^^^*^ii!^^/. n^ 
 
 THE RANGE OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SOUL: 
 
 ITS AIMS AND METHODS. 
 Crown 8vo, 3s. 6d. 
 
 He is no ordinary preacher, but a biblical student in the 
 truest sense of the term. . . . We can commend the volume as 
 graceful in style, scholarly in treatment, and spiritual in tone. 
 ■ — Dundee Courier. 
 
 FROM MALACHI TO MATTHEW: 
 
 OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF JUD^-EA 
 
 FROM 440 TO 4 B.C. 
 
 Second thousand. Small crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. 
 
 Mr. Moss's book is worthy of the series. His style is 
 straightforward and graphic. He can tell a story rapidly and 
 forcibly. There is vigour and there is vitality throughout. — 
 British Weekly. 
 
s^^ 
 
 % 
 
 
 The Range 
 
 OF 
 
 Christian Experience 
 
 BEING THE TWENTY-EIGHTH ' FERNLEY LECTURE 
 DELIVERED IN HULL, JULY, 1S9S 
 
 ^ 
 
 RICHARD WADDY MOSS 
 
 CI-ASSICAL TUTOR, DIDSBURY COLLEGE 
 
 |£?oniron : 
 CHARLES H. KELLY 
 
 2, CASTLE ST., CITY RD., E.C. ; AND 26, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 
 
 1898 
 
To 
 
 '■''all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ 
 in uiicomiptness.^'' 
 
 " The God of peace, . . . make you 
 perfect in every good thing to do His will, 
 working in us that which is well-pleasing 
 in His sight, throjigh Jesus Christ ; to whom 
 be the glory for ever and ever. Anient 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The following pages are a lecture, not a treatise, being 
 suggestive and practical rather than exhaustive and 
 complete. Christian experience is as manifold as is human 
 temperament on the one hand, or the gifts of God's grace 
 on the other. The lecturer has endeavoured to note 
 merely a few of the directions in which thought may be 
 profitably turned, with a view at once to the glorification 
 of God for the bounty of His provision for the soul, and 
 to the nourishment of a spirit of devotion and hopeful- 
 ness amongst the people of God. 
 
 DiDSBURY College, Makchestee, 
 September, 1898. 
 
co:n'tekts 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 The Christian Regulation of the Body 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Man, a unit of graded elements — The body generally over-indulged 
 or over-restrained in religious prescriptions — Its sanctity, in 
 the New Testament and in Christian doctrine — Its care, a 
 religious duty within limitations — Asceticism has no religious 
 quality in itself, whilst reasonable physical exercise has — The 
 fatal enthronement of the body, and its due subordination — 
 The body a servant, with the rights and obligations of service . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 The Christian Regulation of the Mind 
 
 The mind, of higher relative value than the body — Its natural 
 powers are exaggerated in rationalism, and overlooked in agnos- 
 ticism — Its actual limitations, as witnessed in experience, and 
 as recognised in Scripture — It cannot by itself fill up the 
 natural conception of God, or foretell the events of the near or 
 the distant future, or read the final destinies — The greatest 
 breaches with reason are to be met with in the philosophies or 
 the counsels of practical duty — The principal reasons Avhy a 
 similar charge has been laid against Christianity are the ambi- 
 guity of the term impossible and the occasional extravagance of 
 the mystics — The Christian religion, when rightly viewed, proves 
 favourable to culture — Scripture appeals directly for the exercise 
 of the mind, implicitly requires it, and supplies both necessary 
 and worthy objects of thought — The future is suflSciently re- 
 vealed — The alliance between religion and reason, as a matter of 
 history — Religion and education — The tendency of non-religious 
 thinking to melancholy, contrasted with the effects of allying 
 reason with religion ...... 10 
 
X Contents 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 Religion as a Co-ordinating Power in Man 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The faculties and functions of man are graded alike in Scripture and 
 in common opinion — In religion itself there is a recognised 
 hierarchy of motives — Self-preservation, the strongest instinct, 
 sometimes subjected by natural means, but in religion steadily 
 kept in a subordinate position — Judaism anticipated this 
 grading, which becomes the rule of Christianity — The influence 
 of religion in other domains of morality — It restrains the vices 
 and purifies the social instincts, as no other agency can — It 
 supplies the individual with new motives and virtues, extends 
 the range of duty, exalts its sanctions, and makes of man a self- 
 governed unity — Testimony of Scripture . . .32 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Secret of Spiritual Health 
 
 Health as the equilibrium of the instincts — The existence universally 
 of the religious instinct — Its satisfaction possible only through 
 religion, without which equilibrium and the resulting content 
 cannot be reached — Change of view on the part of j\Ir. Romanes 
 — Professor W. James on the wisdom of faith, and its relation to 
 spiritual content — Happiness, according to Mr. P. G. Hamerton, 
 and according to philosophy and Scripture — A poet's contrast 
 between nature and man, true only when the equilibrium is 
 unstable — Religion secures stability, and thereby calm and 
 strength ........ 43 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Life of the Soul as Correspondence with its Surroundings 
 
 Life defined as correspondence with surroundings — These in the case 
 of the soul are chiefly of three classes. 
 
 Imperfect correspondence with nature — Questions of origin and issue 
 variously treated by different scientific authorities ; but the 
 terms of natural causation themselves require explanation — • 
 Phenomena appeal to more than the senses — Religion alone 
 supplies the postulates for their metaphysical interpretation. 
 
Contents xi 
 
 Utirccogniscd inlluence of Clnistiauity upon man's correspondence 
 with liunian surroumliiigs, which involve mainly elements of 
 disturbance and of obligation — The miseries of the times, often 
 exaggerated, but capable of complete relief under the remem- 
 brance of the relation of God to men and the world — Religion, 
 not only thus the solvent of fearfulness, but also the only 
 effective bond of dutifulness — Neighbourliness is a religious 
 virtue, anticipated in the non-Christian religions, but con- 
 secrated in Christianity — Altruism, ultimately and logically 
 defensible on religious considerations alone — Religion supplies 
 a strong ethical will, with adequate excitement and additions 
 to natural resources. 
 
 The most important factors in every career are the influences of the 
 Holy Spirit, and their treatment is vital — Congruity with 
 divine relations, as an ethical rule — Corres[)ondence with God, 
 voluntary and not forced or reluctant, fruitful of every virtue, if 
 resolutely made the law of all life — The use and profit of 
 seasons of rapt emotion and privileged vision ... 52 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 The Substituted Self 
 
 The self, wrongly and rightly explained — Scripture not a systematic 
 philosophy, but philosophical and true to human consciousness 
 — The self, a man's standing and worst trouble — Various forms 
 of the evil self, apparenth' incurable ; but Christianity leaves no 
 room for personal despondency — The stages of the treatment of 
 the self: symbol of clothing, mortification of the separate forms 
 of the self, the crucifixion of the whole, the appropriation by 
 Christ of its functions. 
 
 Imperfect views of self-transformation and its secret — Not to be 
 confused with exhaustion or apathy — Not forced or reluctant — 
 Not the rapture of i)oets or the mystical rising of the inner light 
 — St. Paul's personal experience — The inseparable unity of 
 Father and Son in the Godhead ..... 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 Details of Virtue and Outlines of Method 
 
 Jewish conception of holiness, as separation from sin and the imita- 
 tion of the kindlier virtues of God ; and of saintliness, as love's 
 ingenuity in the effort to please Him — The humanity of Christ, 
 a standard and pledge — Perfection, etymologically and as like- 
 
xii Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ness to God — The separate virtues of service and of good-will — 
 Life's sorrows, as treated by the essayists and philosophers 
 (Taine, Stephen, Hinton, Marcus Aurelius, and others), and as 
 borne and interpreted in Christian experience — Philosophy fails 
 to quiet the human spirit for several reasons — Experience of 
 Augustine, Tennyson, St. Paul — Satisfaction with self, not per- 
 manent in this life, of which the law is struggle and efibrt. 
 Human volition and divine grace — The former ineffectual of itself, 
 but necessary to success — The resolute imitation of Christ — The 
 unlimited power of the Spirit, whose influence is free, abundant, 
 and perfecting ...... 96 
 
THE RANGE 
 OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REGULATION OF THE BODY 
 
 Man, a unit of graded elements — The body generally over-indulged 
 or over-restrained in religious prescriptions — Its sanctity, in the 
 New Testament and in Christian doctrine — Its care, a religious 
 duty within limitations — Asceticism has no religious qi;ality in 
 itself, whilst reasonable physical exercise has — The fatal en- 
 thronement of the body, and its due subordination — The body a 
 servant, with the rights and obligations of service. 
 
 Since living man is a unit compounded of body, mind, 
 and soul, and since religion is of such a kind that it cannot 
 legitimately consent to any limitation of its control, the 
 sufficiency and the comparative value of Christianity may 
 be regarded as contingent upon its effective concern for 
 the whole of man. His body is his least estimable, if not 
 his least important, part. Its weakness is one of the 
 greatest obstacles to continuous effort, its weight amongst 
 the heaviest of his burdens, the urgency of its untamed 
 impulses one of his frequent incitements to sin. As the 
 
 I 
 
2 The Rmige of Christian Experience 
 
 house of which his mind is a tenant for a time, it needs to 
 be kept swept and garnished, fit for occupation. As the 
 agent of a sovereign will, whatever reduces its alertness, or 
 renders it sluggish and reluctant, disqualifies it to that 
 degree for those functions which are appointed by nature 
 and sanctioned by religion. 
 
 As a rule, the body has been w^ont to receive either too 
 little or too much attention, as a part of the discipline 
 which religion was supposed to require, or of the worship 
 which it enjoined. Occasionally, when its relations to the 
 present life have been ignored, physical indulgences that 
 were alleged to await it hereafter have been turned into 
 the strongest, if not the principal, motive to conformity. 
 In some cases the encouragement and the gratification of 
 its lowest lusts have been incidental to, or even conspicuous 
 elements of, the prescribed ritual ; in others the body has 
 been persistently crushed, and its most wholesome needs 
 denied, under some conception of the divine which made 
 human pain a pleasure to a deity, or the crippling of 
 a man's body a necessary stage towards saintliness. 
 Excess of physical gratification led to its natural conse- 
 quences of satiety, weariness that was intolerable, distrust 
 and hopelessness ; and the issue of the over-restramt was 
 hardly better. ■ The will or the mind broke down under 
 the strain, and the man became a madman, a hypochon- 
 driac, or an impostor. It is probably correct of all 
 religions except Christianity, and even of certain of its 
 developments, that, whenever any cognisance has been 
 taken of the body, its powers have been exhausted by 
 over-indulgence, sterilised by a disproportionate asceticism, 
 or, at least, man has been left without any quickened 
 
Regulation of the Body 
 
 sense of responsibility for its management, and has felt 
 at liberty to do Avith it what he pleased. 
 
 The New Testament, on the other hand, both directly 
 and by significant implication, reveals and emphasises 
 the sanctity of the body, and guards against its neglect 
 and its misuse. In a single paragraph in the First Epistle 
 to the Corinthians (1 Cor. vi. 12-20), St. Paul enunciates 
 four truths, which, if each was not entirely novel, had 
 never before been linked together in so forcible and sur- 
 prising a combination. The body is "for the Lord, and the 
 Lord for the body " — His for service, as He is the body's 
 for indwelling. Our bodies are " members of Christ " — not 
 merely organs of His thought and will, but " limbs " of His, 
 designed to move and act in tuneful accord with His every 
 wish. With such a dignity is the body invested, that 
 against it, as against everything that is divine in its 
 essence or claims, man may even sin. The body, again, 
 " is a temple of the Holy Ghost " ; and since so august 
 a Being condescends to inhabit it, and to make His 
 sanctuary there, the basis upon which tlie final appeal 
 rests is more than adequate : " G-lorify God therefore in 
 your body." 
 
 Elsewhere the same apostle shows his respect for the 
 body by exalting it into an emblem of the church, deemed 
 by Christ so honourable and so highly to be esteemed, 
 that He " purchased " it " with His own blood " (Acts xx. 
 28). For the sake of His body, " which is the church" 
 (Col. i. 24), the opportunity for a self-denial that can be 
 compared with " the afflictions of Christ " is spoken of as 
 a matter for thanksgiving. The climax of a passage in 
 which the exaltation of Christ is exhibited in its graded 
 
4 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 glories is the fact that He is " head over all things to the 
 church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth 
 all in all" (Eph. i. 22, 23). All the gifts and ministries 
 of the church are " unto the building up of the body 
 of Christ" (Eph. iv. 12). 
 
 But in the doctrine of the incarnation may be found a 
 yet more striking indication of the respect with which the 
 Christian religion regards the human body. If it was 
 worthy to be assumed by Christ, it cannot conceivably be 
 a right object of contempt, and every abuse of it is a dese- 
 cration. By becoming bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, 
 our Lord touched the whole physical nature of man with 
 the sceptre of His favour, and made it meet, or recognised 
 its meetness, to be linked with the divine. It was because 
 "the Word became flesh" (John i. 14), that He was able 
 to dwell among us, and we to behold His glory. The 
 manifestation was transcendent, and is subduing the world ; 
 the instrument by which it was effected is invested in 
 the process with abiding dignity, value, and significance. 
 Christ is its saviour (Eph. v. 23) ; and amongst the 
 blessings which He secures for man is " our adoption, to 
 wit, the redemption of our body" (Eom. viii. 23). 
 
 The body having been selected by Christ for such 
 honour, its care within right limits becomes naturally a 
 matter of religious obligation. What exactly are those 
 limits is nowhere expressly stated in Scripture, which, 
 though not entirely silent concerning them, leaves their 
 determination chiefly to the reason and conscience. It is 
 possible to imagine circumstances in which the demands of 
 the body would have to give way before higher claims, and 
 its subjection to a strain beyond what considerations of 
 
Regulation of the Body 
 
 health warranted has on rare occasions been defended, not 
 unsuccessfully, on the ground of the exigencies of a pressing 
 duty or the constraint of an enthusiastic love. But these 
 are exceptional instances, which cannot be l)rought under 
 ol)vious and general law ; and when they arise they must 
 be settled by each man for himself, with due recognition 
 of the responsibility of decision. " Let every man be fully 
 persuaded in his own miiul " (Rom. xiv. 5) is the rule 
 that applies to such perplexities as involve differences of 
 practice with similar purity of motive ; and against a plea 
 of full assurance expostulation may proceed, but condemna- 
 tion must be withheld. 
 
 Within these real, if variable, limits the Christian 
 religion seems to require, and certainly secures, that the 
 body should be neither over-indulged nor over-restrained. 
 Inasmuch as the laws of health are laws of God, methods 
 by whicli He has ordained that the body should be kept in 
 the fittest condition for effort or use, those laws find their 
 highest sanction in religion, and under its influence produce 
 their best results. To that the experience of the insurance 
 societies and the bills of mortality are a sufficient witness. 
 Whatever may be the exact meaning of " severity to the 
 body" in the difficult passage, Colossians ii. 23, evidently 
 St. Paul does not in any way identify the process with 
 religion, but ventures rather to speak with some contempt, 
 and classifies it with self-imposed and superfluous services. 
 The severe treatment which the soldier metes out to his 
 body by exposing it to hardship,^ or the student by ignoring 
 its claims,^ may be justified by the results ; but the un- 
 
 1 Lysias, Or. Fun. lb ; Joseplius, Bell. Jud. iii. 7. 18. 
 - Plutarch, Moralia, p. 137. 
 
6 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 sparing repression of the body has inherently no religious 
 quality at all. Essentially indifferent, like circumcision or 
 the eating of meat, discipline becomes valuable or worthless 
 in the light only of the nlterior ends for the sake of which 
 it is practised. 
 
 On the other hand, in regard to the due exercise of 
 the body, the New Testament is far from taking the cor- 
 responding position that physical exercise in itself is of no 
 account. On certain conspicuous occasions the Bible has 
 been quoted as favouring athleticism, which it certainly does 
 not condemn, so long as the body is not worshipped, or its 
 development turned into a substitute for religion. Scripture 
 recurs to the arena and the gymnasium for some most 
 effective symbols ; it exhibits the same natural laws as 
 presiding alike over the growth of the body and the graces 
 of the soul, the secret of self-control not differing much 
 in respect of human effort from that of agility ; and in 
 one place it recognises, expressly if perhaps not heartily, 
 the benefit of physical culture in itself. There is a little 
 doubt whether " bodily exercise " in 1 Timothy iv. 8 relates 
 to gymnastic exercises proper, or to some discipline of an 
 ascetic character akin to modern training ; but in either 
 case it is the external body that is in view, its muscles 
 that are being exerted or prepared for exertion ; and upon 
 such exercise the judgment is that it " is profitable," 
 although the qualification, " for a little " purpose or time, 
 is immediately added. A religion that enjoins ministry 
 to the physical needs of others, and scorns the man who 
 says to the poor, " Depart in peace," yet gives " them not 
 those things which are needful to the body "(Jas. ii. 16), 
 cannot be accused of neglecting or dishonouring the body. 
 
Regulation of the Body 
 
 In it, — its life or death, its bonds or freedom, — Clirist may 
 be " magnified " (Phil. i. 20). In it, " the dying of Jesns " 
 may be borne about, and " tlie life also of Jesus may be 
 manifested" (2 Cor. iv. 10). The brands of Jesus on the 
 body (Gal. vi. 17) are warrant enough for warning away 
 every disposition on the part of others to question, or 
 thwart, or annoy. And since the body is capable of 
 rendering such service, religion, though neither committing 
 nor consenting to the blunder of exalting the servant above 
 the master, is not reluctant to give the servant its due 
 measure of credit, attention, and care. 
 
 There is however a sad discovery which no man is 
 long in making, that his body is not easily kept in its 
 proper place of subordination. Its appetites are strong, 
 often clamorous for indulgence or for mastery, — the 
 appetite for inglorious ease, the lust of the flesh, the 
 instincts that periodically rebel, and the senses that are 
 permanently impatient. For all these the Christian 
 religion provides due means of restraint ; and the adequacy 
 of the control has been shown, as it may again, in an 
 experience that denies none of the legitimate cravings of 
 the body, permits no extravagance or rebellion on the 
 part of any of its powers, and even encourages it to 
 exercise itself in the service of God and His people. In 
 Galatians vi. 7, 8, the teaching assumes a general form, 
 though not without allusion to that special vice of 
 selfishness which is unfailingly present in sins of the 
 flesh. The nature of the soil, in moral as in natural 
 husbandry, determines in part the quality of the harvest ; 
 and " he that soweth unto his own flesh," making its 
 gratification the design and aim of his sowing, " shall of 
 
8 The Raiige of Christian Experience 
 
 the flesh reap corruption." Blighted grains, pellets of 
 blackened and disappointing dust, and not the good wheat 
 of the kingdom, must be expected by every one who 
 makes the indulgence of the senses the law of his life. 
 
 In the Epistle to the Eomans (viii. 5-13), the same 
 conclusion is stated even more sharply, with some of the 
 reasoning upon which it is based, and with logical remorse- 
 lessness and cogency. To enthrone the body and let it 
 rule is of necessity fatal ; " for if ye live after the flesh, ye 
 nmst die." To subdue it and make it die is the secret 
 of real life ; for " if by the spirit ye mortify the deeds " 
 (literally, the doings : i.e. if ye check, frustrate, and bring 
 to nought the incipient actions of the body, and keep it 
 continually under stern authority), " ye shall live." The 
 writer of those words indicates elsewhere (1 Cor. ix. 27) 
 in his own case exactly what he means. The incorruptible 
 crown is in view before him ; and he says, " I buffet my 
 body," — beat it to shape and use, compel it by blows of the 
 fist to serve as a pliable instrument of religious purposes, — 
 " and bring it into bondage : lest by any means, after that 
 I have preached to others, I myself should be rejected." 
 
 If the Christian religion does not on the one hand 
 look with favour upon the maltreatment of the body, it 
 does not on the other surrender to the body. To the 
 sin that is in it, no grace is extended. In accordance 
 with its precise function as an organism or a collection 
 of appliances, it is bound down to its position of sub- 
 ordination, and there both guarded against misuse and 
 compelled to serve its end. There can be no reasonable 
 doubt that within the sphere of Christian civilisation, 
 and the more fully as the Christian elements in civilisa- 
 
Regulation of the Body 
 
 tion have gatliered force, the lawful rights of the body 
 aud their limitations have been recognised and respected 
 as they have been recognised nowhere else. It is 
 now a matter of almost uniform observation, that the 
 humanitarian work of the world is best done under 
 Christian intiueuces. Humanitarianism itself is indeed a 
 product of Christianity ; and some of its most popular 
 movements may be said to date their initial success from 
 the time when they entered formally into alliance with 
 the Christian faith. In personal experience too it has 
 been found again and again, that the grace of God in 
 Christ gives a man mastery over passions and lusts that 
 refuse to yield to any form of human power, aud makes 
 the body an obedient, if sometimes a hard-pressed, servant 
 of the consecrated will. In all the churches, and nowhere 
 else with the same facility and to the same degree, men find 
 it possible to present their " members as instruments of 
 righteousness unto God" (Eom. vi. 13). 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REGULATION OF THE MIND 
 
 The mind, of higher relative value than the body — Its natural powers 
 are exaggerated in rationalism, and overlooked in agnosticism — 
 Its actual limitations, as witnessed in experience, and as recog- 
 nised in Scripture — It cannot by itself fill up the natural con- 
 ception of God, or foretell the events of the near or the distant 
 future, or read the final destinies — The greatest breaches with 
 reason are to be met with in the philosoj)hies or the counsels of 
 practical duty — The principal reasons why a similar charge has 
 been laid against Christianity are the ambiguity of the term 
 impossible and the occasional extravagance of the mystics — The 
 Christian religion, when rightly viewed, proves favourable to 
 culture — Scripture appeals directly for the exercise of the mind, 
 implicitly requires it, and supplies both necessary and worthy 
 objects of thought — The future is sufficiently revealed — The 
 alliance between religion and reason, as a matter of history — 
 Religion and education — -The tendency of non-religious thinking 
 to melancholy, contrasted with the effects of allying reason with 
 religion. 
 
 Of man, however, the body is in many respects his least 
 important part. The New Testament frequently refers to 
 its low relative value, as, for instance, in the great hymn 
 to the Praise of Love, " If I give my body to be burned, 
 but have not love, it profiteth me nothing " (1 Cor. xiii. 3). 
 That the mind, heart, and soul are its superiors is a 
 common theme of poets and novelists ; and that the 
 Christian religion should provide for these faculties yet 
 more abundantly is but natural. Eeligion accordingly 
 
 10 
 
Regulation of the Mind 1 1 
 
 directs and employs the activities of sense, supplies the 
 will and the fundamental emotional powers with stimulus 
 and with appropriate objects of action, and presents to 
 the mind a theory of the universe, of which parts tran- 
 scend though they satisfy the reason, and of which no 
 part is inconsistent with the rest or with the necessary 
 postulates of thought.^ Keason is neither contradicted 
 nor flattered, but its limitations as human and finite are 
 remembered and respected. It receives truths which it 
 wants, and has presented to it subjects of inexhaustible 
 interest, in the contemplation of which lies the secret 
 of perpetual intellectual progress. 
 
 The treatment thus accorded by religion to the reason 
 is in strict harmony with the nature of the latter and 
 with its capabilities. By rationalism reason is assumed 
 to be competent to find out God, and to formulate a 
 sufficient theory of anything in heaven above, or in 
 the earth beneath, or in the water under the earth. 
 Agnosticism goes to the other extreme, denying alike the 
 power of the mind to frame any positive idea of the 
 unseen, and in the absence of sensible evidence its right 
 to conjecture. Christianity, not forgetting that reason is a 
 faculty of man and therefore a sharer in his imperfections, 
 does not expect too much from it, and is patient with its 
 hypotheses and blunders ; but at the same time bears 
 in mind its divine origin and its quasi-divine functions, 
 and consents to its continuing in theology the process 
 it pursues in natural science, and to its passing in due 
 
 1 Cf. AV. James, The Will to Believe, pp. 12.')-133, for some suggestive 
 and vigorous remarks on the relation of a religious philosophy to the 
 departments of the mind. 
 
1 2 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 measure from the visible elements to the laws that regu- 
 late them, and to the Lawgiver. 
 
