyman, therefore, treats them with horror, and de- nounces them as infidelity, he produces no conviction, except that he himself is either ill-informed or insincere. Profes- sional reproaches against a book so manly and modest, so evidently truth-loving, so high-minded and devout, as this of Mr. Greg's, are but a melancholy imbecility. We may hold to many things which he resigns ; we may think him wrong in the date of a Gospel or the construction of a miracle; we may even dissent from his estimate of the grounds of immor- tal hope and the ways of eternal Providence : but we do not envy, and cannot understand, the religion which can feel no thankful communion with thought so elevated, and trust so sound and real. No candid reader of the " Creed of Chris- tendom " can close the book without the secret acknowledg- ment that it is a model of honest investigation and clear exposition ; that it is conceived in the true spirit of serious and faithful research ; and that whatever the author wants of being an ecclesiastical Christian is plainly not essential to the noble guidance of life, and the devout earnestness of the affections. It is highly honorable to an English layman, amid the pressure of affairs, to take up a class of critical inquiries, which the clergy seem to have abandoned for a narrower and THK CREED OF ciiristendo:m. 2G9 more passionate polemic. It is a remarkable characteristic of the present age, that, when the most startling attacks are made upon the very foundations of existing churches, nobody repels them. Nothing is offered to break their effect, except the inertia of the mass that rests upon the base assailed. For every great sceptical work of the last century there was some score of reputable answers ; but half a dozen books of the same tendency have appeared within a few years, all of which have been copiously reviewed, have spread excitement over a wide surface, and set an immense amount of theological hair on end, but not one of which has received any adequate reply. Yet the slightest of these productions would favorably com- pare, in all the requisites for successful persuasion, — in learn- ing, in temper, in acuteness, — with the best of the last age, excepting only the philosophical disquisitions of Hume and the ecclesiastical chapters of Gibbon. The first in time, — Hennell's " Inquiry into the Origin of Christianity," — though the most open to refutation, was permitted to pass through an unmolested existence ; and its influence, considerable in itself, and increased by the sweet and truthful character of the author, is still traceable in the pages of Mr. Greg. To the effect of Strauss's extraordinary Avork, the good Neander's Leben Jesu offers but a mild resistance, and is itself, through the extent of its concessions, an open proclamation that the problems of theology can never be restored to the state in which all churches assume them to be. Parker was excom- municated by his sect ; but his " Discourse of Matters per- taining to Religion " has walked the course unchallenged, and displayed the splendor of its gifts, within the entire lines of the English language. Newman, Foxton, and Greg have since entered their names on the index expiirgatorliis of Orthodoxy ; but they also will be simply excluded from the sacred circle of readers bound over not to think ; and, beyond this, will make their converts undisturbed, and accumulate fresh charges of threatening power in the intellectual atmo- sphere which surrounds the Church. Whence this pusillani- mous apathy ? Is it forgotten that creeds always assailed and 23* 270 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. never defended are sure to perish ? Or is it felt that the defence, to be sound and strong, must be so partial — so lim- ited to points of detail — as to promise a mere diversion, instead of a repulse, and be more dangerous than the attitude of passiveness ? Or does the Clmrch resignedly give up her hold on the class of earnest, intellectual men who cannot degrade rehgion into a second-hand tradition, but must "know what they worshijD " ? Certain it is that her whole activity has long abandoned this class, and addressed itself exclusively to the narrower and lower order of mind, wliose vision is bounded by the periphery of a given creed, and whose life is satisfied with the squabbles and the gossip of articles forced into neighborhood, but no longer on speaking terms. If the efficacy of " holy orders" is called in question, streams of sacerdotal refutation flow from the press ; but if the inspira- tion of the twelve Apostles is denied, it is a thing that neither bishop nor priest will care to vindicate. If a word of mis- take is uttered about the drops of water on the face of a baptized baby, it conjures up a storm that rolls from diocese to diocese ; but if you say that pure religion has no rite or sacrament at all, the ecclesiastic atmosphere remains still as a Quaker's silent meeting. The deepest interest is felt about the origin of liturgies, and the history of articles, but nobody heeds the most staggering evidence that three of the Gospels are second-hand aggregations of hearsay reports, and the fourth of questionable authenticity. You deny the self-consistency of the Church of England and call it a compromise ; and tlie sudden rustle of gowns and sleeves proclaims a great sensa- tion. You analyze the accounts of Christ's resurrection ; you ask whether they are not discrepant ; you point out that, apparently, the oldest record (Mark's) contained, in its origi- nal/ form, no account of the event at all, and that the others bear seeming traces of distinct and incompatible traditions. You cry aloud for help in this perplexity, and hold yourselves ready to follow any vestiges of truth ; and, except that the creeds are still muttered every Sunday, all the oracles are dumb. If you want to find the true magic pass into heaven. THE CREED OF CimiSTENDOM. 2^1 scores of rival professors press round you with obtrusive supply : if you ask in your sorrow, AVho can tell me whether there be a heaven at all ? every soul will keep aloof and leave you alone. All men that bring from God a fresh, deep na- ture, all in whom religious wants live with eager power, and who yet are too clear of soul to unthink a thought and falsify a truth, receive in these days no help and no response. The Church feels its interest, as an educated corporation, to con- sist in overlaying and covering up the foundations of faith with huge piles of curious learning, history, and art, which, by affording endless occupation, may detain men from search after the living rock, or notice of the undermining flood. And, as an established corporation, she relies on the lazy con- servatism of mental possession ; on the dislike felt by the comfortable classes towards the trouble of thought and the disturbance of feeling, and their usual willingness to hand over these operations to the prayer-book and the priest We are grateful to Mr. Greg for shaking this ignoble and preca- rious reliance, which he notices in these admii*able sen- tences. " A more genuine and important objection to the conse- quences of our views is felt by indolent minds on their own account. They shrink from the toil of working out truth for themselves out of the materials which Providence has placed before them. They long for the precious metal, but loathe the rude ore out of which it has to be extricated by the laborious alchemy of thought. A ready-made creed is the paradise of their lazy dreams. A string of authoritative, doo-matic propositions comprises the whole mental wealth which they desire. The volume of nature — the volume of history — the volume of life — appall and terrify them. Such men are the materials out of whom good catholics of all sects are made. They form the uninquiring and submissive flocks which rejoice the hearts of all priesthoods. Let such cling to the faith of tlieir forefathers, if they can. But men whose minds are cast in a nobler mould, and are instinct with a diviner life, — who love truth more than rest, and the peace of 272 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. Heaven rather than the peace of Eden, — to whom ' a loftier being brings severer cares,' — ' Who know man does not live by joy alone, But by the presence of the power of God,' — such must cast behind them the hope of any repose or tran- quillity, save that which is the last reward of long agonies of thought ; they must relinquish all prospect of any heaven, save that of which tribulation is the avenue and portal ; they must gird up their loins and trim their lamp for a Avork which cannot be put by, and which must not be negligently done. ' He,* says Zschokke, ' who does not like living in the fur- nished lodgings of tradition, must build his own house, his own system of thought and faith for himself/ " — p. 242. The work of Mr. Greg derives its interest, not from any- thing in it that will be new to the studious theologian, but from the freshness and force with which it presents the results of the author's reading and reflection on both the claims and the contents of Scripture. Adopting the ordinary notion of "inspiration," as equivalent to a supernaturally provided "infallibility," he reviews and condemns the reasonings by which this attribute has been associated with the Bible ; and decides that the mere discovery of a statement in the Scrip- tures is no sufficient reason for our implicit reception of it. Having cleared away this obstacle to all intelligent criticism, he pursues his way, chiefly under the guidance of De Wette, through the earlier literature of the Hebrews ; and adds another to the many exposures of the humiliating attempts, on the part of English divines, to reconcile the cosmogony of Genesis with modem science ; attempts which we should call obsolete, did we not remember that Buckland and Whewell are both living, and have not yet attained the episcopal bench. Mr. Greg adopts the views of which Baur is the best known recent expositor, but which Lessing long ago traced out, as to the gradual formation of the Hebrew monotheism ; and shows the striking contrast between the family Jehovah of the Pa- triarchs and the universal God of the later Prophets. AYliat- ever be the origin of the doctrine of a Messiah, and under THE CREED OF CUKISTENDOM. 273 whatever varieties it appeared, it never pointed, the author conceives, to such a person as Jesus of Nazareih, or such a product as the Christian Church; and it is only by perverse interpretations, unendurable out of the field of theology, that any passages in the Old Testament can be made out to pre- fifTure the events in the New. In the argument, therefore, between the early missionaries of the Gospel and the uncon- vinced Jews, Mr. Greg maintains that the latter were the more fliithful to their sacred books. The phenomena of the first three Gospels are next examined sufficiently to explain the several hypotheses respecting the order and materials of their composition. The author rests on Schleiermacher's con- clusion, that a number of fragmentary records of incident and discourse formed the groundwork, partly common, partly ex- clusive, of the triple Evangile. He thus removes us, in this portion of the Scriptures, from first-hand testimony altogether ; and throws upon internal criticism the task of discriminating between the original and reliable elements on the one hand, and those on the other which did not escape the accidents of floating tradition and the coloring of later ideas. This deli- cate task the author attempts ; and manifests throughout an acquaintance with the methods and models of the higher criticism, fully qualifying him to form the independent judg- ment which he sums up in these words : — "In conclusion, then, it appears certain that in all the synoptical Gospels we have events related that did not really occur, and words ascribed to Jesus which Jesus did not utter ; and that many of these words and events are of great signifi- cance. In the great majority of these instances, however, this incorrectness does not imply any want of honesty on the part of the Evar.gelists, but merely indicates that they adopt- ed and embodied, witiiout much scrutiny or critical acumen, whatever probable and honorable narratives they found cur- rent in the Christian community." — p. 137. The peculiarities of the fourth Gospel are next dealt with : its ajiparent polemic reference to the gnosis of the first and second centuries ; its absence of demoniacs and parables ; the 274 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. length, the mysticism, the dogma of its discourses, and their uniformity of complexion with the historian's own narrative and reflections ; the narrowness of its charity, and the apoc- ryphal appearance of its " first miracle." Without question- ing the probability that within the contents of this Gospel is secreted a nucleus of facts, Mr. Greg thinks the book so clearly imbued throughout with the writer's idiosyncrasy, as to be inferior in historical value to the Synoptics ; and the discourses of Jesus, in particular, must be regarded as free compositions by the Evangelist. In our author's management of this subject there seems to us to be an unfavorable change. The style of thought peculiar to John, as well as that charac- teristic of Paul, lies out of the latitude native to him ; and with every intention to be just in his appreciation, he fails, we think, to reach the point of sympathy from which the fourth Gospel should be judged. The realism of his mind makes him a better critic of the hard Judaical element of the Chris- tian Scriptures, with its objective distinctness and its moral beauty, than of the more ideal Gentile ingredients, where a subjective dialectic traces forms of thought in the intense fires of spiritual consciousness. In a separate discussion of the question of miracles they are restored to the subordinate position, as compared with moral evidence, assigned to them by the early Protestant divines. Adopting the position of Locke, that " the miracles are to be judged by the doctrines, and not the doctrines by the miracles," he can admit with the less pain his conviction, that, even in the instance of the resurrection of Jesus, the historical evidence is too conflicting and uncertain to bear the supernatural weight imposed upon it. He admits, indeed, that Jesus may have risen from the dead ; the Apostles mani- festly believed it ; and that the marked change in their char- acter and conduct, from despair to triumph, affords the strong- est evidence of the sustaining energy of this belief. But, in our ignorance of the grounds of this belief, (the Gospels and book of Acts containing no correct or first-hand report of the facts,) it is impossible, he conceives, to form any rational esti-. THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 275 mate of their adequacy. In Mr. Greg's decision on this important point, we see the effect of his entrance on the problem of Christianity from the liistorical end. If, instead of addressing himself first to the Gospels which lie most re- mote from the source of the religion, and represent the latest and most constituted form of the primitive tradition, he had begun with the earliest remains of Christian literature, and traced the doctrine of the resurrection from the Epistles of Paul into the story of the Evangelists, we think he would have arrived at a different conclusion. In dismissing the testimony of Paul as " of little weight," he throws away the main evidence of the whole case. We can understand the critic who, having put the miraculous entirely aside, as logi- cally inadmissible, makes light of the Pauline statements on this matter, and appeals to their writer's openness to impres- sions of the supernatural in proof of a certain vitiating un- soundness of mind. But one who, like our author, regards this a priori incredulity as an,unphilosophical prejudice, and upon whose list of real causes, never precluded from possible action, supernatural power finds a place, cannot consistently condemn another for believing in concrete instances Avhat he himself allows in the general ; and put the Apostle out of court, on the plea that we have no evidence but his assertion of his intercourse with the risen Christ. Is not Ms assertion the only evidence possible of a subjective miracle ? and is there any ground for restricting supernatural agency to an objective direction ? No doubt, facts presented to external perception have the advantage of being open to more wit- nesses than one ; and if it be deliberately laid down as a canon, that in no case can any anomalous event be admitted on one man's declaration, we allow the consistency of refusing a hearing to the Apostle. But such a rule would only be an example of the futility of all attempts to reduce moral evi- dence to mathematical ex})ression. Facts of the most ex- traordinary nature have always been, and will always be, received on solitary attestation ; and if so, it makes no logical difference whether they be called " objective," or " subjective." 276 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. A man has faculties for apprehending what passes within him, as well as what passes without ; nor do we know any ground for trusting the latter which does not hold equally good for the former. If it be said that the reporter of a miracle not only announces what he sees or feels, — which we may accept on his veracity, — but proclaims its supernatural source, — which we may repudiate from distrust of his judgment, — the remark is perfectly just, only that it applies alike to all testi- mony, and not exclusively, to miraculous reports. Our dis- position to receive the evidence of a witness assumed to be veracious, depends on our having the same preconceptions of causation with himself. In the ordinary affairs of life, this common ground is sure to exist, and therefore remains a mere latent condition of belief. But the slowness to admit a mira- cle arises from the failure of this common ground ; and if the hearer reserved in the background of his mind, and in equal readiness for action, the same supernatural power to which the witness's assertion refers, he would feel no more tempta- tion to incredulity than in listening to some matter of course. The reluctance to believe, is proof that his store of causation is limited to the natural sphere ; and every phenomenon irre- ducible to this drops away from all hold upon his mind. As there is no such thing as a fact perceived without a judgment formed, so is there no belief in the attestation of a fact with- out reliance on the soundness of a judgment ; and that re- liance depends on the hearer having the same list of causes in his mind as the witness. If, then, Mr. Greg holds, with Paul, that the j)Ovver exists whence a subjective miracle might issue, and if from the nature of the case such miracle must remain a matter of personal consciousness, why reject the Apostle's report of his experience ? In choosing from among the causes which both parties admit, it cannot be denied that Paul alights upon that which, if there, gives the easiest and most certain explanation ; and to find a satisfactory origin for his impressions and conduct in natural agencies is so difficult, that critics would never attempt it, but to escape the acknowl- edgment of miracle. On his own principles we do not see THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 277 how our author could excuse himself to the Apostle for reject- ing his testimony ; which does but communicate, in the only conceivable way, that which is allowed to be possible enough, and which best clears up the mystery of an astonishing rev- olution in personal character, and in the convictions of an ear- nest and powerful mind. The whole question of miracles, however, loses its anxious importance with those who, like our author, would still, amid their constant occurrence, look to other sources for the cre- dentials of moral and religious truth. If anything is positively and incontrovertibly known respecting the Apostles, — and in proportion as we trust the synoptical Gospels must we allow Mr. Greg to extend flie remark to their Master, — it is this : that whatever powers they exercised, and whatever commu- nications they received, were inadequate to preserve them from serious error ; and from delivering to the world, as a substantive part of their message, a most solemn expectation which was not to be fulfilled. This fact, no longer denied by any reputable theologian, alone shows that, even in the pres- ence of the highest Christian authority, the natural criteria of reason and conscience cannot be dispensed with. In the ap- plication of these to the teachings and life of Christ, our autlior finds, if not any truths of supernatural dictation, at least the highest object of veneration and affection yet given to this world. " Now on this subject," he says, " we hope our confession of faith will be acceptable to all save the narrowly orthodox. It is dilficult, without exhausting superlatives, even to unexpres- sive and wearisome satiety, to do justice to our intense love, reverence, and admiration for the character and teachings of Jesus. We regard him, not as the perfection of the intellect- ual or philosophic mind, but as the perfection of the spiritual character, — as surpassing all men of all times in tlie close- ness and depth of his communion with the Father. In read- ing his sayings, we feel that we are holding converse with the wisest, purest, noblest Being that ever clothed thought in the poor language of humanity. In studying his life, we feel 24 278 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. that we are following the footsteps of the highest ideal yet presented to us upon earth. ' Blessed be God that so much manliness has been lived out, and stands there yet, a lasting monument to mark how high the tides of divine life have risen in the world of man ! '" — p. 227. We differ altogether from our author in his notion of inspi- ration, and his reduction of Christianity within the limits of human resource. But we must say, that while there is such an estimate as this of what Jesus Christ was, it is a matter of subordinate moment what is thousjht about the mode in which he became so. By a process of " Christian Eclecticism," Mr. Greg draws forth from the Gospels the elements which he regards as characteristic of the relij^ion of Jesus ; distino-uishino; those which make it the purest of faiths from others which appear to him irreconcilable with a just philosophy. The doctrine of a future life is reserved for a separate discussion ; the gen- eral result of which we know not how to describe, otherwise than by saying that the author discards all the evidence and yet retains the conclusion. All the arguments, metaphysical and moral, for human immortality, he condemns as absolutely worthless ; he confesses that he has no new ones to propose ; he affirms that all appearances, without exception, proclaim the permanence of death, the absence of any spiritual essence in man, and the absolute sway of the laws of organization; yet, on the report of that very " soul " within him, whose ex- istence nature disowns, he holds the doctrine of a future ex- istence by the irresistible tenure of a first truth. We do not wonder that the rigor with which Mr. Greg has pushed his principles through other subjects of thought should relent at this point, and refuse to cast the