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 Curteis, George Herbert 
 
 1824-1894. 
 The scientific obstacles to 
 
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THE SCIENTIFIC OBSTACLES 
 
 TO 
 
 CHKISTIAN BELIEF. 
 
THE 
 
 SCIENTIFIC OBSTACLES 
 
 TO 
 
 CHRISTIAN BELIEF 
 
 BOYLE LECTURES, 
 1884. 
 
 / 
 GEORGE HERBERT CURTEIS, M.A., 
 
 CANON RESIDENTIARY OF LICHFIELD CATHEDRAL; 
 
 EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF LICHFIELD ; 
 
 PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS IN KING'S COLLEGE, LONDON. 
 
 Hontion : 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1885. 
 
 2he Right of Translation and Re-production is Reserved. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL, B.C. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Extract from a Codicil to the Last Will and Testament of 
 the Hon. Egbert Boyle, Esq., dated July 28, 1691. 
 
 «' "YXTHEREAS I have an intention to settle in mvlife- 
 V V time the sum of Fifty Pounds per annum for 
 ever, or at least for a considerable number of years, to be 
 for an annual salary for some learned Divine or Preachin^ci 
 Minister, from time to time to be elected and resident 
 within the city of London or circuit of the Bills of Mor- 
 tality, who shall be enjoined to perform the offices follow- 
 ing, viz. — To preach Eight Sermons in the year, for 
 Proving the Christian Religion against notorious Infidels, 
 viz., Atheists, Theists, Pagans, Jews, and Mahometans, not 
 descending lower to any controversies that are among 
 Christians themselves : these Lectures to be on the first 
 Monday of the respective months of January, February, 
 March, April, May, September, October, November, in such 
 church as my trustees herein named shall from time to 
 time appoint;! to be assisting to all Companies, and 
 encouraging of them in any undertaking for Propagating 
 the Christian Religion in foreign parts ; to be ready to 
 satisfy such real scruples as any may have concerning these 
 matters, and to answer such new objections and difficulties 
 as may be started, to which good answers have not yet l)een 
 made. ... I will that after my death Sir John Rother- 
 ham, Sergeant-at-Law, Sir Henry Ashurst, of London, 
 Knight and Baronet, Tlioman Tennison, Doctor in 
 
 "^ The Boyle Lectures are now preached in the Cliapel Royal, 
 Whitehall, on some of the Sundays following Easter Day, in the 
 afternoon. 
 
VI Preface. 
 
 Divinity, and John Evelyn, sen., Esq., and the survivors 
 or survivor of them, and such person or persons as the 
 survivor of tliem sliall apx)oint to succeed in the following- 
 trust, shall have the election and nomination of such 
 Lecturer, and also shall and may constitute and appoint 
 him for any term not exceeding three years, and at the end 
 of such term shall make anew election and appointment of 
 the same or any other learned Minister of the Gospel,^ 
 residing within the city of London or extent of the Bills of 
 Mortality, at their discretions." 
 
 THE rapid spread of unbelief in England 
 during tlie last ten years has struck every 
 observer. But its causes liave been very super- 
 ficially investigated. Christians have been in too 
 great a hurry to defend what was so justly dear to 
 their own hearts. And the all-important question 
 has therefore been deferred, which ought to have 
 stood first in their deliberations for defence, viz., 
 What lyreciscly are, at the present day, the obstacles 
 to Christian helieft Until that question has been 
 faced and answered, apologists are in danger of 
 striking quite wide of the mark, and of simply 
 "beating the air." No doubt even such ill- 
 directed energy has its value. It displays to all 
 beholders the extreme preciousness of the Gospel 
 to those who have the privilege of retaining their 
 faith ; and it confirms the assurance and animates 
 the courage of the great mass of implicit believers. 
 
Some Points must he Surrendered. 
 
 Vll 
 
 What sucli hasty and random strategy, however, 
 does not do is to maintain the cause of Christ 
 against outside attacks, and to convince unbe- 
 lievers. For that purpose quite another sort of 
 strategy is needfiiL The apologist must calmly 
 " sit down first and count the cost." In other 
 words, he must bravely face the full ]3erils of the 
 situation ; he must not under-estimate the forces 
 which his adversary is able to bring into the field ; 
 he must intuitively enter into the opponent's 
 views, appropriate and (as it were) sympathise 
 with them, and divine beforehand what is likely 
 to be advanced in maintaining them. Above all, 
 the Christian leader — if he is to win, not merely a 
 skirmish, or even a battle, but the whole cam- 
 paign — must " count the cost " in another sense. 
 He must know what to surrender. It is merely 
 brutal and useless strategy to defend everything 
 without discrimination. In every age some points 
 become of less vital importance than they were 
 before ; some breastworks are found to be incom- 
 petent to resist improved methods of attack ; and 
 some outlying defences, to every eye but that of 
 their passionate defender, have manifestly become 
 worse than useless, mere traps for impounding and 
 wasting the force urgently required elsewhere, 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 mere gratuitous invitations to tlie foe to effect a 
 lodgment and to proclaim a victory, if not actually 
 to gain one. 
 
 For instance, it should be clearly understood by 
 all who would defend the Christian faith in Eng- 
 land, that here (at least) no scorn is felt for that 
 faith. The extraordinary blessing which divine 
 Providence has accorded to this country in her pos- 
 session of a reformed and ever-reforming, yet at 
 the same time catholic and historical and national, 
 Church has secured us against that danger. Had 
 the Church of England presented, at this moment, 
 the aspect either of a powerful, but unreformed, 
 corporation — or had she, on the other hand, been 
 reformed indeed, but frittered into innumerable 
 and powerless fragments, had she lost her catholic 
 organisation, or forfeited her claim to be the 
 old historic Church of the nation — in either case 
 the defence of Christianity would have been 
 greatly compromised. Contempt would have been 
 felt and expressed for an organism which had 
 grown too ossified and senile to bear the touch of 
 reform; and indifference would be expressed for a 
 spiritual discipline which failed to command the 
 allegiance, or to stir the enthusiasm, even of its 
 own professed adherents. Surrounded, however, 
 
Three Types of Mankind. ix 
 
 as slie now is, by a host of minor voluntary 
 societies, which act as safety-valves against over- 
 government within, and provide a happy refuge 
 without for every serious discontent, the Church 
 of England has thus far amply justified her privi- 
 leged position in this country; and has — by the 
 almost universal admission of her foes — formed 
 the main bulwark of modern Christendom against 
 unbelief. 
 
 To this body, then, above all others, seems now 
 committed by divine Providence, the task of 
 making head against the advancing inroads of 
 nineteenth century unbelief. It- is a many-sided 
 body. It offers " facets " (as it were) correspond- 
 ing to many points of the mental compass. But 
 especially its three great schools of opinion— the 
 so-called High, Low, and Broad parties — present 
 fronts of sympathy and attraction for the three 
 main types of, at least Anglo-Saxon, mankind. 
 In the High Church school the imaginative 
 element predominates; and in the touching 
 beauty of its ritual and the lovely tranquillity 
 and peaceable self-subordination that reign there, 
 thousands of devout souls have found a quiet 
 framework for their religious lives, and a soothing 
 remedy against that morbid excitement which too 
 
Preface. 
 
 often unsettles and deranges minds of the devo- 
 tional type. Indeed, much more than this may 
 now be said in thankful recognition of what the 
 so-called Catholic Revival in the Church of Eng- 
 land has done for English Christianity. There are 
 hundreds of intellectual men, and men of high 
 scientific or literary acquirements, to whom the 
 mental liberty accorded hy a ritual presentment of 
 religious ideas has been salvation and peace. These 
 men are, in every sense, the cream of English 
 society. They are the best of England's sons. To 
 lose them, to make religion difficult and unaccept- 
 able to them, to impose upon them elaborate 
 theological burdens, and insist on their accepting 
 the Gospel m (what may perhaps be called) its 
 pulpit form, or not accepting it at all — this would 
 be gross folly and consummate treason to Christ. 
 For the Gospel is far more than its form of pre- 
 sentment, as even the Apostles found out, when 
 they were divinely led to break with the Jewish 
 system in which it had been originally inshrined. 
 The framework of Christianity therefore became 
 from that time forward more elastic, and freedom 
 of mental movement within it grew more assured 
 as all sorts and conditions of men came in. And 
 the great Apostle who first carried the Church 
 
Each ** School " has its Oucn Function. xi 
 
 boldly into Europe, and bowed tlie Greek mind 
 beneath the gentle yoke of Christ, gloried in that 
 elasticity and freedom ; he joyfully became " all 
 things to all men," and exultingly proclaimed to 
 the Gentile world, "Stand fast in the liberty 
 wherewith Christ hath made you free ! " 
 
 But not even in his time, when the leaven of the 
 Gospel was seizing and permeating with its mar- 
 vellous potency Hellenic philosophy and Roman 
 statecraft, was this freedom so essential as it is 
 now\ For in iiliysical science a really new world of 
 thought has of late years been discovered ; and so 
 the very opening which Alexander sighed for in 
 vain, " a new world to conquer," has been provi- 
 dentially made ready for a general advance of the 
 whole forces of the Church. And in literature, too, 
 such revelations have lately been made, by pro- 
 curing for linguistic and historical study the 
 various sacred books of the far east, by compelling 
 the long silent hieroglyphics of Egypt to give up 
 their secret, and by disinterring from their dusty 
 graves the tablet libraries of the Assyrian kings 
 that a summons to break with merely classical 
 and medioeval formulae of thinkino^ seems as 
 clearly in the air as when St. Paul proclaimed 
 emancipation from the Jewish law. 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 Not that any real breach of continuity is either 
 necessary or possible. And here the evangelical, 
 or so-called Low Church, party may — if they 
 will only rise to tlieir golden opportunity — do 
 most precious service to their Master's cause. 
 For to them, above all men, St. Augustine's 
 motto seems peculiarly to belong : — " Transeunt 
 nubes, coelum manet," — " Let God be true, 
 though every man be a liar; traditions, rituals, 
 all the mechanism and paraphernalia of divine 
 things, may easily change and pass away, pro- 
 vided only the truth they all express and embody 
 remains intact." And so this school hold them- 
 selves in trust with the naked spiritual verities, 
 the ideals, the essential heart-transforming truths, 
 which the traditional school has mainly charged 
 itself with the task of clothing in elaborate cere- 
 monial and symbol. And if the modern man 
 desires above all things to retain his grasp of 
 Christian ideals, while he simply helps himself, as 
 he was meant to do, by ecclesiastical art and sees 
 through it such higher and spiritual truth as his 
 soul may be able, from time to time, to assimilate, 
 surely such a free use of ceremony and sacrament 
 is precisely what a Low Churchman should ap- 
 prove. But he must have patience and tolerance 
 
SuTSum corda ! " xiii 
 
 for what seem to him doctrmal immaturities 
 and imperfections. And he should remember that, 
 as with ritual forms of expression, so with dogmatic 
 and verbal formulae of divine truth, " the clouds 
 pass over, but the blue sky remains behind." 
 
 And as for the third school, the (so-called) 
 Broad Cpiuiicn party in our English Christen- 
 dom, the representative of the more intellectual 
 side of religious life, it is quite obvious that this 
 is the most natural of all allies for men of science 
 and refinement who also desire to be Christians. 
 Along this " facet " of the Church reason is ever 
 busy, and is ever claiming fellow-workers in the 
 difficult task of penetrating — so far as God shall 
 empower the human mind to do so — the mysteries 
 of God with the light of clear intelligence. And 
 as Science, for her part, is doing precisely the 
 same with the dark mysteries of nature, it seems 
 that complete harmony should here exist ; and 
 that this school is especially charged to clothe 
 with ever new interest for intellectual men the 
 varied problems which theology presents. For 
 we need not fear, in the name of God, any truth 
 whatever, and should endeavour to tinge with 
 spiritual consecration the brave and patient toil 
 of workers in every branch of human endeavour. 
 
xiv Preface. 
 
 But for all schools alike, and for every religious 
 man who would ''serve his own generation by the 
 will of God," one maxim is nowadays essential, 
 one motto should be for ever present in the 
 mind. It is the same as that stirring call of the 
 Catholic Church of Christ in all ages, from the 
 very beginning, " Sursum corda ! " Lift up your 
 hearts ! Kaise up your thoughts to higher planes 
 of thinking than you have ever yet habitually 
 lived in ! It is by the simple process of taking 
 higher, grander, less unworthy, more cosmic, more 
 elevated, views of God and of divine things, that a 
 thousand modern difficulties about these baffling 
 subjects are resolved and vanish of themselves — 
 as vapour is absorbed into dry air, or as childish 
 perplexities disappear in mature life. If English- 
 men and Englishwomen could only be persuaded 
 firmly to believe that religion demands the 
 exercise of our very highest powers — intellectual, 
 imaginative, and moral — they surely woukl, with, 
 out " evil surmisings " or jealous party enmities, 
 warmly welcome every fellow-worker in this 
 difficult but captivating department of mental 
 labour. And then a possible future might open 
 before this country which it is entrancing to con- 
 template. She might, with her grand historical 
 
England the ''Terra Sancfa" of the Future, xv 
 
 Church and her multitude of acute and strenuous 
 workers in every department of mental labour, 
 easily become a blessing to universal Christendom : 
 and to her own sons, whether at home or in 
 the colonies or in foreign kindred states, Eng- 
 land might be — as she is already on the way 
 to be — a Terra Sancta, a sort of Holy Land, 
 a mother land whence influences far better, 
 more noble, more free, than any which mediseval 
 Europe drew from Rome, might constantly radiate 
 around. Her soil is crowded with the most beau- 
 tiful and interesting relics of bygone centuries; 
 nowhere can the Christian life of the past be 
 better studied than here; in no country and in no 
 Church are old institutions, old service-books, old 
 ceremonies, old buildings, to be seen as they are 
 in England — alive not dead, reformed not petrified, 
 adapted to and nourishing an active Christian 
 faith of a modern kind, and not a Christianity 
 artificially preserved from decay by exclusion of 
 the fresh wholesome air and by precautions 
 worthy of Egyptian Pharaohs, whose highest am- 
 bition was gratified when their dead bodies were 
 made impervious to all change. 
 
 In this connection, I cannot refrain from 
 quoting the language of an American writer on 
 
xvi Preface, 
 
 EDgland, which appeared not long ago in a New 
 York magazine. " Nature with us [in the United 
 States] is a harsh, unloving stepmother. She 
 has the continental swing and stride and the con- 
 tinental indifference. The dominant impression 
 of the English landscape is repose. Never was 
 such a restful land to the eye — especially to the 
 American eye, satiated with the mingled splen- 
 dour and squalor of his own landscape, its violent 
 contrasts, and general spirit of imrest. England 
 is the old homestead. It is grandfather's and 
 grandmother's land. It is the seat of the domi- 
 nant race. The American feels ' at home ' there." 
 {The Century, November, 1883.) The same feel- 
 ing is constantly expressed by visitors to our 
 sacred ancestral land, both American and colonial. 
 May nothing be done to impair it ! May every- 
 thing be done to strengthen and to elevate it ! 
 And, still more, may every effort be made to con- 
 secrate it to highest Christian uses; and so to 
 make it, in the most telling and permanent way 
 of all, a spirit of unity and a " bond of peace." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Foundations of Christian belief rudely shaken nowadays. — 
 Even women affected by unbelief. — Christendom should 
 arouse itself to grapple with the problem. — What are the 
 modern obstacles to belief ? — First question a historical 
 one. — Is it from fault of our own, or by the ordinary law.s 
 of intellectual progression ? — Our planet has swept into new 
 environments. — Old evidences have lost their value. — Each 
 generation has its own difficulties to encounter. — Gnosticism 
 the first wave of intellectual difficulty. — Another wave 
 after a thousand years. — Church accepted the aids of 
 heathen logic and metaphysics but rejected crude theories of 
 physical science. — A third wave five hundred years later. — 
 Deism and other forms of unbelief. — Christendom riven 
 into numberless divisions. — And now, another wave-crest 
 of unbelief towers above our modern controversies. — 
 Darwin's honoured name. — His disciples outstrip their 
 master. — Nature- Worship proposed by some.' — The law 
 of recurring unbelief, — Intellect and imagination need to 
 be well balanced. — Faith is the common ground for all. 
 
 Pages 1—23. 
 
 & 
 
xviii Contents. 
 
 LECTUKE II, 
 
 Intellect and imagination two factors working together. — How 
 controversies arise. — Contrast, in foreign cities, of fanati- 
 cism and atheism. — Happy the nations that soften the 
 asperities of conflict. — Duty of conciliation on both sides. — 
 AVork of intellect analytical and discriminative. — Work of 
 imagination to make things human. — Anthropomorphism 
 therefore necessary. — Worship of mere nature impossible ; 
 or of mere humanity. — Evil inexplicable on any theory. — 
 Materialism a real obstacle. — But matter and force two 
 different things. — Theism, not Atheism, satisfies the human 
 mind. — Human knowledge only relative. — Intellect, ima- 
 gination and conscience, triple functions of the mind. — 
 Faith a prime necessity, — Combining unknown power, 
 unfathomable wisdom, and firm will, into a superior unity, 
 we so worship God. — Impossible to believe in an evil 
 power guiding the universe. — The cosmic force not uncon- 
 scious. — The Christian conception of a personal God rational 
 and satisfactory Pages 24 — 50. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 CREATION. 
 
 Christian doctrine that God created and sustains nature. — 
 Mind antecedent to matter. — Simple picture-language of 
 Genesis justified. — The " carpenter theory of creation " a 
 man of straw. — "Evolution" supplements creation, does 
 not contradict it. — Primal creative "word" expanded into 
 a majestic stream of ph5'sical legislation. — By the logos, 
 or intelligible reason of God all things were made. — Fate, 
 an irrational conception. — Cosmic forces awful, but not 
 fateful. — The jDower that governs the universe is not fate, 
 but a living God. — Clue furnished by our own will. — 
 
Contents. xix 
 
 "Chance" an irrational idea. — Letters thrown on floor 
 could never arrange themselves into a play of Shakspearc. 
 — And impossible to grant infinite time. — Earth not long 
 ago a mass of molten lava. — Theory of creation, supple- 
 mented by "evolution" is, after all, the most satisfactory. 
 
 Pages 51 — 67. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 MIRACLE. 
 
 Scientific men turn away from miracle with dislike. — Fuller 
 liberty should be accorded than in times gone by. — Timely 
 deference and breadth of view may retain modern culture 
 and science in allegiance to Christ. — Possibility of miracles 
 denied by no one. — The same point of view occupied by 
 S. Bernard and M. Renan. — Miracle subject to fair histori- 
 cal inquiry. — The Church bound to be truthful. — All 
 acknowledge this. — No w^ant of liberty exists. — Miracle 
 no violation of "law." — 3firaculous and capricious action 
 not identical. — Admit a God, and you admit "volition" 
 in nature. — New laws are often discovered by science, and 
 not ascribed to caprice. — Unreason has no place in 
 Christian idea of God. — A fixed purpose, undoubtedly, 
 in all signs and wondei-s. — Miracles acted as scaftblding 
 in building up Monotheism. — When building complete, 
 scaffolding no longer necessary.— St. Paul's life spent in 
 tiying to emancipate Gentile world from school-methods of 
 Israel.— The New Testament miracles engendered firm 
 belief in Christ, and conception of Him as image of God's 
 thought concerning man. — Acknowledged beauty of 
 Christ's character.— Christ's spirit has seized us.— Last 
 benediction of the Gospel, " Blessed are they that have 
 not seen, and yet have believed."— Anxious quest about 
 miracles not required of Christians now. — INliracle should 
 come last, not first.— Begin with human nature of Christ, 
 and advance upwards.—" He that is able to receive it let 
 him receive it."— The clergy should look forward, not 
 backward Prr^c? 68— 94. 
 
XX Contents. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE FALL OF MAN. 
 
 Feeling of "shame," a characteristic of the human species. — 
 Pharaoh speaks from the obelisk of seeking peace to his 
 conscience. — IN'o other creatures know what *' shame " is. 
 — Impossible to say when sin began. — Yet it must have 
 had a beginning. — On modern as well as ancient theories 
 of descent of man, there was a time when shame had not 
 dawned on him. — There must have been some great transi- 
 tion. — Man hovered for a time "on the razor edge." — Then 
 a fall came. — Christianity and science not divergent. — The 
 fall of man does not contradict hypothesis of evolution. — 
 Denial of moral evil irrational. — Many moral evils exist in 
 human nature which are not bestial. — Problems to be 
 worked out. — Melancholy scientific prognostications of 
 human extinction. — Tlie Church's picture animating and 
 rational. — There shame and fall point to recovery. — 
 Touching poetry of Genesis. — Story suitable for all ages 
 and races of mankind. — Poor success of Milton. — The Fall 
 narrated in prose. — Who could undertake to better this 
 ancient Semitic parable of the origin of sin ? Pages 95 — 114. 
 
 LECTURE VL 
 
 EEDEMPTION. 
 
 The Fall and Redemption closely related. — Redemption a meta- 
 phorical word. — Metaphor a kind of poetry. — It appeals to 
 the imagination. — Scientific men object that redemption 
 is too miich dramatised and thrown into imagi- 
 native forms. — But metaphorical language is indis- 
 pensable. — All representations are confessedly weak and 
 inadequate, but the fact, the reality, remains. — Evil is not 
 totally irreversible. — Assurance of possible recovery is 
 almost too good news to be true. — But the reverse of that 
 assurance Avere too bad news to be true. — It seems part of 
 our nature at its best to revolt against degrading reign of 
 moral chaos. — To be assured of final shipwreck of hu- 
 manity would destroy all interest in nature and her ways. 
 
Contents. xxi 
 
 — Some possibility of human redemption must exist. — Reli- 
 gion the most powerful factor for producing moral changes. 
 — It tamed the barbarous hordes that broke into RomaTi 
 Empire. — Christianity now binds people together, and re- 
 deems them from scourge of perpetual war. — Testimony of 
 Henry George that the salvation of society is in Gospel of 
 Christ. — Human nature to be studied in the nursery. — First 
 mental power awakened is the imagination. — This faculty 
 the easiest to work on. — The good news of Redemption 
 must be told in language to suit the imagination, — Ap- 
 proach there and attention will be arrested. — A new ideal 
 must be supplied. — Lovely ideal set forth in the Gospels. — 
 Handed on by Church. — Her ritual and rhetorical presenta- 
 tion of the subject. — No conflict here with science.— Law of 
 variation works by unexpected appearance of some new 
 type. — Genius sometimes abruptly changes the whole course 
 of world Pages 115—134. 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 A subject personally interesting to all. — Recent study of Oriental 
 ways of viewing the world. — But why go backwards in 
 researches after truth? — Eastern ideas of future life. — 
 Limitation of our faculties, — Christianity refuses to reduct- 
 this mysterious question into definite terms of the human 
 understanding. — It leaves us free to speculate on all open 
 questions. — Scientific facts not always understood, yet 
 freely taught. —Sympathy therefore asked for the Church 
 which teaches truths not wholly understood. — Explicit 
 faith demanded from no one. — Death alone can reveal the 
 truth. — Eternal or " spiritual " life claims to belong to 
 some higher state of things than we are now familiar with. 
 — Whenever a new class of beings appears new surround- 
 ings prepared for them. — Then a new idea buds forth from 
 some parent stock. — A leading specimen appears. — So the 
 second Adam, t5'pe and fountain-head of a new race. — They 
 are attached to him, are moulded on His type and became 
 
xxii Contents. 
 
 part of His evei-extending Body, the Church. — Nature' 
 transmutations of force. — Fact of Christ's Eesurrection. — 
 Difficult to account for success of Christianity without His 
 Resurrection. — Not likely that St. Paul and others were 
 victims of illusion. — This aids us to picture the future life. 
 — Can we believe that all men, good and bad, pass into 
 annihilation ? — Beautiful poetry of the Apocalypse. — Temp- 
 tation to forget that it is poetry and to put a construction 
 on its language which it is not meant to convey. — Un- 
 broken chain of life in the past, — Vain curiosity about the 
 future. — Why not leave all in God's hands ? — Amazing 
 M-ealth of forms displayed by Him in Nature. — St. Paul's 
 teaching agrees with science. — Our present life full of 
 mystery ; and ourselves a standing parable of life victorious 
 over death. . Pages 1Z6 — 164. 
 
 LECTURE YIII. 
 
 CONCLUSIOX. 
 
 All have passed through much perplexity. — But even "little 
 faith " is not without reward. — It has life and will grow. 
 — The present a transition period. — Doubt appointed to 
 some persons as their schooling. — Patience needed. — 
 Science has engendered no form of religious worship of its 
 own. — Positivism idealises man instead of the Cosmos. — 
 Addressed to the more refined classes. — Secularism to the 
 lower classes. — The West too prosaic for great religious en- 
 thusiasms. — Loyalty to the Power that rules the world 
 bids us accept the Christian system. — Our organised 
 Christianity has carried, us through twelve centuries of as 
 sacred a history as ever belonged to any people. — There is 
 no contradiction between Science and Christianity. — Free 
 inquiry is a watch-word of the Gospel. — Yet some ** sys- 
 tem " is required to save the soul from shipwreck and ruin. 
 — Christian teachers look for sympathy and patience from 
 men of science. — Only the moral qualities of Faith, Hope, 
 and Charity required — things capable of infinite gradations. 
 
 Pages 165—181. 
 
THE SCIENTIFIC OBSTACLES 
 
 CHRISTIAN BELIEF. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION-. 
 
 1 Cor. i. 22 : ** The Jews require a sign, aud the Greeks seek 
 
 after wisdom." 
 EoM. iii. 29 : " Is He the God of the Jews only ? Is He not 
 
 also of the Gentiles ? " 
 
 THERE can be no question, I think, that the lect. 
 foundations of Christian belief have been, ^' 
 during the latter half of the nineteenth century, 
 very rudely shaken and disturbed. No one who 
 either reads or thinks, or who observes carefully 
 what is going on around him, can well avoid this 
 conclusion. For not only in private intercourse 
 with each other do men of culture and education 
 acknowledsre their difficulties, but so much is 
 unbelief in the air that even vulgar irreligion 
 has felt encouraged to be jubilant and noisy.^ 
 
 1 The most remarkable and exaggerated specimen of "jubi- 
 lant" irreligion comes to us, with many other exaggerations, 
 from the other side of the Atlantic. In Colonel Ingersoll — 
 who ought to be a hearty, manly Christian, of the type of 
 
2 Historical Introduction. 
 
 LECT. Public caricatures of sacred things have been 
 
 I. 
 
 attempted : and one may hear in many a 
 debating society blasphemies openly vented, 
 
 Bishop Hacket with his maxim, "Serve God and be cheerful" 
 — we have (at present) a powerful speaker against Christianity. 
 His "orations" are fresh and delightful ; they are couched in 
 high-flown, poetical prose ; they sound like Emerson adapted to 
 a popular platform. But the Christianity he opposes is a fossil 
 thing. If it survive anywhere, it must be in some remote con- 
 venticles in the backwoods of America. His most impassioned 
 appeals simply demand a right to think and speak freely, which 
 every sentence shows that he already possesses. Is there not 
 something a trifle unreal, and therefore ludicrous, in such pos- 
 turing as this : ** I do not pretend to have fathomed the abyss, 
 nor to have floated on outstretched wings level with the dim 
 heights of thought. I simply plead for freedom : I ask for light 
 and air for the souls of men. I say, Take off" those chains ; 
 break those manacles ; free those limbs ; release that brain ! I 
 plead for the right to think, to reason, to investigate." — {Re- 
 ligion of the Future, 14th edition, p. 17.) "Priests tell us 
 there is a god somewhere in heaven, who objects to a human 
 being thinking and expressing his thoughts." — [How Man makes 
 Gods, p. 163.) The Christian's answer is : "All this is ancient 
 history, and not always quite accurate history : for instance, 
 ' The Epistles are addressed to nobody. . . . The Testament, 
 as it now is, was not written for hundreds of years after the 
 apostles were dust.' " — ( What must loe do to he Saved ? p. 198.) 
 It is pitiful to see such power and energy wasted against a 
 " man of straw," especially when the orator is virtually a 
 Christian, if he only knew it. "The meanest hut," he says, 
 " with love in it is a palace fit for the gods. . . . You cannot 
 be so poor that you cannot help somebody. ... It is not 
 necessary to be rich : joy is wealth. . . . There is neither in 
 my heart nor on my lips a sneer for the hopeful, loving souls 
 who believe that over all there is a Being who, in some way, 
 will reclaim and glorify every one of the children of men. . . . 
 
Women TrouUed hy Unhclief. 
 
 whicli can only proceed upon the confident i^ect. 
 presumption that, in the eternal conflict between 
 Reason and Faith, Faith is at present under- 
 going a series of defeats, and that Christianity 
 is entangled with such legacies of un-reason from 
 the past that the intractable knot admits of no 
 easy solution, but must be violently cut. Another 
 extremely suggestive phenomenon also points the 
 same way. It appears that great numbers of 
 women nowadays are affected by unbelief: and 
 many a life is made restless and unhappy by the 
 dissatisfaction which arises when such natural 
 and congenial duties as those of teaching young 
 children, visiting the poor, attendance at church, 
 are thwarted by some interior cross-current of 
 thought, whispering doubt and self-suspicion of 
 hypocrisy.^ It is high time, therefore, that 
 
 For tlie man Christ I have infinite respect : the place where 
 man has died for man is holy ground : to that great and serene 
 man I gladly pay the tribute of my admiration and my tears." 
 To one who can say all this, Jesus Himself would have 
 replied, " Thou art not far from the Kingdom of God." 
 
 ^ 1 speak here from personal knowledge. But the experience 
 of hundreds will justify what I say. There is, in these days, 
 an ever-increasing number of highly educated women who 
 deeply lament the difficulties of Christian belief, and who are 
 as far as possible from feeling, with Mrs. Besant, "No religion 
 has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good 
 news of Atheism." Read the Life of Miss Martinecm, the Life 
 of Miss Cavpcntcr, the Life of Ellen Watson, "IVe Tivn'' (a 
 novel), and the Life of Annie Kcary, wlio touchingly asks, 
 
 B 2 
 
Historical Introdiiciion. 
 
 LECT. Christendom aroused itself to grapple boldly 
 
 I. 
 
 with an unsolved problem which is working 
 such mischievous results ; and that the question 
 were honestly asked, and fairly answered, What 
 are the main obstacles, which debar our own- 
 generation from the haii2nness of tranquil 
 Christian belief ? 
 
 Now the first step in this inquiry should be 
 the historical one — How is it that the present 
 failure of belief has come to pass? For if it 
 should appear that the present distress has arisen 
 from no fault of our own, but simply by the lapse 
 of time, and in consequence of the ordinary laws 
 of intellectual progression, the discovery will aid 
 in restoring serenity to troubled minds.^ It will 
 
 " May it not be that the souls which are meant to flower most 
 gloriously towards God have to grope about a long time in 
 doubt and uncertainty?" — (p. 206.) If the Christian clergy 
 have become too feeble or too timid to minister to minds like 
 these, degeneracy must indeed have set in. *'Degeneres animos 
 timor arguit," says Virgil: while a real "faith makes all men 
 brave," says Origen (Cels. i. 11). "I have shrunk from going 
 to clergymen" (said Altiora) ; "they appear to adapt their 
 religion to the social requirements by which they are surrounded, 
 instead of going in for the highest thing, cozUe que coiUc." — 
 (Oliphant's Altiora Peto, i, 190.) But *' Ein wahrer Priester 
 strebt den schlafenden Keim der besseren Menschheitzu wecken, 
 die Liebe zum hoheren zu entziinden, das gemeine Leben in ein 
 edleres zu verwandeln." — (Schleiermacher, Bede iibcr Religion, 
 p. 150.) 
 
 ^ This hopeful feeling seems to have taken possession of many 
 thoughtful minds. "These times of renewiEg and regeneration 
 
Modern Unbelief Natural. 
 
 show how, by causes we could not control, our lkch 
 
 planet has (so to speak) been swept on into new 
 environments; so that, naturally and inevitably, 
 the old bearings have somewhat changed their 
 places, and the old " evidences " have in many 
 cases lost something of their evidential value. 
 It will also show how each successive generation 
 has its own difficulties to encounter. It will re- 
 call to remembrance the fact that, if perplexities 
 about belief form the special trial of our own 
 
 of human nature seem to occur at intervals, according to some 
 law which Science has not yet fathomed. . . . And upon such 
 a period of renovation there are signs that we may now be 
 entering." — (Graham, Creed of Science, 1881, p. 281.) "There 
 never was a time when the fundamental doctrines of Christianity 
 could be more boldly proclaimed, or when they could better 
 secure the respect and arrest the interest of Science." — 
 (Drummond, Natural Laio in the Spiritual World, 7th edition, 
 1884, p. 162.) For this benefit some thanks are due to the 
 much-despised previous century, from which "the nineteenth 
 century has received a rich bequest, though never was an heir 
 more ungi-ateful to his benefactor." — (Strauss, Essays, French 
 trans., p. 60.) Indeed in every man his "last thoughts are 
 but the result of changes dating far back in his own individual 
 history, or having their roots in the modes of mental or vital 
 activity of his ancestors." — (Laycock, Mind and Brain, 2nd 
 edition, 1869, i. 2.) For — to quote the oddest and most piquant of 
 modern books on this subject — "A man's past selves are living 
 in him at this moment, with the accumulated life of centuries. 
 ' Do this, this, this, which we have done and found our profit 
 in it,' cry the souls of his forefathers within him. Faint are 
 the far ones, coming and going as the sound of bells : loud and 
 clear are the near ones. . . . Our oif?i experience indeed ! "' — 
 (Samuel Butler, Life and Hahit, 1878, p. 52.) 
 
Historical Introduction. 
 
 LECT. day, still it is not the first time that Knowledge 
 
 and Faith have been found difficult of adjust- 
 ment, nor the first time that people's moral 
 courage and religious loyalty have been tested 
 by doubt. Nay, more than that : it will reveal 
 how certain generations seem privileged to settle 
 questions that have been accumulating, perhaps, 
 for a thousand years. For just as, watching the 
 play of waves along the shore, we often notice 
 that some rhythmic law of ^veight and impetus 
 not only propels wave after wave in sheets of 
 fretted foam at our feet, but also gathers in each 
 seventh billow (as it is said) all surplus energy 
 and momentum, so we may detect a rhythm in 
 the history of thought. Whence it happens that 
 on the skill and courage and readiness of certain 
 people at certain times may hang suspended the 
 destinies of the whole future and of all mankind. 
 Life is difficult at such epochs. Yet who would 
 not prefer to live at such turning-points in the 
 world's history, and to form part of such an elect 
 generation as that ? What would we not, every 
 one of us, give to have had a share in defending 
 Europe from Asiatic supremacy at Marathon, or 
 in crushing Varus and his imperial legions on the 
 free soil of our Fatherland, or in shattering the 
 Spanish Armada under Queen Ehzabeth 1 Well, 
 in the conflicts of thouixht, too, similar honours 
 
Periods of Perplexity. 
 
 are to be gained, and similar benefits to mankind lect. 
 are to be achieved. In both cases the same 
 qualities are essential to success, viz., confidence 
 in our cause, and self-sacrificing bravery in 
 maintaining it. May we Englishmen of the 
 nineteenth century show as much patience, skill, 
 industry, and courage in this field of mental 
 strife as our countrymen have always hitherto 
 displayed whenever " Duty, stern daughter of the 
 voice of God," has summoned them to personal 
 energy and mutual trust !^ 
 
 (1.) Now on looking back over the annals of the 
 Christian Church, the larger waves of (what may 
 
 1 This new form of '* struggle " which has devolved upon us 
 at the present day strikes all observers. The struggle for sur- 
 vival '* HOW rages as violently and inexorably on the domain of 
 morals as it formerly did on the physical field." — (Buchner, 
 Man in, tlie Past, &c., English trans., 1872, p. 158.) "The 
 Christian faith, in the judgment both of its enemies and of its 
 friends, is at this moment threatened by dangers as formidable 
 as any which it has ever had to confront during the whole 
 course of its history." — (Dale, On the Atonement, 7th edition, 
 1878, p. 27.) But Continental Romanism can never grapple 
 with such dangers as these ; when *' La Science cherche le mot 
 de I'univers, que I'l^lglise Catholique a laisse s'obscurcir." — (E. 
 Burnouf, Science des Heligions, 3rd edition, 1876, p. 432.) It 
 is English Christendom which is called upon to meet this new 
 foe, worthy of its steel. But then it must be fearless. It should 
 take to heart a late warning : " Something has arrested develop- 
 ment. What ? The retrospectiveness, the fear of ceasing to be 
 what it originally was, which seizes an institution when it has 
 begun to be uncertain why it exists."— {JS'atural LcUgion, 1882, 
 p.^223.) 
 