 With the rationalistic position the Christian Scriptures, 
 which are professedly a revelation needed by man, have 
 of necessity little sympathy. To add that human nature, 
 were it not for its weakness and the inconsistency of its 
 vanity, would also have little sympathy, would not be a 
 serious exaggeration. Each of the physical sciences them- 
 selves might be described as consisting of a small nucleus 
 of truth embedded in an encompassing sphere of mystery. 
 In whatever direction the mind advances, in studying 
 itself or the things external to itself, the steps taken with 
 confidence are comparatively few, the barriers through 
 which it can barely see are close and high. As the very 
 bases of its reasoning, this faculty has to be contented 
 with inductions that are imperfect, with assumptions that 
 baffle demonstration. Only by the keenest watchfulness 
 can it prevent its methods from becoming faulty, or its 
 apparatus from being misused. Whilst into the realm of 
 the seen it can penetrate only a little way, certain 
 manifestations of' force puzzle and defy it, the secret of 
 life is unapproached, and the mind remains a perplexity 
 even to itself. What it has found out, and apparently 
 what it can find out, bear only a small proportion to what 
 it has failed, and apparently must fail, to find out ; and 
 with every new advance in knowledge, the limitations of 
 its functions and of its power become the more con- 
 spicuous. 
 
 The recognition of this qualified competence of the 
 mind as itself both finite and divine, touching in its 
 origin the highest sources and the lowest, and partaking 
 
Regulation of the Mind 1 3 
 
 of the qualities of both, rules its treatment by Christianity. 
 The mind is not de-rationalised or crushed, but is confined 
 within its proper sphere, and there encouraged to effort 
 and progress. Every human faculty has its legitimate 
 office and use ; and so far is religion from denying pre- 
 rogatives to reason, that every help it can render is 
 required, and, according to Bishop Butler, even the right 
 of judgment concerning revelation is conceded. There are 
 grounds indeed upon which theology, or the systematised 
 truths of religion, might be regarded as a rationalisation of 
 the universe, as making its order and history intelligible ; 
 and this is a process in which such royal investiture is 
 put upon the reason, that the temptation to assume 
 imperial rank becomes a frequent danger, imperilling alike 
 religion and reason. The latter consequently has to be 
 kept in its proper place, — a place of dignity indeed, but 
 also of such a degree of humility as corresponds with its 
 intrinsic inadequacy. 
 
 In several respects these limitations of the reason 
 come to the front in the teaching of Scripture. Elihu 
 considered himself a wise and well-informed man, but 
 confessed that " by reason of darkness" (Job xxxvii. 19) 
 no speech of his could set forth in order " the wondrous 
 works of God " ; adding, " The Almighty, we cannot find 
 Him out" (xxxvii. 23). In one of those magnificent 
 passages elicited from His inner consciousness by the 
 needs of men, our Lord speaks royally, — " All things 
 have been delivered unto Me of My Father : and no 
 one knoweth the Son, save the Father ; neither doth any 
 know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever 
 the Son willeth to reveal Him" (Matt. xi. 27). For 
 
14 The Range of Christiaii Experience 
 
 majesty, for ample and reverential effectiveness, St. Paul 
 never associated his reader more closely with himself in 
 worship than when he wrote of " the blessed and only 
 Potentate ; . . . \yho only hath immortality, dwelling in 
 light unapproachable ; whom no man hath seen, nor can 
 see: to whom be honour and power eternal" (1 Tim. vi. 
 15, 16). The very words pulsate with awe, and "the 
 angels veil their faces whilst they gaze." 
 
 But it is not merely in regard to the knowledge of 
 God that the necessary weakness of the human mind has 
 to be confessed. To it that which is to be is dark, and no 
 conclusions from the past enable the secrets of the future 
 to be read. Each day has its sufficiency of evil (Matt, 
 vi. 34), just as for each day there is provided a sufficiency 
 of grace ; but the man of shrewdest wit is unable even to 
 conjecture of what kind the evil will be, and upon what 
 part of the life or purpose of the soul it will fall. Our 
 hopes gather in rich promise, and are scattered. Ambitions 
 that are right and worthy have to be renounced. The 
 incoming tide of circumstance rolls up to our feet the 
 unexpected and the baffling, and too often pours into the 
 heart the overwhelming and the hopeless. Weakness 
 and failure close careers that were discreetly chosen ; or 
 an overlooked incident disturbs an entire calculation, and 
 throws the whole system of object and means out of gear. 
 To withhold the prayer to see the distant scene is self- 
 denying, but superfluous, for each to-morrow is shrouded 
 in its own thick cloak of darkness. In some mood of 
 prophetic vision the clouds may lift for a moment, but the 
 next they come down again upon tlie pathway, and make 
 every step uncertain and hazardous. Wliether it is a 
 
Regulation of the Mind 1 5 
 
 badge of man's frailty or a consequence of his freedom, 
 the nearness of his mind's horizon is a discovery he 
 soon makes ; and if he retain much confidence in his 
 power to foretell the future, the basis of his confidence 
 must be sought amongst the vagaries of human vanity and 
 not amongst the warrants of experience. 
 
 Whilst reason is unable to discern the immediate 
 future, or to trace its events in their natural sequences, 
 to unaided vision the periods beyond are even more 
 obscure. Many practical benefits would follow, if the old 
 request were granted, " Lord, make me to know mine end, 
 and the measure of my days, what it is " (Ps. xxxix. 4) : 
 but the recurring urgency of the desire is itself a witness 
 to the limitation of the reason, and the moment and 
 manner of his death remain a standing uncertainty to 
 every man. And " who can tell a man what shall be 
 after him under the sun ? " (Eccles. vi. 1 2.) " He heapeth 
 up riches, and kuoweth not wdio shall gather them " 
 (Ps. xxxix. 6). To insure permanence for some of his 
 plans, civilisation has invented an artificial system of the 
 utmost completeness ; but its complexity is such that 
 in its application the best experts occasionally blunder, 
 and no degree of skill can eliminate every conflictino- 
 element, or reduce the ambiguities to absolute distinctness. 
 Moreover, there are matters of far greater importance 
 than those for which a measure of stability is secured 
 by law ; and for these the most exact guide of which 
 the reason can avail itself is a theory of probabilities, 
 where the problems are chiefly puzzles and the results 
 only approximately correct. 
 
 If, despite the help of all the sciences, the mind cannot 
 
1 6 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 unravel or pre-determine events close at hand, it is not 
 surprising that dark shadows lie upon the remote judg- 
 ment and the final destinies. Whether indeed there will 
 be a future judgment is claimed as an open question by 
 some, denied as a postulate or an inference of reason by 
 others. The conception is present in some form in almost 
 every mythology, but generally with accompaniments so 
 grotesque as to repel the mind in proportion to its 
 maturity. Where even on such a ground as the in- 
 compatibility of desert and recompense in this life, the 
 idea of a re-adjustment hereafter has been proclaimed a 
 necessity of thought, the idea has had to .be left unclothed ; 
 or if the expansion has been attempted, the world has 
 welcomed the product, or ignored it, as the play of a free 
 fancy. Whether the passage refers, according to the 
 older interpretation, to the felicities of heaven, or more 
 directly, according to the context, to all the w^ealth of the 
 provision which God has made in Christ for man, there 
 is no ground whereon the statement can be disputed, that 
 " whatsoever things God prepared for them that love Him " 
 are " things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, and 
 which entered not into the heart of man" (1 Cor. ii. 9). 
 The physical senses, the heart in its aspirations, the mind 
 with its methods, — the grace and the peace of God tran- 
 scend them all, and so do the joy and the woe which 
 future destiny will unfold. It " passeth knowledge " is 
 the verdict which every Christian pronounces upon many 
 a matter that revelation brings before him, and which 
 every sincere man pronounces upon his religious belief, 
 or the belief that religion offers him, whenever he 
 tries to define it. His reason carries him on every 
 
Regulation of the Mind i 7 
 
 excursion to a certain point, but fails by itself beyond. 
 Its dignity, its place in the organised comity of the man, 
 the magnificence of its achievements, require that it be 
 treated by religion with courtesy. Its only partial 
 mastery of practical life, its habit of outstripping scientific 
 evidence, its proved inability to predict the future from 
 the history of the past, its liability to distortion, and 
 many another defect, forbid that reason should be taken 
 as the supreme and final guide in the things of God or 
 the things of the soul. 
 
 The complaint has sometimes been made that religion, 
 or at least theology, involves the reason in contradictions, 
 and tyrannically demands from it the acceptance of dis- 
 cordant propositions. Whether such a complaint would 
 not lie better against some of the counsels of practical 
 duty and some of the more highly commended philosophies, 
 is open to consideration. In the emergencies wherein a 
 man is bidden to take the bull by the horns, the process 
 may be convenient and effective, but can hardly be said 
 to be rational. The direction pays no heed to reason, 
 because reason has discredited itself by silence or failure. 
 In the state of nature again, and in the relations of the 
 nations, force, which is entirely unreasonable, is the final 
 arbiter. The philosophies also are wont to figure as 
 the most perfect productions of the human mind, and 
 reason and reason alone is claimed to have operated in 
 their construction. There are however some curious 
 doctrines in the philosophies, ancient and modern. One 
 of them (Stoicism), contrary to the belief of the greatest 
 of the poets, makes much depend upon names. Accord- 
 ing to it, life is full of evil : and the evil, as long as 
 
 2 
 
1 8 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 it is called by that name, will press upon and pierce the 
 heart. An arbitrary change of terminology at once puts 
 the matter right ; and if evil be but resolutely named 
 good, happiness is alleged to follow. If that be so, 
 words are much more than counters ; as their multitude 
 is popularly supposed to be a concealment of the absence 
 of thought, their inappropriateness may be philosophically 
 pleaded as a contradiction of experience. But it has been 
 reserved for more recent times to present to the ordinary 
 man, as the masterpiece of the thought of the ages, a 
 system which rests in part upon the strange principle 
 of the identity of different things. There are sections 
 of Hegelianism through which can be traced the steps 
 of reason in its sobriety and in its triumph ; there are 
 other sections which no disciple or expositor has yet 
 succeeded in rendering intelligible, and in the presence 
 of which the mind can only stand aghast. Theology 
 contains certain truths that tax human language for their 
 expression, and go beyond anything that reason alone 
 might have been expected to discover ; but for incoherence 
 and absolute breach with reason, recourse must be had 
 to some of the maxims of prudence or to some of the 
 speculations of philosophers. 
 
 Apart from the necessary transcendency of many 
 theological conceptions and inferences, there are perhaps 
 two main reasons why this reproach has attached itself 
 especially to the Christian creed. Both involve careless- 
 ness of language on the part of good men ; but the one 
 must be sought amongst the apologists, the other amongst 
 the mystics. 
 
 There is an old paradox, Credo quia wipossihile, ascribed 
 
Regulation of the Mind 19 
 
 often to Augustine, but more correctly to TertuUian,^ 
 which is a not unfair representation of the way in 
 which the mysteries of the faith have occasionally been 
 referred to. But an impossibility may be so called either in 
 virtue of an intrinsic quality, or on account of the limited 
 ability of the person or faculty concerned. In the latter 
 sense alone has the word any application within the sphere 
 of Christian thought. Eeason, as the faculty of a finite 
 man, must partake of his imperfections : as he rises 
 towards God, it must rise with him ; but at present the 
 distance of his separation from God is the measure also of 
 its defects as an instrument of thought. To call upon 
 reason to accept contradictions would be criminal ; but to 
 offer it beliefs which are in the line of its own advance, — 
 additions to and not confusions of its knowledge, means by 
 which what it surmises becomes certain or what it knows 
 is unified, — is to treat it in a way that is congruous alike 
 with its own character and with the best known methods 
 of education. 
 
 The other cause is to be found in the extravagance of 
 phrase in which mystics of the extreme school have some- 
 times indulged. When men multiply such paradoxes as 
 that nothing is credible except the inconceivable, nothing 
 near except the remote, nothing so visible as the unseen,- 
 they may be talking a language that is plain to the 
 initiated, but they cannot complain if the unimaginative 
 are mystified and the unsympathetic repelled. Ecstasy 
 
 ^ Cf. Be Car lie Christi, .sec. 4 : "Credibile est, quia iiieptuni est ; . . . 
 certum est, quia inipossibile." 
 
 - Instances of such statements are frequent in the mystical literature 
 of the religious rhapsodists of Germany, and iu the devotional -writings 
 of Englishmen who have come under its influence. 
 
20 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 and incoherence are near neighbonrs ; and in all periods of 
 religious history, except the Iiard and the dry, there has 
 been perplexity in the attempt to keep the mystical 
 element within proper bounds, and, whilst rightly exer- 
 cising it, to give no occasion to the enemy ; when exag- 
 gerated, mysticism provokes the charge of unreasonableness, 
 and spoils man's touch with practical duty ; when it is 
 shunned and neglected, the soul's wings fail of their widest 
 extension, and the exhilarations of the upper air and of 
 the nearest approaches to God are lost. 
 
 Whilst the restraint that religion puts upon reason 
 is thus natural and legitimate, and in precise accord with 
 the relative dignity of each, on the positive side the mind 
 is encouraged to exercise itself, and is brought into contact 
 with objects of knowledge, the most august of all and the 
 most inexhaustible. That religion is favourable to in- 
 tellectual culture of the truest kind and of the highest 
 degree is so obvious, that the only cited exceptions to 
 that law prove vipon examination to involve a misappre- 
 hension on the part of the man who cites them as to 
 the meaning either of religion or of culture. The former 
 is identified with some ecclesiastical system or regula- 
 tion ; or the latter is reduced, until it implies no more 
 than the easy activity of the mind in regard to some 
 specialised branch or branches of knowledge. But inas- 
 much as religion claims all the sciences as its handmaids,, 
 and carries their ultimate conclusions into the presence of 
 God for unification and for worship, its right practice in- 
 volves no atrophy ^ of any part of the brain. The lower 
 
 ^ There are some significant confessions, from a religious as well as an 
 artistic point of view, in Darwin's Life and Letters, i. 100-103, ii. 139. 
 
Regulation of the Mind 2 i 
 
 intellectual tastes and the higher alike are gratified and 
 directed, the most powerful educative stimulus is brought 
 to bear, and the mind filled with orderly conceptions that 
 at once purify it and promote its progress. 
 
 If it be objected that such a description of its effect is 
 ideal, it must be remembered, on the other hand, that the 
 failure of some religious men to reach an ideal is due 
 solely to their own imperfections. And a method or a 
 force is not wisely judged by its results in the hands of 
 those who do not rightly use it. There are several 
 passages of Scripture which directly call upon a man to 
 employ and exercise his own mind, not only in devising 
 his way, but in reflection and even in long and earnest 
 study. It would not be difficult to collect from the book 
 of Proverbs a series of passages that might fairly be * 
 entitled the Praises of the Intellect. " Happy is . . . 
 the man that getteth understanding" (Prov. iii. 13), would 
 fitly introduce or close them ; and amongst them would 
 occur such confident maxims as that " the heart of him 
 that hath understanding seeketh knowledge" (xv. 14), and 
 such emphatic counsels as " Get understanding ; . . . with 
 all thou hast gotten get understanding" (iv. 5—7). "Let 
 each man be fully assured in his own mind " (Eom. xiv. 5), 
 points to a degree of conviction that can be reached only 
 by a combination of mental processes. " Brethren, be 
 not children in mind : howbeit in malice be ye babes, but 
 in mind be men" (1 Cor. xiv. 20), is the kind of advice 
 that is in place, not in a religion that discourages the 
 exercise of the mind, but in the mouth of a man who had 
 been brought up at the feet of tlie greatest teacher of his 
 age. The same apostle prays for a people he loved, in 
 
2 2 The Rmtge of Ch^Hstian Experience 
 
 compact and highly charged phrase, that they might be 
 " knit together . . . unto all riches of the full assurance 
 of understanding " (Col. ii. 2), so that " the treasures of 
 wisdom and knowledge " and " the mystery of God " might 
 be open to them. To the disciple to whom he was most 
 attached he wrote : " Consider," that is, give your mind to 
 " what I say," in all its bearings, in its logical correctness 
 and implications, and in every application to personal 
 duty ; and " the Lord shall give thee understanding in all 
 things " (2 Tim. ii. 7). In his own spiritual life he was 
 so far from admiring what is unintelligible, or desiring the 
 diffused exaltation in which reason seems to be superseded 
 and unfruitfulness follows, that he once wrote, " I speak 
 with tongues more than you all : howbeit in the church I 
 had rather speak five words with my understanding, that I 
 might instruct others also, than ten thousand words in a 
 tongue" (1 Cor. xiv. 18, 19). Every manifestation of the 
 Spirit of God, who is never the author of confusion, but 
 whose methods are sometimes beyond though never against 
 human knowledge, he would welcome ; but by preference 
 he chose the lowlier walks, where the mind was not com- 
 pelled to linger behind, and the service was " reasonable " 
 (Rom. xii. 1). 
 
 Nor is such teaching in the New Testament confined 
 to St. Paul. In the Gospels anxious thought for the 
 morrow is forbidden ; but the miracles are themselves 
 appeals to thought, and the primary object of the whole 
 story is intellectual conviction with the faith that includes 
 it. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews generally 
 identifies himself with the persons he is counselling, and 
 does not often address them directly and as apart from 
 
Regulation of the Mind 23 
 
 himself. Two of the occasions when he ventures to do so 
 are of interest in the present connexion. " Consider the 
 Apostle and High Priest of our confession, even Jesus " 
 (Heb. iii. 1), he writes in the one case, using a word that 
 denotes continuous observation and fixed attention. In 
 the other passage (xii. 3), he chooses a word that is 
 not found elsewhere in the New Testament, — a word 
 denoting minute and detailed examination, the comparison 
 of part with part, the kind of analysis that overlooks no 
 particulars and misjudges none, — and thus constructs a 
 verse that has many a time turned the disposition to 
 complain into the glad sense of association with Christ 
 and of fellowship in suffering : " Consider Him that hath 
 endured such gainsaying of sinners against themselves, 
 that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls." In face 
 of such a marvellous display of heroism, it may be said as 
 fitly as at one of the scenes of catastrophe in the Apoca- 
 lypse, " Here is the mind which hath wisdom " (Eev. xvii. 
 9). For "whoso is wise shall give heed to these things" 
 (Ps. cvii. 4o) ; and wise heed to the ways of God is the 
 secret at once of well co-ordinated human knowledge, and 
 of the emancipation of the soul from circumstance and 
 from evil. 
 
 But not only in this way of instruction and appeal 
 does the Christian religion show itself favourable to 
 mental culture ; it provides the mind with matters to 
 think about, which both meet the mind's necessities, and 
 form in no exaggerated phrase the crown of human know- 
 ledge. The fact of the Son's pre-existence from eternity 
 could not conceivably have been discovered by the reason 
 alone. Tliat fact however makes the conception of a 
 
24 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 personal God, ruling amid all the silences and solitudes 
 that preceded the first creative fiat, intelligible and think- 
 able, supplying all the elements that are necessary to 
 constitute personality, and preserving the mind from 
 heJpless entanglement in the degradations of materialism. 
 The Trinity, the providence of God, the incarnation, the 
 atonement, the resurrection of Christ, the holiness of the 
 universal Father and the sanctifying grace of His Spirit, 
 and all the marvels and the efficiency of the mode which 
 He has contrived for the perfecting of human character 
 — such subjects of thought transcend all others in im- 
 portance, attractiveness, inexhaustibility. 
 
 In every mind too, however it has been acquired, there 
 is apparently a sense of the future, the ambiguities of 
 which either haunt and baffle a man, or are resolved by 
 some over-mastering conviction. There is probably no 
 ingredient of natural consciousness more frequently present 
 or more fruitful in its emotional effects than the contrast- 
 ing brotherhood of expectancy and apprehension. The 
 Christian religion alone provides men, not with guesses, 
 but with certainties as to the otherwise unknown years 
 that stretch inimitably forwards. Not only is incorruption 
 brought to light in the Gospel, remaining no longer a 
 fancy of the poets, an unsustained intuition, or an im- 
 perfect induction, but it assumes the form of an under- 
 lying conception, and is recognised as so certain that 
 revelation takes no trouble to prove it, paying it the 
 honour of unhesitating assumption. Other elements of 
 stability follow. The human incidents of the future, and 
 the play of man upon man and of fitness upon opportunity, 
 are left unveiled : but it is known of a truth that Jehovah 
 
Regtdation of the Mind 25 
 
 is the God of the future, and that He will be present 
 among His people with sufficient grace in every one of 
 life's emergencies and surprises. And beyond the nearer 
 future stretches an eternity the particulars of which are 
 still liidden, although its ruling principles are stated witli 
 clearness and decision. " "We know that we are of God " 
 (1 John V. 19), "that, if He shall l)e manifested, we shall 
 be like Him " (iii. 2), that the Lord will " judge His 
 people " (Ps. 1. 4) and "do right" (Gen. xviii. 25); and 
 such knowledge is strength and peace. 
 
 It is well for a, man to equip his mind with the 
 treasures of every language and the conclusions of every 
 science, and to train it to easy action in regard to any 
 perplexity that may present itself. It is well too for a 
 man to know what death means, and what comes after 
 death. Inasmuch as the Christian can do both, tlie 
 superiority in fulness of intellectual advantage lies 
 necessarily with him. The man who says, " I have 
 gotten me great wisdom above all that were before me " 
 (Eccles. i. 16), l)ut "in much wisdom is much grief" (i. 18), 
 who crushes down his religious faculties and refuses to 
 allow them to help him to a single certainty about the 
 future, that man, in regard to harmony and completeness 
 of culture, must take a place beneath the saint who both 
 explores the provinces of human knowledge, and exults in 
 the assurance, " It is not yet made manifest what we 
 shall be," but " we know that ... we shall be like 
 Him; for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John iii. 2). 
 Christianity carries on and consecrates human culture, 
 responding to the demands of tlie mind, and opening 
 up new fields for its occupation, but never restraining 
 
26 The Range of Christian ExpeiHence 
 
 or coercing it except when it is beginning to wander 
 from God. 
 
 There are moreover some matters of history which 
 significantly illustrate the true relation of religion to 
 reason. It is hardly fair to judge that relation by the 
 extravagances of small and ephemeral sects, by the sneers 
 of men whose opinion on any other subject no one would 
 think of citing, or even by the blunders of ecclesiastical 
 authorities under the joint influence of exclusiveness and 
 fear. A factor in human progress may be misunder- 
 stood or for a time checked and frustrated, but it soon 
 recovers, and never fails to produce at last its full effect. 
 And in the large movements of history since Christ died, 
 there can be no doubt that religion and reason have been 
 in general alliance, or that much of the best work of the 
 latter has been done at the incitement or with the encour- 
 agement of the former. In many of the masterpieces of 
 ancient literature, religious impulse and intellectual gift, 
 power of mind or play of fancy, wrought side by side ; 
 and whether the test of quantity or that of quality be 
 applied, there have been few later ages concerning which 
 the same might not be said. Still as of old, the finest 
 thinking owes generally its inspiration, its guidance, or its 
 issue to religion ; and no atmosphere is so bracing to the 
 wits as that of the Cross or the chamber of devotion. Of 
 literary art, if it be permitted to grade its products, a 
 perfect hymn is probably the finest gem ; and the man 
 who provides the people with adequate and timely words 
 for their worship rules more spirits than any. Nor at 
 present is any province of thought proving so attractive 
 to the mind, so provocative of its exercise and skill, as 
 
Regulation of the Mind 27 
 
 that which occupies the borderland between the sciences 
 of observation and the domain of inspiration. To carry 
 up to God the latest conquests of human knowledge, and 
 bring nature and man into explicit relation with Him, — 
 reason has no higher ambition, and all its steps in that 
 career wait upon religion. 
 
 Between education and religion, at least witliin the 
 circles influenced by tlie Scripture, the alliance has always 
 been of the closest. An early passage in the Old Testa- 
 ment (Deut. vi. 7) binds upon the Jewish father the duty 
 of instructing his sons in a law that touched human life 
 at almost every point, thus investing the relationships 
 of kindred with consecrating responsibility. Detailed 
 regulations followed in the course of time, according to 
 which schools were planted even in the smaller villages 
 apparently as adjuncts to the synagogues, and the modern 
 provisions for insuring attendance were anticipated.^ The 
 teacher who by way of eminence in Jewish literature is 
 simply called Eabbi (Jehuda Hanasi) once said ^ that " the 
 world exists only by the breath of school children " ; 
 and it was a maxim "' which attracted approving comment, 
 that " he who has learnt and does not impart to 
 others disregards the word of God." Whilst secular 
 education amongst the ancient Jews was thus religious in 
 its origin and care, Christianity certainly did not divert 
 men's energies into a different channel. On the contrary, 
 there have been countries and times in which monastic 
 schools have been almost the only schools ; whilst fighting 
 
 ' Baha halhra, 21 ; cf. Spiers, "Scliool System of the Talmud," reprinted 
 from the Jewish Chronicle. 
 