sublimest of human hopes over the brink of darkness. We respect, as a holy abstinence, his refusal to silence the pleadings of tlie inner voice. But we admire his faith more than his philosophy ; and are aston- ished that he does not suspect the soundness of a scientific method which lands him in results he cannot hold. No scep- ticism is so fatal, — for none has so wide a sweep, — as that THE CREKD OF CHRISTENDOM. • 279 which despairs of the self-reconciliation of liuman nature ; which flings among our faculties the reproach of irretrievable contradiction ; which sets up first truths against deductions, conscience against science, faith against logic. Ever since Kant balanced his Antinomies, and employed the gravitation of Practical reason to turn the irresolute scales of the Specu- lative, this unwholesome practice has been spreading, of assum- ing an ultimate discordance between co-existing powers of the mind. In the language of rhetoric or poetry, in the dis- cussion of popular notions on morals and religion, it would ])e hypercritical to complain of the antitheses of understanding and feehng, — sense and souh But to an exact thinker it must be apparent that an ambidextrous intellect is no intel- lect at all ; and that, were this all our endowment, the life of the wisest would be but a chase after mocking shadows of thought. The following words of our author, with all their tranquil appearance, describe a state of things which, were it real, might well strike us with dismay : — " There are three points especially of religious belief, re- garding which intuition (or instinct) and logic are at variance, — the efficacy of prayer, man's free-will, and a future exist- ence. If believed, they must be believed, the last without the countenance, the two former in spite of the hostility of logic." — p. 303. This is absolute Pyrrhonism, and thou^jh said in the interest of religion, is subversive alike of knowledge and of faith. The pretended " logic " can be good for very little, which comes out with so suicidal an achievement as the disproof of Jirst truths. The condition under which alone logic can exist as a science is the unity in the human mind of the laws of belief, — a condition which would be violated if any first truth contradicted another in itself, or in its deductions. The moment, therefore, such a contradiction turns up, a consistent thinker will either regard it as a mere semblance, and proceed to re-examine his premises, and test his reasoning ; or he will treat it as real ; and then it thi'ows contempt on logic altogeth- er, and relegates it into impossibility. In neither case can his 280 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. reliance incline to the logical side. Mr. Greg, however, sticks to his logic whenever, as in the two cases mentioned in the foregoing extract, it loudlj negatives a point of religious belief; and abandons it only where it restricts itself to cold and dumb discouragement. A bolder distrust of his logic, and a firmer faith in the logic of nature, would perhaps have harmonized the differing voices of the intellect and the soul, blending them in a faith neither afraid to think nor ashamed to pray. Had our author been as familiar with the Catholic and Ar- minian divines, as with the literature of inductive science and Calvinistic theology, he would have known that there is a phi- losophy from which the religious intuitions encounter no re- pugnance ; and would, at least, have noticed its offer of medi- ation between Faith and Reasoh. He is, however, entirely shut up within the formulas of a different school, which press with their resistance on his religious feeling in every direction, and produce a conflict which he can neither appease nor ter- minate. With an intellect entirely overridden by the ideas of Law and Necessity, no man can escape the force of the com- mon objections to any doctrine of prayer, or of forgiveness of sin ; and if those ideas possess universal validity, the very discussion of such doctrines is, in the last degree, idle and absurd. But what if some mediaeval schoolman, or some im- pugner of the Baconian orthodoxy, were to suggest that, though Law is coextensive with outward nature. Nature is not coextensive with God, and that beyond the range where his agency is bound by the pledge of predetermined rules lies an infinite margin, where his spirit is free ? And what if, in aggravation of his heresy, he were to contend that Man also, as counterpart of God, belongs not wholly to the realm of nature, but transcends it by a certain endowment of free power in his spirit ? Having made these assumptions, on the ground that they were more agreeable to " intuitive " feeling, and not less so to external evidence, than the one-sidedness of their opposites, might he not suggest that room is now found for a doctrine of prayer ? Not that any event bespoken and planted in the sphere of nature can be turned aside by THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 281 the urgency of desire and devotion ; not that the shghtest swerving is to be expected from tlie usages of creation, or of the mind ; wherever hiw is established — without us or with- in us — there let it be absolute as the everlasting faithfulness. But God has not spent himself wholly in the courses of cus- tom, and mortgaged his infinite resources to nature ; nor has he closed up with rules every avenue through which his fresh enero-v mi^-ht find entrance into life ; but has left in the hu- man soul a theatre whose scenery is not all pre-arranged, and whose drama is ever open to new developments. Between the free centre of the soul in man, and the free margin of the activity of God, what hinders the existence of a real and living communion, the interchange of look and answer, of thought and counterthought ? If, in response to human aspi- ration, a higher mood is infused into the mind ; if, in consola- tion of penitence or sorrow, a gleam of gentle hope steals in ; and if these should be themselves the vivifying touch of di- vine sympathy and pity, what law is prejudiced ? what fiiith is broken ? what province of nature has any title to complain ? And so, too, (might our mediieval friend continue,) with re- spect to the doctrine of forgiveness. If men are under moral obligation, and God is a being of moral perfection, he must regard their unfaithfulness with disapproval. Of his senti- ments, the clear trace will be found in the various sufferings which constitute the natural punishment of wrong. These are incorporated in the very structure of the world and the constitution of life ; and to persistence in their infliction, the Supreme Ruler is committed by the assurance of his constan- cy. They fasten on the guilty a chain which no pardon will strike off, but which he will drag till it is Avorn away. Not all the divine sentiment, however, is embodied in the physical consequences. Besides this determinate expression of his thought, written out on the finite world, there is an unex- pressed element remaining behind, in his infinite nature : on the visible side of the veil is the sujjjrestive manifestation ; on the invisible, is the very affection manifested. There is a personal alienation, a forfeiture of approach and sympathy, 2-4* 282 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. which would survive though creation were to perish and carry its punishments away ; and would still cast its black shadow into empty space. This reserved sentiment, and this alone, is affected by repentance. But it is no small thmg for the heart of shame to know this. The estrangement lasts no longer than the guilty temper and the unsoftened conscience ; and when, through its sorrow, the mind is clear and pure, the sunshine of divine affection will burst it asrain. In this the free Spirit of God is different from his bound action in nature. Long after he himself has forgiven and embraced again, ne- cessity— the creature of his legislation — will continue to wield the lash, and measure out with no relenting the remain- der of the penalty incurred ; and he that yet drags his burden and visibly limps upon his sin, may all the while have a heart at rest with God. And thus is retribution — the reaping as we have sown — in no contradiction with forgiveness, — the personal restoration. How far such modes of thought as these would help to rec- oncile the conflicting claims, — and how they would stand re- lated to Mr. Greg's terrible friend, " Logic," we do not pre- tend to decide. "We refer to them only as possible means of escaping — at least of postponing — his desolating doctrine, that intuitions may tell lies ; and in support of our state- ment, that his theoretic view lies entirely within the circle of a particular school, — a school, morever, so little able to satis- fy his aspirations, that he is obliged to patch up a compromise between his nature and his culture. The curious amalgama- tion which has taken place in England, of the metaphysics of Calvin with the physics of Bacon, has produced, in a large* class, a philosof>hical tendency, with which the distinctive sen- timents of Christianity very uneasily combine. The effacing of all lines separating the natural and moral, the limitation of God to the realm of nature, and the subjugation of all things to predestination, are among the chief features of this tendency, and the chief obstacles to any concurrence between the intellectual and the spiritual religion of the age. If some of the elements in the early Christianity are too THE CREED OP CHRISTENDOM. 283 hastily cancelled by our author, there is one sentiment -whose inapplicability to the present day he exposes with an irresisti- ble force ; — that depreciating estimate of life which, however natural to A])OSilcs " impressed with the conviction tliat the world was falling to pieces," i;s wholly misplaced among those for whose office and work this earthly scene is the appointed place. The exhortations of the Apostles, "granting the prem- ises, were natural and wise." " But for divines in this day — when the profession of Christianity is attended with no peril, when its practice, even, demands no sacritice, save that preference of duty to enjoy- ment which is the first law of cultivated humanity — to re- peat the language, profess the feelings, inculcate the notions, of men who lived in daily dread of such awful martyrdom, and under the excitement of such a mighty misconception ; to cry down the world, with its profound beauty, its thrilling in- terests, its glorious works, its noble and holy affections ; to ex- hort their hearers, Sunday after Sunday, to detach their heart from the earthly life, as inane, fleeting, and unwortliy, and fix it upon heaven, as the only sphere deserving the love of the loving or the meditation of the wise, — appears to us, we confess, frightful insincerity, the enactment of a wicked and gigantic lie. The exhortation is delivered and listened to as a thing of course ; and an hour afterwards the preacher, who has thus usurped and profaned the language of an Apostle who wrote with the fagot and the cross full in view, is sitting comfortably witli his hearer over his claret ; they are fondling their children, discussing public affairs or private plans in life, with passionate interest, and yet can look at each other without a smile or a blush for the sad and meaninjj-less farce they have been acting ! Everything tends to })rove that this life is, not perhaps, not probably, our only sphere, but still an integral one, and the one with which we are here meant to be concerned. The present is our scene of action, — the future is for speculation and for trust. AYe firmly believe that man was sent upon the earth to live in it, to enjoy it, to study it, to love it, to embellish it, — to make 284 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. the most of it, in short. It is his country, on which he should lavish his affections and his efforts. Spartam nactus es — hanc exorna. It should be to him a house, not a tent, — a home, not only a school. If, Avhen this house and this home are taken from him. Providence, in its wisdom and its bounty, provides him with another, let him be deei3ly grateful for the gift, — let him transfer to that future, when it has become his present, his exertions, his researches, and his love. But let him rest assured that he is sent into this world, not to be con- stantly hankering after, dreaming of, preparing for, another, which may or may not be in store for him, but to do his duty and fulfil his destiny on earth, — to do all that lies in his power to improve it, to render it a scene of elevated happiness to himself, to those around him, to those who are to come after him. So will he avoid those tormenting contests with nature, — those struggles to suppress affections which God has implanted, sanctioned, and endowed with irresistible su- premacy,— those agonies of remorse when he finds that God is too strong for him, — which now embitter the lives of so many earnest and sincere souls ; so will he best prepare for that future which we hope for, if it come ; so will he best have occupied the present, if the present be his all. To de- mand that we love heaven more than earth, that the unseen should hold a higher place in our affections than the seen and famihar, is to ask that which cannot be obtained without sub- duing nature, and inducing a morbid condition of the soul. The very law of our being is love of life, and all its interests and adornments." — pp. 271, 272. With all that is admirable in our author's book, he contem- plates the whole subject from a point of view which exhibits it in very imperfect lights. He professes to treat of " The Creed of Christendom." Yet, in examining only the canoni- cal Scriptures and the primitive belief, he totally ignores the " Creed " of the greater part of " Christendom," namely, of the Catholic Church. For it is only Protestants that identify Christianity with the letter of tlie New Testament, and settle everything by appeal to its contents. According to the older THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 285 doctrine, Christianity is not a Divine Philosophy recorded in certain books, but a Divine Institution committed to certain men. The Christian Scriptures are not its source, but its first product ; not its charter and definition, but its earliest act and the expression of its incipient thought. They exhibit the young attempts of the new agency, as it was getting to work upon the minds of men and trying to penetrate the resisting mass of terrestrial affairs. They are thus but the beginning of a record which is prolonged through all subsequent times, the opening page in the proceedings of a Church in perpetu- ity ; and are not separated from the continuous sacred litera- ture of Christendom, as insulated fragments of Divine author- ity. The supernatural element which they contain did not die out with their generation, but has never ceased to flow through succeeding centuries. Nor did the heavenly purpose — precip- itated upon earthly materials and media — disclose itself most conspicuously at first ; but rather cleared itself as it advanced and enriched its energy with better instruments. The sub- limest things would even lie secreted in the unconscious heart of the new influence, and only with the slowness of noble growths push towards the light ; for the noise and obtrusive- ness of the human is ever apt to overwhelm the retiring si- lence of the divine. The disciples,' who, when events were before their eyes, and great words fell upon their ears, " un- derstood not these things at the time," are types of all men and all ages ; whose religion, coming out in the event, is known to others better than to themselves. A faith, there- fore, should be judged less by its first form than by its last ; and at all events be studied, not as it once appeared, but in the entire retrospect of its existence. No doubt this doctrine of development is made subservi- ent, in the Romish system, to monstrous sacerdotal claims. A priestly hierarcliy pretends to the exclusive custody, and the gradual unfolding, of God's sacred gift. But sweep away this holy corporation ; throw its treasury oi)en, and let its vested riglit, of paying out the truth, be flung into the free air of history ; gather together no Sacred College but the collected 286 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. ages ; appeal to no high Pontiff but the Providence of God ; — and there remains a far juster and subhmer view of the place and function of a pure Gospel in the world, than the narrow Protestant conception. Christianity becomes thus, not the Creed of its Founders, but the Religion of Christendom, to be estimated only in comparison with the faiths of other groups of the great human family ; and the superhuman in it will consist in this, — the providential introduction among the affairs of this world of a divine influence, which shall gradu- ally reach to untried depths in the hearts of men, and become the organizing centre of a new moral and spiritual life. It is a power appointed — an inspiration given — to fetch by rever- ence a true religion out of man, and not, by dictation, to put one into him. For this end, it would not even be necessary that the beai- ers of the divine element should be personally initiated into the counsels whose ministers they are. Philosophy must know what it teaches ; but Inspiration, in giving the intensest light to others, may have a dark side turned towards itself. There is no irreverence in saying this, and no novelty : on the contrary, the idea has ever been familiar to the most fervent men and ages, of Prophets who prepared a future veiled from their own eyes, and saintly servants of heaven, who drew to themselves a trust, and wielded a power, which their ever- upward look never permitted them to guess. Nay, to no one was this conception less strange, than to the very man who, in his turn, must now have it applied to himself. With the Apostle Paul it was a favorite notion, that the entire plan of the Divine government had been a profound secret during the ages of its progress, and was opening into clear view only at the hour of its catastrophe. Not only was there more in it than had been surmised, but something utterly at variatice with all expectation. Its whole conception had remained un- suspected from first to last ; undiscerned by the vision of seers, and unapproached by the guesses of the wise. Never absent from the mind of God, and never pausing in its course of execution, it had yet evaded the notice of all observers ; THE CREED OF CIIRISTENDO^[. 287 and winding its way through the throng of nations and the labyrinth of centuries, the great Thought had passed in dis- guise, using all men and known of none. Nor was it only the ])agan eye that, for want of special revelation, had been detained in darkness, or beguiled with the scenery of dreams. The very people whose life was the main channel of the Divine purpose did not feel the tide of tendency which they conveyed ; the patriarchs who fed their flocks near its foun- tains, the lawgiver who founded a state upon its banks, the priests whose temple poured blood into its waters, and the prophets at whose prayer the clouds of heaven dropped fresh purity into the stream, — all were unconscious of its course ; assigning it to regions it should never visit, and missing the point where it should be lost in the sea. Nay, Paul seems to bring down this edge of darkness to a later time ; to include within it even the ministry of Christ and the Galilean Apos- tles ; to imply that even they were unconscious instruments of a scheme beyond the range of their immediate thought ; and that not till Jesus had passed into the light of heaven did the time come for revealing, through the man of Tarsus, the significance of Messiah's earthly visit, and its place in the great scheme of things. Paul, in claiming this as his own' special function, certainly implies that, previous to his call, no one was in condition to interpret the secret counsels of God in the historic development of his providence. lie feels this to be no reflection on his predecessors, no cause of elevation in himself; steward as he is of a mighty mystery, he is less than the least of all saints. He simply stands at the crisis when a conception is permitted to the world, which even " the angels have vainly desired to look into " ; and though he may see more, he is infinitely less than the Prophets and the Mes- siah whose place it is given him to explain. He is but the interpreter, they are the grand agencies interpreted. He is but the discerning eye, they are the glorious objects on which it is fixed. In seeking, therefore, for the divine elemeiit in older dis- pensations, the Apostle would assuredly not consult the pro- 288 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. jects and beliefs of their founders and ministers. In his view, the very scheme of God was to work through these without their knowing what they were about ; to let them aim at one thing while he was directing them to anotlier ; to pour through their life and soul an energy which should indeed fire their will and flow from their lips in their own best purposes, but steal quietly behind them for his ; so that what was primary with them was perhaps evanescent with him ; while that which was incidental, and dropped from them unawares, was the seed of an eternal good. What Moses planned, what David sung, what Isaiah led the people to expect, was not what Heaven had at heart to execute. Even in quest of God's thought in the Christian dispensation, Paul does not refer to the doctrines, the precepts, the miracles of Jesus during his ministry in Palestine, — to the memorials of his life, or the testimony of his companions. He assumes that, at so early a date, the time had not yet come for the truth to appear, and that it was vain to look for it in the preconcep- tions of the uncrucified and unexalted Christ ; who was the religion, not in revelation, but in disguise. If, therefore, any one had argued against the Apostle thus : " Why tell us to 'discard the law ? your Master said he came to fulfil it. How do you venture to preach to the Gentiles, when Jesus de- clared his mission limited to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ? No vestiges of your doctrine of free grace can be found in the parables, or of redeeming faith in the Sermon on the Mount " ; — he would have boldly replied, that this proves nothing against truths that are newer than the life, because expounded by the death, of Christ ; that God reveals by action, not by teaching ; that no servant of his can understand his own office till it is past ; and that only those who look back upon it through the interpretation of events, can read aright the divine idea which it enfolds. This view it was that made the Apostle so bold an inno- vator, and filled his Epistles with a system so different from that of the synoptical Gospels as almost to constitute a differ- ent religion. He had seized the profound and sublime idea THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 283 that, when men are inspired, the inspiration occupies, not their conscious thought and will, but their unconscious nature ; laying a silent beauty on their affections, secreting a holy wisdom in their life, and, through the sorrows of faithfulness, tempting their steps to some surprise of glory. That which they deliberately