Historical Introduction. 
 
 LECT. be called) her "scientific" controversy seem to 
 
 I. 
 
 have gathered themselves up mainly at four 
 epochs. The first arose so early as the end of the 
 first century, and it taxed severely the skill and 
 courage even of the Apostolic age. It was the 
 great wave of Gnosticism; of which perhaps 
 Marcion, in the second century, is the ablest and 
 most prominent representative. Christ had now 
 come and gone. A quantity of new and surpris- 
 ing facts had, by His appearance, been abruptly 
 added to the world's stock of experiences. And 
 Judaism was content nawely to employ them — as 
 we see so vividly in the writings of St. James, and 
 in most of the early Christian literature — in 
 fugitive, homiletic, and epistolary forms. But no 
 sooner did Christianity come in contact with the 
 acute and logical Greek mind, than it found itself 
 at once in collision with a whole outside world of 
 European philosophies and sciences; and these 
 could not fail to exercise a profound influence 
 upon the method employed by its preachers. 
 Track, for instance, St. Paul's progress westward ; 
 observe the singular transitions of thought which 
 he is undergoing at every step ; contrast the 
 thoroughly Jewish cast of his Epistles to the 
 TJiessalonians with the Greek tone and the philoso- 
 phic colour of his later Epistles to the Bomans, 
 Ephesians and Colossians ; and then bring the last 
 
Science " in the Second Century. 
 
 surviving Apostle, St. John, into tlie field, and lt^ct. 
 notice his " logos doctrine " and his other philoso- 
 phical speculations ; — and we cannot fail to become 
 aware that we see already the first stirrings of the 
 great intellectual Gnostic movement even upon 
 the pages of the New Testament itself. And if 
 we carry our studies a little further on, and open 
 the history of the second century, we discover 
 the movement in its full onward swing. 
 
 Gnosticism was, in fact, a wave of speculation 
 much like that which stirs us at the present day. 
 Christianity had already been morally and spirit- 
 ually accepted by the great mass of those to whom 
 it was preached ; and now it was in process of 
 intellectually establishing itself. It was feeling 
 earnestly around for a suitable body, or logical 
 system of thought, in which to inshrine its spirit, 
 its new emotions, its vague ideas, engendered 
 once for all by the abrupt appearance of Christ 
 upon the world's stage. One thing only could 
 spoil the process : and that was the prevalence of 
 impatience and of self-conceit. And when, at 
 length, they did prevail, then the whole movement 
 went astray and lost itself in wild and futile 
 attempts to clothe Christianity in the motley 
 garments of second- century science. Pairs of 
 ^ons, male and female, were invented : a vast 
 system of emanation was thought out : the 
 
10 nistoriccd Introduction. 
 
 I. 
 
 LECT. personal God became an abstraction, an " abyss," 
 a " silence " : the world was condemned as a huge 
 blunder, the work of a secondary creative power 
 removed by many long stages from God : and its 
 recovery to reason and good order was set in 
 motion by the direct descent of another ^on, 
 Christ, from heaven commissioned by the Supreme 
 BeinsT to counteract and reverse the mistakes of 
 the Demiurge, the inferior god of the Old Testa- 
 ment dispensation. Such wild work as this was 
 rightly characterised by St. Paul as a ''science 
 falsely so called." Its ideas were crude and 
 whimsical; while yet it presumed to give itself 
 the airs of a universal and permanent present- 
 ment of truth. And so, clothing itself in a 
 Christian dress, Gnosticism ventured forth to pro- 
 claim itself to the world as the unadulterated 
 religion of pure reason. 
 
 Confronted for the first time with these strange 
 intellectual pretensions, it is highly interesting 
 and instructive to observe how the Church com- 
 ported herself. And it is satisfactory to find that, 
 guided by the spirit of truthfulness and of toler- 
 ance, she first gladly embraced and imbedded in 
 her system all that was good in Gnosticism ; and 
 then, having done so, was bold to warn and 
 rebuke those who pushed their speculations into 
 extravagance, to announce that the Church 
 
I. 
 
 The Middle Ages. 11 
 
 declined to follow them, and to foretell that lect. 
 Gnosticism, thus taught, was in the fair way to 
 become a '' heresy." Clement of Alexandria, 
 ear]y in the third century, tried his best to re- 
 Christianise Gnosticism, and to secure to the 
 Church the great advantage of an alliance, instead 
 of a warfare, with the science (such as it was) of 
 the day. But his efforts were in vain. The hard 
 intellectual spirit refused the easy yoke of Christ ; 
 and, withdrawing itself erelong in Neo-platonism 
 and Manichseanism, depleted the Church of much 
 intellectual power and prepared for Christendom 
 the lono^ death of " the dark As^es." 
 
 (2.) Pass over a thousand years: and nov/ 
 another wave of controversy with Science has 
 accumulated and must be dealt with. Eleven 
 centuries have come and gone since Christ 
 appeared in the world. And during that vast 
 lapse of time the ancient civilisation, with all its 
 treasures of culture and thought, had died and 
 been buried. The hordes of barbarism had 
 broken in upon its entrenched and imposing- 
 order, and the classic world had gone down in 
 hideous ruin and confusion. But by the end of 
 the eleventh century a new order had sprung up 
 and become established. The feudal and mon- 
 astic systems began to restore peace and set- 
 tled government ; leisure returned and thought 
 
12 Historical Introduction. 
 
 LECT. revived .1 And then, at the fortunate moment, the 
 stores of Eastern learning and of Arabian science 
 were poured out at the feet of the Western 
 nations ; and in Abelard, and many others, a 
 wave of doubtful omen began to raise its threat- 
 ening head, scornful once more of the Church's 
 traditional ways, and threatening another attempt 
 to reconstruct theology upon independent lines, 
 and to elevate the mere fleeting science of a day 
 into a religion for all days. And what was the 
 Church's behaviour now ? It was the same as 
 before. She addressed herself to " refuse the evil 
 
 ^ It is curious to observe how, in unexpected quarters, a 
 tardy justice is being done to the Church, as, in fact, the 
 prudent nurse and not the enraged enemy of Science. " In 
 Religion let us recognise the high merit that, from the begin- 
 ning, it has dimly discerned the ultimate verity, and has never 
 ceased to insist upon it. . . . Each higher religious creed, 
 rejecting those definite and simple interpretations of Nature 
 previously given, has become more religious by doing this." — 
 (H. Spencer, First Princi2)les, 4th edition, 1880, p. 99.) 
 "Whatever Science may have done to confirm man's idea of 
 the unity of Nature, Theology had more to do with it." — (Dulce 
 of Argyll, Unity of Nature, 1884, p. 2.) "There has been a 
 tendency among modern thinkers to dwell upon the greed, the 
 craft, the obscurantism of (so-called) spiritual rule, and to 
 represent the priesthood as the hereditary enemy of progress. 
 It may be asserted, with at least equal truth, that priests have 
 been its chief promoters." — {Westminster Review, October, 1883, 
 p. 422.) And even in Polynesia the fact has been acknowledged. 
 " Ordinairement c'etait ces colleges de pretres qui conservaient les 
 connaissances nautiques et astronomiques vi-aiment remarqua- 
 Ijles." — (Reville, Religions dcsPcupIes non cn-iZm's, 1083, ii. 77.) 
 
Metaphysics, not Physics. 13 
 
 and choose the good." And while enthusiastically i-ect. 
 accepting the new aids of heathen logic and meta- 
 physics which Providence had suddenly placed 
 at her disposal, she declined to embrace or to 
 be responsible for other parts of the Aristotelian 
 philosophy, and especially for his unmanageable 
 physical science.-^ No ; she would wait (if 
 
 ^ It is well known how deeply the school divines were in- 
 debted to Aristotle's logic and metaphysics for their fine-spun 
 Theology. The notion of Transubstantiation, for instance, is 
 wholly derived from that heathen source ; though it may have 
 received an odd sanction from certain epicursean speculations. 
 For instance : " Hominis esse specie Deos, confitendum est ; 
 nee tamen ea species * corpus' est, sed quasi-corpus, — nee habet 
 'sanguinem,' sed quasi-sanguinem." — {CiQ.QT:o, De Nat. Deorum, 
 lib. i. § 18.) But both Innocent III. in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, and Urban V. in the fourteenth, firmly refused leave to 
 the University of Paris to study Aristotle's physical writings. 
 (Bp. Hampden, Bampton Lectures, p. 444.) In sober truth, 
 surely the world was not then ripe for any worthy physical 
 science ; and Dr. Biichner should have withheld his common- 
 place sneer, that " the Christian Middle AgQ was the sworn 
 enemy of all study of nature." — (Animal Physiology, French 
 trans., p. 5.) Grostete, the noble Bishop of Lincoln (11253), 
 especially encouraged the establishment of the Franciscans at 
 Oxford, because of their free cultivation of natural science. 
 His pupil, the celebrated Roger Bacon (tl293), pursued with 
 ardour — though with a wild extravagance which caused him to 
 be charged with " magic " — the study of Nature, the knowledge 
 of whose laws he declared to be "the true magic." — (Laugen, 
 ap. Eistor. Zcitschrift, 1884, p. 442.) In 1312, Pope Clement 
 V, — following Bacon's lead — ordered Hebrew and Arabic (the 
 physician's languages) to be studied in the European universities. 
 And in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII. reformed the Calendar, as 
 Roger Bacon had advised three hundred years before. At 
 
14 Historical Introduction. 
 
 LECT. necessary) for another thousand years. What 
 
 L 
 
 was lapse of time to her ! And can we, looking 
 back from our present scientific vantage-ground, 
 say that such patience was either ill-advised or 
 
 WTonoj ? 
 
 (3.) Pass over another five hundred years, and 
 yet a third tremendous accumulation of threaten- 
 ing Science has to be dealt with. By the end of the 
 sixteenth century the reformation of the Church 
 had been fully accomplished : the New World had 
 been discovered and partly settled : the ancient 
 classical civilisation had once more come forth 
 into vivid light : and every mind that could think, 
 every heart that could feel, throughout all Chris- 
 tendom, was vibrating with pardonable pride at 
 the new powers which mankind had suddenly 
 displayed and the new wonders which God had 
 almost miraculously revealed.^ The time, in short, 
 
 length, in 1620, Francis Bacon published the ripe fruit of a thirty 
 years' study in his Novum Organum, or new method of dealing 
 with Nature ; viz., by ** renouncing notions and beginning to 
 form an acquaintance with things." — {Nov. Org., ed. Pickering, 
 p. 16.) Thus the patience which checked crude efforts till "the 
 fulness of time was come," at last received its reward. 
 
 1 The jo}^, the Kavxvf^is, with which the "Humanists" of 
 the sixteenth century welcomed their emancipation from 
 Scholastic Theology, may be compared with the similar 
 "exultation" of St. Paul and of his school at their emanci- 
 pation from the Jewish Law ; and with the heartfelt thank- 
 fulness which irradiates every modern student of Nature at his 
 emancipation from the dreary formulas of Puritan Divinity. 
 
The Post-Beformation Period. 15 
 
 had come round again for the appearance of the lect. 
 old daiig©*- and the old opportunity — the " danger" 
 
 For the intellectual aspect of this "joy "see Bacon's i\^ov?«?t 
 Organum, Part I — with his remarkable reference to the recent 
 opening-up of "our new Continent."' For its aesthetic aspect, 
 study the Renaissance pictures in the lN(itional Gallery. For its 
 comic aspect, skim through Von Hutten's JEpistolce Obscurorum 
 Virorum and Erasmus' ironical Praise of Folly. At the present 
 day the feelings of non- Christian students seem a little mixed. 
 In Mr. Matthew Arnold they are merely sad : — 
 "The sea of Faith 
 
 "Was once too at the full ; and round Earth's shore 
 
 Lay, like the folds of a bright girdle, furled : 
 
 But now I only hear 
 
 Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar." 
 Prof. Clifford, with all his spring and brightness, owns to a 
 deeper regret : — " The loss of belief is a very painful loss. We 
 have felt, with utter loneliness, that the Great Companion is 
 dead." — {Essays, ii, 247.) Mr. Stuart-Glennie sinks deeper: 
 "Very far are we from being the first who have experienced the 
 agony of discovered delusion." — (In the Morning-land, i. 378.) 
 While the Duke of Somerset confesses to being " excruciated with 
 doubt." — {Modern Scepticism, p .144.) Others again are jubilant. 
 Dr. Biichner cries — and he is followed by Mrs. Besant — "Atheism 
 alone leads to freedom, to reason, to progress." — [Der Goitcs- 
 hegriff, p. 45. ) Some are scornful : — 
 
 " But in the reign of Science you are born. 
 
 Theology, with pomp and riches, yet 
 
 Sits mumbling, droning, in his padded chair, 
 
 Gouty, asthmatic, ailing every way. 
 
 A young audacious voice rings through the land." 
 
 {Evil May-day, Macmillan's Magazine, November, 1878.) 
 and some even are comical : — " Gavi'oche arrivant d'cmblee et 
 avec si peu de peine au dernier mot de la philosophic — c'est 
 bien dur h, penser ! " — (Renan, Souvenirs, 9th edition, p. 155.) 
 Amid all these curiosities of un-Christian emotion, the Christian 
 Student of Nature remains simply calm, thankful, and hopeful. 
 
IG Historical Ivirodiidion. 
 
 LECT. of crude and wild and self-confident attempts to 
 reconstruct Theology from its basis and to elevate 
 the mere ideas of the sixteenth contury into a 
 Religion for all time ; and the " opjDortunity " for 
 weaving into the web of Christian teaching some 
 of the new bright threads that the progress of 
 discovery had placed at the Church's disposal. 
 Around the name of Feaxcis Bacon all our 
 memories of this most deeply important time in- 
 stinctively gather. In his works, and especially 
 in the first part of his Novum Organum, all the 
 stirring thought of the time is mirrored and the 
 best science of the Elizabethan golden-age arrays 
 itself in shapes of brilliant promise for the future.^ 
 But ere long the shadows deepen also. Deism 
 and various other forms of unbelief display them- 
 selves ; and the old error is yet a third time re- 
 peated, in rash attempts to reconstruct a Religion 
 out of the over-estimated data of a transient phase 
 of thought. " Patience ! " was again the warning 
 voice of Christian good sense ; " the sublime and 
 the ridiculous, the rational and the irrational, 
 the splendidly, fruitfully true and the absurdly, 
 desperately false, are never far removed from 
 each other. It were a grievous pity unawares 
 to cross the line that separates them, and by too 
 
 1 See Dean Churcli's brief and admirable Life of Francis 
 Bacon (1881) and criticism of his work. 
 
Our Own Times. 17 
 
 mucli haste and over- confidence now to spoil the i^ect 
 future of the world." But, in spite of all such 
 warnings, the future was (to a great extent) com- 
 promised. Christendom was thoughtlessly riven 
 into a hundred divisions; and seeds of unbelief 
 were sown, which should ruinously fructify in a 
 coming "age of reason," and produce at length 
 the nameless horrors and absurdities of the French 
 Revolution.* 
 
 (4.) And now, in our own time, yet another 
 crisis has gathered, and a similar wave-crest of 
 threatening mischief to Christian belief towers 
 menacingly above all the smaller controversies of 
 the day. For, once more, a great revelation of 
 new truths has been granted to the world ; and, 
 in the renowned name of Darwin, Science 
 
 . ^ "En France on attaqua avec une sorte de fureur la religion 
 chretienne sans cssayer meme de mettre une autre religion a sa 
 place." (De Tocqueville, L'ancicn Regime ct la Levohttion : 3rd 
 edition, p. 251.) Contrast the moderate, regretful, and " almost 
 Christian " tone which, amid the freer air of tlie nineteenth 
 century, characterises even French unbelief. "II est de toute 
 necessite que chacun garde sa foi dans son coeur ; et jDermette 
 a son intelligence de suivre les voies que la raison lui ouvre.'' — 
 (E. Burnouf, Science clcs Religions, 3rd edition, p. 4.) "Jo 
 regrettais par moments de n'etre pas Protestant, afin de pouvoir 
 etre philosophe sans cesser d'etre chretien. Je cherchais a 
 croire ; mais je ne pouvais. Oh oui, mon ami, ces jours conip- 
 teront dans ma vie ; s'ils n'en furent les plus decisifs, ils en 
 furent au moins les plus pcnibles." — (Renan, Souvenirs, 9th 
 edition, pp. 292, 394.) 
 
 G 
 
18 Historical Litrodudion. 
 
 LECT. honours the laborious achievements of a hun- 
 dred patient observers, and susjoects the advent 
 of perhaps a new ReHgion for mankind. The 
 word " religion " may seem a strong one : but it 
 is, I think, justified by the unmeasured language 
 used nowadays by some of Mr. Darwin's most 
 devoted followers — the disciples, as usual, far 
 outstripping the master. For instance, Dr. Blich- 
 ner (the celebrated spokesman of this school in 
 Germany) thus buoyantly unfurls the banner of 
 his crude materialism, and proclaims the ap- 
 proaching conversion of a transient phase of 
 physical science into a Eeligion : " The science- 
 men (he says) of the last generation committed 
 the grave fault of abstaining from generalisation, 
 and contented themselves with the ceaseless ac- 
 cumulation of facts. Nowadays — thanks to the 
 appearance of the Evolution theory — a philo- 
 sophical [he means a theological] movement has 
 been imported into the domain of the natural 
 sciences." ^ And if we ask what religious form 
 
 ^ Thus even Strauss "answers the question, * Ave we still 
 Christians ? ' quite unreservedly, No ; the question, however, 
 * Have we still a religion ? ' with a conditional Yes. It depends, 
 that is to say, whether our feeling of dependence as regards the 
 universe and its laws is to be accounted a * religion ' or not. A 
 cult we shall no longer build upon this feeliug ; but it still has 
 a moral effect and is connected with a certain piety." — Lange, 
 History of Materialism, English trans., 1881, iii. 329.) But some 
 Naturalists, it appears, go further ; and Dr. Lowenthal, at 
 
NatuTc-Worsliirp Proposed. 19 
 
 this new philosophy of Materialism is to take, lect. 
 the answer is given a few pages further back : — 
 " The Sun is the supreme source of all our 
 activity, both physical and intellectual : and this 
 truth of itself suffices to reduce to nothing all the 
 Theological interpretations of the Universe. Yes : 
 were a Keligion of Nature still possible, we could 
 not choose an object more worthy of our worship 
 than the luminary adored by our ancestors." ^ 
 In short; we are invited to return to Baal worship 
 once more 1 But surely that magnificent sweep 
 
 Leipsic, in 1865 tried to estaWisli a '* cogitant" community, 
 with a downright worship of Thought and Knowledge. Dr. 
 Reich, at Neuwied, in 1873, started a sort of "Church of 
 Humanity," with processions, hymns, drums, trumpets, organs, 
 and carillons, under an organised priesthood. {Ibid, p. 295. ) Comte, 
 as we all know, vainly attempted the same kind of absurdity. 
 
 ^ Biichner, Light and Life, French trans., 1883, p. 6. — Con- 
 trast the sober, yet elevated and poetical tone of Professor 
 Tyndall, years before, in his celebrated Lectures on Heat. — 
 (1863, p. 431.) "All terrestrial power is drawn from the 
 Sun. . . . The Sun comes to us as 'heat,' he quits us as 
 ' heat ' ; and between his entrance and departure the multi- 
 form powers of our globe appear. They are all special 
 forms of solar power. Presented rightly to the mind, the dis- 
 coveries and generalisations of modern science constitute a 
 'poem,' more sublime than has, ever yet been addressed to the 
 intellect and imagination of man." Yes, — on account of the 
 enormous and astonishing complexity of its harmonies. But, 
 viewed in relation to the time and the surroundings whence it 
 came, perhaps the primseval "Psalm of the Divine Creation," 
 in the Book of Genesis, is far more wonderful and (in its sim- 
 plicity) equally sublime. 
 
20 Historical Introduction. 
 
 LECT. of Christian thought, which passes at one bound 
 
 beyond, not merely the sun, but the very outer- 
 most star that feebly glimmers in our telescopes, 
 and which disdains the biggest material galaxy 
 of hydrogen, sodium, and iron that ever flickered 
 in the sky as so much " dust of the balance " 
 when compared with the sublime idea of God 
 needs not to lower its triumphant ensign to a 
 religion of dead things, nor to dwarf its stately 
 worship of the Omnipotent and the Eternal into 
 a cultus of the reigning notion of the hour about 
 vibratory movements called " heat." This were 
 indeed to surrender the grandest, the most ex- 
 pansive, and the most supremely rational^ con- 
 ception of the Universe that has ever yet been 
 presented to mankind, in favour of a mere pe- 
 dantry of the laboratory, a religion with as little 
 inspiration in it as that of the Eabbis or the 
 Schoolmen. 
 
 1 All science is, and ought to be, impersonal : all religion is, 
 and must be, personal. It is impossible therefore for Science, 
 by itself, to generate any rational form of Religion ; while 
 Eeligion — superadding (as it does) to the conceptions of Science 
 the notion of Conscious Will in the Universe — redeems these 
 conceptions from the charge of representing the Universe as a 
 dead, mechanical, infra-human thing, and at once makes it 
 human, rational, instinct with consciousness and life. I^Tow 
 this grand thought— embodying the Pantheism of Sjunoza and 
 something more — is expressed by Christianity in its doctrine of 
 the Creation and sustentation of all things by the Divine "Word 
 or Reason, " by whom all things were made." 
 
Tlic Laiv of Recurring Unhelief. 21 
 
 And now one question remains — and it is i^ect. 
 of the deepest importance to both Science and 
 Religion that it should be thought out to a 
 reasonable issue. It is this : By icJiat laio of 
 the human mind is it that these successive epochs 
 of douht occur ? What is the cause, not of the 
 mere daily plash and angry break of trivial 
 controversies, but of the rise and menacing 
 accumulation of these larger and more inter- 
 mittent conflicts ? Are they to be explained as 
 tidal waves of mental oscillation, bearing on their 
 mighty rise and fall the whole tumult of our 
 local storms, and swayed by some external force 
 that is not terrestrial merely, but of a larger and 
 supernatural order ? Or do they obey some 
 natural law of the human mind ? Their laiv, I 
 lelieve, is to he sought for in the natu7ul play and 
 counteraction of tiuo ^wlar forces in the train. 
 For we possess, on the one hand, an analysing, 
 subdividing, restless questioning-poAver in the 
 Intellect; we have, on the other hand, a 
 formative, simplifying, synthetic power in the 
 Imagination. The movements of the intellect 
 are rapid, incessant, mordant, disintegrating, 
 and, by themselves, merely destructive. They 
 are like the unwearied agencies which decompose 
 organic bodies or wear down mountain-chains. 
 Interminable and illimitable investipration is their 
 
22 Historical Introdiiction, 
 
 LECT. proper function ; and without their salutary check 
 forms of thought once established would remain 
 eternally fixed ; customs and dogmas and formulae 
 once accepted would refuse all change and all 
 purification ; and to every offered reform an indo- 
 lent Conservatism would oppose a bar of finahty, 
 and in imperious tones would reply " noii j^os- 
 sumus," — we will not and we can not (except by 
 accumulation of fresh dogmas and formulae) 
 submit to any change. 
 
 Yet, on the other hand, when allowed to act 
 by themselves without restraint from the imagin- 
 ation, the forces of the intellect are irrational 
 and destructive. Let any one study the 
 curious phenomenon of Buddhism — that revolt 
 against the unbridled imaginativeness of Brah- 
 manism by preaching salvation through pure 
 intellectual analysis — and then he will under- 
 stand what injury may be done by a one-sided 
 use of the human faculties.^ For if truth is to 
 be reached, all the human mind, and not merely 
 Jialf of it, must be employed. Action and re- 
 action, analysis and synthesis, diastole and 
 systole, are essential to the healthy working of 
 
 ^ The most easily accessible works on Buddhism are the two 
 slight, but interesting, manuals by Rhys Davids (S.P.C.K.) and 
 Ijy Bishop Titcomb (Religious Tract Society). For further study, 
 consult Hardy's Eastern MonacMsm, Koppen's Buddha, St. 
 Ililaire's Buddhisme, Max MuUer's Sacred Books of the. East, &c. 
 
Common Groimcl at Last. 23 
 
 tlie mind, just as they are to the well-being of lect. 
 the body. 
 
 And so we have reached, at last, the common 
 ground on which both science a,n(l religion may 
 stand together ; we have gained the initial point 
 from which all successful work in either depart- 
 ment must needs take its start. That common 
 ground, that initial point, is FAITH, — faith 
 in the sufficiency of the human mind, and 
 faith in the true and kindly leading of that 
 exterior Cosmic power, which now stimulates our 
 intellect by the revelation of new discoveries, 
 and now calls on our imagination to bestir itself 
 and to re-form its old conceptions in the light of 
 these new discoveries. It is only by honestly 
 acting in this *' faith" that we can each of us 
 " serve our own generation by the wall of God," 
 and can carry into effect our Lord's injunctions 
 to " bring forth, out of the treasures committed to 
 our stewardship, things both new and old." It 
 is by this " faith " that mountains of seeming 
 difficulty are easily removed ; and that, even amid 
 the desert of surrounding scepticism, a highway 
 is prepared for further advances towards the at- 
 tainment of truth. For every argument must begin 
 with some axiom ; and, as the prophet said of old, 
 '' if ye will not helievc, ye shall not be established." ^ 
 
 ^ Isaiah, vii. 0. 
 
II. 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 GOD. 
 
 Colossi ANS i. 15 : "The image of the invisible God." 
 
 LECT. TF the piinciples laid down in the previous 
 JL lecture are correct, and it can be substan- 
 tiated that all rational thinking is invariably 
 the result of two mental factors w^orking har- 
 moniously together, the Intellect and the 
 Imagination — it becomes easy to understand 
 how opposite deflections from reason and good 
 sense may arise on any subject whatever; 
 and, among the rest, on Religion. For, as 
 heathen and Christian thinkers agree in affirming, 
 truth usually lies midway between extreme 
 statements. And so, while one class of errors — 
 pointing towards superstition — w^ill be caused by 
 excessive reliance on the imagination alone, an- 
 other class of errors — pointing towards atheism — 
 will be as certainly generated by too exclusive a 
 
IIow Controversies Arise. 25 
 
 reliance on the bare intellect. In both cases, luct. 
 
 balance and counterpoise are wanting, and one- 
 sidedness is the result. And, inasmuch as the 
 over-imaginative mind is naturally prone to feed 
 itself on thoughts and scenes which afford it 
 nourishment, and so, unawares, to aggravate its 
 own malady ; and the hard intellectual character, 
 scorning the apparent untruthfulness of legend, 
 poetry, and art, is tempted to immerse itself ever 
 deeper in mere criticism and analysis ; it follows 
 that the angle of divergence between these two 
 classes of minds may easily go on widening until 
 reconciliation becomes impossible. And then, 
 perhaps, war is at last declared. Hard words and 
 uncharitable insinuations embitter the conflict. 
 And the result may be, ere long, that violent 
 contrast which shocks the traveller in so many 
 foreign cities, where emblems of gross and puerile 
 fanaticism are flaunted on one side of the street, 
 while a hostile array of atheistic literature and 
 blasphemous caricature is paraded on the other. ^ 
 
 ^ The streets of Brussels were mainly in the writer's thoughts. 
 And there, since these words were written, a most violent conflict 
 has broken out between the ** clerical " and the ** liberal " party. 
 Indeed no country is free from these convulsions which has 
 allowed its Christianity to become (as Coleridge would saj') 
 Petrified. Perpetual self-adaptation to surroundings is the 
 ■nniversal law of life, as Mr. Spencer has well pointed out ; and 
 tliat which refuses to conform to this law is a failure, and is on 
 
 II. 
 
II. 
 
 26 God. 
 
 LECT. Happy those nations and churches that are wise 
 enough to soften the asperities of such a conflict ; 
 to reform with bold fidelity whatever from time 
 to time may on either side need reforming ; and, 
 by courtesy and mutual tolerance, to maintain on 
 foot, that surest guarantee of peace and national 
 stability, a large central body of fairly unanimous 
 opinion, midway between smaller extreme parties 
 of irreconcilable violence and of extravagant 
 dogjinatism. 
 
 But this inestimable blessing can only be 
 secured at one price. There must be sincere and 
 repeated efforts at a mutual understanding. And, 
 therefore, while "physicians"^ are bound, for 
 
 its way to extinction. Dean Stanley gives a curious account of 
 the llussian "Starovers," or Dissenters from the Greek Church, 
 who take their stand on alosolute immobility. — {Eastern Church, 
 p. 471.) And in England the " seventh-day Baptists, " and other 
 religious societies, present the same melancholy spectacle. But 
 even St. Paul became "all things to all men, that he might 
 save some." 
 
 ^ It were very convenient if this word could be restored to its 
 original meaning, and could take the place of "scientist," 
 "philosopher," "naturalist," "professor of physical science,'' 
 and other cumbrous or ambiguous phrases ; and could hence- 
 forth express simply " a student of Nature." A beginning has 
 already been made, for instance, by Biichner {Light and Life, 
 French trans., p. 202) and by others. It is obvious that Law, 
 Physic, and Divinity still fairly represent — tliough viewed on 
 their practical and useful side — the three great departments of 
 study ; viz. the ways of man, of nature, and of God : and that 
 these three words exhaust all the possibilities of human know- 
 
DiUy of Conciliation. 27 
 
 their part, to pursue science without unmannerly lect. 
 assaults on religion, "theologians''" are equally 
 bound, on their part, to put no irritating obstacles 
 in the way of science. Their duty is rather to 
 irradiate with a touching human beauty, and to 
 explain in terms of human morality, that vast 
 un-human, inscrutable universe, whose structure 
 science has laid bare.^ For the work of religion 
 
 ledge. For, with every respect for the subtle and thoughtful 
 writer known as "Dionysius the Areopagite," it is impossible 
 to think that "what the doctors have seen by a divine intuition " 
 concerning the Angelic Hierarchy can be accounted as any 
 certain information about another world. 
 
 ^ How any naturalist, with a heart to feel for others' suffer- 
 ings, can study Nature's ways without craving for some extra- 
 neous explanation of her " in-humanity, " is a mystery beyond 
 solution. For, as Kant long ago truly remarked, " the study 
 of nature, by itself, leads to no theological results." — {Critik of 
 Pure Reason, p. 390.) And thinkers like Schopenhauer and 
 J. S. Mill concur with the ancient gnostics in feeling the evils 
 of the world to be a most terrible enigma for man to contem- 
 plate. The latter bluntly declares that '* nearly all the things, 
 which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, 
 are Nature's everyday performances." — {Essays on Religion, 
 p. 28.) Take the insect world : Darwiti " found on one sundew- 
 leaf the remains of thirteen insects. The number thus annually 
 slaughtered must be prodigious." — [Insectivorous Plants, p. 2.) 
 ** Viviparous flies produce 22,000 at a birth ;" soon, but for 
 wholesale destruction, " we should have 2,000 decillions." — (Van 
 Bryssal, Population of an Old Pear-tree, p. 165. ) Or take the ani- 
 raal world : " Early in the autumn, swarms of lemmings [a sort 
 of rat, a few inches long] mount the steep slopes of Heimdals-ho, 
 on their way to the coast ; where the harrassed crowd — thinned 
 by the unceasing attacks of the wolf, the fox, the dog, and even 
 
28 God. 
 
 LECT. is very grently imaginative Avork. Its function is 
 to idealise and to personify. But the hard 
 scientific intellect is, by itself, impotent to ad- 
 vance one step beyond "structure." Dissection 
 (so to speak) of the great dead body of the Cosmos 
 is its proper duty and delight. Anatysis is its 
 work ; and it becomes uneasy in the presence of 
 anything that seems to defy analysis. Tlie very 
 sixty-three elementary substances are regarded 
 but as conquests deferred, virgin-peaks that the 
 climber has set his heart on one day scaling. 
 
 the reindeer, pursued by the eagle, hawk, and owl, and never 
 spared by man himself, yet still a vast multitude — plunges into 
 the Atlantic Ocean and perishes." — [Popular Science Review, 
 April, 1877.) Add to this the graphic but harrowing account 
 of the seeding of the bamboo, and its results, in Robinson's 
 My Indian Garden (p. 193), and study the multifarious engines 
 of death and destruction, the ** tooth and claw," to be seen in 
 any Natural History Museum. It is idle to console oneself with 
 Schopenhauer's easy dictum, '* Hier wirkt der "Wille in seiner 
 Urspriinglichkeit — also erkenntnisslos. ]\Ian versteht die 
 Sj)rache der Natur nicht, weil sie zu einfach ist." — [Uber den 
 Willen in der Natur, 4th edition, pp. 55, 58.) It is still idler 
 to regard, with J. S. Mill, " Nature and life as the product of a 
 struggle between contriving Goodness and an intractable material, 
 or a Principle of evil, as was the doctrine of the ^Manichaeans." 
 — {Essays, p. 116.) Unless we give up the problem altogether, 
 it is far more rational to " humanise " the inhuman j)henomenon 
 by carrying it boldly up into the conscious, but inscrutable Will 
 which, for ends unknown to us, determines all things. {Eo7n. 
 viii. 20.) Such "subjection in hojie" is within the experience 
 of every child, every servant, every subject ; the other explana- 
 tions fall outside all human experience and verification. 
 
Intellect and Imagination. 29 
 
 Nay, even the ultimate atoms of matter them- lect. 
 selves are viewed with suspicion as tainted with 
 the heresy of finality, and as making pretensions 
 to an inviolability which it is not in the habit of 
 science to accord to any person or thing whatever. 
 Thus the work of the pure Litellect is throughout 
 analytical and discriminative. Like that kindred 
 but vaster cosmic power which is described in 
 Hebrews iv. 12 — it is ''quick and powerful and 
 sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even 
 to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of 
 the joints and marrow." And whenever, weary 
 of its eternal investigations, it woukl pause and 
 clothe with shapeliness and beauty its heaps of 
 crude materials, it is obliged at once to awaken 
 its companion and to borrow help from the 
 Imagination. It must summon that wondrous 
 artist which can restore unity to the incoherent 
 mass of details, can transmute a sequence of 
 phenomena into a *' law," a stream of tendencies 
 into a " purpose," a succession of changes into an 
 " evolution," a series of events into a " history ; " 
 and, in short, can make dead things live. 
 
 But how can the imagination make dead things 
 live ? Solely by the magic of one simple process : 
 hy making them human, and so bringing them 
 home (by the touch of kindred) to the intuitive 
 comprehension and sympathy of our minds. How 
 
30 God. 
 
 LECT. else can anything in heaven or earth be brought 
 home to iis, or be put in communion with us, 
 than by making it human ? ^ Take, for instance, 
 the arrow-headed strokes on an undeciphered 
 Assyrian tablet. They can, of course, be num-- 
 bered, be measured, be copied, be compared. 
 But meanwhile all is dark, dumb, devoid of 
 interest, a series of hard, dead lines. But, in a 
 moment perhaps, certain sequences dawn out into 
 a human name : the light then grows apace : the 
 stone becomes vocal, historical : and ere long, in 
 known terms of man's life and man's way of 
 acting and thinking, a buried and forgotten race 
 becomes intelligible and alive again to commune 
 with their brother men.^ Precisely in the same 
 
 ^ The same tliouglit seems to have occurred to the perverted 
 mind of Schopenhauer. " Unsere Bewunderung der unendlichen 
 Vollkommeuheit und Zweckmassigkeit in den Werken der Natur 
 beniht im Grunde darauf, dass wir sie im Sinn unserer AYerke 
 betrachten." — ( TFille in der Natxir, p-. 55.) But from want of 
 %ny faith in the reLative veracity of our concej)tions, **what 
 might have been for his wealth becomes to him an occasion of 
 falling ; " and refusing (as it were) to see with the aids assigned 
 for seeing, he is of course unable to see any tiling at all. 
 Floundering in a similar abyss of hopeless scepticism as to the 
 trustworthiness of our faculties, one man believes in *' transub- 
 stantiation," while another cries that "the heavens declare 
 the glorj'-" of no one beyond Kepler and Copernicus. — [Cf. 
 Strauss, A. und N. Glattbe, p. 216.) 
 
