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 Number 
 
DANGERS 
 
 APOSTOLIC AGE 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RIGHT REV. JAMES ^OORHOUSE, D.D. 
 
 Bishop of Manchester. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER: 
 2 AND 3, BIBLE HOUSE. 
 1891. 
 
%0 
 MY DEAR WIFE, 
 
 TO WHOSE LOVING AND UNTIRING HELP 
 
 I OWE MUCH OF THE LEISURE WHICH I HAVE 
 
 EMPLOYED IN THEIR COMPOSITION, 
 
 I DEDICATE THESE LECTURES. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The dangers of the Christian Church in the ApostoHc 
 age, as they are revealed to us in the New Testament, 
 seem to me to have been mainly the three following. 
 
 (i) The danger that the Church might be narrowed, 
 in its doctrine and practice, by the determination of the 
 Judaizing party within it to insist that all should enter 
 it b}^ the way of circumcision, and that all should hold 
 their right of membership only on condition of observ- 
 ing the whole Law of Moses. This party looked upon 
 the Gospel as a reformed and spiritualized edition of 
 the Law, and upon the Christian Church as a some- 
 what liberalized form of the ancient Jewish communion. 
 Had these pretensions been admitted, every Gentile, 
 in order to become a Christian, must first practically 
 have become a Jew, and have taken upon himself all 
 the burdensom.e obligations of the Mosaic law. To 
 such requirements the Gentile world would never have 
 submitted, and the Church would have been strangled 
 in its cradle. 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 Worst of all, the spiritual freedom of the Gospel 
 would have been first obscured and then destroyed, 
 and the world would have lost its greatest spiritual 
 treasure, before even it knew what it was losing. 
 
 To avert calamities so terrible, St. Paul wrote the 
 Epistle to the Galatians, attacking the nascent error 
 where it had gained greatest acceptance and where it 
 threatened the most fatal consequences. 
 
 (2) The second danger by which the Apostolic 
 Church was threatened had a mainly Gentile source. 
 It arose, not from a jealous and exclusive Judaism, 
 but from what thought itself a liberal and enlightened 
 philosophy. The difficulty was keenly felt in the 
 Apostolic age, as it is felt by many still, of reconciling 
 the omnipotence of God with the existence of moral 
 and physical evil. Gnostic thinkers were already 
 endeavouring to minimize this difficulty by interposing 
 between the Divine Source of life and the manifesta- 
 tions therein of pain and sin, a series of secondary 
 beings, to the later and less spiritual of whom, and 
 not to God, the causing of evil might be attributed. 
 
 St. Paul attacked this error in the Epistle to the 
 Colossians, claiming therein for God His unimpaired 
 right of universal sovereignty, and pointing for the 
 solution of the terrible problem of evil to a redemption 
 eternally designed, and as universal as the evil which 
 it was wrought to remedy. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 (3) The third danger was one which was rather 
 experienced by the Jewish Christians than caused by 
 them. As the slow years wore on without any visible 
 return of the Son of God in power and great glory, 
 Jewish Christians whose faith had been largely coloured, 
 if not mainly supported, by the expectation of such a 
 return, began to be weary and faint in their minds. 
 If their hope ^ had been deceived in this respect, they, 
 asked themselves, could they trust it in any other ? 
 Towards the close of the seventh decade of the 
 Christian era, while their minds were in this state of 
 doubt and perplexity, they were stirred to the depth 
 of their souls by the approach of the great Jewish 
 rebellion. Should they take no part in it ? Should 
 they leave their brethren unhelped to meet the tremen- 
 dous shock of the Roman ? This question, agitating 
 at any time, was doubly formidable now, when their 
 belief in Christ and in His promises had been rudely 
 shaken. They were tempted accordingly to abandon 
 the faith and the very name of Christian, and as Jews 
 pure and simple, to stand or fall, live or die, with their 
 brethren after the flesh. The danger was of apostasy, 
 and the Epistle to the Hebrews was written to 
 meet it. 
 
 I have written the three courses of lectures which 
 follow, in the hope of giving to those who have neither 
 access to many books nor much time for study, as vivid 
 
XI 1 PREFACE. 
 
 a picture as I could draw of the great spiritual struggles 
 which, in the Apostolic age, arose out of the approach 
 of these dangers. The subject is itself of deep interest 
 to every Christian man, and, if I am not mistaken, its 
 consideration will be productive of two great advan- 
 tages of a more or less permanent character : it will 
 enable us to gain a clearer apprehension of the mean- 
 ing of those inspired records which are our authority 
 in matters of doctrine ; and it will throw great and 
 welcome light on many of those deeper subjects of 
 speculation which are of permanent interest to the 
 human mind. May God be graciously pleased to 
 accept this humble effort to commend the truth of His 
 Holy Word to the men of this generation, and to make 
 it, if it be fit for so gracious an office, a means of their 
 spiritual edification. 
 
 BisHOPScouRT, Manchester, 
 Tth November, 1890. 
 
Of the many books which I havehaJ occasion to consult in the prepara- 
 tion of these lectures, I set down here those which I think will be most 
 valuable to the student. 
 
 Introduction to the New Testament : Dr. Salmon. 
 
 The Life and Epistles of St. Paul : Conybeare and Howson ; Lewin ; 
 
 Archdeacon Farrar. 
 Paul, his Life and Works : F. C. Baur. 
 Church History : F. C. Baur. 
 PauUnisni : O. Pfleiderer. 
 Hibbert Lectures : O. Pfleiderer ; Professor Reville ; Le Page Renouf ; 
 
 Professor Sayce. 
 History of Christian Theology in the Apostolic Age : Reuss. 
 St. Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans : Jowett. 
 History of Philosophy : Ueberweg. 
 The World as Will and Idea : Schopenhauer. 
 The Philosophy of the Unconscious : Von Hartinann. 
 Prolegomena to Ethics : J. H. Green. 
 Data of Ethics : Spencer. 
 Types of Ethical Theory: Martineau. 
 Philosophy of Religion : Pfleiderer. 
 Three Essays on Religion : J. S. Mill. 
 Bampton Lecttires : Bishop Temple. 
 
 Prolegotnena to the History of Religions : Professor Reville. 
 The Religion of the Se?nites : Professor W. Robertson Smith. 
 St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians : Bishop Lightfoot ; Prof. Beet. 
 St. PauTs Epistle to the Colossians : Bishop Lightfoot ; Rev. LI. Davies. 
 The Epistle to the Hebrews : Bishop Westcott ; Delitzsch. 
 The Jewish Te77iple and the Christian Church : Rev. Dr. Dale. 
 Introduction to Epistle to Hebrezus : Alford ; Professor R. Smith in 
 
 Enc. Brit. 
 References to places and persons in Dr. Smith's Bible and Classical 
 Dictionaries, and in the 9th edition of the Encyclopcedia Britannica, 
 especially, in Eiic. Brit.^ Mr. Ramsay's article on " Phrygia." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Galatian Lapse i 
 
 The Colossian Heresy in 
 
 The Hebrew Apostasy . . , . . .169 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE, 
 
I. 
 
 I HOPE to explain to you in these lectures the connection of 
 the life of the glorified Saviour with the moral and religious 
 regeneration of mankind. Perhaps you would like me to 
 plunge at once into the midst of our subject. I think, 
 however, that it will be good, both for you and me, that I 
 should take a different course. 
 
 Each of the great salient truths of the Christian faith has 
 been forced into form and clearness by the pressure of 
 special circumstances. And if we would firmly grasp the 
 full meaning and germinant applications of those truths, if 
 we would see them with the eyes of those who first caught 
 sight of them, cast them into verbal form, and made them 
 prevail, we must be content to approach them by the slow 
 and patient historical method. If, therefore, you think that 
 I am leading you to the heart of our subject by a very round- 
 about path, I wish you to remember that I have deliberately 
 chosen this method as the only one likely to be fruitful. 
 
 St. Paul was incomparably the greatest thinker of the 
 Primitive Church ; in my judgment, one of the greatest 
 thinkers of all time. In saying this I do not mean for a 
 moment to suggest any comparison between the Apostle 
 and his Divine Master. Any such comparison would have 
 seemed to him nothing short of blasphemy. I think, how- 
 ever, you will see, as we proceed, that my estimate of the 
 Apostle's spiritual insight and power is by no means ex- 
 aggerated. That which led him to put forth and display 
 that power was a violent controversy which arose in the 
 
4 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 Primitive Church, and which came to a cHmax in Galatia 
 Hence my selection of the Galatian lapse as the subject of 
 our meditation in the present course of lectures. 
 
 Now, in order that we may understand the cause of that 
 lapse, and the occasion of the Apostle's rebuke of it, it is 
 necessary that we should get a very clear idea of two things, 
 first, the character of those who fell; and, second, the 
 nature of the influence which caused their fall. I shall 
 consider the first of these topics in the present lecture. 
 
 Our question, then, is to-day. What was the character of 
 the Galatians? In order to give a clear answer to that 
 question, we must know something both of the people and 
 the land which they inhabited. Galatia, we are told, was a 
 country of Asia Minor ; but to say no more than that is 
 to say what is not only insufficient, but misleading. For, 
 equally to the Christian and the classical scholar, the name 
 Asia Minor calls up the thought of that beautiful but narrow 
 band of it which lies on the shores of the ^gean, and looks 
 forth directly upon Greece. To the north of it is the Troad, 
 the scene of that struggle which has been immortalized in 
 the Iliad. In the midst of it lies the old " Asian meadow " 
 of Homer, the valley and plain of the Cayster. Fertile and 
 beautiful exceedingly, this narrow territory glows amidst the 
 darkness of Western barbarism with a light which time will 
 never quench. Its glory is as the glory of Athens, its 
 mother-land ; and so long as the pursuit of truth and the 
 worship of beauty arouse and impel the soul of man, the 
 philosophy of Thales and Heracleitus, the art of Apelles 
 and Parrhasius, will give to Ionia a deathless name. 
 
 Nor is the interest of the Christian in that classic region 
 one whit inferior to that of the scholar. For at Ephesus, at 
 Smyrna, and the rest of the seven churches it was St. Paul 
 who lit the candlestick of Divine truth, and St. John who 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 5 
 
 fed its flame with unction from the Holy One. And though 
 now the lamps of Asia are extinguished, and all is dark, 
 yet memory clings fondly to the holy ground, peopling its 
 marshes and desolations with the august and sacred forms 
 which have made it famous among the abodes of early 
 culture and religion. 
 
 But all the more because we are accustomed to identify 
 Asia Minor with this brilliant fringe of one of its sea coasts, 
 is it misleading to say only that Galatia was in Asia Minor. 
 That immense country has a very peculiar formation. Its 
 central parts consist of a vast tableland, between two thou- 
 sand feet and four thousand feet above the level of the sea, 
 from which it is everywhere separated by lofty mountains. 
 Its vast central plains are desolate and treeless, not unlike 
 many of those with which we are familiar in Australia, and 
 like them affording pasturage for vast flocks of sheep. They 
 are occupied now mainly by nomad people, though in past 
 times the more fertile parts of them were made to yield 
 considerable crops of grain. The greater part of this central 
 tract is very badly watered ; and such streams as it has find 
 no oudet to the sea, but form great lakes, the largest of 
 them of extreme saltness, though many are fresh, with 
 bright green banks, and covered by water-birds. 
 
 It may easily be conceived that the climate of this lofty, 
 dry, treeless plain is peculiar, presenting great extremes of 
 temperature, intense heat in summer, and an equally intense 
 cold in winter. At all seasons, therefore, travelling in it 
 must be extremely trying. Throughout the greater part of 
 the year the traveller who has come from the hot seaboard 
 plains is glad to crouch by the fire and wrap himself in his 
 warmest robes, while in the heat of the short summer he 
 must advance beneath the fervid blaze of an eastern sun 
 and amid whirling clouds of dust. 
 
6 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 It was in the north-eastern part of this plain that Galatia 
 was situated, a rude and uninviting province, in the very 
 heart of the interior. But its rudeness and backwardness 
 were further aggravated by the difficulty of reaching it. 
 From any of the sunny and fertile plains of the south and 
 south-east it could only be approached by crossing the 
 snowy range of Mount Taurus. Four hundred miles of 
 steep, lofty, rugged, and, save at three or four spots, innpass- 
 able mountains separated it from the wealth and culture of 
 the plains. The most accessible of its passes, the famous 
 " Cilician Gates," which breaks through the range between 
 mountains rising to a height of more than ten thousand 
 feet, is eighty miles in length. In climbing, either by it or 
 by any other of the accustomed routes, the traveller passes 
 through some of the wildest and grandest scenery in the 
 world. 
 
 The mountains consist wholly of limestone, and there- 
 fore the steep pathways, paved in ancient times, appear 
 as white as if made of marble. This narrow, white, and 
 broken path winds everywhere among tremendous preci- 
 pices and narrow gorges covered thickly with pine and oak. 
 In winter, or at the colder seasons, the short streams which 
 tear their way through the dark forests to the narrow band 
 of sea-plain below, quite fill the narrowest parts of the 
 passes, sweep away the frail bridges, and put the life of the 
 traveller in imminent danger. 
 
 Nor are perils of another kind wanting. Crouching in 
 those black trackless woods were the wild Isaurian and 
 Pisidian robbers, and woe to the traveller who should try to 
 slip through their ambush without the protection of a large 
 company. Thus, to the barriers set by nature, man added 
 one more formidable ; and, accordingly, few travellers from 
 the south would be found on these roads except at the 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 7 
 
 beginning of summer, when great bands of shepherds left 
 the hot and grassless plains, with flocks and herds, to find 
 pasturage in the green cool yaiiahs, or hollows, of the table- 
 land above. 
 
 This short account of the Asian tableland and the 
 approach to it, may enable us to understand not only the 
 rudeness and backwardness of the central tribes, but also 
 the indisposition of any but the boldest and most enthu- 
 siastic to penetrate the country. 
 
 When John Mark stood below, at Perga, on the Pamphy- 
 lian plain, looking up to the savage ranges of the Taurus, 
 dark with oak and pine up to their snowy crowns, and 
 thought of the terrors of the ascent, and of those perils by 
 rivers and perils by robbers which St. Paul encountered 
 there, is it very wonderful that his heart failed him, and 
 he left Paul and his uncle to prosecute their dangerous 
 journey alone ? 
 
 We have seen the effect likely to be produced upon the 
 character of the Galatians by the remoteness and inaccessi- 
 bility of their country. It now remains to take into account 
 the effects of race. No doubt in the days of St. Paul there 
 would be a sprinkling of Greeks from the western seaboard, 
 of Jewish traders from the south, and even of Roman" 
 charged with the necessary duties of government. But the 
 mass of the population consisted of two races : the Phrygian 
 aborigines, who constituted the lower class ; and the Asian 
 Gauls, who had conquered them, and settled in their 
 country, very much as the Norman conquerors settled 
 among our Saxon forefathers in England. 
 
 I will say something first about the Phrygian basis of the 
 people. All authorities are agreed that the Phrygian race 
 was the most ancient race in the country, their origin being 
 lost in the mists of prehistoric times. Modern authorities, 
 
8 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 however, are disposed to identify them with that ancient 
 Pelasgic race which was found at the dawn of history in all 
 parts of Greece, Italy, and Asia Minor; and to find the 
 original home of both races in the highlands of Armenia. 
 At one period, before the incursions of the Semitic races 
 from the south-east, and of the Thracians from the north- 
 west, it is supposed that the Phrygians occupied the whole of 
 Asia Minor. This conclusion becomes immensely interest- 
 ing in the light of the greatest and most recent archaeological 
 discovery of our own days. 
 
 All readers of the Bible will remember that a people 
 called the Hittites dwelt in the days of Abraham as far 
 south as Hebron. It was from them that he purchased the 
 cave of Machpelah as a burying-place. At the time of the 
 Israelite invasion of Canaan they had been driven north- 
 w^ard. But it was against their serried lines of chariots that 
 the Israelites had to contend at the decisive battle of Merom. 
 In later days we find their soldiers of fortune leading the 
 armies of David and Solomon ; and we read later still that 
 when the Syrians broke up in panic from the siege of 
 Samaria, it w^as " for fear of the kings of the Hittites." 
 
 Of the existence of these people classical history was 
 absolutely silent. Accordingly, this fact was cited by a 
 great scholar and critic now living, as a proof of the in- 
 accuracy of the sacred history. How could such a people 
 as the Hittites, it was urged, had they ever existed, have so 
 utterly dropped out of sight? The last word of secular 
 history, however, had not yet been uttered about this 
 ancient people. 
 
 The hieroglyphics of Egypt have been consulted, and 
 what do they tell us ? That before the time of Moses, in 
 the days of Egypt's mightiest Pharaoh, a treaty was made 
 between the great Rameses and the king or grand-duke of 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 9 
 
 the Hittites, who had waged fierce wars with him on equal 
 terms. We find that the Hittite king had drawn his armies 
 and resources, not only from the Syrian and Mesopotamian 
 highlands, but also from all the tribes of Asia Minor. 
 
 Pictures of these Hittite warriors appear on the monu- 
 ments, and they represent a non-Semitic, probably a Turanian 
 race. Only a few years ago Professor Sayce noticed what 
 former observers had failed to remark, that the Hittite 
 warriors are represented as wearing boots with turned-up 
 toes, like those which are to this day worn among the 
 snowy uplands of the Taurus. To these discoveries the 
 cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria have added their testi- 
 mony. They speak of a great Hittite kingdom which 
 existed and waged war in Mesopotamia nearly two thou- 
 sand years before Christ, before Abraham left Ur of the 
 Chaldees. 
 
 Now who were these mighty people ; whence came they, 
 and from what regions of the earth did they draw those 
 vast resources of men and money which enabled them thus 
 to hold the balance of power between the great empires of 
 Egypt and Assyria. Again a new discovery has helped us 
 to an answer. Within the last few years inscriptions have 
 been found and partly read in all parts of Syria and Asia 
 Minor, in a script which is neither that of Egypt nor of 
 Assyria, but of that mighty Hittite race, which for more 
 than a thousand years held supreme dominion in Western 
 Asia. 
 
 Comparing all these sources of information, the ablest 
 experts of the present day have come to the following 
 conclusions : — 
 
 The Hittites were probably a Turanian race who had 
 their original home on the lofty mountain plateau of 
 Anatolia, east of the Halys, the very region from which 
 
lO DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 the Phrygians or Pelasgians came. They brought with 
 them a culture and a religion derived originally from 
 Chaldaea, the mighty mother of all Cushite and Semitic 
 civilisation. It was the Nana of Babylon who in another 
 form became their great goddess Atargatis, the Ashtoreth 
 of the Canaanites, the Cybele of the Phrygians. It is too 
 early yet to say that Hittites, Phrygians, and Pelasgians 
 were one people. Perhaps they were not, but only suc- 
 cessive migrations of kindred races from the same Asian 
 uplands. This, however, is certain, that they came from 
 one home, had one religion, and found the central scene of 
 their empire in one country, Asia Minor. 
 
 Here, then, w^e have something definite about that 
 Phrygian race which formed the lower stratum of the 
 population of Galatia in the time of St. Paul. And we 
 find that the worship of the mighty mother at Pessinus, 
 with its eunuch priests, its mysterious rites, and wild 
 orgiastic dances, was nothing else but a form of the sensual 
 nature-worship which, so far as we know, had its rise in the 
 plains of Chaldsea, where the ancestors of Abraham knew 
 it, and under its inspiration worshipped other gods. 
 
 But now I have said that, superimposed on this lower 
 Phrygian layer of population, there was another and a 
 conquering element, which, indeed, gave its determining 
 character to the whole. We are startled by the sudden 
 apparition of the Western Celts in the very heart of Asia. 
 How came they there ; standing out alone, amidst the 
 detritus of early races, a kind of boulder people ? To 
 this question we can give a very definite answer, for the 
 eastward migration of these Celts took place in the full 
 daylight of history. 
 
 The Celts appear to represent that portion of the Aryan 
 race which occupied the central and southern regions of 
 
THE GALATIAN LAFSE. II 
 
 their wide territory. Moved, then, either by the pressure 
 of increasing numbers, or by the resdessness of their dis- 
 position, great hordes of them migrated eastward within 
 historic times. 
 
 It w\as a side-wave of this great flood of people which 
 poured over the Apennines, under Brennus, and submerged 
 Rome, thence spreading itself out in weaker waves over 
 Southern Italy. A hundred years later, another horde from 
 the same western hive, swarming eastward, threw itself on 
 Thrace and Macedonia. It was a part of this body which 
 endeavoured to plunder Delphi ; but, being repulsed, its 
 remnants were headed back upon the main body of the 
 eastward-moving current. All passage to the southward 
 being thus denied them, it became necessary that they 
 should either retrace their steps or force their way still 
 further eastward. 
 
 The beaten tribes seem to have pursued the former course, 
 wandering away, and being, so to speak, lost in space. 
 Those, how^ever, who had not joined in the disastrous 
 southern raids pressed on, and, forcing their way across the 
 Hellespont, landed in Asia Minor. There, for many years, 
 they fought and slew and plundered, partly on their OAvn 
 account, and partly as mercenaries of the petty kings of the 
 country, till at last, suffering a great defeat from the King 
 of Pergamum, they were hemmed into the province where 
 they finally settled, and which was called after them Galatia, 
 or Gallo-Graecia, Greece of the Gauls. 
 