think, that which they anxiously elaborate, that which they propose to do, is ever the product of their human reason and volition, and cannot escape the admixture of personal fallibility. But their free spontaneous nature speaks unawares, like a sweet murmuring from angels' dreams. AVhat they think without knowing it, what they say without thinking it, what they do without saying it, all the native pressures of their love and aspiration, these are the hiding- place of God, wherein abiding, he leaves their simplicity pure and their liberty untouched. The current of their reasoning and action is determined by human conditions and material resistances ; but the fountain in the living rock has waters that are divine. If this be true, then must we search for the heavenly element in the latencies rather than the prominen- cies of their life ; in what they were, rather than in what they thought to do ; in the beliefs they felt without announcing ; in the objects they accomplished, but never planned. We must wait for their agency in history, and from the fruit return to find the seed. It is not peculiar to Mr. Greg that, in estimating Christian- ity, he has neglected, and even reversed, this principle. All who have treated of it from the Protestant point of view have done the same. They have assumed that the religion was to be most clearly discerned at its commencement ; that the di- vine thought it contained would be, not evolved, but obscured by time, and might be better detected in ideal shape at the beginning of the ages, than realized at the end ; that its agents and inaugurators must have been fully cognizant of its whole scope and contents, and set them in the open ground of their speech and practical career. In the minds of all Protestants the Christian religion is identified exclusively with the ideas of the first century, with the creed of the Apostles, with the 25 290 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. teachings of Christ. The New Testament is its sole deposi- tor}", in whose books there is nothing for which it is not answerable. The consequence is a perpetual struggle be- tween untenable dogma and unprofitable scepticism. The whole structure of faith becomes precarious. If Luke and Matthew should disagree about a date or a pedigree ; if Mark should report a questionable miracle ; if John should mingle with his tenderness and depth some words of passionate in- tolerance ; if Peter should misapply a psalm, and Paul indite mistaken prophecies ; above all, if Jesus should appear to believe in demonology, and not to have foreseen the futurities of his Church, — these detected specks are felt like a total eclipse ; affrighted faith hides its face from them and shrieks ; and he who points them out, though only to show how pure the orb that spreads behind, is denounced as a prophet of evil. The peaceful and holy centre of religion is shaken by storms of angry erudition. Devout ingenuity or indevout acuteness spend themselves in vitiating the impartial course of histori- cal criticism; neither of them reflecting, that, if the topics in dispute are open to reasonable doubt, they cannot be matter of revelation, and may be calmly looked at as objects of natu- ral thoutyht. It is a thinGf alike dansrerous and unbecominof that religion should be narrowed to a miserable literary parti- sanship, bound up with a disputed set of critical conclusions, unable to deliver its title-deeds from a court of perpetual chancery, whose decisions are never final. The time seems to have arrived for freeing the Protestant Christianity from its superstitious adhesion to the mere letter of the Gospel, and trusting moi*e generously to that permanent inspii-ation, those ever-living sources of truth within the soul, of which Gospel and Epistle, the speeches of Apostles and the insight of Christ, are the pre-eminent, rather than the lonely, examples. The primitive Gospel is not in its form, but only in its spirit, the everlasting Gospel. It is concerned, and, if we look to quan- tity alone, chiefly concerned, with questions that have ceased to exist, and interests that no longer agitate. It often reasons from principles we do not own, and is tinged with feelings I THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 291 which we cannot share. Often do the most docile and open hearts resort to it with reverent hopes Avhich it docs not reahze, and close it with a sigh of self-reproach or disap- pointment. With the deep secrets of the conscience, the sublime hopes, the tender fears, the infinite wonderings of the religious life, it deals less altogether than had been desired ; and in touching them does not always glorify and satisfy the heart. We are apt to long for some nearer reflection, some more immediate help, of our existence in this present hour and this P^nglish land, where our enemies are not Pharisees and Sadducees, or our controversies about Beelzebub and his demons ; but where we would fain know how to train our children, to subdue our sins, to ennoble our lot, to think truly of our dead. The merchant, the scholar, the statesman, the heads of a family, the owner of an estate, occupy a moral sphere, the problems and anxieties of which, it must be owned, Evangelists and Apostles do not approach. Scarcely can it be said that general rules are given, which include these par- ticular cases. For the Christian Scriptures are singularly sparing of general rules. They are eminently personal, na- tional, local. They tell us of Martha and Mary, of Nicode- mus and Nathaniel, but give few maxims of human nature, or large formulas of human life : so that their spiritual guidance first becomes available when its essence has been translated from the special to the universal, and again brought down from the universal to the modern application. They are felt to be an inadequate measure of our living Cln'istianity, and to leave untouched many earnest thoughts that aspire and pray within the mind. One divine gift, indeed, they impart to us, — the gracious and holy image of Christ himself. Yet, some- how, even that sacred form appears with more disencumbered beauty, and in clearer light, when regarded at a little distance in the pure spaces of our tlionght, than when seen close at hand on the historic canvas. It is not that the ideal figure is a subjective fiction of our own, more perfect than the real. Every lineament, every gesture, all the simple majesty, all the deep expressiveness, we conceive to be justified and de- 292 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. manded by the actual portraiture : our least hesitating venera- tion sees nothing that is not there. But the original artists' sympathy we feel to have been somewhat different from ours. They have labored to exhibit aspects that move us little ; and only faintly marked the traces that to us are most divine. The view is often broken, the official dress turned into a dis- guise. The local groups are in the way ; the possessed and the perverse obtrude themselves in front with too muc^h noise ; and tlie refracting cloud of prophecy and tradition is con- tinually thrown between. So that the image has a distincter glory to the meditating mind than to the reading eye. All this, oftener perhaps felt than confessed, is perfectly natural and innocent. It betrays the instinctive analysis by which our own affections separate the divine from the human. Paul was right in his principle, that in history the divine ele- ment lies hid ; is missed at the time, even by those who are its vehicle ; and does not parade itself in what they conscious- ly design, but lurks in what they unconsciously execute. It comes forth at " the end of the ages," — the retrospect of fifty generations instead of the foresight of one. This doctrine is true of individuals, in proportion as they are great and good. They labor at what is most difficult to them, and make it their end ; but their appointed power lies in what is easiest. They chiefly prize the beliefs and the virtues most painfully won ; but their highest truth dwells in the trusts they cannot help, and their purest influence in the graces they never willed, or knew to be their own. And it is true in history ; Paul himself signally illustrating the rule which he had ap- plied to earlier times. He had found, as he suppo-ed, the Providence of the Past, which all had missed, from Moses to Christ ; but in his turn he missed, as we perceive, the Prov- idence of the Future, from himself to us. The kind of agency which he anticipated for Christ bears no resemblance to that which his religion has actually exercised. The only fault we can find with Mr. Thorn's admirable exposition is, that he attributes to the Apostle too distinct an apprehension of Christ as an impersonation of moral perfection ; and supposes THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. 293 the purpose of the Pauline Christianity to have been the es- tablishment, as sole condition of discipleship, of reverential sympathy with the type of character realized in the Galilean life of Jesus. He says : — " In contrast with such teachers " (the Ritual and the Dog- matic), " St. Paul, in our present chapter (1 Corinthians ii.)j refers both to the matter and the manner of his own ministra- tion of the Gospel. He did not teach it as a Rhetorician, to attract admiration to himself, and give more lively impressions of Paul the Orator than of Christ the Redeemer from sin, nor as a Philosopher, to raise doubtful questions on metaphysical subjects, and become the leader of a speculative school ; but as the Apostle of Jesus Christ, he proclaimed to the hearts of men the practical and life-giving Gospel, that ' God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself; that by the uni- versal Saviour all distinctions were for ever destroyed, and the whole family of God to grow into the common likeness of that well-beloved Son, — for that now neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but the renewal of the affections after the image of the Lord. Where could an en- trance be found for party divisions in a doctrine that pro- fessed nothing, that aimed at nothing, except to awaken the consciousness of sin within the heart, and, through trust in the God of holiness and love revealed in Jesus, to lead it to repentance and life? All who felt this love of Christ con- straining them, cleansing their souls by the divine image that had taken possession of their affections, and, through the mercy it proclaimed, encouraging their penitence to look for pardon from their God, must, of necessity, be one communion ; for this Gospel sentiment and ho[)e could create no divisions amongst those who had it, — and those who had it not were outside the Christian pale, and, so far, could make no schisms within it. Now, whence comes tliis Gospel sentiment, this new principle of life ? Were there any who had the exclu- sive power of communicating it? Did it require to be intro- duced by any intricate reasonings, by any subtle dialectics, which only the Masters in philosophy had at their command ? 25* 294 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. Not SO, says St. Paul ; — it is a spiritual feeling, excited by moral sympathy, as sopn as Christ is offered to the hearts that are susceptible of the sentiment ; — and in whatever bo- som there is not enough of the Spirit of God to cause that moral attraction to take place, neither philosophy nor outward forms, nor aught else but the divine image of goodness kept before the heart, can awaken the slumbering sensibilities which are the very faculties of spiritual apprehension, and which, as soon as they are alive, behold in Christ the solution of their own struggling and imperfect existence, their ideal and their rest. In regard to a. sentiment so spiritual, a sym- pathy with the image of God, where is the possibility of intro- ducing party divisions, and violating Christian unity ? There can be but two parties, — those that have the sentiment, and those that have it not. All Christians constitute the one, — and as for the other, in relation to Christian unity, they are not in question. Such is the argument of St. Paul in this second chapter." — p. 30. It may be quite true that the essential power of Christian- ity resides in the image, ever present to the heart of Chris- tendom, of a God resembling Christ, and loving those who aspire to approach him through the same resemblance. But we cannot find any traces of such a conception in the writ- ings of Paul. The " faith " on which he exclusively insisted w^ould be very incorrectly defined, we conceive, as a rever- ence of Christ's character as morally like God. If we may judge from the negative evidence of his letters, he appears to have had no insight into the interior of his Master's earthly life, and no great concern about it. There is an entire absence of any moral picture of Jesus, who is presented in the Apos- tohc writings as an object, not of retrospective veneration, but of expectant reliance ; not of admiring trust for personal qual- ities realized in a past career, but of hope grounded on his official destiny in the future. One beauty of his character is, indeed, appealed to in the Pauline writings, viz. his humil- ity and self-renunciation ; * but even this is recognized, not * See Philippians ii. 5-11. THE CREED OF CnRISTENDOJI. 295 on liistorical, but on theocratic grounds ; it is illustrated, not by anything in his life, but by the fact of his death, conceived as a voluntary postponement of his theocratic prerogatives, and an abrogation of his exclusive nationality. He was a " spiritual " object to the Apostle of the Gentiles, not from perception of the inner marks and graces of his spirit, but from his being invisible and immortal, reserved in heaven under external escape from the conditions of earthly life. Mr. Thom's doctrine is a happy development of modern truth from ancient error ; but regarded as a mere interpretation, it perhaps sets down to the Apostle's account a just moral ap- preciation of the past, instead of an erroneous conception of the Providence of the future. The religion of Christ lias as- suredly turned out a very different phenomenon from any- thing that was anticipated at its origin. It was announced as a Kingdom ; as the king did not come, it became a Repul>- lic. It was conceived as a State ; it grew up into a Faith. It was pi-oclaimed as the world's end ; it proved to be a fresh beginning. It was to consummate the Law and the Proph- ets ; and it confounded both. It was to cover Pagan nations with shame and destruction ; it embalmed their literature, and was transformed by their philosophy. It was to deliver over the earth to the pure and severe Monotheism of the Hebrews ; which, however, it so relaxed as to provoke Islam into exist- ence to proclaim again the monarchy of God. Its subjects were to be gathered from the Jews and half-castes of the Eastern Synagogue ; and its most signal glories have been nmong the Teutonic nations, and the then unsuspected con- tinents of the West. In every element of its internal power, in every direction of its external action, it has burst all the proportions, left behind all the expectations, with which it was born ; and how can we continue to try it by the standard of its origin ? Are we to say, that, having promised one thing and become another, it is not of God ? That might be well, if it Ivdd fallen short of its own professions, — disappointed us of dreams it had awakened of glory and delight. But if it has hecn far better than its word; if, instead of winding up 296 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. the world's affairs, it has given them a new career; if for Messiah's tame millennium we have the ojrand and stru5r";lino: life of Christendom, and for his closed books of judgment tlie jet open page of human history ; if for the earthly throne and sceptre of Christ, sweeping away the treasures of past civil- ization, we have his heavenly image and spirit, presiding over the re-birth of art, the awakening of thought, the direction of law, and the organism of nations ; if from the dignity of out- ward sovereignty he has been raised to that of Lord of the living conscience^ not superseding the soul, but exercising it with sorrow and aspiration ; then, surely, in so outstripping itself, the religion should win a more exceeding measure of trust and affection. Had it only realized its first assurances, we should have thought it divine ; since it has so much sur- passed them, we must esteem it diviner. There is no reason for the common assumption that a religion must be purest in its infancy. It is no less surrounded then, than at each sub- sequent time, with human conditions, and transmitted through human faculties ; and when delivered to the world, embodied in action or in speech, necessarily presents itself as a mixed product of divine insight and of human thought, — of the liv- ing present and the decaying past ; a flash of heavenly fire on the outspread fuel upon the altar of tradition. So it is with the Scriptures of the New Testament ; which are not the heavenly source, but the first earthly result and expres- sion of Christianity, and which present the perishable condi- tions as well as the indestructible life of the religion. Only by the course of time and Providence can these be disengaged from one another, and the accidents of place and nation fall away. If there dwell in the midst a divine productive ele- ment, the further it passes from the moment of its nativity, the clearer and more august will it appear. It is like the seed dropped at first on an unprepared and unexpectant ground ; which in its earliest development yields but a strug- gling and scanty growth, but each season, as another gener- ation of leaves falls from the bouglis, becomes the source, through richer nutriment, of fuller forms ; till at length, when THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM:. 297 it has spread the foliage of ages, making its own soil, and deepening the luxuriance of its own roots, a forest in all its glory covers the land, and waves in magnificence over conti- nents once bare of life and beauty. So is it with the germ of divine truth cast upon the inhospitable conditions of history ; it is small and feeble in its earlier day ; but when it has pro- vided the aliment of its own growth, and shed its reproductive treasures on the congenial mind of generations and races, it starts into the proportions of a Christendom, and becomes the shade and shelter of a world. Much, therefore, as we value all attempts to illustrate the first records of Christianity, and to detach what was purely human and transient in its original form, we think that the religion itself cannot acknowledge the competency of such investigations to decide upon its claims. From a verdict on its^r^^ works, it has a right to appeal for judgment upon the whole. It is the religion, not of John and Paul alone, but of Christendom ; without a comparative estimate of whose moral and social genius, it can by no means be appreciated. Tlie weakness and inadequacy of all narrower methods of defence will in the end drive the clergy to occupy this larger basis of operations. And the change will be not more favorable to the logic of their cause than to the charity of their disposition. So long as the Scriptures alone are taken as the standard, no more than one creed, at most, can be regarded as concurrent with the Christian faith. But when the entire existence of tlie religion through eighteen centuries is adopted as the meas- ure, the very interests of advocacy themselves require that the best construction rather than the worst be put upon the errors and eccentricities of all churches within the compass of Christendom. The evidences would, in that case, be de- stroyed by exclusiveness, and widened in their foundations by comprehensiveness of temper ; and tlie firnmess of every discij)le's faith and the energy of his zeal would become as- surances, not of his limitation of mind, but of his largeness of heart. Instead of endless divisions, multiplied in the search after unity, we might hope to see the lines of separation be- 298 THE CREED OF CHRISTENDOM. come ever fainter ; and every test of Christianity withdrawn except that of moral sympathy vyith the spirit of Christ; a test which, as God alone can apply it, man cannot abuse ; and according to which many that, in the ecclesiastic roll, have been first, shall be last, and the last first. THE ETHICS or CHRISTENDOM. The Temporal Benefts of CJiristianity exemplijied in its In- fiuence on the Social, Intellectual, Civil, and Political Con- dition of Mankind, from its first Promulgation to the pres- .ent Day. By Robert Blakey. London. 1840. Small Boohs on Great Subjects. Edited by a few Well- Wishers to Knowledge. No. 19. On the State of Man subsequent to the Promulgation of Christianity. London. 1851. The Connection of Morality with Religion; a Sermon, preached in the Cathedral of St. Patrick, at an Ordina- tion held by the Lord Archbishop of Dublin, Sunday, Sep- tember 21, 1851. By William Fitzgerald, A.M., Vicar of St. Ann's, and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Dublin. London. 1851. Of these works, the third treats theoretically, the others practically, of the relation of Christianity to human nature. The preacher seeks in the natural conscience for the moral ground and receptacle of revelation ; while the historians trace its moral oi)eration in society and life. Were both tasks per- fectly performed, we should be furnished with a complete image of the religion at once in its idea and its expression ; should be able definitely to compare its promise with its achievements^ and to submit it, as a whole, to philosophical appreciation. But the two halves of the subject are exhibited with very unequal success. It is much easier to show the intended than the 300 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. actual influence of the Christian faith upon the character of its disciples, — to determine by a priori methods what it must he, than by an a posteriori induction to estimate what it has been, and is. Mr. Fitzgerald, as becomes a professor of ethical science, has well contended that the religion which he recom- mends from the pulpit is neither indifferent nor supercilious towards the morals which he teaches from the University chair, — but assumes their obligation, appeals to their authority, and, in its mode of reconciling the human will with the Divine, raises them into eternal sanctities. It addresses itself to man as a being already conscious of responsibility ; and simply pro- poses to restore reason and conscience to that supremacy in fact which of right they can never lose. How far has this aim been visibly realized ? Are the traces of a Divine renovation clear upon the face of Christendom ? Is there the difference between ancient Greece and modern England, or between the empire and the papacy of Rome, which might be expected between an unregenerate world and a regenerate ? The his- torical answer to these questions is attempted by Mr. Blakey, with perhaps adequate resources of knowledge, but with so im- perfect an apprehension of the requisites of his argument, that his book, though often instructive in detail, is altogether inef- fective as a whole. He is content to select and enumerate the most salient and favorable points in the transition from an- cient to modern civilization, and to set them down to the credit of Christianity ; without care to disengage the action of con- current causes, or to balance the account by reference to more questionable effects. A much finer analysis is needed, in order to draw from history its real testimony on this great matter ; and nothing can well be more arbitrary, than to stroll through some fifteen centuries, and, gathering up none but the most picturesque and beneficent phenomena, weave them into a glory to crown the faith with which they co-exist. In Chris- tendom, all the great and good things that are done at all will of course be done by Christians, and will contain such share of the religious element as may belong to the character of the actor or the age ; but before you can avail yourself of them THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. . 