 ^ See the deeply interesting exhumation of Hittite history 
 described in Sayce's Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, 
 Religious Tract Society, 1884. 
 
Eolo Imagination Wot-Jcs. 81 
 
 II. 
 
 way, in Geology, the testimony of the rocks to lect. 
 ancient forms of animal life, and to the long 
 history of our planet, dawned out upon the last 
 generation. At first the note-books of ob- 
 servers were filled with dead intellectual facts, 
 to which no rational meaning could be given. 
 But at last the imag^ination awoke to clothe it 
 all in human forms and to give it living touch 
 Avith the human mind. And then dead rocks 
 became "strata," as though it were of human 
 masonry ; slant surfaces became " tilted," as 
 though with some giant's upheaval ; crushed and 
 shattered skeletons were repaired, and a kind 
 of human " life " was imagined back into them, 
 like the life which we feel impelled to attribute 
 to the kindred animals around us. In short, 
 Geology became possible solely by reducing into 
 terms of our own inward experience the outside 
 facts of dead Nature, and by clothing non-human 
 phenomena with a human meaning.^ Once more, 
 
 ^ First attempts, in science as well as elsewhere, will often 
 provoke a smile. Thus the earliest efFort to "humanise" the 
 occurrence of shells on mountain heights was to suppose them 
 floated there, like Noah's ark, by the deluge. Then came 
 Voltaire's celebrated attempt to discredit the deluge by supposing 
 the shells dropped by pilgrims from the East. Then the jocose 
 side of human nature was utilised by attributing the shells to a 
 freak or "practical joke " of JSature. Lastly, the truth began 
 to dawn. — (See Lyell, Principles of Geology, 7th edition, p. 58 : 
 or Miss Buckley's Short History of Natural Science, p. 214.) 
 
82 God. 
 
 LECT. in Astronomy, what caused Newton to start from 
 his desk in such a state of mental agitation that 
 his trembling fingers refused to draw his long- 
 accumulated piles of dumb and senseless figures 
 out to their now foreseen conclusion ? It was 
 simply that a human meaning had suddenly 
 dawned upon the arithmetical chaos and had 
 transformed it into Cosmos ; that the notion of a 
 mutual drawing together as men know the sen- 
 sation, and in proportion to mass and distance 
 as men w^eisfh and measure such thino^s, had 
 seized (like resurrection) upon the senseless facts. 
 The Solar System, in short, had abruptly become 
 intelligible, simply because it had (in a w^ay) 
 become human. 
 
 Such illustrations might be multiplied to any 
 extent that the argument might require, and 
 proofs might be drawn from every department 
 of physical science.^ But the samples now given 
 
 ^ No more striking instance of the success which attends this 
 "humanising" of Nature could be found than is presented in 
 a charming little book lately published by Mr. Taylor, and 
 entitled (oddly enough) The Sagacity and Morality of Plants. 
 Writers of a less popular kind often think it necessary to pause 
 occasionally, when using similar language, and to deprecate being 
 taken au scricux. But they are obliged to use such language, 
 nevertheless, on every page if they would be either interesting 
 or intelligible. Even Vignoli, who would d€;grade this action 
 of the ftincy to a mere bestial instinct derived from our ape-like 
 ancestors, and who glorifies Science as the *' depersonification of 
 
Antliropomoiyliism " Necessary. 
 
 are probably sufficient to carry conviction to every lect. 
 
 thoughtful mind, and to establish the axiom that 
 without " anthrojDomorphism " every science re- 
 mains barren, and its results are inconceivable 
 to our minds. 
 
 (2.) And if so, we must now gird up our atten- 
 tion and make an effort to ascend from these 
 lower ranges of study to that loftiest pinnacle of 
 all earthly thinkmg to which Religion invites 
 us. For to this height, too, the universal prin- 
 ciple we are now in possession of will accompany 
 us, and will render our course intelligible and 
 secure. It v/ill show us how to deal even with 
 that fundamental question which lies at the 
 
 myth," complains that scientific men "regard 'laws' as sub- 
 stantial entities." — {Myth and Science, Intern, series, 1882, 
 p. 195.) The fact is, they cannot help it. And though Plato, 
 long ago, led the way in describing "the processes of measuring 
 and counting and weighing, as aids towards dispelling theso 
 tricks of fancy " — {Rcpiiblic, Euglish trans., p. 602) ; yet even 
 the prosaic Baxter allows " it must be a point of spiritual 
 prudence to call in [pictorial] sense to our assistance " — (Saints' 
 Best, p. 251) ; while Renan declares that art "a, de nos jours, 
 ime fonction religieuse superieure a celle du theologien " — 
 {Etudes, p. 430), and Herbert Spencer, confessing that "very 
 likely there will ever remain a need to give shape to that inde- 
 finite sense of an ultimate existence which forms the basis of our 
 intelligence," unnecessarily adds, "We shall not err in doing 
 this, so long as we treat every notion we tlius form as merely a 
 symbol, utterly without resemblance to that for which it stands." 
 — {First Principles, p. 112.) "Why should we thus go out of our 
 way consciously to spoil, for ourselves and for others, the power 
 of the symbol to suggest to us that of which it is the symbol ? 
 
 D 
 
 II. 
 
34 God. 
 
 LECT. bottom of all Theology and determines its whole 
 
 II. 
 
 course — the question of the existence and attri- 
 butes of God. Of course, if there be no God 
 theology comes to an end, and all our religion is 
 vain. For we cannot make up our minds, with 
 Dr. Biichner and the ancient Phoenicians, to wor- 
 ship heat : nor can we seriously pretend, with 
 the Positivists, to adore abstract Humanity. No 
 doubt, we are grateful to mankind for all their 
 ffood work in clearins^ forests, destrovingr monsters, 
 and enduring innumerable sanguinary conflicts to 
 secure the survival of ourselves upon these fair 
 fields of earth. But science discloses to us in- 
 terminable periods of time before Humanity 
 existed at all. And far behind Hercules and 
 Cecrops, and the whole calendar of primjsval bene- 
 factors to society, there stretch out enormous 
 spaces wherein Nature alone, without man, held 
 sway, and Avhere accordingly the Christian and 
 the Positivist part company. For what is a 
 "religion" worth which cannot see behind the 
 advent of Man upon the Globe; which cannot 
 idealise and personify the Universal Force itself; 
 and cannot even echo such old-world thoughts as 
 that " man is the measure of all things/' and that 
 human reason (A-0709) sits at the right hand of 
 Cosmic power, except by abolishing the idea of 
 God and bidding us worship Man ? 
 
Worship of " Ilmnanity'' Impossible. 35 
 
 No : seriously doubt the existence of God, and l^ct. 
 
 religion — in any rational sense of tlie word — must 
 
 come to an end. The poetry of the world is then 
 
 gone : and prose reigns supreme. All hope of 
 
 idealising Nature's unity, and of bringing it home 
 
 in human attributes to our human imagination, 
 
 is at an end. Frittered into a multitude of 
 
 details, " the wood cannot be seen for the trees : " 
 
 the city cannot be grasped because of its houses : 
 
 the Almighty cannot be discerned because of His 
 
 works. "And then" (as an eloquent writer has 
 
 lately described it) "theories are rejected one by 
 
 one ; the great books are returned sadly to their 
 
 shelves : and at lens^th conflicting^ truths, like the 
 
 beams of light in the laborator^^-experiment, 
 
 combine to make total darkness in the mind." ^ 
 
 Yes — says an Atheist who had passed through 
 
 ^ Drummond, Natural Law in the Sinritual World, 7th 
 edition, p. 237. This singular and eloquent book has attained a 
 great popularity ; but every thoughtful reader of its laboured 
 argumentation feels temj)ted to exclaim, as he approaches the 
 ultimate issue — " Nascetur ridiculus mus." What ! only those 
 immortal who are " converted," in the Presbyterian sense of the 
 word ! It is perfectly easy to make Scripture texts seem to 
 countenance any theory whatever — even the Anglo-Israel craze. 
 And, as the earliest Latin Father pointed out 1700 years ago, 
 "Nihil proficit congressio Scripturarum nisi plane ut aut 
 stomachi quis ineat eversionem, aut cerebri ^ [A warfare of 
 Scripture-texts sends a man either off his head or off his 
 temper.] (Tertullian, Prosscri^^, § 16.) In f;ict, "Triigt der 
 heutige Leser ebensoviel in Sie hinein, als er aus Ihr ent- 
 nimmt." — (Strauss, Alte und Neue Glauhe, 4tli edition, p. 301.) 
 
 d2 
 
36 God. 
 
 LECT. all these dismal experiences — " we have lived 
 to see the sun shine out of an emj)ty heaven, 
 to light up a soul-less earth : we have felt with 
 utter loneliness, that the Great Companion is 
 dead." ^ 
 
 Is there, then, a God; or is there not? Let 
 us first inquire why, on a sudden, in these days, 
 such a question as this should press seriously for 
 an answer? It is not necessary on the present 
 occasion to dwell on the prevalence of one 
 '* obstacle to belief" which, if it is not founded on 
 some deeper perplexity, is hardly worthy of seri- 
 ous mention, — I mean, impatience aroused by the 
 inadequate language about God habitually em- 
 ployed by many Christian teachers. All our 
 language upon such a subject must, surely, be 
 utterly inadequate. And, in addressing the igno- 
 rant and childlike, there is absolute necessity 
 for adapting thought and language to their needs.^ 
 
 1 Prof. Clifford, Essays, ii., 247. 
 
 - At the same time, I must honestly confess that I think 
 much of the language which religious people use — amid the 
 culture and knowledge of the present day — about Almighty 
 God, is highly imj)rudent and almost unpardonable. It is of 
 the first necessity, at the present day, that Christian teachers 
 should exi:)and and elevate their whole conception of what the 
 divine agency in the universe is like. Whatever their language 
 may be, or whatever the symbols they habitually employ, their 
 ideas about God should soar above — not sink below — those of the 
 ordinary students and admirers of Nature ; and they should 
 sometimes allow it to be seen that such is the case. To be 
 
" Evil " InexijlicaUe on any Theory. 37 
 
 II. 
 
 Nor can I think worthy of much attention another i^ect. 
 obstacle which, however real and solid, is not 
 peculiar to Christianity nor characteristic of the 
 present day, — I mean the inexplicable mystery 
 of the existence of evil. Some philosophers have 
 indeed persuaded themselves that the theory of 
 " Evolution " explains away this mystery. They 
 hold that, since we partly see how conflict and 
 death issue in the improvement of the world, 
 therefore suffering and degradation are sufficiently 
 
 circLimscribecl, for instance, in thinking about the supreme ador- 
 able Power that determines all things by mere analogies derived 
 from Oriental despotisms — such as we read of in Herodotus or the 
 Book of Esther — is not only contrary to the Christian faith, as 
 expressed in the Athanasian Creed, but is contrary to common 
 sense and common prudence. Why should we give occasion to 
 the enemies of God to blaspheme ? The Creator is represented, 
 says Haeckel, as "an almighty man who plans and constructs a 
 variety of toys." — {History of Creation, i., p. QQ.) "Voltaire," 
 says Dr. Bilchner, "taught that ' Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faut [for 
 political reasons] Tin venter ; ' and RobesiJierre, with great pomp 
 restored the Supreme Being, precisely as one sets up or de- 
 thrones an earthly king. " Gott spielt dabei die Eolle eines 
 Popanzes oder Polizei-biittels, welcher stets mit aufgehobener 
 Ruthe vor den Mencheu steht und ihnen wie bosen Kindern 
 droht : Wenn ihr nicht artig seyd, so werde Ich euch an mich 
 denken lehren ! " — {Dcr Gottas-hegriff, 1874, p. 56.) In another 
 work, criticising certain notions about Pantheism pointing to 
 Revolution and Theism to Absolute Monarchy, he makes a 
 touching appeal to the Christian clergy : " We should believe in 
 the possibility of a peaceful issue, if it were possible for the 
 clergy and for statesmen, instead of following their present 
 ways, to take an intermediate course between these extremes." 
 —{Science and Nature, French trans., i. 15.) 
 
38 Ood. 
 
 LECT. accounted for ; and, whether all be for the best or 
 "' not, that we at least know the reason why we 
 are so miserable. The solution of the enigma (if 
 it be a solution) is welcome to Christians, so far 
 as it goes ; for, to that extent, it aids them to 
 justify the ways of God towards men and towards 
 the other creatures that are sensitive of pain. 
 But, in point of fact, it leaves the difficulty 
 precisely where it was before. It explains indeed 
 how a great many evils are the outcome of certain 
 laws — laws of " struggle for existence," of " sexual 
 selection," of '' survival of the fittest " — but it in 
 no way explains how or why such laws of sutfering 
 and waste ever came to be imposed upon the 
 universe. To that insoluble question the reason 
 of man has but two possible modes of reply. 
 One is, the despair and pessimism of Schopen- 
 hauer — who holds (to use popular language) that 
 the world was created by the devil. The other is, 
 the belief and hope of St. Paul — who trusts, in 
 spite of many perplexities, that all things are 
 sustained and governed by God, who is Love. 
 In short, St. Paul relegates us, once more, to Faith 
 — to a moral solution of obstinate intellectual 
 difficulties — as the only outlet to confidence and 
 peace that is open to faculties so limited as ours ; 
 and St. John's position is anticipated, that there 
 is only one way of mastering the world and 
 
Materialism a Real Obstacle. 89 
 
 II. 
 
 surmounting its obstacles, and that is by the l^ct. 
 ethical intuitions of a well-trained conscience.^ 
 
 Meanwhile, there is undoubtedly one real 
 obstacle to the acceptance of a Christian belief 
 in God, which has in our day assumed a large 
 and menacing aspect. It is the philosophy of 
 Materialism. On not a few minds of the highest 
 order — especially among those who have given 
 themselves with a noble self-devotion to the 
 study of Nature — a strong suspicion of the all- 
 
 ^ This necessity of "Faith," i.e. of moral serenity and sta- 
 bility, as a preliminary to intellectual knowledge — though denied 
 by hard thinkers like Professor Clifford — (^5sa?/s, ii. 219), was 
 strongly felt by able men like Clement of Alexandria [Strom., 
 vii. p. 732), Origen (c. Cclsum, i. 11), and Anselm (Cwr Lcus 
 Homo, i. 2), who states the matter tersely, thus : " Credo ut 
 intelligam." He means, there is a certain atmosphere, a certain 
 climate, which is essential — in Theology, as in every other 
 branch of knowledge — to productiveness. " We are warned by 
 Professor Eamsay that a long process of geological education is 
 required to realise the conception ' of denudation.' " — {Scq)ticism 
 in Geology, 2nd edition, 1878, p. 87.) "At first the mind 
 refuses to take in revealed facts : but by degrees the steady 
 contemplation of these facts so strengthens and expands the 
 intellectual powers, that where truth once could not find an 
 entrance, it eventually finds a home." — (Professor Tyndall, 
 Lecture at Royal Institution, June 9, 1876.) "Till we accept the 
 faiths which our faculties postulate, we can never Tcnoiu even the 
 sensible world ; and when we accept them, we shall know much 
 more." — (J. Martineau, in Contemporary Review, March, 1876.) 
 " It is the inclination and tendency of the heart which finally 
 determines the opinions of the mind." — (Luthardt, Funda- 
 mental Triiths of Christiamty, English trans., p. 25.) 
 
40 G-od. 
 
 LECT. sufficiency of "matter" to explain the universe 
 "' has laid a powerful hold. It is seen that all 
 phenomena are, in some way, associated with 
 matter: it is believed that matter, in an atten- 
 uated form, fills all space, and that across a 
 vacuum no message of any kind can reach us : 
 and it is alleged that, apart from the aid of 
 certain highly composite molecules of matter, 
 neither consciousness nor thought is known to 
 exist. Hence the im -material is confounded with 
 the non-existent. " Apart from matter, there is 
 no such thing as force, or movement, or tension, 
 or resistance." ^ " The profession of a materialist 
 faith is, at the present day, no mere presentiment 
 or prophecy; but the result of a deeply-rooted 
 conviction." 2 "The theologians have their 
 dogmas ; and we have ours. They are these : 
 {a) matter has existed from eternity; (h) out of 
 this the world has formed itself; (c) from its 
 inherent qualities the changeless laws have 
 emanated by which the world is maintained. 
 Nowhere do we find any place for God, . . . 
 your ' God ' is nothing else than a personification 
 of forcer ^ 
 
 ^ Biicliner, Light and Life, French trans., p. 124. 
 " Moleschott, Circulation of Life, French trans., ii., p. 57. 
 3 Hartmann, God and Science, ii., p. 72; of. ''Darwinism," 
 pp. 22 and 14. 
 
"Matter'' and '''Force" a Dualism. 41 
 
 But observe, we have there, in that last word, lect. 
 what Aristotle would call a fi€Td^acn<; eh aXXo 
 yivo^ : in other words, we have that fruitful 
 parent of all mystification and fallacy, the un- 
 noticed substitution of a nevj idea for the one 
 originally under discussion. "Matter" certainly 
 is one tiling ; and " materialism " ought to mean 
 the acceptance of matter as a sufficient explana- 
 tion of all phenomena in heaven and earth. But 
 " matter " and " force " surely are tivo things, not 
 one thing. For nobody would undertake to maintain 
 that a substance and the various qualities — often 
 fusfitive and successive — which attach to the 
 substance, are absolutely one and indistinguish- 
 able. No one would say that iron and the force 
 which expanded and coloured and liquefied it, 
 were one and the same thing. No one would 
 assert that an oratorio was identical with so many 
 pages of music and so many yards of catgut and 
 brass-tubing. Nor can this fatal objection be 
 evaded by pleading that the word " matter " has 
 nowadays assumed a wider meaning ; and that it 
 now embraces all the " forces," latent or active, 
 which from age to age it may evolve. For this 
 only pushes the question a stage further back ; 
 the intellect at once busies itself to analyse this 
 still more wonderful " matter " again into its com- 
 ponent parts: viz. (1) substance, (2) qualities; 
 
42 God. 
 
 LECT. and so the Dualism — which was conjured so 
 
 II. 
 
 deftly away — is instantly restored. It were 
 better, therefore, to retain the old words ; to say 
 that matter is one thing and force another 
 thing ; to believe, with Mr. Spencer, that there 
 is " a power which the Universe manifests to 
 us " ; 1 and to hold, with Dr. Biichner, that 
 ** all the way-posts point to one goal — the unity 
 of matter, the unity of force." ^ And if this 
 Dualism — which first sums up all the sixty-three 
 elements into one word " matter,'' and then all 
 the eight forms of motion into one word "force " 
 — be an accepted fact, then the Atheist (it seems) 
 should come over to our side. For (as Mr. Brad- 
 laugh says), "It is necessary that every form of 
 Dualism should be rejected. ... It is only by 
 reaching unity that we can have a reasonable 
 conclusion. . . . Either Atheism or Theism must 
 be the true doctrine of the Universe."^ Cer- 
 tainly : the mind cannot rest until it attains the 
 idea of unity. The ascertained Duality, there- 
 fore, of matter and of force must needs find its 
 point of unity a stage higher still ; and so we are 
 led to the only further point in which these and 
 all other lines converge in absolute unity — the 
 ultimate idea of God. Theism, therefore, and not 
 
 1 Spencer, First Principles, p. 46. 
 
 2 Light and Life, p. 73. ^ Pica for Atheism, p. 23. 
 
Human Knowledge only Relative. 43 
 
 Atheism, alone satisfies the human mind, and turns lect. 
 out to be the true theory of the universe. 
 
 (3.) But why (it may be asked) should that 
 only which satisfies the human mind be regarded 
 as true ; and that which leaves it dissatisfied and 
 restless be rejected as false ? This (as everybody 
 knows) is the standing question of Philosophy. 
 And it were well that it should nowadays be 
 answered out of hand, and be finally laid at rest. 
 For, after all that has been written and thought 
 and said for ages upon the subject, there really 
 can no longer be any reasonable doubt about the 
 answer, nor any hesitation in affirming plainly, 
 that the huyiian mind has nothing whatever to do 
 with absolute and outside truth : that it is but a 
 mirror,^ constructed to image forth the universe 
 in a manner impressive and useful and delight- 
 ful to us ; and that its presentment, therefore, 
 is relative, not absolute, truth. And, since we can 
 never get behind ourselves, cannot see except 
 with the eye, nor think except with the brain, it 
 
 ^ " Ulilich, in a pamj)hlet penetrated by the noblest feeling 
 for truth, calls religion ' the science of sciences ; ' he explains 
 truth as * the reflection of reality, of the leal world with its 
 things and forces, laws and processes, in the soul of man.'" — 
 (Lange, Hidory of Materialism, iii., p. 284.) *' The human mind 
 is always, in some degree, a reflecting surface (as it were) for 
 the verities of the unseen and eternal world." — (Duke of Argyll, 
 Unity of Nature, 1884, p. 122.) 
 
44 God. 
 
 LECT. is obvious that the very first and most essential 
 
 II. 
 
 act in all our mental work must be (as was before 
 pointed out) an act of pure Faith — -faith in the 
 sufficiency of our faculties, faith in the approxi- 
 mate veracity (for all practical purposes) of our 
 mental mirror, faith in the gift we possess of 
 interpreting all things in terms of our own mind, 
 complete in its triple functions of Intellect, 
 Imagination, and Conscience. 
 
 Any one can test the reasonableness of this 
 Faith for himself. Take any subject you please, 
 and think it out. Reflect, for instance, on the 
 law of gravitation : and first try to disbelieve the 
 intellectual veracity of such a notion as "the 
 square of the distance " — instantly Newton's dis- 
 covery tumbles into ruins, and chaos is reinstated 
 in our conception of the universe. Disbelieve 
 next (as one might easily do, if cynically disposed) 
 the imaginative picture of two great globes " pull- 
 ing at " each other, or " being weighed " against 
 each other, or as escaping a fatal shock by cen- 
 trifugal flight — instantly you are back among 
 columns of dead figures again, and your supposed 
 brilliant acquisition becomes dust and ciphers in 
 your hands. Or throw scorn, lastly, on the moral 
 facet of your mental mirror ; smile sadly away 
 any notion it may suggest of a good and serious 
 " purpose " in all this reign of law : let haphazard 
 
Hence " Faith " a Prime Necessity. 45 
 
 be king ; or, worse, let malignity be supposed to lect. 
 have set all things in motion, and "gravita- 
 tion" to be nothing better than an accursed 
 clockwork set going for tlie production of the 
 utmost possible confusion, misery, and ruin — and 
 then, once more, Newton's splendid discovery 
 collapses. It is rejected by the common-sense of 
 mankind. For men refuse with healthy intuition to 
 see in this wonderful universe either a contempt- 
 ible work of blind chance or a hideous reign of 
 infinite and almighty malice. " Rather (say they) 
 we will wait for further information ; and mean- 
 vrhile, ' in patience possess we our souls.' " 
 
 Thus it appears that even within the narrow 
 illuminated zone within which real knowledge can 
 be attained, and where Science is most at home. 
 Faith in the veracity of our mental faculties — ■ 
 however limited and relative all their knowledge 
 may be — is the one essential condition of success. 
 How much more, when we look forth at either 
 frontier of clear consciousness into the darkness 
 and mystery beyond I For, as Krishna says in the 
 ancient Hindu poem, '' All things which exist are 
 invisible in their primal state, visible in their 
 intermediate state, and again invisible in their 
 final state." ^ And, as Mr. Spencer says to-day, 
 " xilike in the external and the internal worlds, 
 ^ Thomson's Bhagavat-gita, p. 1 3. 
 
46 God. 
 
 LECT. the man of science finds himself in the midst of 
 perpetual changes, of which he can discover 
 neither the beginning nor the end."^ Every- 
 where, then, we are met by the imperative 
 necessity of Faith — and most of all Avhen we con- 
 template that pictured sheet (as it were) which 
 our mind presents to us as the boundary of our 
 conscious knowledge, whereon is projected a brief 
 foreshortened summary, for practical religious 
 purposes, of the great unknown which lies 
 beyond. When, therefore, on that pictured screen 
 we recognise, with the vast majority of mankind, 
 the solemn, awful figure of an unknown Povxr, 
 one and harmonious behind all ceaseless play of 
 change ; when we trace there the lineaments of 
 an unfathomable Wisdom, guiding, evolving, and 
 balancing all that exists ; and when we read there 
 a firm, calm Will, reaching ends by certain 
 selected ways and steadily evolving the mor6 
 perfect from the less perfect, order out of chaos, 
 and good out of evil ; we are not to be deterred 
 by any foolish fear of " anthropomorphism " from 
 accepting, here too, with confidence such concep- 
 tions as the human imagination is irresistibly im 
 polled to form. 2 We combine the triple impression 
 
 * Spencer, First Trinci'ples, p. ^^. 
 
 " Ta e^Srj tcDj/ Q^S}v acpofxalovciv eavroTs ol &vQpooiroi. — (Arist. 
 Polit., i., 2.) **If there be a God at all, it is manifest to 
 
''Let Each he Persuaded in his Own Mind!' 47 
 
 made upon us into a superior unity. And, falling lect. 
 low in adoration, we confess, in some stammering 
 form of utterly inadequate human speech, the 
 mysterious jDresence of God. 
 
 Let him that can live without any such 
 awakened consciousness of God, let him that can 
 say, " I know not what you mean by God : I am 
 without the idea of God," try to live his life 
 worthily that way.^ The animals around him do 
 the same ; living contentedly between their 
 barriers of sense ; " materialists " according to 
 their lights. But let him acknowledge that most 
 human beings (at any rate) are compelled by the 
 very constitution of their minds to go further, and 
 to ask who or what is that power which — from 
 within or from without — has developed matter to 
 its present marvellous complexity, so that (as 
 Darwin says) "we stand in awe before the 
 mystery of life."^ 
 
 Or again, if any philosopher can stop with the 
 bare idea of power, in his researches into the 
 origin of things, and can exclaim (with the buoy- 
 ant self-confidence of a Biichner), '"'without object, 
 
 every one \Yho reflects, that there is no possible method of 
 describing His deeds or His nature, except that of adopting 
 language appropriate to man." — (Bishop Goodwin, JFalks, &c., 
 p. 293.) 
 
 ^ Bradlaugh, Plea for Atlicisvi, p. 4. 
 
 "^ Cross-fertilisation in Plants, p. 458. 
 
48 God. 
 
 LECT. without cause, Eternity rolls round upon itself, 
 ^^' though the human spirit recoils before so simple 
 a solution of the world's great enigma,"^ — let 
 him do so. Only let him remember that the very 
 same imaginative faculty which has conceived — 
 from interior muscular sensations — the idea of 
 "force," ought from innumerable indications of 
 what we feel as purpose and contrivance to infer 
 also a cosmic attribute of " wisdom." 
 
 Or again, if any one can be content with a dis- 
 covery of power and wisdom only, be it so ; and 
 let him guard himself, with what courage he may, 
 against the suspicion that this awful cosmic power 
 has aims which he can in no way forecast, and that 
 this awful WISDOM may possibly be a vast malig- 
 nant cunning. But let him know that to the 
 vast majority of mankind such a suspicion that 
 the devil may be sitting at the world's helm is 
 positively intolerable and even ludicrous; and 
 that, when '' im^orovement " seems the guiding idea 
 in all selection and all evolution, when " enhanced 
 intelligence" seems the purpose of all cerebral 
 change, and when "noUlity of character," seems 
 the object aimed at by such evil in the world as 
 we can understand at all, it is impossible to per- 
 suade them that goodness is not, along with 
 power and wisdom, a characteristic of the Spirit 
 ^ Lir/Jit and Life, French traus., p. 241. 
 
The Cosmic Force not unconscious. 49 
 
 that guides the universe. And since wisdom lect. 
 and goodness cannot, consistently with any sane 
 use of our human faculties, be assigned to an 
 unconscious being — since every impulse of our 
 nature, every fresh discovery of our own impotence, 
 every new revelation of the wonder of the universe, 
 all compel us to look up to the world-power with 
 awe, and forbid us to look down upon it with airs 
 of superiority; and since our human brain (the 
 only organ we have for thinking purposes) will not 
 let us believe that an aerolite " falling down from 
 Jupiter," with its blind physical momentum, nor 
 yet an Assyrian bull or an Egyptian crocodile, 
 with their headlong brutal instincts, form any 
 sufficient type of the energy that sways the 
 universe/ — we seem driven by the very constitu- 
 tion of our faculties to attribute to that majestic 
 energy full consciousness of what it does, or perhaps 
 something far higher than "consciousness," of 
 which our human brain-power is but a distant 
 reflection and a type.^ 
 
 ^ "Ein Unbewusstcs . . . eine blinde iN'aturkraft . . . Auf 
 die Hohe (!) dieses Standpnnkts hat uns die iieuere Naturfor- 
 scliung in Darwin gefiihrt." — (Strauss, Alte und neue Glauhc, 
 p. 219.) 
 
 2 " Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as 
 much transcending Intelligence and "Will, as these transcend 
 mechanical motion ? It is true we are totally unable to conceive 
 any such higher mode of being. But this is not a reason for 
 questioning its existence," — (Spencer, First Princij^Us, p. 108.) 
 
 E 
 
50 God. 
 
 LECT. And if so, we have at last reached, in this 
 grand combination of attributes, the Christian 
 conception of God. And in reaching it, we have 
 passed the line at which mere speculation merges 
 into Religion. For such a Being has assumed 
 (what Christians mean by) "personality." In 
 other words, intercommunion has now become 
 possible : we can approach, we can worship, we 
 can love : the thing we call " prayer " begins to 
 suggest itself : the springs of hope and fear are 
 touched : and amid all the baffling complexity, 
 and sometimes terror, of the surrounding cosmos 
 our earthly life may now be passed in filial serenity 
 and confidence. We may henceforth feel that we 
 walk with a divine companion, and that the irre- 
 sistible world-power has become to us as a personal 
 friend and (in touching anthropomorphic phrase) 
 " our Father which is in Heaven." 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 CREATION. 
 
 Gen. i. 1 : "In the beginning God created the heavens and 
 the earth." 
 
 I 
 
 N the Jast lecture an attempt was made to t-t^ct. 
 
 III. 
 
 establish the position, that — since all truth, 
 without any exception, if it is to come home to 
 LIS and be conceivable by us, must be imaged 
 upon the retina (as it were) of our minds in some 
 kindred and anthropomorphic way — it follows in- 
 evitably that the majestic undivided Power, which 
 the universe as a whole reveals to us, can only 
 be rationally conceived in the same manner. The 
 Deity, in short, can only be thought of by us in 
 terms of the human mind. And we saw that 
 this innocent — nay, unavoidable — anthropomor- 
 phism carries with it the triple idea of a tran- 
 scendent Power, Wisdom, and Goodness: which 
 three qualities, combined and welded together in 
 
 E 2 
 
52 Creation. 
 
 LEGT. a substantial unity, form the Christian conception 
 of God. 
 
 We must now advance a step further ; and the 
 next problem must be faced, wliich presents itself 
 in reflecting upon the universe as a whole. It 
 is that problem of the Divine causation of all 
 things which is popularly expressed by the word 
 " Creation." The Christian doctrine on this sub- 
 ject is perfectly clear and positive. It affirms 
 that God created and sustains Nature; or, in 
 other words, that mind stands first in the order 
 of thought, and not matter. For, of the two, one 
 miTst be first. We cannot rest in a dualism. 
 Everything points to a unity in Nature. When, 
 therefore, our own experience presents us with 
 the striking contrast between a corpse and a living 
 man ; when our irresistible intuitions compel us 
 to assign a quite infinite superiority to that con- 
 scious life (mind) which alone differentiates the 
 man from the corpse ; and when all the sciences 
 at present affirm that no corpse, or matter of any 
 kind, is able to generate life — even in its lowest 
 degree — while life (on the contrary) seizes and 
 transforms matter, and conscious-life (or "mind") 
 transfigures the whole face of the globe ; the 
 inference seems irresistible that mind predomi- 
 nates over matter. And so, if the question be 
 raised, which of the two was antecedent, in order 
 
Mind Antecedent to Matter. 53 
 
 of time and in. order of causation, the answer lect. 
 given by Christianity is the only one consonant 
 to reason : viz., that in the universe, as a whole, 
 mind was first and was the cause of r.udter. In 
 other words, " In the beginning GoD created the 
 heavens and the earth." This text, then, is a 
 brief, pictorial, and popular way of stating a 
 profound truth. Subtle language is not for the 
 populace. Yet the Avhole brotherhood of man- 
 kind is interested in these problems and asks 
 these questions. What would a teacher be worth 
 w^ho could not express his answer in terms intel- 
 ligible to his pupil ? 
 
 (1.) It seems strange, therefore, that cultivated 
 and scientific men should be found so thoughtless 
 or so ignorant of mankind as to declaim against 
 the Church's continued use of that simple picture- 
 language which, in Genesis, has proved itself, for 
 ages, the most efficient "teacher of babes" that 
 could possibly have been found. For it has laid 
 firmly down, in all the more civilised countries 
 of the globe, the tv/o first stepping-stones to any 
 sound physical knowledge : (1) The essential unity 
 which lies at the bottom of all things; (2) that 
 most singular anticipation of the truth, viz., the 
 process of Creation by stages, in ever-ascending 
 order, and with rest (for the present) in the 
 appearance of man. It seems strange indeed, 
 
54^ Creatio7i. 
 
 LECT. and not a little childish, that great philosophers 
 
 III. 
 
 should go out of their way to have a fling at this 
 picture-book for the unlearned ; and parodying (as 
 is often said) the noble poetry of the Bible into 
 so much bald prose, should gravely take to pieces 
 (what the Eejjlies to " Ussays and Bevieivs " called) 
 "this Psalm of the Divine Creation," and should 
 try to rob the people of so precious and suitable 
 a lesson book. 
 
 Yet this surprising folly is committed every 
 day. Thus Dr. Hartmann puts on airs of scorn, 
 and says, " We children of the newer time can no 
 longer make the mystery of Creation consist — like 
 the gross conception of former days — in the hard- 
 ened clay, the breath divine, and so forth." ^ Dr. 
 Molescliott goes further. He thinks the idea of 
 " Creation " nonsense, and he naively tells us why : 
 " When Liebig begins to talk of the laws of 
 Nature and, in the same breath, of a Creator, he 
 ceases to be intelligible ; for the laws of Nature 
 are an expression of the most rigorous necessity — 
 and necessity excludes Creation." - We will deal 
 with that presently. But meanwhile we may 
 amuse ourselves with the sorry mirth of a 
 favourite American orator, who describes how 
 "a supreme being took some nothing and made 
 
 ^ Darwinisme, 3rd edition, p. 2-1. 
 2 Circulation dc la Vic, p. C. 
 
The " Carjpenter Theory " a Man of Sircnu. 55 
 
 a world and one man ; " and with tlie curious lect. 
 impatience of even Mr. Herbert Spencer, who is 
 indignant with the " carpenter theory " of Crea- 
 tion.-^ Yet this admirable writer candidly confesses 
 on another page that " The gross body of dogmas, 
 traditions, and rites [in short, the whole apparatus 
 of the Church] renders the truth more appreci- 
 able to lower perceptions : they serve to make 
 real and influential over men that which would 
 else be unreal and uninfluential." ^ While a 
 shrewd thinker, Professor Huxley, clearly sees the 
 common sense of the matter, and exposes the 
 absurdity of seriously assaulting a man of straw, 
 or of " discussing a view which no one upholds." ^ 
 Let, therefore, irritable philosophers like Yignoli 
 proclaim a crusade against all use of myth and 
 picture- language for the unlearned, if they think 
 it worthy of their cause to do so.* The Christian 
 Church holds it both more rational and more 
 charitable " not to destroy, but to fulfil ; " to fill 
 out the whole framework, and to breathe into it 
 a fuller meaning ; and not passionately to break 
 the imperfect mirror, but to purify and improve 
 it. For (as Professor Tyndall admirably says) 
 even "the study of Natural Science goes hand- 
 in-hand with the culture of the Imaoination. . . . 
 
 o 
 
 ^ First Prinei^Jles, p. 113. - First Principles, p. 121. 
 