 It were useless to follow them farther in their tumultuous 
 history. For our purpose it is more to the point to observe 
 that, like many a conquering race, while retaining their own 
 language they adopted the religion and caught no little of 
 the sensuality and effeminacy of the degenerate people they 
 had subdued. Still, however, " it was the Celtic blood," as 
 
12 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 a great critic has remarked, " which gave its distinctive colour 
 to the Galatian character, and separated them by so broad a 
 line from their nearer neighbours." 
 
 For our purpose, then, it becomes important to ask what, 
 according to the testimony of contemporaries of St. Paul, 
 were the special traits of the Celtic character ? The Gauls 
 are everywhere credited with the special excellences which 
 Thierry attributes to them, " with a personal valour which 
 is without its equal among ancient peoples; with a spirit 
 frank, impetuous, open to all impressions, and eminently 
 intelligent." But, on the other hand, they are said to have 
 had all the faults which he acknowledges, " extreme 
 changeableness, an absence of constancy, a marked repug- 
 nance to those ideas of discipline and order so powerfully 
 felt among the Germanic races, an excessive ostentation, 
 and a perpetual disunion, the effect of extreme vanity." 
 
 Caesar charges them with fickleness and excessive love of 
 change. So eager were they, he says, for news that they 
 would gather tumultuously around any passing stranger and 
 detain him, even against his will, till he had satisfied their 
 curiosity. In religious worship he charges them with "an 
 excessive devotion to external observances ; " and this ritual- 
 istic bent of the Celtic mind has persisted to our own times. 
 
 Only the other day, at the funeral of a great poet, who, 
 refused the prayers of the Church, torches and urns and 
 tawdry decorations were borrowed from the ritual of a dead 
 paganism to replace the discarded inscription and cross. 
 Ritualism of some kind the Celt must have. His sensuous 
 impressionable nature seems to require it. Truth must be 
 externalized and presented to his sight before he seems able 
 to grasp it. Even holiness, in order to produce its full 
 impression on him, must exhibit itself in the pallor and lean- 
 ness, the fasts, mortifications, and solitude of the ascetic, 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 1 3 
 
 We cannot be astonished, then, when we find the Gauls 
 of Asia succumbing so easily to the passionate ritualism of 
 the Phrygian cultus ; nor even when we find them so ready 
 to combine with it, for a time, every new ritualistic worship 
 which presented itself. 
 
 It is a striking fact that each of their three capital cities 
 had its own prevailing form of worship. At Pessinus they 
 worshipped the Phrygian mother of the gods, continuing 
 their devotion to her service, even when the black, ugly 
 fetish, which was supposed to have fallen from heaven, had 
 been removed to Rome ; at Tavium the prevailing worship 
 was that of the Greek Zeus ; while at Ancyra the new 
 Emperor-worship was established, and a temple of white 
 marble was erected to Augustus by the united contributions 
 of Asia. 
 
 A people so fickle, so prone to change, so ready to 
 welcome any new thing, would be quite likely to give the 
 apostle of a new faith, like St. Paul, a favourable hearing. 
 But how came they, it may be asked, with their ritualistic 
 heredity, to welcome and adopt a faith so purely spiritual 
 as that proclaimed by St. Paul ? St. Paul's preaching had 
 other things, I answer, to commend it to them, besides its 
 novelty. 
 
 The Apostle, it would seem, had not intended to stay in 
 Galatia, but, crossing hastily the central tableland, to press 
 on to the more hopeful region of Lydia, with its great cities. 
 Midway, however, in his course he was arrested by an 
 attack of that mysterious malady which he calls his thorn, 
 or stake, in the flesh. It seems quite certain that this was 
 either an epileptic affection, like that under which our 
 great King Alfred suffered all his life, or the terrible 
 Eastern ophthalmia, which, besides being exquisitely painful, 
 grievously disfigured those who suffered from it. In either 
 
14 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 case, it would not seem as if the Apostle was at this juncture 
 a promising missionary to so vain and impressionable a 
 people as the Gauls. But we must remember their ascetic 
 conceptions of holiness. Would not the contrast between 
 the frail messenger and his mighty preaching be likely to 
 produce a striking effect upon such people ? 
 
 St. Paul has been called by a modern scholar " an ugly 
 little Jew." Beyond doubt the judgment of many of his 
 contemporaries was substantially the same ; for at Corinth it 
 was the common reproach of his enemies that " his bodily 
 presence was weak and his speech contemptible." He 
 possessed none of the graces either of person or of rhetoric. 
 Pale, meagre, and low of stature, his very aspect was an 
 offence to the aesthetic Greeks. Simple and direct in 
 character, he w^as too earnestly bent on delivering his 
 message to waste time or strength on the mere forms of 
 expression, like the mercenary sophists of Greece, who felt 
 conscious that they must compensate by beauty of form for 
 poverty of matter. His great thoughts, which shook the 
 world, seem to have rushed forth in whatever words appeared 
 at the moment to give them freest course and clearest 
 utterance. 
 
 But just those things which would be a scandal to the 
 Greeks might be most exactly adapted to the needs and 
 taste of a rude and simple people like the Galatians. Ever 
 the Celtic race has demanded before all things earnestness. 
 Thought they love, learning they admire, and even rhetoric ; 
 but all with them is nothing if not charged with the lightning 
 force of enthusiasm. It was the earnestness of the early 
 Methodist preachers which swayed the minds and bowed 
 the hearts of the Celts of England, the Welsh and Cornish 
 peasantry. 
 
 And never, surely, since the world began was there 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 1 5 
 
 a preacher more earnest and enthusiastic than St. Paul. 
 Himself he had long ago forgotten. He had sunk his very 
 being in the Lord he loved. So utterly engrossed, indeed, 
 was he in the work of Christ's kingdom that no other 
 interest seems to have dwelt for a moment in his soul. He 
 passes through the grandest scenery in the world without 
 even an allusion to it. War and politics might not exist for 
 any notice he takes of them. His heart is with his Saviour ; 
 his interests are in heaven ; and the one work to which he 
 bends the whole energies of his mighty spirit is the work 
 of making men love Christ, and of delivering them from 
 the slavery of sin. 
 
 Conceive, then, this feeble, insignificant-looking man, 
 racked by pain, and disfigured by disease, so driven along, 
 nevertheless, by the imperious enthusiasm within, that he 
 cannot be silent, first opening his lips among that rude, 
 impressionable people. Contempt, perhaps, they may have 
 felt at first; but as the voice gathered strength, and as 
 words came more freely, now in orderly sequence, and now 
 in lightning flashes of inspiration, uttering thoughts almost 
 too great for words, and ever and anon broken and shattered 
 by the might of an emotion which overpowered alike both 
 speaker and hearer, think how that first impression must 
 have been changed, how they must have seen St. Paul, 
 as a Yorkshire peasant once said that he saw Wilberforce, 
 ."growing visibly greater as he went on." The result was 
 astonishing. The orator took their hearts by storm. There 
 was nothing they would not have given him. 
 
 He reminds them in his letter that " they did not despise 
 nor loathe the temptation in his flesh." They received him, 
 on the contrary, as an angel of God, as Jesus Christ Himself. 
 Yea, if that would have availed him anything, they " would 
 have plucked out their very eyes and have given them to 
 
1 6 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 him." But, alas ! they were Gauls, with all the fickleness 
 of their race, with its passionate love of ritual exaggerated by 
 Phrygian mixture ; and, as we shall see in the next lecture, it 
 only needed a certain kind of temptation to turn their love 
 into indifference, their reverence into insolence, their spiritual 
 freedom into legal bondage, their promising beginning into 
 a threatening and all but fatal fall. In this lecture we have 
 dealt with the Galatian conversion ; in the next we shall 
 have to consider the Galatian lapse ; and we shall find, I 
 think, in its history and character weighty lessons and 
 impressive warnings. 
 
II. 
 
 We have to ask to-day the question, what was the influence 
 under the impulse of which the Galatians fell ? And that 
 brings us into the very heart of a controversy, now, indeed, 
 in its unmediated antagonism a thing of the past, but still 
 living on, and revived a few years ago by Professor 
 Pfleiderer, not in Berlin, where he is Professor of Theology, 
 but in London. 
 
 The theory of the earlier Tiibingen school, that there 
 was a bitter feud between the apostles of the circumcision 
 and of the uncircumcision, and an irreconcilable opposition 
 between their doctrines, may now be regarded, to use the 
 words of Archdeacon Farrar, " as a religious romance," 
 founded on the words of our epistle, " before that certain 
 came from James." 
 
 I am far, however, from thinking that the controversy 
 aroused by the publication of that romance was useless. It 
 brought out a great deal that was interesting about the 
 currents of opinion in the Primitive Church. It showed 
 us that the Church of the first century, instead of enjoying 
 that purity and peace which we fondly attribute to it, was 
 even more distracted by disputes and slanders than that 
 of our own time ; that the golden age is quite as much a 
 dream in the history of the Christian Church as in the 
 traditions of classical poetry ; that human nature has never 
 for long been less intractable than we find it ; and that, 
 especially, the Apostle Paul was pursued and persecuted 
 
1 8 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 by a Christian sect with an unscrupulous and mahgnant 
 hatred which might even have excited surprise amongst 
 ourselves. 
 
 I see that Professor Pfleiderer still believes, not only that 
 the Gospel according to St. Luke was an eirenicon between 
 the Pauline Gospel according to St. Mark and the anti- 
 Pauline Gospel according to St. Matthew, but also that 
 when St. James wrote, "Ye see that by works a man is 
 justified, and not by faith only," he made a direct polemical 
 reference, not to those who had abused St. Paul's doctrine, 
 but to that Apostle himself. I can see no sufficient justifica- 
 tion for such conclusions. They appear to me to be the 
 last survivals of a theory being rapidly driven out of the 
 field of thought, and only now interesting as forcing us to 
 contemplate steadily initial differences in Christian doctrine 
 which we might otherwise overlook or treat too lightly. 
 
 That there was a difference of mental attitude and dis- 
 position between St. Paul and St. James, and that this 
 difference in the nature of the two men expressed itself in 
 the form of their teaching, and carried them not seldom 
 into sympathy with opposite sides, is, I believe, all but 
 demonstrated. That there is not, for instance, in the 
 whole Epistle of St. James a single direct reference 
 either to the incarnation, the atonement, justification by 
 faith, or the conflict between the flesh and the spirit, is 
 a fact which speaks volumes. 
 
 To review the controversy left us by the TUbingen school 
 would be. however, an endless and unprofitable task. 
 Instead, therefore, of wasting your time in such an effort, 
 I will endeavour to lay before you as concisely as I can 
 the true history of the rise and progress of the Jewish- 
 Christian opposition to St. Paul. 
 
 It will be necessary to begin with the Apostle's own 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 1 9 
 
 proof of the independence of that preaching which he 
 calls "his gospel." It is certainly startling, when we 
 come to think of the matter closely, to be told, by one 
 who never knew the Lord in the flesh, that he neither 
 received the truth which he preached from man, neither 
 was he taught it, but " by the revelation of Jesus Christ." 
 What can the Apostle mean ? we are disposed to ask. 
 Does he mean that he knew nothing whatever of what 
 the Lord said and did while He was upon earth ? If so, 
 how can he be a Christian ? where can he have learned 
 the spiritual principles of his Master's teaching ? Surely, 
 in this case, he ought to lay claim to be an original 
 founder, and not a mere disciple of Jesus Christ. So 
 far, however, is the Apostle from making any such claim, 
 that there is not one of the twelve of whom we could 
 say as unreservedly as of St. Paul that he entirely lost 
 himself in the Saviour. He not only calls himself the 
 " slave " of his heavenly Master, declaring that he is 
 determined to know nothing among men but "Jesus 
 Christ and Him crucified," but he looks upon all his 
 work as the mere outflow of Christ's energy, and upon 
 his own spiritual existence even, as nothing but an 
 indwelling of Christ within his soul. 
 
 If, then, he owes everything to Christ, and yet gained 
 nothing from men, can he mean to say that he was made 
 to live over again in vision the whole earthly career of his 
 Master, and so, as it were, to see and hear for himself at 
 first hand? No shadow of such a claim is anywhere 
 made. 
 
 What, then, does St. Paul mean by claiming independence 
 for his gospel ? I think we are compelled to conclude that 
 when he spoke of his gospel as distinct from that of others, 
 he was referring to that special form of truth into which the 
 
20 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 great spiritual principles and doctrines connected with his 
 Master's life and death had been cast in the course of 
 his own meditation and teaching. Baur himself observes 
 that St. Paul must have been well acquainted with the 
 outward facts of his Master's earthly career. These he 
 might easily have learnt, if indeed he needed then to learn 
 them, while staying with Ananias at Damascus after his 
 conversion. But every ordinary Christian knew those 
 facts. And to know them was to be a long way still from 
 St. Paul's conception of his Master's eternal relation to 
 mankind. 
 
 Many vital questions would remain still to be asked. 
 How had Christ's death and resurrection affected the 
 application of the principles of his teaching ? How had his 
 relation to the Church been changed by the outpouring of 
 Pentecost ? Above all, how was a Christian's relation to the 
 law altered by the death of Him who bore its curse ? Upon 
 this last question especially the Lord had left no explicit 
 instructions. He had said indeed that His kingdom was 
 to be as wide as the world. But then, as every Jew hoped 
 that obedience to the law would be equally universal, there 
 was nothing in mere universality to limit legal obligation. 
 
 No doubt Jesus had carried His spiritualizing of the law 
 so far as to imply in effect its abolition. For what would 
 become, for instance, of all that mass of legal precepts, 
 which implied service at the temple, if in the new era men 
 were to worship the Father neither at Samaria nor at 
 Jerusalem ? Or how could a law command universal and 
 perpetual respect of any portion of which it could be 
 truthfully said that it was not good in itself, but only 
 *' added because of the hardness of men's hearts"? Still 
 all this was so far mere matter of inference. And before 
 men will surrender the habits, and especially the privileges, 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 21 
 
 of ages and generations, they demand an authority more 
 explicit than mere inference. 
 
 To a thoughtful man, taking this into account, the imme- 
 diate outlook of Christianity at the period of St. Paul's 
 conversion was very grave indeed. No doubt it had made 
 many converts among the chosen people. But then all 
 these were zealots for the law. They frequented the temple 
 services and sacrifices, kept the Sabbaths and ordinances, 
 observed all the national laws and customs, and, in a word, 
 appeared most likely to their neighbours to have become 
 the better Jews for having turned Christians. This appears 
 all the more probable from the fact that after the short, sharp 
 spasm of persecution, of which the chief victims were first 
 Stephen, and then after an interval James, the Church of 
 Jerusalem had peace for twenty years. Christians, indeed, 
 in Jerusalem would appear to their neighbours, and probably 
 to themselves, to be that portion of Israel who believed that 
 the long-expected Messiah had come in Jesus of Nazareth, 
 had sanctified their hearts by His Spirit, and would soon 
 come again to restore the kingdom to Israel. 
 
 There w^as nothing in such a position as this, either on 
 the one side to excite bitter animosity or on the other to 
 impel Christians to separate themselves from the law ; and 
 it really seemed for a moment as if the mighty enthusiasm 
 of Pentecost might sink into respectable legalism, as if 
 Christianity might be strangled in its cradle by the iron 
 hand of the law, as if it might sink into an obscure Jewish 
 sect, and disappear in the national ruin, instead of breaking 
 its fetters, spreading its mighty spiritual pinions, and claim- 
 ing the universal heaven as its home. 
 
 But then, just at this crisis, the Divine Lord of the 
 Kingdom fulfilled His eternal counsel by the miraculous 
 capture (to use a Pauline figure) of the Great Aposde of the 
 
2 2 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 Gentiles. To St. Paul, from that hour, Jesus Christ was 
 not the mere Jewish Master who had taught and lived by 
 the lake and on the hills of Galilee, but the Divine Man 
 from heaven, the risen Conqueror, who had arrested him in 
 his career of persecution, and sent him to labour at the 
 ends of the earth. Not then to those Judaean teachers did 
 he go, who were apparently settling down into a received 
 position among the Jews ; but away into the far Arabian 
 wilderness, away, I believe, like Elijah, to the terrible rocks 
 of desert Sinai itself. There he would be still, away from 
 the noise and babble of the world. There, alone with God, 
 he would commune with his own heart on the meaning of 
 the awful, blessed thing which had happened to him. There, 
 in those stern desolations, which spoke so solemnly of the 
 law's iron demands, he would ponder the relations of God's 
 ancient word to the soul shaking thoughts which under 
 Divine inspiration were shaping themselves within him. 
 He had a present to realize, a past to understand ; and, in 
 the light of both, a great vague, heart-troubling future to 
 anticipate. There he Hved, thought, and prayed, how long 
 we know not, but long enough at least to enable him to 
 gain a firm spiritual hold of the truth he was seeking, the 
 relation, viz., of his risen and glorified Lord to his own 
 heart, to the word of God, to the Christian Church, and to 
 the miserable dying heathen world. 
 
 Then, after three years, he went to Jerusalem to see 
 Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. A blessed season 
 of refreshing, we cannot doubt, for the solitary and thought- 
 vexed man. For not less by his sunny Christian sympathy 
 than by his affectionate memories of their common master, 
 St. Peter must have comforted the heart and enlarged the 
 knowledge of the mighty convert. His visit would seem to 
 have been for the Apostle Paul an almost private one, 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 23 
 
 for other of the apostles, he tells us, he saw none in the 
 course of it, save James, the Lord's brother. Now the 
 Apostle omits a long and, for him, somewhat stormy period, 
 that of his first call to missionary work, and that of his 
 first Gentile mission in company with Barnabas. 
 
 On their return to Antioch the apostles are first confronted 
 by that Jewish-Christian opposition which was henceforth to 
 be the worst earthly cross which St. Paul was called upon 
 to bear. Certain men came down from Judea, who began 
 to teach the Gentile brethren at Antioch that it was 
 necessary for them to be circumcised. Paul and Barnabas 
 resisted this claim with all their might. From what we 
 know of the former, we may be sure that he would have 
 resisted it to the end had he stood alone in the Church 
 and in the world. But in that event the Christian Church 
 must have been divided into two camps, which, instead of 
 joining their forces to assail sin and ignorance, would have 
 exhausted each other in mutual conflicts. This must be 
 avoided at all hazards. It was resolved, therefore, to refer 
 the whole question in dispute to the apostles and elders in 
 Jerusalem. There, for the first and only time in his life, 
 St. Paul met the three great pillars of the Christian Church, 
 Peter and John, and James, the Lord's brother, two of 
 -these four, at least, being the greatest prophets and thinkers 
 of their time. 
 
 Never in all her stormy history has a greater crisis over- 
 taken the Church. For the issue to be decided was not 
 less than this, whether the Church of Christ should remain 
 a Jewish sect or become a world-wide kingdom. The action 
 of the Apostle Paul was as wise as it was self-efiacing. He 
 went at once to the leaders of the Christian Church, and 
 communicated to them clearly what that Gospel was which 
 he had been preaching among the Gentiles. At once they 
 
24 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 accepted it as the truth, and gave to him and Barnabas the 
 right hand of fellowship. At the council which was assembled 
 to consider the matter, Paul and Barnabas, with admirable 
 wisdom, said nothing about principles, but confined them- 
 selves to giving a faithful account of the manner in which 
 God the Holy Ghost had blessed their preaching. 
 
 With good and pious men this is always a powerful argu- 
 ment. It was the fait accompli which silenced those who 
 objected that Peter had eaten with men uncircumcised in the 
 house of Cornelius. " The Holy Ghost fell on them," cried 
 the Apostle, " and who was I that I could resist God ? " It 
 was substantially the same argument which was advanced 
 now by Paul and Barnabas, and to it, we may suppose, even 
 more than to the Pauline address of St. Peter, was it due 
 that opposition faded away. The matter seemed to be 
 decided by apostohc authority and the act of God. But 
 then arose James, and though he has nothing to urge either 
 against the principles of Peter or the acts of Paul, he is 
 obviously not prepared to advance as far as either in 
 practice. He proposes accordingly a compromise, which, 
 while afifirming the liberty of the Gentiles, shall leave Jewish 
 converts to live as they had lived hitherto : providing, 
 moreover, .that for charity's sake, to avoid giving offence 
 to Jewish brethren, the Gentiles shall observe certain re- 
 strictions in eating. 
 
 Substantially this was a victory for St. Paul. On the 
 main point of the obligation of circumcision, it affirmed the 
 freedom of the Gentiles. And at first, perhaps, this might 
 have seemed all which was necessary. Time, how^ever, 
 soon revealed the essential weakness of this compromise. 
 In such a Church, for instance, as that at Antioch, where 
 Jewish and Gentile Christians mixed at meals, and specially 
 at the Agapse, dissension might at any time be introduced 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 25 
 
 by Jewish brethren. They might urge that to a proper 
 keeping of the law, separation from the meals of the un- 
 circumcised, even when those uncircumcised were Christian 
 brethren, was an absolute necessity. Relaxations might be 
 permitted, no doubt, to the weakness of the poor Gentiles ; 
 but still, you know, if they were asked privately their own 
 opinion of such Christianity, they must say that the less 
 they had to do with it the better. 
 