 2 Shabbath, 119. = Sanhedrin, 99. 
 
2 8 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 could be learned elsewhere, reading, and to a greater degree 
 writing, could be learned nowhere else. Many of the older 
 seats of learning were originally ecclesiastical foundations : 
 they are now gradually ceasing in civilised countries to be 
 sectarian, with gain to the religious elements that still enter 
 into their constitution and largely control them. In Sun- 
 day schools the secular education, for the sake of which 
 they were in part established, was by no means given from 
 secular motives ; and now that the need for it has ceased, 
 the whole training is becoming religious and biblical. Even 
 where the school is, as in a few places,^ a wholly distinct 
 organisation from the church, its officials and agents would 
 be the first to disclaim the operation in themselves or upon 
 their work of any higlier motive than the love of God, 
 and for His sake the love of the children. The function 
 of education has been defined upon good authority ^ as 
 the instruction of men in the utilisation of those sources 
 of happiness which nature affords, with a view to their 
 knowing " how to live completely." In the absence of 
 religion no such function can be discharged, and every 
 attempt to do so must leave a man's most urgent needs 
 unsupplied and yearning. Theoretically, the co-operation 
 of reason and religion is indispensable to the completeness 
 of life : how well they have co-operated when the rights 
 of each have been recognised, and the servant's work has 
 been done as before the master's eye, the intellectual 
 progress of the race is itself a witness. 
 
 ^ An arrangement of this kind is always to be deplored, as weakening the 
 corporate agencies of the church, and imperilling the duties of communion 
 on the part of the scholars. 
 
 " Mr. H. Spencer, as quoted in Lady "Warwick's Progress in Women's 
 
 Education. 
 
Regulation of the Mind 29 
 
 It is not often that the mind apart from religion 
 attains to any large, full, and ahiding degree of satisfac- 
 tion. Its persistent exercise has in some way become 
 associated with a tendency to melancholy ; and pessimism, 
 which is never niort^ than tlie passing mood of a religious 
 man, is always apt to become the profession of the non- 
 religious philosopher. One eminent writer,^ whose experi- 
 ence can only be called Christian with a qualification, says 
 that " the gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more 
 or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night 
 enwraps the universe." But to the Christian the gloom 
 is only transitory, and the darkness of each brief night is 
 soon pierced and broken up by the morning. Instead 
 of being enwrapped in dulness, the more thoughtful his 
 soul becomes, the more continuously does he walk in light, 
 and the darkness overtakes him not (John i. 5, xii. 35). 
 In one of his University Sermons (185 9), Dr. Pusey 
 described his own experience towards the close of what 
 he considered a long and tempted life. " For forty-five 
 years," he said, " out of duty and not out of curiosity, 
 I have read more of unbelief than most, in every 
 form, in every province and district where it has made 
 its assaults ; I have read it until the fiesh crept and 
 the soul sickened ; but our dear Lord's promise was 
 fulfilled to me, ' If they shall drink any deadly thing, 
 it shall not hurt them,' and my safeguard was this — 
 loyalty to, and I hope I may say, though all too poor, 
 a love to our divine Master." In that mind at least 
 there was no thickening gloom, but a strong and restful 
 confidence, not far removed from certainty. " In all 
 
 ^ The Journal Intime of H. F. Amlcl, trans, by Mrs. H. A\'ard, }>. 102. 
 
30 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 my study of the ancient times," wrote an historian to his 
 friend,^ " I have always felt the need of something, and it 
 was not until I knew our Lord that all was clear to me : 
 with Him there is nothing that I am not able to solve." 
 
 But nowhere does the satisfaction of the mind receive 
 better expression than in the New Testament. Philip 
 was the calculating apostle (cf. John vi. 7) : with his 
 arithmetical intellect balancing proofs against improba- 
 bilities, he once measured the demonstration that would 
 leave no room for doubt, and with reverence and decision 
 submitted his conclusion to Christ, " Lord, show us the 
 Father, and it sufUceth us " (John xiv. 8). There was 
 yearning in his intonation, and in the grace of his Saviour 
 the response to such yearning, " He that hath seen Me 
 hath seen the Father " (xiv. 9). In Him, men are 
 "enriched in all utterance and all knowledge" (1 Cor. 
 i. 5), all life becoming illuminated with " the light of the 
 knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ " 
 (2 Cor. iv. 6). The revelation of the holy Fatherhood, 
 whose love is not slack nor His justice hard, is the 
 supreme thought of man, a sufdcient basis and inspiration 
 for dutifulness, the pattern and the power for emancipation 
 and for perfecting. The greatest of hymn-writers pictures 
 Jacob as wrestling with God for the sure knowledge of 
 His name, and as counting the cost less than nothing : 
 
 Lame as I am, . . . 
 
 I leap for joy, pursue my way, 
 
 And as a bounding hart fly home. 
 Through all eternity to prove 
 Thy nature and Thy name is Love. 
 
 1 Johann von Miiller to Karl Bonnet. Cf. Luthardt, Aiwloget Vwtr. 
 Eng. trans, p. 363. 
 
Regulation of the Mind 
 
 And the greatest of the apostles finds words too weak 
 for the utterance of his rejoicing wonder, and turns to 
 worship : " the depth of the riches both of the wisdom 
 and the knowledge of God ! . . . To Him be the glory for 
 ever" (Rom. xi. 33—36). When the mind, like the heart, 
 of man, has found its way into the inner shrine where God 
 reveals Himself to His worshippers, it can do no other 
 than acknowledge, " Where Thou art is heaven." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 RELIGION AS A CO-ORDINATING POWER IN MAN 
 
 The faculties and functions of man are graded alike in Scripture and 
 in common opinion — In religion itself there is a recognised 
 hierarchy of motives — Self-preservation, the strongest instinct, 
 sometimes subjected by natural means, but in religion steadily 
 kept in a subordinate position — Judaism anticipated this grading, 
 which becomes the rule of Christianity — The influence of religion 
 in other domains of morality — It restrains the vices and purifies 
 the social instincts, as no other agency can— It supplies the 
 individual with new motives and virtues, extends the range of 
 d uty, exalts its sanctions, and makes of man a self -governed unity 
 — Testimony of Scripture. 
 
 As to the relation of religion to the other faculties or 
 functions of man, there is an equally singular agreement 
 between Scripture and observation. According as the 
 parts and powers are graded by every one who is not 
 himself misled in judgment by sensualism, so are they 
 graded in .the philosophy of the Bible, and in the ex- 
 perience of the Christian. It is commonly acknowledged, 
 for instance, that the pleasures of the mind are higher 
 than those of the body, and that there are some plea- 
 sures, of altruistic satisfaction or ethical fruitfulness or 
 divine communion, which are higher still. A scale of 
 values, that did not begin with the instincts most deeply 
 rooted in the flesh, and gradually rise through the mental 
 and social faculties to moral judgment, to conscience, to 
 
Religion as a Co-ordinating Pozver 
 
 aspiration after God, would be self -condemned in the 
 opinion of most men. Similarly of tlie various pursuits in 
 which men indulge, there may be rivalry for the lowest 
 place between sensuousness and the vindictive infliction 
 of injury upon others ; nevertheless it is curious that 
 the dishonour attached to the latter is itself historically 
 a product of religious even more than of social con- 
 siderations, whilst there is but little unwillingness to 
 concede the solitude of the supreme position to religion, 
 as the loftiest and sovereign pursuit of man. The only 
 adequate sanction of philanthropy, of the modern humani- 
 tarianism that spends itself upon the sick and needy, of 
 the sacrifice of personal comfort or convenience for the 
 succour of others, is to be found in religion, and being 
 found is almost everywhere applauded and commended, if 
 not everywhere obeyed. Conscientiousness, again, has been 
 described as the prime quality of scientific work, which is 
 thus indebted for its successes and progress in part to the 
 mind, in part to something more important still. In the 
 hierarchy of man, an opinion which is practically un- 
 animous puts the body at the bottom, fills the intermediate 
 places variously, and with the stjul crowns the scale. 
 
 Within the various religions themselves, and amongst 
 the adherents of each, a grading not altogether unlike may 
 be traced. As they advance in refinement, the eagerness 
 for a Mohammedan paradise ranks by common consent 
 below even the desire to flee from the wrath to come. The 
 anticipation of fellowship with the saints and with the 
 dead, and of all the social joys that fill the pictured future, 
 recognises its mistress in the absorbing presence of God. 
 And the full recovery of His likeness, in spotlessness from 
 
 3 
 
34 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 sin and in the instinctive imitation of His loving care for 
 the needy, stands with good and unquestionable right at 
 the head of all spiritual ideals as " pure religion and 
 undefiled " (Jas. i. 27). 
 
 Of the instincts rooted in the body, the strongest 
 is generally allowed to be that of self-preservation ; and 
 accordingly he who has had the longest and most intimate 
 acquaintance with human nature from the beginning, who 
 has made it his special study and himself the most expert 
 mental philosopher out of heaven, is represented as holding 
 that " skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give 
 for his life " (Job ii. 4). Yet so far has the training of 
 man advanced, that in his engrossment with other things 
 he is able to forget and ignore this instinct, to repress and 
 silence it in the presence of what he now calls higher 
 claims, and even under religious constraints to scorn and 
 contemn its cravings. Any great ambition is enough to 
 bring the first result to pass, or any occupation or study 
 in which a fair degree of interest is felt. Military dis- 
 cipline, professional honour, social opinion, the pressure of 
 any masterful purpose, will accomplish the second. In 
 both these cases the sacrifice of the body is accepted, not 
 gladly, but sternly as a necessity that must be faced, or 
 carelessly as a possible incident to which a strong man 
 may be indifferent. It is only in religious experience that 
 the body's protests against the apparent ways of God are 
 instantly rejected, and its clamours to live in dishonour 
 exultingly checked. There is a sullen regretfulness with 
 which the acknowledgment is sometimes made, that it is 
 possible to do worse things than die ; and occasionally the 
 voice of a brusque sage may be heard counselling others 
 
Religion as a Co-ordinating Power 35 
 
 to count renunciation better than life. Possibly there 
 is more indignation than peace in Job's famous saying, 
 " Though He slay me, yet will I wait for llim : never- 
 theless I will maintain my ways before Him " (Job 
 xiii. 15). But the intonation of Habakkuk's words is a 
 sufificient key to his spirit : " Though the fig tree shall not 
 blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines ; the labour of 
 the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat ; the 
 flock shall 1)0 cut off from the fold, and there shall be no 
 herd in the stalls " — i.e. though famine stares me in the 
 very face, and the body sickens for want of sustenance and 
 dies : " yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God 
 of my salvation" (Hab. iii. 17, 18). 
 
 It is however in the New Testament that the minor 
 importance of the body and of its life receives fullest 
 expression. There are few of our Lord's paradoxes or 
 plays upon words that are repeated as many as six times 
 in the Gospels ; and the exceptional repetition is an 
 indication alike of prominence in His teaching and of 
 attractiveness to His disciples. Six times ' He is reported 
 as saying, with little variations that modify the emphasis 
 but accentuate the central truth, " Whosoever would save 
 his life shall lose it : and whosoever shall lose his life for 
 ]\Iy sake shall find it." The life of the body and the true 
 life of the man are thrown into contrast ; the former must 
 not be over-valued, and may well and wisely be forfeited, 
 if thereby the latter is secured. It is a doctrine that 
 shifts the centre of gravity from the resolution to live 
 long to the fixed purpose of living rightly. Not to seek 
 death, but to welcome it in preference to any relapse 
 
 1 Matt. X. .39, xvi. 25 ; Mark viii. -35 ; Luke ix. 24, xvii. 33 ; John xii. 25. 
 
36 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 from God, becomes accordingly the rule of Christian 
 duty. 
 
 Anticipations of that rule may be met with in Judaism, 
 which is full of types of religious experience as well as of 
 Christian privilege. The second book of the Maccabees 
 must not be regarded as strictly historical, but at least it 
 reveals the temper of the times in which it was written. 
 Eleazar was tempted to deny God, but determined " to die 
 willingly and nobly a glorious death for the reverend and 
 holy laws," and " went straightway to the instrument of 
 torture." When he was at the point to die, he " groaned 
 aloud and said, To the Lord, that hath the holy knowledge, 
 it is manifest that, whereas I might have been delivered 
 from death, I endure sore pains in my body by being 
 scourged ; but in soul I gladly suffer these things for my 
 fear of Him" (2 Mace. vi. 28, 30). A good mother, name- 
 less but never to be forgotten, saw her six sons done 
 brutally to death before her eyes ; and when her seventh,, 
 the youngest, was plied in his agony with promises of 
 wealth and high estate if he would but recant, she steeled 
 her yearning heart, and called to her darling " in the 
 language of her fathers. My son, have pity upon me that 
 carried thee in my womb, and, . . . proving thyself 
 worthy of thy brethren, accept thy deatli, that in the 
 mercy of God I may receive thee again with thy brethren "" 
 (vii. 27—29). But nothing in the Apocrypha can com- 
 pare, in pathos and convincing demonstration, with the 
 great roll of the dead in the Epistle to the Hebrews. A 
 few names are singled out, simply a few from an innumer- 
 able multitude of crowned men, " of whom the world wa& 
 not worthy." Here they had no rights of citizenship ; and 
 
Religion as a Co-ordinating Power 2,j 
 
 the body was a tenement of clay, which, if it did not serve 
 their purposes and still more if it frustrated their purposes, 
 the tenant was ready to leave for his home. " They were 
 stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were slain with the 
 sword" (Heb. xi. 37); and the story of their deaths, 
 instead of being a dirge, is a militant and triumphant 
 strain, that has stirred men ever since to loyalty and 
 heroism. 
 
 St. Paul knew life on most of its sides, wealth and 
 poverty, success and failure, authority and impotence. He 
 had been the hope of his nation, and became its scorn. In 
 this life and its opportunities he never lost interest ; yet 
 except for its opportunities there seemed to him little 
 reason for a desire to live. " We that are in this tabernacle 
 do groan, being burdened" (2 Cor. v. 4), was his mood 
 when he thought of the glories beyond. The groan soon 
 ceases to be heard, when he thinks about God ; and he 
 adds, " We are of good courage, and . . . make it our 
 aim, whether at home or absent, to be well-pleasing unto 
 Him " (v. 8, 9). The same contending emotions, with the 
 same tranquil issue, find expression elsewhere. " I am in 
 a strait betwixt the two," he writes to the Philippians 
 (i. 23, 24), "having the desire to depart and be with 
 Christ ; for it is very far better : yet to abide in the flesh is 
 more needful for your sake." At Miletus the future was 
 altogether threatening : " The Holy Ghost testifieth unto 
 me in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide 
 me " ; and yet the apostle continues, " I hold not my life 
 of any accoimt, as dear unto myself, so that I may accom- 
 plish my course" (Acts xx. 23, 24). The martyrologies, 
 the records of evangelical devotion, the divine register 
 
38 The Range of Cfudstian Experie?ice 
 
 of the motives and hindrances of the godly, are all full of 
 instances where the servant has not been unwilling to be 
 like the Master, and has so triumphed over the urgency of 
 the instinct of self-preservation as to consent to die. 
 
 In the case of other instincts too, and of the whole 
 domain of natural morality, the same truth holds good. 
 Eeligion, in actual experience, checks the vices together 
 with the corruption they tend to produce, exalts the motives, 
 extends the range of duty, introduces the higher graces, 
 preserves the rightful supremacy of the soul, lifts man up 
 to God. By non-religious methods habits can be fixed 
 and character formed ; but every character is the better 
 for consecration, and otherwise the perfect co-ordination 
 of its parts is impossible. 
 
 Of the restraining and quickening influences of religion 
 a better witness than M, Taine could hardly be desired. 
 The philosophy of his earlier life was, even according to 
 his admirers, somewhat crude and mechanical ; and with 
 all his intellectual culture and progress, he never rose far 
 above the earth-born mists that thicken the lower air. 
 After accumulating in many hundred pages the indications 
 of the factors that had worked for centuries in the develop- 
 ment of a great country, he states his conclusion ^ thus : 
 " We can now reckon the value of what Christianity has 
 brought into modern society ; how much modesty, sweet- 
 ness, and kindliness ; what it there maintains of honesty, 
 good faith, and justice. Neither the reason of philosophers 
 nor the culture of artists and men of letters, nor yet even 
 the sentiment of honour, feudal, military, and chivalrous, — 
 
 1 Quoted in an article on Henri Taine in the Quarterly Rei-icu; July, 
 1897, rr- 211, 212. 
 
Religion as a Co-ordinating Power 
 
 not any code, or administration, or government, can, in this, 
 its function, avail if it be wanting. There is nothing 
 except Christianity which can hold us back on our native 
 incline, or prevent the gradual slipping downward by which, 
 incessantly and with all its weight, our race goes back 
 into the depths ; and to-day the ancient Gospel is still the 
 best auxiliary that social instinct can call to its aid." 
 Had tiie writer been entirely free from prepossessions, he 
 would probably have called the Gospel the approved guide 
 and governor, rather than the auxiliary of the social 
 instinct. 
 
 Witli him there are few historians or moralists who 
 are not in substantial agreement, and his main conclusion 
 is supported by all history. Plans and theories of govern- 
 ment have been tried one after another, some of them 
 professedly the cream of human science. Sparta of old, 
 and the French Eevolution in later times, sufficiently show 
 how they work and to what they lead. Eeadjustments of 
 opportunity or of relation, now with a view to usher in 
 some socialistic millennium, and now at the bidding of 
 some revived political school, have been made under every 
 condition of advantage, and found wanting. Men can 
 alter the incidence of taxation, they can provide careers 
 for energy and promising investments for talents, and they 
 can render it possible for some of the neglected rights 
 of humanity to exercise themselves and obtain tlieir own. 
 Nevertheless it is the. gentleman, in fustian or in broad- 
 cloth, and the lady, in silk or in mended rags, who sweeten 
 society ; and these are products, not of legislation and poli- 
 tical sentiment, but of honour and conscience, which flourish 
 and make themselves felt in exact proportion as religion is 
 
40 The Range of C/u'istian Experience 
 
 refined and perfected. " Democracy," so Eenan writes in 
 one of his Letters, " has no discipline, and no moral ideal 
 to impose." Eeligion is at once the antiseptic and the 
 tonic of the human race ; its reformation fills moribund 
 States with new life, its presence and supremacy are the 
 prime condition of human progress. 
 
 The community is only the larger arena, upon which 
 the operation of great principles is seen in more com- 
 plexity, though not necessarily in more distinctness, than 
 on the stage of individual life. There are indications 
 enough that religion can control and regrade the instincts 
 of each man, and make of all the elements that constitute 
 him a self-governed unity, eqvial in dignity to that of his 
 origin, functions, and destiny. It supplies him with new 
 virtues, and with new motives to virtue. For even if 
 faint traces of humility, patience, and purity of intention 
 can be found in the pre-Christian centuries, they were the 
 adornment of only a few sages ; whereas Christ popularised 
 such qualities, exemplified them, and so effectually urged 
 their cultivation upon men, that to-day no moralist would 
 deny their merit, and no casual lounger in the market- 
 place would like to be charged with lacking the last of 
 them. If wrong be regarded as the breach of an imper- 
 sonal law, the restraint is sometimes adequate, and some- 
 times may be made so by the fear of public opinion and 
 the coercion of the magistrate. But when wrong is re- 
 garded as sin against a personal God, there is an internal 
 restraint, mighty and irresistible, unless the belief is for- 
 gotten for a time. Duty, as being the expressed will of 
 an external authority, may be done reluctantly : duty, as 
 being the carrying out of the wish of an all-loving God, 
 
Religion as a Co-07^dinating Power 4 1 
 
 would readily be transcended, if it could. To help and 
 minister to the needy, the children of other people, the 
 men who themselves fulfil no obligation, is superfluous and 
 a work of supererogation, according to the civilisations into 
 which the spirit of Christ has not gone forth. It becomes 
 spontaneous and a gratification of soul to those who have 
 heard a Saviour saying, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one 
 of these My brethren, even tliese least, ye did it unto Me " 
 (Matt. XXV. 40). Thus in Christian experience the com- 
 munications of the soul with the world outside are duly 
 regulated, the free soul itself is brought into relation with 
 the divine, no pure enjoyments or rational interests are 
 denied it, and in union with the Holy Spirit its wise 
 autonomy and its progress towards perfection are assured. 
 
 In the Scriptures there are many implications of this 
 relative value of the parts of man, and many express direc- 
 tions as to the concentration of effort and culture upon the 
 more important, to the repression, if necessary, of the others. 
 " Keep thy heart with all diligence " (or, according to the 
 margin, " above all that thou guardest ") ; " for out of it are 
 the issues of life" (Pro v. iv. 23), is one of the counsels of 
 wisdom. In the case of the Saviour there is a strain of 
 teaching, stern and remorseless, which begins with the 
 Sermon on the Mount, and recurs more than once in the 
 subsequent ministry. " If thy hand or thy foot causeth thee 
 to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee. ... If thine 
 eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it from 
 thee " (Matt, xviii. 8, 9). No quarter must be given to 
 any organ or instinct that would separate a man from God. 
 St. Paul was ready even to renounce an indulgence that 
 might separate anotlier man from God, and once wrote. 
 
42 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 not in ecstasy, but with strong purpose, " If meat maketh 
 my brotiier to stumble, I will eat no flesh for evermore, 
 that I make not my brother to stumble" (1 Cor. viii. 13). 
 Elsewhere, he argues that, whilst gifts of intellect and 
 endowments of influence are good, there is a still more 
 excellent way. " If I speak with the tongues of men and of 
 angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or 
 a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, 
 and know all mysteries and all knowledge ; and if I have 
 all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am 
 nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, 
 and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it 
 profiteth me nothing " (xiii. 1—3). St. John does not differ 
 from him, though his temperament was different. " All that 
 is in the world," he writes, " the lust of the flesh, and the 
 lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life, is not of the 
 Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, 
 and the lust thereof : but he that doeth the will of God 
 abideth for ever" (1 John ii. 16, 17). 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE SECRET OF SPIRITUAL HEALTH 
 
 Health as the e{Hiilibrium of the instincts — The existence universally 
 of the religious instinct — Its satisfaction possible only through 
 religion, without which equilibrium and the resulting content 
 cannot be reached — Cliange of view on the part of Mr. Romanes 
 — Professor W. James on the wisdom of faith, and its relation to 
 spiritual content — Happiness, according to Mr. P. G. Hamerton, 
 and according to philosophy and Scrijijture — A poet's contrast 
 between nature and man, true only when the equilibrium is un- 
 stable — Religion secures stability, and thereby calm and strength. 
 
 To speak of this proper graduation of the instincts and 
 interests as the condition of the complete health and perfect 
 life of man is not much more than a change of terms. 
 The conception of health is generally very vague, and to 
 express it with precision is not easy. The best or least 
 objectionable definition is probably that which regards 
 health as the condition of equilibrium ^ of the instincts, 
 marked negatively by the absence of any severe tension 
 and positively by physical ease and content. In religious 
 experience, therefore, according to the stage which it has 
 reached, the religious instinct must be duly equilibrated 
 with the others, and the symptom and result will be the 
 spiritual peace to which the New Testament in several 
 passages makes emphatic reference. 
 
 ^ Cf. Martineau, TyiKS of Ethical Theory, ii. ol9. 
 43 
 
44 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 In writing thus of a religious instinct, an objection might 
 be raised that the phraseology showed no close adherence 
 to technical accuracy. It would be a sufficient reply that 
 the mysteries of psychology are not at present under dis- 
 cussion, and that the term in question is used with the 
 exact sense it bears in the extended conception of health. 
 That there is in every man something religious, an aspira- 
 tion upwards, a need and demand for communion with 
 some unphenomenal person or power, a consciousness of 
 the existence of an invisible world both above his own 
 head and beyond his own life, does not really admit of 
 doubt, and cannot seriously be contradicted. It has been 
 detected in every tribe of savages ; and the civilised men 
 who have professed to be without it have generally, as the 
 years passed, disclosed some private superstition that has 
 put their boast to shame. There are indications in the 
 fragment of autobiography ^ written by Charles Darwin in 
 1876, that he was never wholly without what he calls 
 the religious sentiment ; and in some of the variations 
 of his belief, the sentiment deepened into conviction. 
 Whenever a traveller has reported the discovery of a 
 race in which there was alleged to be no discernible 
 element of religion, his conclusions have had eventually 
 to be revised. The man in whose thoughts God is not 
 and has never been has still to be found, and amongst 
 the fundamental and characteristic constituents of man 
 may safely be placed a sentiment or instinct or need of 
 religion. 
 