 3 The Crayfish, p. 319. ^ 3hjth and Science, p, 429. 
 
56 Creation. 
 
 LECT. We picture atoms and molecules and vibrations 
 
 III. 
 
 and waves, which eye has never seen nor ear 
 heard, and which can only be discerned by the 
 Imagination." ^ Yes ; the " culture " of the 
 Imagination, not its repudiation ; the diligent 
 attempt to polish that inward mirror, and to 
 correct it from stains that blur and unevennesses 
 that distort its representations — that is the true 
 work to be done for mankind. And in proportion 
 as that is successfully accomplished, the artificial 
 helps of myth legend and symbolism can, without 
 fatal mischief, be replaced by a personal and inde- 
 pendent power of reflecting the universe and of 
 seeing its real meaning by direct intuition. To this 
 liigh perfection it is that Christianity invites us all. 
 (2.) But there is a second, and a far more 
 serious, objection raised against the Christian 
 doctrine of Creation : it is the objection which 
 emblazons on its banner the now familiar word 
 "Evolution." For this favourite theory is sup- 
 posed, in some quarters, to stand in flagrant 
 contradiction to the idea of a Divine creation.^ 
 But since the hypothesis of Evolution is nothing 
 else than an attempt to explain how the heavens 
 and the earth were created, leaving the statement 
 quite untouched that they ivere created, it is 
 
 1 Radiation (1865), p. 60. 
 " "Fhysiciis," Theism, j). il. 
 
"'Evolution" supplements ''Creation." 57 
 
 difficult to see how the two notions can come i^ect. 
 into collision with one another. The one simply 
 takes up the story where the other leaves it off. 
 And we have only to place them end to end, 
 thus : " From God all things took their origin ; 
 and by successive stages of evolution He made 
 them to become what they now are : " in order 
 to see quite clearly how the ancient and the 
 modern statements are merely one line prolonged. 
 We may, therefore, decline to argue (as is fre- 
 quently done) that the Evolution theory remains 
 at present in a very precarious condition — though 
 the allegation is true. For I hold it quite un- 
 worthy of Christians to show any slight, or even 
 to accord a reluctant acceptance, to the only 
 theory of Creation which has hitherto thrown 
 any light on this mysterious subject. For it 
 is not light, it is darkness, to say (with the 
 ancient sages) " water is the first principle of 
 all things," or " fire is the first principle," or 
 "all things came out of a cosmic Qgg" or "the 
 world came forth by an oversight while Brahma 
 slept." Nor is it sufficient to assert, with the 
 ancient Hebrews, that " Jehovah spake the word 
 and all things were made." The question now 
 raised by Science is the further question, " What, 
 more precisely, did Jehovah speak ? What were 
 the laws which proceeded out of His mouth ? " 
 
58 Creation. 
 
 LECT. And if it should be ascertained — as it promises 
 to be — that the creative laws, which have pro- 
 duced all this marvellous complexity we find 
 around us, were the same on a vast scale as 
 those which we see with our own eyes at work 
 on the small scale ; if it should appear that births, 
 not startling a23paritions, have throughout been 
 God's method ; that His laws have always been 
 laws of growth (as we know it in the crystal, 
 the plant, the animal), not of abrupt finality ; 
 and that steadfast continuity of plan has 
 characterised creation, not a fitful and feeble 
 caprice ; surely all these discoveries come home 
 to us as, in the highest sense, human, rational, 
 intelligible. The conception of the primal crea- 
 tive " word " is now expanded into that of a 
 majestic stream of legislation, permeating and 
 controlling all things; the creative ''fiat" is 
 rescued from humiliating comparison with a 
 magician's potent spell; and the statement be- 
 comes for the first time clear and comprehensible, 
 that " by the WoRD— the Logos, or intelligible 
 reason — of God all things, in heaven and earth, 
 were made." 
 
 (3.) But there is a third objection raised against 
 the Christian doctrine of Creation. And this the 
 Church refuses to treat so lightly. On the con- 
 trary, she firmly condemns it as un-human, irra- 
 
''Fate'' an Irrational Conce/ption. 59 
 
 tional, immoral. It is that obstacle put forward lect. 
 by Dr. Molescliott in the passage already quoted : 
 "The laws of Nature are the expression of the 
 most rigorous necessity — and necessity excludes 
 creation." He means, I presume, that all things 
 are as they are by a rigid and irresistible fate; 
 that fate sweeps onwards gyrating nebul99, suns, 
 comets, planets, geological formations, the ever- 
 growing complexity of chemical molecules, the 
 mutual adaptation between insects and plants, 
 the ever-multiplying varieties of animal life, and 
 all the fretful, feverish activities of man upon 
 this globe, in one blind, inexorable torrent of 
 necessity — beginning (as Dr. BUchner puts it) 
 nowhere and ending nowhere, without purpose, 
 without cause, without intelligence.^ It is indeed 
 a grand. Titanic conception; heathen, sombre, 
 awful; dark as Erebus, solemn as some great 
 drama of iEschylus, a real Tragedy of the Uni- 
 verse ; extinguishing all hope, suppressive of all 
 energy, derisive of all freedom, a reductio ad 
 absurdum of all human responsibility, and a 
 sentence (as it were) to a dumb and passive 
 endurance of involuntary servitude for life for 
 the whole human race. 
 
 Yet there are doubtless some indications which 
 (at first sight) point that way. In the first place 
 
 1 LirjM and Life, Frencli trans., i). 241. 
 
60 Creation. 
 
 III. 
 
 LECT. a very little serious thought, as he paces home- 
 wards beneath a star-lit sky, is sufficient to send 
 any man upon his knees in awe and utter self- 
 abasement. Who are we, that have just left 
 perhaps some highly important public meeting, 
 that have risen in our place in Parliament, that 
 have finished our poem, painted our great picture 
 of the season, or drawn to its result some profound 
 calculation which is to revolutionise the world of 
 science ? We are dust, we are motes in the 
 sunbeam, we are bubbles carried down the foam- 
 ing rapids of Niagara. With vast and majestic 
 force, with speed and momentum to which the 
 tranquil aspect of things forms an irrisive veil, 
 we and all our works are beinsf hurled throuoh 
 space, amid a dance of giant suns and flaming 
 comets, at which one's heart stands still. At 
 60,000 miles an hour this tiny spray-drop we 
 call "the earth" is speeding on; at 20,000 miles 
 an hour (it is believed) the huge solar system 
 itself is advancing into new and untried spaces ; 
 while our neighbour Sirius is calculated to be 
 dashing from us at a speed of 118,000 miles an 
 hour, and the nearest star in Cygnus is flashing 
 along at 140,000 miles an hour.^ 
 
 ^ Proctor, Astronomical Essays, p. 270 ; ditto, The Study of 
 Nature, in Fraser's Magazine, September, 1871. Cf. Ilerschel, 
 Astronomy, p. 311. 
 
Cosmic Forces " Aufid," not ''Fateful" 61 
 
 The energy of the universe is, indeed, por- lect. 
 
 tentous. Should the earth suddenly stand still, 
 the heat generated (as in an arrested bullet) 
 would rise to 11,000°; and every terrestrial thing 
 would become a wreath of vapour.-^ One single 
 lightning-spark (the merest tri(le) has been mea- 
 sured ; its flash was ten and a half miles long : 
 another, from immediately overhead, struck down 
 a man three miles away. Aerolites come rushing 
 furiously into our upper atmosphere, and in 1872 
 Professor Secchi counted 14,000 of them in three 
 hours. One such mass fell unconsumed, and is 
 now in Paris ; it weighs twelve hundredweight. 
 Another, in 1872, fell in America; it broke a tree, 
 killed a man, and then buried it:^elf two feet in 
 the hard frozen ground.^ Yet, balloonists tell us, 
 when you rise 2,600 feet above this noisy earth 
 all is placid, deep, unbroken silence.^ The busy 
 hum of millions of insects is unheard; the cattle 
 upon a thousand hills vanish into points ; the city 
 roar is reduced to zero ; the clashing of the battle 
 is noiseless ; the earthquake ruins a metropolis 
 and is unperceived ; while man and all his works, 
 
 ^ Somerville, Molecular Science, i. 27. Eeis, Ze Soldi, 1869, 
 puts it at a much higher figure. See also Sir Edni. Beckett, 
 Origin of the Laws of Nature, p. 35. 
 
 2 Nature, ISSO, p. 64 ; of. Flammarion, The Atmosphere, pp. 
 179, 479. Hartwig, Subterranean World, p. 347. 
 
 ^ Glaisher, Travels in the Air, p. 364. 
 
 III. 
 
62 Creation. 
 
 III. 
 
 LECT. and the great planet on which he lives and frets 
 and dies, seem borne along by a silent, irresistible, 
 inexorable force. You may call it " fate," if yon 
 please : but you are not obliged to call it " fate." 
 There is quite another theory, a message of good 
 news to man, which peremptorily forbids him so 
 to call it, and rather cheers and animates him 
 with a summons to arouse his moral force and 
 to trust a better hope than that. It bids him, in 
 short, frankly to believe (how can he possibly ]JTOve 
 such a thing by algebra or logic ?) that the power 
 which moves all this tremendous mechanism is not 
 a frightful, blind, and headlong " fate," but a merci- 
 ful and living GoD. " Why " (say you) " should he 
 believe it ? " Because this belief is alone rational, 
 and mirrors definitely and completely the experi- 
 ences of his own inner nature : while the other 
 conception — grand and sombre though it be, like 
 a monstrous Hindoo temple — is irrational, con- 
 tradicts inward experience, and draws its inspi- 
 ration from a defective observation of human 
 consciousness instead of a complete observation. 
 Suppose that, granting personal consciousness to 
 be the key to all the great world's movements^ 
 we should argue from our bony framework alone, 
 and should say, " These things lie where they are 
 put : they are passive : they are pulled by liga- 
 ments ; the ligaments are shortened by muscles ; 
 
The Clue Furnished hy our " Will.'' Co 
 
 the muscles are shrunk by a nerve. All is t-^ct. 
 
 . III. 
 
 mechanism; all is a chain of necessity. My 
 
 passive frame, therefore, explains to me the 
 Universe." Is it not clear that such a mere 
 anatomist's view of things would be a very im- 
 perfect and partial one ? No : we must summon 
 the Biologist into the field. And then we shall 
 hear, if he be Professor Huxley, a confession that 
 the power of volition " counts for something ; " i in 
 short, that you must not, with a spot, shut off the 
 Will from your microscopic investigation. And 
 then, all things (not some things) considered, this 
 fact of a Will, of which we are more immediately 
 and intuitively conscious than of anything else in 
 the whole universe,^ stands out as the leading 
 fact in our inner world; and therefore supplies 
 (as it seems meant to do) the most rational and 
 
 ^ Huxley, Lay Sermons ; cf. Graliam, Creed of Science, 1881, 
 p. 146 : "In spite of the specuhtive conclusion that the Avill 
 is not a free causal agency, is there not the equally clear prac- 
 tical conviction that man can control the course of his life and 
 actions to some considerable degree ? I think Ave must admit 
 it." Bersier, Sermons, iv. 109 : "Chacun de vos actes est la 
 contradiction la plus frappante apportee a votre systems. Yous 
 ne pouvez modifier la Nature ; et a chaque instant vous la 
 modifiez. ' ' 
 
 2 So the Duke of Argyll, Unity of Nature, 1884, p. 115 : 
 "We know the operations of our own minds with a fulness and 
 reality which does not belong to any other knowledge what- 
 ever." Cf. 1. Cor. ii. 11. 
 
64< Creation, 
 
 LECT. the most liiiman interpretation of all the tremen- 
 dous movements that we observe around ns. 
 
 Of course, I know that, as a last resort, this 
 "will" in us may be point-blank denied. But so 
 may anything else (however certain) be denied 
 with a little hardihood and a certain taste for 
 paradox. It is often said, for instance, that the 
 will may be resolved into motives ; when, in fact, 
 it is merely stimulated by motives. Or, again, its 
 history may be investigated, and the cerebrum 
 may be watched as it grew — from the amphioxus 
 onwards. Very likely, and very interesting, too. 
 But, however grown, and whatever made of, the 
 Will is now positively there. It is a primary fact 
 of human consciousness — like a colour or a sound. 
 No man can either prove a colour or disprove it. 
 He can only assert it, and call attention to it. 
 And if his comrade be blind, he may not believe 
 in its existence. If he be disputatious, and given 
 to wrangle about words, he may say, *' I have Avith 
 a lens investigated your plate of green sand : it is 
 not green, it is blue grains and yellow grains 
 mixed ; there is no such thing, therefore, as green." 
 What can you do ? You know it is green, and 
 walk away. Controversy in such a case is useless. 
 Lastly, there is yet one more theory of the 
 origin of all things, which must be mentioned ; 
 because it is a favourite theory with some men 
 
Chance'' Irrational. 65 
 
 heartily devoted to science, who embrace it, — I ^^^^ 
 
 think in a spirit of opposition to the Christian 
 doctrine of Creation, — from not seeing to what 
 irrational conclusions it ultimately leads. The 
 theory I refer to is that of "chance," as the 
 ultimate principle which accounts for all the 
 present phenomena of the universe. It is not, 
 however, necessary to spend much time in dis- 
 cussing this extraordinarily irrational supposition. 
 There are facts, no doubt, which seem at first to 
 look that way; as, for instance, the haphazard 
 waste of seeds and of fishes' ova, the chance way 
 in which strata and sea-beaches seem piled up, 
 the capricious changes in the weather, and so 
 forth. And hence some people, both in ancient 
 and modern times, have been led to see in the 
 cosmos itself only "a fortuitous concourse of 
 atoms ; " and have said, " Give me infinite past 
 time, — and, after an infinite number of failures, 
 the present comiplex harmony of Nature may 
 conceivably have been attained."^ 
 
 To this it may be replied. Can any stretch of 
 human imagination conceive a box of letters 
 thrown repeatedly on the floor, till at last they 
 shall arrange themselves into a play of Shak- 
 speare or the Iliad of Homer ? Or again, How 
 can infinite time be granted when both geology 
 ^ Biiclinc:-, Der Gotteshcgrif, ji. 29. 
 
 F 
 
 IJI. 
 
Creation. 
 
 LECT. and astronomy loudly protest that, a compara- 
 tively short time ago, this earth was a mass of 
 molten lava, on which no life could possibly exist ? 
 Both these objections, I think, hold good. But 
 there is another, which is at least equally fatal. 
 It is this : That the crude and childish conception 
 of ''chance" explains nothing and helps no one. 
 It is a mere word, and is devoid of any sense or 
 meaning. It carries our thoughts oat, beyond 
 the sphere of the human and the intelligible, into 
 the inexplicable and irrational. It brings nothing 
 home to us, awakens no intuition, arms us with 
 no new powers of comprehension. It cannot 
 pretend to excuse itself as a suggestion of as 
 yet undiscovered " law ; " for then it would be 
 "chance" no longer. Law and chance are two 
 mutually exclusive ideas. And if the noble, 
 human, and fruitful conception of universal law 
 in Nature is now, at last, to give way, and the 
 un-human, chaotic notion of ''a reign of hap- 
 hazard " is to take its place, we shall have to bid 
 a loner and sorrowful adieu to science. For 
 something reigns, it appears, in the universe 
 which is utterly capricious, unreasonable, incal- 
 culable, incommensurate with the faculties of the 
 human mind. All positive knowledge, therefore, 
 and all forecast of the future become utterly 
 impossible. No one can tell what may happen 
 
The Theory of "Creation'' alone Satisfactorij. 67 
 
 to-morrow, or lay down any fixed rules for his lect. 
 thoughts. The age of science, in short, has come 
 to an end ; and the infancy of mankind has re- 
 turned, when Nature seemed without continuity 
 or coherence, and we lived in an atmosphere of 
 miracle and wonder, not knowing at any time 
 what might happen next. 
 
 Such a theory of the origin of things is, surely, 
 puerile. And as the notion of Fate is almost 
 equally ridiculous, answering every question by 
 the fatuous reply, " It is because it is ; " while in 
 the rational and suggestive theory of evolution 
 there is nothing which conflicts with Christian 
 teaching; we seem brought back at last, with 
 thankful satisfaction, to that only hypothesis 
 which is (so to speak) synchronous and in tune 
 with the human intellect, majestic and beautiful 
 to the human imao^ination, and full of animatino: 
 confidence for the human heart, viz., the h3rpo- 
 thesis of a Divine Creation, the doctrine that 
 " in the beginning GOD created the heavens and 
 the earth." 
 
 F 2 
 
IV. 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 MIRACLE. 
 
 Acts xv. 19 : "Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouLle not 
 them which, from among the Gentiles, are turned to God," 
 
 lec:t. TTTE reach to-day a subject from which — I am 
 Ti afraid — all scientific men turn away with 
 an instinctive feeling of uneasiness and repug- 
 nance. It is the subject of Miracles. They think 
 that the Church is hopelessly at variance with 
 them on this question : and perhaps they suspect 
 that she does not care to look it fairly and can- 
 didly in the face. I shall endeavour to show 
 that this suspicion is not well-founded. And, on 
 the other hand, I hope to be able to point out 
 why, and how far, a greater liberty should now- 
 adays be conceded by the Church to men of 
 education in dealing with this question. For of 
 this I am quite sure, that if a fuller liberty be 
 not (in some way) accorded than it has been the 
 custom to accord in times gone by, the tension 
 between science and relidon will ere long; become 
 
Urgency of the Question. 69 
 
 so severe that the calamity will be imminent lect. 
 which Romanism, with its unyielding policy, has 
 brought upon so many countries of the Continent ; 
 and our people, too, will be severed into hostile 
 camps of superstition on one side and unbelief 
 on the other. Hitherto England has had the 
 good fortune, or the wisdom, to avoid this great 
 calamity ; and, owing to her faithful acceptance of 
 the Reformation in the sixteenth century, she 
 now possesses the " catholic " or traditional system 
 of the Church in a reasonable and elastic form. 
 But English Christianity is in these days 
 summoned to higher efforts still. And as our 
 country has long ago, in politics, learnt and taught 
 the lesson of patience, tolerance, and constant 
 self-adaptation to the emerging changes of the 
 world, so, in religion, it is now open to her to 
 show how a little timely deference and hreadth of 
 view may retain modern culture and science in 
 allegiance to Christ, and may preserve for men of 
 thought and leisure the priceless blessing of 
 unbroken religious communion with their less 
 educated countrymen. The crucial problem, the 
 turning-point on which the direction of the whole 
 future depends, is the question of Miracle. Here 
 stands the most solid of all modern " obstacles to 
 Christian belief:" here gather, as to a focus, 
 almost all the lines both of scientific and of 
 
70 Miracle. 
 
 IV, 
 
 LECT. literary objection.-^ For no educated European 
 doubts any longer tbat law reigns supreme in 
 Nature ; and no well-read man or woman is ignor- 
 ant that Miracle enters, as an essential ingredient, 
 into every early history of every race and of 
 almost every religion. At the same time, no one 
 desires to find in God any traces of arbitrary or 
 impulsive action. On the contrary, steadfastness 
 and continuity are to us the " signs " of a Divine 
 hand, and we should fail to recognise an arbitrary 
 god as God at all. Hence " Miracle " has become 
 to many of our generation a burden to be borne, 
 an obstacle to be got over; it is, to them, no 
 longer a help, but a hindrance. And yet (as has 
 been well said) "there never was a time when the 
 fundamental doctrines of Christianity could be 
 more boldly proclaimed, or when they could better 
 secure the respect and arrest the interest of 
 science." ^ It seems, then, that the time is ripe 
 for reviewing the whole question of Miracles, 
 for a better ordering of the approaches to that 
 
 1 "The miracles, whicli are so closely interwoven with the 
 sacred story, look strange and out of place in a world where 
 law is universal and invariable." — (Beard, Hihhert Lecture, 
 1883, p. 404.) "It would be hopeless to define the evidence 
 which could establish the reality of the alleged occuiTences." — 
 (Supernatural Religion, iii. 403.) 
 
 2 Drummond, Natural Law in the Sirlritual World, 7th 
 edition, p. 162. 
 
Possibility of Miracles denied hy no one. 71 
 
 obstacle, and for skilfally rearranging the defences lect. 
 of Christianity on that side.^ It were not well ^^' 
 if a slothful or obstinate retention of the ancient 
 outworks — now turned — should cause the citadel 
 to fall. Rather we need diligence (as St. Anselm 
 says) to " work hard, when once we have attained 
 a firm faith, to bring it into accord with reason ; " ^ 
 since (as St. Bernard still more forcibly puts it), 
 "a faith, which admits of combination with any 
 known error, is no Catholic Faith at all, but only 
 a mistaken credulity." ^ 
 
 (1.) Now this last quotation from one of the 
 most revered Fathers of the Church, singularly 
 enough, places us precisely at the point of view 
 which is occupied by M. Eenan, and by all the 
 most advanced thinkers of the present time. 
 They say, We do not at all deny the possibility of 
 Miracles : we are too painfully conscious of human 
 limitation and infirmity to do that.* What we 
 
 1 " ]\Iiracles have retired into the background as arguments 
 for Christianity." — (Lias, Arc the Scripture Miracles Credible ? 
 p. 255.) *'To us, who for nineteen centuries have been 
 children of that kingdom, such evidence is needless." — (Archd. 
 Farrar, Life of Christ, 1874, i. p. xvi.) So too Augustine, 
 Confessions, bk. xiii. § 29. 
 
 2 Cur Dcus Homo, i. 2. ^ Sermon iv. 
 
 * *' Ce n'est point par un raisonnement d j^riori que nous re- 
 poussons le miracle ; c'est par un raisonnement critique ou 
 historique. Plus ou s'eloigne, plus la preuve d'un fait surnaturel 
 devient difTicile. Pour bien compreudre cela, 11 faut avoir 
 
72 Miracle. 
 
 LECT. demand is that each case of supposed " Miracle " 
 
 IV. 
 
 shall be subject to fair historical inquiry ; so that 
 if found to be a " mytJius " it shall be truthfully 
 acknowledged to be such ; if found to be a 
 *' legend " it shall be guarded faithfully from being 
 handled as if it were entirely without alloy ; while 
 if found on thorough historical investigation to be 
 " history" then it shall be accepted exactly as it 
 stands, and shall be treated — just as in physical 
 science some new and surprising fact is treated — 
 as a summons to set our little structure of 
 j)reconceptions into better order, and to reflect 
 that ''there are more things in heaven and earth 
 than were dreamed of perhaps in our philosophy." 
 Now this position of St. Bernard, of M. Renan, 
 of Professor Huxley, of Professor Tyndall, Pro- 
 fessor Helmholtz,^ and of a host of scientific 
 men in every land, is precisely the position also 
 of English Christianity. With us, too, (so-called) 
 edification is not the main thing; truth is the 
 main thing. A God of truth, we are sure, cannot 
 be served by a lie. Rather — as St. Augustine - 
 
 I'habitude de la critique des textes et de la metliode historique." 
 — (Renan, Souvenirs, 9tli edition, p, 238.) "That miracles are 
 impossible, being a wholly groundless assumption, the question 
 of their actual occurrence becomes one of purely historical 
 evidence." — (Shairp, CicUure and Religion, 5th edition, p. 117.) 
 
 ^ Ap. Naville, La Physique modernc, p. 45. 
 
 * Augustine, De Dodr. Christ, lib. ii § 18. 
 
The Church Bound to he Truthful. 73 
 
 so nobly puts it — we regard all truth, wherever lect. 
 found, as the royal metal (so to speak) ; and, in 
 whatever remote place or whatever comminuted 
 condition we light upon any shining morsel of real 
 truth, that we claim at once as belonmngf to our 
 Lord and King, and through Him to His Church. 
 To this doctrine every intelligent Churchman 
 will, without hesitation, at once accede. And 
 therefore, whatever patience or caution he may 
 think fit to display, he really desires with all his 
 heart and soul historical veracity, as well as every 
 other kind of veracity ; and is as determined as 
 any student of Nature can possibly be to stand 
 or fall only by what is true. 
 
 And if this be the case, surely one of the most 
 imposing obstacles to churchmanship at once 
 falls away and disappears. For it is (I think) 
 the supposed engagement to maintain, at all 
 hazards, certain things known to be untrue/ which 
 
 ^ Those who are surprised by statements and arguments 
 which look this way should, however, remark the admissions 
 which often accompany them ; e.g., "We are bound to tell man- 
 kind that these miracles were the method by which He mani- 
 fested His character. He worked miracles. If you do not believe 
 this, we have nothing more to say." — (Lias, Are the Scripture 
 Miracles Credible ? p. 255.) And yet some line must be drawn : 
 for "we are bound to admit that the stoppage of the rotation 
 of the earth is an unusual event. . . . There seems a high prob- 
 ability that, at a later period, some scribe added the quotation 
 from another ancient history, the Book of Jasher." — {Ibid. 
 
74' Miracle. 
 
 LECT. repels from the Church so many votaries of truth. 
 
 IV. 
 
 But this supposition is an absolutely groundless 
 one. On the contrary, whoever accepts the bap- 
 tism of Jesus Christ, and lays the hand of loyalty 
 in His hand, becomes from that hour a liegeman 
 of '' the Truth ; " he hears the welcome reminder, 
 " He that is of the Truth heareth my voice ; " and 
 (while avoiding fretful haste and reckless breach 
 of charity) he is, and always must be, ready to 
 weave in, at all cost, to the tissue of Christian 
 thought whatever time shall verify as true, and 
 to eliminate, as alien and foreign matter, what- 
 ever may ultimately show itself as untrue. For 
 no infallibility with us stops the way. Even the 
 general councils of the Church we allow may 
 err, and have erred, in things pertaining to God. 
 And therefore, surely, all such liberty of thought 
 and speech as any reasonable and calm and 
 charitable man ought to desire is already ii^so 
 facto, as a Christian, his. No one can rob him of 
 that right. And every help he can himself bring 
 to the elimination of falsehood from Christian 
 
 p. 228.) And, with regard to the sun-dial of Ahaz, "the 
 possibility of later interpolations is becoming more and more 
 clearly acknowledged." — {Ibid. p. 231.) Again, *' Does the in- 
 spiration of the Bible necessarily imply the correctness of every 
 statement contained in it ? I tliink that it does." — (Bishop 
 Perry, Science and the Bible, 1869, p. 75.) But still, " tradition 
 does not show the deluge to have extended over the whole earth ; 
 which seems to have been disproved by geology." — {Ibid. p. 71.) 
 
IV. 
 
 Miracle oio Violation of " Laio." 75 
 
 doctrine is welcome, if only offered in the spirit i>ect. 
 of courteous patience and charity for those who 
 have been long used to other ways of think- 
 ing. If then want of liberty in dealing with the 
 question of Miracles be alleged as an obstacle 
 to Christian belief, the answer is plain and deci- 
 sive : No such want of hberty exists. Truth 
 alone is what we Christians, like all other men, 
 are interested in. Truth alone is what we, as 
 Christians, are bound earnestly to seek and faith- 
 fully to hold fast.^ And the Church of Jesus 
 Christ has nothing whatever to do with anything 
 which is not true. 
 
 (2.) But we must now go further than this, and 
 must explain the Christian position with regard 
 to Miracles more clearly. For there exists a 
 second obstacle to belief in the shape of a deeply- 
 rooted misapprehension as to what the Church 
 really means by a " Miracle.'* It is commonly 
 alleged that by her acceptance of Miracle she dero- 
 gates in some way from the majestic and now 
 firmly-established conception of permanent law 
 in Nature ; because it is supposd that miraculous 
 and cafricious action are identical. No better 
 
 1 "0 Veritas, Veritas! Quam intime, etiam turn [ait. 18] 
 medullcB animi mei suspirabant tibi ! " — (Augustine, Confessions, 
 lib. iii. § 10.) " Bishop Butler said, 'I mean to make truth the 
 business of m}' life,' " — {The Century, September, 1SS4.) 
 
76 Miracle. 
 
 LECT. exponent of this view could be found than Hart- 
 
 IV, 
 
 mann, in the following remarkable passage : " So 
 long as Miracle is not regarded as contradicting 
 Nature, there is, in reality, no reasonable ground 
 for protesting against it — except the character 
 of caprice, which it presents."^ But miracle 
 is certainly not regarded nowadays as "contra- 
 dicting" Nature. It is simply regarded — Avhen- 
 ever it can be proved to have occurred at all, 
 which is purely a matter for history to determine 
 — as a point of intersection between some vast 
 outer circle of God's ways and the small inner 
 circle to which we ourselves are better accus- 
 tomed.^ It is as though a meteor or a comet of 
 vast orbit abruptly came and went within our 
 smaller terrestrial orbit. The Miracle then, of 
 course, consists solely in the intersection being of 
 set purpose, harmonised and arranged to act as a 
 " sign " and a moral force upon certain observers. 
 Now against such a Miracle even John Stuart 
 Mill acknowledges that no valid objection can 
 be raised, short of a doubt or denial of God 
 altogether. For he says, " There are few things 
 of which we have more frequent experience than 
 
 ^ Darwinisms, p. 160. 
 
 '^ *' The medineval belief in miracles, and the modern belief 
 in law, cannot be held by the same mind." — (Dr. Flint, On 
 Theism, 1877, p. 13.) 
 
Science often Discovers New Laius. 77 
 
 of physical facts whicli our knowledge does not lect. 
 enable us to account for, because tliey depend on 
 'laws' which observation, aided by science, has 
 not yet brought to light ; and it is always possible 
 that the wonder-worker may have acquired (con- 
 sciously or unconsciously) the power of calling 
 these into action. . . . We cannot, then, conclude 
 absolutely that the miraculous theory ought to be 
 at once rejected. . . . Once admit a God, and the 
 production of an effect by His direct volition 
 must be reckoned with as a serious possibility." ^ 
 Yes, this is surely true ; and Mr. Mill has here 
 touched, as with a needle's point, the narrow and 
 (it may be hoped) vanishing line which separates 
 the believer from the non-believer in Miracles. 
 Once admit a God, and you admit " volition " in 
 Nature. 
 
 Does, then, the abrupt revelation of " new law " 
 involve, of necessity, the notion of '' caprice ? " 
 To this it may be replied : First, that science 
 itself has frequently to admit the existence of 
 new — yet certainly not capricious — laws. For in- 
 stance, it was always confidently believed that 
 all substances contract by cold, till at last it was 
 discovered that water and bismuth expand by 
 cold.2 Again, the circulation of the blood was, till 
 
 ^ J. S. ]\Iill, Essays on lleliglon, p. 230. 
 2 Tyndall, Heat, p. 86. 
 
78 
 
 LECT 1824, supposed to follow an invariable direction, 
 
 IV. 
 
 but in tliat year a new law of alternation came 
 to light in a certain Ascidian.^ In 1861, M. 
 Comte's unfortunate prediction that no one would 
 ever find out the chemical composition of the 
 solar bodies, was stultified by the sudden appari- 
 tion of a new law of incandescent gases. And not 
 long ago, after ages of unalleviated pain, a new 
 law of anaesthetics suddenly broke upon man- 
 kind. It is clear we are absolutely surrounded 
 and enveloped by an unseen world of latent, 
 undiscovered, unsuspected " laws." It may be, 
 therefore, that " Miracle " is but the well-timed 
 (not capricious) apparition of some new law,^ some 
 unsuspected reason, some undiscovered faculty. 
 And if so, after producing its purposed moral and 
 spiritual effect, the "wonder" may be capable 
 afterwards (if God will) of gradual resolution 
 into terms of our ordinary intelligence. 
 
 Secondly : if some element of " caprice,'' appear 
 to exist in the harmonising of times and con- 
 currences, which it seems as if God had kept 
 m His own power, — still this " harmonising and 
 timing" process is going on in the realm of 
 
 1 Huxley, Lay Sermons, p. 95. 
 
 2 "Omnia portenta contra Naturam dicimus esse. Sed non 
 sunt. . . . Portentuni fit, non contra naturam, sed contra quara 
 [earn qute] est nota natura."— (Augustine, Civ. Dei, xxi. 8.) 
 
No "Caprice" in God. 79 
 
 nature, at every moment and in every direction, 
 around us. Bees go forth in the morning, and 
 all day long they visit only one species of flower,^ 
 in order that pollen may be carried where alone 
 it will succeed. The eye is prepared in secret, 
 where no light has access ; and when sunshine at 
 last reaches it, it sees. And so, no doubt, in 
 human history, too, every harmonising process 
 proceeds by law and by reason ; for, as Mr. Mill 
 truly says, '' We cannot but suppose the Deity, in 
 every one of His acts, to be guided by motives." ^ 
 Yes, to think otherwise would be treason against 
 God. What ! are we to exaggerate our fancies so 
 far, and accumulate to such an intolerable height 
 all the old world's pictorial and childish concep- 
 tions of the Deity — which is arming, at this very 
 hour, the bloody hand of Islam once more — as to 
 make God an awful Eastern Despot, an arbitrary 
 Sesostris or a Nebuchadnezzar, whose nod is 
 death, and whose whims and passions, as they 
 chase each other across his mind, decide the 
 destinies of a universe ? Away with so blas- 
 phemous a thought 1 Un-reason has no place 
 whatever in the Christian conception of God. 
 Rather He is "the Amen," the faithful and 
 steadfast and true, in Whom is " no variableness, 
 
 1 Lubbock, Flowers in Relation to Insects, 18 S2, p. 26. 
 
 2 Essays, p. 228. 
 
 LECT. 
 IV. 
 
80 Miracle. 
 
 LECT. neither shadow of turning." St. Paul, in his 
 Second E|)istle to the Corinthians,^ bases an 
 elaborate argument on this very axiom of the 
 Gospel. And just as, in the noblest and best and 
 most regal of men, the most firm and stable and 
 continuous and unvacillating purpose displays 
 itself, so (surely) the Christian is bound to think 
 it is with God. Caprice, then, is absolutely ex- 
 cluded. God would not be God if lie were not 
 the supreme reason and the source of steadfast 
 transcendent order. And, if any Miracle should 
 ever proceed from His hand, we may (and we 
 must) conceive that it, too, is but the fragmentary 
 arc of some vast curve, whose "law" may not be 
 known to us, but is certainly known to Him.2 
 
 Thus any "obstacle to belief" which may 
 have arisen from the notion that Miracle contra- 
 venes the sublime idea of universal and inviolable 
 law, turns out to be a purely imaginary obstacle. 
 Let history only do its part, and positively assure 
 us of the actual occurrence of any miraculous 
 event, and we are at once at home again in a 
 wider sweep of "law" than we had moved in 
 
 1 2 Cor. i. 20. 
 
 " ** Les sciences natnrelles ont du souvent reconriaitre des faits 
 en apparence incroyahles et contraires a toutes les lois generale- 
 ment acceptees." — (Oscar Schmidt, Phil, de V Inconscicnt, French 
 translation, p. 91.) 
 
''•Signs and Wonders''' had a Purpose. 81 
 
 before. Our horizon is enlarged — that is all. lect. 
 
 IV. 
 
 And, as men of sense and modesty, we begin at 
 once to conform our ways of thinking to the new 
 environment amid which we find ourselves, and 
 to readjust our too narrow theories to the newly- 
 ascertained facts. 
 