 At Jerusalem, under the presidency of the Lord's own 
 brother, they felt themselves in the kingdom of God, but at 
 Antioch or Ephesus, or any of those objectionable places in 
 the Gentile outlands, while they would not positively say 
 that they preferred synagogue to church, still it well-nigh 
 came to that. They might, indeed, worship with such 
 disciples, but as for eating with them, that they would never 
 do, and they looked anxiously for the time when the leaders 
 of the Church, discovering their mistake, would revert to the 
 holy strictness of the yet uncorrupted Church of Jerusalem. 
 
 Meanwhile, how was St. Paul treating this question of 
 allowed Jewish conformity ? More and more he spoke 
 of the law as a mere national code, good perhaps for the 
 Jews so long as their national polity subsisted, but binding 
 on no man whether born a Jew or a Gentile. Regeneration 
 of heart could never be obtained along the line of obedience 
 to law. In the battle against sin, law was nothing, and 
 circumcision was nothing, but only faith, which worketh by 
 love. A Gentile Christian was bound to avoid circumcision 
 and holiday-keeping in order to show that he trusted only in 
 the grace of Christ. 
 
 What bitter exasperation such teaching w^ould produce 
 among Christian Pharisees we can easily conceive. That 
 the Gentile Christians in the name of Paul should brush 
 aside their scruples, and laugh at their airs of superiority, 
 
26 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 would be far worse than if some irreverent nonconformist or 
 low churchman should rudely tell a ritualist nowadays that 
 his religion was not one of clothes and postures, but of heart 
 and life. Worse, I say, because the ritualism to which 
 these Christian Pharisees clung so tenaciously was that of 
 an alien faith. They could not call themselves Mosaists, 
 and yet they wanted to live as Mosaists, and to impose a 
 Mosaic manner of life upon all others, an inconsistency of 
 which they must have been latently conscious, and which 
 must have made them all the more ready to take offence, 
 because it exposed them to a crushing answer. 
 
 At length the position became so intolerable that they 
 resolved to endure it no longer, but to make an end of it 
 at once by crushing Paul, its chief defender, before his 
 admirers at Antioch. Their plot was astutely conceived* 
 Not a word would they say against the decree of the council. 
 The Gentiles should attend their unclean banquets without 
 a word of protest from them. But then they would claim 
 and publicly exercise those rights of which, thank God, the 
 decree had not deprived them. By carefully abstaining 
 from attendance at all Gentile meals they would mortify 
 the pride of these upstarts and teach them their natural 
 inferiority. 
 
 The time for this demonstration was craftily chosen. 
 Peter and Paul and Barnabas were all at Antioch, and what 
 they openly did in the presence of these great leaders could 
 never afterwards be called in question. Day by day, then, 
 the Jewish plotters passed the public boards of the Gentiles 
 with cold and reserved demeanour, carefully separating 
 themselves, and doubtless making as much stir as they 
 could about their ostentatious ceremonialisms. Can you 
 not easily realize the immense effect of such conduct upon 
 the Gentile brethren ? Do as they would, they could not 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 27 
 
 help respecting a Jew. Was not the Lord Jesus a Jew? 
 Was not Paul, their great teacher, a Jew ? Was not the 
 mother Church of the whole Christian world still Jewish ? 
 And who were they, aliens born out of due time, to look down 
 upon the children of the covenant ? As then they saw the 
 delegates from Jerusalem passing by the rooms where they 
 ate, with ill-repressed disgust, what a chill must it have 
 struck to the heart of their brotherly love, how it must 
 have filled them with perplexed humihation ! 
 
 Nor was this the worst. Peter, the impressionable, felt 
 himself in so false a position when these Jewish aristocrats 
 passed by him at the Gentile tables, that, not to alienate the 
 circumcision, he, too, passed away to the separate meals. 
 How could he bear to meet his warmest friends and ablest 
 supporters at Jerusalem with a cloud on their faces ? Their 
 friendship, at all events, he must not lose. Peter thus gone, 
 Barnabas began to waver. Certainly it did seem a privilege 
 to be able to eat with either Jews or Gentiles, as one pleased. 
 No Gentile could go to the exclusive table. Might he not 
 then even increase his influence with the Gentiles by showing 
 that that table was open to him as well as to Peter ? So, as 
 one after another fell away, the poor Gentiles felt themselves 
 thrust into an inferior place. They were made to feel that 
 there was a church within a church, and that if they would 
 advance into the holy place they must consent to be cir- 
 cumcised, and keep the whole law. 
 
 A cleverer plot was never laid ; and had it not been for 
 one man there can be Httle doubt that its success would have 
 converted the Christian Church from that day onward into 
 a Jewish sect, with the risen Jesus for its Messiah. The 
 truth of God was put in danger ; the hope of the world w^as 
 being darkened ; humanity was being robbed of its best 
 treasure 
 
28 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 But Paul was not the man to stand by silently and see 
 such a thing done. So up he rose in the midst of them, at 
 some meeting doubtless which was not a meal, and where 
 all, including the apostles, were assembled. Not a word 
 does he vouchsafe to the aristocrats. They, wnth their 
 narrow-souled exclusiveness, had acted after their kind, 
 and what they did mattered only to a few. But that Peter, 
 the foremost man in Christendom, the man miraculously 
 chosen to admit the Gentiles to the Christian Church, the 
 man whose powerful pleading at the council had saved the 
 Gentiles' freedom, that he should believe one thing and do 
 another was intolerable. 
 
 Him at once, then, Paul attacks. " You are a Jew," he 
 cries ; " if then in times past you have eaten freely with the 
 Gentiles, seeing no harm in it, how is it now that by your 
 example you are teaching these Gentiles that they ought to 
 live as Jews ? Do you think that if you create a higher 
 sacerdotal caste in the Church all these ignorant people will 
 not be anxious to press into it ? Besides, the evil is not 
 only a practical, it is much more a doctrinal one. If you 
 observe these Mosaic restrictions you acknowledge the 
 binding obligation of the ceremonial law. Now, I appeal 
 to you as an honest man, do you believe that ? Nay, do 
 we not both know that it is your faith, as it is mine, that ' a 
 man is not justified by works of law, but by the faith of 
 Jesus Christ ' ? How, then, can you be so unfaithful to 
 your trust as to put it in peril by your equivocal conduct ? '' 
 
 It may seem little to us, perhaps, after all these years, 
 when the fierce passions of the primitive age have burnt 
 themselves out, that St. Paul had the courage to stand 
 forth, and in the presence of the arrogant Pharisees to 
 rebuke their greatest leader to his face. But not the less 
 was it a grand and heroic deed ; and not the less did it 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 29 
 
 carry with it far-reaching and momentous consequences. 
 The whole Jerusalem plot was blown to pieces. These 
 men could never afterwards creep into Gentile churches 
 and allege that the great Peter had refused to eat with 
 the uncircumcised, while their audacious champion Paul 
 had held his peace. No, the result was of the very 
 opposite kind. Peter was too honest a man to carry 
 deception or unreality one step further, when once its 
 inception had been faithfully pointed out to him. And 
 therefore, from that time onward, the gratified Gentiles 
 could report that the attempt to create a Jewish caste in 
 the Church had indeed once been made at Antioch with the 
 tacit support of Peter and Barnabas, but that as soon as 
 Paul had lifted up his thunder-voice of truth all had sub- 
 mitted to it, and once more the Agapae were eaten in 
 common. 
 
 AVith the heart of a woman when his dear children forgot 
 him, or treated him unkindly, Paul had the courage of an 
 archangel when the truth of God was endangered. Mobs 
 were nothing to him, and very little more were kings and 
 procurators ; but to have stood forth thus alone, not only 
 against Peter, but also his own true yoke-fellow, Barnabas, 
 to have thrown not only all fear but all friendship to the 
 winds, when loyalty to the Lord Jesus demanded it, proves 
 the Apostle to have been one of those great and finely- 
 tempered souls, very rarely fashioned in our human clay, by 
 which God executes the purposes of eternity. 
 
 Many were the lands and fortunes through which the 
 glorious Apostle was to pass before his next and his bitterest 
 trial from the Christian Pharisaic party was to come upon 
 him. At first that party seems to have been paralysed by 
 the terrible blow which St. Paul had dealt it. For of their 
 movements during the three years of the Apostle's Ephesian 
 
30 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 ministry we know little or nothing. At Ephesus, in the 
 school of Tyrannus, St. Paul had time not only to preach to 
 men from all parts of Greece and Asia, but also gradually 
 and insensibly to beat out into perfect form and clear ex- 
 pression those views of human regeneration through Christ 
 which he afterwards poured forth with such perfect mastery 
 in the epistles to Galatia and Rome. 
 
 His own thoughts, I cannot but believe, were gradually 
 clearing themselves of every confusing association. Their 
 change in a positive direction may not have been marked, 
 but, as his greater epistles show, they were becoming nega- 
 tively sharper and less tolerant of unconformable elements. 
 They were falling, too, into systematic shape, finding their 
 logical relation to each other and the great thoughts of the 
 earlier dispensation. Should any new need arise, the Apostle 
 would be found ready to strike harder and straighter than 
 ever before. 
 
 And soon a very terrible need approached. The. Phari- 
 saic Christian party were changing their tactics. St. Paul in 
 person they dared not meet. His word was a thunderbolt 
 which shattered their flimsy sophisms to pieces in a moment. 
 But none the less they hated him, and were resolved upon 
 destroying his influence. He might be great, but he was 
 not ubiquitous, and the plan they now resolved on was 
 characteristic of the slow, persistent, deadly hate of bafiled 
 fanatics. 
 
 While he was making his fine orations in the school of 
 Tyrannus, and shining like a star before the motley crowds 
 of Ephesus, they would quietly creep into the churches 
 which he had left undefended in Greece and Galatia. No 
 doubt it seemed to 'them that he had broken the terms 
 of the Jerusalem compromise, for what else than that was 
 it to deprive them practically of that Jewish privilege of 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 3 1 
 
 exclusiveness which the compromise had left untouched? 
 They would, therefore, on their side, pay as little heed to 
 its concessions. They would insist everywhere that the 
 Gentiles must be circumcised, and keep the whole law. 
 
 But how were they to gain a hearing among St. Paul's 
 own disciples ? They must endeavour to discredit his 
 person and undermine his apostolic authority. The Second 
 Epistle to the Corinthians and that to the Galatians 
 exhibit fully their viodus operafidt. St. Paul, they alleged, 
 was no apostle at all. He had never seen the Lord, 
 except in some vision which he was fond of talking about. 
 So far, indeed, was he from being an apostle that he got his 
 mission only from the subordinate church of Antioch. Let 
 him show letters testimonial, if he had any, Hke those which 
 they could themselves produce from the mother Church of 
 Jerusalem, and James, the Lord's own brother. What was 
 the worth of all Paul's arrogant boasting in the face of 
 such proved defects as these ? Again, he was teaching 
 heresy. He told men that they need not keep the law. 
 But who was it who had said that not one jot or tittle 
 should by any means pass away from the law till all were 
 fulfilled ? Nay, his own practice condemned him. Who 
 had circumcised Timothy ? Who had become as a Jew to 
 Jews that he might win Jews? He was a slippery and 
 deceitful man, and as contemptible in speech and presence 
 as he was heretical and untruthful in teaching. Nay, 
 worse, did they not observe how craftily he disposed of the 
 ialms which he professed to gather for the poor saints at 
 Jerusalem ? It was all very well for him to work osten- 
 tatiously for his own bread, but let them inquire what 
 became of the money which he professed to forward by 
 Titus to Jerusalem. Were they going to be the bondslaves 
 of such a charlatan as this ? W^ere they going to allow 
 
32 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 themselves to be separated by him from the holy severity 
 of the glorious church at Jerusalem ? Let them turn 
 while yet there was time, repudiate this sham apostle's 
 authority, and rest once more in the unity of Zion. How 
 vile a tissue of false insinuations this was we know full well. 
 But we can never know the anguish of heart with which 
 the. Apostle first heard, after his flight from Ephesus, that 
 such things as these had been believed of him by his own 
 children in the faith. 
 
 The mischief was bad enough at Corinth. But in 
 Galatia everything for the moment seemed to be lost. 
 Nothing had been easier than to play upon the fickleness 
 and credulity of these ignorant Gauls. The new ritual 
 which the Judaisers brought pleased them as a new toy 
 pleases a child, and it promised them, beside, a new 
 religion of forms far more easy to observe than the severe 
 and lofty principles of spiritual Christianity. What was the 
 Apostle to do ? He was in Macedonia when all this dis- 
 astrous intelligence poured in upon him. In his indignation, 
 then, and anguish he sat down and wrote first the Second 
 Epistle to the Corinthians, then that to the Galatians, and 
 then, at no great distance of time, in a quieter tone, that 
 systematic expansion of the Epistle to the Galatians which 
 he sent to Rome. 
 
 So, the Church won some of her greatest treasures out of 
 the envenomed hate of these despicable Christian Pharisees. 
 St. Paul at once throws all compromise to the winds. He 
 will keep no terms with such men. They have accused 
 him of vacillating statements. He will put it out of their 
 power, at any rate, to make that statement again. His 
 words shall be such as no human being can mistake. 
 Indeed, the crisis was of such a kind as to make the very 
 plainest speech a simple necessity. The issue raised was 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 33 
 
 one of life or death, of gospel or no gospel, of freedom or 
 bondage, of salvation or destruction. Not only those poor 
 wavering Gauls, but the whole Church, yea, the whole 
 human race, was interested in the result. It seemed as 
 though the cause of humanity had been committed by the 
 fiat of Providence to the Apostle's single arm, and by God's 
 help he would not be wanting. Drawing then the sword, 
 and throwing away the scabbard, he rushes to the front 
 of battle, determined that he will not spare. 
 
 " I marvel," he cries to the foolish Gauls, " that ye are 
 so soon moved away from Him that called you to another 
 gospel." "Oh, stupid Galatians," slaves of your senses, 
 who can believe nothing you do not see, did I not paint up 
 Jesus crucified before your eyes, in lineaments so large, in 
 colours so vivid, that you could make no mistake ? Who, 
 then, hath bewitched you with his evil eye ? How is it that 
 you are turning from the spirit to the flesh, from freedom to 
 bondage, from Sarah to Hagar ? How, having once known 
 God, are ye turning again to the beggarly elements to which 
 ye desire to become bondslaves ? Law and circumcision, 
 weeks and months and years, fasts, sacrifices, festivals, and 
 sabbaths, I tell you they are all nought. " Neither cir- 
 cumcision is anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new 
 creature." Will you tell me that surely you are no worse 
 for circumcision, even if you be no better ? I deny it. I 
 will not suffer you to be circumcised. " If you be circum- 
 cised, you are debtors to do the whole law." " If you are 
 circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing." Is that clear 
 enough for you ? Or do you wish me to be still more ex- 
 plicit ? Well, then, I tell you that your fine, new gospel is 
 no gospel at all. It is a fall from grace. It is an apostacy. 
 He who teaches it is a traitor to Christ, and a foe to Christ's 
 silly lambs who have gone bleating after him. Let him be 
 
 3 
 
34 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 anathema. And lest you should suppose this to be nothing 
 more than the utterance of an uncontrollable anger, I repeat 
 it solemnly and deliberately, Let him be anathema, let 
 him be cut off from the body of Christ. 
 
 So he goes thundering over their heads, scattering all 
 their new-sprung conceits and insolences as the storm 
 scatters the dry leaves of autumn and drives the obscene 
 birds of night to the darkness of their nether caves. As 
 once before by the terror of his presence, so now by the 
 might of his words, St. Paul broke and scattered the dark 
 bands of sacerdotal insolence and tyranny, and planted the 
 flag of spiritual freedom where it has been floating -ever 
 since, on the height of his glorious epistle. 
 
 What lessons his polemic had for his own time we have 
 seen ; what lessons it has for us I must endeavour to explain 
 in my next lecture. 
 
III. 
 
 When we have cast aside what is of only temporary interest 
 in the Epistle to the Galatians, we find that the Apostle 
 Paul is dealing therein with a question of permanent 
 importance, what, namely, can secure the happiness and 
 spiritual renewal of the human race ? He deals with this 
 question negatively and positively. Negatively he affirms 
 that happiness and regeneration cannot be secured by 
 works of a law ; positively that they can be secured by 
 the help of the Spirit of Christ. 
 
 In the present lecture, I shall consider the bearing of his 
 negative doctrine on some theories of our own time. One 
 of those theories is that the highest good can be secured 
 for humanity by a better distribution of material possessions. 
 This is the favourite theory of the noisier and coarser of 
 the leaders of European nihilism and socialism. Like most 
 incomplete explanations of life, it is not without its truth, 
 and it is by virtue of that truth that it lives. Assuredly, so 
 long as any large proportion of the human race is without 
 sufficient food, decent lodging, and leisure enough to de- 
 velop its higher nature, so long as its whole time is taken 
 up by mechanical drudgery, and its whole interest is con- 
 centrated upon an absorbing anxiety to keep hunger at bay, 
 it cannot realize either happiness or the highest form of 
 human life. That is why all lovers of their race must ever 
 take the deepest interest in the labour question ; and why, 
 
36 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 moreover, religious men are specially called upon to help 
 to settle that question in the general interest. 
 
 But when men go farther than this and insist that, with 
 a fair distribution of material wealth, all the pressing wants 
 of humanity will be satisfied, they not only take the part for 
 the whole, but the lesser part for the greater. It does not 
 follow that if all the loaves in the world were divided equally 
 among all the eaters men would be either better or happier. 
 Happiness, as Carlyle pointed out, depends not so much on 
 what a man has as on what he demands. If, therefore, with 
 an increasingly equal distribution of material means it should 
 happen that the individual desire for more develops in an 
 increasing proportion, the progress of equal distribution will 
 be accompanied in the majority by heightened discontent 
 with their position. And precisely this consequence is what 
 many able sociologists fear. 
 
 Education is enlarging the expectations of the people, and 
 if they be led to believe that the best blessings which life 
 can give them are those purchasable with money, it is not 
 at all unlikely that those heightened expectations may lead 
 to envy and discontent, the fruitful parents of misery. 
 
 Von Hartmann has pointed out that though crimes of 
 violence are diminishing among the working classes, deceit, 
 chicane, and smart practices show a suspicious tendency to 
 increase ; while every now and then, as in the reign of the 
 Paris Commune, when the muzzle of law is removed, it is 
 found that there are people ready to indulge in the vilest 
 and most sanguinary excesses. "So far," in his opinion, 
 " the all-devouring selfishness of man has not lessened ; it 
 is only artificially dammed in by the dikes of the law and 
 of civil society." 
 
 Envy, too, is said by careful observers to be growing in 
 Europe. Men seek to possess not merely enjoyment, but 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. ^'J 
 
 as much of it as their neighbours, and would rather be a 
 Httle poorer, if only thus they could provide that nobody 
 should be richer than themselves. That is the main reason 
 for the demand in Socialistic Europe that the existence of 
 private property in the form of capital shall be arbitrarily 
 forbidden. When no man can increase his property, no 
 man can be richer than his neighbour, and though under 
 such a regime it is certain that the aggregate wealth of the 
 community and even the share of individuals would be less, 
 still envy would be gratified by seeing everyone as poor as 
 itself 
 
 I do not doubt that there are generous enthusiasts who 
 advocate socialism for very different reasons. It pains them 
 to see men suffering hardships which they do not share. 
 Their wealth burns them like a corrosive, their comfort 
 disgusts them like a crime, so long as they see their 
 orethren miserable and destitute. And so, impelled by 
 this noble feeling, they wish to take the shortest cut to a 
 remedy, forgetting that their system would level men down 
 instead of lifting them up, and that equality of material 
 means would be dearly purchased by the abolition of 
 individual independence, the stimulus of advancement, 
 and the sanctity of the home. Let us give to these 
 enthusiasts all the credit they deserve, but also let us not 
 forget that theirs is not the common case, that, in general, 
 envy is a mightier force than love in these socialistic 
 movements. If this be so, then certainly, since happiness 
 depends rather on a man's disposition than on his means, 
 the human race might be far from being made happier by 
 the success of the socialistic movement. 
 
 Yes ; but, urge some, we are not so much depending on 
 socialism for our paradise of the future as upon the advance 
 of the practical arts, under the guidance of science ; upon 
 
35 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 the increase of the productiveness of the earth ; upon the 
 multipHcation of conveniences in hghting, sanitation, loco- 
 motion, and the Hke ; upon the invention of labour-saving 
 machines ; and upon a better distribution of political power 
 in the world. Well, suppose that these advantages had 
 increased a hundredfold, and suppose that a vast increase 
 of population had not very largely neutralized such advan- 
 tages, how much nearer do you suppose that they would 
 have brought the human race to universal happiness ? 
 Remember that the race is but a multiplication of individuals, 
 and that very much as each feels, so will the whole. What 
 conscious gratification, then, let me ask you, do you daily 
 feel in being lighted by gas rather than by candles, in 
 travelling twice as fast by rail as you did by coach, in 
 inhabiting a house of eight rooms instead of one of four ? 
 You experienced a momentary satisfaction, no doubt, if 
 you happened to live when first the change was made. But 
 how quickly that sense of satisfaction faded. Your advan- 
 tages became a mere matter of course to you, and you 
 immediately began to hope for something better. 
 