301 in Christian Apologetics, it must be shown that, under any other faith, no social causes would have remained adequate either to produce them or to provide any worthy equivalent. Because Charlemagne, after baptizing the Saxons in their own blood, displayed a better zeal by establishing cathedral and conventual schools, therefore to put the horn-book of the liberal arts into the hand of his religion, while leaving the wet sword to stain his own ; because chivalry blended in its vow '-'■fear of God " with " love of the ladies," therefore to trace all loyalty and courtesy to the doctrine of the Church ; because the mediseval schoolmen imported into every science the canons of Divinity, and decided between Realism and Nom- inalism on eucharistic principles, therefore to give the priest- hood all the honors of modern philosophy and intellectual liberty, — is, to say the least, very vulnerable logic and very superficial history. Of a far superior order is the little book " On the State of Man subsequent to the Promulgation of Christianity." In a previous treatise, " On the State of Man before the Promulgation of Christianity," the author had passed under rapid review the ancient systems of civilization, — sta- tionary, progressive, aggressive ; and having seized on their characteristic features, he now brings with him determinate points of comparison into his survey of the post-Apostolic times. The view which he spreads beneath your eye of the world, as it lay ready to afford a channel for the Christian faith, is remarkable for breadth and truth. Conducting you, with the wide picture in your mind, to the pure head-spring in Galilee, and keeping close to the stream as it descends and opens from these sequestered heights, he enables you to see, reach by reach, where it fertilizes and where it destroys ; the new fields of life it enters, the old landmarks of habit it over- whelms. The author is not more familiar with the Christian Apologists and Fathers, than with the later Latin and revived Greek literature from Trajan to Aurelian ; and by skilfully noting the moments when Pagan and Christian life not only stood in silent co-presence, but came into active contact, he brings out into clear relief the new type of character which 26 302 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. formed itself within the communities of disciples. That type is so strikingly original, its features so conspicuously express an order of passions and ideas strange alike to the Hellenic and the Italian races, as to betray the creative action of some vast moral power unborrowed from the established civilization. When the free Roman breaks the bread of communion with slaves, -T- when the slippery Syrian forswears lying and theft, — when the heedless Greek chanjres his eao;emess of the moment into a living for eternity, — when a people ignorant of Stoic maxims display a contempt of torture and death sub- limer than the ideal of the Porch, — an influence is plainly at work which has penetrated to hitherto unawakened depths of the human soul. The phenomenon is the more impressive, when regard is liad to the materials from which the early Christian communities were jrathered. It cannot be imaofined that they were composed of elements particularly choice ; and, indeed, amid the universal corruption of morals and exhaus- tion of wholesome life, it is difficult to conceive how, if the Christian doctrine had enforced a rigorous selection, instead of indiscriminately inviting innocence and guilt, any decent ele- ments could have been collected. Without adopting Gibbon's contemptuous estimate of tlie body of primitive believers, we cannot doubt that it comprised very mixed ingredients ; we know that it contained great numbers of the servile class, and very few whose station and culture gave them access to the higher ideas familiar to the schools of jjhilosophy : yet from these unpromising sources arose a society, which, in severity of morals, in intensity of affection, in heroism of endurance, reversed the habits of the world to which they belonged. It seems to us an idle question for sceptical criticism to raise, Avhether the religion of Christ comprised in its teachings any ethical element absolutely new. If genius had conceived it all before, life had not produced it till now ; and the more you affirm the philosophers' competency to think it, the more do you convict them of inability to realize it. But in morals scarcely can there be clear intellectual conception of principles not yet embodied in living character. As in the highest works THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 303 of art, the thing seen is far other than the thing imagined and described ; not doctrines, but persons, are here the only ex- pression of the truth ; and till they appear, ethical forms are but as the human clay without the vital fire. In the statement of thought, the early Christians, not excepting the Scripture writers, are rude and unskilled ; and a taste formed from the study of Plato and Seneca may be offended by the rusticity of Mark, and the abruptness of Paul. But whoever can rise above the level of a merely intellectual critique, and embrace, with our anonymous author, the whole phenomenon of the first centuries of our era, will see a glow of self-denying faith, and a deep movement of conscience, affording manifest announce- ment of a new edition of human nature. Tliat edition has now been extant for many centuries ; and is variously legible in the literature, the institutions, the pri- vate manners of Christendom. The Christian ideal of human life lies as an open book before us ; yet as a book so various in its versions, and so overlaid with comments, that the fresh flavor of its language, and even the finer essence of its thought, are in danger of being lost. The actual Christianity of each successive age, and each contemporary nation, is the express result, not only in its dogma, but in* its life, of two component terms, — a given matter, and a given faculty of faith. How- ever full and constant the former may be in itself, the latter is perpetually variable with the knowledge and passions of the time, and the special genius of individual leaders ; nor can this variation of insight in the mind fail to neutralize some portion of truth, and to give disproportionate magnitude to others. The data supplied by inspiration itself form no ex- ception to this rule. Delivered into the charge of tlie human soul, they fall into the moulds of its recipient nature, take their immediate form from the laws of its life, and are reacted on from its independent activity. Tlie immutable custody of anything by a finite thinking subject, involves the most evident contradiction ; the very contact with human intelligence re- duces universal truth to partial, the permanent to the variable, the secure to the contingent. It is only in the essential Unity 304 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. of Reason and Conscience in every age, that we find the means of correcting the aberrations and verifying the insight of all particular men. Not that we are to conceive of the human race collectively as one large person, of which individ- ual minds are vital organs, and which has a necessary growth and development, entitling each century to boast of advance beyond its predecessors. We know of no spiritual units, of no personalities, except each single and separate will ; nor do we find anything in their mutual relation which necessarily determines them to uninterrupted improvement, and excludes the encroachment of degeneracy and falsehood. Indeed, no sorrier product is there of human conceit and ignorance than the cant of " progress," which assumes that every newest phase of thought is wisest. But if all men are endowed with radi- cally the same faculties, however various in their intensities and proportions, there is a court of appeal in permanent sit- ting, where the normal laws of intellectual and moral appre- hension are administered against all provincial prejudices and transient verdicts of error. In the long run, the healthy per- ceptions of good eyes will outvote the discoloring effects of all ophthalmic epidemics, how obstinate and wide soever they may be. And the moral vision of mankind will no less vindi- cate its natural rights, by returning again and again into clear discernments, and settled admirations, and discharging the illu- sory forms and false tints of each separate age. To deny the ethical competency of the mind for this office, — to say that there is no power given for deciding what, among the claim- ants on reverence, is really noble, true, and good, — is, with all its j)ietistic pretences, an act of the profoundest scepticism, washing away, as a quicksand, the only rock on which any faith can be built. It is to treat the durable source of truth as evanescent and uncertain, and shut out the possibility of all religion. On the other hand, to set up and idolize the life and thought of any one time as an unquestionable rule for all times, and stereotype it for unmodified reproduction, is to treat the evanescent as the durable, and build on whatever stands above the water, heedless whether it be the quicksand or the THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 305 rock. Yet, strange to say, this particular superstition, and that general unbelief, — an apparent antithesis of error, — usually meet in the same mind, and constitute together the chief theology of most visible churches. Having deposed and insulted the eternal sanctities, they coax and flatter the letter of Scripture to acce[)t the vacant throne, and exchange the holy modesty of its administration for a universal empire of pretence. They drain off the springs of inspiration at their fountain-head, and turn all history into a plain of sand, that they may magnify their Hebrew reservoir as the world's sole supply; forgetting that, when cut off from the running waters, the choicest store loses its fresh virtues, and the fairest lake, shut up without exit, turns into a Dead Sea. In contradiction of both errors, we shall assume that transitory elements can- not fail to mix themselves with the expression of the purest inspiration, — the horizon of human relations and expressible things around even the divinest soul being limited; and that, as the inspiration tries itself upon age after age, bringing into distinct consciousness now one side of truth and now another, it becomes more and more possible to find its essence and eliminate its accidents, to save its catliolic beauties apart from its sectional distortions. The Christian ideal of life is not to be looked for in what is special to the Crusader or the Quaker, — to Puritan or Cavalier, — to Platonists of the sec- ond century or Aristotelians of the twelfth, — to Aquinas or Luther, — to John or Paul ; but in such sentiment as was common to them all, and attached to them as citizens of Chris- tendom. When this element is disengaged from all that en- cumbers it, it will be found pervading and animating still whatever is noblest in our modern life ; while all that is nar- row, and weak, and unworthy in the moral doctrine of our age, springs from a forced attempt to perpetuate the acciden- tal modes of the Apostolic period. Every one is sensible of a change in the whole climate of thought and feeling, the moment he crosses any part of the boundary which divides Christian civilization from Pleathen- dom ; yet of nothing is it more dilficult to render any compen- 26* 306 THE ETHICS OP CHRISTENDOM. dious account. It is easy to enumerate in detail the phenom- ena which are modified or disappear ; just as on entering a new physical region the travelling naturalist may register the new species of plants and animals, that, one after another, pre- sent themselves to his research. But the>e do not 2)aint the scene before even the learned eye ; they are the separate out- comings of a great life-thrill, into whose current their roots penetrate ; the landscape, as a whole, speaks differently to the mind, and the whole heaven and earth seem pregnant with a thought unfelt before. To read off that thought, requires an apprehension the converse of the analytic vision of science. The same difficulty occurs when we endeavor to seize the la- tent principle of a natural realm of history. Such principle, however, there must be. Beneath all the moving tides of Christian thought there lie still depths that supply them all, and a centre of equilibrium around which they sweep. We believe that the fundamental idea of Christendom may be described to be the ascent tJirough Conscience into commun- ion with God. Other religions have lent their sanctions to morality, and announced the Divine commands to the human will ; but only as the laws of an outward monarch within whose sovereignty we lie, and who, ruling in virtue of his almightiness, has a right to obedience, ordain as he will. Other religions, again, have aimed at a union with God. But the conditions of this union, dictated by misleading conceptions of the Divine nature, have missed on every side the true level of human dignity and peace. Manichoeism, deifying the antith- esis of matter, takes the path of ascetic suppression of the body. The Indian Pantheist, imagining the Divine Abyss as the realm of night and infinite negation, strives to hold in the breath and sink into self-annulment. Plato, seeing in God the essence of thought, demands science and beauty, not less than goodness, as the needful notes of harmony with him, and appoints the approach to heaven by academic ways. The modern Quietists, worshipping a Being too much the reflection of their own tenderness, have lost themselves in soft affections, relaxing to the nerves of duty, and unseemly in the face of THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOJI. 307 eternal law. Christianity alone has neither crushed the soul by mere submission, like Mohammedanism ; nor melted it away in the tides of infinite being, like Pantheistic faiths ; but has saved the good of both, by establishing the union with God through a free act of the individual soul. Assigning to him a transcendent moral nature, sensitive to the same distinctions, conservative of the same solemnities, which awe and kindle us, it singles out the conscience as the field where we are to meet him, — where the bridge will be found of transit between the human and the divine. No fear or servility remains with an obedience consisting, not in mystic acts and artificial habits, but in the free play of natural goodness ; and rendered, not in homage to a Supreme Autocrat, but in sympathy with a Mind itself the infinite impersonation of all the sanctities. Nor are any dizzy and perilous flights incurred by a devotion wliicli meets its great Inspirer in no foreign heaven, but in the higher walks of this home life, and misses him only in what is mean and low. The place assigned in Christianity to the moral sentiments and affections has no parallel in any other religion. The whole faith is as an unutterable sigh after an ideal perfection. Holiness eternal in heaven, incar- nate on earth, and to be realized in men, — this is the circle of conceptions in which it moves. Its very name for the In- spiration which mediates all its work, expresses the same thing. It is not simply an eudovaiaa-fxos, — not fiavla, — not ^aicxfla, — but the TTvevfia ayiov. The Dasmon of Socrates — the least heathenish of heathen men — was but an intellect- ual guide, and checked his erring judgment ; the Holy Spirit guards the vigils of duty, and succors the disci[)le's tem[)ted will. This profound sense of interior amity with God through faithfulness to our highest possibility, appears in the Christian Scriptures under two forms, — the positive and the negative, — each the complement of the otiier. In tlie Gospel, Jesus him- self, as befits the saintly mind lifted above the strife of passion, describes the aspiration after goodness as the native guidance of the soul to her source and refuge. In the Epistles, Paul, pouring forth the confessions of a fiery nature, proclaims the 308 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. sense of sin to be the contracted hinderance that bars the as^ cent, and against which the wings of the struggling will beat only to grow faint. These representations are evidently but the two sides of the same doctrine seen from the heavenly and from the earthly position. Whether we are told what the good heart will find, or what the guilty must lose, the lesson equally recognizes the Divine authority of conscience. The benediction and the curse are but the bright and the dark hemisphere of one perfect truth. The Apostle, standing in the shadow of the world's night, and regarding its averted face, dwells on the gloom of alienation, — the " foolish heart that is darkened," — the " reprobate mind " from which God is hid. Christ, conscious of the holy light, and knowing how it penetrates the folds of willing natures, and wakes what else would sleep, speaks rather of the glory that is not denied, and utters that deepest of blessings, — " The pure in heart shall see God." To this bright side also the Pauline view in the end comes round. For though in him we miss that recog- nition of a natural human goodness which gives such grace and sweetness to many of the parables ; though in his scheme the human will has not only betrayed its trus^, but hopelessly crippled its powers ; yet he does not leave it in the collapse of paralysis, with the hard saying that it can in no wise lift up itself, but points to a hope that bends over it from above. The soul that is too far gone to act, may still be capable of love ; if unable to trust itself, it may trust another ; if it can- not cammand its volitions, it may surrender its affections ; can reverence, can aspire, can yield its hand, like a child, to an angel of deliverance. Beyond the precincts of this world is an Image of divine excellence and beauty, — one recently withdrawn from human history, and soon to have a more au- gust return. It is but to turn the eye and give the heart to that ideal and immortal perfection, and in the light of so pure a love, the clouds will clear from the conscience, and lift them- selves as a nightmare away ; the lame will, forgetting its in- firmities, will spring up and walk ; and the restoration, impos- sible by flight from deformity and ill, will come tlu'ough the THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 309 attraction of a Divine sanctity ana goodness. Thus does the Apostle snatch the disciple at last into the right perceptions which Christ assumes to be possible at first ; and in both its primitive developments the Christian religion implies the com- munion of man with God through purify of heart. To this sentiment, conveyed with hving realization in the person of Jesus Christ, may be referred whatever is distinc- tively great in Christian ethics. Proposing, as an end within their reach, the ascent of the soul to a divine life, and as the means, a simple surrender to its own highest intimations, they have melted away the interval between earthly and heavenly natures, — not by humanizing God, but by consecrating man. In treatinsc the lower desires of sense and self as the steams that intercept, the tender reverences as the clear air that transmits, the light of lights, they have struck the deepest truth of human consciousness. Hence the temper of aspira- tion, — the earnest ideality, — the sense of infinite want, with faith in infinite possibihties, — the sorrowful unrest in the present, with irrepressible struggle for a better future, — which are impressed on the poetry, the art, the social hfe of Christendom. Unlike the expression of the Hellenic mind, they aixi rather a prayer for whut might be, than a joy in what is. Hence, too, the predominance of the psychological and subjective element in the philosoi)hy of modern times, and the conversion of the ancient " metaphysics " into the form of "mental science." Man would never have ceased to be merged in nature, and registered merely as a part of its con- tents ; his self-knowledge would not have vindicated its inde- pendent rights ; his mind would not have been recognized as the court of record for the moral legislation of the universe, — had not his religion taken him deep into himself, and from a new point shown him his relation to all else ; kindling his own consciousness to a point of intense brilliancy, in correspond- ence with a divine centre, which must be sought on the same axis of being, — like the two determining foci of an infinite curve, that find each other out, while the realm of determined nature hes around, as the configured area, or the bounding 310 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. curve. Of the external world, indeed, too little account has been made in the faith of Christians. They have not cared to recognize it as the shrine of immanent Deity ; — have stood in uneasy relations to it ; often inimical to it ; sometimes trying to get rid of it as an illusion ; usually regarding it as a foreign object, like a great statue on the stage of being, with only stony eyes and ears for the real play of passions that whirl around. Existence, in its essence, has been felt as an interview between man and God, at which space and nature have been collaterally present, but in which it was not appar- ent what they had to do. Physical science and the plastic arts may have reason to complain of the depressing influence of this imperfect view, and of the hard necessity under which it places them of pursuing their ends with only scanty and grudging recognition from religion. But, for the philosophic knowledge of human nature, and the practical regulation of human society, this isolation of the soul within its own con- sciousness, — this concentrated personahty, — this vivid inter- change of life with God without diffusion through benumbing media, — must be held eminently ennobling. If, from the fundamental Christian sentiment, we descend to the scheme of Applied Morals which it organized and in- spired, the principle still vindicates itself in its results. The great problems of life are supplied from two sources, — the Persons that may engage our affections, and the Pursuits that may invite our will. The light in which the personal rela- tions are presented before the eye of Christendom is undeni- ably benign and true. It has never been obscured without the social spread of injustice and discontent; nor ever cleared again, but as the precursor of reformation. That every human soul has its sacred concerns and its divine communion, is the simplest of thoughts ; but so