 (3.) And this brings us to another thought, the 
 pursuit of which may help to confirm our liberty 
 in dealing with this bafiling subject of Miracle. 
 It is certain that Miracles, if they really happened, 
 and if they came from God, must have been 
 employed by Him for some definite imrioosa. They 
 were not " portents," scattered at random about 
 the universe, confounding the wise and astonish- 
 ing the simple. Kather they were " signs," with 
 a moral and religious end in view.^ They Avere 
 helps towards the construction of some great 
 system of belief, a schooling to train us amid 
 childish things for a higher maturity, a scaffold- 
 ing to assist — while it veiled for a time — the 
 elevation of some permanent edifice of thought, 
 in relation to which the scaffolding was a mere 
 temporary expedient. When, therefore, the build- 
 
 ^ "The significance of tlie miracle is its manifestation of a 
 divine power. But we have, in present reality, that transcen- 
 dent jiower which Christ's truth and grace are at this moment 
 exercising over the Avorld." — (Bp. Barry, Boyle Lectures, ISSO, p. 
 206.) "History, with us, takes the [evidential] place of pro- 
 phecy."- (Ihid. p. 204.) 
 
 G 
 
82 Miracle. 
 
 LECT. iiig was completed, the scaffolding surely might 
 
 IV. 
 
 be dispensed with. Rather, it must of necessity 
 be dispensed with ; else it will begin to hinder 
 where it formerly helped. 
 
 Take, for instance, the two great series of 
 Miracles which are alleged to have accompanied 
 and assisted the building up of the Jewish and 
 then of the Christian dispensation. What was 
 the purpose — what was, at any rate, the actual 
 effect — of each of those series of wonders, as they 
 are related upon the pages of the Bible ? It v/as, 
 in the first case, the building up of a solid and 
 afterwards never-questioned monotheism. And 
 that point once absolutely secured, the scaffolding 
 ceased to be of much use or even of much 
 interest. And so, not only the Old Testament 
 Miracles, but at last (as we are happily reminded 
 by St. James in the text) the entire elaborate 
 mechanism of the Mosaic institutions — divine 
 though they were, and admirably adapted to their 
 temporary purpose — became actually obsolete and 
 " ready to vanish away." ^ Its work was done. 
 And when it was attempted by some, whose loyalty 
 to the past was greater than their foresight of the 
 future, to maintain the Mosaic Law unchanged, it 
 became an obstacle to true belief. The letter 
 began to confine and strangle the spirit. The 
 ^ ITcbrev)s\m. 13. 
 
The Resulting Belief alone Valuable. 83 
 
 real made war aojainst the ideal. And the whole lect. 
 
 . IV. 
 
 lifetime of the greatest and most energetic of 
 the Apostles, subsequent to his conversion, was 
 expended in securing for the Gentile world a 
 complete emancipation from the school-methods 
 which Israel had gone through. In other words, 
 it VMS not the method, hut the result, tvhich ivas 
 prized hy God and was valuable to wmi. " Let not 
 them be troubled," therefore, with Jewish rites 
 and Levitical ceremonies, *' which from among 
 the Gentiles are turned to God." 
 
 And the same process had to be repeated during 
 the lonor twiliojht of the Dark Acres and the in- 
 fancy of the modern European nations. The 
 science of that day was quite incompetent to teach 
 mankind the unity of all things. It preferred to 
 break up Nature into separate kingdoms. Its 
 fancy peopled the earth with magical and irra- 
 tional agents. And Nature threatened to become, 
 under its teaching, an assemblnge of independent 
 forces and independent principles.^ Indeed, this 
 failure of science to teach mankind the oneness of 
 the Cosmos reached almost down to our own time ; 
 and (as Mr. Mill confesses) only " a few generations 
 
 ^ For instance, " There existed all through the Middle Ages, 
 and even as late as the seventeenth century, the sect of the 
 Cabalists. They believed in the existence of * spirits of nature,' 
 embodiments or representatives of the four elements." — (Lecky, 
 History of Rationalism, 2nd edition, i. 46. ) 
 
 G 2 
 
84 Miracle. 
 
 IV, 
 
 LECT. ago the dependence of phenomena on universal 
 laws was unrecognised by mankind : and even by 
 the instructed could not be regarded as a scientifi- 
 cally established truth." ^ But during all that weary 
 time, the Church had always persistently taught 
 it, in her doctrine of the One God ; and religion 
 had maintained that healthful atmosphere of 
 Monotheism,^ amid which alone the grand truth 
 of Nature's unity could gradually and tentatively 
 be reached by science. But how, amid the then 
 complexity and childishness of physics, was the 
 Church able to keep in mind this Divine unity 
 of all things ? It was, I think, mainly through 
 the conception of Miracle ; which seemed to men 
 to reveal, in glimpses and in patches, the under- 
 lying Divine government — in other w^ords, the 
 unity of all things — and so heralded the clear 
 scientific acknowledgment of it, as patches of 
 open water herald the emancipation of the Arctic 
 spring. 
 
 And precisely the same thing may be said with 
 regard to the second great series of Miracles, which 
 assisted in building up the early stages of the 
 Christian dispensation. As the popular belief in 
 
 1 Essays, p. 222. 
 
 2 "Men's creed is perpetually changing under the influence 
 of civilization. In the Middle Ages the measure of probabilitj' 
 was essentially theological. Men seemed to breathe an atmo- 
 sphere that was entirely unsecular." — (Lecky, Rationalism, i. 8S.) 
 
Acknoivlcdgccl Beauty of Christ's Character. 85 
 
 the Old Testament Miracles engendered among lect. 
 
 IV 
 
 the Jews a monotheistic conception of the world, 
 which (after the Captivity) nothing was able to 
 destroy; and as the mediseval Miracles taught 
 new barbaric Europe the same conception, which 
 (since the Reformation) nothing has been able 
 to undermine; so the New Testament Miracles 
 eno'endered a firm belief in Christ, and a con- 
 ception of Him as "the image" or incarnation 
 of God's thought concerning man,^ whereby that 
 ineffable thought was rendered visible, tangible, 
 intelligible. There is no doubt that this re- 
 markable effect has really been produced. For 
 the modern world is positively permeated with 
 the conviction of the sublime mission of Jesus 
 Christ, and is jDenetrated to the heart by the 
 touching beauty of His character. Those who 
 have brought themselves to deny every one of 
 His Miracles yet confess, with Dr. Strauss, that 
 '' Jesus appears as a thoroughly lovely character, 
 needing only to be developed from within, and 
 never needing anything like a conversion or a 
 beginning afresh," ^ — in short, with nothing to 
 repent of, sinless. And those who most despair 
 
 ^ 'Eyevvrjaev 6 narr^p Thv Tlhv . . . XSyou, oh irpocpopiKhv oA\* 
 iuvirSararov Koi (wvra, oh x.^[Xe(n AaX^iOeura aW' i/c Jlarphs 
 aiSius Koi au€K(ppd(TTOi}S. Aoyos vowv rov Ilarphs ih fiovKruxa. . . . 
 A6yo5 Xa\a>v koI Xiywv ^A iwpaKa Trapa T<j5 IlaTpi fxov, ravTO. 
 AaAuJ. — (Cyril of Jerus., Lcckcrcs, xi.) ^ Leben Jesu, p. 208. 
 
86 Miracle. 
 
 LECT. of acquiring any true knowledge about religious 
 
 IV. 
 
 matters, say, " People no longer ask for Miracles 
 or for the authority assigned to Miracles. The 
 plain demand is, Tell us of Christ 1 Tell us all 
 you know, or deem you know, about Christ 1 
 Assist us with your learning, that we may under- 
 stand and correctly appreciate what is written 
 concerning Him. The more these demands are 
 acceded to, the more resj^lendent do the work 
 and mission of Christ appear." ^ 
 
 Thus, by whatever means it has been produced, 
 it is certain that a profound appreciation of Jesus 
 Christ has come to be almost universally attained 
 amonofst civilised mankind. We have not seen 
 Christ. A hundred obscurities and difficulties 
 and perplexities beset His wonderful biography. 
 They were meant, perhaps, to loosen our attach- 
 ment to the mere " letter " of the gospel. Never- 
 theless His "spirit," has seized us. His ideal 
 remains photographed upon our minds, though 
 much of that which helped to fix it there may 
 perchance have been washed away. And as a 
 young man is haunted, and his character is often 
 quite transfigured, by the ever-present image of 
 one he loves, so the world to whom Jesus has 
 been preached is haunted, and is being trans- 
 formed by His ideal. The Miracles, therefore, 
 
 ^ Bithell, Creed of a Modern Agnostic^ ]). 126. 
 
Modern Experiences. 87 
 
 which at first propped up and protected this faith, lsct. 
 
 IV. 
 
 and which (as all allow) have long ago ceased, 
 may perhaps be meant to become henceforth of 
 historical, rather than religious, interest. And a 
 race of mankind, which has permanently acquired 
 this conception, may perhaps justly claim that it 
 should not henceforth be " troubled " overmuch 
 by things that were once a help, but are now a 
 difficulty. It may be permitted to draw near 
 to Christ by avenues that are to it more appro- 
 priate and easy. And it may be allowed to fall 
 back upon our Lord's " last benediction of the 
 Gospel and special endowment of the later 
 Church," ^ viz., " Blessed are they that have not 
 seen [with outward miraculous evidences], and 
 yet have believed." 
 
 We may even illustrate this position by ob- 
 serving what is going on under our very eyes, 
 in relation to belief in the Holy Spirit and His 
 personal agency among men. We see, at the 
 present day, how many men are helped to a 
 thorough grasp of this doctrine — in some respects 
 the greatest and most influential doctrine of our 
 time — by a conviction of His almost sensible 
 presence in their crowded assemblies, and by a 
 belief in something as near " miraculous " agency - 
 
 ^ "Westcott, Gosj^cl of the Resurrection, p. 102. 
 2 Cf. Drummond, Natural Laio, p. 94. 
 
88 Miracle. 
 
 i^ECT. as the uncongenial atmosphere of our day will 
 
 IV. 
 
 allow. But when once they have reached and 
 grasped the doctrine, have assimilated it, and find 
 themselves actually growing stronger and riper 
 every day by His mysterious presence within 
 them, they do not suffer themselves (I think) to 
 be seriously perplexed and shaken by the remem- 
 brance of their past excitement and enthusiasm, 
 and of the marvels by which they were formerly 
 helped. Thay have got the reality; they have 
 huilt the house. The " sign," therefore, and the 
 scaffolding have become things of the past; and 
 if " difficulties " arise about them, they are diffi- 
 culties that need no longer perplex. 
 
 But if thus in all departments of Christian 
 doctrine — relating to the Father, the Son, and the 
 Holy Spirit — it be true that Miracle has wholly or 
 partially done its work, has retired into the back- 
 ground, and has ceased to be an assistance to 
 belief, may we not gather all these facts together 
 into a general statement, and say that the in- 
 terest and importance of Miracles, as a whole, 
 has past (or is passing) away ; and that a feverish, 
 anxious quest about them is as little required of 
 Christians in the nineteenth century, as a nervous 
 scrupulosity about the Mosaic Law was required 
 in the first century ? Why should it be required ? 
 When once the goal has been attained, why should 
 
Calmness and Patience Rewarded. 89 
 
 all the way we came be so anxiously scanned i^ect. 
 
 afresh ? Why should all the past stepping-stones 
 be revisited and carefully scrutinised; the weak 
 and perilous foot-bridges be suspiciously tested, 
 and gone over again ; and the things that are 
 lefore be forgotten, that we may press back to 
 those things that are heliind ? Do you say, " We 
 cannot be sure that we have arrived, unless we 
 thus go over the whole journey again?" But, 
 surely, a man who looks round and finds himself 
 in London, does not vex his soul about the state 
 of the rails or the structure of the engine that 
 has brought him there. And so, to a man who 
 has really grasped and assimilated the magnificent 
 idea of Monotheism, what does it greatly matter 
 whether the story of Samson be a mythus or not ; 
 whether Balaam's history be mingled with legend 
 or not ; whether Joshua's miracle be taken from 
 the book of Jasher, or not ? whether Jonah's pro- 
 phecy be poetry or prose ? These things have 
 now taken, for him, their true position and their 
 real value. They are historical and literary ques- 
 tions of the utmost interest. They are religious 
 questions no longer. 
 
 And in the same way, if a man have once 
 realised the unique majesty and beauty of Christ's 
 character, and his heart have fallen in love (so to 
 speak) with that sublime Personality — what are 
 
 IV. 
 
90 Miracle. 
 
 LECT. to sucli a man the petty baffling questions about 
 
 IV. 
 
 the New Testament Miracles ? Rather would he 
 smile, when urged to deny Christ on their account, 
 and would say (with aged Polycarp) : " So many 
 years have I known and served him ; how co.n I 
 now forsake my Saviour and my King ? " Or he 
 would exclaim, with St. Paul : " Yea, though [in 
 times gone by] I may have known Christ after 
 the flesh, henceforth know I Him [thus] no more." 
 We can, therefore, and if we can we ought, to 
 gather calmness, cheerfulness, and courage from 
 the commanding positions which — both in Science 
 and Religion — we have now attained; so that 
 breathing this serener air, we may address our- 
 selves with confidence to the great historical and 
 physical studies which lie before us, and by means 
 of which the true is to be sifted from the false. 
 And then perhaps, at last, faith and patience may 
 receive an unexpected reward. A larger and 
 freer view of the vast possibilities, which the 
 universe has in store, may emancipate our minds 
 from too much narroAvness in denial. And, can- 
 didly weighing the force of evidence, we may at 
 length be able to say, "It is not by reasoning 
 a 'priori, nor yet by a blind submission to 
 authority, that we have come to believe in certain 
 Miracles of the Gospel ; but by arguments drawn 
 from criticism and history." 
 
''Miracle" sJiould come Last, not First. 91 
 
 For, in all human things (as the saying is), lect. 
 " well begun is half done. " In innumerable 
 cases, to begin at the right end is the whole 
 secret of ultimate success. And in these subtle 
 religious questions (above all) to begin building 
 at the bottom rather than the top — to begin, 
 e.g., with the Imman nature of Christ^ and ad- 
 vance from that as high as you can, to begin 
 with the mere symbolism of the Sacraments and 
 rise from that to higher thoughts about them, to 
 begin with the plain historical facts and political 
 environment of Christ's life, and to mount from 
 them to the higher and more difficult conceptions 
 of His nature and His mission to mankind — that 
 is true policy. That sets a man on his way to a 
 firm and solid belief; that removes a hundred 
 obstacles and stumbling-blocks, and mountain- 
 ranges of difficulty out of his way, by simply 
 starting him along them (as it were) instead of 
 athwart them. That, in short, is the Apostles' 
 system ; who always began, in heathen countries, 
 by preaching in Jewish synagogues and to people 
 somewhat "prepared for the Lord." That is 
 Christ's own method ; Who always began with 
 easy things and went on to harder things, and 
 
 ^ ** If any do not include the supernatural character of Chris- 
 tianit}'^ in their definition of it, the support of miracles is not 
 wanted ; because the moral truths are their own evidence." — 
 (Mozley, On Miracles, 1st edition, p. 22.) 
 
92 Miracle. 
 
 — • — . __^ ^ 
 
 LECT. was contented to see " first the blade, then the 
 
 IV. 
 
 ear, then the full corn in the ear." 
 
 Approached in this way — left to the last, instead 
 of being presented, in all its deterring perplexity 
 to the modern man, at the threshold of the 
 inquiry after Christ — Miracle ceases to be an 
 obstacle to Christian belief The gentle and 
 tolerant maxim of the Saviour comes into play, 
 " He that is able to receive it, let him receive 
 it." There will always be an abundance of people 
 fully able to receive it. Let not him that re- 
 ceiveth judge him that receiveth not : for he 
 may be on his way to a full reception. To be a 
 liegeman of Christ is to be a Christian — unless 
 the Apostles who left all and followed Him, 
 without even understanding as yet His Jewish 
 Messiahship, were not " Christians." The question 
 which is put by Christ to every man is Hke the 
 question of Jehu in the Old Testament, " Is thy 
 heart right, as my heart is with thy heart ? If 
 it be, give me thine hand." It were absurd to 
 suppose that a harassing course of historical criti- 
 cism must come first; it were maddening to be 
 assured that salvation hung suspended on an ex- 
 haustive metaphysical inquiry into the nature 
 and evidential force of Miracle. It hans^s sus- 
 pended on something better — on a decision of 
 the heart, rather than of the intellect. And 
 
Tlic Clergy should Look Forward, not Backward. 93 
 
 iust as millions are devoted Christians, whose lect. 
 
 IV. 
 
 intellects are clouded with the grossest supersti- 
 tions, so may thousands be devoted Christians and 
 be at inward peace with God, whose intellects 
 are beset with subtle doubts and are daily engaged 
 with historical and other problems, for whose 
 solution a lifetime is insufficient. 
 
 Let a man once cast off, with a sense of its 
 puerile grotesqueness, the notion of a universe 
 given over to Chance — let a man, by an act of 
 his Avill, repudiate the chilling and irrational 
 conception of a universe ruled by dead Fate — - 
 and let him believe with all his heart in a living 
 God and a super-human (not infra-human) con- 
 scious Will at the world's helm : such an one is 
 not far from the kingdom of heaven. He has 
 entered upon the avenue which leads, if diligently 
 pursued to the end, to a moral knowledge of the 
 invisible God. He is on his way to recognize in 
 Christ an incomparable teacher about God, One 
 Who " spake as never man spake." Learning and 
 appreciating those lessons, he will come to feel 
 that never, on the world's stage, has any such 
 presentment of a divinely-human character as 
 Christ's been ever exhibited to God and to man. 
 And bowing heart and conscience in allegiance to 
 this great Master, he will reach at last a peaceful 
 rest beneath Christ's gentle reign. And acknow- 
 
94 Miracle. 
 
 IV. 
 
 LECT. ledging thus, by a slow and natural growth of 
 conviction, Christ to be his '' prophet, priest, and 
 king," such a man ought to find among the 
 Christian clergy helpers, friends, and guides. He 
 oueht to meet with welcome from skilful minis- 
 ters of the New Testament, who "make straight 
 paths lest that which is lame be turned out of 
 the way," ^ and who hold with calm assurance 
 that " the reliance of the clergy must be in liberty: 
 that their power does not lie in traditions treasured 
 up from the past, but in their sympathy with 
 the aspirations of the future : and that religious 
 discussion and inquiry conduct to progress, which 
 after all is but the pursuit of light." ^ 
 
 ^ nehrews xii. 13. 
 
 ^ Esquiros, Religious Life in England, sub fin. 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 THE FALL OF MAK 
 
 Gen. iii. 7 : ''And the eyes of them both were opened ; and 
 they knew that they were naked." 
 
 WHERE will 3'Ou find, within the whole field lect. 
 of human literature, a sentence so full of 
 profound ethical truth as this ? Where will you 
 light upon fifteen words that so simply, and yet 
 so accurately, depict a universal fact of moral 
 consciousness ; that refer us with such unerring 
 point and certainty to the discovery which (I 
 fear) we have each one made long ago for 
 ourselves — viz., that, alone among all living 
 creatures upon the earth, we have cause to feel 
 *' shame " ? Yes : explain it how you will, at- 
 tenuate it by pointing out some indistinct traces 
 of a similar feeling in one or two of the very 
 highest domesticated animals, still the indisput- 
 able fact remains — that " shame " is a universal 
 
96 The Fall of Man. 
 
 V. 
 
 LECT. characteristic of the human species ; and that a 
 " shameless man " is an abnormal being for 
 whom all his fellow-creatures blush. 
 
 Whence, then, arises this singular proclivity to 
 shame ? What have we all clone, that this un- 
 easy suspicion should haunt us that all is not 
 as it should be ? It is quite useless to divert 
 attention from the fact ; or to conceal it from 
 observation behind gaiety of demeanour or an 
 air of absorption in the world's pursuits. The 
 truth always emerges, in spite of our best efforts 
 to conceal it, that " conscience doth make cowards 
 of us all." From the deepest depths of the past, 
 a proud, conquering Pharaoh speaks to us on the 
 embankment-obelisk ; and even he talks of seek- 
 ing peace to his conscience.^ A pure, high-minded 
 philosopher, like Marcus Aurelius, feels impelled 
 to say, " my soul, when v/ilt thou be such as to 
 need pardon no longer from the gods and from 
 men ? " ^ A rapt and devoted Christian saint, 
 like Augustine, is forced to cry out, " What can 
 bring us back to hope, except God's mercy ? " ^ 
 
 ^ "Thothmes III. occupied the throne of Egypt about 1450 
 B.C. This is one of the few dates that can be authenticated." 
 ... On the fourth side of the obelisk, the highest authorities 
 read, that Thothmes hoped for repose to his mind from the fact 
 that he made due offerings to the gods. (King, Cleopatra's 
 Needle, pp. 61, 94.) 
 
 - Private Thoughts, Book x., § 1. 
 
 2 Confessions, Book x., § 58. 
 
Man alone feels " Shame'^ 97 
 
 And from the page of the modern German un- lect. 
 believer rises the same sad confession : " In the 
 self-assertion of the flesh against the spirit I 
 recognise sin : and since man is by nature subject 
 to this tyranny of the flesh, it follows that he is 
 by nature sinful : and, the sinful nature propa- 
 gating itself, there arises an original sinfulness." ^ 
 Thus from every quarter of the human horizon 
 alike there reaches our ear the same strange note 
 of discord and dissatisfaction, the same confession 
 of moral incapacity and failure, the same unrest 
 and sense of shame. 
 
 And then reflect that this note is heard from 
 no other creature whatever, besides man, on 
 all this broad earth. The animals around us, 
 throughout their tribes, are naked and are not 
 ashamed. There is no sense of sin apparent 
 among them, although their actions are often 
 such as — for cruelty, selfishness, greed, impurity 
 — should awaken the keenest sense of shame. 
 But they are evidently not capable of such a 
 feeling. Man alone is capable of it ; because (as 
 Dr. Biichner tells us) "it is only in man that 
 the world becomes conscious to such a desfree, 
 that it rises out of its previous dream-like natural 
 existence. Struggle, therefore, now rages on the 
 
 * Frauenstiidt, Religion cler Natur, p. 176. 
 
 H 
 
98 The Fall of Man. 
 
 LECT. domain of morals as violently as it formerly did 
 on the physical field." ^ 
 
 It becomes, then, at this point, extremely in- 
 teresting to inquire at what precise moment, in 
 every ones life, was this fatal venom, of sin and 
 shame introduced into his constitution ? We are 
 all conscious of it now. Was it introduced yester- 
 day, or at any other fixed point in our past lives ? 
 Nay : though I may have sinned yesterday, 
 broken through the normal law of my being, 
 clouded and confused the ideal of my life, that sin 
 (I know too well) was preceded and generated by 
 many other sins reaching back in sad procession 
 to the furthest confines of my memory. And 
 even the first sin that I can remember must have 
 had a latent cause. It was, evidently, but the 
 outcome of a strange hias to evil, which — in me, 
 as in every other child of man — seems to be 
 congenital. Thus it is impossible to put the 
 finger on any certain hour or on any special 
 event in any one's life, and to say, " Here first 
 evil found an entrance into the soul. Before that 
 fatal moment a spotless angel was among us, an 
 evenly-balanced character, bearing no burden of 
 hereditary bias, showing no discoloured trace of 
 ancestral tendency to sin. It was purely white, a 
 
 1 Man in the Past, the Present, a7id the Futtore, English 
 trauslation, 1872, p. 150. 
 
V. 
 
 Impossihie to say where Sin Began. 99 
 
 sheet of blank paper." ^ We all know that such l^ct. 
 a description would be absolutely false, and even 
 " unscientific " ; and that the Church's ancient 
 ban against all such Pelagian heresy has since been 
 abundantly confirmed by the best modern obser- 
 vation and the surest modern discoveries.^ 
 
 But if so, if there is a strain of evil in every 
 one of us, and no child of man, even by any 
 favourable accident, ever escapes the taint, then 
 one's thoughts are compelled to wander back 
 beyond the individual life. The history of the 
 species opens before us. And at some point in 
 that history we have again to search where we 
 may put our finger down and say, '' Just there — in 
 the reign of that king, on the day after that 
 political crisis, at the precise moment when that 
 tribe landed on a certain shore — sin began in the 
 world." But, once more, of course we cannot do 
 
 ^ Dr. Molescliott appears to regard the human mind in this 
 way. He says, " Pourvu qu'on accorde que la pensee n'est que 
 la page sur laquelle viennent s'inscrire les faits, et qu'elle n'ait 
 d'autre privilege que celui de les raconter, la glorie de la science 
 est foudee."— (Circulation de la Vie, French translation, i. 22.) 
 
 2 The Church's strong aversion to Pelagianism has been much 
 discredited by her champions' injudicious language in the 
 opposite direction. But "we may believe that the sin of the 
 first man entailed on his posterity a condition of sinfulness, 
 , . . while yet we may avoid language which would suggest 
 a literal imputation of Adam's sin to each of his descendants ; 
 and admit that ' sin ' can bear only a modified sense in regard 
 to what is not personal."— (Dr. Bright, Antipclarjian Treatises 
 of St. Augustine, p. xiii.) 
 
 H 2 
 
100 The Fall of Man. 
 
 LECT. anything of the kind. The origin of sin again 
 ehides us. And so conscious failure to do right, 
 shameful divergence from known duty, seems to 
 be primaeval, and to haunt mankind like the 
 shadow of some bright endowment. It is an 
 "electric chain wherewith we are all darkly bound." 
 And we must pass out beyond history itself, if 
 we are to track this mischief to its source. In short, 
 we are baffled ; and we cannot do better than 
 confess, with St. Augustine, St. Ambrose and St. 
 Cyprian, that it flows down ah origine, and that it 
 is, in a word, Original Sin. 
 
 And yet, when we come to think of it, there 
 must have been some *' origo," some beginning of 
 this evil. On all modern, as v^rell as on all 
 ancient, theories of the " descent of man," there 
 certainly was a time when " shame," consciousness 
 of failure, had not yet dawned upon him. 
 Suppose, for instance, he came directly from 
 the hand of God — surely, under that hypothesis, 
 he was not placed upon this earth originally 
 burdened with a horrible sense of guilt. Or 
 suppose, as science nowadays prefers to put it, 
 that man's frame was prepared for him by a long 
 series of evolutions, and that " man is intimately 
 allied by his origin to the whole chain of inferior 
 organic forms/' ^ — still that makes no difference. 
 
 ^ Biichner, Vic psychique dcs Betes, French translation, p. 16. 
 
Yet it must have had a Beginning. 101 
 
 On all suppositions alike, there must have been a lect. 
 certain moment when he made the grand transition 
 and became, to all intents and purposes, a Man ; 
 when he ceased to be either a dormant non- 
 entity or a dreaming animal and awoke to self- 
 consciousness. There must have been an hour 
 when — ^just as plant-life had once upon a time 
 appeared, or when animal-life had once upon a 
 time appeared — so now spiritual, or reflexive self- 
 conscious life, appeared} And then upon this 
 planet, for the first time, stood a being in whom 
 had dawned a new and hitherto unheard-of power 
 of self-determination, of self-judgment, and of self- 
 reproach. It is true the circle within which these 
 new powers of freedom could be exercised was, 
 and is still, a very narrow one ; and that he was, 
 and is still, hemmed in by a compact hedge of 
 inexorable outside laws, whose forces he may, to 
 a certain small extent, combine and direct, but 
 may neither break through nor contravene. But 
 that limitation, again, makes no essential dif- 
 ference. Within his little circle, at any rate, 
 this erect and vertebrated mammal awoke one 
 day to a sense of freedom ; awoke to find that the 
 
 1 "This [Triassic] period is one of the most important 
 turning-points in the organic history of the earth. The Palpso- 
 lithic fern forests were then replaced by the pine forests ; and 
 perhaps all remains of reptiles belong to the Trias onwards." 
 — (Haeckel, History of Creation, English translation, ii. 221.) 
 
102 The Fall of Man. 
 
 LECT. supposed finality of the previous reign of brute 
 life was no finality at all. Among the rich possi- 
 bilities of creation there was latent yet another 
 force, which was destined to change the whole 
 face of the earth. And this force was the mental 
 force of reflex, and therefore of accumulated, con- 
 sciousness ; ^ the power of self-reflection upon the 
 laws of his being, of mental concurrence with 
 them or of dissent from them ; the duty of judg- 
 ing them and of judging himself; the choice 
 of happy, willing self -surrender, or of shameful 
 reproachful failure and moral downfall. Yes ; 
 the day had dawned, the hour had come. And a 
 fall had, from that hour, become at any moment 
 possible. But it had not yet actually occurred. 
 
 "Would it, or would it not, occur ? Might it be 
 averted ? Who could, at that fateful, that critical 
 turning-point of all the world's future history, 
 foretell the course of events? At any rate, no 
 compromising deed had yet been done. And so — 
 emerging (it may be) from the animal world of 
 absolute and sinless unconsciousness — primaeval 
 
 2 "A partir de ce moment, les plienomenes conscients s'en- 
 cliainent I'un a I'autre : il y a de la memoire. Cette coordination 
 des impressions, en vue d'un but K attendre, devient un raison- 
 nement. . . Enfin tout desir accompagne d'un raisonnement, 
 d'une Evaluation relative du moLile, devient une volition." — 
 (Letourneau, Physiologic des Passions, second edition, 1878, 
 p. 40.) 
 
Equi]Joise of neivly -created Man. 103 
 
 man stood there innocent, however capable now lect. 
 of falKnof. It must have been so. No other 
 hypothesis is thinkable, no other sequence of 
 events is conceivable. He was poised, then, for 
 a moment eVl ^vpov aKfir}^, — as it were " on a 
 razor's edge." How long could, or would, the 
 equipoise be maintained ? 
 
 Alas, too surely a fall would come. The 
 ideal, mirrored in transient reality, of an inno- 
 cent and yet no longer a merely animal being, 
 was seen, only to be dashed after too short trial 
 to the ground. And then man became conscious, 
 not only that he possessed a new potver, such as 
 no dog or ape or ant or bee had ever possessed, 
 but that — when once with powerful recoil the 
 animal nature had reasserted itself — he possessed 
 a new feeling. And so shame, self-reproach and 
 conflict, began. Amid suffering and toil and 
 bitter loss, this new acquisition of freedom must 
 (like every other) through long ages be tested and 
 tempered and trained to harmonious service. In 
 short (to return to Biblical language), "the eyes 
 of mankind were opened, and they knew that they 
 were naked." 
 
 Now what is there in all this account of the 
 origin of human guilt and self-reproach which 
 should give any reasonable offence, or present 
 any serious difficulty, to a candid and observant 
 
10-i The Fall of Man. 
 
 LECT. man? Is it the doctrine of "heredity," — which 
 
 V. 
 
 is here presupposed ? Is it the theory of selec- 
 tion by moral conflict, and of the ultimate 
 survival of the fittest, — which here receives a 
 consecration by theology ? Surely these things 
 are the corner-stones of all modern biolomcal 
 science. And it would rather seem as if Chris- 
 tianity had here again, as in so many other cases, 
 by a kind of penetrating forecast, actually antici- 
 pated the course of modern thinking; and had 
 long ago presented, in rude sketch and poetic 
 adumbration, the very same truths as science was 
 afterwards to make her own. What then are 
 the "obstacles to Christian behef" which the 
 Church's doctrine of the FALL OF MAN presents 
 to a cultivated and refined intellect ? With the 
 utmost efforts to be scrupulously just, I can 
 only imagine three objections : — 
 
 (1.) First of all, ^'that this description of the 
 fall of man contradicts (in some taay) the reigning 
 hypothesis of ' evolution ' ; that a more reasonable 
 and scientific account of the universal moral 
 failure we see around us is to be found in the 
 doctrine of unbroken 'bestial survivals' within 
 us ; that what we are called upon morally to do, 
 therefore, is simply to ' let the ape and tiger die,' ^ 
 to cultivate and raise to the highest efiiciency 
 ^ Tennyson, In Mcmoriamy stanza cxvii. 
 
Christianity and Science at one. 105 
 
 and power tlie new faculties that have dawned lect, 
 
 within man, and so eventually to conquer a new 
 platform (so to speak) of terrestrial life for our 
 species. And then, perhaps, a new beginning 
 shall be possible, and a new and higher race shall 
 come into being." But to all this the reply, surely, 
 is very easy. There is no contradiction whatever, 
 there is a complete harmony, between this theory 
 and the Christian representation of things. The 
 Bible teaching, from the very fact of its being so 
 pictorial and childlike, is most elastic and ready to 
 welcome — like some well-devised political frame- 
 work — every successive development and every 
 healthful consolidation of structure that increas- 
 inof knowledg^e can offer to its service. Indeed I 
 am bold to say that the Church of God has, 
 throughout its long life of eighteen hundred 
 years, been incessantly occupied — just as the 
 human body is, to which it offers so many 
 striking analogies — in selecting from the stream 
 of matter perpetually placed at its disposal that 
 which it can build with, and in rejecting what is 
 foreign and incompatible. Now all these hypo- 
 theses of evolution, of natural selection, of here- 
 dity, of survival, it can build with. The materials 
 they offer are compatible with the life, and kin- 
 dred with the doctrine of Christianity. They 
 simply make more rational and intelligible, and 
 
106 The Fall of Man. 
 
 LECT. expand into prose, what the Church has perhaps 
 too vaguely and poetically taught. For as St. 
 Clement of Alexandria puts it, ''Science is the 
 active clenching by reason of the passive accept- 
 ances of faith : " Ho which St. Augustine generously 
 adds, " Faith holds the door oioen for science to 
 enter in." ^ 
 
 But Christian faith does even more for science 
 than that. It very often — with its singularly 
 wide and large poetry of anticipation — displays 
 some half-finished but suggestive sketch, waiting 
 (as it were) to be filled up in detail ; and thereby 
 it seems to invite science to yet further and 
 more serious efforts. 
 
 Just so it is here. And science, with her con- 
 ception of unbroken bestial-survivals, has not 
 taken sufficient account of that momentary 
 equipoise and subsequent downfall, which must 
 have occurred when man first emerged from 
 animal innocence and became really " man." Nor 
 has it properly pictured out the full grandeur and 
 truth of that strange evolution, reflex conscious- 
 ness in man — in other words, human freewill — 
 and of its consequences throughout a long and 
 painful education. Nor yet has science sufficiently 
 observed how many moral evils are now fully deve- 
 
 1 Clement of Alexandria, Strom., Book VI T. 
 
 2 Ap. Bishop Wordsworth, on Genesis, p. xxii. 
 
Denial of Moral Eoil Irrational. 107 
 
 loped in human nature, which are not " bestial " i^ect. 
 
 at all. Such are despair, pure diabolical destruc- 
 tiveness, utter scepticism, religious fanaticism, 
 and many more. Thus there is an abundance 
 of problems still waiting to be worked out, in 
 every department both of scientific theory and 
 of religious practice. Why should we not close 
 our ranks and work fraternally together (as Christ 
 would have us do) against all the protean forms 
 of human misery, ignorance and sin ? 
 
 (2.) But there is another and a far more trench- 
 ant reason why some men of science hold aloof 
 from all co-operation with the Church ; and why 
 they especially detest her doctrine of the " fall of 
 man." They say — though how they can say it 
 passes one's comprehension — ^Hhat man is innocent 
 still : that he cannot have fallen, hecause he is not 
 sinful now. The failure which an unenlightened 
 reason stigmatises as ' sin,' is not sin at all. 
 It is hardly misfortune. The course of events, the 
 stream of tendency, is responsible for its occurrence. 
 And as to man, he has no free-will, and therefore 
 no responsibility. He is, in fact, an animal still, 
 an anthropoid mammal. He cannot help doing 
 what he does ; he cannot choose but follow what- 
 ever impulse, good or bad, is predominant for the 
 moment. He is, in short, a machine. He is a 
 marionette, pulled about by unseen wires of mul- 
 
 V. 
 
108 The Fall of Man. 
 
 LECT. tifarious solicitation, and played, in some way, by 
 the memories or by the newly-emergent instincts 
 of the universal mother of all living things, 
 Matter." 
 