 Ask the rich man how much happier he feels for his 
 customary enjoyments. He would feel the loss of them, 
 no doubt, as a distinct misery, and he is by so much more 
 the slave of circumstances. But their mere possession is 
 just as much a matter of course as breathing the air is. 
 And he is always, besides, longing for something more. 
 You can, in fact, no more feed the human soul on bread 
 than you can the human body on a stone. And the idea, 
 therefore, of increasing the general happiness by any possible 
 arrangements of a pecuniary or political kind, apart from 
 something better than they, is one of the most egregious of 
 all our modern illusions. When we demand better food, 
 better lodging, and more leisure for the poor, it is not 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 39 
 
 because we think that these things in themselves are suffi- 
 cient to produce happiness, but because we beheve that they 
 would liberate time and energy for the pursuit of something 
 better than themselves. They would remove hindrances, 
 they would furnish facilities/and they would do nothing more. 
 
 " Precisely," exclaim others of our modern theorists ; 
 " that is exactly our own view. We do not expect more 
 happiness from a changed distribution of material comforts, 
 but from better conceptions of the true conditions of moral 
 and social improvement. Give men a more accurate 
 knowledge of what they should do and they will do it. 
 Show them what to think about themselves and their 
 neighbours and the relations which bind them together ; 
 multiply text-books on these subjects for the young, and 
 larger treatises for their elders, and you will soon see a great 
 moral improvement in the world." 
 
 So they speak. And this theory of theirs not only guides 
 their practical action, but also expresses itself in the direc- 
 tion and result of their historical studies. They ransack 
 the ancient literatures of the world for evidences of high 
 and noble thought ; and if they should anywhere find what 
 they seek, or something even resembling what they seek, 
 they straightway cite it as a true measure of the life of the 
 age and country of its origin. Did the Vedic Indians ever 
 talk about Dyaus Pitar, the Heaven-Father : that is proof 
 enough that they all lived habitually under the inspiration 
 of the loftiest religious intuitions. Did Confucius ever say 
 that '* a man should not do to his neighbour what he would 
 not have done to himself : " that, again, is proof enough that 
 the Chinese people once lived on the same high level of 
 moral feeling as that to which true Christians have attained. 
 They knew so much ; ergo^ they were so much. No con- 
 clusion could, in fact, be more untrustworthy. 
 
40 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 The occasional outbreak in all lands and times of these 
 high religious and moral intuitions proves unquestionably 
 the depth and richness of man's speculative faculty. It 
 shows that the human mind is the natural mirror of great 
 thoughts, the inexhaustible fountain of lofty intuitions, and 
 that no spiritual shipwreck, how disastrous soever, can 
 quench the inner light, or drown the hopes and aspirations 
 of our race. 
 
 But it is one thing to see and another to do. It is one 
 thing to discern a law and another to obey it. It is one 
 thing for a great sage or prophet to proclaim a lofty truth ; 
 it is another for his people to apprehend and realize it. 
 " Virtue," says Schopenhauer, " cannot be taught any more 
 than genius. It would be, therefore, just as absurd to 
 expect that our moral systems will produce virtuous, holy, 
 and noble men, as that our aesthetics will produce poets, 
 painters, and musicians." He is never weary of repeating 
 Seneca's maxim, " Velle non discitur^'' willing is not learnt. 
 And willing, not thinking, is the matter of prime moment 
 in action. " Will is first and original," he cries. " Man 
 does not come into the world as a moral cipher, merely to 
 get a knowledge of the things in it, and thereupon determine 
 to be this or that." He comes with a character, and though 
 you may change his actions by increasing his knowledge, 
 the intentions and dispositions expressed by those actions 
 you will not change, except by producing some effect upon 
 his character. 
 
 Thus if a man, tired of the pleasures of sense, and 
 convinced that he must soon lose them, changes the form 
 of his life only for the purpose of obtaining certain other 
 pleasures for himself beyond the grave, though his acts may 
 be different, and far less injurious to his neighbours, yet his 
 disposition remains what it was, purely selfish. To change 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 4T 
 
 the man you must change his will, or, if you like so to 
 express it, those realized tendencies of will which are called 
 character. 
 
 Professor Green is equally emphatic upon this point. 
 " As Plato said," he observes, " till the character is set in 
 the direction of the ideal, a theory of the ideal can be of 
 no value for the improvement of conduct." " An ethical 
 teacher," he remarks, " will not take it for a reproach to be 
 reminded that no philosopher can supply a moral dynamic." 
 And again : " No one can convey a good character to 
 another. Everyone must make his character for himself. 
 All that one man can do to make another better is to 
 remove obstacles, and supply conditions favourable to the 
 formation of a good character." 
 
 Von Hartmann puts this conclusion in almost brutal 
 language. " The reader," he observes, " was in error if he 
 sought to find consolation and hope in philosophy. . . . 
 Philosophy is hard, cold, and insensitive as a stone. And 
 if the strength of man is unequal to the task of enduring 
 the results of thought, if the heart, convulsed with woe, 
 stiffens with horror and breaks into despair, then philosophy 
 registers those facts as valuable psychological material for 
 its investigations." 
 
 One can have little enough sympathy with such expressions 
 as these, but not the less is it necessary to note the truth 
 which they express, that the most exact thinking can no 
 further affect conduct than by setting before the mind what 
 it ought to do, what it will consult its own highest interest 
 and welfare in doing. Whether, however, these monitions 
 will be regarded, whether men will be any the better for the 
 exact rules and results of ethical or other science, depends 
 still on the state of the will, and on that only. 
 
 Some persons still dispute the truth of this conclusion by 
 
42 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 trying to represent human action as the result, not of will, 
 but of motives presented to the will, meaning by motives 
 solicitations of desire. Professor Green's masterly analysis 
 has, however, effectually disposed of this subterfuge. He 
 admits, of course, that there cannot be such a thing as 
 unmotived willing in an intelligent doing. But it by no 
 means follows that motived willing is not free. Several 
 solicitations, we will suppose, present themselves to a man's 
 desires, which tend to draw him in different directions. 
 The man surveys them. He considers with himself whether 
 the following of one or of another will yield him the highest 
 satisfaction or the greatest good. So far he is identified 
 with none of them. They are outside him, and allure him 
 merely. When, however, he wills to adopt one of them as 
 means to his personal good, and so to realize it in action, 
 he has made that motive his own, and he becomes aware of 
 the fact by the appearance in his consciousness of a sense 
 of personal responsibility for what he does. No doubt the 
 present choice of his will is greatly determined by similar 
 past acts of choice, by those formed tendencies of will which 
 we mean when we talk of character. 
 
 But then, in every step of the formation of such character, 
 there was a similarly free act of his will ; so that character 
 no more results from a mere mechanical following on of 
 necessarily connected events, than does any single act of 
 free determination. 
 
 Once more, then, we are driven to the conclusion that 
 human goodness, and by consequence human happiness, 
 depends ultimately on the state of the will. Whatever there 
 is to increase virtue, improve human nature, and make life 
 worthier and happier, must necessarily achieve its purpose 
 by action upon the will, by giving to each man the power 
 to present to himself and to realize as his highest personal 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 43 
 
 good those actions which are dominated and inspired by 
 love of others. " Nothing," says Kant, " can be conceived 
 in the world, or even oat of it, which can be called good 
 without qualification, but a good will;" for which the 
 corresponding form in Professor Green's work is, "Every 
 form of real goodness must rest on a will to be good, which 
 had no object but its own fulfilment." 
 
 Seeing, then, that the human race can never be morally 
 and spiritually elevated, or made truly happy, unless its 
 individual members gain the will to be good, how, let us 
 ask, is such a will to be obtained ? It is a very popular 
 answer to this question, by leaving the human race to the 
 influence of its own inherent tendency to progress in the 
 right direction. 
 
 But how, we are disposed to ask, do you arrive at the 
 conclusion that there is any such inherent tendency in our 
 race ? Oh, we assume this, is not unfrequently the flippant 
 rejoinder, as a consequence of the theory of development 
 by natural selection. But now suppose that we grant that 
 theory proved for the sphere of physical life, where every- 
 thing proceeds according to unchanging law, and freedom 
 is impossible : how does it follow that the same law will 
 prevail in that sphere of which freedom is the necessary 
 condition ? If the lower animals had man's power of 
 forming abstract conceptions, of adopting one or another 
 of these as the representation of its own highest good, and 
 of then freely realizing that representation in their life, is 
 there anything more certain than that the law of development 
 by natural selection would cease to operate ? It would be 
 necessarily displaced by the law of intelligent and free 
 individual selection. 
 
 How, then, can it be reasonable to pass over into the 
 moral sphere, without more ado, a law which only holds 
 
44 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 good on the condition that its subjects shall not be free? 
 If, then, this crude inference be reasonably barred, on what 
 other grounds, may I ask, is it affirmed that there is a 
 natural tendency in man to develop a will to be good, to 
 seek self-satisfaction in those objects only which will destroy 
 the selfish and develop the loving impulses within him ? 
 We assume it, it is sometimes said, because we observe such 
 a progress in the history of the human race. But how is 
 this so, if we exclude, as we obviously must, that particular 
 area of human society in which it is alleged that man has 
 received special help from the Spirit of Christ ? Through 
 recent discoveries we can test this conclusion by reference 
 to the experience of six thousand years. 
 
 Do we find, then, among the races of men who have 
 lived and flourished during that long period outside the 
 limits of Christendom, any clear evidence of a spontaneous 
 and continuous moral development? It is the testimony 
 of M. Renouf that " the sublimer portions of the Egyptian 
 religion are not the comparatively late result of a process 
 of development. The sublimer portions are demonstrably 
 ancient, and the last stage of the Egyptian religion was 
 by far the grossest and most corrupt." In like manner 
 the process of Egyptian civilization is one of continually 
 deepening degradation, moral, social, and political. 
 
 We obtain the same result if we inquire respecting the 
 progress of that civilization, equally ancient, which had its 
 origin in Chaldea. Never a very elevated form either of 
 thought or worship, it gradually declined, till in every one 
 of its offshoots, whether Assyrian, Phrygian, Phoenician, or 
 Carthaginian, it faded away into degrading sensuality and 
 national death. Confucius partly adopted from an almost 
 immemorial past, partly himself created, a very lofty system 
 of ethics in China. And that system has retained its hold 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 45 
 
 on the Chinese people, in spite of the Buddhistic invasion. 
 "The national conscience of that country," says Edkins, 
 "is much more Confucian than Buddhistic." " But what," 
 asks the same author, " has been the result on the Chinese 
 of the Confucian morality ? " And he replies, " It has not 
 made them a moral people." Where, then, is the evidence 
 of progress in that immense and ancient empire? The 
 Chinaman remains what he has been for thousands of years, 
 a patient labourer, an utter materialist, the backward product 
 of a stagnant civilization. 
 
 What, again, has been the history of Aryan civilization in 
 India ? Beginning with the comparatively pure nature- 
 worship of the Vedas, and the vigorous life of the early 
 Aryan conquerors, it has ended in the superstitious puerility 
 and national feebleness with which we have been made 
 familiar in our Hindoo subjects. No better has it fared 
 with the Buddhist reform of the ancient Brahminism. What 
 a descent from the metaphysical power and ethical beauty 
 of Gautama's original teaching to the useless asceticism, 
 the base superstitions and praying-machines of modern 
 Buddhists ! 
 
 Greece and Rome, again, presented in their earlier years 
 a popular Hfe, pure, pious, and strong, including the germs 
 in the one of grand developments of thought and art, in 
 the other of law and government. But how did they end ? 
 In a life so unutterably foul that we cannot pollute our 
 lips by describing it, and in a popular degeneracy so hopeless 
 that nothing could save it from destruction. 
 
 Is it otherwise with the history of that ancient civilization 
 of the western world, which seems to Professor Reville to 
 be as great a discovery for modern scholars as if they had 
 been able to migrate into a neighbouring planet ? It was 
 so ancient that when the Spaniards arrived in America, the 
 
46 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 natives themselves had lost all memory of the ancient cities 
 and noble monuments which the Europeans rescued from 
 oblivion. Even in decay, however, this civilization was 
 imposing. It had fine roads, irrigation canals, a careful 
 system of agriculture, and splendid cities, which had their 
 streets cleansed by day and lighted by night, " advantages 
 in which none of the European capitals rejoiced in the 
 sixteenth century." And yet, what had been the effect of 
 this civilization upon the moral condition of the people? 
 When the Spanish conquerors landed, the natives of the 
 country remembered a succession of three empires, and in 
 each case it was the more polished people, who, enervated 
 by their civilization, had been vanquished and ruined by 
 more savage tribes from the north. Progress there was 
 none. When civilization reached a certain stage, it produced 
 in each successive conquering race enervation and decay. 
 
 Where, then, on all the earth, in all the known history of 
 man, can you find signs of continuous progress, except in 
 Christendom ? Will it be urged, perhaps, that even in this 
 state of the case we have no right to ascribe the progressive- 
 ness of Christendom to its Christianity, knowing, as we do, 
 that Christendom has appropriated the thought and art of 
 Greece, the law and organization of Rome ? I answer that 
 Christendom is not the only part of humanity which made 
 that appropriation. Mohammedanism was born six hundred 
 years after Christianity. It rapidly appropriated all the 
 results of Greek and Roman civilization, whether in their 
 Pagan or Christian form. " When Europe," says Dr. Draper, 
 " was hardly more enlightened than Cafifraria is now, the 
 Saracens were cultivating and even creating science." They 
 not only possessed the wisdom of Greece and Rome, but 
 as Dr. Draper has brilliantly shown, were in some directions 
 advancing far beyond it. If, then, it is the inheritance of 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 47 
 
 classical culture which has largely contributed to the pro- 
 gressive civilization of Christendom, how is it that it had no 
 such effect on the Saracens ? 
 
 How is it that with all this treasure of ancient lore, and 
 vigour of indigenous thought, the moral and spiritual life of 
 the Moslems sank into the torpor of arrested development ? 
 Their history only affords another and a conclusive proof 
 that human nature does not contain in itself any sufficient 
 stock of progressive energy, that in the domain of moral 
 freedom, if we leave out of account that part of it in which 
 it is alleged that the soul of man has been reinforced by the 
 spirit of Christ, the law of progressive development has not 
 prevailed. 
 
 Now, how is this ? How is it that out of the sphere of 
 Christ's influence salvation has not come to men through 
 the works of any law ? How is it that the history of the 
 whole human family affords one vast body of evidence of 
 the truth of St. Paul's negative affirmation ? Some, per- 
 haps, may still attribute this result to a defective ideal aim. 
 Admitting that the Christian religion is the progressive 
 element in Christendom, they may still urge that it is pro- 
 gressive because of the character of its ideal. They may 
 point to what is unquestionably a fact, that until the founda- 
 tion of the Christian Church there was no system which at 
 once set up the will to love as the highest good for man, 
 and at the same time sought to impart that good to every 
 one. What, for instance, can be loftier than the moral 
 ideal of the great masters of Greek thought? It may, 
 indeed, be too narrow in the range of its duties, " tem- 
 perance and fortitude," as a great critic has pointed out, 
 " having to do duty between them for the whole of what 
 we understand by self-denial." But this was by no means 
 its most serious defect. Not with the range of duties which 
 
48 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 it prescribed, but rather with the range of the subjects of 
 those duties, have we most reason to be dissatisfied. 
 
 " In Aristotle's view," says Professor Green, " the /?to9 -n-paK- 
 TLKos, the life of rational, self-determined activity, was only 
 possible for a few among the few," for the free citizens of 
 a Greek state. Barbarians, slaves, and women, that is, more 
 than nine-tenths of the human race, he regarded as simply 
 beneath the reach of the practical life. Most of them were 
 mere chattels and instruments of the rest. And hence an 
 immense restriction both in the area of practical duties and 
 the range of faculties called into play for their realization. 
 There was no room in such a system for the feeling of 
 universal sympathy and brotherhood, or for those vast and 
 far-reaching efforts which become necessary when every 
 human creature is regarded as a person, capable of reaching 
 the will to good, and possessing claims for help on all 
 others. When such a duty is realized, conscience becomes 
 uneasy at its violation, as it would not have been in a 
 Greek, who used his slave as his chattel, and thought of 
 the members of other states as enemies whom it was his 
 right to hate and spoil and destroy. 
 
 Why do we feel nervous now, why does our conscience 
 experience a sense of discomfort, when we see aboriginal 
 races perishing in the lands which we have occupied? 
 Because our Christian belief, however imperfect it may be, 
 has taught us that each of these has his rights, and we fear 
 that we may have contributed to the extinction of such 
 races by ignoring those rights. Now, it was just this great 
 question, whether every man has all the rights of his nature 
 as man, whether man is more than Jew, and spirit more 
 than circumcision, which was distinctly raised for the first 
 time in that great controversy, of which we feel the echoes 
 and shakings in the hot broken words of the Epistle to the 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 49 
 
 Galatians. No doubt the same question had been already 
 raised, and virtually decided, in our Lord's teaching of the 
 Universal Fatherhood of God. It was not enough, however, 
 to state such a question implicitly. Before it could be 
 finally settled, before those tribal and national prejudices 
 could be broken down, which had been growing and 
 hardening for thousands of years, exclusive claims must be 
 drawn forth into clear expression and negatived by name. 
 
 Now, the question was clearly raised in the Galatian 
 Church, Is it possible for man, as man, to partake of the 
 salvation of Christ ? Is his humanity a sufficient qualifica- 
 tion ; or must man become a Jew before he can become a 
 Christian ? No man could have been fitter than St. Paul, 
 by nature, training, and personal experience, for dealing 
 with this immense question. He had been a personal 
 possessor of each of the exclusive privileges in which a Jew 
 of that generation could pride himself. He was a Roman 
 citizen, he was a member of the chosen people, he had 
 belonged to the most exclusive sect of his religion, and even 
 within the limits of that sect he had been distinguished for 
 rancorous exclusiveness. He knew the full meaning of all 
 which his enemies claimed ; he had tried their method of 
 rigorous privilege and proud self-sufficiency to the utter- 
 most, and it had broken down. There was no truth in it. 
 There was no help in it. He had had to abandon all that 
 to find truth and help in Christ. Every man needed 
 what he had needed. Every man could be saved as he 
 had been saved, not by merit, but by grace ; not by works 
 of a law, but by faith in Christ ; not by the suggestions 
 of a scheme of thought, but by the help of an Almighty 
 Spirit. And because this salvation was designed for every 
 man, and sufficient for every man, therefore the Apostle 
 proclaimed, in words which must have shaken that proud, 
 
50 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 cruel, jealous, masterful world from end to end : " There is 
 neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there 
 is neither male nor female," every clause, you see, striking 
 at a throned and time-established He, " for ye are all one 
 in Christ Jesus." 
 
 Now, I have no doubt that by thus enlarging the range 
 of moral duties and rights, of religious privileges and 
 opportunities, St. Paul contributed no little to that change 
 of will in individuals upon which, as we have seen, human 
 improvement depends. But if you had asked him whether 
 he thought the development of a better ideal sufficient of 
 itself to effect this change, he would have met you at once 
 with an emphatic denial. " Velle non discitur'' he would 
 have said in effect. No law, no plan, no system of thought, 
 no theoretic scheme of any kind, can make man good. It 
 can show him what he should be, but it can never make 
 him such. And if you had further asked him why, he 
 would have replied with his doctrine of the weakness and 
 insufficiency of the human will. He was not himself dis- 
 satisfied with the law. For its own purposes the law was 
 " holy and just and good." The misery was that he who 
 knew and admired it was not able to keep it. It was weak, 
 not in itself, but " through the flesh." 
 
 He found within himself two tendencies. The one he 
 called "the flesh," which lusted to evil ; the other he called 
 " the mind," which desired to obey the law of God and was 
 not able. It would be useless to attempt to fix any exact 
 meaning upon such terms as " flesh " and " mind " in this 
 connexion. St. Paul was no dry logician. He grasped at 
 the first words which would most vividly picture his thought; 
 and half the follies of dogmatism have arisen from failing to 
 recognise that fact. St. Paul wished to name those selfish 
 tendencies within him which, impatient of restraint, hurried 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 5 1 
 
 him into transgression, and he took the word " flesh," that 
 which described the outward part of his nature, the seat of 
 lusts and passions, as fittest. He wished again to describe 
 those higher impulses of love to God and man which found 
 themselves formulated in God's law, and so delighted in it ; 
 and to these impulses he gave the name " mind," as de- 
 scribing that in his nature which was inward and highest. 
 
 Now, of these two active tendencies so named, St. Paul 
 declares that the lower is naturally the stronger. The will 
 to live is stronger than the will to love. Thus he cannot do 
 the things he would. He is driven to do the things he hates. 
 How can any law help him in such a strait ? What is the 
 use of issuing commands to a man who cannot do what he 
 desires ? What he needs is spiritual force to add power to 
 his will ; to make the will to love triumph over the will to 
 live. 
 
 "But how can such help be possibly given?" cries the 
 naturahstic philosopher. Such a change, going down to the 
 very roots of being, reversing the direction of will, that is 
 nothing less than a re-making of the man. " True, most 
 true," the Apostle would have replied. " This is what it is, 
 and nothing less than this is necessary. The old man must 
 die, and a new man must be born within. The first Adam, 
 the nature which we brought into the world with us, 
 must be transformed by the energy of that second Adam, 
 who is a quickening spirit." That is why we need a risen 
 and glorified Saviour. We need Him here and now, this day 
 and all days. We need Him as a present power, as a con- 
 tinuously in-dwelling and quickening presence. The memory 
 and the words of the Divine Teacher of Galilee are not 
 enough for us. We need a living Christ, a present Christ, 
 an almighty Christ, to reinforce our will and raise us day 
 by day from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. 
 