 This aptitude and yearning for God in the human 
 breast being thus acknowledged, it follows that the religious 
 
 ^ Cf. especially Lift aiid Letters, i. 309-312. 
 
The Secret of Spiritual Health 45 
 
 instinct must be fitly recognised and met before real health 
 can be enjoyed, or the condition of content, the goal and 
 aim of every function, be reached. If " the heart requires 
 a God," nothing l)ut a God will satisfy and tranquillise it. 
 That it does so require, and is incapable of settled and full 
 peace until it find Him, has been shown at length by 
 Pascal,^ and is attested by general experience. " The 
 misery of man is great upon him " (Eccles. viii. 6) ; and 
 under whatever mask he hide it, behind the mask — of 
 frivolity or engrossment or unconcern — there is a heart 
 more often heavy than light, with secret wounds for 
 which the world has no healing balm. 
 
 Mr. G. J. Eomanes published - pseudonymously, in 
 1878, a vigorous attack on theism, in the course of which 
 he wrote, " I am not ashamed to confess that with this 
 virtual negation of God the universe to me has lost its 
 soul of loveliness." When he died in 1894, he left behind 
 him a series of notes he had prepared for use in a pro- 
 jected work that was to have been entitled " A Candid 
 Examination of Eeligion." These were afterwards pub- 
 lished, and amongst them is the following : ^ " I know from 
 experience the intellectual distractions of scientific research, 
 philosophical speculation, and artistic pleasures ; but am 
 also well aware that even when all are taken together and 
 well sweetened to taste, in respect of consequent reputa- 
 tion, means, social position, etc., the whole concoction is 
 but as high confectionery to a starving man. He may 
 
 ^ Fensees, bk. i. 
 
 " A Candid Examination of Theism, by "Physieus," who in the preface 
 describes the book as written "several years ago," but kept back for the 
 benefit of "more mature thought. " 
 
 ' Thoughts on Religion, edited by Canon Gore, i)p. 151, 152. 
 
46 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 cheat himself for a time — especially if he be a strong man 
 — into the belief that he is nourishing himself by denying 
 his natural appetite : but soon finds he was made for some 
 altogether different kind of food, even though of much less 
 tastefulness as far as the palate is concerned." If the 
 highest earthly satisfaction be gained, it soon " palls by 
 custom " ; and whenever " one end of distinction is reached, 
 another is pined for. There is no finality to rest in, while 
 disease and death are always standing in the background." 
 That there is " a vacuum in the soul of man which nothing 
 can fill save faith in God " is " unquestionably true." 
 Thereupon Eomanes proceeds to speak in glowing terms, 
 themselves a witness to the rising of his own faith, of the 
 happiness of religious, and especially of Christian, belief. 
 " It is a matter of fact that besides being most intense, it 
 is most enduring, growing, and never staled by custom. 
 In short, according to the universal testimony of those who 
 have it, it differs from all other happiness not only in 
 decree, but in kind. ... It has no relation to intellectual 
 status. It is a thing by itself, and supreme." Spiritual con- 
 tent, therefore, in the eyes of a trained and distinguished 
 man of science, an observer, and a logician, is strictly 
 dependent upon and actually secured by religion. 
 
 The next witness may fitly be a philosopher by pro- 
 fession, in some departments of philosophy exceeded in 
 aljility and authority by few. Professor William James 
 has made his contribution ^ to the settlement of the vexed 
 question, whether life is worth living. The misery and 
 woe of life are general and unmistakable. " In the 
 
 ■^ In au address under that title, reprinted in Tlia Will to Believe, 
 pp. 32 (f. 
 
The Secret of Spii'itual Health 47 
 
 deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the 
 ultimate mystery of things works sadly." An optimistic 
 temperament may feel joy in living, but temperaments and 
 moods are tickle. Eousseau wrote of the nine years he 
 spent at Annecy : " Happiness followed me everywhere ; 
 it was in no one assignable thing ; it was all within my- 
 self ; it would not leave me for a single instant " : but in 
 his later days he became " a prey to melancholy and black 
 delusions of suspicion and fear." Here is a dismal message 
 for man from James Thomson's City of ihe Dreadful 
 Night — 
 
 This life holds nothing good fur us, 
 
 But it ends soon and nevermore can be ; 
 And -we knew nothing of it ere our birth, 
 And shall know nothing when consigned to earth. 
 
 Weariness of life is one of the diseases often bred by 
 reflection, by " too much grubbing in the abstract roots of 
 things " ; and, says Mr. James, reflection, if carried further, 
 will oppose an effective remedy. He does not use theo- 
 logical terms, nor does he speak in the full-hearted and 
 confident way of a greater philosopher, " I know Him whom 
 I have believed, and I am persuaded that He is able to 
 guard that whicli I liave committed unto Him" (2 Tim. 
 i. 12): nevertheless he has not failed to discover that 
 " pessimism is essentially a religious disease ; ... it consists 
 in nothing but a rehgious demand to which there comes no 
 normal religious reply." And his counsel is substantially, 
 Let a man venture himself upon the religious truths which 
 to science are unprovable, and assume on trust an unseen 
 spiritual order ; and though he will 1 )e able thereby to 
 form no positive idea of the larger world that surrounds 
 
48 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 the world of his present natural knowledge, there will be 
 a qualified blessing, for faith " in an uncertified result " is 
 often " the only thing that makes the result come true." 
 In " the crepuscular depths of personality the sources of 
 all our outer deeds and decisions take their rise. Here is 
 our deepest organ of communication with the nature of 
 things ; and compared with these concrete movements of 
 our soul, all abstract statements and scientific arguments — 
 the veto, for example, which the strict positivist pronounces 
 upon our faith — sound to us like mere chatterings of the 
 teeth." The religious instinct vindicates itself at last, and 
 the teacher's note becomes clear. Spiritual content and 
 the faith that lives by religious truths are one and 
 inseparable, the first growing as the second does, and with- 
 holding itself from every heart into which the latter is 
 refused admission. 
 
 An artist may well be consulted next. The last book ^ 
 of the late Philip G. Hamerton, published not long after 
 his death, is devoted to the discussion of happiness and 
 its secrets. But the tone of the book is melancholy, the 
 pensive wisdom of the author elsewhere becoming now 
 sombre, disappointed, regretful, as though his stoical self- 
 sufficiency could no longer be maintained with ease or with 
 hopefulness. The grip of a fatal disease was upon him as 
 he wrote, and too much must not be expected of a man 
 when he is walking the shadowed valley. But the book 
 itself is, in its definitions, its argument, and its conclusion, 
 an undesigned testimony to the close and vital relationship 
 between happiness and religion. The former is defined as 
 " that degree of satisfaction with our existence which, in 
 ^ The Quest of Hapimiess. London, 1897. 
 
The Secret of Spiritual Health 49 
 
 spite of minor vexations and disappointments, makes us 
 willing to go on living as we are now living without any 
 important change." In tliat sense of the word, a dog 
 basking in the heat of a warm fire, or a cow chewing the 
 cud in a lazy and sunlit meadow, may be commended as 
 the best specimens and most inspiring examples of a 
 successful life. Aristotle preferred to regard happiness as 
 " the exercise of the faculties in the way of virtue " ; and if 
 that be correct, though but partially, it is clear that the 
 maintenance of present external conditions is not a matter 
 of the first moment. Hamerton again advises men to seek 
 happiness as they do fortune or scholarship or skill, and to 
 abandon ideals as material only fit for poetry, contracting 
 their desires, and never yielding to any temptation to 
 grasp the infinite. The method is consequently one of 
 struggle and repression, in the application of which there 
 can necessarily be little comfort. The reward is doubtful, 
 for, whilst a man may find the world a tolerable place, 
 Hamerton implies that, had he himself had the power, 
 he would have created one with some differences. To 
 make happiness dependent upon external conditions is 
 thus manifestly to fail in our object. 
 
 There are two or three primary needs, the gratification 
 of which, though not essential, is probably an aid to happi- 
 ness. Amongst them are physical health, companionship 
 with kindred spirits, and the means of simple living. But, 
 on the other hand, there are sick people who seem pre- 
 eminently happy, and poor people whose hearts are full 
 of peace, and the lonely man is not always a man of 
 sorrow. In Christian regulations express provision has 
 been made for whatever need men have of mutual sympathy 
 
 4 
 
50 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 and help ; and 1)y the use of the prescribed means spiritual 
 health may be more easily maintained, and the soul 
 quickened in its growth. But to enjoy life, the indis- 
 pensable thing is that a man hold it lightly, and be 
 comparatively indifferent to what it has the power to 
 bestow or to take away. External circumstances come 
 and go, and change endlessly ; man needs to stand amongst 
 them as lord, not subjecting himself to any of the things 
 which "perish with the using" (Col. ii. 22). To do that, 
 Ms religious instinct must be allowed full play ; the inner 
 development of character and soul, the perpetual feeding 
 of spiritual life, must be made central amongst his 
 ambitions. The free working of all the instincts in their 
 due measure, with religion as their recognised master, is 
 the condition of equilibrium, wherein alone the soul is 
 stable, full of riches, and at rest. 
 
 The poets are fond of comparing or contrasting a 
 human mood with an aspect of nature, not always to the 
 advantage of man ; but occasionally they allow themselves 
 to generalise, not always to the credit of their logic. 
 Only a limited or forgetful observation could, for instance, 
 prompt Mr. William Watson to write -^ — 
 
 With stormy joy, from height on height, 
 
 The thundering torrents leap ; 
 The mountain tops, with still delight, 
 
 Their great inaction keep. 
 
 Man only, irked hy calm, and rent 
 
 By each emotion's throes, 
 Neither in passion finds content, 
 
 Nor finds it in repose. 
 
 1 In The Hope of the World. 
 
The Secret of Spiritual Health 5 1 
 
 It is a contrast between nature in her storms and 
 quietudes, and man in his weakness. The strong man is 
 proverbially calm, not " irked by calm," and sometimes can 
 set up a barrier against inrushing waves of emotion that 
 are mightier in volume and more forceful than nature's 
 torrents. Resolution and pride can do that. If the con- 
 trast had been with religious man, the poet would have 
 needed other words. " Calm's not life's crown, though 
 calm is well " : many a time on the still mountain tops a 
 wearied, worried soul ^ has met with God, and drawn in 
 large draughts of that easy strength, of which the secret 
 is quietness and confidence (Isa. xxx. 15). And as for 
 emotion and its throes, there is an old promise, " When 
 the adversary shall come in like a flood, the spirit of the 
 Lord shall lift up a standard against him " (lix. 19, margin 
 of Eevised Version). Christian experience accordingly 
 exhibits the man whom the bees are trying to sting, 
 and at whom the powers of darkness are thrusting sorely, 
 not as rent by his emotions, but as saying with some 
 exultation, " They compassed me about like bees ; they are 
 quenched as the tire of thorns : for in the name of the 
 Lord I will destroy them" (Ps. cxviii. 12). If the heart 
 be united in the fear of God, though danger or sorrow 
 draw nigh, " the peace of God " stands sentry before it 
 (Phil. iv. 7), and " the peace of Christ " fills, rules, and 
 arbitrates witliin it (Col. iii. 15). 
 
 ^ Cf. "Wordsworth's "Song for the AVandering Jew" — • 
 Though the torrents from their fountains 
 
 Roar down many a craggy steep, 
 Yet they find among the mountains 
 Eesting-places, calm and deep. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE LIFE OF THE SOUL AS CORRESPONDENCE WITH 
 ITS SURROUNDINGS 
 
 Life defined as corresijondence with surroundings — These in the case 
 of the soul are chiefly of three classes. 
 
 Imperfect correspondence with nature — Questions of origin and issue 
 variously treated by different scientific authorities ; but the terms 
 of natural causation themselves require explanation — Phenomena 
 appeal to more than the senses — Religion alone supplies the postu- 
 lates for their metaphysical interj^retation. 
 
 Unrecognised influence of Christianity upon man's corresjiondence 
 with human surroundings, which involve mainly elements of dis- 
 turbance and of obligation — The miseries of the times, often ex- 
 aggerated, but capable of complete relief under the remembrance 
 of the relation of God to men and the world — Religion, not only 
 thus the solvent of fearfulness, but also the only effective bond of 
 dutifulness — Neighbourliness is a religious virtue, anticipated in 
 the non-Christian religions, but consecrated in Christianity- 
 Altruism, ultimately and logically defensible on religious con- 
 siderations alone — Religion supplies a strong ethical will, with 
 adequate incitement and additions to natural resources. 
 
 The most important factors in every career are the influences of the 
 Holy Spirit, and their treatment is vital — Congruity with divine 
 relations, as an ethical rule — Corresjjondence with God, voluntary 
 and not forced or reluctant, fruitful of every virtue, if resolutely 
 made the law of all life — The use and profit of seasons of rapt 
 emotion and privileged vision. 
 
 Like the conception of health, that of life does not readily 
 take form in words ; but there can be little doubt that the 
 continuance of life depends upon a certain degree of corre- 
 spondence with its surroundings, and that its quality and 
 
 52 
 
The Life of the Soul 
 
 richness are determined by that degree. The more com- 
 plete the correspondence, the more perfect the Hfe ; and 
 whatever defect there is in the former will be accompanied 
 by a similar deficiency of the latter.^ 
 
 The actual surroundings of the soul of man are in 
 number beyond counting, as well as of the utmost com- 
 plexity in the blending of their relations. They may, 
 however, be classified ; and in the case of every class it 
 will be found that under the influence of religion alone can 
 full correspondence be constituted. 
 
 The first class consists of nature, with all its contents 
 and appeals, as far as it is external to man. That is the 
 precise region in which most of the recent and wonderful 
 progress in man's knowledge of the sciences and use of his 
 knowledge has been made. Yet too often the advances 
 have been in a few directions only, through man's refusal 
 to put himself into complete correspondence with nature, 
 to study it in all its aspects, to reap the bountiful 
 harvest ^\■ith which every one of its fields was ready to 
 reward his toil. The correspondence has been confined to 
 the phenomena of nature ; its mysteries have been exposed 
 to a selective choice, and everything beyond the reach of 
 the senses has been theoretically shunned, even though 
 the theoriser has at once proceeded to unify some of his 
 observations, and to place them under the protection of a 
 convenient hypothesis. 
 
 ^ Tliese views, to which Herbert Spencer was probably the first to give 
 expression, will need, in their relation to the biological sciences, to be 
 slightly modified, in view of the accumulating evidence that the most 
 extreme changes in environment, when gradually and slowly made, are not 
 fatal to vitality. But thereby the utility of the definition in the examina- 
 tion of matters of the soul is certainly not diminished. 
 
54 The Range of Christimt Experience 
 
 This process has been applied most frequently to the 
 questions of the origin and the issue of nature, which have 
 been dismissed either as involving resort to despised meta- 
 physics or as referring to matters magisterially pronounced 
 unthinkable. Haeckel, for example, writes ^ of original 
 creation, that the process, " if indeed it ever took place, is 
 completely beyond human comprehension, and can there- 
 fore never become a subject of scientific enquiry " ; but he 
 makes no attempt to prove the premiss from which so for- 
 midable a conclusion is inferred. The position of Spencer 
 and Tyndall is not substantially different. Darwin is less 
 dogmatic, and hesitates. In a letter^ to Sir Joseph D. 
 Hooker in 1 8 63. he writes curiously : " I have long regretted 
 that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal 
 term of creation, by which I really meant ' appeared ' by 
 some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish, thinking 
 at present of the origin of life ; one might as well think of 
 the origin of matter." A reader may well ask, Why not ? 
 especially as he possesses an enquiring mind, and finds 
 Darwin acknowledging and almost protesting his belief in 
 a God of adequate resourcefulness. Sixteen years later 
 he wrote,-'' " In my most extreme fluctuations I have never 
 been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a 
 God" — which is equivalent to confessing that he had with 
 him a belief, which if correctly used might perhaps have 
 saved him from some of his fluctuations. Apparently 
 Huxley always held " that creation, in the ordi- 
 nary sense of the word, is perfectly conceivable." He 
 
 1 History of Creation, Eng. trans., i. ji. 8. 
 
 2 Quoted in Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, iii. 18. 
 
 3 Ihid. i. 304. 
 
The Life of the Soul 55 
 
 adds,^ " I find no difficulty in imagining that, at some former 
 period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made 
 its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is pre- 
 ferred), in consequence of the volition of some pre-existent 
 Being." That must have been written before or in 1887. 
 Kef erring to creative acts in virtue of which species of 
 plants and animals are alleged to have come into being, he 
 proceeds to ask for some particle of evidence as a condition 
 of belief in " a statement wliicli appears to me to be highly 
 improbable." But it should not be forgotten that, in cer- 
 tain reminiscences contributed to a monthly journal,^ Mr. 
 Wilfrid Ward reports a conversation, in the course of 
 which Huxley said : " One thing which weighs with me 
 against pessimism, and tells for a benevolent Author of the 
 universe, is my enjoyment of scenery and music. I do 
 not see how they can have helped in the struggle for exist- 
 ence. They are gratuitous gifts." 
 
 In regard to this matter of origins Huxley may con- 
 sequently be said to occupy an intermediate position between 
 those of the religious and of the non-religious respectively. 
 He was probably feeling the intellectual tendencies 
 which began to show themselves in the scientific world 
 towards the close of his splendid career, and have continued 
 to gather force. The position of Eomanes is even more 
 encouraging. He wrote ^ in or probably before 1892, that 
 " in the opinion of most biologists the origin of life is a 
 question which we may well hope will some day fall within 
 the range of science to answer," but that " at present, it 
 
 ^ In a chapter contributed to Life and Letters, ii. 187, 188. 
 " Nineteenth Centm-i/, Aug., 1896, p. 287. 
 ^ Darwin and After Darwin, i. 15. 
 
56 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 must be confessed, science is not in a position to furnish so 
 much as any suggestion upon the subject." He too may be 
 held to have slightly modified his opinion in the course of 
 not many years. For in his Thoughts on Religion he appears 
 to argue ^ that, if one science has to stop at the limits of 
 the sensuous, another can take up the task, and carry the 
 enquiry further. Phenomena have to be explained in terms 
 of natural causation, and then natural has to be explamed 
 in terms of ultimate causation. Without that attempt the 
 explanation of the phenomena is itself left incomplete ; and 
 the man who engages in it must either break and hope- 
 lessly lose himself, or find his thoughts at last in the lofty 
 sphere of the divine activities. 
 
 This correspondence with nature at all points may 
 fairly be regarded as a condition, or even as a constituent 
 of spiritual life. The man who insists upon using pheno- 
 mena only as far as his senses serve him, of necessity uses 
 them only in part, and learns only some of the lessons they 
 were designed to teach. Nature, which in one aspect is 
 the work of G-od, and thereby an intimation of what He is, 
 in another aspect is a temple in which He must be wor- 
 shipped. Face to face with its sanctities, its solitudes, 
 its magnificence, its mysteries, man has both to consider 
 and to adore. The mind, contemplating the marvellous 
 processes, must pass in thovight backwards to their origin, 
 forwards to their end. From the handiwork the view 
 changes to the Designer and His purpose. To exclude all 
 influences from without, except those that flow through 
 the channel of sensation, is at once to introduce new diffi- 
 culties into the explanation of nature, and to disappoint 
 
 1 Cf. esi^ecially pp. 121-126. 
 
The Life of the Sotil 57 
 
 and afflict the soul with self-imposed frustations. There 
 are limitations upon the finite mind, and, in its fullest 
 correspondence with nature, it will conclude, as Joh did, 
 " Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways : and how 
 small a whisper do we hear of Him ! " (Job xxvi. 14.) But 
 it is His voice that, as far as the ear can catch its tones, 
 must be heard. His " goings " that must be felt. In Psalm 
 civ., Humboldt says ^ tliat " tlie whole universe is sketched 
 with a few bold touches," and the thought of the universe 
 operates in two main ways upon the poet. It fills him 
 with wonder and awe : " Lord, how manifold are Thy 
 works ! in wisdom hast Thou made them all : the earth 
 is full of Thy riches" (Ps. civ. 24). And it bhids him to 
 God in exultant and permanent devotion : " I will sing 
 unto the Lord as long as I live : I will sing praise to my 
 God while I have any being" (ver. 33). St. Paul writes 
 that " the invisible things of Him since the creation of the 
 world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things 
 that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity " 
 (Kom. i. 20); and the perfection of spiritual life involves 
 the metaphysical as well as the physical interpretation 
 of the things that are made, and the prostration of the 
 soul : " All things have been created through Him, and 
 unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all 
 things consist" (Col. i. 16, 17). "Of Him, and through 
 Him, and unto Him, are all things. To Him be the glory 
 for ever" (Eom. xi. 36). 
 
 The human influences that surround the soul are to most 
 men of greater attractiveness, and to all men probably of 
 greater weight. Each man is of necessity related to others, 
 
 ^ Cosmos, Bohu's Eiig. trans, p. 413. 
 
58 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 and the play of soul upon soul never ceases. From one 
 side to the other claims and attendant obligations flow and 
 re-flow in a continuous stream that perhaps empties itself 
 at death, but never before. The home, the neighbourhood, 
 the community, the nation, the race, the consequences of 
 past human action, the plans and contingencies of the 
 future — with all this environment the ordinary corre- 
 spondence of civilised men is already determined largely 
 by Christian sentiments, of which the source is often 
 unperceived or forgotten : the proper correspondence can 
 be effected and kept up only by the aid of religion, and 
 is always proportionate to the extent to which the life is 
 genuinely religious. 
 
 Of this class of influence much tends to the unsettle- 
 ment and disquietude of the human spirit. The wider 
 view of society and the narrower one are alike full of 
 apprehension ; and there are not many periods when 
 men do not in some of their moods feel, with Shelley,^ 
 that 
 
 the future is dark, and the present is spread 
 Like a pillow of thorns for the slumberless head. 
 
 Keats once wrote - that 
 
 Here, where men sit and hear each other groan, 
 . . . but to think is to be full of sorrow 
 And leaden-eyed despairs. 
 
 Yet his dulness was the result of the fret and inexorable 
 pressure of life, rather than of the complexity and pain 
 of man's relations with man. There is no need however 
 to resort to the sensitive poetic temperament for the 
 1 Prometheus Unbound, act i. - Ode to a nightingale. 
 
The Life of the Soul 59 
 
 discovery of forebodings or their expression. " At the 
 sound of the neighing of the strong ones the whole land 
 treiubleth " (Jer. viii. IG); and every continent, almost 
 every country, is full of war, or the rumours of war, 
 or the din and waste of its preparations. Ancient king- 
 doms are collapsing ; and around them stand the angry 
 dogs, jealous of one another, but eager for the fray. One 
 race is left to be persecuted for its faith, and anotlier to be 
 baffled in its endeavour to protect itself with the merest 
 shreds of self-government, because the concert of Europe 
 is resolved into an instrument of mutual watchfulness 
 and protest. Every interest of the country is threatened, 
 so say some of the economists ; and society is gradually 
 disintegrating, bad manners spreading everywhere, the 
 churches failing to touch the larger and more powerful 
 sections of the population, spiritual vision ceasing, and a 
 great wave of indifference to the creeds and moral sanctions 
 sweeping over the land. 
 
 It is a dark picture, too dark, as every one knows who 
 does not by false induction exalt the fears of his own dismal 
 moods into the features of society. Morality and religion 
 are progressing, not losing ground in the world ; and the 
 shadows are slowly but certainly uplifting. Compared 
 with the state of things a century ago or less, there is 
 more light and richer, and reason for looking forward to a 
 still brighter to-morrow. But at the same time it would 
 be silly blindness to overlook the gray tones on the canvas, 
 and in plan or diagnosis to let day-dreams take the place 
 of substantial fact. The world is full of evil, and neither 
 are ethical claims sufficiently recognised, nor is the work 
 of religion properly done. As far as luiman relations alone 
 
6o The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 are concerned, if man knew about them nothing more than 
 what is naturally in the mind, it would almost be wiser 
 and more reasonable to fear than to hope. 
 
 There is an old saying that " fear hath punishment " 
 (1 John iv. 18); consequently its only right to a place 
 in the human breast is that of an interloper, to be 
 ejected with haste. The best way to do so effectually, is to 
 fill with some counter and antagonistic emotion the place 
 the fear is apt to occupy. And in actual experience a 
 bulwark against every assault of trembling has been found 
 in the introduction of the remembrance of God into all 
 the intellectual processes by w^hich estimations of the 
 present and opinions concerning the future are formed. 
 The man in whose thoughts God is not can make himself 
 reckless or stern : God must be in all his thoughts if his 
 peace is to lie as a river (Tsa. xlviii. 18). 
 