 On this supposition, of course, all the theories of 
 modern science about man's ascent from amid the 
 brute world of unconscious and almost automatic 
 dreaminsf, lose their sense and meanino^. The 
 story of his fall, too, from momentary equipoise 
 becomes a nursery tale. And the animating 
 hope of his recovery — and more than recovery 
 — through conflict, toil, and pain, evaporates into 
 haze and illusion. No evolution towards moral 
 life and self-government has ever taken place. 
 Man's history records nothing but a grim and 
 grotesque procession of nodding waxwork figures 
 — slowly changing in appearance, indeed, from 
 a sponge or an echinus to a Sir Isaac Newton 
 or a benevolent Howard — but without emanci- 
 pation from the iron chain of irresistible and 
 inexorable fate. And whither, we may w^ell 
 ask, is this melancholy and ludicrous procession 
 steadily marching on ? To what worthy goal, at 
 last, are we all being sped thus helplessly along ? 
 Let there be no poetic illusions, say our new 
 teachers Avho would better the lovely story of a 
 human fall and a divine redemption. All is plain 
 prose ; and the goal we shall reach is " extinction." 
 
Melancholy Prognostications. 109 
 
 "Every great thing," says Dr. Biiclmer, "which lect. 
 
 V. 
 
 man has ever accomplished upon the earth, must 
 vanish, and in the universal bosom of eternal matter 
 be swallowed up/' ^ ' ' There approaches a time," says 
 Frederick Strauss, "when the earth will be no 
 longer inhabited; and then, every living and 
 rational thing, with all its works and doings, its 
 politics, its art, its science, shall not merely dis- 
 appear and leave no trace behind, but shall have 
 left no memory even of its existence behind in 
 any spiritual being whatever. With the earth, its 
 history too will utterly vanish away." ^ 
 
 It is obvious, however, that such melancholy 
 notions as these simply explain nothing. They 
 make no attempt to clear up, or to give any human 
 and rational account of, the dreadful mysteries 
 of moral ruin and degradation by which we are 
 everywhere surrounded. They deny point hlanh 
 that there is any sicch degradation to lament. They 
 simply say there is no more fall from any high 
 ideal, no more cause for compunction about the 
 matter, no more hope of recovery and re-ascent, 
 than in the degradation of a mountain, when the 
 stones slip down from the cliff and are passively 
 beaten into sand at its foot. 
 
 And should we bitterly complain of God's 
 
 ^ Dcr Gottcshegriff, p. 27. 
 
 * Alte undneice Glcmbe, p. 227. 
 
110 The Fall of Man. 
 
 LECT. JDJustice in exposing us to all these nncalled-for 
 miseries, the grave reply is, There is no God to 
 complain to, and no injustice to complain of. It 
 is all FATE. Things are so because they are. And 
 we must console ourselves as best we may with 
 the reflection that any catastrophe we may com- 
 plain of now is nothing when compared with the 
 horrible catastrophe that is coming. But then 
 happily all will soon be for ever at an end. 
 
 From all such sickly forebodings a man of sense 
 impatiently turns away. When Job's comforters 
 tried to drown their friend's accumulated grief in 
 the still greater grief of finding himself a wicked 
 hypocrite, who had brought all the trouble on 
 his own head, they still left him hope of re- 
 covery by repentance. Here we are left no hope 
 at all. And therefore we turn back with thank- 
 fulness and joy to the animating rational picture 
 set before us by the Christian Church; where 
 shame and fall, well used, point towards recovery ; 
 where the race, like the individual, is shown how 
 it may (if it will) only lose its pristine animal- 
 innocence of childhood's protected garden, to 
 receive it back again in enhanced beauty and 
 heightened worth ; and where (as M. Lenormant 
 well points out),^ unlike all the other pictures of 
 man's moral history that the world has ever seen, 
 ^ Origines de VHistoirc, i. 65. 
 
Touching the Todry of Genesis. Ill 
 
 Hope gilds the sombre landscape and almost lect. 
 simultaneously with the " fall of man " gives 
 the promise of his redemption. 
 
 (3.) But there is a third obstacle which some- 
 times appears to stand in the way of Christian 
 belief about the Fall of Man from pristine inno- 
 cence ; and it is probably the commonest of all. 
 How many persons feel an unreflecting repugnance 
 to the story -like form in which the Hebrew prophet 
 has seen good to couch his sublime teaching ! How 
 many even thoughtful men there are, who cannot 
 help indeed accepting the doctrine enshrined 
 there, yet who resent the poetry that so eloquently 
 teaches the inner meaning of the world's deep 
 tragedy, just because it is poetry and not bald nine- 
 teenth-century prose. They forget, surely, that 
 this story does not address itself to the nineteenth 
 century only, nor to philosophers only, nor to 
 scientific men only ; but that its audience is all 
 mankind in every age. Think then of the amaz- 
 ing complexity of the task ! The story must 
 be adapted to all races, to both sexes, and to all 
 ages. The savage must be drawn by it ; the 
 little children must be pleased by it ; the woman's 
 heart must be interested and satisfied ; and even 
 the philosopher must be tempted by it to lay 
 aside for an hour his books and his instruments, 
 and, taking the hand of his little daughter, to 
 
112 The Fall of Man. 
 
 LECT. listen in church to the simple yet profound and 
 suggestive story, how the paradise of human 
 innocence was lost and regained. With what 
 poor success has even a Milton done this, writing 
 for merely one people, of a certain European 
 stock, at a very brief period of their long history ! 
 JVlio shall succeed in doing it for the lohole human 
 race? Surely then with patience — nay, v/ith 
 gratitude — should every reasonable man, who 
 would have some reasonable account given to his 
 children of the source of human sin, accept this 
 simple childlike episode of the great Semitic poem 
 of the origin of man. How could it be bettered ? 
 " Man emerged (it says) at fiat of divine Eeason 
 and steadfast Law from the world of dust and 
 matter — last in point of time, first in point of 
 dignity. 'He received, as the ripe fruit of many a 
 previous development, a precious but a perilous 
 gift — the gift of free-will and self-censure. He 
 awoke ; he became aware of intellectual primacy ; 
 he began to generalise and classify and give names 
 to things, as no creature had ever done before. 
 He next became conscious of the pressure of 
 natural law, and of power either to concur, or to 
 withhold concurrence from it. And so, amid* 
 the innocent dumb creatures, there now stood 
 one innocent — for all too short a moment — like 
 themselves, but (unlike them) poised on a slip- 
 
The "FalV narrated in Prose. 113 
 
 pery possibility of wilful fall. Behold, ye angels ^^ct. 
 of heaven ! Behold, ye kindred creatures that 
 inhabit sea and land ! Your master and your 
 king is come. How perfect, how like an image 
 of God, how transcendent a thought spoken out 
 (as it were) and revealed to the world, stood man, 
 for a brief space, upon the earth ! His form, so 
 long prepared and in the higher vertebrates fore- 
 told, is ' very good/ His mind is dominant and 
 regnant amid beast and bird and fish. His 
 character, as yet unsullied, shines serene in 
 childlike simplix?ity, without distraction or self- 
 conflict, 'naked and not ashamed.' But, alas, 
 how soon will this bright scene be clouded over ! 
 Some lower instinct obeyed, some bestial memory 
 indulged, some carnal impulse gratified, will bring 
 with it, on reflection, shame and self-rejDroach. 
 And then the endless warfare has besfun. It is 
 the FALL OF :man. And henceforth, amid toil 
 and bitter experience of evil, a stern selection 
 shall commence of the morally fittest and strong- 
 est, for survival amid some future happier sur- 
 roundings. But is victory, for any, henceforth 
 possible ? Is not moral survival, amid the clash 
 of animal passions and the ever-tightening habits 
 of greed and selfishness, a hopeless and unsub- 
 stantial dream ? No : along with the fall came 
 the animating hope of recovery — hope that always 
 
 I 
 
114 The Fall of Man. 
 
 LECT. makes glad and strong the heart of man, confi- 
 dence that all is not lost, but that, somehow — in 
 God's good way and time — there shall eventually 
 come redemption." 
 
 Such, in plain paraphrase of modern prose, is 
 the ancient Semitic parable of the origin of 
 human sin. Who will undertake to better it ? 
 V7ho will deny that the special genius displayed 
 here is a kind of divine flash of inspiration ? 
 Who will refuse to see that the whole story is 
 bathed in a kind of dayspring from on high, 
 and is suited to our needs, awakening to our 
 conscience, stimulating to our brotherly love, 
 rendering the very fall and degradation of man 
 out the first act of a sublime drama, and promis- 
 ing, ere it reach its conclusion and the curtain 
 fall, to be completed and crowned by some 
 divine Redemption.^ 
 
 ^ Cf. Lenormant, Origincs de VHistoire, i. 107. — *' Rien 
 n'oblige a prendre au pied de la lettre le recit du cliapitre II. 
 de la Genese. On est en droit, sans sortir de I'orthodoxie, de 
 le cousiderer comme une figure destinee h, rendre sensible un 
 fait de I'ordre purement moral. Ce n'est done pas la forme du 
 recit qui importe ici ; c'est le dogme qu'elle exprime. Et ce 
 dogme de la declieance de la race des hommes, par le mauvais 
 usage que ses premiers auteurs ont fait de leur libre arbitre, est 
 une verite eternelle, qui nulle part d'ailleurs n'eelate avec la 
 meme nettete. EUe fournit la seule solution du redoubtable 
 probleme, qui revicnt toujours se dresser devant I'esprit de 
 rhomme." 
 
VI. 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 EEDEMPTION, 
 
 Psalm xxxi. 8 : "Thou hast set my feet in a large room." 
 
 WE reach to-day a " large " and animating lect. 
 subject — the Redemption of mankind from 
 the consequences of the Fall. These two ideas are 
 closely related, and are complementary to each 
 other; and the balance of Christian doctrine 
 would be fatally disturbed if either should be 
 held or discussed apart from the other. The word 
 " redemption," however, must never for a moment 
 be regarded as a complete and adequate expression 
 of all that is involved in the profound mystery of 
 man's recovery from moral degradation. It is, on 
 the face of it, a metaphorical word; and a 
 " metaphor " is nothing more than a play of 
 fancy, a gauzy network of analogies, thrown deftly 
 round some delicate and fugitive idea difficult to 
 grasp. Such ideas elude direct handling. Indeed, 
 
 I 2 
 
116 Bedemption. 
 
 LECT. all truth is coy, and shy of too impetuous ap- 
 
 VI. 
 
 proach> And the subtlest results of thinking 
 seem gifted — like the ultimate atoms of matter — 
 with a strange power of mutual repulsion, which 
 forbids a perfect coherence. We are not, there- 
 fore, to expect a faultless logical expression, or 
 strict mathematical accuracy, when we come to 
 deal with such high spiritual matters as these.- 
 The word "redemption" is a metaphor. Now 
 metaphor is a kind of poetry ; and all poetry 
 appeals, of course, to the imagination rather than 
 to the reason. 
 
 (1.) Now what is the main obstacle to Christian 
 belief which bars the way against men of scientific 
 training, when they are invited to approach the 
 naturally animating and attractive subject of 
 redemption ? It is, I think, simply the fact that, 
 in ordinary/ Christian teaching, they find the whole 
 theory of moral recovery and rehahilitation too 
 miLch personified and dramatised and throivn into 
 imaginative forms. For this is a method which 
 science nowadays, rather too stiffly, refuses 
 
 ^ Ihv Se dA7j06ios epaa-TTjV elprjviKhv dvai, kclv raTs Cv''"h(^^(rt, 
 Trpoa-rJKeu. (Clem. Alex., Stro7n. viii. 6.) "La veriti est 
 comme les femmes capricieuses, que Ton perd pour les troj) 
 aimer." (Eenan, Essais, p. 202.) 
 
 ^ IleTratSeujUeVou iariv eVt toctovtov TUKpifies iTri^rjTelv, icp' 
 Z(rov 7] rod TrpdyaaTOS <t>vais iindex^Tai. (Aristotle, Nic. Eth. 
 i. 4.) 
 
Meta;plioTical Language Indispensable. 117 
 
 to follow. It cherishes an almost irrational lect. 
 suspicion of that indispensable gift of imagination, 
 by whose aid we round and shape our thoughts 
 into " ideas," and so bring them home to our 
 consciousness as human and intelligible. But 
 meantime far more than half the language used 
 by science itself is metaphor and poetry. And, 
 whenever, leaving our arid investigations, we 
 try to teach other people and to put them in 
 possession of our results, then to abandon meta- 
 phor is to abandon all hope of success, and refusal 
 to dramatise the subject is nothing else than 
 refusal to interest and instruct. If then the repre- 
 sentations, by which Christian teachers endeavour 
 to reach men with the conviction that their moral 
 imperfection is remediable, seem to people of 
 culture crude and scarcely tolerable, let it be 
 remembered that they are all confessedly incom- 
 plete and inadequate. But meanwhile the fact, the 
 reality, intended to be presented remains. It is 
 that — contrary to all reasonable expectations — the 
 accelerating velocity of human downfall may be, 
 and in millions of cases actually has been, 
 arrested ; that the accumulating tension of evil 
 habits need not enchain with a hopeless degra- 
 dation ; that the sinful soul may (so to speak) be 
 " pardoned," and the captive victim be bought 
 off and " redeemed." If you wish to understand 
 
118 Bedemption. 
 
 LECT. and to grasp the idea of some great building, 
 
 VI. 
 
 some castle or cathedral, you naturally walk round 
 it and view it from many different points ; till at 
 last the stereoscopic notion of it dawns upon you 
 and you have embraced its meaning as a whole. 
 And so it is with this great mystery of the moral 
 re-instatement of man. Viewed from one side it 
 is " recovery " or " regeneration " or " renew^al " 
 or " conversion " or " redemption ; " viewed from 
 another side it is " atonement " or "justification " 
 or " forgiveness " or " sanctification " or " adop- 
 tion" or "salvation." But not one of these ex]3res- 
 sions, nor all of them together, are full and adequate 
 descriptions of that strange thing, the reversal of 
 man's fall. Still less is any one bound to receive 
 as satisfactory any of the (so called) " schemes of 
 salvation " — whether forensic or otherwise — by 
 which good men have often aided themselves 
 and helped their own generation, bat which they 
 have thereupon been tempted to regard as ade- 
 quate conceptions and to call " the Gospel." But 
 the Divine Gospel of God's good news is a larger 
 and sublimer thing than any of our " schemes " 
 or "plans of salvation." The ways of God are 
 grander and more comprehensive and more loving 
 (we may be sure) than anything which we are 
 likely to attribute to Him. And therefore no man 
 need stumble or "be offended" at the mere tem- 
 
Moral Degradation Eevcrsihle. 119 
 
 porary expedients or word-pictures of theologians ; t^ect. 
 no man need build obstacles to bis faith out of 
 mere metaphors or out of the simple language of 
 the Bible. He should rather ask himself one 
 home question : "Do I desire, by aid of Christ, 
 to disembarrass my soul from clinging sins and 
 from the power of evil habits, rashly formed 
 perhaps in da3^s of my ignorance ? If so, I surely 
 shall not stumble, on the threshold of my inquiries 
 after that salvation, by reason of its too pictorial 
 language or too traditional method of present- 
 ment. Rather, if thousands have already found 
 emancipation and serenity through the agency of 
 belief in Christ, I too will approach that I may 
 see Him for myself. I will ' become a fool that 
 I may be wise ; ' and will try to learn how it can 
 possibly be that One, who died eighteen hundred 
 years ago in a far-off land, should be to thousands 
 here and now so great a benefactor." 
 
 (2.) But at this point another obstacle to Chris- 
 tian belief suddenly starts into view. To many 
 men it seems dbsohdely impossible that the course 
 of moral degradation, once entered ujwn, should 
 ever he reversed. The thought of such reversal 
 may indeed be enchanting, and the good news 
 of such a hope (if it were only true) would be 
 arresting and delightful. It would be news to 
 make a man look up with a new interest from 
 
120 Redemption. 
 
 LECT. his weary ledger ; to make a woman pause in her 
 
 VI. 
 
 round of dreary gaieties ; to make a youth — 
 sliding morally downwards and letting himself 
 go — stop and recover a joyous energy; to make 
 a child — often so much more sad and thouGfhtful 
 than we have any idea of — feel bright and con- 
 fident about his young life. But then is such 
 recovery within the order of things ? Only look 
 around ! Here is a world crowded with a thou- 
 sand millions of human beings, every one of them 
 fallen from his ideal state. Evil, bitter physical 
 and moral evil, slipping in like some lithe in- 
 truder, has fixed its poisonous fangs upon each 
 individual of them. Not one has escaped. The 
 very baby in the cradle is passionate ; ^ the very 
 grey-beard, with one foot in the grave, is miserly ; 
 the streets are filled with troops of harlots, doomed 
 to a bestial life and an early death ; drunkenness, 
 murder, hatred, lust, fraud, and horrible war steep 
 the world to the lips in misery. How can all 
 this torrent of wickedness be ever stayed and its 
 downward course be reversed ? 
 
 And again, if wo look to individual lives, how 
 does every heart conceal a lurking traitor within, 
 and every conscience feel that 
 
 ** Not e'en the dearest heart, and next our own, 
 Knows half the reasons why we smile or si2;h." 
 
 ^ St. Augustine, Confess, i. 11, 
 
Evil cannot le Incurable. 121 
 
 We are all of us like people wounded in some lect. 
 
 VI. 
 
 fray against the enemies of our peace — stagger- 
 ing under various temptations, stumbling, falling, 
 rising again, hoping against hope, and fighting 
 a battle which is all but irretrievably lost. And 
 meanwhile every failure weakens our character 
 and disarms our future resistance. The habit of 
 defeat begins to grow upon us. We are every 
 day more discouraged than before. Defensive 
 power wanes, in proportion as the aggressive 
 power of appetite and passion w^axes ever stronger 
 by habitual indulgence. In short, recovery of 
 balance and quiet self-control becomes daily more 
 hopeless ; until, like St. Paul, we cry out in de- 
 spair, "Who shall deliver me from the bondage 
 of this death ? " i 
 
 And yet, on the other hand, if the assurance of 
 redemption and deliverance seem too good news to 
 be true, the reverse of that assurance is far too 
 lad news to be true. It is really impossible for 
 any sane man to sit down tranquilly in view of 
 the enormous moral evils which both history and 
 experience reveal to him, without cherishing some 
 hope and framing some theory of their ultimate 
 extirpation. It seems part of our very nature to 
 rise in revolt against this degrading reign of moral 
 chaos and brutal impulse amid which we live. 
 ^ Romans vii. 24. 
 
122 Eedemption. 
 
 LECT. And — what is more strikinof still — the better the 
 
 VI. 
 
 man, the purer, the nobler, the more he be truly 
 and ideally a son of man and a scion of the human 
 race, the more intense is always his repugnance 
 and hatred against this special class of evils. 
 Physical pain he may patiently bear. The spec- 
 tacle of Nature's universal warfare he may endure 
 to witness, under the impression that it is, in the 
 end, beneficent. But what can he say, what can 
 he do, in presence of the appalling fact of almost 
 universal moral degradation ? No possible good, 
 it seems, can come of that. " Comtpiio optimi 
 pessimal And to be finally assured of the hope- 
 less shipwreck of that "last result of time," 
 humanity, would indeed extinguish all respect 
 for Nature and her ways, and destroy all interest 
 in an evolution which has issued, it would seem, 
 in a total and disastrous failure of that one race, 
 in whom its preparation, for a million years, had 
 found its end and culmination. 
 
 We are, therefore, it seems, in " a strait betwixt 
 two." Both alternatives are equally impossible 
 and unthinkable — both that of man's redemption 
 and recovery, and that of his irremediable fall. 
 And yet, is there not one element in the latter of 
 the two alternatives, which makes it even more 
 unthinkable than the former ? There are, no 
 doubt, many astonishing things in the universe. 
 
Some Things we ought not to Believe. 123 
 
 VI. 
 
 and " Nature (as Professor Tyndall says) is full of I'Ect, 
 anomalies, which no foresight can predict, and 
 which experiment alone can reveal." -^ But there 
 is only one absolutely shocking anomaly in the 
 universe ; and that is the assurance (if we are 
 really compelled to feel the assurance) that we 
 are witnessing a moral degradation which it is 
 beyond the power, or beside the will, of God to 
 stay in its downward course to final ruin. We are 
 no doubt aroused, for instance, to feel a certain 
 surprise when we are first told that Uranus rotates 
 the wrong way; or that transparent ammonia 
 actually intercepts 5,000 times more heat than 
 equally transparent air ^ ; or that the same atoms, 
 differently hooked together into molecules, may be 
 now an acid and now an alkali ^ ; or that an orchid 
 sets a spring-gun for a bee * ; or that a human 
 being may possess a double consciousness.^ But 
 none of these surprises are " shocking," repugnant, 
 or such as a man ought not to believe. Now a 
 man ought not to believe that the unnatural, reek- 
 ing degradation of the slums in some great city is 
 part of Nature's order, need not therefore be inter- 
 fered with, and cannot be redeemed. 
 
 ^ Lecture on Heat, p. 86 . 
 
 " Tyndall, Eadiation, p. 16. 
 
 ^ Cooke, New Chemistry, p. 249. 
 
 * Darwin, Fertilization of Orchids, p. 222. 
 
 5 Carpenter, Mental Physiology, p. 460. 
 
124) Redemption. 
 
 YI. 
 
 LECT. (3.) But not only are we able to see, on steady 
 reflection, that some possibility of human redemp- 
 tion must certainly exist ; %ug are also alle to 
 itndcrstand, in some measure, tTirough what avenue 
 it may he exiKcted to come. Improved economical 
 conditions would not bring it ; ^ easy and pleasant 
 environment, with absence of poverty and toil, 
 would not secure it. For lazy abundance seems 
 usually to degrade and to prove a Capua 
 to human virtue ;2 and there is many a 
 lovely and delicious scene where "only man is 
 vile."^ Nor does increase of knowledge insure 
 moral elevation; nor the highest dignity of 
 personal surroundings engender it ; ^ nor the 
 perfection of political institutions guarantee 
 
 ^ This may be seen in our own well-to-do colonies, and in tlie 
 United States. Eead JSTordhotr's Covumcnistic Societies in the 
 United States, p. 292. 
 
 2 See Trollope's IFest Indies; and SoiUJi Sea Buhllcs, by 
 " The Earl and the Doctor," 3rd edit., 1872. 
 
 3 See Andrew Wilson, Travels in Casiimir, &c., 1875, p. 225, 
 &c. Hunter, Orissa, 1872, i. 118, &c. De Carne, Indo-China, 
 1872, p. xviii. &c. White, Land Journey from Asia, 1871, 
 p. 2, &c. De Beauvoir, Voijage, 1870, ii. 168, 198, &c. Tozer, 
 Turkey, 1869, ii. 28. Keville, Peujiks non-dvilizes, 1883, 
 ii. 81. 
 
 -* "Louis XV., by his noble carriage and the mild, yet 
 majestic, expression of his features, was worthy to succeed 
 to Louis the Great." (I^tme. de Campan, Life of Marie Antoi- 
 nette, i. 14.) Yet read her description of this man's heartless 
 and diabolical immoralities, in the same volume ; and his 
 treason against children, subjects of his paternal government. 
 
Religion lest effects Moral Changes. 125 
 
 it.^ Not even can philosophy, or famiharity with i^t^ct. 
 the sublimest thoughts and maxims of conduct, 
 give renovation of character. The very height to 
 which a thinker or an orator is often borne by 
 strength of intellectual pinion, or by the fervour 
 of excitement, forms a peril from which many do 
 not escape unscathed. No ; the experience of 
 the world's history, and the accumulated know- 
 ledge we now possess of all sorts and conditions of 
 human character, have rendered the position 
 unassailable — that religion is by far the most 
 powerful factor within our reach for effecting per- 
 manent moral changes. It was the sanction of 
 religion which first restrained the casual impulses 
 of primaeval savagery, and reduced them under 
 the yoke of law ; it was religion which welded 
 rovinsf desert-tribes into a nation ; it was 
 religion which tamed and transformed the 
 barbarous hordes that broke into the Roman 
 Empire. It is religion, it is Christianity — no 
 candid observer will dispute the statement — 
 which is at this day binding together, as with a 
 subtle chemical affinity, the civilised peoples of 
 the earth, and redeeming them from the intoler- 
 able scourge of perpetual war. And if a yet 
 
 ^ For France, see Daiiban, Le Fond de la SocUtS, &c., 
 1873 ; p. 36 : Greg, Essays, 2ud series ; p. 31. For England, 
 " Circumspice ! " 
 
126 Bedemption. 
 
 LECT. further redemption is to be looked for, and some 
 
 VI. 
 
 relief is to be expected from the present crushing 
 evil of pauperism — with its twin attendants, 
 crime and disease — there seems no doubt that 
 here too the angel of deliverance will take the 
 form of " religion." For even the most advanced 
 reformer and outspoken advocate of social change 
 that modern England has given ear to, confesses 
 this truth in plain v^ords. " There is," says he, 
 " a gospel of selfishness — soothing as soft flutes to 
 those who, having fared well themselves, think 
 that every body ought to be satisfied ; but the 
 salvation of society, the hope for the free full 
 development of humanity, is in the Gospel of 
 Brotherhood, the Gospel of Christ." ^ 
 
 (4.) But if so, and if it be conceded that 
 through religion alone moral transformations of 
 any permanence and value are to be looked for, 
 can lue understand ly what process these singidar 
 conversions are effected^ It seems that we can. 
 In the first place, we have to inquire which of 
 the mental powers is the most readily and uni- 
 versally accessible to exterior influence ; which is 
 the most plastic and impressionable and likely (as 
 it were) to hold the door open for the entrance of 
 the new guest, who is in time to become master 
 of the house. The answer to that inquiry may 
 ^ H. George, Social Prohlc7ns, p. 9. 
 
TJic Imagination is first to Develop. 127 
 
 be reached in a very simple and pleasant way. lect. 
 If any one will go into — that most practical 
 of all schools for the study of human nature — his 
 own children's nursery, he will there see the 
 human powers and feelings at work, with that 
 curious suggestiveness which always accompanies 
 the origins and embryo-stages of things, and with- 
 out the remotest attempt at affectation or dis- 
 guise.^ And the very first thing he will there dis- 
 cover is this : — That the earliest and most univer- 
 sal mental power to awaken into activity is the 
 imagination. This power, if he watch long 
 enough, will soon be followed by a slowly de- 
 veloping reason, and this again by a gradually 
 maturing conscience. Of course they all three 
 ultimately combine and are intertwined together. 
 But their start is not simultaneous : just as, in 
 many plants, the stamens and the pistil do not 
 awake to action together, though they appear 
 together afterwards.^ The pictorial imagination 
 then, will be the commonest and the most widely- 
 spread and the most childlike in its easy sensi- 
 tiveness to new impressions, of all the faculties 
 belonging to the human family. 
 
 If he then go forth into the streets among the 
 
 * See Eeville, Pmples non-civilizes, ii. 223. 
 - Lubbock, Flowers in lielation to Insects {NatiLre Series), 
 p. 30. 
 
128 Redemption, 
 
 LECT. masses of mankind, lie will there find his first 
 
 TI. 
 
 conclusions abundantly verified. For while nine- 
 tenths of our race are arrested at various early 
 stages of their mental growth, there is one stage 
 which they seem, almost without any exception, 
 to have reached, and that is the stao^e of imam na- 
 tive impressibility. Tell either your children or 
 the populace a story, and you are quite sure to 
 be listened to. Garnish your public speech well 
 with illustrations drawn from tangible and visible 
 things, and 5^ou will attract men as Orpheus at- 
 tracted the wild denizens of the forest with his lyre. 
 Invite universal mankind to dramatic representa- 
 tions and you will charm them all. Not only will 
 the educated and half-educated go in crowds to see 
 a play of Shakespeare acted on the stage, but the 
 wildest street- Arab will be held entranced by the 
 adventures of Cinderella, and the hlasi London 
 rake will be found in tears before a miracle-play 
 at Ammergau.i 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that if you desire to preach 
 the good news of redemption to all alike — to 
 poor and rich, young and old, male and female, 
 workman and philosopher — the one receptive 
 organ which they all have in common, and to 
 which you must address yourself, is the imagina- 
 
 ^ This was a fact, witnessed and recorded by a visitor at the 
 *'X)lay," some years ago. 
 
A New Ideal must he Siqij^lied. 129 
 
 VI. 
 
 tion. Make your first approach there, and you lect 
 will be welcomed with interest and attention. 
 But approach directly by way of the conscience, 
 and you make your appeal to the very organ 
 which is, perhaps, at present paralysed by inaction 
 and darkened by sin. Or approach directly by 
 the intellect, and you are instantly obliged to 
 adapt yourself to a hundred different classes of 
 mind and degrees of civilisation. Your treatise 
 on the Gospel composed for the twelfth century 
 will be consigned to oblivion in the sixteenth 
 century : and your " body of divinity " carefully 
 elaborated for the Reformation period will be im- 
 patiently torn up and thrown away when a new 
 reformation-period begins to dawn upon the 
 world. Only that abides which — like Homer, 
 like Shakespeare, and (above all) like the Bible 
 — appeals to the universally receptive power, 
 the imagination. And through that, therefore, 
 must come the first pictured traits of the new 
 and redeeming Ideal, which is to dissolve gradu- 
 ally away the old worldly notions and sensual 
 conceptions of life, and to replace the old Adam, 
 the old type of human nature, with a new and a 
 better one. 
 
 (4.) But a further question here arises. With 
 yjhat new Ideal, precisely, shall the receptive imagi- 
 nation he supplied, if the whole man is to he thereby 
 
 K 
 
130 Eedemption. 
 
 LECT, gradually leavened and redeemed ? The right soil 
 ^^* has been found : with what seed shall it be sown ? 
 The new Ideal to be presented before it must (as 
 we long ago found out) be something distinctively 
 human, else it will find no sympathy and no 
 welcome from the ordinary human mind. It 
 must be something attractive and simple, else it 
 will not come home to all alike. Yet it must be 
 profound and mysterious, lest it be despised and 
 seem to challenge fathoming to the bottom. 
 Again, it must present the character of gentle- 
 ness and peace, or it will (as the Old Testament is 
 said to have done among the Goths and Maories) 
 stir up and inflame the very lower passions that 
 it was meant to hush to rest. Nor must it fail 
 to carry marks of suffering and brave endurance, 
 else it will not correspond to the experience of 
 the vast majority of the human race. Nay, it 
 should — if that were possible — show signs of 
 having met, and known how to conquer, that last 
 and most terrible enemy of the whole human 
 species, Death. Surely it were no vain dream to 
 believe that, if such an ideal figure could be pro- 
 jected powerfully and continuously on the imagi- 
 nation, a new type (as it were) of mankind might 
 in course of long centuries be gradually engen- 
 dered. The supreme beauty of such a heavenly 
 character would enkindle sympathy and loving 
 
Means for Presenting that Ideal. 131 
 
 adoration. The lips of such a Son of Man, parted lect. 
 with words of welcome for the sinful and of resto- 
 ration for the fallen, would awaken hope and 
 earnest purpose in many a despairing soul. And 
 as each individual came under its transforminsr 
 influence, some — many, it may be ; all, it might 
 have been hoped — would fall in love and be 
 melted into conformity with this ideal man. They 
 would see in Him a glorified image of their own 
 possible better selves ; would feel convinced that 
 this was the idea of God, existent from the 
 beginning, concerning the human species ; and so 
 by loyalty and self-devotion would be elevated, 
 regenerated, renewed in the spirit of their minds 
 — in a word, would be redeemed. 
 
 And then all that is wanting is some organisation 
 by means of which the redeeming figure may be 
 (so to speak) perpetually dramatised to men's 
 imagination and may be set forth visibly before 
 their eyes. Now sacred art in its various branches, 
 the tranquil ritual of the Church, saintly imita- 
 tions of Christ's life (in multifarious partial ways 
 and imperfect degrees), and the rhetorical or de- 
 scriptive presentation of the subject by Christian 
 teachers, have certainly succeeded in keeping 
 alive for more than eighteen centuries a most 
 vivid and heart-transforming "remembrance" of 
 such a living and energising ideal, in the person 
 
 K 2 
 
132 J^edemption. 
 
 LECT. of Jesus Christ. And in those who fully re- 
 
 VI. 
 
 ceive it, this new conception seems to cast out 
 and take the place of all previously existing 
 ones, whatever they may have been — heathenish, 
 Pharisaic, Sadducee, worldly, carnal, devilish, or 
 any other. Its recipients appear to live hence- 
 forth as if born into new surroundings and gradu- 
 ally awakening to new sensibilities. To the old 
 life and views of things they have bidden adieu. 
 They say, ''I feel (as it were) crucified with 
 Christ, to whom my heart's allegiance is now 
 given. Nevertheless I live ; I am more fully and 
 consciously alive than I ever was before. Yet it 
 seems no longer I, but Christ"who liveth in me." ^ 
 This, then, is the redemption, through Jesus, 
 the world's Saviour, which is committed to the 
 Church's keeping from age to age. This is the 
 Gospel of good news — at least, in one of its many 
 aspects — which has brought peace, courage, and 
 strength to the untold thousands of the human 
 race. And this is a Christianity to which science, 
 so far from being hostile or indifferent, ought to be 
 most friendly. For it thwarts (so far as I am 
 aware) no single scientific advance, it traverses no 
 single scientific position. It teaches, as science 
 also does, that no creature and no species is fixed 
 in an invariable state ; but that all things are 
 ^ Galatians ii. 20. 
 
No Conflict here ivith Science. 133 
 
 moulded by incessant change and plastic to the i^^^t. 
 constant touch of external influences.^ It ac- 
 knowledges, with science, the fact of occasional 
 counter-evolution; and sees in human degrada- 
 tion one of the saddest examples of its occurrence.^ 
 Yet it believes, with science, that exterior and 
 more cosmic agencies may, in a marked wa.y, 
 alter many things — as oscillations in the earth's 
 orbit probably produced the glacial epochs, with 
 all their vast results,^ and as the great lunar tide- 
 wave daily reverses the rivers' downward course — 
 
 *' And hiislies lialf the babbling Wye, 
 And makes a silence in the hills." 
 
 Yet withal it bows the head, with science, to the 
 majesty of unbroken and invariable Law ; and holds 
 it to be as firm and invariable as the eternal 
 '' Amen," of whose standing will Law is the expres- 
 sion. And it perceives, as science also does, that 
 the way in which the law of variation works is by 
 the unexpected, yet from all eternity prepared, ap- 
 pearance — " Epiphany " is the Greek word for it 
 — of some exterior agent, some divergent force, 
 some new strain, in the animal sphere some 
 
 ^ "We strain our imagination to conceive the processes of 
 creation ; while, in reality, they are round us daily." — (Duke of 
 Argyll, Unity of Nature, 1884 ; p. 270.) Cf. Darwin, Earth- 
 worms, 1881 ; p. 258 : Grant Allen, Colours of Floioers, 1882 : 
 p. 20. ^ Unity of Nature, p. 372. 
 
 3 See Croll, Climate and Time, 1875 ; pp. 77, 325. 
 
134 Redemption. 
 
 LECT. fresh departure, among mankind some dazzling 
 "genius" who turns the world vipside down. 
 
 The scientific obstacles, therefore, to Christian 
 belief seem, in this department of religious 
 thought, remarkably few. One glance around at 
 the state of our great modern cities, one hour's 
 reflection on the teaching of the world's history, 
 one earnest effort of the will to revive belief in the 
 general beneficence of Nature, and to reenkindle 
 hope in the future of its crowning result, Man — 
 these mental acts, of which all thoughtful men 
 are capable, seem to be enough for a complete 
 recovery of the Christian point of view about 
 redemption. And though at times, when the 
 better feelings ebb, it is possible to surrender to 
 more despairing thoughts, and almost to make 
 shipwreck of one's faith — at such times, by re- 
 course to the aids of the Church, and by bending 
 the proud knee in prayer, and sacrificing one hour 
 to quiet meditation over the Gospel page, a 
 marvellous recovery is possible. And the grey- 
 haired philosopher goes back to his microscope or 
 his laboratory a serener and a better man ; 
 because he has learnt what that saying of the 
 great Master meant — " I thank Thee, Father, that 
 Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and 
 prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." " 
 ^ Mattheio xi. 25. 
 
VII. 
 
 LECTURE YII. 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 .noM. vi. 23 : " The gift of God is eternal life." 
 