52 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 " Therefore," cries St. Paul, " though we have known Christ 
 after the flesh, now henceforth know we Him no more." 
 The Christ whom we know is the Christ in the heart, whose 
 spirit is ours, whose will is ours, whose work is ours, whose 
 Father is ours. Is any man then tormented and cast down 
 by the lusts of the flesh, is any man groaning beneath the 
 condemnation of the law, and of his own conscience, to him 
 I say, " Walk in the spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lusts 
 of the flesh ;" believe on the risen and glorified Redeemer, 
 " for they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh, with its 
 affections and lusts." Here is the centre and main content 
 of the Gospel according to St. Paul. 
 
 Before, however, proceeding to expound it more fully, and 
 to trace its more important consequences, it will be necessary 
 in my next lecture to consider one more, and the last possible, 
 attempt, to cure the evils of a weak and perverse will with- 
 out faith in Christ. 
 
IV. 
 
 We saw in the last lecture that if men are to be made 
 better and happier, this must be effected by some change 
 of will. No law, no ideal, no mere scheme of life, how 
 excellent soever, can make men good. It can only show 
 them what they ought to be. Doubtless this is something, 
 and may be much. It may excite admiration. It may 
 stimulate effort. But it cannot, on the large scale, insure 
 success to such effort. It has not done so in the past out- 
 side of Christendom, and only to a limited extent inside 
 of it. 
 
 What then is the cause of this failure ? St. Paul tells us 
 that it arises from defect of power in our higher nature to 
 overcome the selfish impulses of our lower nature. And 
 he adds that if our higher nature is ever to secure the 
 victory, this can only be accomplished by the help of the 
 Spirit of Christ. So far we had come in our last lecture, 
 and it might now seem to be time to go on to consider 
 more largely this central position of the Apostle, with its 
 principal consequences. At this point, however, we are 
 stopped by the claims of what I may call the philosophy 
 of unconscious will, to solve the problem before us in a 
 different way. And before we can feel secure in following 
 the Apostle, we must at least hear what is to be said on 
 behalf of this new solution. Strange to say, it is sub- 
 stantially a revival of that of Gautama the Buddha, as, 
 indeed, Schopenhauer, its modern originator, has confessed. 
 
54 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 He says that all attempts to convert the Brahmans and 
 Buddhists to Christianity are of about as much use " as if 
 we fired a bullet at a cliff." 
 
 " The ancient wisdom of the human race," he goes on, 
 " will not be displaced by what happened in Galilee. On 
 the contrary, Indian philosophy streams back to Europe, 
 and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge 
 and thought." In like manner. Professor Reville, in his 
 classification of religions, brings Buddhism and Christianity 
 (though with a very different estimate of their relative 
 merits) into the same category. Of religions there are, he 
 thinks, five classes, (i) the simple worship of natural 
 objects ; (2) the animist and fetichist religions ; (3) the 
 great national mythologies founded on the dramatization 
 of nature ; (4) the legalistic religions ; (5) the religions of 
 redemption or deliverance. In the last category he puts 
 Christianity and Buddhism by themselves. In doing so 
 he does not mean to affirm that there are no elements of 
 deliverance in other religions, but only that in these two, 
 Christianity and Buddhism, the aim at deliverance, whether 
 from sin or misery, is the determining principle of the 
 faith. 
 
 Now, amongst all the writers in the New Testament, no 
 one brings out this distinguishing element of Christianity 
 so sharply, definitely, and largely as St. Paul. You will see 
 therefore that there is a special reason for comparing his 
 account of the deliverance of man with that given by 
 Buddhism and Buddhistic philosophy. Ordinarily, no 
 doubt, it would be necessary to consider the religion, and 
 the philosophies founded on it, apart. For religion is 
 something more than philosophy. Its most general defi- 
 nition, derived simply from a consideration of what is 
 common to all religions properly so called, is that of Pro- 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 55 
 
 fessor Reville. " Religion," he says, " is the determination 
 of human life by the sentiment of a bond uniting the 
 human mind to that mysterious mind whose domination of 
 itself and of the world it recognises, and to whom it delights 
 in feeling itself united." Of this " feehng of a bond," he 
 says most truly, it is not that merely of a theoretic relation, 
 but of a bond as positive and as real " as, for instance, the 
 force of gravitation which detains us on the surface of the 
 earth." Man feels it as soon as he begins to think about 
 the world which surrounds him. 
 
 Religion is, in fact, in its most general conception, no 
 other than the instinctive recognition of what lies essentially 
 in man's perception of the universe. When he first knows 
 it, there lie latently in his inward picture of it the con- 
 ceptions of the infinite, of the orderly, of the wise and the 
 beneficent ; only at first these conceptions are largely 
 implicit. He has not separated them from his other 
 thoughts and feelings, and looked at them - in abstraction ; 
 nor can he make this separation purely at a bound, but only 
 by degrees through a succession of very imperfect detach- 
 ments. Because, however, these conceptions are really 
 present in his mind, wrapped up in the uncoiled multiple 
 of his thoughts, man has an instinctive impression of their 
 existence, and the feelings aroused by this impression are 
 a prophetic projection of thoughts which will become more 
 and more explicit as life rises in culture. Listening, then, 
 to the whisperings of this instinct, man becomes conscious 
 that there is face to face with his spirit another spirit 
 manifested in the world around him, with which he desires 
 to enter into communion. This desire is excited, not 
 merely by the hope of gain or safety, but much more by 
 the wish to enlarge and elevate his own low and narrow life. 
 
 Hence the exquisite charm of religion. It enlarges all 
 
56 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 horizons ; intensifies all emotions ; stimulates imagination ; 
 and opens the way into worlds of hope and love, which are 
 boundless and wonderful. All this, however, is conditional 
 on the assumption that the Being with whom we seek union 
 is a Mind. As Reville puts it, '* The man who feels, thinks, 
 and desires, will always know himself to be superior to that 
 which has neither thought, nor feeling, nor will." From 
 the moment in which the savage discovers that his fetich is 
 not a person but a thing, he ceases to adore it. And from 
 that first instant in which the philosopher discovers that 
 the worlds are unconscious, he will cry with Pascal, " I am 
 greater than the Universe, for even if the Universe kills 
 me, I know what it does, while of the advantage which it 
 has over me the Universe knows nothing." 
 
 Such is religion conceived of with the utmost generality. 
 How, then, does it differ from philosophy? They have 
 this in common, that they both arise naturally from the 
 impulse in the human mind to seek the supreme ground 
 and unity of all things. But the paths which they pursue 
 in their common quest are different. Philosophy proceeds 
 by the path of systematic thought; religion, as I have 
 pointed out, by that of instinctive feeling. Philosophy may 
 possibly get upon a false track; then, as it proceeds by strictly 
 logical methods, all will be tainted by the original error, 
 and this error will only become the more considerable as 
 speculation expands and advances. Religion, on the other 
 hand, though by no means exempt from mistakes, is far 
 less liable to fundamental fallacies. The intuitions by 
 which its feelings are excited are eternally true, because 
 imposed by the very constitution of man. And hence, what 
 religion lacks in sufficiency of form it makes up by certainty 
 of intuition. 
 
 Philosophies arise and sweep all before them for a time, 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 57 
 
 demanding even that religion shall only exist as their ex- 
 pression ; then suddenly they are seen to be unreliable, and 
 crash down into ruin. But the religion which they sought 
 to subjugate lives on. It was not really committed to any 
 logically connected exposition of the intuitions on which 
 it rests, and was thus but little disturbed by philosophical 
 revolutions. 
 
 It may appear at first sight, then, to be rather unfair to 
 take any philosophy as an adequate representation of a 
 religion of deliverance, like Buddhism. But the fact is 
 that, in the true sense of the word, Buddhism is not a 
 religion at all. In its original form it had no God. No 
 doubt in later times its disciples, impelled by the craving 
 for some satisfaction of the religious instinct, made a god of 
 their founder, and even appropriated religious elements of 
 a most unworthy kind from the low polytheisms around 
 them. The Buddhism of Gautama, however, the original 
 Buddhism, has no god at all, and thus, according to our 
 definition, is no religion at all, but simply a philosophy. 
 In its original form it has all the disadvantages of Oriental 
 obscurity, and thus to represent it by carefully reasoned 
 Western systems, based on the highest form of Western 
 philosophy, that of Kant, is to do it more than justice; 
 and, moreover, to make it as nearly comprehensible as so 
 obscure a philosophy can be made. 
 
 Furthermore, the systems of Schopenhauer and Von 
 Hartmann deserve to be studied on account of their own 
 position in modern thought. They are philosophies, not 
 merely of being and knowing, but especially of redemption. 
 It may be that this their declared aim has something to do 
 with the popularity of the later of them in an age which is 
 interested, above all things, in the delivery of the masses of 
 mankind from evil and misery. Von Hartmann's principal 
 
58 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 treatise has gained in Germany a popularity which, for a 
 philosophical work, is simply astonishing. It has run 
 through no fewer than nine editions, having been apparently 
 read not only by the small class which is interested in 
 philosophical questions, but by all sorts and conditions of 
 men. Owing, I have little doubt, to this circumstance, 
 Schopenhauer, in spite of his repellent character and 
 misanthropical principles, has become at length a great 
 name in Germany. A committee even has been formed to 
 raise a statue to his memory, which embraces the names 
 not only of eminent Germans, but also of Americans, 
 Indians, and Frenchmen, including persons so well known 
 as Ernest Renan, Max Miiller, and Emile de Laveleye. 
 
 What, then, let us ask, is the method of human re- 
 demption proposed by these popular and famous modern 
 philosophies ? Schopenhauer's gospel is based upon a pecu- 
 liar theory of being. He asks, like all other philosophers, 
 what is the reality which shows itselfin all those appearances 
 in consciousness, which make up the sum of our knowledge ? 
 And he answers, it is, not matter, not force, but will. "The 
 concept of will," he says, " has hitherto been subordinated 
 to that of force, but I reverse the matter entirely, and 
 desire that every force in nature shall be thought as will." 
 His reason for this demand is not without its cogency. 
 The conception of force, he argues, is ultimately derived 
 from that of will. We run up the long line of causation 
 till we come to a point where we can find no further 
 antecedent, and we say that the last link in this chain, the 
 cause of all causes, is force. 
 
 But why do we talk about force ? How do we gain the 
 conception of force? Simply from the experience which 
 we have of the effort of our own will. " The eifort," says 
 Bishop Temple, " which is necessary when we choose to do 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 59 
 
 what we have barely strength to do, impresses on us the 
 sense of a force residing in ourselves, and capable of over- 
 coming resistance." When, therefore, we find without us 
 that which seems in like manner to have the power of 
 overcoming resistance, we transfer to it the conception 
 of that which we first experienced within, and say that it 
 is a force, or the seat of force. But now, asks Schopen- 
 hauer, why do we substitute the less known for the better 
 known ? Force, as we know it, is will. Why then give it 
 the name force, the name of an uncertain inference, simply 
 because it shows itself without us ? It is a will within, and 
 why not therefore without ? Strange to say, the course of 
 physical speculation seems to be leading thoughtful men 
 more and more in the direction of this conclusion. For 
 some little time scientists were content to rest in the 
 assumption that what are called atoms are simply vortex- 
 rings of aether. 
 
 Now, however, the suggestion of Boscovich, that atoms 
 are nothing but atomic centres of force, seems to be 
 meeting with increased acceptance. Professor Clifford 
 says, for instance : " We know with great probability that 
 wherever there is an atom there is a small electric current. 
 Very many of the properties of atoms are explained by 
 this; and we have vague hopes that they all will be. If 
 so, we shall say that an atom is a small current." But a 
 small current of what ? we ask. And already Wallace has 
 made answer, "We have traced one force to an origin in 
 our own will, while we have no knowledge of any other 
 primary cause of force. It does not seem therefore an 
 impossible conclusion that all force may be will-force, and 
 that the whole universe is not merely dependent upon, but 
 actually is the will of higher intelligences, or of one Supreme 
 Intelligence." 
 
6o DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 But now, Schopenhauer, basing himself chiefly on the 
 phenomena of unconscious cerebration, goes a step farther, 
 and declares this will, which is everything, to be un- 
 conscious, a mere blind impulse to live. Von Hartmann 
 has stated this view (in which he agrees with Schopenhauer) 
 so clearly that I will quote his account of it. " That piece 
 of matter yonder," says he, " is a conglomerate of atomic 
 forces, viz., of fiats of the unconscious to attract from this 
 point of space with this intensity, to repel from that point 
 with that intensity. Let the unconscious intermit these 
 acts of will, at the same moment that piece of matter has 
 ceased to exist; let the unconscious will anew, and the 
 matter is there again. Here the prodigy of the creation of 
 the material world is lost in the marvel of its every-day 
 preservation each moment, which is a continuous creation." 
 
 But, now, what is the consequence of assuming that the 
 will which stands behind and constitutes all existence is 
 nothing more than a blind will to live ? That the world is 
 and must be full of misery. For this will which is all, takes 
 counsel of nothing but its own selfish impulse towards 
 realization. Does this realization involve to all conscious 
 creatures a perpetual striving which never reaches its goal, 
 and heats of passion succeeded by disgusts of disappoint- 
 ment or eiitiid? All this is matter of no concern to the 
 unconscious. Its one purpose is to pass into concrete 
 being, and if in reaching its end it turns the universe into 
 a shambles, and all consciousness into one deep protracted 
 pain, all that is nothing. Live it will. And to gain its 
 object it will so blind all creatures with the illusion of 
 pleasure, that they shall become voluntary agents of its 
 purpose ; as ready to suffer for it, in the insensate rage of 
 passion or acquisition, as the demented fanatics of India are 
 to throw their writhing bodies beneath the car of their idol. 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 6 1 
 
 What then in these circumstances is the object of 
 philosophy ? To discover the illusion ; to detect the Al- 
 mighty selfishness at its unhallowed merciless work, and 
 so to point out some means of escape from its cruelty. 
 But what means of escape are possible to us, it may be 
 asked, when we ourselves are only a form and objectivation 
 of this same blind impulse ? Schopenhauer's way of escape 
 is the same as that of Gautama, a mystic asceticism possible 
 only to the few. 
 
 A man must endeavour to rise into the world of Platonic 
 ideas ; so to identify himself with the objects of thought 
 that he drops all self and all willing out of the process. If 
 the slightest scintilla of willing should intrude into this life 
 of pure contemplation, the thinker must hasten to sink his 
 "self" again in the object of perception. He must flee 
 from will into idea. But what, we ask, if his very life, if his 
 very self consists in unconscious willing, how is he to give 
 up willing and yet live ? Ah ! replies Schopenhauer, blessed 
 is that man who has so banished will as to live no more. 
 That is Nirvana ; that is Paradise. Every effort must be 
 made to attain that end. Hence the value of asceticism, 
 for by the refusal of what is agreeable, and by the selection 
 of what is disagreeable, man breaks the will and predisposes 
 himself to give up willing. 
 
 Mystic contemplation, however, is the better way, for 
 so a man may first pass into a state of ecstasy in which 
 he thinks without willing, and ultimately may reach the 
 pessimistic heaven, where every manifestation of will is 
 abolished, even its most fundamental manifestations, "time 
 and space, subject and object," and there remains " no will, 
 no idea, no word . . . only nothingness." 
 
 Schopenhauer began, as we saw, with an assumption 
 which is contradicted by our religious consciousness, that 
 
62 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 the mind manifested in the world is without freedom and 
 without thought, that it is in fact no mind at all, but a mere 
 blind impulse to live, w^hich, unconscious of itself, and 
 bound by the iron fetters of necessity, has neither mind nor 
 heart, neither wisdom nor benevolence. What right had he, 
 then, to give to this mere machine-like impulse the high 
 name of will ? Will we know, and, as we know it, it is a 
 determination free to choose the form of its own realization, 
 and never choosing it till it has taken counsel of intelligence. 
 
 Now it is of such a will as this that we discern the signs 
 in the world without us. It is with such a will as this that 
 we have the instinctive desire to enter into union. Tell us 
 that the will of the world is only a blind impulse, and we 
 shall despise it and refuse to believe in it, and most of all 
 to believe that in its blind, headlong course it managed to 
 develop itself into us, free wills, capable of love, and guided 
 by conscious intelligence. Is it wonderful then, that, be- 
 ginning as Schopenhauer did, he ended as he did ? Who 
 could have any feeling towards his unconscious selfishness 
 but one of repugnance ? who could entertain any more hope 
 of life, if life were nothing but the rush of this blind 
 impulse? Then certainly the only escape from the will 
 to live would be in the will to die, and in the will (on 
 Schopenhauer's system an impotent one) to bring every- 
 thing else to death. 
 
 Von Hartmann, adopting Schopenhauer's system with 
 additions of his own, imagines that he has found a way to 
 make this gospel of death finally and universally efficacious. 
 He is dissatisfied with Schopenhauer's account of that real 
 which is the basis of phenomena. A blind impulse, he 
 urges, starting from no beginning, and tending to no end, 
 is a mere empty form without contents. "No one," he 
 urges, " can merely will without willing this or that : a will 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 63 
 
 which does not will something is not. No volition, as 
 Aristotle said long ago, without object." Schopenhauer 
 even without noticing it, gives an object to his blind impulse 
 by calling it a will to live. Its object is to realize itself in 
 concrete forms of existence. Accordingly, Von Hartmann 
 sets beside the unconscious will of Schopenhauer, "as 
 metaphysical principle of equal value," the unconscious 
 "idea of Schelling." The All thinks, but it thinks 
 unconsciously, without either knowing itself or what it is 
 thinking about. In support of this strange hypothesis he 
 marshals an immense array of biological facts (the only 
 really interesting part of his work) to show that there is 
 thought in nature of an unconscious kind. What his 
 instances actually prove, however, is something a long way 
 short of this. He shows that many of the actions of the 
 lowest organisms betray the existence of a rational purpose. 
 It is certain, however, from the extremely rudimentary 
 organization of these creatures, that such a purpose has 
 never been conceived by them. If not, then it must have 
 been formed for them, by something outside of them ; by a 
 real ground of their being which is either conscious or 
 unconscious of what it purposes. The real question is, 
 which of these alternatives shall we take ? Shall we say 
 that the purpose-forming Ground of Being is conscious or 
 unconscious of its own thought ? As by hypothesis the real 
 ground is unknowable, we can decide this question in no 
 other way than by a reference to the analogy of our own 
 experience. Do we know then of any such thing as thought 
 without a conscious thinker ? Can we conceive of any such 
 thing ? If not, then the assumption of thought and purpose 
 in a real Being who is unconscious of their very existence is 
 purely arbitrary, and appears to me at least to be utterly 
 irrational. Von Hartmann's theory, therefore, must be 
 
64 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 pronounced to rest partly on arbitrary hypothesis and 
 partly upon inconclusive reasoning. But such as it is, 
 it is absolutely necessary to that which alone directly 
 concerns us, his scheme for delivering the human race from 
 that pain and misery which result necessarily from his theory 
 of the nature of the universe. 
 
 His conception of the process of deliverance is as 
 follows : In the infinite ages of the past the unconscious 
 will to live drove on blindly and peacefully under the 
 guidance of an unconscious intelligence of whose very 
 existence it was unaware. At last, however, it blundered 
 into the realization of organic existences which could feel 
 pain from this everlasting striving to live. Now, what was 
 to be done? How could this impetuous mistake of the 
 will to live be rectified? Bhndly thinking, the unconscious 
 All was found equal to the emergency. It realized itself 
 in beings so constituted that sensational impressions were 
 followed by ideal reactions other than those involved in the 
 will to live. In the unconscious, nothing could be thought 
 but what was willed. But here, in these new beings which 
 had broken in, ideas could be seen and held together 
 which were not willed, which were only seen, and then sent 
 back into the ideal world without realization. 
 
 Idea thus became separated from will, and could be held 
 in the mind apart from will. Seeing this for the first time, 
 the unconscious will felt itself face to face with a new power, 
 and from its amazement at this discovery consciousness 
 resulted. Thus, cries Von Hartmann in an ecstasy, " the 
 great revolution had come to pass; the first step in the 
 world's redemption had been taken." Now beings existed in 
 the world who were capable of seeing through the illusion of 
 life. They could discover that willing meant misery, and that 
 the only way to escape from misery was to cease willing. 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 65 
 
 This, however, was but little so long as the impulse was 
 only to individual deliverance. To see salvation in such 
 deliverance was Schopenhauer's mistake. What was the 
 use of individual emancipation from the will to live, so long 
 as the infinite unconscious went on willing as usual ? In 
 the place of the individual who had willed himself out of 
 life, the unconscious will of the universe brought a thousand 
 others into life, who did but repeat the old experience 
 of misery. Nay, what deliverance were it if even the 
 whole human race, individual by individual, willed itself 
 out of existence ? The unconscious would only will into 
 existence other races of sentient beings to repeat the 
 wretchedness of those who had gone. Plainly, in order to 
 get rid of misery and bring back peace to the universe, it is 
 necessary in some way to will the unconscious All itself out 
 of existence. 
 