deep and moving, that, where it is received and acknowledged, it calls up angelic vir- tues ; where it is insulted and denied, it lets slip avenging fiends. Wherever it is sincerely held, it secures that rever- ential feeling towards others, beneath whose spell the selfish passions sleep, and without which the precept of courtesy and THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 311 the definition of rights are an ineffectual form. Power loses its insolence, and dependence its sting, where their mutual relation does not carry the whole individuality with it, but stops with the limits of social and political convenience, and lies under the restraining protection of a supreme equality before God. The " Fraternity " that is the offspring of po- litical theories, and aims to neutralize by fellow-citizenship the diversities and antipathies of nature, is often the watch- word of envy and egotism, shouted by the voice of hatred, and announcinji: the deed of violence. It is for want of faith in that liighest brotherhood of worship and responsibility which Clu'istianity assumes, that impatient schemes are formed for artificially equalizing the weak and the strong, and abolishing the relations of necessary dependence. Nor, where tliat faith is absent, can they ever be answered so as to satisfy the feel- ing from which they spring. They may be shown to be im- practicable, and crushed by the relentless argument of fact ; but the fact will be protested against as unnatural, and the impossibility will seem a cruelty. How differently is this topic handled by the logic of science and the sentiment of religion ! How much less justly does the former draw the line between natural subordination among men and tyrannous oppression, than the latter! Aristotle undertakes the defence of slavery on grounds both of philosophy and of experience. Nature, he contends, pursuing a definite end in every act of creation, assigns to some things, from their very origin, a des- tiny to rule, while imposing on others a necessity of being ruled. Wherever a plurality of parts concur to form a gen- eral whole, dominant and subordinate elements present them- selves. Even within the inanimate realm this is apparent, as in the case of harmony in music. But it is chiefly con»>pic- uous in the sphere of animal existence ; the body being, by nature, servitor, of which the soul is lord. In the highest stage of animate being, the constitution of well-organized men, this law comes into the clearest light ; for here the soul sways the body with absolute command, while reason exercises over the passions the prerogatives of a royal and constitutional 312 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. power ; and were equality to be substituted for these modes of subjection, mischief would ensue on all sides. Not less evi- dently does Nature announce the dependence of inferior on superior in the rank allotted to the brutes in relation to man ; and again, in the case of the two sexes, of which the male, as the more distinguished, is rendered dominant. The same ne- cessary law adjusts the positions of mankind inter se. All those who are as intrinsically inferior to their neighbors as the body to the soul, or the brute to the man, — (and this is precisely the case of the mere manual laborer,) — are slaves by nature ; and for them, as for the body and the brutes, it is better to be servile than to be free. Any man who can be made property of by another, and who is competent to under- stand a master's intelligence without a spontaneous stock of his own, is naturally a slave. Such a one performs functions in the world not essentially distinguished from those of the domestic animals ; the destiny of both is to contribute their corporeal energies to the service of society ; and creatures fit for this alone are brought into the slave-market by Nature herself. Consistently with this conception of the laborer as a living tool {hovkoi efiy^vxou opyavov), Aristotle lays it down that the relation of master and slave admits no rights, and excludes friendship. To our modern worshippers of strength, this will appear commendable doctrine, very much because they have themselves relapsed into the old Hellenic way of studying the problems of the universe ; descending, in the Pantheistic method, from the whole upon the parts ; fetching rules from the wider sphere (therefore the lower) to import into the nar- rower ; entering the human world from the physical, — the oiKovfieuT] from the koo-jios ; approaching society as a specialty superinduced on a groundwork of nomadic barbarism; and determining the functions of the individual as member of the vital organism of the state. So long as this logical strategy is allowed, the Titans will always conquer the gods ; the ground-forces of the lowest nature will propagate themselves, pulse after pulse, from the abysses to the skies ; and right will exist only on sufferance from might. But there is a THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 313 heaven, after all, which the most trenchant giant cannot storm, and where justice and sanctity reserve a quiet throne. Without disputing the inequality of gifts and consequent law of natural ranks, religion qualifies it by an addition which overarches and absorbs it. Were man only the choicest, most intelligent, most gregarious of the mammalia, — were the theory of his affairs a mere extension of natural history, — we might reasonably discuss, in Aristotle's way, the conditions under which he may fitly be put in harness. But there is in him an element that takes him beyond the range of a Pliny or a Cu- vier, that lifts him out of the kingdom of nature and gives him kindred with the preternatural and divine. He is not simply an instrument for achieving a given fraction of a universal end, but has a sacred trust which, on its own account, he is empowered and commissioned to discharge. He is watched by the eyes of infinite Pity and Affection, braced for his faith- ful work, succored in his fierce temptations. The conditions of dutiful, loving, noble life must be preserved to him. Let his task, indeed, be suited to his powers ; and if he cannot rule, by all means let him serve ; but still with a margin and play of spiritual freedom secure from encroachment and con- tempt. Those on whom Heaven lays the burden of duty no power on earth may strip of rights. The conscience with which the Highest can commune, the spirit which is not too mean for His abode, can be no object of slight and scorn from men. By law and usage you may have the disposal of anoth- er's lot and labor ; but in the reality of things the lord of a province may be less than the conqueror of a temptation. You may be Greek, and he barbarian ; but in the heraldry of the universe, the blood of Agamemnon is less noble than the spirit of a saint. In thus snatching the individual, as bearer of a holy trust, from the crush of nature and the world, Chris- tianity became tlie first human religion, — that absolutely took no notice of race and sex and class. It created a new order of inalienable rights, neither the heritage of birth, nor the franchise of a state, but inherent in the moral capabilities of a man. The free opening of sanctity and immortality to every 27 314 . THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. willing heart could not fail to exercise an intense influence on the better portion of a world, like the declining empire of Rome, sickened with corruption and confused with unmanage- able oppressions. That it did so, is proved by the whole tenor of the early Christian literature ; and the effect is well described and accounted for by the writer " On the State of Man subsequent to the Promulgation of Christianity." " The mockery of adoring as gods the licentious tyrants who had occupied the imperial throne, seems to have put an end to everything like religious, feeling among the nations under the sway of Rome. The free satire of Lucianus shows how completely it had faded away, for it introduces the gods of Olympus complaining that they were starving for lack of offerings ; not altogether because Christian or philosophic doc- trines prevailed widely, but rather on account of the total indifference of the people to their ancient mythology ; for even if it ever had symbolized the truth, its meaning was now forgotten ; and, even so far back as the time of Cicero, had become totally unintelligible to the learned, as well as to the multitude. It was useless, therefore, and wanted but a slight impulse from without to overthrow it. But to the philosopher who was in earnest in his pursuit of this truth, buried under the rubbish of time, the doctrine of Christ afforded it ; there he found all that the master minds whom he honored had taught and hoped ; but he found it simplified, purified, and confirmed by sanctions such as Plato had wished for, but scarcely dared to expect ; — to the Roman patrician, if any there were who still looked back with fond memory to the purer morals and stern courage of his forefathers, the Chris- tian simplicity of manners and firm endurance of torture and death was the realization of what he had heard of and ad- mired, but scarcely seen till then ; — to the slave, sighing under oppression and condemned to hopeless bondage, the doctrine of the Gospel gave all that was valuable in life ; the Christian slave was the friend of his Christian master, par- took of the same holy feast, shared the same painful but glorious martyrdom ; he was raised at once to all his intellect- I THB ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 315 ual rank, found freedom beyond the grave, and lived already in a happy immortahty ; — to the woman, degraded in licr' own eyes no less than in those of the tyrant to whose lusts she was the slave, it offered a restoration to all that is most dear to the human race ; it offered intellectual dignity, equal- ity before God, purity, holiness. The Christian woman could die ; she could not, therefore, unless consenting to it, be again enslaved to the vile passions of men ; before God she was free, and with Him she trusted to find shelter when the hard world left her none. Can we wonder, then, that Christianity found votaries wherever a mind existed that sighed after bet- ter things ? for the preacher of Nazareth had at last expressed the thought which had been brooding in the minds of so many, who had found themselves unable to give it utterance." — p. 55. Nor was it merely within the pale of the Christian frater- nity that relations of mutual reverence and tenderness attested the power of an ennobling faith. Intensity of internal com- bination is often balanced, in religious brotherhoods, by vehe- mence of external repugnance ; and were we to accept the fiery declamation of Tertullian as fairly expressing the spirit of his fellow-believers, we could ill defend them from the charge of fierce antipathy to the persons as well as the creed of their Pagan neighbors. But many silent mercies appear which contradict this loud intolerance. When the Decian persecution and its attendant tumultuary movements had filled Alexandria Avith such slaughter as to breed pestilence from the bodies of the dead, the Christians, instead of sullenly per- mitting the physical calamity to avenge their cause, assumed the duties of public nurses, and performed the loathsome tasks from which priests and magistrates had fled. Referring to this occasion, the author just cited says : — " The plague made its appearance with tremendous violence, and desolated the city, so that, as Dionysius, the Christian bishop, writes, there were not so many inhabitants left of all ages, as heretofore could be numbered between forty .jd sev- enty. In this emergency the persecuted Christians forgot all 316 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. but their Lord's precept, and were unwearied in their attend- 'ance on the sick ; many perishing in the performance of this duty by taking the infection. ' In this way,' says the bishop, with touching simphcity, ' the best of the brethren departed this hfe ; some ministers, and some deacons,' the heathens having abandoned their friends and relations to the care of the very persons whom they had been accustomed to call * Men-haters.' A like noble self-devotion was shown at Car- thage when the pestilence which had desolated Alexandria made its appearance in that city, and, I quote the words of a contemporary, ' All fled in horror from the contagion, aban- doning their relations and friends as if they thought that by avoiding the plague any one might also exclude death alto- gether. Meanwhile the city was strewed with the bodies, or rather carcasses of the dead, which seemed to call for pity from the passers-by, who might themselves so soon share the same fate ; but no one cared for anything but miserable pelf; no one trembled at the consideration of what might so soon befall him in his turn ; no one did for another what he would have wished others to do for him. The bishop hereupon called together his flock, and setting before them the example and teaching of their Lord, called on them to act up to it. He said, that if they took care only of their own people, they did but what the commonest feeling would dictate ; the ser- vant of Christ must do more ; he must love his enemies, and pray for his persecutors ; for God made his sun to rise and his rain to fall on all alike, and he who would be the child of God must imitate his Father.' The people responded to his appeal ; they formed themselves into classes, and those whose poverty prevented them from doing more gave their personal attend- ance, while those who had property aided yet further. No one quitted his post but with his life." — p. 162. This self-devotion in times of distress, strangely contrasting with habits and temper aj)parently unsocial, has too steadily reappeared in every earnest church not to be accepted as a Christian characteristic. During the fatal famine and epi- demic which desolated Antioch m the third century, the Pagan THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 317 governor, when urged by the inhabitants to make authoritative arrangements for relieving the sufferings of a perishing popu- lace, repHed that " The gods hated the poor " ; while the Christians, prevailingly poor themselves, plunged into the centre of the danger, and carried into the recesses of fever and despair the quiet presence of help and hope. If disciples have thus freely rendered to " those without " services which Pagans refused to one another, it is not simply in stiff obedi- ence to a precept of love to their enemies, but from a heart- felt sentiment of honor for human nature and consequent tenderness of human life. There was no man who, though he might be a persecutor to-day, might not be a comrade to- morrow ; he had a soul susceptible of consecration ; and day and night the gates of the Church were ready to fly open to the touch of penitence ; and whether he throws off the mask of delusion or not, he must be treated as a brother in disguise. Only by reference to this conception of all men as possible subjects of sanctifying change, can the fact be explained, that even where the creed has opened an infinite gulf between believer and unbeliever, the active charities have detained in lingering embrace the persons whom the theoretic fancy has flung into the ultimate horrors. A religion that is superior to the external distinctions of lineage and class, and draws its lines only by the invisible coloring of souls, must ever be a religion open to hope, and therefore apt to love. Even where the severest doctrine of exclusion has prevailed, the fundamental sentiment of Christian faith has saved the heart from the most withering of all passions, — the blight of scorn. Human nature may appear beneath the eye of an austere believer in an awful, but never in a contemptible light. The very crisis in which it is suspended can belong to no mean existence. What it has lost is too great a glory, what it has incurred is too deep a terror, to be conceivable except of a being on a grand scale. He is no worm for whom the eternal abysses are built as a dungeon and the lightnings are brandished as a scourge. Accordingly, the very alienations of intolerance itself have acquired a higher and more respect- 27* 318 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. ful character than in ancient faiths. The sort of feeling with which the Jew spurned " the Gentile dog "is sanctioned by piety no more. The Oriental curl of the lip is scarcely trace- able on the features of Christendom ; and is replaced by an expression of tragic sorrow and earnestness, where lights of admiring pity flash through the darkest clouds. It seems, then, that the essential sentiment of all Christian faith — the communion through conscience with God — carries with it, not only noble personal aspirations, but also, towards oth<3rs, affections of singular generosity and depth ; affections which demand for every man a position in which he may work out the moral problem of life, which dignify every lot w^here this is possible, and which soften even actual alienations with possible reverence and hope. The sphere of action which these feelings may shape for themselves, the particular enterprises they may undertake, the external pursuits they may assume, will necessarily depend on many foreign and accidental conditions. The work which it would fall to the hands of the same faithful man to do, if he lived on through the changes of the world, would greatly vary from age to age. The work which contemporary men, of equal and similar fidel- ity, will set themselves to accomplish, will vary with their several positions. The same act, or even habit, which is inno- cent (though possibly not innocuous) in one place, may assume quite an altered significance in another. It would be absurd, for instance, to set down the double marriages of patriarchal times in the same moral rank with modern cases of bigamy. And the doctrine of Plato's Republic respecting marriage, startling as a comment on the manners of his age, by no means expresses the odious state of mind which would be im- plied in its substitution now for the sanctities of private life. The devotion to studious and peaceful acts which may usually be either blameless or laudable, may become a guilt like trea- son in an hour when the interests of public liberty claim every citizen for the council or the field. Indeed, the conduct in such contrasted instances is in no proper sense the same ; it has only an external identity j it is a physical self-repetition, THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 319 with a moral contrariety ; and unless, in speaking of a human action, we mean to shut out the soul which makes it human, and to denote only the muscular flourish and spasm of limb, the sameness is but a semblance with a reality of difference. The moral values of actions, taken in this narrowest sense, are inevitably variable ; and any code that should present a list of them as obhgatory in perpetuity, without regard to the changes of their meanino: to the mind, would mistake the very nature of human duty. Not that we deny the existence of permanent grounds for the adoption of some habits and the avoidance of others. There are reasons, unchangeable as the corporeal frame of man, why opium should not be taken as an article of food, and why cousins should not intermarry. But the grounds of prohibition in these cases are rational^ not moral ; they are found in the outward effects, not in the in- ward sources, of conduct ; and only when its outward effects are known to the agent, so as to enter among its inward sources and modify its meaning, does he pass from unwise to im- moraL External action, in short, stands as an indifferent phe- nomenon, between the mind that issues it and the world into which it goes. The thought and affection whence it s[)rings in the former give its moral, the results to w^hich it tends in the latter its rational value. Whoever makes a correct esti- mate of the several affections and impulses Avhicli stir the will, and throughout their scale reveres the better and disap- proves the worse, possesses moral truth. Whoever perceives and computes the real consequences of voluntary conduct, possesses rational discernment in human affairs. The former — an interpretation of the conscience and its sacred contents — is the j)ermanent essence of ethical and root of religious wisdom. The latter — an apprehension of physical laws and historical tendencies — is conditioned by the progress of sci- ence and the facilities for social vaticination. Errors in this are inevitable to the limitations of human intellect. Perfec- tion in that is j)ossible only to the highest divine insight in the soul. The fallible judgment respecting outward relations affects only the accidents of morals, though the essence of 320 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. scientific truth. Wliere the inner apprehension is deep and true, the outward judgment contains a principle of self-correc- tion; the miscalculation of one age is checked by that of a succeeding ; opposite errors cancel each other ; and the spirit of a pure faith, like a just feeling of beauty and greatness in art, works itself clear of the false data of usage amid which its inspiration arose, and transmigrates into ever-improving forms. If, however, the reverence due to the inspiration should become a traditional affair, losing its living eye and spiritual tact, it will extend itself as a moping idolatry to the imperfect media and rude materials through which the new glory first gleamed ; an incapable era of renaissance will appear ; the very works which were given as the spring of ever-fresh creation will be used to stifle it; in servile imitation of an original period, its whole character will be lost, and the moment of exactest reproduction will be that of intensest contrast. This is precisely the way in which the spiritual life of the primitive Christians has been dealt with. The thought and meaning that lay at its heart are little apprehended ; its ap- plied morals, in which these are mixed up with the errors in- cident to their point of view, are distorted into a rigid code of obligation, in which the original idea is often entirely reversed. If it be really true that the Apostolic age was impressed with the belief of a speedy end of the world, such an outlook must undeniably have affected the disciples' whole estimate of the value of human pursuits. The plan of life commendable in a passage-ship may be questionable in a settled home ; and the proceedings of an army on the eve of battle are not like the habits of the same people tilling their fields and sitting at their hearths. To apply to a permanently constituted planet the rules promulgated to preserve discipline amid a general breaking-up, is surely an eccentric kind of legislation. Yet by just such a process have modern churches derived a num- ber of ethical extravagances offensive to the eye of chastened conscience, and condemned by their impracticability to the in- sincere existence of perpetual talk. The manner in which THE ETHICS OP CHRISTENDOM. 