 THERE is hardly any subject more personally leot, 
 interesting to all of us, and at the same time 
 more impatient of scientific handling, than the 
 subject of ''a future life." And its great and 
 baffling difficulty is, perhaps, the cause of a very 
 curious phenomenon, which has lately presented 
 itself in the world of thought. There is in the 
 air a kind of second "renaissance," a second 
 revival of a long bygone way of thinking. But 
 the renaissance, this time, is not (like that of 
 the fifteenth century) a mere revival of the pagan 
 classical way of thinking — though even that has, 
 in some quarters, been feebly attempted — but 
 rather a rehabilitation of Oriental, of Hindu, 
 ways of viewing the world and of estimating 
 human life. For this the studies of half a century 
 
136 Immortality. 
 
 i-KCT. have formed a steady preparation. Lassen, Weber, 
 
 VII. 
 
 Muir, Max Mliller, Hardy, Williams, and a host 
 of others, have not laboured in vain. Their works 
 have created a widely spread interest in Indian 
 affairs, and have fostered an eversrrowingf taste 
 for Indian studies. And Buddhism, above all, has 
 been found to harmonise so strangely with many 
 of the most favourite speculations of modern 
 science that something more than sympathy has 
 been expressed for it ; and our Missions to the 
 East, and even our (apparently) secure and long- 
 established English Christianity, have been threat- 
 ened by a reflex wave of aggression from that 
 quarter.^ We can afford to smile at the audacity 
 
 ^ The singular curiosity about Buddhism which is felt 
 nowadays is shown by the great number of books which are 
 constantly written on that subject. Such interest is not sur- 
 prising, when we remember two things — (1) that Buddhism, 
 at this moment, counts many more adherents than any 
 other religion on the face of the earth ; (2), that it offers sal- 
 vation by the way of the pure intellect, a way much affected 
 by a "scientific age" In December, 1872, Good 7^Forc?5 printed 
 an abstract of a Buddhist sermon. In 1875 an attack on 
 Christianity, called An Exposition of Error, was published 
 in Japan, its objections being oddly similar to those of Celsus 
 in the second century. In 1881 public lectures were held at 
 Tokio, in support of Buddhism. A year or two ago, the 
 Bishop of Tinnivelly in South India was astonished by the 
 apparition of a Buddhist counter-mission from Ceylon, which 
 held a meeting in a Hindu temple, and made overtures for an 
 offensive alliance against Christianity with the Brahmins. And 
 at the present moment, in London, any one may procure at 
 Mudie's library a strange attempt, by a Mr. Sinnett, to adapt 
 
Modern Restlessness. 137 
 
 of this Quixotic enterprise. But still we should lect. 
 remember what such phenomena always indicate. 
 They invariably presuppose a restless and growing 
 dissatisfaction with existing forms of belief. They 
 express a dangerous tension between older and 
 newer religious ideas. And they herald an earnest 
 endeavour, on the part of serious and thoughtful 
 men, to crystallise afresh their conceptions of 
 human destiny and duty amid the changed sur- 
 roundings of the times.^ 
 
 But why should we always thus go backwards 
 in our researches after truth ? Interesting as 
 history may be, indispensable as a knowledge of 
 the past is, both for understanding the present 
 
 Buddhism to the English taste. But when Englishmen shall 
 begin to sit still and pine languidly, in Buddhist fashion, 
 after annihilation, a good many things besides English Chris- 
 tianity will be drawing towards their end. 
 
 ^ "At the present moment, unbelief in the revelation of 
 the unseen is undergoing, here as elsewhere, a shock which is 
 without parallel, at least in the history of this country, for 
 the activity of its manifestations." — (Right Hon. W. E. Glad- 
 stone, in Contemporary Ecvieiv, October 1878.) "It is no 
 secret that among the educated men of France and Italy, 
 with the exception of a few individuals, the Christian dogma 
 has ceased to hold an authoritative sway." — {Ibid.) An intel- 
 ligent traveller, lately come from Spain, reports that the same 
 phenomenon is still more remarkably prominent there. While 
 "the Germans have outgrown their faith, they have become 
 entirely indifferent to religious forms. They neither accept nor 
 reject any theological creed ; they simply pay no attention to 
 such things." — (C. Hillebrand, in Nineteenth Century, June, 
 1880.) 
 
138 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. and preparing for the future, yet surely it is 
 
 VII. 
 
 cliildisli to be so often engaged in "reviving" 
 some bygone period or other. It is ludicrous to be 
 so perpetually engaged, as some are, in *' beating 
 back the spirit of the age," and in trying timidly 
 to float, by a slender backwater, in opposition to 
 the mighty stream of Divine progress in the 
 world.i Above all, why should we have recourse 
 to ancient Indian speculations for aid amid the 
 perplexities of modern Europe ? Rather, while 
 we acknowledge that hazy poetic mysticism is the 
 special privilege of the East, as clear scientific 
 thinking forms the prerogative of the West, we 
 should perceive that there is a central point, mid- 
 way between the two, where has arisen a power 
 able to hold them both in equipoise, and to 
 combine both East and West in harmony. And 
 that power is Christianity.^ 
 
 ^ Five-and-tliirty years ago, when we were in tlie red heat 
 of our Eomanticism, and some of us were set upon restoring 
 the "Ages of Faith," a singular warning reached us from an 
 unexpected quarter. Mr. Pugin, a recent convert to Eoman- 
 ism, wrote as follows : — "All anterior to the Reformation is 
 described as a sort of Utopia — pleasant meadows, happy pea- 
 sants, merry England, cheap bread and beef for nothing, all 
 holy monks, all holy priests, all holy everybody. I once be- 
 lieved in Utopia myself. But, when tested by stern facts of 
 history, it all melts away like a dream." — (Pugin, Earnest 
 Address, 3 850.) 
 
 2 Christianity was, by its origin, an Oriental religion ; but 
 by St. Paul (practically) and by St, John (theoretically) it 
 
Eastern Ideas of a Future Life. 139 
 
 Take, for instance, the subject which claims lect. 
 
 VIT. 
 
 our especial attention in the present lecture, the 
 difficult subject of " Immortality." The East has 
 here always tended to lose itself amid a mist of 
 impracticable and immoral theories. In Brahmin- 
 ism it has dreamed of universal absorption in a 
 Pantheistic deity .^ In Buddhism it has pointed on, 
 beyond a long purgatory of innumerable transmi- 
 grations, towards a Nirwana-heaven of dreamless 
 swoon. ^ In Parsism, Gnosticism, Manichsean- 
 ism, it has indulged itself in other bewildering 
 speculations. While the West has ever been 
 tempted to lose itself in hard scientific denials. 
 Christianity alone seems able to maintain the 
 balance between them, and to satisfy all the re- 
 quirements of the problem. And this she does 
 by carefully and steadily insisting on three things. 
 
 was adapted to the requirements of the west. And thus eastern 
 and western ideas became happily welded together. But three 
 centuries before, the way had been providentially prepared by 
 the sweeping conquests of Alexander. 
 
 Hence arose a widespread use of the Greek language in 
 the East, and eventually the translation of the Old Testament 
 into that tongue, Jesus Himself seems to have used both an 
 Asiatic and a European language. For instance in Matthew 
 XV. 8, He cites the LXX where it differs from the Hebrew ; 
 while in Matthew xxvii. 46, He cites the Hebrew where it 
 differs from the LXX (cf. Grindfield, A2Jology for LXX, p. 185.) 
 "La theorie Chretienne n'est rien que la religion primitive des 
 Aryans." — (E. Burnouf, Science des Religions, 3rd edit., p. 114.) 
 
 1 Cf. Monier Williams, Einduism, p. 51. 
 
 - Cf. Bifeliop Titcomb, Chapters on Buddhism, pp. 34, 53. 
 
140 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. First, for men trained and able to philosophise 
 
 VII. 
 
 on these high matters — great liberty of specula- 
 tion. Next, for men of science and history — 
 strong and definite appeal to facts. Lastly, for 
 busy people of little taste for theory, who want 
 truth stamped with authority and wrapped up in 
 some tanmble and striking^ form — a vivid and 
 artistic presentation.^ And it may be well, there- 
 fore, to consider this question of Immortality 
 successively from these three points of view. 
 
 (1.) First, then, viewing it as a subject for 
 speculation, let it never be forgotten by those 
 who have any difficulties about the matter, that 
 this is precisely one of those points — such as 
 the Divine Nature, the time of the world's end, 
 the origin of evil, and several other mysterious 
 questions — which Christianity expressly declines 
 
 ^ It is surely quite remarkable how readily the leading 
 facts of the Gos^^el lend themselves to artistic treatment. 
 Hence, exclaims Ewald, "Elevate Christ as high as you can, 
 but whatever you do, blur not and darken not His earthly 
 history, lest you destroy the only bridge which can lead you 
 to His heaven and His eternity." — {Christus und Seine Zeit, 
 p. xii.) "This conception of God, which is the child's, is 
 evidently the only one which can be universal ; and therefore 
 for us is the only one which can be true." — (Ruskin, Modern 
 Painters, iv. 87.) "Even purgatory, taken as a symbolic re- 
 presentation, has its meaning, like everything else which 
 gifted souls from the beginning have seen by intuition, and 
 then have expressed in earthly speech." — (Tieck, Sclmtzgcist, 
 p. 55.) 
 
Limitation of our Faculties. 141 
 
 to reduce into definite terms of the human lect. 
 
 VII. 
 
 understanding.^ It therefore leaves us perfectly 
 free to speculate upon the " how," " when/' and 
 '' where " of the future life, as much as we please 
 and as far as we can. Indeed we cannot go far. 
 Our faculties are not adapted for a thorough 
 comprehension of these unseen verities. And 
 in making this confession we are standing on 
 similar ground with that of scientific men, who 
 often feel bound to record their absolute igno- 
 rance, in detail, about scientific truths. Thus 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer makes a general confession 
 of the most sweeping kind. He says, " The man 
 of science more than any other truly hnows that 
 in its ultimate essence nothino^ can be known.^' ^ 
 Again, " How physical forces can transform them- 
 selves into intellectual (says Dr. Buchner) is in- 
 explicable ; but not more inexplicable after all 
 than the conversion of one physical force into 
 another." 2 Dr. Grove confesses, "We have oio 
 knowledge as to the exact nature of any mode 
 
 ^ "The Christian religion, as its Founder taught it, employs 
 itself very little with dreams and anxious speculations about 
 the future life. Rather it fixes our attention on a great build- 
 ing in this world, at which all generations must work ; until 
 He returns, who shall bring His reward with Him." — (Flugge, 
 Dcr Eimviel dcr Zukunft, p. 328.) 
 
 ^ H. Spencer, First Pinnciplcs, p. QQ. 
 
 * Buchner, Lumicrc et Vie, French trans, p. 166. 
 
142 Immortality, 
 
 LECT. of chemical action." ^ Faraday said, " He once 
 
 VII. 
 
 thought he knew something about electricity ; 
 but the more he investigated it, the less he found 
 he understood it."^ Dr. Bastian asks, "Why 
 should oxygen unite with hydrogen to form water ? 
 and what do we know concerning the actual 
 phenomena of nutrition ? They are still inscru- 
 table mysteries." ^ Professor Tyndall declares, 
 " Between molecular mechanics and consciousness 
 is interposed a fissure, over which the ladder of 
 physical reasoning is incompetent to carry us." ^ 
 And even Professor Haeckel writes as follows : — 
 " What do we know certainly of the essential 
 nature of matter and of force ; what of gravita- 
 tion; of the essential nature of electricity or of 
 the imponderahles generally, whose very existence 
 is not proved ; what of the ether, upon which our 
 formal science of light and optics is founded ; and 
 what of the atomic theory, on which our chemistry 
 is built ? Yet are we to cease to teach these sci- 
 ences hecause we do not certainly hiow these 
 things ? " ^ Certainly not, replies the Christian : 
 
 ^ Grove, Correlatdon of Forces, 2nd edit., p. 85. 
 
 ^ See Quarterly Review, January 1877. 
 
 2 Bastian, Beginnings of Life, i. 55. 
 
 * Prof. Tyndall, in Nineteenth Centitry, November, 1878, 
 p. 68. 
 
 5 Haeckel, Freie Wissenschaft, p. 55. Cf. Yircliow, Freedom 
 of Science, 2nd edit, p. 20: ''All human knowledge is but 
 fragmentary." 
 
Exiolicit Faith is not Demanded. 143 
 
 only then j^ou should have some sympathy with lect. 
 the Church, which persists (on very high autho- 
 rity) in teaching truths which she makes no 
 pretensions logically to understand ; but rather 
 has plainly stated, from the very beginning, to 
 be things " which eye hath not seen nor ear 
 heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of 
 man to conceive : " and you should listen to 
 Mr. H. Spencer, when he says, " In religion let 
 us recognise the high merit, that from the begin- 
 ning it has dimly discerned [an] ultimate verity, 
 and has never ceased to insist on it ... . each 
 higher creed rejecting the definite interpretations 
 previously given." ^ 
 
 Acknowledging, then, the inaccessibility of those 
 realities which death alone can fully reveal, the 
 Church has nevertheless always faithfully taught 
 the lesson which Christ has put into her mouth. 
 She has proclaimed these truths : (<x) that the 
 present aspect of things will some day pass away, 
 as surely as previous " dispensations " or " forma- 
 tions " have passed away : (h) that the apparent 
 stability and reality of the world is, therefore, 
 illusive, and the true "realities" are things 
 neither visible nor tangible : (c) that man — sum- 
 mit though he seem of all creation, and the last 
 result of time — still as he began only yesterday, 
 ^ First Principles, p. 97. 
 
144 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. so to-morrow tie and all his works will end ; but 
 not vjitlioid having effects heliincl of a very per- 
 manent, and to himself deeply important, kind. 
 For (says Christianity) not only is the human 
 race building up — as corals build up a continent 
 beneath the sea — a spiritual world, hidden at pre- 
 sent and unimaginable to the builders, but a great 
 process of selection is also tacitly going on, so that 
 each individual, according to his quality, will be 
 built in or be rejected from the great building 
 which is growing silently beneath the temporary 
 veil of sense. Thus, according to Christian teaching, 
 in some mysterious way each man is immortal, 
 and that not by any arbitrary decree of God, but, 
 simply by the working of a certain law which 
 is traceable throughout the universe. This law 
 provides that all material, which lends itself to 
 the purposes of the great Power that shapes our 
 ends and harmonises all things, is destined to be 
 preserved from retrograde dissolution and is 
 privileged to *'come up higher." But all 
 material which proves recalcitrant and incom- 
 patible sinks into lower, and perhaps amorphous, 
 conditions and goes to (what we call) " waste." 
 
 But the " dispensation " of the future, the long 
 hoped-for " kingdom of heaven " upon earth, the 
 *' reign of angels " (so to speak) which shall one 
 day supersede the present reign of man on this 
 
Many Truths are Inconceivable. 145 
 
 planet, is characterised by a very perplexing and lect. 
 subtle attribute. It is called " spirituality." The 
 word cannot, of course, indicate anything super- 
 natural; else it would mean something outside 
 the great Cosmos of all-embracing law and order 
 — in other words, outside the area of the Divine 
 will, which finds its expression in order and law. 
 But though it be nothing, strictly speaking, super- 
 natural, yet the words " eternal " or " spiritual " 
 life do constitute a pretension to belong to 
 some higher state of things than we are, most of 
 us, familiar with amid our temporal and worldly 
 occupations. So the phrase " spiritual-mindedness," 
 used by St. Paul,^ is not unintelligible ; yet it is 
 only partly intelligible. And therefore the 
 quality, as we know it now, seems to be merely a 
 first streak of some coming dawn, some rising 
 " dayspring from on high," which is to us as 
 unintelligible now as the advent of Man and of 
 his reign must have been to the gigantic brutes 
 that lorded it in the forests and marshes of the 
 Tertiary epoch. If then, in spite of their crass 
 ignorance, the incredible and unthinkable reign of 
 Man has, nevertheless, become an accomplished 
 fact, there seems no reason on the face of it to 
 deny that Man s reign, too, may very likely have 
 to give place to something better, although some- 
 ^ Romans viii. 6. 
 
 L 
 
146 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. thing now unthinkable to him. At the same time, 
 
 VIT. 
 
 it is clear that the new ruler of the coming age 
 will not be abruptly created for the occasion ; but 
 will be developed, by some kind of selection, 
 from the older stock. And everything indicates 
 that the principle of selection will be the survival 
 of those morally and intelligently most in accord 
 with the Mind that sways the Universe ; ^ while the 
 mechanism of selection will probably be something 
 finer and more spiritual than at present. It will 
 be by disciple ship, not sonship ; by moral, not 
 sexual, heredity ; by re-generation, not generation. 
 But whenever, hitherto, a new class of beings 
 has been ushered into the world, not only have 
 new climates and surroundings — a " new heaven 
 and a new earth " — been prepared for them, but 
 also (if observation is to be trusted) a new idea 
 has rather abruptly budded forth from the parent 
 stock, and a leading specimen has appeared.^ 
 
 1 "It is becoming evident that the strongest and the fittest 
 [to survive] are not physical, nor even intellectual, strength ; 
 but moral forces." — (McCosh, Christianity and Fosiiivism : 
 1871, p. 70.) 
 
 2 " In the Northern Seas a remarkable variety of the com- 
 mon guillemot is found. It often pairs with the common kind, 
 yet intermediate gradations have never been seen. Nor is this 
 surprising. For variations which appear suddenly are either 
 transmitted unaltered or not at all." — (Darwin, Descent of Man, 
 2nd Edition, p. 424.) Polymorphism, in insect larvae, may 
 be the origin of new species. (D'Herculais, Les Insedes, p. 45.) 
 "The original tree from which all the copper-beeches in 
 
How New Maces are Produced. 147 
 
 VII. 
 
 Now just in this way — silently, abruptly, and yet lec 
 (in fact) after long preparation — the second Adam, 
 or type and fountain-head of a new race, appeared 
 in the world. And on that type millions of the 
 human family have since moulded their characters. 
 They have become, by regeneration and renewal, 
 mysteriously one with Him, and " conformed to 
 His likeness." And attaching themselves to His 
 side — as crystals in process of formation, by some 
 wonderful polarity, range themselves beside a 
 crystal already formed — they " grow up to Him in 
 all things," extend (as it were) His incarnation, 
 become part of his ever-expanding Body " the 
 Church," and (to change the metaphor) are built 
 up as living stones to form a temple for the living 
 God. 
 
 Nor do such transformed persons live to them- 
 selves alone. Their discipleship takes effect on 
 others too ; and the spiritual heredity is passed 
 on. They often succeed in radiating on all around 
 them an elevation of thought and an unselfishness 
 of heart, which enkindles a similar heat and 
 
 Europe have been derived was found by accident in a wood in 
 Germany about ninety years ago." — (Coleman, Oitr Heaths, &c. 
 p. 24.) "A short time ago a few gilled salamanders, at Paris, 
 unexpectedly crept out from the water on to the dry land, from 
 amid hundreds of these animals ; they lost their gills and 
 changed themselves into tritons, which breathe only through 
 lungs." — (Haeckel, History of Creation, i. 241.) 
 
 L 2 
 
148 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. vitality in many other persons. Thus they leaven 
 
 VII. 
 
 the world, as yeast permeates the dough, by a 
 rapid fecundity of spiritual life ; and they engender 
 — by a mystery as inscrutable as that of ordinary 
 birth ^ — many spiritual sons and daughters for the 
 unseen world. And, again, just as plant-life seizes 
 on the lower world of dead matter and vitalises 
 it, and as the yet higher animal-life seizes on the 
 plant world and elevates it to a higher stage of 
 being, while at every transformation much mate- 
 rial is rejected as unsuitable and irreceptive, so 
 (once more) does spiritual life seize on such 
 animal life as is suitable, and assimilate and 
 elevate it. And as the lower earthy compounds 
 are dissolved and (in St. Paul's sense of the 
 word) " die " before they can go to form the 
 plant, and the gaseous molecules of the air are 
 dashed to pieces by the yellow light waves ^ 
 before they can be breathed-in by the leaves, — 
 and as (once more) the plant-cell is disintegrated 
 and its life is sacrificed, before its elected parts 
 can be promoted to build up the animal or the 
 
 ^ "He who lias, Avith the slightest attention, remarked the 
 procedure with which nature, in this life, brings out and 
 makes provision for a new being, must think himself a perfect 
 fool if he attempts to guess how she will bring that being into 
 another life." — (Fli)gge, Himmcl dcr ZuJcunft, p. 320.) 
 
 ^ " Every ray has its proper chemical function, — the yellow 
 in the decomposition of carbonic acid." — (Draper, Scientific 
 Memoirs, 1878 : p. 785.) 
 
Natures Transmutations of Force. 149 
 
 man, — so, it may be, the higher spiritual or i^^ct. 
 " eternal " life must seize and mortify and super- 
 sede that lower life of which it takes possession, 
 utilising its material, transforming it, and in the 
 transition destroying it. 
 
 Now, of such mysterious transformations of 
 force even Nature gives abundant types and 
 hints. Dr. Blichner, whom we heard just now 
 confess the baffling mystery of the commonest 
 chemical changes, thus describes for us one 
 instance of Protean transitions of force, — and 
 that in a not very elaborate molecule. He 
 says : — " I take some ' sulphur of antimony ' and 
 first of all electrify it : but this electric force 
 instantly reveals another, that of 7nagnetism ; but 
 this again presently displays another force, viz. 
 heat ; the heat glows into redness and presently 
 starts the vibrations of light; meanwhile the 
 mass dilates, and shows mechanical motion : and 
 the diorama ends by the appearance on the 
 scene of the cheinical force of decomposition."^ 
 Here we have no less than six forces passing 
 into and succeeding each other. And still more 
 curious cases are reported by other chemists, 
 such as the interchange of atoms between sodium 
 and water — where the self-same atoms, merely 
 hooked together under a different grouping, 
 ^ Blichner, Lumierc, &c., p, 202. 
 
150 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. suddenly develop quite new and unexpected 
 ^"* qualities.^ So that even " matter," it seems, and 
 that in its deadest and all but primitive simpli- 
 city, is capable of putting forth the most 
 astonishing latent powers — powers that may have 
 lain dormant and unsuspected for perhaps a 
 thousand millenniums. How much more, if there 
 exist something besides matter in the universe, 
 if there be "spirit," — akin to God, who is a 
 Spirit — then who shall presume to say, before 
 experience, what latent powers it may not possess 
 and may not, some day, amid a suitable 
 environment, suddenly display ? 
 
 (2) But Christianity not only indulges us with 
 all these curious speculations about the baffling 
 subject of Immortality : it also offers our tottering 
 footsteps the most solid assistance that could 
 possibly be given by presenting us with a great 
 typical and illustrative fact. It assures us that its 
 Founder, Jesus Christ, actually, visibly, and 
 tangibly rose from the dead. Thus it comes 
 armed with a definite proof that not only was He 
 the type and germ of a new and better race to 
 come, and in Word represented God's thought of 
 what humanity ought to be, but also that He 
 
 1 Cooke, The New CJiemistrij, 4tli Edition, p. 252. " The 
 qualities aud chemical relations of a compound are determined 
 fully as much by the structure of its molecules as by the nature 
 of the atoms of which the molecules consist." — {Ibid. p. 249.) 
 
Fact of Christ's Besicrrection, 151 
 
 overcame and survived death, and, visibly to i^ect. 
 
 VII. 
 
 chosen witnesses, assumed immortal life. The 
 evidence for the truth of this reassuring fact is 
 such as no candid inquirer can possibly treat with 
 indifference. There is first the undoubted his- 
 torical fact that, immediately after the crushing 
 defeat and disappointment of the Crucifixion, at 
 any rate some event happened which suddenly 
 imparted a joyful animation and expansion to the 
 dismayed and discouraged Church. Next, there 
 is the distinct testimony of all the early disciples, 
 without exception, to the fact that this event was 
 nothing else than the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
 from the dead. ■ And lastly, there is no other 
 competing story about the matter which is worthy 
 of a moment's consideration. Christendom and 
 its institutions are explained, and can only be 
 explained, on the hypothesis of Christ's resur- 
 rection. Though ingenuity might, therefore, 
 possibly manage to account for Mediaeval England 
 without any reference to the battle of Hastings, 
 or some incredible dislike to volcanic cata- 
 strophes might attempt to describe the present 
 condition of Pompeii without any allusion to the 
 famous eruption of Vesuvius, yet a far more difficult 
 task lies before the historian who should under- 
 take to account for the existence of the Christian 
 Church only by the shame and defeat of the 
 
152 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. Cross, without any mention of the reassuring 
 victory of the Resurrection. Nor could any one 
 give a rational estimate of the character and 
 writings of St. Paul if he proceeded on the 
 supposition that both the great Apostle himself, 
 and Peter and James and John,^ whom he visited 
 and consulted, were victims to some incurable 
 illusion in their firm persuasion that they had 
 seen and conversed with Jesus after His death. 
 But if the Resurrection of Christ really took 
 place, then its singular and totally unexpected 
 phenomena present us with a clue towards 
 conceiving what human "immortality" means. 
 It preserves our hope of that result from evapor- 
 ating into a mere belief in ghosts. And it acquits 
 our doctrine from the charge, which might other- 
 wise be aimed against it by votaries of physical 
 science, that it fails to maintain a connection with 
 the material, tangible and conceivable universe. 
 
 Thus the alleged Resurrection of Christ 
 presents itself as a crucial test to every depart- 
 ment of our mental being. To our Intellect it 
 becomes a test of candour. It puts the question 
 — " Will you firmly shut your eyes to a new 
 phenomenon, su^Dported by considerable proof, 
 simply because at present it fits in with no 
 orthodox biological theory ? " To our Imagina- 
 
 1 Galatians i. 18 ; ii. 9. 
 
How Else Can We Picture the Future Life ? 153 
 
 TION it appeals with the question — "Will you lect. 
 obstinately prefer to picture men dying like dogs, 
 or passing to an Orcus full of squeaking gib- 
 bering shades, or transmigrating through the 
 bodies of beasts, or sinking into a Nirwana-sleep 
 only comparable to the death-life of a batrachian 
 inclosed in a stone, or becoming an occult ghost 
 rapping out doggrel verses beneath a table ? Or 
 will you rather welcome a Resurrection-scene of 
 victorious energy and triumphant life, that seems 
 expressly meant to lend itself to artistic treatment 
 and so to become a veritable 'gospel to the 
 poor,' who can follow a dramatic representation, 
 and can easily grasp what is capable of being 
 pictured, though they may not perhaps be able 
 to read or to follow a Platonic argument " ? And 
 lastly to the Conscience, too, this majestic event 
 becomes a test. It seems to say, " Will you — can 
 you possibly — believe that all men, finally and 
 equally, pass into annihilation ? Can you hold 
 that a Stephen or a Paul — 'most miserable of 
 all men ' — are derided and cheated of their hope ; 
 while the murderer, the tyrant, the seducer, the 
 swindler, enjoy all that they can desire ? Is it pos- 
 sible to conceive that Gavroche, who enjoys Paris 
 down to the very dregs, has reason on his side ; ^ 
 
 ^ Yet this seems to be M. Renan's, somewhat u'onical, con- 
 clusion. See an amusing passage in the Souvenirs, 9th 
 
154 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. while the pale student, who sacrifices his life 
 
 vu. 
 
 for the truth, is a fool for his pains, and, with 
 the wreath of steam that has done its work, is 
 tossed away by the wind uncared for and un- 
 thanked ? Or will you — calling to mind that not 
 even this wind-tossed vapour itself, nor the force 
 it represents, are really annihilated, though for a 
 time they may disappear — hold fast the conviction 
 that human life, too, does not really perish ; and 
 gladly welcome the strong aid to moral stability 
 which Christ's resurrection is calculated to 
 supply ? " 
 
 In what way these questions will be enter- 
 tained and answered by each man depends on the 
 quality of his character ; and thereby, no doubt, 
 the secret " thoughts of many hearts " are every 
 day revealed. Nor, in view of that result, does 
 the enigma any longer remain obscure why 
 Christ's resurrection was not made a public and 
 overpowering and incontrovertible event, exclud- 
 ing every possibility of doubt or denial ; but was 
 rather reserved as a help for those that would be 
 helped, and kept back as an evidence for eyes 
 already couched from materialistic film and dimly 
 
 Edition, p. 155. "Gavroclie [the typical Paris gamin] et 
 M. Homais [the atheistic clockmaker] arrivant d'emblee, et 
 avec si pen de peine, au dernier mot de la philosophic I G'est 
 bien dur a peuser." 
 
Free- Will Remains l7tviolate. 155 
 
 aware of spiritual verities unseen by organs of lect. 
 
 VII 
 
 sense. For it thus became — as every aid to moral 
 beings necessarily is — a moral, rather than a 
 logical, influence.^ As a mere " evidence " its 
 force is purposely lowered — as the clearness of 
 our Lord's teaching was purposely lowered by 
 being couched in 23arabolic forms. But it thereby 
 comes to pass that no man's freedom is invaded 
 and no man's will coerced. Rather a mute appeal, 
 as it were, is made to already receptive souls, 
 "Will ye also go away?" And, by a kind of 
 natural selection, those only are touched and 
 captivated by this great event who are prepared 
 to admit its influence upon their lives. 
 
 (3.) The last point of view from which we 
 undertook to approach this difficult subject of 
 
 ^ "The one point on Avliicli the Gospels are agreed in in- 
 sisting is that our Lord, after rising from the dead, claimed 
 absolute power in heaven and in earth. ... In view of this 
 great fact that the Lord was actually living, and that they 
 were in communion with Him, the details of the occurrences 
 which attended His resurrection were of secondary import- 
 ance." — (Wace, The Gospel and Us Witnesses, 1883, p. 160.) 
 "The truth of the miraculous credentials of Christianity rests 
 upon various arguments. . . . Nor in judging upon the force 
 and weight of these arguments can we dispense with the pro- 
 per state of the affections." — (Mozley, O71 Miracles, p. 235.) 
 "Dieu donne la sagesse a ceux qui se conduisent avec piete, 
 a dit un homme [Wm. of Poitiers, a.d. 1050] habile dans la 
 connaissance des choses divines." — (Guizot, Memoires pour 
 servir, &c., vi., 387.) "C'est par I'ame, avant tout, par la 
 foi, que Jesus veut etreconnu." — (Bersier, Servians, i., 309.) 
 
156 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. immortality, was that which is of interest to busy 
 
 VII. 
 
 and practical people — viz. from the side of its 
 popular presentment in literature and art. In- 
 deed, it is from this quarter, probably, that the 
 deepest repugnance to the doctrine usually takes 
 its rise — impatient scorn being often expressed for 
 conceptions of a future life that seem to pass all 
 bounds of childishness and unreason.^ Nor can it 
 be honestly said that such scorn is always without 
 excuse. Professor Tyndall is certainly here within 
 his rights when he says : — " Theologians must 
 liberate and refine their conceptions ; or must be 
 prepared for the rejection of them by thoughtful 
 minds." ^ And in this conviction he is supported, 
 not only by thousands of English Churchmen, but 
 by able Scottish divines ^ and by French Presby- 
 
 ^ "I, for my part, have no objection to extinction. I see 
 the old notions of death and of scenes to follow to be 
 so merely human, so impossible to be true, that I see nothing 
 to be done but to wait, without fear or hope." — (Miss Marti- 
 neau, Life, iii., 454.) 
 
 2 Prof. Tyndall, in Nineteenth Century, November, 1878 ; p. 
 831. Cf. Fliigge, der Eimmel, p. 306. — "Assuredly the Chris- 
 tian belief in a future state is capable of, and urgently needs, 
 elevation, if it is to be regarded as anything more than a 
 popular mythus, and to j)ossess any interest or attraction for 
 cultivated men." 
 
 8 See a collection of "Scotch Sermons," published a few 
 years ago. E.g. (1) Caird on Corporate Immortality, p. 16 : — 
 *' The aim of Christian endeavour is, not to look away to an 
 inconceivable heaven beyond the skies, but to realise the 
 latent heaven which human nature and human society con- 
 
Poetry of the Apocalypse. 157 
 
 terians like the eloquent and pious M. Bersier. I'Ect. 
 This great preacher laments that " the most serious 
 Frenchmen nowadays refuse even to speak of 
 eternity, while many deny a future life with a 
 sort of passion." At the funeral of M. St. Beuve, 
 he says, the service of consolation was reduced to 
 twenty words : " Messieurs ! you, who have rendered 
 this last homage to the memory of the dead, be 
 thanked in his name ! The ceremony is termi- 
 nated." ^ And at the funeral of Mr. Darwin in 
 Westminster Abbey, a French savant was heard 
 to remark, " Had this event occurred in France, 
 either no priest would have ministered here, or, if 
 he did, no man of science would be present." 
 
 Now w^hy is all this ? May it not be because 
 Christianity has too much forgotten its freedom, 
 and has allowed itself to be too dependent in this 
 matter upon the Apocalypse ? Yet every one 
 nowadays is aware that this Book is poetiy, and 
 
 tain." — (2) Semple, on Eternal Life, p. 333: — "Our ideas are 
 drawn chiefly from the Apocalypse ; but when once we under- 
 stand that Eternal Life is a property only of the soul, these 
 splendid descriptions cease to be literal." (3) Stevenson on 
 Eternal Life, p. 369 : — ** Gates of pearl and streets of gold ! He 
 who once realises the gulf which separates spiritual life from 
 spiritual death, would refuse them, if they were to risk his 
 spiritual likeness to God." (4) Story, on Christ'' s Autlioriiy, 
 p. 376 : — " Through demanding that too much be believed, one 
 may induce repugnance to belief altogether." 
 ^ Bersier, Sermons, iv., pp. 216, 188. 
 
158 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. poetry of the very deepest Hebrew dye. Every 
 one knows that the " gates of pearl and streets of 
 gold" are metaphors, and is sure that St. 
 Augustine's glorious Gentile " City of God " could 
 be ill confined within the jasper wall of a four- 
 square city, 12,000 furlongs every way, ''the 
 length and the breadth and the height of it being 
 equal." ^ But still the charm of the Apocalypse, 
 and of books founded on the Apocalypse, is so 
 great that we are almost always tempted to 
 confine our thoughts to its guidance, and forget 
 that, as Dante built up with Mediaeval materials 
 his marvellous fancies about the unseen world, 
 and as Milton and Bunyan built with Reforma- 
 tion materials, so we, too, have liberty to build 
 with Modern materials, and are free to quarry (as 
 it were) from the bosom of the soil of our own 
 native land a home for our thoughts to dwell in. 
 Suppose, then, we are, in these days, instructed 
 mainly by Nature ; then, from Nature and the 
 natural sciences we may allowably derive our 
 modes of thinking about the Future Life. We 
 may reflect, with delight and with profit, how the 
 forces that play amid the universe are (to all 
 appearance) cooeval with its existence. We may 
 observe how they suffer transformation, yet are 
 never destroyed ; and though latent in coal-seams 
 ^ Hevelation xxi. 16. 
 
Unlrokcn Chain of Life in the Past. 159 
 
 and elsewhere for untold centuries, are suspended, lect. 
 never annihilated. We may repeople past worlds 
 with their strange inhabitants, and know that (in 
 view of them) even our present terrestrial scene is 
 already " a new heavens and a new earth." We 
 may remember the astonishing fact that, looking 
 down the interminable vista of the past, our own 
 life has (virtually) been eternal. For the chain of 
 linked vitality can never once (for millions of 
 years) have been snapped, or we should not be 
 here to-day ; so surely has cell passed on to cell 
 its mysterious torch of vitality, since " life " (all 
 science thus far agrees) can never start from the 
 ground afresh ; it has always been engendered by 
 some previous life. And then we may reflect how 
 varied are the ways of Nature even in her methods 
 of propagation ; so that, as Blichner says, mere 
 customary things deceive us; and the truth is 
 that in the animated world at large an infinite 
 majority of beings know absolutely nothing of 
 either sex or birth .^ 
 
 And so, at last, we come back to the thoughts 
 which inspired the teeming mind of the great 
 Apostle, St. Paul. For what is it that he really 
 says in that noble chapter to the Corinthians 
 which deals with the Church's " sure and certain 
 hope '* of a future life ? ^ Is it not this ? 
 