 But how could this be done ? How can the unconscious 
 will, separated into conscious individuals, destroy itself in 
 them and the whole cosmos ? Even this does not seem 
 impossible to Von Hartmann. Idea has been separated 
 from the will to live in conscious individuals. This idea can 
 persist in independence. It can even become the master 
 of the will to live. Seeing thoroughly through the illusion 
 of life, and comprehending clearly that all willing whatever 
 must end in unblessedness, it seizes upon its own share of 
 willing to turn it into a weapon against the universal will. 
 It may be difficult to conceive how a will which is in its 
 very essence a will to live can be changed by the stress of 
 an idea into its opposite ; but even this Von Hartmann 
 thinks he can imagine, and thence comes his hope of a 
 radical and final deliverance from misery. 
 
 The day may come, he thinks, when the major part of 
 the whole willing which constitutes the universe may be 
 
 5 
 
66 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 concentrated in humanity. Improvements in agriculture 
 and the arts of Hfe may increase the number of the living 
 members of the human race indefinitely. If so, we shall 
 have a will force upon the earth which, considering its 
 quality, its possible intensity of effort, may be preponderant 
 over that other portion of it which is manifested in stars and 
 insentient or unconscious existences. Of the stars only a 
 small portion, he thinks, have advanced to the stage in 
 which they could support sentient hfe; and even of that 
 small portion there seems no probability that any could 
 support sentient life of a high order. If, then, the energy of 
 will required to keep the worlds and their contents in being 
 be of so low an order that it is not to be compared for 
 efficacy to that which is concentrated in the human race, 
 what is to prevent mankind from willing the whole out of 
 existence if only all be brought to combine in the effort ? 
 
 And why should not all be brought some day into such 
 a combination ? Great thinkers, when they have become 
 profoundly penetrated by the conviction that the only way 
 to stop misery is to stop willmg, will gradually impart their 
 conviction to others. Nay, it seems to Von Hartmann that 
 this conviction is already settling down into the hearts of 
 the hapless millions of mankind, through the sense of their 
 own misery. People are coming to hate life because of its 
 wretchedness. A pessimistic melancholy is stealing over 
 the heart of the world. The race is growing old ; and as it 
 grows older there is a palpable diminution in it "of the 
 energy of feeling and passion," outcome of the will to live. 
 Those, then, who have the power are gradually acquiring the 
 will to use it. 
 
 Again, as a third condition of deliverance, we find that 
 the communication of the members of the human race with 
 one another is being facilitated by better means of loco- 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 6/ 
 
 motion. Thought and feeHng are becoming cosmopohtan. 
 A strong conviction of the vanity of hfe estabHshed in one 
 part of the world, may be expected therefore to communicate 
 itself rapidly to all the rest. And thus there appears to be 
 a possibility that at some future time " the greater part of 
 the spirit active in the universe may form the resolve to give 
 up willing." And then what will happen ? " Conscious- 
 ness," says Von Hartmann, " will then suffice to hurl back 
 the total actual volition into nothingness, by which the 
 process and the world ceases ; and ceases, indeed, without 
 leaving any residuum whatever, whereby the process might 
 be continued." 
 
 This is salvation with a vengeance. The universe is 
 saved from misery by being reduced to nothing ! The 
 human race is one day to exhibit its might, as a god greater 
 than Buddha, by willing God, the world, and itself into 
 annihilation. Like Samson, the human race, condemned to 
 grind for ages, blind and bound, in the mill of a wretched 
 existence, rises in its might at length, and seizing in its 
 awful grasp the vast pillars of the universe, buries itself and 
 its oppressors in a common ruin. 
 
 One may suspect indeed the pessimist speculator of the 
 future to give this alleged myth of Samson quite a new 
 turn. Samson is human nature, with its strong animal 
 passions and its grand intuitions of the ideal. A Nazarite 
 from its childhood, dedicated by the unconscious idea to 
 the service of deliverance, and showing from time to time 
 its fitness to achieve it, it forgets at length its vocation in 
 passionate indulgence of the will to live. Israel may be 
 enslaved, the universe may be in misery, but what is that 
 to it so long as it can dally with its Delilah-hke lusts and 
 passions ? 
 
 At length, however, misfortune crushes it. It begins to 
 
68 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 lose its pleasure in the senses. Its strength goes from it. 
 It becomes the maimed and blinded slave of its passions. 
 This opens its eyes. It begins to yearn after redemption, 
 and to devote itself inwardly to that talk of universal de- 
 liverance which it has too long neglected. Then in the 
 prison-house of its pessimism it gains new strength. Its 
 hair begins to grow; its purpose becomes clearer; and 
 even while the passions are revelling in their triumph, it 
 seizes the pillars of life, bows the mighty muscles of its 
 volition, and buries the universe in ruins. 
 
 Such is the paradise of pessimism ; such is the Nirvana 
 of our western Buddhists ; such the aim and hoped-for 
 goal of the only religion which, in common with Christianity, 
 can be called a religion of deliverance. Its gospel may be 
 expressed in one short sentence, Man is to be delivered 
 from the will to live by gaining the will to die. Now can 
 we state as shortly the gospel of the only other religion of 
 deliverance ? We can. Man is to be delivered from the 
 will to live by gaining the will to love. Now, what causes 
 this enormous difference between the two faiths ? The 
 difference, I answer, of their points of departure. The Lord 
 Jesus teaches us that the will behind, all phenomena is no 
 mere blind impulse to live, directed by a thought, if it have 
 any thought, of which it is itself unconscious ; but a will to 
 love, sustained by Infinite Power, and guided by Infinite 
 Wisdom, that its image and reflection are to be sought not 
 in what is lowest in human life, but in what is highest, in 
 the freedom of man's will, in the consciousness of his 
 thought, in the light of his conscience, in the unselfishness 
 of his love. 
 
 The Infinite Spirit is our Heavenly Father, who loves us 
 and cares for us, and it is to be the one aim and purpose 
 of our life to become " perfect, as our Father which is in 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 69 
 
 heaven is perfect." Still, it must be acknowledged that 
 there is a dark shadow over man's life. God made him 
 free that he might become virtuous. But he used his 
 freedom to his own undoing. He has chosen to realize 
 the selfish will to live, instead of the heavenly will to love. 
 Observe, it is this lower nature of man which our modern 
 Buddhists have seen as reality behind all phenomena. 
 And therefore their terrible pictures of what life must be, 
 on their own assumption, are actually true of those who 
 yield themselves to the impulse of their lower nature. 
 
 *' If a man seeks," says Schopenhauer, " with burning 
 eagerness to accumulate everything to slake the thirst of 
 his egoism," and thus experiences, as he inevitably must, 
 " that any finite appeasing of this fierce pressure of will is 
 impossible," the end must be " a sense of terrible desolation 
 and emptiness, an eternal unrest, an incurable pain." This 
 pain then, in the worst of men, seeks to relieve itself " by 
 the sight of the suffering of others." At this stage the will 
 to enjoy passes over into one of pure malevolence, into 
 those monstrous forms of humanity which are presented in 
 the Neros and Domitians of history, demons incarnate, who 
 live in all the torments of an earthly hell. This is the gulf 
 of misery which ever yawns in front of those who give them- 
 selves up to the impulse of man's lower nature, of the selfish 
 will to live. 
 
 Now, this lower nature exists in every man, and is ever 
 striving to overcome the will to love, that image of the 
 Heavenly Father in which man was created. The struggle 
 between these two natures, the lower and the higher, is 
 the actual process of the spiritual life of every man. When 
 the will to live preponderates the man becomes bad ; when 
 it triumphs, and utterly quenches the will to love, the man 
 becomes a fiend, like Nero. When, on the other hand, 
 
70 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 the will to love preponderates, the man is good ; when it 
 triumphs, and quells the will to live, the man becomes a 
 saint, like St. Paul. 
 
 The question, then, of prime importance in human life is 
 this, How can the will to love be made to subdue within 
 us the will to live : how can the will of the Gospel suppress 
 the will of Pessimism ? It is with that question that the 
 gospel according to St. Paul is mainly concerned, and it is 
 its answer to that question which furnishes its glad tidings. 
 No law can give the victory to the will to love. Law does 
 but declare that it ought to prevail. No mere unassisted 
 effort of man can secure that victory, because the will to 
 live is too powerful within us. 
 
 How, then, is our weak will to love to be so reinforced 
 that it can attain final and decisive ascendency ? It can 
 only get the help it needs in Christ. Our Heavenly Father, 
 pitying our weakness and seeking our salvation, sent His 
 only-begotten Son to fight for us the battle of the two 
 wills. 
 
 Christ being true man had in His humanity in germ and 
 potency the will to live as well as the will to love. The will 
 to live in Him could be tempted to selfish excess. It was 
 so tempted. But His own inherent will to love rose in its 
 might and overcame the temptation. Never for an instant 
 was the will to live allowed by Him to become selfish. 
 
 Still, the battle was hard and long. He was assailed by 
 seduction, by applause, by misunderstanding, by hate and 
 opposition, by pain, torture, and death; but through all 
 the will to love, to love even those who hated and slew 
 Him, obtained a perfect victory. He spent and gave his 
 hfe to save men, even the worst, from the selfish desolating 
 will to live. And then, says St. Paul, having won the victory? 
 He passed into the unseen world that thence He might 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSK. 7 1 
 
 send forth His Spirit into the hearts of all who believed 
 on Him. 
 
 Weak, then, as we are by nature, " we can do all things 
 through Christ, who strengtheneth us." We needed not a 
 dead law to command and condemn, but a heavenly force to 
 enter our hearts, which, without abolishing our will, should 
 reinforce it and give it energy to love. Christ supplies that 
 need. He gives us more than a command which we could 
 not obey, more than an example which we could not imitate. 
 He gives us will-force, the aid of His own Divine Spirit to 
 dwell in us and renew us unto holiness. " The flesh may 
 still lust against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh ; " 
 but "if we be led by the spirit we are not under the law." 
 
 Conflict there will still be, failure there will still be ; many 
 an error, many a fall, many an hour of heart-ache and 
 bitter repentance ; but to those who cling to Christ and pray 
 for the aid of His Spirit, strength shall never be wanting, nor 
 the sense of pardon, nor the calm of inward peace. And 
 when at last the end comes, instead of longing to escape 
 from the misery of willing into the silence and darkness of 
 death, the faithful Christian shall be able to say with St. Paul, 
 " I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I 
 have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for me a 
 crown of righteousness ; " the will to live in me has been 
 changed wholly, not into the will to die, but into that will 
 to love which is the will of Him "who loved me and gave 
 Himself for me." 
 
V. 
 
 We have seen that there is spiritual discord in man, a 
 conflict between two wills, the will to live and the will to 
 love. Man's salvation, his deliverance from internal discord 
 and misery, depends on his ability to make the will to love 
 in him triumph over the will to live. How, then, is this 
 end to be achieved ? Can it be secured by law ? No ; law 
 can only point to what should be done, can never secure 
 that it shall be done. Can unassisted effort then ? No ; 
 the will to live in each individual too far preponderates over 
 the will to love. What, then, in this emergency is to be 
 done ? How can man be saved, not merely from the 
 consequences of his sin, that were little, but from sin 
 itself ? St. Paul tells us that the possibility of this deliverance 
 has been established by the creation in human life of a 
 new religious synthesis, of a union new, but most real and 
 inward, between the soul and its glorified Saviour. 
 
 The mere announcement of such a fact as this, not 
 merely supernatural, but super-intelligible, is often met by 
 an incredulous shrug of the shoulders, or by the remark 
 that we have got beyond all that, and that in these days we 
 only believe what we can see or understand. That sounds 
 very wise, but, as all real thinkers know, is in truth very 
 shallow, the fact being that we can understand through and 
 through no single least thing in all our experience and 
 thought. 
 
 Some of the profoundest words which have been uttered 
 
THE GAL ATI AN LAPSE. J I 
 
 in this generation have been cast by the Poet Laureate 
 into the quaint and crabbed form of a poem of some dozen 
 lines. There is not charm enough in their form to stamp 
 them upon the memory, but they are to the effect, that if 
 we could understand all about the little flower growing in 
 the wall-cranny, we should understand God and man, and 
 all things. To understand any one thing to the very bottom 
 is to understand everything. 
 
 I daresay many of you will remember Plato's beautiful 
 representation of the nature of human knowledge. He 
 supposes a number of men in a cave, tied to chairs, with 
 their faces to the cave wall in such a manner that they 
 canrfot turn their heads. Behind them is lighted a fire, 
 and between them and the fire a number of people pass, 
 whose shadows are thrown on the wall of the cave. The 
 tied men can see the shadows, but they cannot turn their 
 heads and see the real persons who cast those shadows. 
 
 So is it with our knowledge. Our spirit sees the shadows 
 of realities cast on the cave wall of consciousness, but it 
 cannot turn its head and see the realities themselves. To 
 know all about the litde flower in the wall-cranny would be 
 to turn our heads and see reality ; an apocalypse far more 
 wonderful than has ever yet been shown to man. Let this 
 be recognised at once, then, that no man completely under- 
 stands anything. No man can turn his head and look at 
 reality. And yet, for all that, our minds are so constituted 
 that we cannot help believing in reality, and, moreover, 
 that there is a possibility of union between the reality which 
 we name ourselves, and that which reveals itself in nature. 
 Call this latter reality what you will, matter, or force, or 
 will, it cannot produce changes in us through the changes 
 in our body. These outward or bodily changes we can, in 
 a way, understand. They are all ultimately reducible to 
 
74 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 molecular vibrations of the nerves. Let the impulse from 
 the outward reality approach us through what sense soever 
 it may, whether through eye, or ear, or touch, it ends by 
 producing molecular vibrations in the brain. 
 
 That is the last fact of which physiology can tell us. 
 But how we are able to turn these various simple vibrations, 
 now into our sensation of sound, and now into the totally 
 distinct sensation of light or heat, no one can tell us. We 
 do it ; but how, nobody can divine. But do we, therefore, 
 disbelieve that the thing is done ? Does our defect of 
 understanding disturb for one moment our belief that the 
 reality without, be it what it may, has entered into a real 
 and mutual relation with the reality within, be that wttat it 
 may ? Not for one moment. Let us, then, apply this 
 illustration to the case of religion. 
 
 What did we find in our last lecture was the latest and 
 most general definition of religion, according to Professor 
 Reville ? It ran thus : " Religion is the determination of 
 human life by the sentiment of a bond uniting the human 
 mind with that mysterious mind whose domination of itself 
 and of the world it recognises." Now, what is there in this 
 conclusion which goes beyond that which I have just 
 reached, and which every thoughtful man admits ? The 
 name '* mind " has been given to the inward and outward 
 reality instead of the perfectly general designation, '* be it 
 what it may." Now, why is this change made ? We know 
 ourselves to be minds, conscious minds, capable of will and 
 intelligence, and because we see in nature signs of the 
 operation of a similar mind, and at the same time feel in 
 our hearts the longing for union with such a mind, we 
 postulate the great synthesis of religion. And experience 
 justifies that postulate. There is such a union, and it is 
 the joy, the charm, the enlargement, the elevation, the 
 
TPIE GALATIAN LAPSE. 75 
 
 enfranchisement of our whole life. Before, then, you can 
 kill religion, you must destroy humanity, for belief in 
 religion is bound up with the very roots of its existence. 
 
 But still are there, let us ask, no rational difficulties in 
 religion ? Nay, the whole subject bristles with them. 
 How can a union take place, it may be asked, between 
 realities so incommensurable, without disturbing if not 
 destroying the fundamental properties of the weaker? 
 How can man's freedom of will be preserved in union 
 with a will which is Almighty ? How can the distinction 
 of finite individuality be preserved when the pious soul 
 loses itself in God ? The answer is that all these diffi- 
 culties mean not impossibilities in fact, but limitations in 
 our power of thinking. The great union does take place, and 
 no such consequences follow as our feeble thought forecast. 
 
 Union with God brings with it not only joy and light, but 
 also an intensification and heightening of the very powers 
 which we feared it would obliterate. Will especially now 
 feels itself able to do what conscience demands and reason 
 commends, it can realize the life of love. Instead of 
 extinguishing freedom, the great religious synthesis has 
 increased it. Every voice of every religious soul under 
 every sky, in every age, affirms that it is so. What, then, 
 is the value of the objection that we cannot understand 
 how it is ? Reality is always greater than thought. It 
 shrouds mysteries which thought cannot penetrate. It only 
 shows us its shadows on the wall. Now, St. Paul, as we 
 saw, taught the possibility of another and a more fruitful 
 spiritual synthesis, of a union, not only between the soul 
 and God, but also between the soul and the glorified Christ. 
 It is sought, as I have said, to exclude the consideration of 
 this teaching by the initial rationalistic objection that we 
 cannot tell how such a thing may be. 
 
^6 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLlC AGE. 
 
 But what is the value of that objection in the hght of 
 what has just been urged ? You cannot tell how anything 
 can be ; how the little flower in the wall-cranny can be what 
 it is ; how the soul of man can enter into communion with 
 nature or with God. But are you then so foolish as to 
 proclaim a universal scepticism ? No ; you appeal to expe- 
 rience, and you bid thought to remember that it is not 
 the judge, but the mere observer and creature of reality. 
 Whether there can be such a thing as a real union between 
 the soul and the glorified Christ is a question to be deter- 
 mined by the appropriate evidence, and its consideration 
 is not to be intercepted or prejudiced by the utterly irre- 
 levant objection that we are not able to understand how 
 it can be. Its affirmation is at any rate the central fact of 
 the Pauline Gospel. It would weary you if I attempted to 
 show how many critics and religious teachers have recog- 
 nised this truth. 
 
 Two testimonies, however, I will cite, as those of men 
 w^hose freedom from dogmatic bias is as conspicuous as 
 their keen critical ability. I mean F. C. Baur and Professor 
 Jowett. I have frequently had occasion to differ from Baur, 
 but I bear willing testimony to the masterly way in which, 
 in general, he has analysed St. Paul's teaching. AVhat, 
 then, according to him, is the central thought of the 
 Apostle? "The fundamental and ever-recurring thought 
 of the Apostle," says he, "is that only in union with 
 Christ can the Christian be what he is and ought to be 
 as a Christian ; that in Him alone has he the essential 
 principle of his being and his living, or is he himself a 
 Christ, as the German language expresses so significantly, 
 in the Christian name." 
 
 Not less decided and explicit is the opinion of Professor 
 Jowett. " Everywhere St. Paul speaks of the Christian as 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 77 
 
 one with Christ. He is united with Him, not in His death 
 only, but also in all the stages of His existence. . . . There 
 is something meant by this language, which goes beyond 
 the experience of ordinary Christians. Something, perhaps, 
 more mystical than in these latter days of the world most 
 persons seem to be capable of feeling ; yet the main thing 
 signified is the same for all ages, the knowledge and love 
 of Christ, by which men pass out of themselves to make 
 their will His and His theirs. And often they walk with 
 Him on earth, not in a figure only ; and find Him near 
 them, not in a figure only, in the valley of death." These 
 last touching words, coming from a man so sincere and 
 reticent, are something more than a statement of what 
 St. Paul teaches. They are Professor Jowett's own testimony 
 to the reality of the fact which that teaching expresses. 
 I recognise, of course, that if I ask you to believe that the 
 affirmation of a spiritual union between Christ and the 
 believer is the central truth of St. Paul's doctrine, I must 
 give you other evidence besides that of the opinions of 
 great critics, however eminent. 
 
 But here I am met by a difficulty. The Scriptural evi- 
 dence of the fact becomes perplexing by its very abundance. 
 Its exhibition becomes a question not of citing a few proof 
 texts, but of quoting large portions of St. Paul's Epistles, 
 and of caUing attention, not only to explicit statements, but 
 to obscure and underlying currents of sentiment, which are 
 sometimes more convincing than any statements in the 
 world. It is thus impossible to produce all the Scriptural 
 evidence, but I will try to help your thought by referring to 
 expressions which may suggest many others. 
 
 There is one pregnant expression of St. Paul, which is 
 often, unfortunately, concealed in the Authorised Version 
 by loose translation. I me^n the phrase " in Christ," Of 
 
78 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 course, if the thought of union with Christ be central with 
 St. Paul, we should expect him to see and to say that all 
 our graces, privileges, and achievements are to be found or 
 gained in Christ. 
 
 And this he actually does say, as the following sentences 
 will indicate : " The grace of God is given you in Christ;" 
 "There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ 
 Jesus ; " " We are sanctified in Christ Jesus ; " ' We are 
 created in Christ Jesus to good works ; " " We are alive 
 unto God in Jesus Christ our Lord; " "If any man be in 
 Christ he is a new creature; " "To me to live is Christ ; " 
 " Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God ; " 
 " Christ in you, the hope of glory ; " " Of Him are ye in 
 Christ Jesus, who is made unto us wisdom, and righteous- 
 ness, and sanctification and redemption." And, as the 
 crowning passage of this class, and the one which most 
 clearly expresses what they all declare, " I live, yet not I, but 
 Christ liveth in me." 
 
 Again, St. Paul strives to suggest the intimacy of the 
 spiritual union between Christ and believers by certain 
 striking images. He compares it to that of the stones of a 
 building, " In whom ye are builded together for an habita- 
 tion of God through the Spirit ; " and, once more, to the vital 
 bond which unites the head and members of a body, "Ye 
 aie the body of Christ ; " " Grow up into Him in all things 
 which is the head, even Christ." 
 