321 Enjjlish divines conduct themselves towards this error of the first century appears to us not simple and ingenuous. Some still affect to deny it, and to treat its reiterated assertion as a mere perverseness and impudence of heresy ; yet they leave the statement without serious refutation, though well aware that the weight of critical authority is altogether in its favor, and though avowing their own theory of revelation absolutely to require that it be false. Others incidentally and grudgingly admit it, and then pass on as if nothing had happened ; innne- diately relapsing into the same authoritative appeal to Scrip- ture, the same direct and mechanical use of its precepts, the same assumption of it as an instrument yielding on interpre- tation nothing but truth, which had been habitual with them before their eyes were opened. Now, if anything be certain on such a matter, it is that to suppose one's self in the world's last year, — the admission paid to the panorama of judgment and the spectacle only waiting to begin, — is no small and sleepy idea, which might ineffectually turn up now and then, and sink back below the surface without further trace. A man who could live in presence of such a vision, and not carry its crimsoned light upon every object that fixed his eye, could be no apostle of truth or preacher of earnestness ; nor do we know that anything more contemptuous could be said of him than that, no doubt, he held such an expectation, but it was of no consequence. To convert the author of the Pauline Epis- tles into a dilettante believer of the pattern of the nineteenth century, and say of his most tremendous gleams of thought that they were but transitory fireworks which meant nothing, is no less an offence against his character than a misunder- standing of his writings ; and we conceive that, in affirming the deep penetration of his mistaken world-view into the sub- stance of his monitory teaching, we shall be vindicating the fundamental veracity and noble clearness of his soul. To exhibit the Cliristology of the Apostles with the fulness necessary for tracing pseudo-Christian morality to its origin, would require a volume. We can only advert to one or two points, indicating the direction which such an inquiry would 322 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. take. It is admitted on all hands, that a second advent of Christ is announced in almost every book of the New Testa- ment ; that, if we except the Gospel of John, it is spoken of invariably as a real, personal return, an objective and scenic event, to be seen, heard, and felt ; and cannot be explained away into a spiritual access to the world, or a subjective drama in the soul of disciples. It is further admitted, that with this advent are integrally connected many incidents which, however difficult to group into a complete picture, con- stitute, under every variety of possible arrangement, a final consummation of human affairs. Indeed, the article in the Creed which declares that Christ "shall come to judge the quick and the dead, and at his coming all men shall rise again with their bodies and shall give account for their own works," shows how the Church understands the doctrine, and conjoins the end of the world with the advent. The nature of the event being so far undisputed, the question which separates the mass of scientific interpreters from the popular expounder, refers only to its date. The Apostle Paul, it is urged by the critics, writes to his Thessalonian converts, in answer to a distressing doubt which could have no existence but in minds on the watch for the return of Christ ; and his answer, far from checking this outlook, raised it to such intensity that, to soothe their excitement, he wrote to them again to remove the event from the immediate foreground of their imagination ; yet even then detained it quite within the limits of their nat- ural lives, and, simply interposing one or two signals of its approach that had not yet appeared, counselled them not to lose their comj)osure, but maintain a " patient waiting for Christ." The orio-inal doubt which had disturbed them seems to have been one instructively characteristic of the early the- ocratic faith. Some member of the community had died ; his friends, in addition to their natural sorrow, were apparently taken by surprise, that, after enrolment among the citizens of the approaching kingdom, he was taken from their side, and would not be with them when they hailed the arrival of Christ. What would become of him ? They thought he would have THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 323 to remain in his sleep till Messiah should exercise his func- tion of raising the dead, which was not to be at first ; and so, durinor the great crisis, and for an uncertain continuance be- yond, he would linger behind the privilege which they enjoyed. This seems, at first sight, a strange subject of distress. That the second advent should take place in the presence of the living only, and should leave the dead without part or lot in the matter, is so completely at variance with the picture which has become fixed in the common Christian imagination, that scruples may readily be felt about attributing so mutilated a conception to the Thessalonian church. The commonly re- ceived picture, however, is made up of elements incongruously brought together from several Scripture writers, to whom the expected event presented itself under different aspects ; and nowhere can they be found combined into such a whole as the ecclesiastical faith represents. To understand and account for the Thessalonian state of mind, we have only to read over the 24th and 25th chapters of St. Matthew, and to surrender our- selves to the images there presented, without adding anything of our own. These chapters contain the fullest description of the advent, the last judgment, and the end of the world, that can be found in Scripture ; yet the dead are not brought upon the scene at all, nor is any resurrection found among its eh' ments. The whole idea is evidently of a return of the Son of Man, within the limits of a generation, to take account, in his theocratic capacity, of the very persons who had known him in his Galilean humiliation and disguise, — of those who, having joined him in his days of trial, had been intrusted by him with the administration in the interval of his heavenly absence, — and of those who, after rejecting him personally, had hardened themselves no less against the preaching and overtures of his subsequent ambassadors. The nations gath- ered before him are furnished from the surviving population of the earth ; and the ground of their admittance or rejection is the reception they have given to Messiah in the persons of his missionaries and representatives. In supposing the dead to have lost their chance of participathig in this scene, the 324 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. Thessalonians did but paint it to themselves as Christ, accord- ing to the first Gospel, had described it to his hearers. Their misgiving plainly assumes that the advent was sure for the living and was lost for the dead. Tlie Apostle answers by denying the distinction, and putting both classes into the same condition ere the great hour strikes : but what condition ? Does he say that the living will die first? No; but that the dead will live first : so that the departed companion will come back at the right moment for mingling with the troop of friends that shall go " to meet the Lord in the air." The same order of events is given in the sublime, but little under- stood, chapter oA the resurrection in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, where the Apostle places himself, at the advent, not among " the dead " that " shall be raised incorruptible," but among the survivors that " shall be changed " into immor- tals without ever quitting life. It is a topic of praise to the disciples at Corinth that they are " waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ." He assures his Philippian friends that " the Lord is at hand," and prays that they may " be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ." Having come out safe from his examination and hearing at Rome, he avows his persua- sion that he will be similarly delivered "from every evil work," and preserved unto Christ's heavenly kingdom. Though amid his toils and weariness he earnestly desired to be en- dowed with his immortal frame, — to be invested, as he ex- presses it, with his house from above ; yet he was unwilling to put off the corruptible, till he could put on the incorruptible ; he would have his mortality " swallowed up of life " ; he did not wish the great hour to find him naked, but clothed, not, that is, a disembodied spirit, but a living man. He stands at the era on which " the end of the world has come " ; and begs his correspondents to let certain existing disputes lie over, and to "judge nothing before the time until the Lord come." Not less explicit evidence is afforded in the writings of other Apos- tles. James says, " The coming of the Lord draweth nigh ; . . . . THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 32o behold, tlie Judge standeth before the door." Peter, ''The end of all things is at hand." John, " Children, it is the last time ; and as ye have heard that Antichrist shall come, even now are there many Antichrists ; whereby we know that it is the last time." If the author of Christianity did not himself entertain the same expectation of an early return to assume his Messianic prerogatives, he has been greatly misrepresented by his biographers. For though one of them represents him as disclaiming a knowledge of the specific " day and hour " appointed for his " coming in the clouds with great power and glory," the disclaimer follows immediately on his announce- ment, that at all events it will take place within the existing generation. Does any reader doubt whether this " coming in the clouds " really describes the judgment ? or whether " this generation " denotes the natural term of human life ? Both questions are answered at once in Matthew's report of a single sentence, which simultaneously defines the event and its date : " For the Son of ]\Ian shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels ; and then he shall reward every man accord- ing to his ivorhs. Yerily I say unto ,You, there be some stand- ing here which shall not taste of deaths till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." It is certainly possible enough tliat the discourses in which these expressions occur may be incorrectly reported, and have acquired from the writer's state of mind a definiteness not belonging to the original production. But, at any rate, they reveal the historian's conception of what was in Jesus's thought ; and the false coloring of expectation which they threw over his prophecies could not fail to extend in their reports to his preceptive discourses, and thus to have almost the same influence on the recorded Christian ethics, as if the error were his as well as theirs. The evidence on this point is so positive and overwhelming, that critics such as Olshausen, whose testimony is undoubtedly reluctant, no longer think of resisting it. Nothing, indeed, can be opposed to it but a kind of interpretation which is the opprobrium of English theology ; and whose problem is, not simply to gather an author's thought from his words, but from 28 326 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. amonsr all true thoujxlits to find the one that will sit the least uneasily under his words. Thus " the end of all things " is explained away into the founding of the Christian Church; the " coming of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven," in- to the Jewish war under Titus ; the last judgment, which " rewards every man according to his works," into the escape of the Christians and the slaughter of the Jewish zealots at the destruction of Jerusalem. No doubt, many good and well- instructed men have persuaded themselves that by such ex- egetical sleight of hand they could save Apostolic and other infallibility. We can only say, that when piety supplies the motive, and learning the means, for bewildering veracity of apprehension, two rich and noble endowments are spent in corrupting a nobler, which is the life of them both. To the moral sentiments which should occupy the soul, it may make little difference how long the world is to last. But to the course of action which should engage the hand, it is a matter of primary moment. All human occupations rest on the assumption of permanence in the constitution of things ; nor is it less true of a planet than of a farm, that mere ten- ants at will, unsecured by lease and even served already with notice to quit, will undertake no improvements, and will suffer the culture to decline to the lowest point. What profession could remain respectable if society had no future ? What interest would attach to the administration of law, on behalf of property which was not worth six months' purchase, and life which, stripped of survivorship, had lost all sacredness to the affections ? Who would sit down to study the Pharmaco- pojia on board a sinking ship ? What zeal could be felt by the statesman or general in repelling from his country an in- jury that could never be repeated, or removing a grievance on the point of supernatural death ? The fields would scarce be tilled which the angels with flaming sword might come to reap ; or the vineyards be dressed in sight of him " who treadeth the wine-press alone." All the crafts of industry, all the adven- tures of commerce, are held together by a given element of time ; and, when deprived of this, fall away into inanity. No THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 327 one "would build a house on ice melting with hidden fires ; or freight ships over an ocean which earthquakes were to drain aw^ay ; or fabricate silks and patent-leather for appearance at the last tribunal. And the loosened hold of these pursuits upon human zeal, so far from implying their exchange for anything higher and more spiritual, involves the direct reverse. They cannot be abandoned ; the stern punctuality of hunger, the peremptoriness of instinctive or habitual want, compel their continuance; and Paul himself made sail-cloth for a world on its last voyage. But they are kept up only because there is no help for it; they sink into mere bread-trades ; and are thrown back many stages from the tranquil human towards the grim cannibal level. All work in this w^orld, no doubt, rests at bottom on the elementary animal requirements of our nature ; but it is then most worthily performed, not when these requirements are most obtrusive, but when they are most withdrawn. It is the specific moral benefit wdiich social or- ganization confers upon man, that it enables him to retreat from the constant presence of sheer necessity, and stand at a sufficient distance from it to allow other and higher feelings to connect themselves wath his industry. It is a lower thing to consult for the natural wants of primitive appetite, than for the artificial love of order, neatness, security, and beauty ; and a craftsman works in a better spirit when earning some un- necessary gift for his wnfe or child, than when toiling for the bitter loaf that staves off starvation. An art prosecuted with- out pride in its ingenuity, without intellectual enlistment in its methods of skill, is degraded from an instrument of discipline into a prowling for food, — from a mode of life into a make- shift against death. To take away the future, therefore, from secular pursuits, is simply to draw off" from them whatever redeems them from meanness ; to plant them in greedy isola- tion, as mere personal necessities ; and cut them off" from the groat human system which lends to them a color of nobleness and dignity. Among the early Christians this tendency was greatly checked by the fresh aims and employments which their religion created ; and in devotion to which the more en- 328 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. thusiastic spirits found ample scope for their affections. The Church, subsisting like an mtrenched camp in a hostile land, had to make sallies in all directions for rescue of the wander- ing, and for captives to the faith. An aggressive activity of compassion and conviction found tasks for the energies disen- gaged from secular pursuits ; and the new relations into which their religious profession threw them towards the synagogue, the magistrate, the Pagan worshipper, suppUed them with continual problems of conscience, severe, but wholesome to the mind. So peculiar, indeed, was their position, that, even if they had reckoned on a continuance of human affairs, they could hardly, perhaps, have mingled much with a world that drew them with such slender sympathies. Separated in ideas and affections, they must in any case have created a new and detached centre of social life. Still it is undeniable that their isolation was favored and exaggerated by their faith in an ap- proaching end of all things ; and that they withdrew from human interests, not simply because honorable contact with them was impossible, but because they were taught entire in- difference to them as elements of a perishing system. Not only is no recognition given to the pursuit of art and letters, and the citizen's duty presented only on the passive side ; but even the relations of domestic life are discouraored, and the slave is dissuaded from care about his liberty, on the express ground that it is not worth while, on the brink of a great ca- tastrophe, to assume any new position, or commit the heart by new ties. The time is too short, the crisis too near, for the career of a free life, or the buildinor of a human home. It is better for every one to continue as he is ; and instead of wait- ing to have the world perish from him, to regard himself as already dead to the world. To stand impassive and alone, neutral to joy or sorrow, with soul intent on the future, and disengaged from impediments of the past, earnest to keep bright on its watch-tower the beacon of faith, but resolute to descend no more into the plain below, appeared to the Apostle Paul the highest wisdom. And how could it be otherwise? Seen from his point of view, all temporal claims sank into THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 329 negation. The constitutions, the arts, the culture, of civilized nations were about to be superseded ; and the Christians who had already retired from them needed no new ones to take their place, except such provisional arrangements as might serve during the world's brief respite. Equally natural and suitable to their conceived position were the non-resistance principles of the early disciples. What right could be worth contending for on the dawn of a great day of redress, when every wrong would be brought to its account ? Who would carry a cause before Dikast or Proconsul to day, when Eter- nal Justice was pledged to hear it to-morrow ? Who refuse to resign to human coercion what a retributive Omnipotence would soon restore ? When the great assizes of the universe are about to be opened, it were a poor thing for the suitors to begin fighting in the vestibule. In all these respects the prac- tical code of the Apostolic age was inevitably influenced by the mistaken world-view prevalent in the Church. For the plaintiff, the hour was fixed when his suit would be called ; for the slave, the emancipation-day Avas declared ; and from him that bound himself in heart to the past, the past was about to be snatched away. The rules of action dictated by these no- tions are mere accidents of the first age, — correct deductions from a misconceived system of external relations. They are wholly dependent on this misconception, and have no neces- « sary connection with the interior spirit, the characteristic sen- timents and affections which distinguish Christianity as a re- ligion. If the Apostles had lived on till their mistake had worn itself out, and they had discovered the permanence of the world, — had they postponed all writing of Scripture till this lesson of experience had been learned, — we apprehend that their scheme of applied morals would have been very differ- ent ; a more genial recognition would have been given to nat- ural human relations ; the social facts of property and govern- ment, the private concerns of education and self-culture, the personal responsibilities of genius and intellect, would have been less slightingly dismissed, and reduced to clear moral order ; and the sentences would have been greatly modified 28* 330 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. which now support the delusions of the improvident, the ascet- ic, the exclusive, and the non-resisting. Unhappily, Apostles do not live for ever, so that we are denied that chance ; and successors of Apostles, though seldom scarce, are not a helpful race, being chiefly marks of an absent inspiration. The task, therefore, of applying the essential Christian sentiments to a permanent world, — though avowedly undertaken by the Ro- man Catholic Church, — remains unperformed ; and instead of it we have, in the common Protestantism, a violent misappli- cation to human nature and all time of the accidents and er- rors of the first age, resulting, we fear, in a caricature injuri- ous alike to that first age itself, and to all true apprehension of the nature and proportions of human duty. Expressions abound in the literature of modern Christen- dom implying an antithesis between temporal and spiritual things, between morality and religion, between the world and God. No one can fail to observe that this antithesis, whether founded in reality or not, has become a social fact. There are two standards of judgment extant for the estimate of charac- ter and life ; one set up in the pulpit, the other recognized in the forum and the street. The former gives the order in which we pretend, and perhaps ineffectually try, to admire men and things j the latter, that in which we do admire them. ♦Under the influence of the one, the merchant or the country gentleman is professedly in love with the innocent improvi- dence of the ravens and the lilies ; relapsing into the other, be sells all his cotton in expectation of a fall, or drains his farms for a rise of rent. On the Sunday, he applauds it as a saintly thing to present the patient cheek to the smiter ; on the Monday, he listens with rapture to Kossuth's curse upon the house of Hapsburg, and the Magyar vow^ of resistance to the death. He assents when the Apostle John is held up to his veneration as the beloved disciple, but, if the truth were known, the Duke of Wellington is rather more to his mind. Supposing it all true that is said about the vanity of earthly pleasures and ostentations, he nevertheless lets his daughters send out next day invitations to a grand ball, and makes his THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 331 house busy with dress-makers and cooks. He is accustomed to confess that in him there is no good thing, and that all h']^ thoughts and works are only evil continually ; yet he is pleased with himself that he has provided for the family of his gar- dener who was killed on the railway last week. In these and a thousand other forms may be noticed the competition be- tween two coexisting and unreconciled standards, the relations between wliich are altogether confused and unea>5y. Whoever is interested in following up the genealogy of ideas, and would search for the origin of this mixed and mischievous state of mind, must look first to the influence of Luther, and thence to the Pauline doctrine, which he