 1 Vie et Lumiere, p. 258. 
 
 2 The soberness of the Church's official language on this 
 
160 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. " The resurrection of Jesus Christ gives the clue 
 
 VII. 
 
 to all our thoughts. In Adam — that is, in the 
 physical manhood we received by generation — we 
 die : in Christ — that is, in the spiritual manhood 
 of re-generation — we live. And observe that law 
 and order reign even here. Christ is the first 
 fruits ; and then by degrees the kingdom of life per- 
 meates everywhere. But for this hope, why fight 
 with beasts at Ephesus and ' die daily,' and why 
 such reverential care for dead friends, that some 
 even dream of vicarious rituals for them ? Rather 
 let us embrace pessimism. Let us make believe 
 we are beasts, and eat and drink like them, for 
 to-morrow, like them, we are to be annihilated ! 
 But a man may ask, how are the dead raised, 
 and with what hody do they come ? O vain and 
 foolish and anxious curiosity ! Canst thou not 
 leave that problem in the hands of God ? Only 
 think of His amazing ivealth of forms as displayed 
 in Nature} Think of celestial bodies and terres- 
 
 subject is very remarkable. It never pretends to rise above the 
 level of faith and hope. For " the hope of continuance after 
 our death can never be more than an act of faith : demon- 
 strated science it can never be." — (Fliigge, Der Himmel, 
 p. 326.) 
 
 1 **A single drop of water," says Prof. Owen, "may contain 
 500,000,000 infusoria, whose difference of size is greater than 
 that between a mouse and an elephant." — (Somerville, Physical 
 Geography, ii., 67.) "Nearly 40,000 species of plants and 
 animals have been added to the Linnoean-list by palseonto- 
 logical research." — (Huxley, Lay Sermons, p. 224.) Yet, 
 
St. PauVs Teaching Agrees loitli Science. 161 
 
 trial bodies, of birds and fishes, beasts and men 1 lect. 
 Why the very stars at white heat, or yellow, 
 or red, or dull, differ from one another in radiance.^ 
 If God 'will that thou shalt live again, never fear 
 hut that from Eis rich storehouse some frame, most 
 suitaUe to thy netv environment, shall he forth- 
 coming for thy clothing. But personal continuity 
 — how about that ? Well : is not the seed, whose 
 rude, unsightly form is dissolved and lost in the 
 furrow, continuous with the lovely waving miracle 
 of beauty that stands erect there in the summer 
 days of harvest? Is it lost because (in a sense) 
 it died ? Has it vanished because no one would 
 know it again ? Is it annihilated because its old 
 shaj^e has disappeared, and God — from select and 
 prepared material, nursed in ovary after ovary of 
 the past, and living on with an eternal vitality 
 when the ancillary stalk and root and leaf and 
 husk are rejected and gone — has built up at last 
 this lovely thing, full of energy, grace, and utility ? 
 Even so, we shall not all sleep, but we shall be 
 changed, and death shall be swallowed up in 
 victory." 
 
 "from man himself down to the lowest fungus or alga, every 
 organism begins with a minute spheroidal mass of protoplasm. 
 And all animals and plants never fail to be resolvable into 
 oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon." — (Mivart, in CoU' 
 temporary Review, July, 1879, p. 696.) 
 1 Cf. Biichner, Lumiere, &c., p. 72. 
 
 M 
 
162 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. I confess 1 do not see, with all the newest 
 lights that science has cast upon the world of 
 matter — for science cannot go one step beyond 
 that — how St. Paul's glowing and yet reserved 
 language could well be improved upon. No one 
 really knows what " life " is ; and therefore no one 
 really knows what " death " is.^ Though it be 
 the commonest of all phenomena, yet science has 
 not one word to say about life ; but only about 
 matter when life is absent from it ; or chemistry, 
 perhaps, is busy remodelling the architecture 
 which life had built up. Sleep, too, "twin brother 
 of death," ^ is totally unexplained. Generation is 
 more mysterious and inexplicable even than 
 death. Assimilation of food is a daily resur- 
 rection of dead matter. Repair, by choice and 
 direction of material — as the great blood-river 
 goes rushing by, and each organ dips for the 
 stuff it wants — is so for beyond all imagination, 
 that the growth of a finger-nail is an incompre- 
 hensible miracle. Cell-life and amoeba-life — 
 10,000 separate lives within our veins, yet all 
 subordinate and incorporate in the one life that 
 rules and acts and thinks for all — there is a 
 "' mystery " we all carry about with us every day.^ 
 
 1 See Bishop Butler, Analogij, part i., chap, i. 
 
 2 Iliad, xiv. 231. 
 
 5 Dr. Caton, of Liverpool, has observed even a migration of 
 tliese white amce,ba-like corpuscles in the blood through the 
 
Mystery of our Present Life. 163 
 
 And thus, amid our idle pl.iy and still idler i^k^t. 
 
 business, we are to ourselves a standing parable 
 and daily type of that higher truth which we find 
 it so hard to believe ^ — the ultimate Victory of Life 
 
 walls of the arteries, while no red corpuscles ever act in tha 
 way. — (See Academy, February 1, 1871.) 
 
 ^ No Christian teacher, worthy of the name, will ever deny 
 that the doctrine of Immortality — even when confirmed by that 
 most merciful aid to our faith, the visible conquest of death 
 by Jesus Christ — is a very difficult and inconceivable doctrine. 
 But its difficulty is immensely increased by official recognition 
 of crude popular conceptions, as if they were themselves 
 matters dc fide. Their crudity, of course, is perpetually liable 
 to exposure. For instance. Sir John Herschel, in the Fort- 
 nightly Review (June 3, 1865), pointed out the following 
 facts : That at the end of only 3,000 years the human race, if 
 replaced upon this globe, would number 460,000 millions, and 
 would be piled up, body upon body, to 3,674 times the height 
 of the sun from the earth. Hence people who confound popu- 
 lar notions with essential Christian truth often feel, with Miss 
 Martineau, overpowered by the difficulties of such notions, 
 and their faith and hope (quite unnecessarily) give way. That 
 lady's account of her own feelings in immediate prospect of 
 death is most sad and most touching. She says : "1 find death 
 the simplest thing in the world, a thing not to be feared or 
 regretted, or to get excited about in any way. The dying 
 naturally and regularly desire, and sink into, death as into 
 sleep. Rest is all they think about." — {Aufobiograpky, ii. 435.) 
 But add to such restful feelings the Christian's quiet "hope" 
 of immortality and loving " desire to be with' Christ, " and then 
 death may be blessed and peaceful indeed. Nor do we doubt 
 that " Ceux qui ont persevere, qui ont cru, qui ont espere 
 contre toute esperance, ont fini par avoir raison." — (Montalem- 
 bert, Avenir d' Angleterre, p. 280.) " The belief in a future life 
 has strengthened many hands, ennobled many lives, comforted 
 many thousands of the afflicted. It is a beautiful creed, the most 
 
 M 2 
 
 YII. 
 
164 Immortality. 
 
 LECT. over Death, the construction out of that " which 
 vir. 
 
 every joint supplieth" of the Spiritual Body of 
 
 Christ, and the shaping and harmonising of 
 
 myriads of '' living stones " into a social structure 
 
 (cemented by a divine love), Christ Himself being 
 
 the chief corner-stone — " in whom all the buildino:, 
 
 fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy 
 
 Temple in the Lord, builded together for an 
 
 habitation of God through the Spirit." ^ 
 
 "beautiful, in its purified form, that humanity has yet created.' 
 — {Westminster Review, October, 1883, p. 430.) 
 
 1 "Universum humanum genus est sicut unum corpus ex 
 diversis membris constitutum." — (Pomponatius, 1-534, Dc Im- 
 mortalitatc Animcc, p. 5.) 
 
I 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 St. John v. 68 : — "Then said Jesus unto the twelve, 'Will 
 ye also go away ? ' Peter answered Him, ' Lord, to whom 
 shall we go ? Thou hast the words of eternal life.' " 
 
 N this most touching scene, which followed lect. 
 and terminated a day of great perplexity 
 and controversy at Capernaum, we have (I think) 
 an almost exact picture of the state of mind 
 which is prevalent in England at the present 
 moment. We have passed through a half- 
 century of grave perplexity, and of controversy 
 reaching down to the very bases of our most 
 cherished beliefs. We have seen and heard 
 — nay, we have many of us felt to the innermost 
 core of our being — doubt assailing the fundamental 
 truths by which our fathers and mothers, and we 
 ourselves as children, lived. Coming in like an 
 inexorable tide, wave after wave of fresh discovery 
 
1G6 Conclusion. 
 
 LECT. drove us from our cliildish sand-castles of Biblical 
 theology, by which we pleased ourselves and 
 thought we " knew something as we ought to 
 know." Until at last, abandoning our crude 
 speculations on the meaning of prophecy and 
 the bearings of the Apocalypse, and foregoing our 
 puerile notions about a divine Mechanic who con- 
 structed and occasionally repaired for man's use 
 the great engine of the universe, we were driven 
 back to the foot of towering cliffs (as it were) of 
 perplexity that seemed absolutely insurmountable. 
 We stood, with Mr. Herbert Spencer, in face of the 
 Unknowable. But some of us, even in that last 
 dread resort, still " in patience possessed our 
 souls." We found that the greatest saints and 
 doctors of the Church, and the inspired prophets 
 of the Bible, with one voice acknowledged that 
 the ultimate j^roblems of theology are inscrutable 
 — in short, that " no man hath seen God at any 
 time." And then we heard the Master's voice — 
 clear and still amid all the inrushing waves of 
 perplexity — " O ye of little faith I Wherefore did 
 ye doubt?" 
 
 Such faith, " little " though it may be, is never 
 Avithout its reward. For it grows, and at length 
 it removes mountains ; simply because it is, as 
 Jesus said, a " mustard-seed " that has life, and 
 not a pebble without life. It is the strife, through 
 
We Live in a Transition Period. 167 
 
 which we attain a settled and established peace, lect. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 It is the burden and heat of the day, which nobly 
 borne leads on to a tranquil thankful eventide 
 and to a glowing sunset which " repeats the glory 
 of its prime." Nay, how tenfold more glorious, 
 better, grander, happier, is the gray-haired man 
 or woman who has retained — or re-attained — the 
 heart of child-like simplicity than even that most 
 lovely thing the world contains, the joyous inno- 
 cent child ! And so it is in spiritual life. He 
 that endureth, that belie veth, that hopeth in spite 
 of all appearances — that has a faith of Abraham 
 and calmly walks through every seeming im- 
 possibility, a faith of St. Paul that "only they 
 are crowned and sainted who with grief have 
 been acquainted," a faith taught by Christ Himself 
 that through apparent defeat and death lies the 
 way to a victorious resurrection of energy and life 
 — only such a person (I say) finds out at last how 
 "faithful is He that hath promised," and dis- 
 covers that " blessed is the man who endureth 
 temptation ; for when he is tried, he shall receive 
 the crown of life." Indeed in all search after 
 truth, a certain divine gift of patience is required, 
 and a certain peaceableness both towards others 
 and within the hidden realm of one's own con- 
 science. And this atmosphere of peace nothing 
 can so well engender as a steadfast persistency in 
 
168 Conclusion. 
 
 LECT. well-doing, in spite of tlie seeming immorality of 
 
 VIII. 
 
 nature around us, and a firm "continuance in 
 prayer " — that is, in a tranquillising routine of 
 divine worship, and in soothing communion with 
 that all-embracing, all-permeating Spirit, who " is 
 not far from any one of us." For that all-harmon- 
 ising and ruling force has evidently (as Bishop 
 Butler reminds us) appointed to some persons 
 '' mental perplexity "^ as their schooling for higher 
 things and their special life's probation. We may 
 not, therefore, evade that schooling, nor refuse that 
 probation ; still less, should we think evil of it or 
 foolishly regard perplexity as wrong in itself. 
 Loyally accepted and thankfully made use of, it 
 may become the highest right and plainest duty. 
 And then, of course, it will not disturb our calm 
 nor destroy our peace.^ Side-lights will unex- 
 pectedly reveal the contour of a subject, if we 
 quietly let the sun go round. Even " unconscious 
 cerebration " (as it is called) often does half the 
 work, if you will let it — as people sometimes 
 
 ^ Dr. Wigan, Ori Insanity, p, 428. 
 
 2 "How can a man without calm obtain happiness" (says 
 the Hindu Bhagavat-gita). " He who abandons his own 
 interest in the fruit of his actions is always contented and 
 independent."' — (Thomson's translation, pp. 19 and 32.) 
 
 "Calm yourself," said Jean Paul some fifty years ago. "It 
 is your first necessity. Be a Stoic, if nothing else will serve." 
 — (Ap. Froude, Life of Bunyan, p. 53.) 
 
Eeligious Douht a Form of Prolation. 169 
 
 solve an abandoned problem in their sleep. All i^ect. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 tliing^s come to them that can wait. " Wait on the 
 Lord, therefore, and keep His way ; and He shall 
 make thee to inherit the land " — the promised 
 land, at last, of sweet and calm assurance about 
 all things that are essential, of loving tolerance 
 about all things that remain doubtful, of joyful 
 concurrence with those traditional ways of Chris- 
 tendom which have for eighteen centuries preached 
 the Gospel to the poor and overspread the earth 
 (as nothing else could do) with a vast network of 
 brotherly kindness and charity. 
 
 For behold, at this day, what wonders a little 
 " quietness and confidence " have worked ! No 
 one, I think, can attentively watch what is going 
 on in England at present without a strong con- 
 viction growing upon him that the onset of un- 
 belief (unless something should occur to renovate 
 it) has somewhat exhausted its force. The reasons 
 for this conviction are twofold. First, the negative 
 one, that physical science, which seemed at first so 
 formidable and so likely to organise itself into an 
 anti-Christian shape, has now for a good many years 
 had the opportunity, and has proved itself power- 
 less to achieve anything of the kind. And though 
 the author of Natural Religion good -humouredly 
 suggests that the profound awe and admiration of 
 the universe which many " physicians " cherish is, 
 
170 Conclusion. 
 
 LECT. of itself, a sort of religion — a thing which I should 
 
 VIII. 
 
 be the last to deny — still nothing definite has 
 ever come of these high sentiments. The feeling 
 has engendered no cultus ; the mollusk (as it were) 
 has elaborated no chambered shell to dwell in ; 
 no temples have arisen ; no congregations have 
 assembled. Mankind at large are none the better, 
 nor the worse, for it all. And though for indi- 
 viduals this love of nature is indeed beautiful 
 and elevating, yet socially and religiously it seems 
 impotent and sterile. Two only attempts have 
 been even hazarded in this direction, viz., POSI- 
 TIVISM for the refined — a mere philosophy, a 
 scheme for idealising Man instead of the Cosmos, 
 in which man forms an infinitesimal part ; and 
 Secularism for the lower classes, its very name 
 indicating the fact that its heart is set on politics 
 rather than religion, and that it is of this world 
 to the very core. Now it is surely a most re- 
 markable and instructive fact that, amid an 
 atmosphere of unlimited religious liberty, and 
 with buildings facing us in every street for the 
 shelter of emphatically "free churches" and "in- 
 dependent" forms of belief and worship, no 
 worship of Nature should ever yet have been 
 able to get so much as a foothold ; and that, 
 with all her splendid successes in the intellectual 
 sphere, science has morally and religiously 
 
Science lias no Religion of its ovm. 171 
 
 remained to this hour inconstructive. Yet the t^ect. 
 
 Vlll. 
 
 reason is, perhaps, not far to seek. Intellect, 
 which is the cold steel wherewith science mainly 
 works, is an essentially analytic and not a con- 
 structive power. It dissects, it distinguishes, it 
 splits even sunbeams and molecules, it subdivides 
 into ever-growing mazes of bewildering detail its 
 own studies and classifications and theories. But 
 these infinitesimals are not the stuff of which 
 popular "religions" are made. Eeligions are 
 built of coarser blocks. They are suited to ex- 
 press bold and large generalisations, involving 
 much error and exaggeration. They are purj^osely 
 constructed — or rather they spontaneously grow 
 without purposed ''construction" — to give a 
 shelter to great brotherhoods of man, to embrace 
 varieties of sex and age and educatiou, and so to 
 teach mankind by forcible, intrepid action (what 
 science tries in vain to teach them by the way 
 of delicate and airy speculation) the unity of the 
 world and the solidarity (as the phrase is) of man 
 and of the living beings that the world contains. 
 
 " Match me such marvel, save in Eastern clime." 
 The West has (it seems) grown too prosaic^ 
 perhaps too cynical — to engender any more 
 blazing enthusiasms of religious conviction. 
 Arabia (it seems) can still engender such things. 
 But America, for instance, cannot get beyond 
 
172 Conclusion. 
 
 LECT. the extremely comfortable sentimental ism of the 
 
 VIII. -r n rN . „ 
 
 " Latter-day Saints. 
 
 It appears, therefore, to be the simplest common- 
 sense, as well as the highest loyalty to that Power 
 which guides all the evolutions of the world, to 
 embrace and use and develop to the uttermost 
 the splendid opportunity we have inherited from 
 our forefathers in their bequest of the Christian 
 Church. We Englishmen especially possess an 
 organised Christianity, which has carried us al- 
 ready through twelve centuries of (I venture to 
 say) as magnificent and " sacred " a history as 
 ever belonged to the Greeks, the Romans, or 
 even to the Hebrews themselves. And at this 
 moment, after waiting long in anxious expecta- 
 tion to see what religious ideas the physical 
 sciences would engender, our people are begin- 
 ning to break the spell of silence, and to demand 
 that their time-honoured Church shall bestir 
 itself to fresh efforts of revival and reform. In- 
 deed, there are symptoms of an almost fanatical 
 impatience. And, in some quarters, even new 
 and untried methods are without scruple invented 
 for bringing Christianity to bear upon mankind. 
 Thus, by one system, the very outcasts and 
 pariahs of society have been brought under some 
 kind of discipline and been taught the first rudi- 
 ments of obedience and service. By another 
 
Persistency of Christianity. 178 
 
 system tliousands of workino^ men and women t^ect. 
 
 VIIl. 
 
 have been di'awn together, and have been swayed, 
 like standing corn, before the breath of their 
 popular preachers. And among the higher 
 classes, in London especially, such a happy de- 
 ployment of Christian energy and unselfishness 
 is now visible on every hand, that a German 
 writer on Socialism in England has ventured on 
 an inference too good (I fear) to be true. He 
 thinks that " the abyss formerly yawning between 
 our upper and our lower classes has thereby been 
 now virtually bridged over." ^ 
 
 But whether this be true or not, any way an 
 assurance is rapidly dawning upon us all that there 
 is no esse7itial contradiction hetween science and 
 Christianity. Such contradictions as still exist 
 are maintained chiefly by ignorance on the one 
 side and by prejudice on the other. They are, in 
 short, little better than the ghosts of once con- 
 tending armies hovering uselessly about a deserted 
 battle-field. Most of them, indeed, arise from 
 pure misunderstanding. For instance, Dr. Biichner 
 complains that "religion tolerates no doubt, no 
 discussion, no investigation." ^ Yet all Protestants 
 agree that moral faith and intellectual uncertainty 
 are (in some way) correlatives, and that faith 
 
 ^ Brentano, English Socialism, p. 71. 
 2 Man in the Past, &c., p. 219. 
 
174 Conclusion. 
 
 LECT. cannot rise to any great height without the simnl- 
 
 VIII. 
 
 taneous presence of doubt. Discussion, again, has 
 been the very life and vital breath of the Church, 
 from the beginning till now. And, as to rational 
 investigation, it is actually one of the Apostolic 
 precepts — " Be ready always to give a reason for 
 the hope that is in you;"^ ''Add to your faith 
 virtue and to virtue hio^dedge."^ Nevertheless, 
 Sunday lecturers in London tell us, '' The reli- 
 gions say this, or this, is truth which you reject 
 at your peril, and must accept on our authority." ^ 
 Even a woman can lament that "sadness is for 
 the Christian, whose world lies under the curse 
 of an angry God."* While an American orator 
 soars thus into the very empyrean of absurdity : 
 " Religion accepts only the homage of the pros- 
 trate, and scorns the offerings of those who stand 
 erect. She cannot tolerate the liberty of thought. 
 The wide and sunny fields belong not to her 
 domain. The starlit heights of genius are above 
 and beyond her appreciation and power. Her 
 subjects cringe at her feet, covered with the 
 
 dust of obedience." 
 
 ^ 1 Peter, iii. 15. ^2 Peter, i. 5. 
 
 3 Dr. Wild, A Freethinker's Vindication, 1884, p. 7. Con- 
 trast Greg. Gt., Moralia, viii. 3. " Ea quae assero, nequaqnam 
 mihi ex auctoritate credite : sed, an vera sint, ex ratione 
 pensate ! " * Mrs. Besant, Go^^pel of Atheism, 1882, p. 4. 
 
 5 ]i]ger!io\\,' Difficulties of Belief, p. 10. 
 
YIII. 
 
 Free Inquiry a Watchiuord of the Gospel. 175 
 
 I suppose it is quite useless to tell all these i^^ct 
 people that they are under a gross mistake — that 
 Christianity is exactly the opposite of all that 
 they suppose — that the watchword of St. Paul is, 
 "Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath 
 made you free'' and that the first summons of 
 St. Peter to a prostrate convert was, *' Stand up ; 
 I myself also am a man ! " For prejudice builds 
 up as solid a wall to shut out religion, as pious 
 ignorance often builds to exclude science. And if 
 any missile is considered good enough wherewith 
 to assail Christianity, it is always easy to pick up 
 some chance words of anti-Christian bigotry, such 
 as those which M. Renan gathered from his Ultra- 
 montane teachers : " Christian belief hangs on the 
 principle of Infallibility : if I relax my hold on 
 any one point, I relax my hold on all." ^ Or as 
 these, which appeared lately even in an English 
 review : " To doubt wilfully any one article 
 of faith, or to enter on the examination of any 
 dogma with the intention of suspending belief 
 until the conclusion of such examination, would 
 be for a Catholic a deadly sin.'' ^ All such state- 
 ments, however, are already ridiculed by Abelard in 
 the twelfth century. He says, " People assert that 
 
 ^ Souvenir fi, p. 301. 
 
 2 Monsignor Capel in Nineteenth Century, February, 1880, 
 p. 361. 
 
176 Conclusion. 
 
 LECT. nothing pertaining to the Catholic faith is to be 
 
 VI ir. 
 
 investigated by reason ; but if this were accepted, 
 every false religion would entrench itself against 
 us behind the selfsame plea." ^ At any rate 
 for a Protestant it certainly is not a deadly 
 sin, but a way — a sea-way, if you will — rough 
 with waves, and vexed with veering winds, and 
 taxing to the energy and courage of those that 
 sail thereby. And therefore it is buoyed with 
 warnings of hidden peril and lighted with beacons 
 amid the night of " doubt and sorrow " that comes 
 to so many of us in these days. Nor is it unfur- 
 nished with havens of refuge for those who are 
 unequal to the struggle. For confessedly it is not 
 good for all to be harassed with doubt ; but only 
 for some. And this fact it is which adds such 
 subtle difficulty to the task of Christian pastors 
 and preachers, that they might well (I think) 
 have looked for more sympathy and patience 
 from thoughtful men of science than they have 
 usually found. 
 
 But difficult as may be the task of preaching 
 Christ in an age like this, and to congregations 
 composed of the most strangely-mixed ingredients, 
 it is not quite impossible to do so; nor has the 
 simple word of the Gospel ever yet lost its attrac- 
 tive power for any human being, whatever be his 
 ^ Introduction to Theology, lib. ii. p. 1050 (ed. Migne). 
 
Conscious Guilt sends us to Christ. ]77 
 
 stage of thought, who has honestly reviewed his lect. 
 
 own character, and has seen there, in vivid con- 
 trast with each other, the ideal that he might 
 have been and the real that he is. The poignant 
 sense of that terrible contrast is what Christianity 
 means by " sin." And the more, under some system 
 or other — for without " system " of some kind the 
 soul goes to shipwreck and ruin — that grand 
 truth is realised, which both science and Chris- 
 tianity proclaim, viz., the unity, continuity, and 
 superhuman majesty of the universe, the more 
 ao^onisinoj becomes the conviction that fretful, 
 self-willed, self-degraded man forms the sole and 
 shameful exception, amid a surrounding world of 
 unswerving obedience to divine and glorious Law.^ 
 The laws of physical nature we cannot help 
 obeying. Yet even them we sometimes, by our 
 blundering and wilful mismanagement, fail to 
 harmonise and direct aright. We clear our forests, 
 till the climate is spoiled : we build sea-walls, till 
 the beach is swept away and our houses tumble 
 down : we try to ward off typhus, and manage to 
 inoculate our food and our homes with its fatal 
 poison : we set up lightning-conductors, and bring 
 the destroying flash down into our public build- 
 ings. All these faults are, in a sense, physical 
 " sins." They are illustrations and types of those 
 1 See Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, book i. 
 
 N 
 
 viir. 
 
178 Conclusion. 
 
 LECT. far worse moral sins wliich bring discord and ruin 
 
 VIII. 
 
 into the conscience. Indeed, the great chemist 
 Liebig falls quite spontaneously into language of 
 this sort. He says, " I could not discover why the 
 eflfect of my chemicals was so tardy. At last, I 
 discovered the reason : / had sinned against the 
 wisdom of the Creator, and suffered just punish- 
 ment. I had fancied, in my blindness, that the 
 alkalies must be made insoluble, else the rain 
 would carry them off." ■"■ 
 
 But if these things are " sins " and follies, what 
 are we to say to the disobedience which spoils 
 and degrades our own characters ; and poisons, 
 with vicious habit and memory of deeds and words 
 beyond recall, our very hearts ? Surely there is 
 no one — *' scientific " as he may deem himself, 
 and far removed from all superstition and credu- 
 lity — who positively wants no religious help at 
 all ; who needs no redemption ; craves no pardon ; 
 lacks no peace. There is no one who can boldly 
 waive aside as of no consequence to him (or her) 
 that gracious invitation addressed by Christ to 
 all, " Come iinto ME, and I will give you rest ! " 
 
 Thousands, millions, have already come, and 
 have found His promise true. Thousands have 
 been taught — not by the way of microscopes and 
 
 ^ "Agricultural Chemistry," in Contemporary Review, April, 
 1877, p. 882. 
 
Christ Demands Faith, not Certainty. 170 
 
 telescopes (for these have often narrowed, while leci'. 
 the}^ deepened, the powers of mental vision), but 
 by the shorter way of the heart's surrender — that 
 the dread power which holds all things in unity is 
 willing to re-embrace them too in unity, and to 
 bathe their minds in light and peace. And so 
 surrendering themselves to God by Christ, they 
 have awoke to the firm conviction that the 
 universe is neither dead nor dying, nor the spirit 
 that pervades it either a brute instinct or a blind 
 fate — but human (so to speak) and mirrored, " as 
 in a glass, darkly," upon the tranquil surface of 
 their inner man. They have learnt, too, the full 
 meaning of that specially Christian summons, 
 " Sursum corda ! " Lift up your hearts ! In 
 other words, " Take larger views of what that 
 most sacred of all words, ' GoD,' really imports. 
 Kindred to you, and partly intelligible, as this 
 Almighty Power may be, remember that He is 
 quite infinitely super-human and super-personal. 
 And from the fact that your mind and conscience 
 can reflect a few beams only of His universal 
 radiance, learn modesty and hesitation. For your 
 highest knowledge cannot be more than relative 
 and your best conceptions are utterly inadequate. 
 Be thankful, therefore, that your weakness has 
 not been asked for impossibilities, for positive 
 knowledge, for absolute assurance, or for a never- 
 
180 Conclusion. 
 
 VIIT. 
 
 LECT. failing: concurrence with God's will ; but that 
 easy moral graces, capable of infinite gradations 
 from less to more, viz., Faith, Hope, and Love, 
 have been alone required." Yes : inspired by 
 these, a man may walk the world a different 
 being, " a new creature." He is redeemed from 
 all harassing necessity for clear-cut certainty in 
 religion, and is taught by Christ that a heart's 
 FAITH and trust are quite enough. He is re- 
 leased from tormenting thoughts about the 
 haziness that shrouds the future, being tran- 
 quillised by the assurance that hope is all which 
 is expected of a Christian. And he learns, on 
 the highest possible authority, a truth to which 
 the ever-growing experience of life gives ample 
 confirmation, that — 
 
 ** 'Tis the heart, and not the bram, 
 "Which the highest doth attain ; " ^ 
 
 in other words, that improved character — not 
 sharpened intellect — forms the best aid for the 
 solution of the highest problems of all ; that love 
 of goodness has a moral insight into heavenly 
 things, such as mere intelligence can never at- 
 tain ; and that our Lord's words to Nicodemus 
 have a meaning which men of high education, 
 above all, should lay to heart: — It is not hy 
 learning a lesson from a teacher, nor ly conning 
 ^ Longfellow. 
 
Christ Demands Faith, not Certainty. 181 
 
 a task out of a sacred hook, hut by a re-hirth of 
 character {as it were) into a higher ideal world, that 
 a man can alone enter the bright realm of heavenly 
 serenity and joy. " The good Shepherd," says a 
 bold thinker of the second century, " cares indeed 
 for all His sheep; but He seeks especially for 
 such as are of finest quality and most abundant 
 productiveness : and such are men of power and 
 leading, and persons of highly cultivated minds." ^ 
 And to such men as these, at the present crisis of 
 His Church, He seems almost audibly to appeal : 
 "The selfish and the sensuous have abandoned 
 Me, the idle and the frivolous have gone their 
 way, the worshippers of wealth have despised 
 Me. Of them I expected nothing better. But 
 will ye also go away ? " 
 
 ^ Clement of Alexandria, Strom, vi. 17. 
 
 LECT. 
 VIII. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abelard, a free-thinker, 12. 
 vEons, Gnostic notion of, 9. 
 Animals have no sense of sin, 97. 
 Anthropojnorphism necessary, 33. 
 
 involves ideas of power, wisdom, 
 
 goodness, 51. 
 Apocalypse, poetry of, 158. 
 Apostles, not victims of illusion, 152. 
 Assyrian tablets deciphered, 30. 
 
 Bacon's Novum Organum, 16. 
 
 lialaana, story of, 69. 
 
 Belief, now rudely shaken, 1. 
 
 causes of its decline, 4. 
 
 Brentano, views of England, 173. 
 Biichuer, nature-worsliip, 19. 
 Buddliism, modern attraction to- 
 wards, 136. 
 
 Chance, irrational, 65. 
 
 Christianity the salvation of modern 
 society, 126. 
 
 suitable for all mankind, 140. 
 
 Christ a unique character, 93. 
 
 His spirit has seized the modern 
 
 world, 86. 
 
 Church, bound to be truthful, 74. 
 
 attracts ditferent types of man- 
 kind, viii. 
 
 inspires respect, vii. 
 
 modern revival of, 172. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria a great 
 thinker, 11. 
 
 Clergy should sympathise with 
 liberty, 94. 
 
 Controversies, how they arise, 21. 
 
 Cosmic force awful, 61. 
 
 not blind or malignant, 49. 
 
 Courage needed nowadays, 6. 
 
 Creation, Christian view of, 52. 
 
 proceeded by stages, 53. 
 
 the only tenable theory, 67. 
 
 Dark ages knew not Nature's Unity, 
 83. 
 
 Darwin, disciples of, 17. 
 Defences of Cliristianity need review- 
 ing, 71. 
 Degradation not irremediable, 123 
 
 moral, revolt against, 121. 
 
 Deity, hoAv conceivable by us. 51 
 
 Doubt, modern, 165. 
 
 a form of probation, 169. 
 
 Ecclesiastical art, use of, xi. 
 
 England, as viewed by Americans, xv. 
 
 summoned to high efforts, 69. 
 
 characteristics of, 7. 
 
 Evil, undeniable, 107. 
 
 Evolution, does not contradict crea- 
 tion, 56. 
 
 in harmony with aU Christian 
 
 doctrine. 67. 
 
 does not explain the origin of 
 
 evil, 37. 
 
 Faculties, limitation of, 141. 
 Faith, not certainty, 179. 
 
 essential in all mental ojiwa- 
 
 tions, 44. 
 
 never without reward, 166. 
 
 implies doubt, 174. 
 
 a couiuion ground, 23. 
 
 Fall, the Christian view, 110. 
 
 Semitic poem of the, 112. 
 
 compatible with evolution, 105. 
 
 Fanaticism and Atheism, 25. 
 Fate an irrational conception, 59. 
 Force, transmutations of, 149. 
 
 different from matter, 4 1 . 
 
 Freedom gloried in by St. Paul, x. 
 Future life shrouded in mystery, 141. 
 
 and annihilation, 153. 
 
 and evolution, 152. 
 
 St. Paul's view of, 160. 
 
 Generations have their own duties to 
 
 fulHl, 5. 
 Genesis, poetry of, 53. 
 Geologj' in the last generation, 31. 
 
184 
 
 Index. 
 
 Gnosticism grew to be a heresy, 10. 
 God, inadequate language about, 36 
 
 not impersonal, 50. 
 
 not arbitrary, 70. 
 
 indispensable to most men, 47. 
 
 Gravitation, illustration from, 32. 
 
 Hartmann scornful about creation, 
 
 54. 
 History sacred to Englishmen, 172. 
 Humanity, moral failure of, 122. 
 
 Ideals, redeeming power of, 131. 
 Imagination, influence of, 21. 
 
 the first to awake, 127. 
 
 makes things human, 29, 
 
 Immortality, law of, 144. 
 Intellect and imagination, 24. 
 
 restless, 21. 
 
 Investigation an Apostolic precept, 
 174. 
 
 John, his Logos doctrine, 9. 
 Joshua, miracle of, 89. 
 
 Knowledge relative, 43. 
 
 Liberty given by Ritual, ix. 
 Life, new forms of, 148. 
 
 mystery of, 163. 
 
 unbroken chain of, 159. 
 
 its victory over Death, 163. 
 
 Logos, the Reason of God, 58. 
 
 Man, his first appearance, 113. 
 
 his momentary iuuoceuce, 103. 
 
 Matter and Force, 41. 
 Mind and Matter, 53. 
 Miracles a crucial problem, 69. 
 
 no violation of Law, 75. 
 
 engendered belief, 85. 
 
 not a "priori impossible, 71. 
 
 the goal, not the threshold of 
 
 belief, 91. 
 
 matter for historical inquiry, 72. 
 
 Moleschott, on " necessity," 59. 
 Monotheism taught through Miracle, 
 
 84. 
 
 Nature, unity of, 52. 
 Nursery, a study of human nature, 
 127. 
 
 Pain, physical and moral, 122. 
 Patience in seeking for truth, 167. 
 Paul, his westward progress, 8. 
 
 on the resurrection, 161 
 
 Physical science a sort of new revela- 
 tion, X. 
 Physical and moral sin, 177. 
 Positivism, 34. 
 Prayer, how suggested, 50. 
 
 Races, new and old, 147. 
 Redemption, meaning of, 116. 
 Reformation, benefit of, 69. 
 Religion, effects moral change, 125. 
 
 its work is to idealise, 28. 
 
 Restlessness, modern, 137. 
 Resurrection of Christ, 151. 
 
 Salvation, schemes of, 118. 
 
 Schopenhauer, 38. 
 
 Science should be Christian, 69. 
 
 Secularism, political, 170. 
 
 Shame, a human characteristic, 96. 
 
 Sin, original, 99. 
 
 Spencer and the "carpenter-theory," 
 
 55. 
 Strauss confesses beauty of Christ's 
 
 character, 85. 
 System needful, of some kind, 177. 
 
 Theism rational, 43. 
 Theological burdens should be light- 
 ened, ix. 
 Tolerance, duty of, 20. 
 Truth, a paramount object, 73. 
 Tyndall on the Imagination, 55. 
 
 Unbelief recurrent, 21. 
 Unity, indispensable to man's thought, 
 169. 
 
 taught by Genesis, 53, 
 
 Unknown, awfulness of the, 166. 
 
 Waves'of scientific objection, 8. 
 
 West, barren of religious enthusiasm, 
 171. 
 
 Will, stimulated by motives, 64. 
 
 Wisdom and goodness cannot be un- 
 conscious, 49 
 
 Women, affected by modern un- 
 belief, 3. 
 
 Worship, restful effect of, 168. 
 
 LONDON : R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS. 
 
 
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