 Proper correspondence with human relationships and 
 actions means, therefore, that all such things are viewed 
 as in the presence of the throne of God, and that His 
 supremacy and His purposes as certified by history are 
 never long forgotten. The whim of one emperor and the 
 autocratic command of another, the jealousies of nations, 
 the decisions of democratic councils, public opinion with 
 all the influences that modify it, the wrath and the 
 vice of man — it is easy to imagine that in one or the 
 other of these, or in their combination, lies the mightiest 
 force making itself felt amid the relations of men. But 
 there is one thing mightier than them all ; and that 
 is the will of the great Father, whose purposes always 
 bring themselves to pass in some way of consummate 
 wisdom, whether men hear or whether they forbear ; and 
 
TJie Life of the Soul 6i 
 
 who makes even evil passions serve Him, and restrains 
 whatever cannot be turned to any good use (Ps. Ixxvi. 10). 
 " At thy rebuke, God of Jacob, both chariot and 
 horse are cast into a dead sleep " (ver. 6y. Cyrus was 
 a victorious pagan, but the right hand of Cyrus, saith 
 Jehovah, " I have holden " (Isa. xlv. 1). Step by step, the 
 outstretched, invisible, divine arm led him on, along what 
 he regarded as a career of conquests that redounded to 
 his own glory, but what was actually the path of the 
 vengeance of a great God and of the furtherance of His 
 gracious will. Asshur is " the rod of " God's anger, and 
 the staff in the hand of Asshur is God's indignation (Isa. 
 X. 5). The wicked even, according to one Psalm (xvii. 13, 
 cf. the margin of the Eevised Version), are the sword 
 of God; and Jeremiah (li. 20) represents God as ad- 
 dressing a mixed people, " Thou art My battle axe and 
 weapons of war : and with thee will I break in pieces 
 the nations." No one who keeps for practical use his 
 belief that God is great and greatest of all will be 
 long or seriously disturbed by the temporary successes 
 or threatening combinations of earthly powers. He will 
 remember the message concerning Jerusalem when that 
 city was afHicted with almost every conceivable distress : 
 " Thine heart shall muse on the terror. . . . Thine eyes 
 shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tent that shall 
 not be removed, the stakes whereof shall never be plucked 
 up, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken. But 
 there the Lord wall be with us in majesty " (Isa. xxxiii. 
 18-21). The Lord, known to be present in majesty, 
 actively ruling, securing in His own wise way the steady 
 advancement of the race in moral consistency and come- 
 
62 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 liness — that is the unfailing remedy of men's fears. 
 A poet (Keats) writes, 
 
 To l)ear all naked truth, 
 And to envisage circumstance, — all calm ; 
 That is the tojj of sovereignty. 
 
 The cahnness may be stoical or Christian, the despair of 
 hopelessness or the quiet assurance of progress and right. 
 In religious experience alone is the latter found in all its 
 strength ; and there alone it is at home. 
 
 But the threatening elements in human relationship, if 
 sometimes more patent and pressing, are hardly as im- 
 portant as the elements that involve personal duty. It is 
 more than doubtful whether an adequate basis for such 
 mutual obligations and claims as are now recognised in all 
 the higher civilisations can be found anywhere except in 
 religious convictions ; whilst, on the other hand. Christian 
 experience exhibits at once an imperative that brooks no 
 denial, resources and incitement that are unfailing. More 
 than one philosopher indeed has contended that, apart 
 from religious considerations, the measure of a man's duty 
 to his neighbour is that of his neighbour's duty to him, 
 and that a man who neglects his duty to another thereby 
 forfeits any claim he may have had upon the other. 
 According to that view, neighbourliness becomes in many 
 of its manifestations either a superfluity or a disguised 
 attempt to enhance a man's own comfort ; and mission 
 work is a gift of needless generosity to the community, 
 in which there is no reason at all that men should feel 
 constrained to engage or indulge. Social wastrels have 
 broken nature's only contract, and set all men free from 
 any obligation to them. 
 
The Life of the Soul 63 
 
 Fortunately for the race, such reasoning lias never 
 commanded ready assent where an ethical religion has 
 been known, and it is at once rejected and thrust aside 
 wherever the Christian religion is practised. Even in 
 ancient Egypt, though the assertions of blamelessness are 
 the more frequent upon the tablets, liberality to the poor, 
 and even some of the more delicate forms of kindliness, are 
 more than once enjoined. " I am one that smooths diffi- 
 culties, . . . prudent in preventing and easing, quieting 
 the mourner with pleasant speech," claims one man ^ 
 when defending himself at the bar of Osiris. " Let no 
 punishment be done when a noble is busy ; do not 
 depress the heart of him that is already laden," is one " 
 precept, inculcating at least some sympathy with suffering, 
 and much abhorrence of vindictiveness and worry. " Eat 
 not bread while another stands, without reaching out thy 
 hand for him," has ^ a parallel in the New Testament. 
 Another precept ^ is very fine, and anticipates the courteous 
 reserve upon which modern opinion passes no faint judg- 
 ment : " If thou art gracious concerning a matter that hath 
 happened, and leanest to favour a man in his right, avoid 
 the subject, and do not recall it after the first day that he 
 hath been silent to thee about it." 
 
 But only within the Christian sphere does the true 
 brotherhood of man receive emphatic assertion, and phil- 
 anthropy call all human energies to its service. The 
 universal Father counts ministry to the most woebegone, 
 stricken, helpless of His children as devotion to Himself. 
 The man who has thrown away all the claims that 
 
 ^ Flinders Petrie, Religion and Conscience in Ancient E(jyi)t, p. 141. 
 2 Ibid. p. 142. 3 iiifi^ p, 154, -1 iifici, p. 153. 
 
64 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 reason concedes him for counsel and help finds them 
 again, and more than they, as a brother of the Lord, as a 
 sinner for whom Christ died. " Who is my neighbour ? " 
 (Luke X. 29) asked the supercilious lawyer in his hope to 
 confuse and perplex the Saviour. The parable of the Good 
 Samaritan contains the unexpected answer. The mere 
 need of the man who is in distress relates him immediately 
 to the man who is able to meet or help his need. The 
 former has claims upon the latter, the latter obligations to 
 the former ; and the measure of both depends no longer 
 upon a sentiment of reciprocity or a standard of inter- 
 change, but upon the boundlessness of the compassion of 
 the heart of God. 
 
 On another and perhaps even more fundamental ground, 
 duty may be said to be rationalised in religious experience. 
 That the greatest good of the greatest number should be 
 the end of social action, is rarely denied. Nor w^ould the 
 statement be widely questioned, that it was sometimes 
 right for the individual to endeavour to promote the happi- 
 ness of others even at the cost of the sacrifice of his own. 
 But a certain class of philosophers start with the assump- 
 tion that every man is by nature, and ought as man to 
 be, wholly self -regarding ; and proceed at once to argue, 
 with apparent inconsistency, that he ought to devote him- 
 self supremely to other men. The assumption is large, and 
 not entirely warranted by the facts of consciousness ; but 
 the inference, if rational considerations only be admissible, 
 is a non scquitur of the grossest kind.^ Of every bridge 
 between the two that reason alone has attempted to build, 
 
 ^ Cf. a valuable section in Martineau, Tjpes of Ethical Theory, ii. 
 331-344. 
 
The Life of the Soul 
 
 each end rests on firm ground and arches symmetrically for 
 a time ; but the lines of construction never meet, and the 
 most ingenious engineering has to leave a dangerous leap- 
 ing-place in the middle. 
 
 Of late there have been signs of a disposition to defend 
 altruism with evolutionary rather than syllogistic pleas. 
 The contention is substantially that, if human nature be 
 left alone to develop under the play of circumstance and 
 climate, it will of its own accord unfold in two directions ; 
 the masculine elements in its ancestry producing the 
 masterful temper that struggles for its own way, and burns 
 incense to its own will, whilst the motherly elements 
 yield tender pity, kindliness of thought and deed, and the 
 whole company of the graces of service. But whatever 
 name is given to such a process, it has clearly no right to 
 the one it claims. Evolution works by stern and ruthless 
 laws, and is entirely indifferent to everything about the 
 individual except his fitness to survive. To the unfit 
 it does not minister, but without the least compunction 
 kills them off. When it confronts the failing and the 
 weak, " the lion hath roared, who will not fear ? " (Amos 
 iii. 8.) To mate evolution with compassion is the unholiest 
 and most alien of wedlocks. To point to it as the means 
 of salvation and the parent of all the philanthropies might 
 seem a sportive paradox, had not science and theology 
 alike been seriously invoked to give their patronage to 
 such an impossible interpretation of the great harmony 
 that binds together human nature and human duty. 
 
 The secret of the harmony lies in religion alone, in the 
 reHgion of Christ pre-eminently. St. Paul argues accord- 
 ingly, " Now we that are strong ought to bear the infir- 
 
 5 
 
66 The Rmige of Christian Expei^ieiice 
 
 mities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. . . . For 
 Christ also pleased not Himself ; but, as it is written. The 
 reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell upon Me " 
 (Eom. XV. 1—3). " Though He was rich, yet for your 
 sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might 
 become rich " (2 Cor. viii. 9). He " went about doing 
 good" (Acts X. 38); and His example has ever since been 
 for His followers a welcome rule. His love a constraint, 
 sweeping them on in the mastering conviction that " He 
 died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto 
 themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose 
 again " (2 Cor. v. 15). If the teaching of St. Paul transcend 
 his practice, as that of every modest teacher should, it 
 does not transcend his aim. At Athens he was urgent 
 to be left alone (1 Thess. iii. 1), sick possibly or sick at 
 heart, that others might be established and comforted. 
 " Who is weak, and I am not weak ? who is made to 
 stumble, and I burn not?" (2 Cor. xi. 29) he asks indig- 
 nantly, almost passionately, in one place, the anxiety of the 
 churches and the burdens of other people becoming to him 
 for the moment a sufficient authentication of his mission, 
 even as "the marks of Jesus" (Gral. vi. 17), branded on 
 his body, were to him at another time the sufficient 
 symbols of his enslavement to Christ. " I was free from 
 all men," he writes again in conscious and almost proud 
 independence ; but at once he adds, " I brought myself 
 under bondage to all : . . . and I do all things for the 
 gospel's sake" (1 Cor. ix. 19-23). The service of man 
 has sometimes been commended to the world as a superior 
 substitute for the Christian religion, which is as clear a 
 case as history can show of maltreating the inventor, but 
 
The Life of t lie Soul 67 
 
 appropriating his invention. The incarnation alone is the 
 historical explanation of altruism, the power that removes 
 all limitations from its range. Its consistency as a theory, 
 its imperiousness as a duty, its magnificent alleviations of 
 the stress and pain of human life, are rationalised and 
 become intelligible only within sight of the Cross. The 
 perfect example of service, the bond of all neighbourly 
 duty, is the Son of man, who " came not to Ije ministered 
 unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for 
 many" (Matt. xx. 28). 
 
 Not only does obligation become real in religious 
 experience, but incitements are supplied, together with the 
 interior resources of a strong and tenacious purpose. It 
 has been said,^ that no difference in the moral life of man 
 is so deep as that between the easy mood and the strenuous 
 one, in the latter of which present ills become insignificant, 
 so long as the larger ideal is in view. The strenuous 
 mood is possible to every man ; but it can be aroused, 
 temporarily perhaps by the wild passions, abidingly only by 
 the appeal of one of the highest virtues. " In a merely 
 human world without a God, the appeal to our moral 
 energy falls short of its maximal stimulating power " ; ^ 
 and the infinite perspective opens out only when God is 
 seen. " All through history, in the periodical conflicts 
 of puritanism with the don't-care temper, we see the 
 antagonism of the strenuous and genial moods, and the 
 contrast between the ethics of infinite and mysterious 
 obligation from on high, and those of prudence and the 
 satisfaction of merely finite need." ^ One reason nv hy faith 
 
 1 AV. James, Will to Believe, p. 211. 
 
 "- Ibid., p. 212. ^ IhicL, p. 213. 
 
68 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 always triumphs over unbelief lies probably in the per- 
 manency of the enthusiasms which the former excites, as 
 compared with the flatness into which the latter is liable 
 after its spasms to lapse. 
 
 The statement of St. Paul (2 Cor. v. 17) that, "if any 
 man is in Christ, he is a new creature " — or better according 
 to the margin, " there is a new creation " — is capable of 
 more interpretations than the familiar ones. When a 
 religious awakening takes place in the heart of a man, it 
 affects his whole nature, calls into action unsuspected 
 powers, modifies and sometimes entirely changes his 
 career. There are no watertight compartments in his 
 construction ; and a lofty resolve, a spiritual ecstasy, a 
 divine vision, sends waves of influence through every 
 part. A genuine conversion first of all turns the man's 
 face towards God, and then stirs up all the best forces of 
 his nature, sustaining the more subtle and rallying the 
 most spent, until his days are filled with new activities 
 for wJiich neither inspiration nor resources are wanting. 
 " The old things are passed away ; behold, they are 
 become new." 
 
 This change has been illustrated times without number 
 in the lives of individuals, and it can be traced with 
 confidence upon a wider stage. Lollardry was primarily a 
 religious movement, but its contribution to the intellectual, 
 the industrial, and even the political life of the country 
 cannot be seriously questioned. Puritanism again, what- 
 ever its excesses, was an effective stimulus to activity in 
 almost every department of life that was not supposed to 
 be allied with evil and hopelessly bad. Moral results of 
 the most valuable character were confessedly produced by 
 
The Life of the Soul 69 
 
 Methodism, \vhicli also extended the national interest in 
 literature, and has proved no unimportant factor in the 
 commercial development of the country. The exile of the 
 Huguenots was among the greatest blunders a nation ever 
 committed, and other nations are still benefiting from the 
 strength, the stern purpose, and the loyalty to freedom and 
 truth that were thus infused into them. According to 
 our Lord's own figure, personal religion is the salt which 
 seasons all, checking the spread of corruption, flavouring 
 and vitalising the heart of a nation and the spirit of man. 
 
 How religion multiplies a man's resources and incites 
 him to effort and diligence, appears frequently in the New 
 Testament. Nehemiah was aware that religious joy is 
 really a synonym for strength (Neh. viii. 10); but the 
 second paragraph of the second Epistle to the Corinthians 
 (i, 3-11) literally throbs with the two emotions, inter- 
 blended and inseparable. On the one hand are pressure 
 and strain : " We were weighed down exceedingly, beyond 
 our power, insomucli that we despaired even of life." On 
 the other is glorying, renewed with a passion that can 
 compass its expression only by transgressing the rules of 
 literary art : " Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort : 
 who comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may be 
 able to comfort them that are in any affliction, througli 
 the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." 
 Neither sickness nor Inirden could repress the apostle's 
 ardour to make others share in the benefits religion had 
 conferred upon himself. Our Lord once gave to His dis- 
 ciples what must have seemed the impossible and even 
 absurd command to feed five thousand people with five 
 
JO The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 barley loaves and two fishes (John vi. 9). A prosaic, 
 unimaginative man might well ask, " What are these 
 among so many ? " An economist, who lives by arithmetic, 
 might well wonder, " Two hundred pennyworth of bread is 
 not sufficient for them, that every one may take a little." 
 But because the disciples simply did wliat they were told, 
 without " fingering their muscles " or adopting the market's 
 measure of their resources, everybody's appetite w^as satisfied, 
 and the broken pieces that remained were more in quantity 
 than the original food. That is ever the way with our 
 Lord. He sends His people to duty, and fits them for 
 it whilst they are trying to do it ; and when the appointed 
 work is done, their strength is greater than when they 
 began. A story so sublime, so rich in its bearing upon 
 practical life, a standing rebuke to the wisdom of the 
 world, is fitly repeated some five or six times in the 
 Gospels, and was enacted more than once with small 
 modifications in detail before the eyes of the disciples. 
 The estimate of ability that prudence makes is rejected in 
 favour of the fuller estimate that includes the presence and 
 grace of God. " Who is sufficient for these things ? " 
 (2 Cor. ii. 16) is the question many a man has asked 
 himself when the providence or the Spirit of God has 
 brought him to the threshold of new duties or has opened 
 out new opportunities for the exercise of influence for 
 good. That the heart should occasionally so sink is natural 
 enough, if modesty be a virtue ; but it is a uniform reli- 
 gious experience that, whenever a man is led to feel his 
 '■' sufficiency is from God " (2 Cor. iii. 5), the hesitations 
 are stayed, and the duty is dealt with in a way God 
 pronounces honourable and good. On every side of life. 
 
The Life of the Soul 71 
 
 its terrors as well as its claims, religion is clearly the 
 secret of proper correspondence with men, and the only 
 means by which such correspondence can be effected. 
 
 Sometimes may be detected a disposition to regard 
 the influences from without, of nature and of man, as 
 exhausting the surroundings of the soul. But that is to 
 overlook the most important and decisive part of life's 
 environment. In every biography there is interest in 
 learning under wliat skies a man was brought up, who were 
 his teachers, and how the stars and the landscape, the 
 incidents of his village and the memorials of the past, 
 affected him. From all these fountains flow contributions 
 to tlie forces that mould and make liim ; but the supreme 
 questions concerning every human life are, on the one 
 hand, how God by His Spirit wrought upon the man, and, 
 on the other, how the man responded. Divine oppor- 
 tunities come to every heart, quickenings of spiritual 
 aspiration, moments of clear vision, moods when the pre- 
 sence of God is felt ; and everything in the future depends 
 upon whether these revelations are welcomed or dis- 
 dained. No turning-point in life is so critical as that 
 of conversion. The encouragement of the Spirit of God 
 to take up His permanent abode, or His treatment as 
 merely a transient guest, determines whether the soul shall 
 quickly mature and effectively leaven the neighbourhood 
 around, or shall just survive in languors. The activities 
 of life exliil)it a man's energy and the purpose he is 
 pursuing ; but their real value is always contingent upon 
 the motives from which they spring, and the quality of 
 these varies with the degree of inner communion with 
 God. Proper correspondence with the influences with 
 
72 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 which He encompasses the soul is the condition of religious 
 life, perfect correspondence is its perfecting. 
 
 As a general statement this is so true in substance, 
 that upon it with a slight modification an attempt was 
 once made ^ to construct an ethical system, and even to 
 elaborate a complete code of human duties. The method 
 of argument was commended, though not adopted, by 
 Butler in the preface to his Sermons ; but the attempt, 
 whilst removing arbitrariness from the origin of obliga- 
 tion, was vitiated by a false analogy that might have 
 been avoided by using an unmutilated Christian theology. 
 It was argued that there are certain eternal relations 
 which the intellect immediately perceives, thereupon 
 directing the will, unless some disturbing passion inter- 
 vene, into congruous action. The relation of man to God, 
 for example, is that of creatures to the Creator, of the 
 frail and impotent to the Almighty. Fitness therefore 
 becomes the sanction of such emotions as reverence and 
 awe, of such attitudes as dependence and worship. This 
 law of congruity determines the action of God's own 
 will ; consequently no positive command and no revelation 
 of the future adjustments of destiny are needed to make 
 congruity the rule for human life. It is a scheme that 
 works admirably, provided a man is not a Calvinist, but in 
 other respects accepts the revealed doctrine of the Trinity, 
 with its implication of the existence of personal relations 
 from all eternity. To resume lit relations with God by 
 the action of the will and the help of the Spirit, and 
 amidst varying temptations to maintain them day by day, 
 
 ^ Samuel Clarke, Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, pp. 
 197-223. 
 
The Life of the Son/ J 2) 
 
 may even be taken as a serviceable definition of religion 
 itself. 
 
 The need of this liariiiony with God, not merely as 
 a general principle, but in the sense of voluntary corre- 
 spondence with the different intluences He sends, has 
 received frequent expression in literature ; and its con- 
 sciousness is one of the ricliest of religious experiences. 
 Amiel describes ^ how be spent the morning of a spring 
 Sunday in self-disgust. As the day advanced, he noticed 
 that the hawthorns were clothing themselves with blossom, 
 and the whole \alley with beauty and light. He listened 
 to " trivial preaching," to untimely pleasantries, to the 
 merry songs of the birds. He saw griefs without hope, 
 pitiful loneliness, " the working of marriage in its frivolous 
 and commonplace forms," the conduct of old men to whom 
 age had brought no wisdom. " Everything," he said, " has 
 had the same message for me. Place yourself once more 
 in harmony with the universal law ; accept the will of 
 God ; make a religious use of life." It was one of these 
 experiences that led him to frame the reluctant rule of 
 ex pediency , that " as it is impossible to be outside God, 
 the best is consciously to dwell in Him." On the same 
 grounds of the irresistible will of God and the necessitv 
 of resignation, he counsels every man, " Only be at peace 
 with self, live in the presence of God, in communion 
 with Him, and leave the guidance of existence to those 
 universal powers against wliom thou canst do nothing." 
 There is too much unwillingness of constraint in the words 
 to make the tone entirely Christian ; and yet the accord 
 of man with God has to be effected, either by the glad 
 
 ^ Amiel's Journal Intime, trans, by ilis. H. Ward, p. 142, ef. p. 1. 
 
74 The Range of Christian Expeinence 
 
 devotion of the human heart or by the forces of the 
 divine throne. 
 
 In non - Christian religious experience can be found 
 suggestions that point to a similar conclusion. Buddhism 
 contains a somewhat elaborate provision for the culture 
 of aspiration, desire, and will : in one precept it com- 
 mends an expansive sympathy, still a little exclusive 
 if the qualifications of other precepts are borne in mind^ 
 but in itself not a remote parallel to Scripture. " We 
 will abide tender and compassionate," so runs a passage ^ 
 in one of the sacred books, " loving in heart, void of secret 
 malice ; and we will be ever suffusing such an one wnth 
 the rays of our loving thought, and from him forthgoing 
 we will ever be suffusing the whole world with thought 
 of love far - reaching, grown great and beyond measure, 
 void of ill - will and bitterness : thus and well must ye- 
 exercise yourselves." The dynamical conception of love 
 as an energy radiating from a glowing centre is familiar 
 elsewhere ; but if the " such an one," which is love's 
 nucleus, is merely human according to Buddhist thought,, 
 the nucleus is dead or unavailing, as Buddhism itself is 
 a sufficient witness. There is a commandment that carries 
 with it better resources, " that he who loveth God love 
 his brother also" (1 John iv. 21). 
 
 A great though eccentric French theologian has described 
 religion as " a conscious and voluntary relation, into which 
 the soul in distress enters, with the mysterious power on 
 which it feels both it and its destiny depend " : nevertheless 
 the relation must be maintained, not only in view of the 
 
 ^ Majjh., 21st Sutta ; quoted by Mrs. Rhys Davids in a paper "On the 
 Will in Buddhism," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1898, pt. 1, p. 56. 
 
The Life of the Soul 75 
 
 mysteriousness of God and of the distresses of the human 
 soul, but in all the aspects in which God can be contemplated, 
 and by the soul in all its needs. Tlie further definition is 
 added of " the penetration of man by God " ; whereas again, 
 no such one-sided penetration is possible, either according 
 to the moral constitution of man or to the moral govern- 
 ment of God. God appeals conthiually to the human 
 spirit, offering guidance and grace ; the guidance must 
 be sought or accepted, the grace must be welcomed and 
 used, or else the spirit continues just as before, save for 
 its waste of another possibility. Correspondence with God 
 depends entirely upon a man's sincerity and his efforts, 
 even though on the other hand all its stages are, accordino; 
 to a favourite paradox of Scripture, a progress of grace. 
 
 Nor is there any part of man's nature or life in re- 
 spect of which this correspondence may not be the rule. Of 
 the wicked it is said in one psalm, that " all his thoughts 
 are. There is no God " (Ps. x. 4) ; and another psalm 
 represents a righteous man as thus praising God, " Tn 
 the multitude of my thoughts " {i.e. doubts, suspicions) 
 " within me Thy comforts dehght my soul" (Ps. xciv. 19). 
 The " words " by which God revealed Himself to man or 
 cast light upon man's duty and ways were to be the con- 
 tinuous subject of the Hebrew's thought and conversation. 
 Thou " shalt talk of them," so ran the law, " when thou 
 sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest liy the way, 
 and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up " 
 (Deut. vi. 7). Few things indeed are more characteristic 
 of Mosaism in its early form, or of the gross literalness 
 of usage into which it declined, than the attempt to 
 identify religion with every occupation, and to exalt every 
 
76 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 act, however trivial, into an intrinsic part of worship. 
 The conception still remains unsurpassed, but its reduc- 
 tion to practice has been brought under the great law 
 that " the spirit giveth life " (2 Cor. iii. 6). To have 
 Grod in all our thought, so that no opinion is formed, 
 no design undertaken, no consequence imagined, except 
 with the remembrance of His unceasing presence and rule, 
 — that is the invincible barrier against misgiving, the 
 secret of peace and of strength. 
 