improperly generalized and exaggerated. We will endeavor to trace the development of the sentiment in the opposite direction, from the ancient germ to the modern fruit. Paul the Apostle proclaimed Faith to be the condition of regeneration and acceptance. To appreciate this message of his, we must remember two things; — namely, (1.) what it was from wliich men were to be rescued on these terms ; (2.) what other conditions had been elsewliere insisted on instead of this, and were put aside by Paul in favor of this. Now enough has been said to show that what he feared for the world which he labored to convert was, primarily, exclusion from the theocratic empire which Messiah would return to erect ; nor is it clear what ulterior consequences, if any, he conceived this exclusion to carry with it. This bani>hment was the negative of that " salvation " to whicli the disciples were called ; and which consisted in their registration as qual- ified citizens of the kingdom for wliich the earth was about to be claimed. The picture before his mind was so far altogether Jewish ; not at all the modern idea of heaven and hell, — spiritual regions to which individuals, one by one, pass after death for moral retribution ; but a terrestrial scene, the wind- ing up of history, affecting men in masses, and completing the purpose for which God had created this world. While, however, the thouglit of the Apostle's mind was national, the compass of his heart was human ; and as the hour drew nigh, 332 THE ETHICS OP CHRISTENDOM. he felt that tha future could not be closed upon the great Gen- tile world ; that his own people were not so sublime a race as to have the issues of Providence all . to themselves ; that he must get rid of their conceited pedigrees, and let the Divine plan, which for a while had narrowed its original universality within the current of Hebrew history, flow out at its end into the full breadth of its first scope. But if so, a new qualifica- tion must be found ; one open alike to Hebrew and to alien, yet nursing the pride of neither. These requisites are ful- filled in simple Faith, which, as a catholic possibility of every human heart, Paul substitutes for prescriptive rights and un- tenable merits. It was the only condition which there was time to realize. To insist instead on a mere moral fitness, on a character of mind suitable to meet the eye of infinite purity, would be a mockery in a state of society at once decrepit and corrupt. The hour pressed : it was not the case of a young and fresh generation, that might be brought back, by heedful training, to the sanctities of nature and conscience ; but an old and callous world, that could do little for itself, had to be got ready in hot haste. A kindled enthusiasm, a new alle- giance, a resurrection of sleeping reverences, is the only hope. Once fix the gaze of faith, the simplicity of trust, on the Di- vine Human Being, who, having been clad in the sorrows of this earth, waits to bring in its everlasting peace ; and this affection alone, comprehending in it every lesser purity, will soften even arid natures, and enrich them with forgotten fer- tility and grace. Preach your moral g}'mnastics to a school of young heroes, whose soul is noble and whose limbs are free ; but at the baths of Baite, amid paralytics that drag the foot, and cripples with worn-out bodies and halting wills, if you cannot touch the spring of faith, you may spare your pedantic rules of exercise. Thus the Apostle's demand of faith was a generous stimulant of hope and recovery to an invalided world, whose natural forces were broken, and which had but little time for restoration. It was a provision for pouring a mountain-breath of healing reverence upon the sickly souls and languid levels of this world. It was an attempt to meet THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 333 a quick emergency, and, by an intense action, condense the powers of preparation. It was therefore an expression, not of the narrowness, but of the universahtj of the Gospel. It shows tlie great heart of the rehgion bursting bounds, and the strong hand of its noblest servant tugging at the gates to get them open, grinding off the rust of tradition and crushing the scrupulous gravel of obstruction. The doctrine, however, assumes quite a different significance when snatched by Luther out of its historical connection, and held valid as a sufficient theory of human nature, and its only possibility of religion. The palsy of will, the incapacity of self-cure, the hopeless moral prostration into which long cor- ruption had brought the world, as it lay beneath the eye of Paul, Luther assumes as the normal condition of the soul, and treats as a congenital incompetency of faculty, instead of a contracted depravity of state. Not that he disowns the hu- man will as an executive power, or denies it a sphere of oper- ation. It can go forth variously into action, — can do what, in the view of mankind, is better or worse, — can commit a murder or can rescue from it ; but in these outward doings, however differently they affect men, there is no real good or evil ; in the supreme view they are neutral automatic exhi- bitions, simply physical as a flash of lightning or a fall of rain ; their real character all lies in the inner spiritual springs from which they issue in the soul: on these alone is the infinite gaze fixed ; and these are turbid all through, and all alike, with the taint and poison of a ruined nature. As all natural actions derive an equal guilt from the impurity of their source, so, when the source is purified, is the guilt equally removed from all ; whilst nothing which the unconverted may do can please Grod, nothing that is performed in faith can come amiss to him. Be it what men call crime or what they praise as virtue, it makes no difference if only it be done in faith. Furnished with this supernatural charm, the believer may pass through any mire and come out clean. " A Christian cannot, if he will, lose his salvation by any multitude or magnitude of sins, unless he ceases to believe. 334 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. For no sins can damn him, but unbelief alone. Everything else, provided his faith returns or stands fast in the Divine promise given in baptism, is absorbed in a moment by that faith."* Plere is a conception of faith altogether distinct from Paul's. It is here no act of reverential enthusiasm and affection, no kindred movement of the soul towards an object beautiful and holy, but a mere willingness to trust a verbal assurance of atonement, — a willingness, moreover, itself foreign to the mind, and superinduced as an unnatural state by special gift. Nor is its efficacy to be sought in its transforming power on man, but in its persuasiveness with God. It does not ennoble anything that is the worshipper's own, but simply hangs on to it externally the compensating sanctity of another; it is, in- deed, described by Luther as the mere vessel put into the hands of the believer, and charged with the treasures of Christ's obedience, — treasures so acceptable that they charm away the foulness, and prevent the rejection, of anything that accompanies them. Thus the effect of faith on the disciple is not to inspire him with a God-like mind, but to prevent his corruptions being any damage to him. By this strange theory, both sin and sanctity are made entirely impersonal to man ; sin, by being a transmitted inability ; sanctity, by being a for- eign donation ; and his individual character sits in the midst, at a point of spiritual indifference, neither chargeable with the dark hue native to its complexion, nor etherealized by the veil of borrowed light which it wears as a robe. No room is found, either in the child of Adam, or in the redeemed of Christ, for any responsibility, any personal guilt or goodness whatsoever. The misery and deformity in which the Gospel finds him is un-moral, — the mere scrofula of inheritance ; the redemption into which it lifts him is un-moral, — the mere usufruct of an alien purity : and thus the whole business of * Luther de Captivitate, Bab. ii. 264. Comp. Dispu. i. 523. Si in fide fieri posset adulterium, peccatum non esset. Other and yet more revolting assertions of the same principle are cited by Mohle, in his Symbolik, I. iii. § 16, whence these passages are taken. on. THE KTIIICS OF CHRISTENDOM. OoO religion begins and ends without approaching, and without im- proving, any hxw of conscience at all ; morality remains abso- lutely cut off from its contact, unaffected by it except in being disowned and degraded, and losing the prestige of a Divine authority. Tliis consequence of his doctrine is not in the least disguised by Luther, whose impetuous audacity never tires of forging phrases of opposite stamp, by which he may put the brand of insult upon Morals, and burn characters of glory into the brow of Religion. The latter, he again and again insists, is to be set in the heavenly realm ; the former, on the other hand, detained upon the ground ; the two being kept as absolutely apart as the sky from the earth, regarded as not less incapable of a common function than light and darkness, day and night. Do we speak of faith and our rela- tions to God ? then we have nothing to do with morals, and must leave them behind lying on the earth. Do we speak of conduct and our relations with men ? then "sve stop upon the ground, and get no nearer to heaven and its lights. The pro- tests of our better nature against our own shortcomings, the sadness of repentance, and the alarms of guilt, so far from being confirmed by true religion, are shown to be mere delu- sion and idle self-torture ; and the conscience that can feel such compunctions is a stupid a.-s struggling in the dust and flats of this world beneath a servile burden it need never bear. To trouble the heart with any moral anxieties or aspirations is the most fatal act of unbelief, — a downright plunge from heaven over the precipice of hell. The moral law may rule the body and its members, but has no right to any allegiance from the soul.* In any personal and historical estimate of Luther there would be much to say in palliation of these monstrous positions ; it would be easy to show their connec- tion with some of the noblest characteristics of his genius, and their antagonism to some of the worst features of his times. But regarded in their influence on Christendom, when de- tached from their living origin, and made the ground of a theory for the governance of life, they can only be lamented * See Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, passim. 336 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. as an explosion of misclilevous extravagance. For in what light do they present Morality to us, after stripping it of all sacredness ? What ground is left on which its obligation may repose, and what end is given for its aim ? It exists, as Luther himself declares, only as a provision for social order and external peace. It is not concerned with the perfection of the individual, but with the organization of the world ; and is nothing but the system of rules and customs requisite for the safe coexistence of many persons on the same field. It is thus reduced from an inspiration of conscience to an affair of police ; the private sentiment of duty, operating in the hidden recess of life, keeping vigils over the temper of the mind and habits of the home, is a mere substitute for public opinion, and no representative of the eye of God. In this way, moral usasres are first voted into existence as matters of convenience, and imposed by the general voice, yielding as their product in the individual an artificial sense of obligation ; and it is a de- lusion to invert this order, and say that the natural sense of obligation, inherent in each individual, creates by sympathy and concurrence the moral usages of mankind. This extreme secularization of morals places Luther in curious company with Hobbes ; and the followers of both have not been alto- gether unfaithful to the" original affinity of their ethical ideas. Both schools have withheld from their conception of morality any touch and color of religion ; both have been jealous of its minsflinsr itself much with sentiment and feeling; ; both have applied to it purely objective criteria, and regarded it as a statutory affair, susceptible of codification, and then needing only a logical interpreter. This singular alliance between sects regarding each other with the greatest antipathy, exhib- its the irresistible tendency of a wholly SMjocr-natural religion to produce an ^V^/r«-natural morality. The result of this sharp separation of the ethical from the spiritual province of life is, that both are deprived of elements indispensable to their proper culture. Our devout people are not remarkable for either clear notions or nice feelings on moral questions ; while the conscientious class are apt to be THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 337 dry and cold precisians, truthful, trustworthy, and humane, but so little genial, so devoid of ideality and depth, tliat poet or prophet is struck dumb before their face. Till the two classes had discovered their mutual alienation and collected them- selves round distinct standards, — evangelical and worldly, — the evil was inconspicuous. For some time after the Refor- mation, both coexisted, without articulate repulsion, in every church, and each silently qualified the other extreme. Be- sides, in spite of Lutheran or other dogma, deep personal faith, grateful trust in such a one as Clu'ist, could not be awakened in a people into Avhom God, whatever they might say of themselves, had actually put a conscience, without cai'rying the moralities with it. It might take the liberty of calling them " stupid ass," but would nevertheless object to have the ass abused. In truth, no sooner was the law of Duty driven from Christianity, than the claim of Honor v/as invoked to take its place ; and the believer was exhorted not to take unworthy advantage of his redemption from legal lia- bility, but to render in thank-offering the service exacted by penalty no more ; worthless as it was, it was all he had to give. Such appeal touches a spring powerful in noble hearts, and is, in fact, only the awakening of a hi (/lie?- order of moral feelings than befoi-e, — a fetching back, under the disguise of transfiguration, of that very sense of duty which had been professedly expelled. In the first enthusiasm of faith, while men's souls, having just flung off the sacerdotal incubus of centuries, were burning to breathe freely, and felt the healthy throb of a new joy, this appeal would meet a full response. The doctrine of faith was but the appointed way of bursting through the miserable scrupulosities, the life of petty debts and casuistic book-keeping, by which a priesthood had main- tained a balance ajr:^inst the world, — of seizins: a Divine indemnity and recovering the wholesome existence of devout instinct. If the inspiration of the sixteenth century could be permanently maintained, if all men were equally suscei)tible of being snatched up by a whirlwind of heavenward affection, if the surprise at finding that the soul had wings of its own 29 338 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. could last for ever, the principle of gratitude and pious honor might answer every end, and human duty be all the better done by taking no security for it ; for you may hurl as a mis- sile, in hot blood, a weight which otherwise you will scarce drag upon the ground. But the fire of an age of Reforma- tion cannot be permanent; nor is gratitude an affection on whose tension life can be securely built ; — you cannot edu- cate people by the force of perpetual surprise. There is a large natural order of minds, little susceptible of a self-aban- doning fervor, for whom you vainly bring the chariot of fire and horses of fire by which prophets fly to heaven, and who are content with the humble mantle of the humanities thrown aside by more daring spirits in their ascent. Quiet, reflective, self-balanced persons are not to be taken by storm, and brought to betray the solid citadel of this world, and say ugly things of the moralities with which they have lived in friendly neigh- borhood. They are capable of being led by reverence for what is better, but not of being kindled by the rays of what is intenser. If they are ever to be lifted into a life beyond con- science, where reluctance and resistance are felt no more, and the instincts of affection may flow of their own pure will, it must be by beginning at the other end, — by the religious dis- cipline of conscience, by pious consecration of this earth and its instant work, by faithful and frugal care of the smaller elements of duty, as of the sacred crumbs of eucharistic bread, not without a Real Presence in them. This class, whose religion, by a decree of their nature, can only exist un- der ethical coi^itions, are wholly unprovided for in the Prot- estant system. In the Lutheran view they belong to the school of worldly unbelief; and though their number, as must be the case in quiet times, has been increasing for a century and a half, and constitutes the vast majority of educated peo- ple in this country, they are without any recognized religion ; either veraciously disbelieving and waiting for something no- bly credible, or uneasily subsisting, suspected by clergymen, in the midst of churches whose theory of life has ceased to be a reality to them. With a faith traditionally shy of morals, THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 339 and morals not yet elevated into faith, we have two separate codes of life standing in presence of each other, — one relig- ious, the other secular, — and neither of them with any true foundation in human nature as a whole ; the secular, an acci- dental congeries of mixed customs and inherited opinions ; the religious, the product of an arbitrary spiritualism, lax and ascetic by turns. It is the peculiarity of modern Christianity that these two codes coexist within the same social body, and even rule over different parts of each individual. The Pauline antithesis between the world and the Church was not less sharp than ours ; but it was a distinction of persons and classes, and no- body could occupy both the opposite ends of it. Once within a society of disciples, he was out of the world, and belonged to " the assembly of the saints " ; and the whole realm of hea- thendom beyond constituted the contrasted term. He did not stand and move with one leg on holy ground and the other on the common earth ; whatever were the principles of the com- munity he had joined, they served him all through, and did no violence to the unity of his nature. Praying or dining, weep- ing or laughing, in the workshop or the prison, he was the same man in the same sphere. As the circle of the Church enlarged, we should therefore expect the world to be driven to a distance, till it was absent from whole countries and con- tinents. But a new " world " has been discovered, not only within the Church, but within the person of every disciple ; his body and limbs, his business and pleasures, being under the law of a morality quite secular ; his soul and its eternal affairs sitting apart in a love quite spiritual. Who shall draw the line between the j^rovinces, and know practically, hour by hour, where he stands ? Living confusedly in both, a man is a})t to acquire a sort of double consciousness, and fluctuate distractedly between Cirsar and God. lie believes, perhaps, that the kingdoms of nature and of grace are destined always to remain side by side, neither absorbing the other till the day of doom. In that case, he will let other men create all the secular usages, the moralities of trade, the maxims of politics ; 340 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. standing aloof from them as not belonging to Ms realm, and falling in with them freely in his own case. They may be of questionable veracity and justice ; but they belong to the Devil's world, and are as good rules as can be expected from legislators sitting in the synagogue of Satan. Why should he decline to profit by them, now that they are there ? When Eve has plucked the apple, it is too late for Adam not to taste the fruit. The pious broker comes on 'Change as into a for- eign world, on which he is pushed by humiliating necessities, and in which he feels an interest derived from them alone : he has his citizenship elsewhere ; he disdains naturalization; he is but a temporary settler ; he wants no vote about the laws ; but, taking them as they are, cuts his crop and retires. The coolness with which people who live above the world some- times avail themselves of its lowest verge of usage is truly amazing. An affluent gentleman of high religious profession, subscriber to Gospel schools, believer in prevenient grace, and otherwise the pride of the Evangelical heart, found himself not insensible to the approaches of the Hudson mania, spec- ulated far beyond the resources of his fortune, declined to take up his bad bargains, and thus, at the expense of utter ruin to his agent, escaped with comparatively easy loss to himself. The agent, being but an honorable sinner of the worldly class, was struck down by the blow into great depression. His employer was enabled to take a more cheerful view, and, on meeting his poor victim, rallied him on his dejected looks and hopeless thoughts, so diiferent from his own resigned and com- fortable state of mind : — " But ah ! I forgot," he added with a sigh, " you are not blessed with my religious consolations ! " Where no such positively odious results as these are produced, there is still often observable the negative selfishness of indif- ference to political welfare and political morals, — an affected withdrawal from temporal interests in the neighborhood or the State, and an insensibility to public injustice strangely dispro- portioned to the zeal displayed against innocent amusements and the nervousness on behalf of invisible subtilties of creed. The false opposition, however, between the world and the THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 341 Church is not always thus passive and quiescent. It is not always recognized by those who hold it, as being a permanent fact to be merely sighed over and let alone. Many men are too earnest and truthful to settle down and pitch their tent upon a ground rocking with contradiction ; to live two lives wholly unreconciled, one in the shame of nature, the other in the confidence of grace ; or to belong to two societies, — one political, the other spiritual, — conducted on principles at in- curable variance with each other. That a rule of action should be secularly good and religiously hateful, — that a sen- timent should be fitly applauded in. Parhament and groaned over in the conventicle, — is to them an intolerable unreality, like the celebrated verdict of the University of Paris, that a doctrine might be true in philosophy and false in theology. In tlieir hands, accordingly, the antithesis between the human and the divine is not a quiescent, but a conflicting dualism, in which their religious ideas become aggressive, and assume a commission to drive back and humble the world. They claim the earth for God, and think the surrender incomplete while anything natural remains; — while any instinct is uncrushed, any laughter unstifled, any genius, however pure, a