 Further, and this is most significant of the central import- 
 ance which he attached to the truth we are considering, he 
 saw it embodied in concrete shape in the two great sacra- 
 ments of the Christian Church. Christians, he says, are 
 buried with Christ in baptism, in which also they have risen 
 with Him. Nay, he goes so far as to say to the Galatians, 
 " As many as haye been baptized into Christ have put on 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 79 
 
 Christ;" upon which passage Baur remarks: "He who 
 puts on a garment goes altogether inside it, and identifies 
 himself with it," as happens to the Christian " in this new 
 relation, which is entered externally by baptism, internally 
 by faith." 
 
 Not less clear and significant again is the Apostle's teach- 
 ing on Holy Communion. He sees in the bread which is 
 broken "the communion of the body of Chiist," as in the 
 cup " the communion of His blood." It is for this reason 
 that Baur calls the Lord's Supper " the central point of the 
 Christian religion ; " just as the sacrificial altar was of Judaism, 
 and the sacrificial cultus generally of heathenism. The 
 Christian Church has certainly not been mistaken in con- 
 cluding that when her Master separated and embodied in 
 visible form the great spiritual truth that all her life must 
 come from His death, and be! appropriated by her faith, he 
 was setting before her eyes that truth which was of most 
 essential import. Why, indeed, is this sacred dramatization 
 of one particular truth to be perpetually repeated, set before 
 men's eyes again and again, and pressed home upon their 
 hearts with all its life-giving power whenever they come 
 together to break the bread ? Because in it was set forth, 
 in a shape equally intelligible to rich and poor, to those 
 whose hearts were to be reached through their thoughts, 
 and to those whose hearts were to be reached through 
 their eyes, the one great central truth of the faith, that all 
 life is to be sought in Christ, that all power of righteous 
 willing is to be gained from Christ, and that all filial com- 
 munion with God is to be kept in Christ. Every faithful 
 and devout communion was thus to bring to mind those 
 wonderful words of the Master, " I am the vine, ye are the 
 branches. As the branch cannot bring forth fruit except it 
 ^bide in the vine, no more can ye except ye abide in Me ; " 
 
80 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 and again, " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and 
 drink His blood, ye have no life in you." 
 
 I assume, of course, that in these latter words our Lord 
 pointed to a spiritual fact. And how can this be doubted? 
 Have you any doubt of the meaning of the metaphor when 
 it is said of husband and wife that they shall be one flesh ? 
 Do you think when you hear these words of any mere 
 material connection? Not for a moment. You know it 
 means that husband and wife shall be as truly one in 
 thought, feeling, and will as if their souls dwelt in one 
 tabernacle, as if they formed "a two-celled heart, beating 
 with one full stroke." The metaphor is so strong, because 
 it has to picture forth a spiritual relationship so close. 
 Now, taking this common-sense canon with you to the 
 interpretation of the other metaphor, can there be any 
 doubt of its scope and import ? 
 
 Why does Christ in this latter case so far strengthen the 
 figure as to declare that we must not only become part of 
 His flesh, but further eat and assimilate it ? Plainly, because 
 of the greater closeness and intimacy of the bond which is 
 to bind us to the Bridegroom of our souls. We are not 
 only to be one with Him, but are to be so wholly filled and 
 formed by that spirit of His which we gain in faith, that it 
 is no longer an exaggeration to say with the Apostle, " I 
 live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." There you have 
 got to the very heart of the heart of the Christian faith. 
 There you come plumb centre. Everything leads up to 
 that ; everything goes forth from that. No doctrine is true 
 which does not rest on that fact and utter it. No life is 
 Christian which does not go forth from it and exhibit it. It 
 shows us that a Christian is nothing less than Christ born 
 again in a new individual soul, and that the Church is 
 simply here to proclaim and facilitate this new birth gf 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 8 I 
 
 men. When the church does this it does its work, and if 
 it fails in this, no matter what its theology, or its ecstasy, 
 or its ritual, or its outward activity, it might just as well 
 be a mere philosophical school, or worse, a heathen cult, 
 " a creed outworn." 
 
 In one word, Christ came in the flesh, to establish a new 
 religious synthesis, a closer union between heaven and earth, 
 a nearer and a dearer and a more fruitful bond, of which 
 He was Himself the central link, between man and God. 
 But nOAv, if this were the great object of Christ's coming, 
 life, death, and resurrection, we may easily see that it must 
 have involved two results of vast and eternal significance ; 
 the one objective and the other subjective, the one having 
 reference to God, and the other to man. If Christ be the 
 germ and basis of a new humanity, the question may first 
 be asked, how will God regard and treat this new humanity; 
 and, secondly, since this humanity is a spiritual body, into 
 which men are not naturally born, but into which they 
 must come by some spiritual act or acts of their own, the 
 question may be asked, What must men do in order to enter 
 this body ? 
 
 The former question I shall deal with in my last lecture ; 
 the latter I shall attempt to answer now. 
 
 To the latter question. St. Paul's answer is given shortly, 
 but fully and unmistakably, in Gal. ii. i, " We believed in 
 Jesus Christ that we might be justified by belief of Christ, 
 and not by works of law." We have seen before that it is 
 only when we are in Christ, vitally united to Him, that 
 He is made unto us righteousness. When, therefore, we 
 are told that this righteousness which He is made unto us 
 comes by faith, and not by works of law, this is equivalent 
 to the statement that it is by faith alone we enter into union 
 with Christ. 
 
 6 
 
82 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 Works of law are, indeed, necessary to us. No man can 
 be a true Christian whose life is not determined by the 
 twofold law, " Thou shalt love God with all thy heart, and 
 thy neighbour as thyself." If faith be real and Christian, it 
 will thus "work by love." Still work is not the means, nor 
 is love the means, by which we come unto Christ, and 
 submit to Christ, and give over our will to Christ. The act 
 by which we do this, and by which alone, from the nature 
 of the case, we can do it, is that act of utter trust and self- 
 surrender which we call faith. When people have not seen 
 this, but have attached to Christian faith others of the 
 several meanings which in course of time have gathered 
 round it, this has mainly been because they have failed to 
 notice that Christian faith is, in its central and highest 
 meaning, affiance on a person, and not merely belief in a 
 truth or a fact. 
 
 When St. Paul was asked by the Philippian gaoler, what 
 he should do to be saved, the Apostle answered, " Believe 
 on the Lord Jesus Christ ; " not on a gospel or a law, but 
 on a Person, on Jesus Christ. In like manner he says to 
 the Romans, "Ye are the children of God by faith in Christ 
 Jesus," and to the Philippians, "To you it is given to 
 believe in Him." 
 
 Again, we observe that the Apostle's teaching did but 
 echo that of his Divine Master. "He that believeth on 
 Me," said our Lord, "shall never thirst." "He that 
 believeth on Me hath everlasting life." " He that liveth 
 and believeth on Me shall never die." The corresponding 
 passage in the Synoptical Evangelists is equally tender and 
 clear: "Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, 
 and learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and 
 ye shall find rest unto your souls." 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 83 
 
 Now the faith that is fixed on a person is by that very 
 fact declared to be trust or affiance. When I say I believe 
 in a man, not in his teaching or his testimony, but in him, 
 I mean that I have learnt to trust him, that I lean on 
 him, and that, more or less, I allow him to lead and direct 
 me both in opinion and in life. And if the man whom 
 I trust were like Jesus Christ, one whom I could trust 
 inimitably, I should be ready, in that case, to yield up to 
 him my whole heart and will. But, now, in connection with 
 the Lord Jesus, we have found a further special reason for 
 this trust. As glorified Saviour, He has constituted a new 
 bond of union between me and God. In Christ I find my 
 Heavenly Father. In Him I find equally my Father's 
 pardon and favour, and my own life and power to do well. 
 And, therefore, believing in Christ means, not only trust 
 for example and guidance, but also for power and peace, for 
 life and death, for time and eternity. P2very careful student 
 of the New Testament has found accordingly, in this self- 
 surrender to Christ, the profounder meaning of faith. 
 
 " That," says Jowett, " which takes us out of ourselves 
 and links us with Christ, which anticipates in an instant 
 the rest of life, which is the door of every heavenly and 
 spiritual relation, is faith." 
 
 " Faith," says Archdeacon Farrar, " is man's trustful ac- 
 ceptance of God's gift, rising to absolute self-surrender, and 
 culminating in personal union, with Christ." 
 
 "The result of faith," again says Reuss, "is the abne- 
 gation of the man's own will, the abdication of self . . . 
 an absolute subordination, in short, of the whole human 
 personality to the personality of the Saviour."' " We arrive 
 here," he proceeds, " at a capital dogma of the Pauline 
 theology, which may be said to govern all the rest. Faith 
 lies beyond the province of analysis, for it may be laid down 
 
84 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 as a fundamental principle that in this faith the life of the 
 individual is merged in a life not his own." 
 
 Of course such faith as this does not arise in the heart 
 without preparation. You cannot trust one whom you have 
 never known, and never learnt in some measure to love. 
 And so, before faith can be possible, there must be an 
 exercise of reason to know the Christ, and a going forth of 
 love produced by such knowledge. Neither of these, how- 
 ever, is Christian faith. Both together are conditions of 
 that change of mind towards Christ which is expressed in 
 our word repentance. Both may exist in considerable degree, 
 and yet not be intense enough to induce a man to make 
 that act of utter self-surrender which is meant by faith. A 
 man may know and love Christ; he may hover near to 
 Christ. Like the wise scribe of the Gospel, he may not be 
 far from the kingdom of heaven. And yet because he has 
 not made the great resolve to give up not only the whole 
 world, but self also for Christ, he has not passed into 
 the kingdom, he has not crossed the bounds of the new 
 humanity. 
 
 " Faith," says Reuss, " is, according to St. Paul, at once 
 an act of the reason, or conviction ; an act of the heart, 
 or trust ; an act of the will, or self-surrender. The last 
 element is, however, the most important of the three ; 
 the only one, indeed, which makes faith the centre of the 
 whole system, since by it alone does faith become the 
 means of justification." 
 
 Now a man may, to a certain extent, believe on Christ 
 with his reason, and trust Christ with his heart, while yet he 
 holds back that decisive act of will by which he surrenders 
 himself to what he knows and loves. Does any one doubt 
 whether such whole-hearted self-surrender be necessary in 
 a Christian man ? Let him remember the Lord's own words, 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 85 
 
 " If any man come to Me, and hate not his father and 
 mother and wife and children, yea, and his own Hfe also, he 
 cannot be My disciple." 
 
 Faith, then, in its highest Pauline meaning, is that decisive 
 act of self-surrender by which the soul gives itself to Christ, 
 by which it enters the new humanity. And inasmuch as it 
 is only there that God can look upon a man with satisfac- 
 tion, it is by faith alone, as subjective condition, that a man 
 is justified. Further, inasmuch as it is only there that a 
 man finds and takes the spirit of Christ, it is through faith, 
 in the first instance, that he works the works of God. Faith, 
 in a word, is the one necessary subjective link in establishing 
 spiritual union between Christ and the soul. That once 
 established, everything is possible, for everything we need 
 is to be found in Christ. Higher reaches of knowledge 
 are there. For in Christ we come to know our Heavenly 
 Father, not only in a higher measure, but in a different way, 
 in that way of personal intercourse in which a father 
 comes to know his child, and a husband his wife. 
 
 Since, however, the intercourse between God and the 
 soul, in Christ, is far closer and more inward than any 
 which is brought about by human relationships, words 
 scarcely serve the Apostle to describe its uniqueness. " I 
 bow my knees for you," he tells the Ephesians, "to the 
 God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ . . . that ye 
 may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the 
 length and breadth, and depth and height, and to know 
 the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye may be 
 filled with all the fulness of God." Again, vaster depths of 
 love are there. So near is God and so precious in Christ, 
 that, stimulated by the spirit of adoption, we can cry with 
 all filial confidence, " Abba Father." So dear, again, is man 
 in Christ, so dear not only in his obedience, but also in his 
 
86 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 rebellion, when as prodigal he is sinning and suffering in the 
 far country, that, carried away on the stream of Christ's re- 
 deeming impulse, we are ready to do all things for him, and 
 to suffer all things if only we may bring him home again. 
 
 All things are thus possible in Christ, all knowledge, all 
 love, all hope, all joy, all sympathy, all suffering, all service. 
 And all things are made possible, objectively through the 
 preparation of the new humanity, and subjectively through 
 the faith by which we are brought into union with it. Do 
 you not see, then, how easily all the apparent contradictions 
 of the apostolic teaching find their harmony and reconcilia- 
 tion if only we get to this central point of view, and throw 
 on them the light of the glorious truth which shines there ? 
 
 Faith without works of a law must secure our justifica- 
 tion, because it is not the effort at obedience, but the 
 decisive act of self-surrender, which unites us to Christ, in 
 whom alone justification is to be found. But faith also 
 must work by love ; for w^ho can give up his whole soul and 
 life to Christ without loving Him ; or who, again, can sink 
 his will in Christ's without gaining that royal will of self- 
 sacrifice which the Master perfected and the Spirit of Christ 
 bestows ? If, then, faith, by bringing us into Christ, must 
 fill us with the spirit of self-sacrifice, it is certain that that 
 spirit in turn must overflow in works of love. 
 
 But let us not forget the order and true relation of these 
 thoughts. Human lives are like trees planted in the soil 
 of nature. So long as they abide in that soil, although here 
 and there good trees will be found bringing forth abundant 
 fruit, yet in general their product will be scanty and poor. 
 Before the vital power of the trees can be stimulated to its 
 utmost possibilities, they must be transplanted into a new 
 soil ; the soil of Christ's heavenly life. The act of trans- 
 planting is the act of faith. This brings us into the new 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 8/ 
 
 humanity. If now you desired to account for the increased 
 fruitfulness of those trees ; to what would you ascribe it ? 
 Objectively to the better quality of the soil (type of Christ's 
 life), and subjectively, with regard to the circumstances of 
 the trees, to the act of transplanting (type of our faith). In 
 other words, faith produces works, not works faith ; faith 
 increases love, not the opposite ; but all alike, both faith 
 and work, and the love by which faith works, are dependent 
 for their efficacy on union with Christ ; on a Divine planting 
 in the soul of the new humanity. 
 
 All comparisons of this kind must fail somewhere, and I 
 am fully sensible that there are aspects of the deep spiritual 
 relations of which I have been speaking, which this rough 
 illustration fails to represent. It will, however, have answered 
 its purpose if it helps to clear our thoughts upon the special 
 point under review, the nature and office of faith. And, 
 observe, it is exactly at this point that we are able to under- 
 stand the depth of the Galatian fall. The Galatians wished 
 to be circumcised, and to gain the privilege of being Jews 
 as well as Christians. But, asks St. Paul, do you know the 
 meaning of what you seek ? Circumcision is the sign of 
 admission to the Mosaic covenant. And what are the 
 terms of that covenant ? "I testify to every man," says 
 the Apostle, " who is circumcised, that he is a debtor to 
 do the whole law." To go back into Judaism is to take 
 upon yourselves an obligation which, out of Christ, no man 
 is able to discharge. He who would save himself by 
 effort, in virtue of his own attempt to keep the law, should 
 remember what is written : " Cursed is every one that con- 
 tinueth not in all things which are written in the book of 
 the law, to do them." 
 
 Now, if a curse rests on every man whose obedience to 
 the law is imperfect, then it assuredly rests on every one 
 
88 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 who seeks to earn salvation by obedience. For no human 
 being, be his efforts never so strenuous, can succeed in 
 rendering a perfect obedience to the law. But this is not 
 the worst. Do you not see, cries St. Paul, that you are not 
 only bringing yourselves under a curse by this disastrous 
 lapse, but also severing yourselves from Christ, falling from 
 His grace ? " Behold I, Paul, say unto you, that if ye receive 
 circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing." 
 
 What a whole worldful of meaning there lay in that 
 warning, our investigation of to-day must have convinced 
 us. For what was the purpose of Christ's coming ? As we 
 have seen, it was to create a new bridge of communication 
 between earth and heaven ; to establish a humanity filled 
 with the richest gifts of Divine grace, with all the light of 
 heavenly truth, and all the fire of heavenly love. It was, 
 further, to make this humanity accessible to man on the 
 simple condition of faith ; a faith equally possible to all, 
 whether Jew or Gentile, bond or free. To supply these 
 means of making men good and happy, all the resources of 
 Divine mercy had been strained to the uttermost. The 
 Holiest surrendered His Only Begotten ; the Infinite came 
 into the limitation of human flesh, that, wrestling there with 
 human sin, and pleading there with human obduracy, He 
 might fill the world with so radiant a light of Divine love 
 as had never shone before the eyes of immortals. 
 
 And yet these blind insensate Galatians were acting as if 
 all that were nothing, as if man could do without Christ, as 
 if in the old ground of nature, with the word of a law behind 
 him, man could subdue his selfish will to live, and rise into 
 the self-denying will to love. The new humanity gone, and 
 faith, the condition of union with it, gone, what was left to 
 them but the old unavailing struggles, the old miserable 
 sense of failure and condemnation, the old bondage and 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 89 
 
 curse and impotence of the law? Nay, it was not only 
 stultification of themselves, but it was further treason to the 
 world to let go this glorious truth on which they had once 
 taken hold. They had entered into this new union in 
 Christ between God and man. They had seen, in Him 
 who constituted it, all which the human race needed, all 
 goodness and happiness, all holiness and peace. They 
 had seen men of every race, Jews and Gentiles, entering 
 into this union, and gaining all its blessings on the simple 
 condition of faith. 
 
 And yet these Galatians, who had seen all this, who had 
 seen that the Gospel brought what all men needed, and 
 placed it where all men could reach it, were ready to fall 
 back into the bondage of a narrow nationalism soon to 
 perish, and into the futile efforts of an unhelped nature, 
 whose groans and cries of baffled endeavour filled all the 
 ages of the past. 
 
 Let us pray that the apostolic warning may not be lost 
 upon us, my friends : for the danger of such lapses from 
 the spirit to the letter, from the second to the first Adam, 
 from the self-surrender of faith to the self-seeking of per- 
 formance, or the self-pleasing of an outward and merely 
 ceremonial religion, is as great to-day as it was eighteen 
 hundred years ago. And if we are to escape such mis- 
 take and reaction, it can only be by setting clearly before 
 our eyes, and holding steadfastly in our hearts, such 
 truths as those which we have been considering to-day ; 
 that all the resources of the new life are laid up for us in 
 Christ ; that we can only gain them, each for himself, by 
 the self-surrender of faith, and that they are thus prepared 
 for us, and taken by us ; that through the long conflict and 
 discipline of life they may make us perfect at length, as 
 our " Father which is in heaven is perfect," 
 
VI. 
 
 I ENDEAVOURED to show you in my last lecture what was 
 the central truth of the Christian religion. We found it to 
 be this, that Jesus Christ had established a new religious 
 synthesis, a new and closer and more fruitful union between 
 God and man. The possibility of such a union already 
 exists for the whole world. Through His death and resur- 
 rection Christ has created a new humanity, filled with the 
 Divine Spirit, and with all the gifts and resources of a new 
 life. This life is sufficient for the regeneration of all, and 
 is freely offered to all. 
 
 " God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, 
 not imputing their trespasses to them." In God's loving 
 purpose, the whole world is already reconciled to Him in 
 Jesus Christ. But man is free. He may refuse the life 
 and grace offered to him in Christ. And, therefore, to the 
 Apostle's announcement of God's completed reconciliation 
 he has to add the exhortation, " Be ye therefore reconciled 
 to God." 
 
 Now, by what act of his own can man freely accept this 
 life of reconciliation ? We found that it was by that act 
 of complete self-surrender which we call faith. Let a man 
 believe in Christ, and he passes into the new humanity, 
 and is regarded and treated by God as forming part of it. 
 But now the question may be asked. What occasioned the 
 need for this new religious synthesis ? Why was it neces- 
 sary that Christ should come in our flesh ? that He should 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. Qt 
 
 suffer and die and rise again, and so pass into His glory ? 
 We have already reached a satisfactory answer to this 
 question from the human side. The creative force of the 
 new humanity was needed by man because of his incapacity, 
 without Divine aid, to make the will to love triumph over 
 the will to live. 
 
 But is this all ? Have we exhausted the reasons for the 
 creation of this new relation in Christ when we have shown 
 man's need of it ? Did not a necessity for it exist also on 
 the Divine side? Could God have entered 'into reconcilia- 
 tion with man without it ? If the Divine love provided 
 this new humanity, did not the Divine justice also demand 
 it ? And, if so, why ? This is the most difficult question 
 in theology. It is the one which has been most largely 
 treated, and most fiercely debated. It is the one upon 
 which agreement, or even general satisfaction, seems to be 
 most hopeless. And yet it is the one upon which, above 
 all others, it is important that we should come to some 
 approximately satisfactory conclusion. 
 
 So many things have been said upon this subject by 
 theologians, which seem to dishonour God, and to outrage 
 the moral sense of good men, that if, on the authority of 
 Holy Scripture, we could put these things aside it would do 
 more perhaps than anything else to dispel unwelcome doubts, 
 and to make faith possible to those who ask nothing better 
 than that they may be able to believe. But what possible 
 hope is there of a successful issue to an investigation which 
 has been made a hundred times with the too familiar 
 results of failure, dissatisfaction, and disagreement ? None 
 whatever, I answer, unless we can discover a better method 
 of inquiry. What changed the whole course of scientific 
 study after Bacon ? What banished from such study, as 
 by magic, the old bitterness, unfruitfulness, and stagnation ? 
 