 In the thirty-seventh Psalm an old man of wide ex- 
 perience records his conclusions didactically for the benefit 
 of those who should come after. This inference at least 
 follows, that it is well for man to welcome every influence 
 from God, and to direct all confidence towards Him. 
 " Commit thy way unto the Lord " ; " rest in the Lord, 
 and wait patiently for Him " ; " delight thyself in the 
 Lord, and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart " — 
 such counsels of wisdom fitly close with an assurance, 
 concerned more intimately with character than with con- 
 dition : " Tlie salvation of the righteous is of the Lord : 
 He is their strong hold in the time of trouble. And the 
 Lord helpeth them, and rescueth them : He rescueth them 
 from the wicked, and saveth them, because they have 
 taken refuge in Him." A man of such experiences might 
 well resolve, " My heart is fixed, God, my heart is fixed : 
 I will sing, yea, I will sing praises " (Ps. Ivii. 7). 
 
 There are times in life when God by His Spirit draws 
 very near, and converses almost as with a friend. One 
 who is aiming at correspondence with Him will court such 
 hours, and long to multiply them. Upon their right use 
 clearer vision is conditioned, with purification of motive 
 
The Life of I he Soul yy 
 
 and spiritual enrichment of every kind. For elation God 
 provides heart-searching, for depression uplifting ; and each 
 is the effectual corrective of the other. In mysteries tliat 
 baffle the mind, a central spot of pure light opens up 
 when they are examined through the lens of the Cross : 
 and the ignorance that remains is no longer a humiliation 
 or a torment, but a Held pf enterprise and promise for the 
 aspiring soul. Failure in the presence of temptation 
 ceases to be a bitter memory, or the sense of weakness a 
 hopeless hindrance, when the almighty Spirit is felt to be 
 pouring in His strengthening grace. Of a life without 
 God the ablest man might well despair to make anything : 
 a life touched by God at every point, with resolute accord 
 with Him as its keynote and principle, means of necessity 
 the perfecting of every virtue, the mastery of every peril, 
 and at last a soiil purified, matured, ripe for the destiny 
 that awaits it above. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE SUBSTITUTED SELF 
 
 The self, wrongly and riglitly explained — i^cripture not a systematic 
 philosopliy, but pliilosopliical and true to human consciousness — 
 The self, a man's standing and worst trouble — Various forms of 
 the evil self, apparently incurable ; but Christianity leaves no 
 room for personal despondency — The stages of the treatment of 
 the self : symbol of clothing, mortification of the sej^arate forms 
 of the self, the crucifixion of the whole, the appropriation by 
 Christ of its functions. 
 
 Imperfect views of self- transformation and its secret — Not to be con- 
 fused with exhaustion or apathy — Not forced or reluctant — Not 
 the rapture of poets or the mystical rising of the inner light — 
 St. Paul's personal experience — The inseparable unitj* of Father 
 and Son in the Godhead. 
 
 In the expression of Christian experience, as in all speech, 
 the necessity constantly recurs of using terms, the exact 
 meaning of which philosophy herself is puzzled to tell. 
 The simpler the term the greater is generally the diffi- 
 culty. It is doubtful, for example, whether men think or 
 talk about anything more than they do about themselves ; 
 but it is certain that the most skilful would consider a 
 hard task set him, were he called upon to say clearly and 
 fully what he meant by himself. The prevailing explana- 
 tions admit of classification under two heads. By some 
 the self is held to be constituted by the collocation of the 
 states of thinking, of feeling, and of willing. Any number 
 of these states are available for the purpose, and the right 
 
 78 
 
The Substituted Self 79 
 
 of selection is unlimited. Placed together in any order, as 
 bricks ^of various shades might Ijc placed together to make 
 a particoloured wall, or drops of water to make an iri- 
 descent stream, there emerges a self which is no longer 
 obscure in its origin, and for which an admirable apparatus 
 of mechanical causation has been provided. By others the 
 self is separated in analysis from its states, and is regarded 
 as something, an entity or subsistence, itself free and sove- 
 reign, underlying or running through its states, and so 
 binding all together in continuity with a bond of life, 
 but at the same time transcending them, and scorning to 
 transfer to them its prerogatives. In favour of this view- 
 stands the testimony of consciousness, which has under 
 the former definition to be convicted of error, or to be 
 explained away. The latter conception is likewise to 
 all appearance more than holding its ground anddst the 
 conflict of theories and the play of recent thought ; 
 and linder its light a series of passages in the New 
 Testament, which in no sense depend upon it for force 
 or intelligibility, become revelations of the supremest 
 privilege. 
 
 The Scriptures, though saturated with the best philo- 
 sophy, are not a treatise on that subject. When most 
 concerned therewith, they avoid technicalities of phraseology 
 and method. Their psychology is popular, not systematic 
 or precise. They were designed not merely for the scholarly 
 few, but for " wayfaring men " (Isa. xxxv. 8), for the class 
 of " plain and honest " people whom Butler so highly 
 esteemed. Thus interpreted, they proclaim as the earthly 
 goal of religious experience sometimes complete oneness 
 with Christ, and sometimes the disappearance of the 
 
8o The Range of ChiHsiian Experience 
 
 sinful self, and the assumption of all its functions by the 
 indwelling Christ. 
 
 That nothing in life gives a man so much trouble 
 as himself is generally allowed. In this sense, better 
 than in any other, the old saying holds good, that a 
 man's foes are they of his own household (Matt. x. 36). 
 To be wounded in the house of friends (Zech. xiii. 6) 
 is distressing ; but to be beaten down and baffled by 
 the persistent refusal of our own heart to submit 
 to discipline, to find faults still surviving in vigour 
 and cropping out unexpectedly after the efforts of years 
 to subdue them, is amongst the saddest of mortal experi- 
 ences. No one is spared from this universal lot, yet 
 fellowship therein brings no comfort. It is the standing 
 background of every life, but no familiarity and no degree 
 of repetition make it tolerable. " The spirit of a man 
 will sustain his infirmity " (Prov. xviii. 1 4) — so much 
 at least independence and a steadfast and tenacious will 
 can do ; but to spend our days in continuous warfare, with 
 the only consequence of continuous and seemingly helpless 
 captivity under the law of sin, may well provoke the 
 hopeless groan, " wretched man that I am ! who shall 
 deliver me out of the body of this death ? " (Eom. vii. 24.) 
 
 Beyond the sin which is central to every form of the 
 unregenerate self is some special kind of sin, peculiar to 
 each man, and possibly due in part to his original tem- 
 perament or to some defect or blunder in his training. 
 It is what Solomon called, in his prayer at the dedication 
 of the temple, " the plague of his own heart " (1 Kings viii. 
 38), the secret bitterness which no one communicates in 
 full to another, the burden that has to be borne alone. 
 
The SubstitiUed Self 8 1 
 
 Elsewhere (Heb. xii. 1) it is "the sin which dotli so easily 
 beset us," or, according to the margin of the lievised 
 Version, which " doth closely cling to us." How closely 
 every sincere man knows in the depths of his spirit, 
 though to others he appear master of himself and free 
 from every fault. 
 
 To enumerate the various forms of this evil self would 
 be to tabulate the constituents of unsanctified human 
 nature, together with the combinations they admit. Ill- 
 temper is generally present, in the shape of discontent or 
 jealousy, of self-assertiveness or petulance, of resentment 
 or wrath ; and this, constantly reappearing and declining 
 to be bound or slain, makes the days grievous. Mind and 
 will become enervated in an atmosphere of indolence that 
 no effort can dispel, and the conscience rebels helplessly 
 against the waste of irrecoverable time and the constant 
 postponement of duty to a morrow that never comes. Or 
 an absolute inability to settle down, itself takes possession 
 of the nerves, inducing all degrees of restlessness and 
 making the completion of worthy work impossible. A 
 tendency to sarcasm breaks away from every restraint, and 
 becomes a habit and " a whip to scourge " the man who 
 indulges therein. The heart refuses to be drilled or enticed 
 into charity, and everything that is thought to be wrong 
 for oneself is forthwith judged and condemned in others ; 
 that a man can be brought to believe all things and to 
 hope all things (1 Cor. xiii. 7) turns into a dream, the 
 realisation of which becomes contmually more remote. Or 
 the will sinks into feebleness, out of which no appeal can 
 rouse it to steadfastness or strain ; and a man is humiliated 
 by the invariable sequence of lofty aspirations and power- 
 
 6 
 
82 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 lessness to rise out of the dust. But whatever man's 
 failures and miseries, he can endure them, if hope remains. 
 Accordingly a famous artist represents a weak woman as 
 casting off her weakness, and, buoyed up only by a great 
 hope, as toiling on. 
 
 Her feet are travel-stained, and bruised, and torn ; 
 Her eyes are blinded that she cannot see 
 One step before her. 
 
 But the bruised feet press forward, and the helpless eyes 
 peer indomitably into the darkness. Sometimes however 
 the self proves so intractable that all hope of deliverance 
 dies out of the breast, and a man seems to have no other 
 refuge left him than the ancient one of suicide or the 
 modern one of apathy. 
 
 In Christian experience such despondency can never be 
 more than a passing mood. There is no ground or excuse 
 for it in the case of a man who knows that the resources 
 of the almighty Spirit are available. The promise to him 
 is, " Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down : for 
 the Lord upholdeth him with His hand" (Ps. xxxvii. 24). 
 He may wonder twice and a third time, " Why art thou 
 cast down, my soul ? and why art thou disquieted 
 within me ? " But he will still cleave to his conviction, 
 and will call upon himself for effort : " Hope thou in God : 
 for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my 
 countenance, and my God " (Ps. xliii. 5). Since the 
 provisions of grace include a God who is our Father, a 
 Saviour who loves men to the death, and a Spirit whose 
 counsel and ministry are on His part unrestrained, hope- 
 lessness concerning self can have no justification in reason. 
 The proper attitude for a soul, against which the battle 
 
The Substituted Self 83 
 
 seems to be going, and over which the uncircumcised are 
 beginning to triumph, is, " Eejoice not against me, mine 
 enemy : when I fall, 1 shall arise ; when I sit in darkness, 
 the Lord shall be a light unto mo " (Mic. vii. 8). 
 
 There are three or four stages in the treatment which 
 the New Testament prescribes for this sinful self, or rather 
 three or four variations in the expressions by which victory 
 over it is explained or celebrated. In some passages the 
 self is viewed as the raiment of a man, as clothing that 
 may be put off or changed. Accordingly, St. Paul writes 
 to the Colossians (iii. 9, 10) concerning the change that 
 took place in their regeneration, and was graciously pro- 
 <3eeding, " Ye have put off tlie old man with liis doings, and 
 have put on the new man, which is being renewed unto 
 knowledge after the image of Him that created him." 
 There the soul is made anew by re-creation in the image of 
 Ood ; and its subsequent career may well, and must, be 
 marked by the deepening of that image. Elsewhere (Eph. 
 iv. 22-24) the substance of the teaching of Christ is 
 summarised : " that ye put away . . . the old man, which 
 waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit ; . . . and put on 
 the new man, which after God hath been created in 
 righteousness and holiness of truth." The self, left to 
 itself, disintegrates morally, and tends to corruption ; to 
 X3ast it off, and assume in its stead the garb of a fresh 
 personality, is the secret of real purity and of wholesome 
 growth. Hence the sharp and ringing command to men 
 who were in danger of wasting themselves in revelling and 
 strife, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Ptom. xiii. 14) 
 — a better occupation than that of making provision for 
 the lusts of the flesh. Clothes become in a sense almost a 
 
84 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 part of a mau ; by them according to a great satirist a 
 man tries to conceal, or according to common observation 
 to adorn, what he is. In rehgion alone can clothes be said 
 under some circumstances to become the man, eliminating 
 his sovereign parts or appropriating their functions ; but 
 the clothes must be the Spirit and righteousness of Christ, 
 with which the world's drapery has no garment of beauty 
 and strength that can compare. 
 
 But this figure of raiment, whilst sufficient for a 
 temporary purpose, is obviously imperfect. Its use involves 
 in one case the laying upon men of an impossible command, 
 and in other instances introduces by implication a confusion 
 between the things that are within, and those that are 
 beyond, human control. For the self of a man is a very 
 Nessus-shirt, which not Hercules himself can tear away. 
 It is God who creates the new man ; and by the grace of 
 God alone can the will succeed in casting off the old man. 
 Kes train ts and discipline of various kinds can modify the 
 self, alter and re-adjust the parts, introduce new con- 
 stituents and effect new combinations, patch up the old 
 garment until its likeness to the original may barely be 
 recognised ; but only within the sphere of the Christian 
 religion is effectual provision made for divine action in 
 putting off the old and putting on the new ; and for an 
 extraordinary and supernatural process of that kind the 
 figure of raiment does not entirely serve. 
 
 Passages of a second class relate to the parts of the 
 self in detail, and enjoin the mortification of such as are 
 wont to prove especially dangerous or offensive. Between 
 the teaching of Christ on the subject and that of St. Paul 
 a distinction may perhaps be traced. In the former the 
 
The Substitttted Self 8 5 
 
 parts of the self that are threatening are referred to 
 particularly, and a specific and very stern treatment is 
 prescribed. The latter more frequently regards tlie self as 
 compounded of parts, to correct whose separate action the 
 whole must be dealt with. Twice and possibly thrice 
 (Matt. V. 20, :^)0, xviii. 8, 9 ; Mark ix. 43, 45), according to 
 the Gospels, our Lord spoke to His disciples without ruth 
 or pity, " If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it 
 out, and cast it from thee. ... If thy right hand causeth 
 thee to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from thee : for it is 
 profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, 
 and not thy whole body go into hell." That is about the 
 only condition under which implacability enters into the 
 human ethics of the New Testament. Under the older 
 covenant a similar course was to be followed in regard to 
 other people who sinned, and the closest ties of parentage 
 or love were not to shelter the offender. One ancient law 
 runs, " If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, 
 or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, 
 which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying. 
 Let us go and serve other gods, . . . thou shalt not consent 
 unto him, nor hearken unto him ; neither shall thine eye 
 pity him : . . . but thou shalt surely kill him ; thine hand 
 shall be first upon him to put him to death " (Deut. xiii. 
 6, 8, 9). But the law of Christ bids a man be full of 
 excuses for the sins of other people, inexorable only 
 towards his own. The worst offender must be borne with 
 patiently, triply appealed to and reasoned with, and not 
 until then cast out (Matt, xviii. 15-17); and even in that 
 case he must not have his chances of repentance summarily 
 ended, but must be left to the tender mercies of God. 
 
86 The Range of C/nnstian Experience 
 
 Wisdom admits of no dallying, lest the corruption spread, 
 with anything that leads to sin in a man or his organism, 
 whether precious as the eye or indispensable as the hand. 
 When a limb is mortifying, quick amputation is generally 
 reckoned better than death ; and the mutilation of the self 
 by rigorously cutting away the evil urgings that will not 
 be silenced is better than defeat in the struggle for virtue, 
 just as St. Paul seems to have felt in regard to more than 
 one form of secular ease or success, " It were good for me 
 rather to die, than that any man should make my glorying 
 void" (1 Cor. ix. 15). 
 
 The same apostle drew up a list, for a special purpose 
 and possibly without any attempt at exhaustiveness, of the 
 evil phases and activities of the self that are to be thus 
 put away. In his Epistle to the Colossians two such lists 
 occur in a single paragraph (iii, 5-9), or possibly it is but 
 one list broken into two by an abrupt and emotional 
 re-casting of the sentence. The course of thought seems 
 to be that the Christian's life is no longer one of mere 
 relation to the world ; the principles for its guidance are 
 from above, upon " the things that are above " the energies 
 should be concentrated, and the canon of wisdom becomes 
 • — " Mortify therefore your members which are upon the 
 earth," and let Christ occupy the whole sphere of life and 
 its developments, and be " all and in all." Elsewhere 
 (Eom. viii. 13) St. Paul assures his readers, "If by the 
 spirit ye mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." 
 The steady, pitiless putting to death of the evil that is 
 rooted in and for the most part constitutes the self, 
 emancipates it, so that its perfecting in full life proceeds 
 without hindrance. 
 
The Substituted Self 87 
 
 But the cluster of passages on this subject that has 
 always attracted most attention is one tliat is consecrated 
 by the transference in symbol to the Christian of the very 
 process whereby Christ took away sin. The most general 
 statement is in the Epistle to the Galatians, where St. Paul, 
 after enumerating the more prominent of the works of the 
 tiesh and contrasting them with the fruit of the Spirit, 
 adds decisively, " they that are of Christ Jesus have 
 crucified the flesh with tlie passions and the lusts thereof " 
 (Gal. v. 24). Susceptibilities to evil, the active appetites 
 that are wont to seek it, are on the cross, nailed there with 
 the sacred body, itself sinless, but bearing all sin ; and 
 therefore in a disciple's heart they have no business, and 
 need have no play. In other places the apostle adopts 
 the language of experience. To the Christians at Eome he 
 writes, " Our old man was crucified with Him, that the 
 body of sin might be done away, that so we should no 
 longer be in bondage to sin " (Eom. vi. 6). If the body, in 
 which sin inheres and by which it works, is hanging lifeless 
 by the Saviour's side, sin's reign must be over, and the 
 soul is free to live in undisturbed union with the Saviour. 
 Whilst logical assurance is the key-note of that verse, with 
 a lifting up of the heart towards the close, the certainty of 
 absolute confidence triumphs in another : " Far be it from 
 me to glory, save in the cioss of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 through which the world hatli been crucified unto me, and 
 I unto the world" (Gal. \\. 14). On the one hand, the 
 world crucified (dead or dying), so that there is no fatal 
 influence of evil that can proceed therefrom ; on the other, 
 the self crucified (dead or dying), so that there is nothing 
 left therein to which the world can appeal — it is a 
 
S8 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 double rampart, solid masonry cased in armour proof, a 
 guarantee of the safety of the soul within, fittest matter in 
 the world for boasting. 
 
 The supreme passage on the subject is however in 
 an earlier part of the same epistle, where the expression 
 of religious experience rises perhaps to its highest con- 
 ceivable point. " I have been crucified with Christ," 
 writes St. Paul ; " yet I live ; and yet no longer I, but 
 Christ liveth in me : and that life which I now live in the 
 flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, 
 who loved me, and gave Himself up for me" (Gal. ii. 20). 
 The last clauses are not explanatory of the central one, but 
 an indication of the inability to reach such a privilege by 
 the use of merely human means, and of the necessity of 
 calling in the most stimulating and effective of spiritual 
 resources. Of the central revelation there are anticipations 
 in other sections of St. Paul's writings, but nowhere an 
 exact parallel. Union with Christ, according to Eomans 
 vi. 5, is accomplished by a process with which His death 
 and resurrection may be compared : " for if we have 
 become united with Him by the likeness of His death, we 
 shall be also by the likeness of His resurrection." In 
 Colossians iii. 4, Christ " is our life," in the sense in which 
 the apostle writes elsewhere, " To me to live is Christ " 
 (Phil. i. 21): that is, "I have no conception of life apart 
 from Him ; He fills up its whole sphere, and exhausts its 
 highest conception, being at once its inspiration and its 
 end, the secret of its strength and the sum of its joys." 
 But not even that quite reaches the utterance in the 
 Galatian epistle. " I have been crucified," says the mature 
 apostle, a cultured and travelled man, with no wildness in 
 
The Substituted Self 89 
 
 his talk, " the old cvcr-sinnmg self is dead on the cross or 
 dying ; yet 1 live : nevertheless the I that lives is no longer 
 the old blnnderer, but the Christ that livetli in me." The 
 original self, apt to sin, haunt (jf the vices, is gone ; and 
 its place as the free sovereign of the life is occupied by 
 Christ. Such an assertion is more than the familiar truth 
 of the indwelling of Christ or of His Spirit ; it is the con- 
 summation of the process by which Christ is formed in the 
 disciple (Gal. iv. 19), the substitution of Christ for the self 
 whicli is not merely merged or lost in Him, but which 
 disappears and yields to Him the rights of control. This 
 man becomes Christ-possessed, not transiently or altogether 
 in a figure ; and tlie utmost is done in him that can be 
 done by religion. 
 
 Attempts have been made to explain philosophically 
 this immolation or transformation of the self, and illustra- 
 tions, especially of its lower degrees, are not confined to 
 the literature of Christian devotion. It does not mean 
 the dying down of hope and purpose into exhaustion or 
 apathy. Xot farther is the east from the west than is 
 the mood in which a melancholy man groans ^ — " To make 
 an object for myself, to struggle, seems to me more and 
 more impossible and amazing : at twenty I was the em- 
 Ijodiment of curiosity, elasticity, and spiritual ubiquity ; at 
 thirty-seven I have not a will, a desire, or a talent left ; 
 the fireworks of my youth have left nothing but a handful 
 of ashes behind them." This miserable man, who seems 
 even to have found a degree of pleasure in entertaining 
 and recording broken thoughts of that kind, sometimes 
 
 ^ The Journal Intime of H. F. Amlcl, trans, by Mrs. H. AVard, 
 
90 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 attained to better vision. Elsewhere he writes ^ that the 
 true dignity of man is constituted by " humble, constant, 
 voluntary self-sacrifice," just as " society rests upon con- 
 science, and not upon science." In a man there are two 
 selves, an evil one and a divine ; and salvation lies in aban- 
 doning the former and taking refuge with the latter. Yet 
 " the task of living with one's own demon " cannot be escaped, 
 and must be undertaken with courage ; and Abel must 
 perpetually exercise himself for the subdual and redemp- 
 tion of Cain. From this unending dualism our author 
 rises once at least for a moment, though not with much 
 confidence, into the fresh and upper air. A religious man, 
 he argues,^ should efface himself, in order not to check the 
 work of the Genius who is making a momentary use of 
 him : " a pure emotion deprives him of personality, and 
 annihilates the self in him." To vibrate in unison with 
 God, in harmony with the universal order, so that " the 
 individual cannot hear himself unless he makes a false 
 note "• — that is the supreme state ; but " how rare for us 
 poor creatures," for whom existence is conflict and its 
 foundation dissonance with God ! That may be called the 
 view of Christian surrender as entertained by a sick man, 
 whose body was a constant burden to him, and into whose 
 heart only a few of the influences of the Cross had 
 streamed. 
 
 By Carlyle frequent use was made of the religious 
 conception of self-sacrifice, though again not as in the New 
 Testament. He was too apt to be ruthless and domineer- 
 ing in tone, and to fix his thought upon the services of 
 duty rather than upon the sanctities of personal character. 
 
 •■ Journal Intime, p. 177. " Ihid., pp. 239, 240. 
 
The Substituted Self 9 1 
 
 Annihilation of self he once defined as the casting oneself 
 " at the footstool of God's throne, ' To live or to die for ever ; 
 as Thou wilt, not as I will.' " It is right as far as it goes 
 — not so good as the Saviour's " I delight to do Thy will, 
 my God " (Ps. xl. 8), or, " My meat is to do the will 
 of Him that sent Me " (John iv. 34) ; but an effective 
 putting of the spirit of Christian bondservice, which finds 
 no hardship in the path of obedience, and even tries to 
 anticipate the commandments. The parallels in the 
 Epistles are the passages where God's ownership of men 
 by right of creation or of purchase asserts itself or claims 
 its due return ; such as, " Ye are not your own ; for ye 
 w^ere bought with a price: glorify God therefore" (1 Cor. 
 vi. 19, 20). The will is not "lost" in God's, but placed 
 upon one side or resolutely kept in subjection, m order 
 that the latter may prevail and rule ; and the utmost 
 gladness of which such service admits is the reasoned and 
 qualified satisfaction, " We are unprofitable servants ; we 
 have done that which it was our duty to do " (Luke 
 xvii. 10). 
 