law unto itself. The crusade against temporal interests and pursuits, consequent upon this state of mind, changes its form with the culture and. habits of the age. In the early years of the Ref- ormation, when the whole Bible was spread open beneath the thirsting eye of an undistinguisliing enthusiasm, the effect threatened at one time to be more terrible than glorious. The full thunder-cloud of the Hebrew prophets, stejiling over a world in negative stagnation, waked the sleeping lightnings of the soul, and for a while streaked the atmosj)here of history with fearful portents. Everything that luid been written of the chosen people, their exodus, their kw, their poetry, their passions, — everything except the relentings of their nature and the unsteadiness of their faith, — became consecrated alike. The military clang of their early history, the harp of their sweet singer, the choral pomp of their priestly rule, the mystic voices of their lonely men of God, — all were Divine 29* 342 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. music alike, often more exciting than the Sermon on the Mount, and not less piercing than the anguish in Gethsemane. Such was the sequence and connection of the Divine dispen- sations supposed to be, that Christianity was simply the Jew- ish theocracy, only let loose out of Palestine to make a prom- ised land of the w^hole world. The downtrodden serfs of Franconia had not long heard the glad tidings from Witten- berg, ere they began to draw parallels between themselves and the old Israel when the desert had been passed. They had been brought to the brink of new hope, and looked, as across Jordan, to an inheritance verdant and tempting to their eye. The earth was the Lord's, and the army of the saints was come to take it ; the bannered princes, the ungodly priests, the " men w^ith spurs upon their heels," all the carnal who peopled this Canaan and perched their " eagle's nests " on every height, must be smitten and cleared off. The time of jubilee was come, when every believer should have his field of heritage ; nay, the birds in the forest, the fish in the stream, the fruits of the ground, whatever has the sacred seal of God's creative power, should be free to all, and the noble should eat the peasant's bread or die. The lawyers should take their heathenish courts away, and men of God should sit and judge the people, according to the spirit and the word. The harvest was ripe, when the tares must be bummed in the fire and the pure wheat be garnered for the Lord. These were the ideas which thousands of armed men, with a clouted shoe and a cart-wheel for their standards, and a leader who signed himself " the sword of Gideon," preached as their Gos- pel through the forests of Thuringia and beneath the citadel of "Wiirzburg. Nor was the ripest learning, much less the most generous spirit of the time, any security against the adoption of their doctrine. It w^as not Miinzer alone who breathed the fierce inspiration, exhorting his sw^arthy miners to " lay Nirarod on the anvil, and let it ring bravely with their strokes " ; but the honest Carlstadt, too, scholar, preacher, dia- lectician as he is, lays aside his broadcloth, and appears in white felt hat and rustic coat at the cross of Rothenburg, to THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 34^ preach encouragement to the people and bring fresh sorrow on himself. Throughout the great movement which in. the third decade of the sixteenth century spread insurrection from the Breisgau to Saxony, the peasants were animated with the belief that the Gospel, armed with the sword of Joshua, was to subjugate the world, and that all the conditions of property, of law, of civil administration, under which secular communi- ties exist, were to be superseded by institutions conformed to a divine model. The leading Reformers, terrified by the re- ligious socialism which they had raised, were ready enough to denounce and crush it. But in truth their own idea differed from this insurgent faith more in form than in essence ; lodg- ing the power in different hands, and prescribing to it a differ- ent method, but assigning to it a similar tru.-t for the same ultimate ends. The kingdoms of this world were to be made the kingdom of the Lord and of his Christ ; and the temporal power was everywhere to assume a spiritual function, and make aggression on whatever opposed itself to the severity and sanctity of the Divine Word. The converts of Knox, the troopers of Cromwell, the town-councillors of Geneva, acting on this doctrine, claimed the whole of human life as their do- main, and pushed tlie inquisitions of police into private habits, and even the secret inclinations of personal belief. Phiying- cards and song-books were denounced and seized, as if they came from the Devil's printing-press ; dancing prohibited, as a })rofane escape of the natural members into mirthful agita- tion; concerts silenced, as enslaving immortal souls to the de-" lusive sweetness of strings and wind ; the caps of women and the coats of men shaped to evangelic type ; and, as if the world were a great school, the gates of cities, and even the doors of houses, were closed at temperate hours by vesper bell or signal gun. Asceticism grasped the sceptre and the sword, and demanded the capitulation of the world. How vain and dangerous this tyrannous repression of nature is, the reaction during the seventeenth century into reckless and fatal license emphatically declares ; and the contrast shows the necessity of finding some mediating term, some reconciling wisdom, by 344 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. which the antagonism may cease between the world and heav- en, between natural morals and Christian aspiration. Yet under a chano-e of form the struj^nrle is still continued ; and with those who most prominently assume to represent the aims of Christianity, the present life, the temporal world, has no adequate recognition of its rights. They have no trust in human nature as divinely constituted, and as having no part or passion without some fitting range. They dare not leave it out of sight for an instant : they must draw up a dietary for it, of sufficing vegetables and water ; they must watch its temper, and see that it behaves with Avinning sweetness to all rascahty ; they must guard its purse, and teach it that to live cheaply, spending nothing for ornament and beauty, nothing for honor and right, but only for subsistence and charity, is the great wisdom of man; they must stifle its indignations, lest it should cease to hold out its cheek to Russia, and, having gone one shameful mile with "the nephew of my uncle," should refuse to go with him another. Both the ascetic doc- trine and the extreme peace principles of the present day, as well as its tendency to renounce all retributory punishment, betray, in our Opinion, a morbidly scrupulous apprehension of evil, quite blinding to the healthy eye for good, — a crouch- ing of moral fear, singularly at vai'iance with the free and noble bearing of the Apostle, who found that " to the pure aU thmgs are pure." As for the non-resistance principle, we have shown that it meant no more in the early Church than that the disciples were not to anticipate the hour, fast ap- proaching, of Messiah's descent to claim his throne. But when that hour struck, there was to be no want of " physical force," no shrinking from retribution as either unjust or un- divine. The " flaming fire," the " sudden destruction," the " mighty angels," the " tribulation and anguish," were to form the retinue of Christ and the pioneers of the kingdom of God. It was not that coercion was deemed unholy, and regarded as the agency appropriate to lower natures and left behind in as- cending towards heaven ; it was simply that natural coercion was not to fritter itself away, but leave the field open for the THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 345 supernatural. The new reign was to come with force ; and on nothing else, in the last resort, was there any reliance ; only the army was to arrive from heaven before the earthly re- cruits were taken up. Nothing, indeed, can well be further from the sentiment of Scripture than the extreme horror of force, as a penal and disciplinary instrument, which is incul- cated in modern times. " My kingdom," said Jesus, " is not of this world ; else would my servants fight " ; — an expression which implies that no kingdom of this world can dispense with arms, and that he himself, were he the head of a human polity, would not forbid the sword ; but while " legions of an- gels " stood ready for his word, and only waited till the Scrip- ture was fulfilled and the hour of darkness was passed, to obey the signal of heavenly invasion, the weapon of earthly temper might remain within the sheath. The infant Church, subsist- ing in the heart of a military empire, and expecting from on high a military rescue, was not itself to fight ; not, however, because force was in all cases " brutal " and " heathenish,'* but because, in this case, it was to be angelic and celestial. It is evident that precepts given under the infiuence of these ideas can have no just application to the actual duties of citi- zens and states, whose problems of conduct, whose very ex- istence, they never contemplated ; and that to urge them upon modern society as political canons is to introduce a doctrine which, under cover of their form, violently outrages their spirit. The mistaken antithesis between temporal and spiritual things runs into the greatest excess, wherever the inherent pravity of human nature is most exaggerated. There are churches, however, — the Catholic and the Arminian, — in whose doctrines the natural condition of man is painted in colors far removed from the deepest shade ; and which deem him not so much incapable of right moral discernment, as weakened for faithful moral execution. In this view, the function of Christianity is not to supersede and cancel, but to supplement and guide, the native energies of the soul ; not to raise it from a mad trance, in which all thought and feeling 346 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. are themselves but a false glare, but to apply a tonic and heal- ing power, enabling it to do the right which it has already li^ht enouijh to see. Professor Fitzo;erald is an adherent to this doctrine, and justly contends that no lower estimate of human nature can consist with responsibility at all. " I am not to be ranked," he says, " amongst those who as- sume that human corruption has not affected the natural power of the moral sense. I think it has. No doubt sinful deprav- ity, wherever it is indulged, is, as Aristotle long ago remarked, (jidapTiKT] Tcoj/ dpxc^v, — it tends to weaken or deprave the sen- timent of moral censure, and to blunt the perception of moral evil " An eloquent but superficial French moralist has compared the conscience to a table-rock in tlie ocean, its surface, just above the ripple, bearing an inscription graven in the stone, which a genius, hovering over it, reads aloud. At times the waves arise and sweep over the tablet, concealing the mystic characters. Then the reader is compelled to pause. But after a while the wind is lulled, the waves sink back to their accustomed level, the inscription stands out clear and legible, and the genius resumes his interrupted task. "This comparison might gain something in correctness if we imagine the inscription traced upon a softer substance. For the stormy waves of passion not only conceal, while they prevail, the sacred characters of virtue, but, as billow after bil- low passes over the tablet, they tend to obliterate the lines. "But in making these large concessions, (which I do very willingly,) I do not feel that I am surrendering the cause. It is one thing to say that the discriminating power of the moral judgment is affected and impaired by human corruption, and quite another to say that it is destroyed. It is one thing to say that it sometimes goes wrong, and another that we can never depend on its decisions. Most men's experience has often brought them acquainted with persons who had impaired, in some way or other, their natural powers of perceiving truth or excellence in some respects, without losing either sound principles of reason or sound principles of honesty in others. TIIK ETHICS OF CIIIilSTENDOM. 347 And the way to correct such obUqiilties of intellectual or moral judgment i:>, not to tell men that they should distrust their natural faculties altogether, but to avail ourselves of so much as remains sound to discover the mistake or imperfec- tion which we seek to remedy or supply. The appeal, in such cases, is from the reason or conscience perverted or impaired, to the same faculties in what physicians would call their nor- mal state. When the effaced portions of the inscription are to be restored, the evidence of the correction results from its harmonizing with the part which has not been obliterated; and an interpolation may be detected by its disturbing the co- herence of the context, — an omission by leaving it imperfect or unintelligible." — p. 26. On this principle alone, unhappily but little congenial with the spirit and traditions of Protestant churches, can Christian- ity coexist with natural ethics. Faith adopts morals, purifies and sublimes them, and especially changes the character of their force ; — for a law of compulsion from below, substitut- ing a love of God above. The enmity ceases between the world and heaven ; the physical earth is not more certainly afloat in space, and on the muster-roll of stars, than the pres- ent life is plunged in eternity, and not behind its chiefest sanc- tities. There is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be slurred over as an unmanageable necessity, in the natural con- stitution and relations of men ; whatever acts they prescribe, whatever combinations they require, are within the scope and consecration of religion. The whole compass of the world and its affairs, all the gifls and activities of men, are brouglit within moral jurisdiction, and included in the embrace of a genial reverence. No narrow interpretation is longer possi- ble of tlie j)rovince of human piety, and the true type of a noble goodness ; as though they demanded a definite set of actions, rather than a certain style of soul, and denied a place to any affection or pursuit which can adorn and glorify exist- ence. Divine things are not put away into foreign realms of being, and future rcMiclies of time, {ittaii)al)le by no patli of toil, no spring of effort, only by miraculous transport ; but are 348 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. met with every day, shining through the substance of hfe and hid amid its hours. Whatever original endowments, what- ever acquired virtues, enrich and elevate our immediate sphere, — the Thought which finds its truth, the Genius that evolves its beauty, the Honor that guards its nobleness, the Love which lightens the burden of its sorrows, — are not mere tem- poral embellishments indifferent to its sacredness, but attri- butes that bring men nearer to the sympathy and similitude of God. Art, literature, politics, employing the highest human activities, and constituting the very blossom and fruit of all our culture, are recognized as having an earnest root, and not being the light growth of secular gayety and selfishness. We have no sympathy with the sentimental and immoral propen- sity, which corrupts the newest Continental philosophy, to recognize whatever comes into existence as ipso facto divine. But we do believe that the great change for which the secret religiousness of this age pines, and which it is sorely strait- ened till it can accomplish, is the deliberate adoption into " heavenly places " of this world, its faculties and affairs, just as God has made them, and man's unfaithfulness has not yet spoiled them. The products of human baseness, hypocrisy, and ambition, — let them remain hateful, eternally contrary to God, things scarce safe to pity ; but believe not that they have got this planet entirely to themselves, and have snatched it as their pecidium quite out of the Supreme Hand. Men are tired of straining their thought along the diameter of the universe to seek for a Holy of Holies in whatever is opposite to their life ; they find a worship possible, even irresistible, at home, and on the road-side a place as fit to kneel as on the pavement of the Milky Way. The old antagonism between the world that now is, and any other that has been or is to come, has been modified for them, or has even entirely ceased. The earth is no place of diabolic exile, which the " prince of the power of the air " ever fans and darkens with his wing ; and were it even, as was once believed, appointed to perish, this would be not because its failure was complete, but because its task was done. No vengeance bums in the sunshine which THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 349 mellows its fruits and paints its grass ; no tlireatenings flash from the starry eyes that watch over it hy night. It is not only the home of each man's personal affections, but the native country of his very soul ; where first he found in what a life he lives, and to what heaven he tends ; where he has met the touch of spirits higher than his own, and of Him that is high- est of alL It is the abode of every ennobling relation, the scene of every worthy toil; — the altar of his vows, the ob- servatory of his knowledge, the temple of his worship. What- ever succeeds to it will be its sequel, not its oi)posite, will re- sume the tale wherever silence overtakes it, and be blended into one life by sameness of persons and continuity of plan. He is set here to live, not as an alien, passing in disguise through an enemy's camp, where no allegiance is due, and no worthy love is possible, but as a citizen fixed on an historic soil, pledged by honorable memories to nurse yet nobler hopes. Here is the spot, now is the time, for the most devoted service of God. No strains of heaven will wake him into prayer, if the common music of humanity stirs him not. Tiie saintly company of spirits will throng around him in vain, if he finds no angels of duty and affection in his children, neighbors, and friends. If no heavenly voices wander around him in the present, the future Avill be but the dumb change of the shadow- on the dial. In short, higher stages of existence are not the refuge from this, but the complement to it ; and it is the j^rop- er wisdom of the affections, not to escape the one in order to seek the other, but to flow forth in purifying copiousness on both. We have said that men are tired of having their earthly and their heavenly relations set up in sharp opi)osition to each other, and are eager to live h(!re in a consecrated world. This tendency has already found expression in two remarkable and apparently dissimilar phenomena, — the partial success of the Anglican and Catholic reaction, and the vast influence on English society of the late Dr. Arnold's character. Both were virtual protests against that removal of God out of the common human life, that unreconciled condition of Law and 30 350 THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. Gospel, which had made the evangelical theology sickening and unreal. A path had to be opened for the re-introduction of a divine presence into the sphere of temporal things. New- man resorted to the supernatural channel of Church miracle ; Arnold to the natural course of human affairs, and the perma- nent sacredness of human obligation. Both restored to us a solemn mystery of immediate Incarnation ; the one putting life, in order to its consecration, into contact with the sacra- ments ; the other spreading a sacramental veneration over the whole of life. Arnold, especially, saw the great moral evils M^hich have arisen from the evangelical depreciation of the " profane " world. The secular, he was well aware, has be- come too secular, the spiritual too merely spiritual. Human nature is permitted to have play with unchecked wilfulness in the one, and is allowed no place at all in the other. The ob- ligations of natural law are held in light esteem, as if, in being social, they fell short of being sacred. The exercises of intel- lect, in the survey of nature or the interpretation of history, are often stigmatized as a mere earthly curiosity, permissible to reason, but neutral to the soul. The worst of it is, that these notions, once become habitual, fulfil their own predic- tions. As there is nothing which the heart cannot sanctify, so is there nothing which it may not secularize. Tell men that in their natural affections there is nothing holy, and their homes will soon be nests of common instinct. Assure them that in their business it is the unregenerate will, and the ani- mal necessity, that labor for the bread which perisheth, and soon enough will an irreverent greediness and a cankered anxiety usurp the place. Persuade them that to study the order of creation or the records of past ages is but a " car- nal " pursuit, and the student's prayer for light will become a mere ambition for distinction, the meditations of wonder be stifled in the dust of mental day-labor, and the tears of admi- ration drop no more on the page of ancient wisdom. This was what Arnold could not abide ; to see religion flying off on wings of pompous pretence to other worlds, and leaving no heavenly glory upon the earth, but letting her very fields THE ETHICS OF CHRISTENDOM. 351 be paved into a street. There was no attempt to save a spot for any earnest reality, except the poor httle enclosure behind the altar rail. The Church will consecrate a graveyard for the dead, but leaves the market of the living still unblessed : you may dissolve away in benediction, wlien your years are over of toil and sweat beneath the curse. To one who ac- knowledges a natural conscience and a natural element in faith, there is a religion in little in every part of life ; it gives at least a note in the chords and melody of worship. Hence Arnold's curious doctrine of the Church as covering all human relations whatsoever, and including the whole organism of the State. He would have nothing which the laws of this uni- verse imposed on the will of man done without a clear and pious recognition ; it was not to be illicitly smuggled in, as if run ashore in a gale of confusion that could not be helped, but must be steadily accounted for and stored in open day. Ethi- cally, this doctrine, though, from its adaptation to a permanent world, it is the least Apostolic in appearance, is, of all inter- pretations of Christianity, the most true ; and if it were not for clinging ideas of extra-moral dogma and special priesthood, as limiting the conception of " the Church," would go far to repeat for our age the work of Socrates for his, and bring down our divine philosophy from heaven to earth. It gets rid entirely of the false spiritualism which has either withheld re- ligious men from [)olitical affairs, or induced them to urge on statesmen rules applicable only where government can be dis- pensed with altogether. It rescues >Christianity from the deg- radation of being hypocritically flattered as the great persua- sive to peace by rulers whom it does not restrain from going to war, and relieves it of an oppressive weight of ftilse expec- tation, as though it broke its promise to the world every time a new ca