 There is again a lonely rapture, in which the body 
 seems to cease for a time to retard the soul's upward 
 flight, the senses that are in touch with the secular 
 become dull, and the self, suffused with the divine, is 
 transformed or forgotten. Tennyson describes the mood 
 as produced by pondering upon the inner mysteries and 
 as issuing in emancipation and enlargement — 
 
 More than once wlien I 
 Sat all alone, revolving in myself 
 The word that is the symbol of myself, 
 The mortal limit of the Self was loosed, 
 
92 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 And jmst into the Nameless, as a cloud 
 
 Melts into Heaven. I touch'd my limbs, the limbs 
 
 Were strange not mine — and yet no shade of doubt, 
 
 But utter clearness, and thro' loss of Self 
 
 The gain of such large life as match'd with ours 
 
 AVere Sun to spark — ixnshadowable in words, 
 
 Themselves but shadows of a shadow-world. 
 
 Another account of the mood is occasionally met with 
 amongst the mystics. Some of them are disposed to 
 represent the experience as due not to the loss of the self 
 so much as to its purification and gain. The " inner light," 
 according to Maeterlinck,^ for instance, is not the product 
 of the descent upon a man of the Holy Spirit, but merely the 
 ascent in the natural and legitimate way of his own spirit 
 within him. That spirit is a ray of the universal light, but 
 man's sins and especially his insensibility to the character 
 and worth of his birthright thicken the media through 
 which the ray shines. If care in tending be constant, if 
 obstructions be cleared away, and lamp and wick be 
 cleansed and trimmed, the flame will burn more brightly, 
 and may at times so dazzle that the self is enveloped in 
 a circle of self-produced light, the radiance of which makes 
 all that is outside one great darkness. It is doubtful 
 whether in the New Testament or in human experience 
 there is much that supports such an explanation. The 
 inner light, which is man's natural possession, has a 
 marvellous faculty of turning into darkness, however 
 tended, in independence of God. In Christ alone can be 
 seen " the true light, even the light which lighteth every 
 man " (John i. 9). The most illumined soul is ever the 
 
 ^ See a suggestive article by Mr. A. Symons on "Maeterlinck as a 
 Mystic" in Contcmj). Review, Sept., 1897, p. 352 if. 
 
The Substituted Self 93 
 
 one in which the enlightening Spirit most intimately 
 dwells. " Wherefore he saith, Awake, thou that sleepest, 
 and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee " 
 (Eph. V. 14), filling self and soul with His light. 
 
 In the Scriptures several instances of this rapt mood are 
 recorded, the highest and fullest account coming from the 
 hand of St. Paul. In Jerusalem once he " fell into a trance " 
 (Acts xxii. 17), much as St. John at Patmos "was in 
 the Spirit" (Eev. i. 10), or as the older prophets dreamed 
 dreams and saw visions. But one such ex])erience seems 
 to have left a special mark upon his memory, and in his 
 final letter to the Corinthians he refers to it at length, 
 hesitating through awe yet positive beyond gainsaying : " I 
 know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the 
 body, I know not ; or whether out of the body, I know not ; 
 God knoweth), such a one caught up even to the third 
 heaven " (2 Cor. xii. 2). This degree of rapture may be 
 exceptional, sent " by reason of the exceeding greatness of 
 the revelations " (xii. 7), though the later verses in the 
 paragraph certainly come down to the level of experience 
 possible to all, and approximations may be found in the 
 devotion of unofficial Christians. Nor does St. Paul tell 
 us anything more about his self in the passage than that 
 for the time it passed out of view, and was as though it 
 was not. As regards character rather than qualification 
 for service, — the extent to which the Christian religion 
 can deal in the way of moral perfecting with the formative 
 elements of a man, the apostle's highest word is that ^ to 
 the Galatians : " I am dead, yet I live ; I live, yet not I, 
 but Christ liveth in me." 
 
 1 Cf. supra, pp. 88, 89. 
 
94 ^'^^' Range of Christian Experience 
 
 The attainment of such an experience by modern 
 men may have been expressed with truth and humbleness ; 
 l)ut on such a subject most Christians prefer, rightly or 
 wrongly, to be silent or to speak with bated breath.^ 
 Thomas a Kempis, in one of his genuine ^ little books, 
 writes with longing, " when shall it be that I can 
 with boldness say, ' I account myself as one that is dead 
 upon earth ' ? For he that is dead cares for neither the 
 praises of men nor the reproaches of the malicious." But 
 the best explanation of the actual meaning of such an 
 experience is obtained from the few glimpses that are 
 granted into the inner consciousness of the God-man. On 
 the one hand, He could say in His sublime sense of utter 
 separation from sin, " The prince of the world cometh, and 
 he hath nothing in Me " (John xiv. 30) ; and on the other, 
 "The Father is in Me, and I in the Father" (x. 38), "I 
 and the Father are one" (x. 30). The prayer of the 
 Saviour for His people was " that they may be one, even 
 as We are one ; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may 
 be perfected into one" (xvii. 22, 23). Thus the spiritual 
 monism is to lie reached at last — each Christian one, 
 because the strife within him dies down before the presence 
 
 1 It is reported of one of the greatest of the presidents, if such a distinc- 
 tion amongst the dignified occupants of the Conference chair may rightly 
 he made, that on the eve of his election he remarked to an intimate friend, 
 " I have been trying to attain self-annihilation, and have not succeeded." 
 So great was the saintliness of the man, of whom it may be said with 
 confidence that he "walked with God," that his friend was of a different 
 opinion. 
 
 - Soliloqvy of the SoiU, translated by Flower, p. 33. This little 
 book, whose contents are of varied quality and occasionally rather forced 
 and heavy, may with some confidence be ascribed to the re})uted author of 
 the De Imitatione, which is surticiently superior to show that the two are 
 not the work of the same man. 
 
The Substituted Self 9^ 
 
 of the indwelling Saviour, to whom the self, having shed 
 its sin, has yielded all control : all Christians one, because 
 the same Christ lives and rules us the self of each, binds 
 them into the unity of a common life with Him, and God 
 becomes finally all in all. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 DETAILS OF VIRTUE AND OUTLINES OF METHOD 
 
 Jewisli conception of holiness, as sejjaration fi'om sin and the imita- 
 tion of the kindlier virtues of God ; and of saintliness, as love's 
 ingenuity in the effort to please Him — The humanity of Christ, a 
 standard and pledge — Perfection, etymologically and as likeness 
 to God — The separate virtues of service and of good- will — Life's 
 sorrows, as treated by the essayists and philosophers (Taine, 
 Stephen, Hinton, Marcus Aurelius, and others), and as borne and 
 interpreted in Christian experience — Philosophy fails to quiet 
 the human spirit for several reasons — Experience of Augustine, 
 Tennyson, St. Paul — Satisfaction with self, not permanent in this 
 life, of which the law is struggle and effort. 
 
 Human volition and divine grace — The former ineft'ectual of itself, 
 but necessary to success— The resolute imitation of Christ — The 
 unlimited power of the Spirit, whose influence is free, abundant, 
 and perfecting. 
 
 In the Old Testament and its dependent literature there 
 are in use two terms of the highest ethical import, and 
 upon them was founded in Jewish exposition a lofty con- 
 ception of the religious experience possible to man. The 
 terms may be distinguished as equivalent respectively to 
 holiness and to saintliness. The former denotes on the 
 negative side separation or withdrawal, and on the positive 
 the imitation of God. " Be ye holy, for I am holy " 
 (Lev. xi. 44), is paraphrased ^ into " As I am separated, so 
 be ye separated " ; and the separateness of God is not 
 1 Sifra, 57 /'. 
 
Details of Virtue and Outlines of Method 97 
 
 explained metaphysically, but morally, as implying aloof- 
 ness from things impure. The imitation of God also is 
 conceived as taking place strictly within the sphere of the 
 Law, but as conlined almost exclusively to God's attributes 
 of grace. There is, for instance, a tradition ^ that Elijah, 
 who rightly said of himself, " I have been very jealous for 
 the Lord, the God of hosts" (1 Kings xix. 10), was once 
 rebuked by God in the words, " Thou art always jealous." 
 By a late Jewish authority ^ the duty of cleaving to God 
 (Deut. X. 20) was objected to, on the ground that " God is 
 a devouring fire, a jealous God" (iv. 24): and the solution 
 was found in the advice, " Cleave to His ways ; as God 
 nurses the sick, so do thou." Though in Scripture itself 
 the justice of God, and even His severity against sin, 
 are sometimes set forth as models for man's imitation in 
 due degree, the tendency of later Judaism to hard literal- 
 ness in ritual observances is scarcely more noticeable than 
 the disposition to magnify the kindlier virtues at the risk 
 of neglecting the sterner. Christian theology of recent 
 years, and at intervals in the centuries preceding, has 
 been apt to take a parallel course. 
 
 The Jewish conception of saintliness goes far beyond 
 the partial imitation of Jehovah and obedience to His 
 expressed will. " Sanctify thyself even in that which is 
 permitted to thee " is the great rule ; ^ and the saintly man 
 is represented not as endeavouring merely to carry out 
 his Father's orders, but as eagerly anticipating them, as 
 seeking in unbidden ways to give the Father joy. Love, 
 
 ^ Yalkut Shimoni, ii. 217, and elsewhere. 
 
 - Quoted by S, Schechtei" in a valuable [laper on the Rabbinical Concep- 
 tion of Holiness in the Jewish Quarterly, Oct., 1897, pp. 1-12. 
 ^ Jchamoth, 20 «. 
 
 7 
 
98 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 and not law, is the sanction of duty, of which the ingenuity 
 of a devoted heart becomes thenceforth the measure. The 
 danger of such an ethical method is that mucli room is 
 left for the play of personal temperament, leading to the 
 exercise of choice amongst duties of equal obligation ; but 
 an effective safeguard is the divine help, which Jewish and 
 Christian teachers alike bid men to seek from heaven. 
 
 According to the New Testament, no degree of 
 moral attainment is impossible to Christian men, and 
 experience ranges from a humiliating sense of weakness 
 against temptation to the triumphant consciousness of 
 mastery and freedom. The perfect humanity of Christ 
 is the prophecy of that of His disciples. He could say, 
 "I have overcome the world" (John xvi. 33); and so in 
 due time can they. To every Christian now struggling 
 with evil, often full of fear that defeat is awaiting him, 
 the sinlessness of Christ is a sure promise : " The God 
 of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly " 
 (Eom. xvi. 20). 
 
 On several occasions a careful study has been made of 
 the use of the term perfect amongst the writers of the 
 New Testament, with a view to determine its exact shade 
 of meaning and the hopes concerning character that are 
 warranted. There is no need to repeat a task already done 
 so well. The only conclusions that will stand are that 
 the term is frequent in Scripture ; that the meaning is 
 fully grown or entire, that is to say, as might have been 
 expected, perfect ; and that perfection is a gift of God, 
 neither unrelated to the capacity of man, nor withheld 
 from his faithful effort. So much is pledged by the teach- 
 ing of Christ, who certainly does not tantalise men by 
 
Details of Virtue and Outlines of Method 99 
 
 representing unattainable ideals as already witliin reach. 
 In the Sermon on the Mount — the official character of 
 which renders any cliarge of extravagance inipossiljle, and 
 of which sanity is as distinct a note as is searching 
 inwardness — He says with imperative assurance, " Ye 
 therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is per- 
 fect " (Matt. V. 48). He may be referring to the whole 
 company of the virtues, or to the special grace to which 
 the precedhig verses relate ; but whether the allusion be 
 generic or specific does not touch the point at issue. In 
 regard of one virtue or of many, Christ bids His people be 
 perfect, and compares their perfection with that of the 
 Father. So completely did St. Paul enter int(j his Lord's 
 meaning, that in one place he declares the functions of 
 the Christian ministry will continue " till we all attain 
 . . . unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the 
 stature of the fulness of Christ" (Eph. iv. 13); and in 
 another he announces the purpose for which he was pray- 
 ing for his friends, that they might " be filled unto all the 
 fulness of God" (iii. 19). St. Peter too held that men 
 might " become partakers of the divine nature " (2 Pet. 
 i. 4). Scripture clearly knows no other limit to religious 
 experience on the one side than that of likeness to God, of 
 the saturation of the soul with the elements of such like- 
 ness until morally, if the Ephesian phrase hold good, there 
 is no divergence and little difference. 
 
 In the case of these elements, the teaching of the New 
 Testament is sufficiently detailed to allow separate investi- 
 gation. The virtues that characterise the relationship of 
 man to man have already been noticed together with the 
 duties of ministry and service. " Render to all their dues " 
 
lOo The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 (Rom. xiii. 7) is a general rule, with the applications of 
 which many paragraphs in the Epistles are filled. The 
 justice that refuses to soften before impenitence, the ten- 
 derness that helps a fallen man to rise, the courtesy that 
 gently asks when it might authoritatively command, the 
 fellow-feeling that shares the burdens of others and inter- 
 cedes for them in their sins, the self-forgetfulness that 
 exalts obligations above claims and counts it more blessed 
 to give than to receive, the devotion that neither pain nor 
 fruitlessness can restrain from spending and being spent, 
 are all illustrated in the experience or counsels of the 
 apostles, just as all were exemplified in the practice of 
 the Saviour. 
 
 " Whence come wars and whence come fightings among 
 you ?" indignantly asks St. James (iv. 1). The question 
 admits of various answers. The greed of gold, the passion 
 of rule, the pride of power, the lust of territory, conflict- 
 ing ambitions and imagined wrong, can set great nations 
 by the ears and part very friends. But this " is not a 
 wisdom that cometh down from above. . . . The wisdom 
 that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, 
 easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits " 
 (iii. 15, 17). The love of Christ is fatal to every passion 
 of disintegration or envy. The living Christ is the only 
 vital and all-embracing bond of union. Where He reigns, 
 " there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and un- 
 circumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman " 
 (Col. iii. 11). 
 
 Love, like death, hath all destroyed, 
 Rendered all distinctions void ; 
 Names, and sects, and parties fall : 
 Thou, Christ, art all in all ! 
 
Details of Virtue and Outlines of Method loi 
 
 The common mercy-seat is the meeting-place for the 
 nations, and thither tlie tribes are already going up. 
 The influence that dwells there is gradually welding 
 each heart into unity with itself, all hearts into union 
 with one another because first of all into union with 
 Christ. 
 
 There is another side of life characterised by the action 
 of pain, mental and spiritual, even more than physical. 
 The causes of the |»ain are personal weakness, disappoint- 
 ment, consciousness of failure, the outrages of opposing 
 fortune, the apparent indomitableness of sin. How forcible 
 these causes are, and how bitter the results, the experience 
 of every sincere man is a sufficient evidence. Whilst 
 however experience is uniform as to the reality of men's 
 miseries, the treatment and the prescribed attitude of soul 
 are not the same. Taine has no better counsel than that 
 a man should bear in mind there are a few compensa- 
 tions, and writes ^ despairingly : " There is surely an 
 excess of evil in the world. Every hundred years man 
 removes from his path a stone or a bramble ; but stones 
 and brambles remain in plenty to tear and wound him. 
 Has he comfort, then liis tender feeling of discomfort 
 grows ; the body is protected, the spirit falls diseased. 
 One thing adds to its dominion, experience, and with it 
 we advance in scientific knowledge and power. Else, on the 
 whole, we lose as much as we gain, and our surest progress 
 will be in resignation." It is cold comfort to tell a man 
 that his misery is a hopeless experience for himself, but 
 will possibly contribute something to the race's knowledge 
 of science. 
 
 ' Cf. Qaarterhj Rn-icw, i\\\y, 1897, )>. 197. 
 
I02 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 To follow our own best judgment, with comparative 
 carelessness as to the result, has been recommended on the 
 assumption that no certain knowledge of God or of His 
 relation to human life is attainable. " We stand on a 
 mountain pass," writes ^ Mr. Stephen, " in the midst of 
 whirling snow and blinding mist, through which we get 
 glimpses now and then of paths which may be deceptive. 
 If we stand still we shall be frozen to death. If we take 
 the wrong road we shall be dashed to pieces. We do not 
 certainly know whether there is any right one. What 
 must we do ? " The best answer he can give is, " Act for 
 the best, hope for the best, and take what comes. ... If 
 death ends all, we cannot meet death better." But what if 
 death does not end all ? To risk everything upon an untrue 
 or even an uncertain hypothesis is recklessness, not reason- 
 ableness. Experience counsels more wisely, " Trust in the 
 Lord with all thine heart, and lean not upon thine own 
 understanding " (Pro v. iii. 5) ; and adopts a happier part, 
 " Though I walk through the valley of deep darkness, I 
 will fear no evil ; for Thou art with me " (Ps. xxiii. 4, 
 marg.). The darkness in the valley is impenetrable ; 
 better step quietly through it with the hand-clasp of 
 Grod, than plunge independently into the mist of the 
 mountain. 
 
 Many of the inconveniences and pains of life can be 
 made tolerable by thought about the purpose they serve. 
 According to James Hinton,^ indeed, " these are the only 
 things in which we rightly feel our life at all. If these 
 be not there, existence becomes worthless, or worse ; suc- 
 
 ^ J. F. Stephen, Liberty, etc., 2iid ed. (Loud., 1S74), p. 353. 
 - Life of James Hinton, pp. 172, 173. 
 
Details of Virtue and Outlines of Method 103 
 
 cess ill puLtiiig them all away is fatal. So it is men 
 engage in athletic sports, spend their holidays in climbing 
 up mountains, find nothing so enjoyable as that whicli 
 taxes their endurance and their energy." Pain is conse- 
 quently pronounced " an essential element of the highest 
 good." It elicits endurance, fortitude, moral energy ; and 
 in all these there is enjoyment proportionate to tlie inten- 
 sity of life. Such a gospel may suit the young and the 
 strong, and fits years and men in whom the vital forces are 
 unexhausted and full ; Ijut it does not entirely explain 
 misery, nor can it compare in certain and magnificent effect 
 with St. Paul's experience : I will " glory in my weaknesses, 
 that the strength of Christ may rest upon me. Wherefore 
 I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in 
 persecutions, in distresses, for Christ's sake : for when I am 
 weak, then am I strong" (2 Cor. xii. 9, 10). The joy and 
 the glorying are not the exuberance of vitality, but the 
 outflow of an increased consciousness of the presence and 
 help of God. 
 
 Philosophy has more than once been praised as the 
 cure for life's sadness, though philosophers are not agreed 
 as to the mode in which their remedy may best be applied. 
 One of them formulates ^ the law that pleasures must be 
 tipped with pain to give them their full zest, and contends 
 that to this law the higher and nobler passions offer no 
 exception. He has no difficulty in adding illustrations of 
 doubtful relevancy. " The ambitious man, say a Napoleon, 
 is always exposed to bitter disappointments and mishaps. 
 . . . Even the peaceful pursuits of literature and science 
 have their acute crises of vexation and frustrated hope. 
 ^ J. C. Morison, The Service of Man, p. 316. 
 
I04 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 Hume, the most even-tempered of men, was so mortified 
 by the faihire of the first vohime of his history, that he 
 would have gone abroad, changed liis name, and renounced 
 authorship, had not war broken out between England and 
 France." To assert that sorrow is unavoidable and a kind 
 of foil to joy, and to illustrate that unnecessary statement 
 by reference to two men of whom the resolution of one 
 failed whilst that of the other stood, may be philosophy, 
 but is not very helpful. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, after describing life as a warfare and 
 a sojourning, and the " things of the soul a dream and 
 vapour," asks ^ in his meditation, " What, then, can direct 
 our goings ? One thing and one alone, philosophy ; which 
 is, to keep the deity within inviolate and free from scathe, 
 superior to pleasures and to pains, doing nothing at random, 
 . . . accepting the apportioned lot as coming from the 
 same sovirce as man himself ; and finally, in all serenity 
 awaiting death, the natural dissolution of the elements of 
 which each creature is compounded. And if the com- 
 ponent elements have nought to fear in the continuous 
 change from form to form, why should we look askance at 
 the change and dissolution of the whole ? It is of nature ; 
 and nature knows no evil." That is the serenity of con- 
 straint, enforced by argument, and possible only to a strong 
 man ; beneath the thin crust of solidity which reasoning 
 has bnilt up over the heart's agitation there is evidently 
 a quaking bog of fears. 
 
 Philosophy alone cannot but fail to quiet and strengthen 
 the human spirit. Regulations that limit freedom and 
 
 ^ As rendered by Dr. G. H. Reiidall, in his translation of Marcus 
 Aitrelms Antoninus to IlimseJf, ii. 17. 
 
Details of Virtue and Outlines of Method 105 
 
 prohibit action without effectually touching the springs 
 from which actions rise, are its natural product. 
 
 Thou slialt abstain — renounce — refrain I 
 Such is the everlasting song 
 
 That in the ears of all men rings — 
 That unrelieved our whole life long, 
 
 Each hour, in passing, hoarsely sings. 
 
 Neither can the mind be permanently satisfied with nega- 
 tions, nor the heart with confinement and bonds. Philosophy 
 again differs from religion, as search does from possession,^ 
 a process of pain and strife from a result of peace and joy. 
 Augustine writes, in his Confessions^ " In Cicero and Plato 
 and other such writers I meet with many things acutely 
 said, and things that excite a certain warmth of emotion, 
 but in none of them do I find these words, ' Come unto 
 me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 you rest.' " Philosophy asks questions, keeps them open, 
 and supplies only partial or tentative answers, whereas 
 spiritual experience, as a great missionary once said, " sets 
 certain questions at rest for us for ever." Christianity, as 
 known from the inside, according to the testimony of those 
 who live there, means the calm, restful, solid consciousness 
 of the rule of God the Father, of the sufficient sacrifice of 
 God the Saviour, of the sanctifying presence of God the 
 Holy Spirit, and therefore means also continuous confidence 
 and victory. 
 
 Tennyson is reported to have been walking on one 
 
 ^ Pico of Mirandola wrote: " Philosophia veritatem quserit, theologia 
 invenit, religio possidet." Cf. Kurtz, Kirchengeschichte, 11th ed., vol. i., 
 1). 352. 
 
 - Bk. vii. ch. xxi. sec. 27, as rendered by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his 
 Aids to Reflection. 
 
io6 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 occasion with his wife's niece, when the conversation drifted 
 or was dehberately turned to personal religion, and he 
 began to speak of his enjoyment of the presence of God. 
 Let the niece herself describe ^ the rest of the incident. 
 
 " I said I thought such a near, actual presence would 
 be awful to most people. 
 
 " ' Surely the love of God takes away and makes us 
 forget all our fear,' he answered. ' I should be sorely 
 afraid to live my life without God's presence ; but to feel 
 that He is by my side, just as much as you are, that is 
 the very joy of my heart.' 
 
 " And I looked on Tennyson as he spoke, and the glory 
 of God rested upon his face, and I felt that the presence 
 of the Most High had indeed overshadowed him." 
 
 But no record of real Christian experience rises above 
 Scripture. St. Paul once wrote of himself in a paragraph, 
 at the contents of which men have reason to wonder. He 
 was not a young man, but of ripe age, matured by wide 
 knowledge of life in all its phases and of fortune in all her 
 moods. His words are quiet, deliberate, carefully chosen, 
 slowly added to one another, with the intonation rising 
 only towards the close. In this assured and unhesitating 
 way he says, " I have learned, in w^hatsoever state I am, 
 therein to be content. I know how to be abased, and I 
 know also how to abound : in everything and in all things 
 have I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hvmgry, 
 both to abound and to be in want. I can do all things 
 in Him that strengtheneth me" (Phil. iv. 11-13). ' Con- 
 tent ' means independent of external circumstances ; and 
 
 1 In an article on Tennyson by Agnes Grace Weld in the Contemporary 
 - Review, Nov., 1897, p. 676. 
 
Details of Virtue and Outlines of Method 107 
 
 a religion that can not only make a man that, but can 
 also equip him with power to do all things, including the 
 mastery of liis temper and the reversal of the whole trend 
 of his nature from sin to God, has evidently no superior 
 and no rival on the face of the earth. 
 
 Whether St. Paul retained his experience thenceforth, 
 and continued to the end to enjoy uninterruptedly the vivid 
 consciousness of self-sufficiency in Christ, Scripture does 
 not plainly say. The probability is otherwise. Permanent 
 satisfaction with self appears to be a blessing reserved for 
 the future state ; and until the whole course of life is past, 
 and the transforming work of the Spirit is done, the godly 
 man looks forward, and thinks, " I shall be satisfied, when 
 I awake, with Thy likeness" (Ps. xvii. 15). Sin, as a 
 possibility and a reminder of the need of watchfulness, 
 if not as a power that is actually assailing the heart, is 
 not finally parted from before death. Conflict with it may 
 cease for a moment, Ijut has soon to be renewed. Perfec- 
 tion, in the sense of a condition in which there need be no 
 fear and from which there can be no fall, has been pro- 
 fessedly attained by some ; but there are grounds for the 
 suspicion that they had reached only some lower standard 
 erected by themselves, and were mistaking it for the 
 ultimate goal. Aspiration and struggle are inseparable 
 from normal Christian experience ; and victory, instead of 
 being won once for all, is renewed and repeated until the 
 series is crowned at last. 
 
 All progress in religious experience is due consequently 
 to the action of two forces, each conditional upon and 
 co-operating with tlie other. There must be intense and 
 persistent action on the part of the will ; and human 
 
1 08 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 purpose and skill can effect nothing apart from the grace 
 and Spirit of God. Aspiration and desire are the first 
 condition. A great poem represents a choir of angels as 
 committing itself to the opinion that 
 
 Whoe'er asj^ires imwearieclly 
 Is not lieyond redeeming. 
 
 But the aspiration must be unwearied, the desire keen and 
 abiding, the will capable of tension, the whole mind made 
 up at every hazard or cost to cleave to God, or the loftier 
 ranges of Christian experience will rarely be visited. " The 
 desire of the slothful killeth him" (Prov. xxi. 25) is as 
 true of spiritual attainment as of secular enterprise ; and' 
 the first counsel of perfection is to turn good desires into 
 resolutions, to crowd into the resolutions all the strength 
 and tenacity of will that can be secured, and strenuously 
 to carry out the resolutions in self-discipline and in every 
 wise kind of exercise "unto godliness" (1 Tim. iv. 7). 
 
 The imitation of Christ, in the sense of the attempt 
 to let His Spirit rule in ours and determine the method 
 and motives of every action, has generally and rightly 
 been regarded as the best of all disciplines. A perfect ideal, 
 itself supplying the necessary resources together with 
 every assurance of success, is thereby obtained ; and the 
 dangers of unpracticalness and of ill-proportioned develop- 
 ment are escaped. Not in details how^ever must even 
 the life of Christ be followed, but in spirit and in power. 
 The details indeed are only in a few instances given in 
 Scripture ; and the Christian religion does not aim so 
 much at the reduction of all men to a perfect type as at 
 the perfecting of the individuality of each. Not to do 
 
Details of Virtue and Outlines of Method 109 
 
 exactly what Christ did, but to act and bear and serve 
 as He would, were He in our circumstances, and 
 from the motives He would feel — few writers in the 
 New Testament fail to exhibit that as the way to 
 perfection. 
 
 There is no part of life to which this rule does not 
 apply. In one passage St. Peter uses a word, which really 
 denotes the head-line on a page of a copybook ; and in 
 regard to all the buffetings and sorrow of life he counsels 
 men, " Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, 
 that ye should follow His steps" (1 Pet. ii. 21). When 
 his little pupils are learning to write, the schoolmaster 
 bids them keep the head -line constantly before their 
 eyes, and reproduce it, not their own clumsy copies of it, 
 to the bottom of the page. The Saviour in His suffering 
 supplies the head-line ; and we are to imitate Him, not 
 our former poor imitations of Him, to the end of our days. 
 In regard to the active side of life, and to all the little 
 ministries that tend to increase men's comfort and to help 
 them to godliness, our Lord Himself adopted a word that 
 makes Him our pattern. God as He was. He washed His 
 disciples' feet, and said to them, " If I then, the Lord and tlie 
 Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one 
 another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye 
 also should do as I have done to you" (John xiii. 14, 15). 
 Last of all, in an irresistible passage St. Paul combines 
 both sides of life, active and passive, and writes the fullest 
 sentence that ever came from his pen : " Have this mind in 
 you, which was also in Christ Jesus : who . . . emptied 
 Himself, taking the form of a servant, . . . becoming 
 obedient even unto death " (Phil. ii. 5—8). To have that 
 
iio The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 mind is the worthiest of human amljitions, the summit of 
 human attainment. 
 
 No sincere man however is long in finding out that 
 the higher ranges of Christian experience do not open 
 themselves to mere wisdom and will, however complete 
 and inflexible. Eesolute effort is the indispensable condi- 
 tion of divine action, but the effort alone can accomplish 
 nothing : in its beginning and in its finished work alike 
 salvation is of God. Scripture leaves no room for doubt 
 that the man who pours out his heart in trust upon Christ 
 will be led on by the Spirit of God to ranges of ex- 
 perience the most remote from his starting-point, led on 
 step by step until God is all the world to him and has 
 accomplished in him all His will. To tlie Corinthians St. 
 Paul wrote confidently, " We all, with unveiled face reflect- 
 ing as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed 
 into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the 
 Lord the Spirit" (2 Cor. iii. 18). The transformation is 
 gradually proceeding ; each change, glorious itself, admits 
 to greater glory ; and the source and more than competent 
 agent of the whole beatifying process is the Spirit of God. 
 In his letter to the Ephesians, the same apostle pauses as 
 soon as he has recorded the wonderful revelation that man 
 " may be filled unto all the fulness of God," and naturally 
 breaks out into a doxology : " Unto Him that is able to 
 do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, 
 according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be 
 the glory" (Eph. iii. 20, 21). All the mind can conceive 
 in moments of supremest rapture or moods of most intense 
 yearning is so far from being the bound of wliat the Holy 
 Spirit can do in a man, that the apostle is constrained to 
 
Details of Virtue and Outlines of Method i 1 1 
 
 knit together particles of emphasis, with a view to suggest 
 how far the grace of God exceeds all human thought or 
 hope. The feeblest of Christians can no longer despair of 
 himself in the presence of that verse ; for the power work- 
 ing in him has at present only begun to work, and there 
 is no human mode of measuring either the power itself or 
 its possible achievements. 
 
 In the light of such a fact the contrasts of mood antl 
 the ever-shifting adjustment of the elements of personal 
 character should be considered, together with the dis- 
 appointments that follow and the continuous cropping up 
 in the life of faults that were thought overcome for ever. 
 Fixedness of pure moral quality is too great a prize to be 
 won with ease or produced in haste. Self-mastery, like 
 faith, has an author who is also its perfecter (Heb. xii. 2). 
 Whilst the uniformity of experience and progress is broken 
 by lapses of effort or desire, and strictly contingent upon 
 " patience in well-doing " (Eom. ii. 7), in every sincere 
 disciple there is a power that worketh mightily ; and the 
 explanation of all apparent breaches in the consistency of 
 Christian character and of all delay in its perfecting must 
 be sought in the corrigible defects of human purpose, and 
 never in the suspected inability of the power within. 
 
 A Hebrew prophet was once blessed with the vision 
 (Zech. iv. 2, 3) of a candlestick of marvellous design. The 
 lamps were fed from a central bowl, into which flowed 
 continuous streams of oil from olive trees that grew on 
 either side of the candlestick. The vision is a symbol 
 for our own days. On the right hand of every sincere 
 Christian and on his left is the living Spirit of God, who 
 is everywhere anointing with His grace those who are 
 
112 The Range of Christian Experience 
 
 eager to receive it. The great secret of a sanctified heart 
 and life is to open np the channels of communication along 
 which the oil of the Spirit can flow, to keep them open, 
 to expand and enlarge them. His rich influence will 
 stream then unhindered into the soul, purifying and vital- 
 ising it ; and the influence will stream out of the soul 
 upon the household, the neighbours, the men with whom 
 daily duty brings us into contact, and the whole sphere of 
 our lives will be filled with sweetness and power. The 
 unfamiliar graces will gather about us, every grace in com- 
 pleteness and in proportion with the others, until we pass 
 from the ultimate limit of the range of Christian experi- 
 ence in this world into the presence of God, and are 
 allowed at last to see His face. 
 
INDEX OF SCRIPTURE PASSAGES 
 
 Gen. xviii. 25 
 Lev. xi. 44 
 Deut. iv. 24 
 „ vi. 7 I 
 „ X. 20 
 ,, xiii. 6, 8, 
 1 Kings viii. 38 
 ,, xix. 10 
 Neh. viii. 10 
 Job ii. 4 . 
 ,, xiii. 15 
 ,, xxvi. 14 
 ,, xxxvii. 19 
 ,, xxxvii. '23 
 Ps. X. 4 . 
 ,, xvii. 13 
 ,, xvii. 15 
 ,, xxiii. 4 
 ,, xxx^-ii. 24 
 ,, xxxix. 4 
 ,, xxxix. 6 
 „ xl. 8 . 
 ,, xliii. 5 
 „ 1. 4 . 
 ,, Ivii. 7 
 ,, Ixxvi. 6 
 ,, Ixxvi. 10 
 ,, xciv. 19 
 ,, civ. 24 
 ,, civ. 33 
 ,, cvii. 43 
 ,, c xviii. 12 
 Prov. iii. 5 
 „ iii. 13 
 ,, iv. 5, 7 
 „ iv. 23 
 „ XV. 14 
 ,, xviii. 14 
 ,, xxi. 25 
 
 PAGE 
 
 25 
 96 
 
 97 
 7,75 
 97 
 85 
 SO 
 97 
 69 
 34 
 35 
 57 
 13 
 13 
 75 
 61 
 
 107 
 
 102 
 82 
 15 
 15 
 91 
 82 
 25 
 76 
 61 
 61 
 75 
 57 
 57 
 23 
 51 
 
 102 
 21 
 21 
 41 
 21 
 80 
 
 108 
 
 21 
 
 Eccles. i. 16 
 
 „ i. 18 
 
 „ vi. 12 
 
 ,, viii. 6 
 Isa. x. 5 . 
 ,, XXX. 15 
 ,, xxxiii. 18- 
 ,, XXXV. 8 
 „ xlv. 1 
 ,, xlviii. 18 
 „ lix. 19 
 Jer. viii. 16 
 „ li. 20 
 Amos iii. 8 
 Mic. vii. 8 
 Hab. iii. 17, 18 
 Zech. iv. 2, 3 
 
 ,. xiii. 6 
 Matt. v. 29, 30 
 
 ,, V. 48 
 
 „ vi. 34 
 
 „ x. 36 
 
 „ X. 39 
 
 ,, xi. 27 
 
 ,, xvi. 25 
 
 ,, xviii. 8, 9 
 
 ,, xviii. 15-17 
 
 „ XX. 28 
 
 „ XXV. 40 
 Mark viii. 35 
 
 „ ix. 43, 45 
 Luke ix. 24 
 
 „ X. 29 
 
 ,, xvii. 10 
 
 ,, xvii. 33 
 Joliu i. 5 . 
 
 „ i. 9. 
 
 „ i. 14 
 
 „ iv. 34 
 
 113 
 
 I'AUF. 
 
 25 
 25 
 15 
 45 
 61 
 51 
 61 
 79 
 61 
 60 
 51 
 59 
 61 
 65 
 83 
 35 
 111 
 80 
 85 
 99 
 14 
 80 
 35 
 13 
 35 
 41, 85 
 85 
 67 
 41 
 35 
 85 
 35 
 64 
 91 
 35 
 29 
 92 
 4 
 91 
 
 John 
 
 vi. 7 
 
 i'ai;k 
 
 30 
 
 
 vi. 9 
 
 70 
 
 
 x. 30 
 
 94 
 
 
 X. 38 
 
 94 
 
 
 xii. 25 . 
 
 35 
 
 
 xii. 35 . 
 
 29 
 
 
 xiii. 14, 15 
 
 109 
 
 
 xiv. 8, 9 . 
 
 30 
 
 
 xiv. 30 . 
 
 94 
 
 
 xvi. 33 . 
 
 98 
 
 
 xvii. 22, 23 
 
 . 94 
 
 Acts 
 
 X. 38 
 
 66 
 
 
 XX. 23, 24 
 
 37 
 
 
 XX. 28 . 
 
 3 
 
 
 xxii. 17 . 
 
 93 
 
 Rom 
 
 . i. 20 
 
 57 
 
 
 ii. 7 
 
 111 
 
 
 vi. 6 
 
 vi. 13 . 
 
 87 
 9 
 
 
 vii. 24 . 
 
 80 
 
 
 viii. 5-13 
 
 8 
 
 
 viii. 13 . 
 
 86 
 
 
 viii. 23 . 
 xi. 33-36 
 
 4 
 31, 57 
 
 
 xii. 1 
 
 22 
 
 
 xiii. 7 
 
 100 
 
 
 xiii. 14 . 
 
 83 
 
 
 xiv. 5 
 
 5,21 
 
 
 XV. 1-3 . 
 
 66 
 
 „ xvi. 20 . 
 1 Cor. i. 5 
 
 98 
 30 
 
 
 ii. 9 . 
 
 16 
 
 
 vi. 12-20 
 
 3, 91 
 
 
 viii. 13 . 
 
 42 
 
 
 ix. 15 . 
 
 86 
 
 
 ix. 19, 23 
 
 66 
 
 
 ix. 27 . 
 
 8 
 
 
 xiii. 3 . 
 
 10, 42 
 
 
 xiii. 7 . 
 
 81 
 
114 
 
 Index of Scripttire Passages 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 1 Cor. xiv. 18, 19 
 
 22 
 
 Eph. i. 22, 23 . 
 
 4 
 
 1 Thess. iii. 1 . 
 
 .66 
 
 „ xiv. 20 . 
 
 21 
 
 „ iii. 19 . 
 
 99 
 
 1 Tim. iv. 7 . 
 
 108 
 
 2 Cor. i. 3-11 . 
 
 69 
 
 „ iii. 20, 21 
 
 no 
 
 „ iv. 8 . 
 
 6 
 
 „ ii. 16 . 
 
 70 
 
 „ iv. 12 
 
 4 
 
 „ vi. 15, 16 
 
 14 
 
 „ iii. 5 
 
 70 
 
 „ iv. 13 
 
 99 
 
 2 Tim. i. 12 . 
 
 . 47 
 
 „ iii. 6 . 
 
 76 
 
 „ iv. 22-24 
 
 83 
 
 „ ii. 7 . 
 
 22 
 
 „■ iii. IS . 
 
 110 
 
 „ V.14 . 
 
 93 
 
 Heb. iii. 1 
 
 . 23 
 
 „ iv. 6 . 
 
 30 
 
 „ V. 23 
 
 4 
 
 „ xi. 37 . 
 
 . 37 
 
 „ iv. 10 . 
 
 7 
 
 Phil. i. 20 
 
 7 
 
 • ,, xii. 1 
 
 . 81 
 
 „ V. 4 . 
 
 37 
 
 „ i.21 . 
 
 88 
 
 ,, xii. 2 
 
 . Ill 
 
 „ V. 8, 9 . 
 
 37 
 
 ,, i. 23, 24 . 
 
 37 
 
 ,, xii. 3 
 
 . 23 
 
 „ V. 15 . 
 
 66 
 
 „ ii. 5-8 . 
 
 109 
 
 Jas. i. 27 . 
 
 . 34 
 
 „ V. 17 . 
 
 68 
 
 ,, iv. 7 
 
 51 
 
 „ ii. 16 
 
 6 
 
 „ viii. 9 . 
 
 66 
 
 „ iv. 11-13 
 
 106 
 
 „ iii. 15, 17 . 
 
 100 
 
 „ xi. 29 . 
 
 66 
 
 Col. i. 16, 17 . 
 
 57 
 
 „ iv. 1. .,. 
 
 100 
 
 „ xii. 2 . 
 
 93 
 
 ,, i. 24. 
 
 3 
 
 1 Pet. ii. 21 . 
 
 109 
 
 „ xii. 7 
 
 93 
 
 „ ii. 2 . 
 
 22 
 
 2 Pet. i. 4 
 
 . 99 
 
 „ xii. 9, 10 
 
 103 
 
 „ ii. 22 
 
 50 
 
 1 John ii. 16, 17 ^ 
 
 ,: 42 
 
 Gal. ii. 20 
 
 88 
 
 ,, ii. 23 
 
 5 
 
 „ iii. 2 . '^r - :25 
 
 „ iv. 19 
 
 89 
 
 „ iii. 4 
 
 88 
 
 „ iv. 18 T ■ 
 
 . m 
 
 „ V. 24 
 
 87 
 
 ,, iii. 5-9 . 
 
 86 
 
 „ iv. 21 . 
 
 . 74 
 
 „ vi. 7, 8 . 
 
 7 
 
 „ iii. 9, 10 . 
 
 83 
 
 „ v. 19 . 
 
 . 25 
 
 „ vi. 14 
 
 87 
 
 ,, iii. 11 
 
 100 
 
 Kev. i. 10 
 
 . 93 
 
 „ vi. 17 
 
 7,66 
 
 ,, iii. 15 
 
 51 
 
 ,, xvii. 9 
 
 . 23 
 
 PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH 
 
The Fernley Lecture of 1896. 
 The Theology of Modern Fiction. By Thomas (!. Selby. Third 
 
 Thousand. Demy 8vo, paper covers, 2s. ; clotli, gilt lettered, 3s. 
 
 " Mr. Selby brings to the treatiuent of his subject extensive and accurate knowledge and 
 a fine literary ta.ste. His exposition of the teachings of the writers with whom he deals is 
 done with remarkable care, whilst his lucidity of style and felicity of illustration are every- 
 where consiilcuous." — Leeds Meixnirii. 
 
 The Fernley Lecture of 1897. 
 The Spiritual Principle of the Atonement as a Satisfaction 
 
 made to God for the Sins of the World. By .J. Scott Lidcktt, M.A., 
 
 Warden of the Beriuoiulsey Suttlunieiit. Second Edition. Demy 8vo, xxiii, 
 
 498 pp., OS. 
 
 "For the total impression made upon us by this work is that of a performance which in 
 its grasp of the subject, its researeh, and its critical ability is litted to rank with the ablest 
 treatises on its theme that have appeared in this j,'eneration." — ClirUtiuii W'uiid. 
 
 New Book by Professor Davison. 
 The Christian Interpretation of Life and Other Essays. 
 By William T. Davison, M.A., D.D., Author of "The Praises of Israel," 
 "The Christian Conscience," etc. Post 8vo, 4s. 6d. 
 
 " An exceedingly able and instructive criticism from the orthodox standpoint. He brings 
 to his topics not only a thorough grasp of the points in discussion, but a general literary 
 cul^ec and an epigrammatic force of expression which make it a real pleasure to read him." 
 —dmstiau World. 
 
 Helps Heavenward. Second Series. 
 Saints of Christ. By T. F. Lockyer, B.A., Author of " The Inspira- 
 tions of the Christian Life," '=The Gospel of St. John: an Exposition," etc. 
 Crown 12mo, art linen, gilt top, Is. 6d. 
 
 "Thorough, practical, and stimulating." — Sundiiv-^ehool Chronicle. 
 
 "The treatment of the subject is clear and sensible. Mr. Lockyer's idea of saintship is 
 thoroughly biblical, and therefore human." — Ilaathujs and St. Leonards Times. 
 
 Books for Bible Students. 
 Studies in Comparative Religion, By Alfred S. Geden, M.A., 
 
 Author of " Exercises for Translation into Hebrew." Small crown Svo, 2s. 6d. 
 
 "The author writes with a very full knowledge of the literature of his subject, and 
 presents the results of wide research in a reailable and attractive form. The book is remark- 
 ably well informed, and it cannot fail to be useful as an introduction to this wide and growing 
 subject."— O^fts^ou- Herald. 
 
 The Church of the West in the Middle Ages. By Herbert 
 
 B. Workman, M.A. Small crown Svo, 2s. tj<l. 
 
 "Intent on Pleasing Thee." A Manual for Would-be Christians. 
 
 By A. R. Kelley, Author of " Following Christ." Crowu 12mo, art linen, gilt 
 
 top, Is. 6d. 
 
 " Devout and practical, and for those beginning the Christian life nothing could be more 
 admirable. This little book is calculated to do much good."— Christian Leader. 
 
 Creed and Conduct. A Series of Readings for Each Week of the 
 Year from Dr. Alexander Maclaren. Selected and Arranged by Rev. 
 George Coates. Second Thousand. Crown Svo, with Portrait, 3s. 6d. 
 
 " I cannot imagine a more serviceable aid to private devotion or a more valuable help to 
 those who . . . need suggestions for tlie cxpositiini, illustration, and application of the word 
 of God. It is a perfect mine of evangelical and spiritual tiuth."— t/rm? Tlu»i<jhts. 
 
 London : CHARLES H. KELLY, 2, Castle Street, City Road, E.C. ; 
 AND 26, Paternoster Ro^v, E.C. 
 
SOME RECENT FERNLEY LECTURES. 
 
 Jesus Cbrist and the Present Age. The Tweuty-fifth Pernley Lecture, delivered 
 
 in Plymouth, August 2, 1895. By James Chapman. Demy 8yo, paper 
 
 covers. Is. 6d. ; cloth, gilt lettered, 2s. 6d. 
 
 "A book well worth readuig; full of careful thought on every page, often in every 
 
 sentence. ; . . Vigorous, manly, scholarly, au excellent spechneu of Methodism at its best." 
 
 — Manchester Courier. 
 
 Christian Doctrine and Morals viewed in their Connexion. The Twenty- 
 fourth Feruley Lecture, delivered in Carr's Lane Chapel, Birmingham, July 
 27, 1894. By George G. Findlay, B.A. Demy 8vo, paper covers, 2s. ; 
 cloth, gilt lettered, 3s. 
 
 "It is a thoroughly able, devout, and well-balanced presentation of Christian doctrine." — 
 British Weekly. 
 
 "It is fresh and full and living, more than all, it is prophetic. Let our readers read 
 themselves into its spirit, into its philosophy, and into its gospel, without a day's delay."— 
 Free Methodist. 
 
 Cliristianity and Socialism. By William Nicholas, M.A., D.D. Demy 8vo, 
 paper covers, 2s. ; cloth, 3s. 
 "With admirable clearness and fairness he has traced the rise and development of the 
 various theories of Socialism. . . . With equal clearness and ability. Dr. Nicholas shows that 
 Socialism is unnecessary, that Christianity is sutflcient for our needs, and that, were its 
 principles apphed, the evils which curse modern society would disappear." — Christian Age. 
 
 The Design and Use of Holy Scripture. By Marshall Handles, D.D. Demy 
 8vo, paj^er covers, 2s. ; cloth, 3s. 
 
 "A weighty and sober contribution to Christian apologia." — Thinker. 
 
 "Abounds with evidences of wide reading, and contains much that cannot fail to be 
 helpful in the culture of the Christian life."— Clbristian World. 
 
 The Credentials of the Gospel. A Statement of the Reason of the Christian 
 
 Hope. By Joseph Agar Beet, D.D. Fifth Thousand. Demy 8vo, paper 
 
 covers, Is. 6d. ; cloth, gilt lettered, 2s. 6d. 
 
 "However well read in apologetic literature any one is, he will find much to interest and 
 
 much to convince in the chapters which deal with the resurrection and the miraculous. At 
 
 this point Prof. Beet makes a distinct advance in the argument, and deserves the thanks of all 
 
 who are interested in the defence of Christianity. The book is throughout written in an 
 
 admirable style."— Dr. Marcus Dods in the Expositor. 
 
 The Christian Conscience. A Contribution to Christian Ethics. By William 
 T. Davison, M.A., D.D. Fifth Thousand. Demy 8vo, paper covers, 2s. ; 
 cloth, 3s. 
 "Acute, forcible, and interesting. . . . Treats a large subject entirely without super- 
 ficiality, and yet in a popular style." — Scotsman. 
 
 " Unquestionably one of the finest and most timely deliverances that has ever emanated 
 from the Fernley chair." — Lincolnshire Free Press. 
 
 The Creator, and What we may Know of the Method of Creation. By William 
 H. Dallingek, D.D., LL.D., D.Sc, F.R.S. Tenth Thousand. Paper 
 covers. Is. 6d. ; cloth, 2s. 6d. 
 "A most carefully written discourse, and will unquestionably be read with profit by the 
 thoughtful reader." — Scientific Enquirer. 
 
 "Contains as much real thought, sound philosophy, logical reasoning, and solid instruc- 
 tion as are found only in large treatises." — Oldham Chronicle. 
 
 The Influence of Scepticism on Character. By William L. Watkinson. Eighth 
 Thousand. 8vo, paper covers. Is. Gd. ; cloth, 2s. 6d. 
 
 " Demonstrates very ably and clearly the demoralising effects of scepticism." — Record. 
 
 " Outspoken and ably written." — Leeds Mercury. 
 
 " It enters very thoroughly into the subject, and numerous examples are given of the 
 deteriorating effect of unbelief in the human character." — Daily Chronicle. 
 
 London: CHARLES H. KELLY, 2, Castle Street, City Road, E.G. ; 
 AND 26, Paternoster Row, E.G.