92 DANGERS OF THE ArOSTOLIC ACE. 
 
 The discovery of a new method of study, the substitution 
 of the inductive for the deductive method of investigation. 
 
 May we not hope, then, for better results in the inquiry 
 which we undertake to-day, if only we adopt a more reason- 
 able method of investigation ? 
 
 It has been too common a practice in the past to begin 
 by fastening on particular phrases of metaphors in the 
 writings of St. Paul, to proceed by giving to those phrases 
 an arbitrary meaning, and then to conclude by deducing 
 from such meanings a number of apparently necessary 
 consequences. Let me give an example of what I mean. 
 As early as the days of Irenoeus and Origen men fastened 
 upon the Scriptural statement that Christ was our ransom. 
 Now, a ransom is the price paid for the liberation of a 
 slave. Man, then, who needed a ransom was in" slavery to 
 some one. To whom then ? Who was the slave-master ? 
 Clearly, it was urged, the devil. To the devil, then, the 
 ransom must be paid. God, who was just, could not deprive 
 him of his right without giving him an equivalent. 
 
 But where could an equivalent be found for all the souls 
 of sinful men whom the devil held in bondage? God 
 offered as the equivalent His Only Begotten Son. The 
 devil joyfully accepted the offer, and Christ was given up to 
 him in death. But lo ! in the moment of his triumph he 
 discovered that he had been the victim of an illusion. He 
 had seized upon God, and found himself in the grasp of the 
 Omnipotent. He could not keep his prey. Christ rent 
 the bars of death and hell, spoiled the spoiler, and led 
 captivity captive. It might have been thought, perhaps, 
 that the idea of God's practising a fraud upon the evil one 
 would have checked this repulsive and audacious speculation. 
 But no such thing. These early theologians rather rejoiced 
 in the thought that the arch-deceiver had been deceived. 
 
THE GALATIAN LAl'SE. 93 
 
 They cried exultingly that the flesh of Christ had been the 
 bait, and when the great dragon took it he found himself 
 caught on the hook of Christ's Divinity. 
 
 We recoil from such expressions now. And since Anselm 
 pointed out that the affirmation of any right in one of God's 
 creatures to hold others of His creatures in bondage was an 
 insult to the Divine Sovereignty, the \vhole theory has been 
 gradually abandoned. Not in vain, however, was it adopted 
 and held as an orthodox explanation by the Christian Fathers 
 for a thousand years, if we only learn the two great lessons 
 which it should teach us : first, that the doctrine of the 
 Atonement may be true, and yet an orthodox explanation 
 of the manner in which the Atonement was made may be 
 untrue ; and, secondly, that the language of the Apostles 
 is not that of scientific exposition, but of popular exhor- 
 tation, that figures of speech are not to be taken for abstract 
 statements nor metaphors for arguments. 
 
 Let me endeavour to enforce this latter caution by a 
 further consideration of the character of the writings cf 
 St. Paul. 
 
 Let us remember, in the first place, that those writings 
 are familiar letters, occasioned by special emergencies, deal- 
 ing with the difficulties of special Churches, and thrown off 
 for the most part in the heat of anxiety or indignation. 
 How, then, can we expect in them scientific language, terms 
 carefully chosen, accurately defined, and employed with a 
 uniformity of meaning? Far more reasonably should we 
 anticipate what we find, vigorous figurative language, fired 
 by deep feeling, and addressed rather to the heart than to 
 the understanding. 
 
 Again, remembering the education and history of St. Paul, 
 we should surely expect him to employ largely the terms, 
 figures, and incidents of the Old Testament. A Christian 
 
94 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 man who had been brought up as a Jew, and who had 
 therefore been taught from his earh"est days to drape his 
 spiritual and ethical ideas in the ritual and ceremonial 
 figures of the law, would almost feel compelled to carry over 
 his customary speech into that world of new thoughts which 
 had been created by Christianity. In like manner the 
 prophets of Israel were compelled to seek their pictures of 
 the world's spiritual future among the incidents of Israelitish 
 history. Where else could they have obtained the drapery 
 of their awful visions ? The Church of the future was 
 accordingly represented by them as Israel, the Church of 
 the present; while the enemies of that Church were conceived 
 under the forms of Babylon, Edom, or Egypt, the actual 
 and well-known foes of Israel. 
 
 Now, how were these passages to be interpreted afier the 
 kingdom of God had been actually established by Jesus 
 Christ ? Were the figures to be illuminated by the light of 
 the fact ? or was the fact to be determined by the form of 
 the figures ? Theological students know that two schools of 
 prophetic interpretation were developed out of this question, 
 the one holding that Israel is always the literal Israel, 
 and Babylon the actual city on the Euphrates ; the other 
 (that which at the present day is everywhere prevailing), 
 that Israel is but the Church of God, and Babylon the 
 spiritual enemy of that Church. The one subordinates the 
 fact to the form ; the other explains the form by the fact. 
 
 Now, why is the latter school everywhere prevailing at 
 the present day ? Because it is seen that its critical basis 
 is the more reasonable ; that if the prophets were driven 
 from the nature of the case to seek the drapery of their 
 visions from history, that mere drapery ought not to be 
 allowed to determine the meaning of the visions. We 
 should surely adopt this same reasonable canon in our 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 95 
 
 interpretation of the sacrificial and ceremonial language of 
 St. Paul. The circumstances of the Apostle's past life 
 compelled him to use such language. It was the historically 
 determined garb of his thought. How unreasonable, then, 
 to suppose that the earlier meaning of this language is to 
 be allowed to impose itself on the vaster thoughts and 
 deeper feelings which the Apostle cast into these ancient 
 moulds ! 
 
 I tried to show you in my last lecture that we know what 
 was the master-thought of the apostle. It stands out clearly 
 in its own light. Let us take it with us then, and allow 
 it largely to determine for us the new Christian sense in 
 which the apostle employed the ancient sacrificial terms, or 
 referred to imperfect shadows of the good things to come. 
 
 Well has it been said by Archdeacon Farrar, respecting 
 St. Paul's familiar application of the history of Abraham : 
 " The Apostle did not derive his views from these con- 
 siderations, but discovered the truths revealed to him in 
 passages which, until he thus applied them, would not 
 have been seen to involve this deeper significance." 
 
 There was still another special reason (brought out 
 clearly by the circumstances of the Galatian lapse) for 
 St. Paul's extensive employment of Jewish ideas and 
 phraseology. Not only were those forms of expression 
 natural to him, as an Israelite and a student of the Jewish 
 schools, but they were further forced upon him by the 
 conflicts of his own age. It might seem strange at first 
 sight that St. Paul should so anxiously seek support for 
 his gospel in the events and shadows of the Old Testament. 
 He says that law cannot save, that when opposed by the 
 selfish impulses of the flesh it becomes the strength of sin, 
 that it was added because of transgressions, put in between 
 the two covenants of promise because of the spiritual back- 
 
g6 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 wardness of the Jewish people ; because, Hke children, they 
 needed a system of particular rules, and could not live on 
 general principles like those of mature age. The highest 
 office which he assigns to the law is that of a pedagogue to 
 bring us to Christ. Why, then, does he not plant himself 
 firmly and independently on that which is of eternal sig- 
 nificance, and draw all promise and precept from that? 
 Specially, why does he not follow this method when writing 
 to Gentiles ? 
 
 We can understand why a writer like the author of 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews should strive to show to 
 Hebrew Christians how Christ fulfilled all the shadowy 
 fore-intimations of the law. But what need was there 
 for St. Paul, writing to Gentile Christians like those of 
 Corinth and Galatia, to adopt this course ? The history 
 of the Galatian lapse gives the answer to that question. 
 Who were they who, creeping into Gentile Churches in the 
 absence of their great Founder, tried to draw them away 
 from Christ ? They were Christian Judaizers, who spoke 
 in the name of law and circumcision. It was necessary, 
 therefore, for the Apostle to meet these ritualists on their 
 own ground, and to show from the law itself that their 
 doctrines were false and pernicious. 
 
 How strikingly this motive comes out in the sudden 
 question to the Galatians, "Tell me, ye that desire to be 
 under the law^, do ye not hear the law ? " And then he 
 introduces the allegory of the sons of the bondwoman and 
 of the free. We see, then, that St. Paul was driven not less 
 by the circumstances of the time than by his own educa- 
 tion and ordinary habit of thought into a large use of Old 
 Testament figures and phrases. He sought out points of 
 comparison. He seized upon analogies, however slight, 
 and sometimes found them in correspondences so remote 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 97 
 
 as to appear to us almost trifling. For all these reasons 
 it is obviously unwise to make too much of sacrificial or 
 ceremonial phraseology in the writings of St. Paul. Let 
 us rather interpret the less certain by the more certain, 
 the figure by the fact, the metaphor by the thought which 
 takes form in it. 
 
 Carrying with us this great principle of interpretation, it 
 seems to me that it may be less difficult than many imagine 
 to come to reasonable conclusions about several disputed 
 points in the doctrine of the Atonement. It is certain that 
 in the Pauline theology Christ's death is the event which 
 is of most decisive importance in connection with the 
 remission of sins. " Christ died for the ungodly," says the 
 Apostle. And again : " He died for our sins ; " " Having 
 made peace through the blood of His cross ; " "I deter- 
 mined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ, and 
 Him crucified." Now, what gave this decisive importance 
 to the death of Christ? It has commonly been said, 
 Christ's vicarious suffering, in which He bore the punish- 
 ment due to the sins of all the world. This is commonly 
 said and taught, but I am unable to find anything about it 
 in Holy Scripture. The righteous God demands righteous- 
 ness, not punishment. Jesus is the Lord our righteousness, 
 not the Lord our punishment. What God provides for us 
 is the righteousness of God, not the punishment of Christ. 
 What Christ bears for us is not our punishment, but " our 
 sins in His own body on the tree." " He hath made Him 
 to be sin [not punishment] for us." 
 
 Well, but it is asked. What is the meaning of sin here ? 
 Surely it will not be held that the sinless Lord was sinful ? 
 And if not, how can He in any way bear our sin except 
 by bearing our punishment ? That is exactly how all 
 unscriptural dogmatism creeps in. Some particular phrase 
 
 7 
 
98 DANGERS OF THE ArOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 is taken, and then, an uncertain and unauthorized inference 
 having been drawn from it, this inference in turn is made 
 the basis of an endless number of other inferences. The 
 thing to be called in question is the first inference ; and 
 here the first inference that sin means punishment seems 
 to me to be utterly unauthorized. Christ is indeed said 
 by the Apostle to have been made a curse for us ; but in 
 what sense ? Was it because God, attributing to Him the 
 guilt of all human sin, pronounced Him accursed on the 
 cross ? Nothing can be further from the Apostle's thought. 
 How could God hate and curse His Son, when that Son's 
 will was most humbly bowed in obedience to His own ? 
 If there can be variations in a love which is Divine, surely 
 the moment of Christ's death must have been that at which 
 God loved Him most dearly. 
 
 Nor is the Apostle's statement at all inconsistent with 
 this view. For how does St. Paul sustain his assertion that 
 Jesus was made a curse for us ? By the free quotation from 
 the Old Testament of the words, " Cursed is every one who 
 hangeth on a tree." The manner of our Lord's death 
 brought Him into the position described in these words. 
 In carrying out the will of His Father, and perfecting His 
 own self-sacrifice, our Lord came, on our behalf, into the 
 position of one ceremonially accursed. He may, therefore, 
 be said to have been made a curse for us. This, and 
 this only, is involved in the Apostle's words. I believe, 
 in short, that the conception of our Lord's vicarious 
 punishment, with all its wide-branching and repulsive 
 consequences, has been introduced into the Bible by mere 
 theorists. 
 
 Mr. Heard has very ingeniously shown, in his " Old and 
 New Theology," that this theory has passed through three 
 Btages, what one may call its stone age, its bronze age, and 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 99 
 
 its iron age ; and that in each it has expressed the views of 
 a corresponding stage in the advance of legal science. 
 
 At first it is purely vindictive ; the expression of the lex 
 talionis. God has been injured, and He will have vengeance. 
 Sin can only be washed out in blood ; and blood God will 
 have, if not that of the offender, then that of some other. 
 
 In the second stage this theory assumes what may be 
 called a legal form. The offence is conceived of as com- 
 mitted rather against a law than against a person, and it is 
 the law which must have satisfaction. The sin is supposed 
 to be'of infinite malignancy, and the law therefore demands 
 a punishment of infinite value. 
 
 But, once more, the law will be sufficiently honoured if 
 that punishment fall on one whose sufferings will be by 
 number or by weight an equivalent for the offence. Nowa- 
 days, however, lawyers have got beyond that second stage 
 of the legal conception of punishment upon which our 
 theory planted itself. Beccaria showed them that it was 
 not so much the severity as the certainty of punishment 
 which w^as deterrent, and accordingly legal enactments aim 
 now rather at reformation than retribution. The wrong- 
 doer's crime is before all things against himself; and it is 
 not only for the sake of society, but also for the sake of the 
 criminal, that he must be punished. Hence, as Mr. Heard 
 shows, there has arisen a corresponding modification in 
 the theory of atonement which we have been examining. 
 Nothing of all this is Scriptural. It is brought in wholly 
 from legal science. 
 
 As Reuss .has,^said, ".There is not a word of all this 
 weighing and calculating scheme to be found in the writings 
 of St. Paul." And, I may add, with the abandonment of 
 the idea that Jesus bore our sins, by bearing their punish- 
 ment, all these elaborate theories, with their unethical 
 
100 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 complexities, fall away. But how, then, it may be asked, 
 are we to determine the meaning of the phrase, " He bore 
 our sins " ? Partly, I answer, by Scriptural usage, and 
 partly by throwing on this difficulty the light of the Gospel's 
 central truth. As Dr. Bushnell has pointed out, there is a 
 passage in Matt. viii. which might have been written to 
 give the exact iisus loqiietidi of sacrificial language in the 
 New Testament. Our Saviour passed a certain Sabbath 
 day at Capernaum in healing and teaching. His fatigue of 
 body and mind w^as excessive, and referring to this the 
 evangelist says, " Ail this was done that it might be fulfilled 
 which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet : Himself took our 
 infirmities and bore our sicknesses." 
 
 Now this quotation from the Old Testament is of decisive 
 importance for two reasons. It is, first, a quotation from 
 Isa. liii., the common storehouse of such quotations ; and, 
 secondly, there can be no doubt of the sense in which the 
 evangelist applied it to our Lord's labours. How did the 
 Lord Jesus bear the sicknesses and infirmities of those whom 
 He healed ? He certainly did not bear them literally, 
 becoming sick for the sick and lame for the lame ; and He 
 as certainly did not bear them punitively, as undergoing 
 penalties which those sicknesses deserved or betokened. 
 Obviously He bore the sicknesses of others in the personal 
 sufferings which His enterprise of healing brought on Him- 
 self. It involved weariness of body, and the pain of pro- 
 tracted sympathy, and the natural disgust inspired by the 
 loathsome consequences of disease. 
 
 And what possible reason, let me ask, can there be for 
 adopting any other than the evangelical interpretation of 
 vicarious phraseology, when the disease healed is moral and 
 not physical ? The suffering of the healer is in both cases 
 that involved in the effort of healing. Only in the case of 
 
THE GALATIxVN LAPSE. lOI 
 
 moral disease it is evident that this suffering must be greater. 
 A man labouring under a physical disease is always willing 
 to be healed. But the sinner commonly clings to his sin, 
 and is unwilling to abandon it. He, therefore, who is 
 determined to save him against his will, who, entering with 
 earnestness on the work of redemption, determines to give 
 the sinner no rest in his iniquity, must look for the most 
 determined and envenomed opposition, must prepare him- 
 self for hatred, denunciation, scorn, and even death. This, 
 however, is a merely formal distinction. It does not touch 
 the essence of the matter. In the latter case, not less than 
 in the former, the deliverer's suffering comes, not from the 
 literal assumption of the disease or its consequences, but 
 only from the natural results of his effort to banish it. The 
 suffering in this latter case is certainly vicarious. It would 
 never have been experienced but for the sufferer's efforts 
 on behalf of others. And yet is it not the less a perfectly 
 natural and inevitable jesult of those efforts ? 
 
 Why should we not say at once, then, that the vicarious 
 suffering of the Lord Jesus was necessitated by the great 
 purpose which brought Him into the world ? the purpose, 
 that is, to deliver man from his sin. Nay ; is not this 
 causative connection between our Lord's saving purpose and 
 His sufferings distinctly marked in most of those passages to 
 which a different interpretation has been given ? Why did 
 our Lord come into the world? "He was manifested," 
 says St. John, " to take away our sins." Why was He 
 called Jesus ? " Because He should save His people from 
 their sins." Why was He made sin for us who knew no 
 sin? "That we might be made the righteousness of God 
 in Him." Why did He die for us ? " That they which 
 live should not henceforth live to themselves, but to Him 
 who died for them and rose again." 
 
102 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 Here in every case it is declared that the final purpose 
 was the deliverance of man from sin. Jesus was humbled, 
 and He suffered, not to bear our punishment, but to take 
 away our sins, to make us holy as He is holy. Christ was 
 the Lamb of God, because He was consecrated and set 
 apart to this redeeming work ; and He became that in 
 reality, which all the lambs of the sacrificial system dimly 
 represented, because He did that which they could only 
 dumbly declare ought to be done : " He took away the sins 
 of the world." 
 
 Here the central thought of our faith helps us. It shows 
 us how this was done. In our Lord's great enterprise of 
 deliverance. He was called upon to combat sin in its utter- 
 most intensity. As God's enemy and man's destroyer. He 
 pursued it through every disguise of pleasure or hypo- 
 crisy, felt all its horror and malignity, resisted all its seduc- 
 tion, defied all its opposition, and finally triumphed over 
 it in death. Thus in His own person He established a 
 humanity free from sin and filled with the spirit of holiness. 
 
 Into this new humanity every sinner can enter by faith ; 
 and upon so entering it he receives that almighty victorious 
 spirit of Christ which takes away sin in himself. Is not 
 this precisely the experience of those who have passed by 
 faith into union with Christ ? When they first gained 
 faith's mighty guerdon, did they not feel a perfect hatred 
 of sin, a joyful love of holiness, a passionate affection for 
 sinners, and, if possible, a still more passionate desire to 
 deliver them from their sins ? And what if the flood-tide 
 of that high experience ebbed again? It once rose so 
 high, it once touched the highest cliffs of thought and 
 feeling ; we saw it there in all its potency and all its possi- 
 bilities, a prophecy of victory, a foretaste of heaven. 
 
 But, it may be urged, surely in St. Paul's Epistles there 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. IO3 
 
 is something more than the natural and necessary conse- 
 quences of Christ's enterprise of dehverance, and of the 
 sinner's appropriation by faith of the results of that deliver- 
 ance. Do we not read of imputation, of God's counting a 
 man to be what he is not ? Do we not find it said that 
 Adam's sinful acts are imputed to his posterity, and that on 
 the contrary Christ's righteous acts are imputed to those 
 who believe on Him ? 
 
 Again, I must say that I find nothing of the kind in the 
 New Testament. Long ago, in his clear and convincing 
 essay on this subject, Archbishop Whately observed : " It 
 is not going too far to say that the whole system is made to 
 rest on a particular interpretation of one text ; " which inter- 
 pretation he proceeds to show is untenable. But surely, it 
 will be urged, you admit the fact of imputation in some 
 sense ? Of course I do, and so must every sober interpreter 
 of Scripture, when he finds St. Paul using the word no less 
 than eleven times in one chapter, Rom. iv. 
 
 But what is it, let me ask, which is there said to be 
 imputed for righteousness ? Is it the righteous deeds or 
 death of Christ ? Nothing of the kind. It is the faith of 
 Abraham, and the faith of every sinner who, like Abraham, 
 believed in God. There is no fiction here ; no impossible 
 transfer of the acts of one moral being to the account of 
 another; but simply the counting of a certain kind of act 
 to be more than it seems. Why this imputation is made, 
 and how it is possible for mercy to make it, will, however, 
 appear more clearly by dwelling for a moment on St. Paul's 
 comparison between Adam and Christ. We are said by 
 the Apostle to inherit Adam's nature, with the sinful im- 
 pulses and mortal consequences contained therein. And 
 surely this is a fact. Instead of talking about Adam as 
 St. Paul did, and in that age must have done, with the 
 
104 DANGERS OF THE ArOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 Bible in his hand, we talk about an original humanity 
 existing on the earth, ages before the Scriptural chronology 
 commences. 
 
 But does that alter the spiritual fact on which St. Paul 
 bases his teaching? Put original humanity for Adam, if 
 you will, and is it not still true that every living man 
 has inherited from that original humanity a preponderating 
 tendency of the selfish will, that this evil will appears in 
 all with the dawn of consciousness, and that it cannot be 
 subdued by any mere law or theory which condemns it ? 
 
 Again, is it not the experience of all believers in Christ 
 that when they come into union with Him by faith they get 
 the power to subdue that selfish will, and to give ascendency 
 to the will to love ? Does not Christ become to them more 
 and more, as life goes on, the power of God unto salvation ? 
 And are we not assured that this same life of Christ is 
 equally available for all men? If so, then is it not the 
 simple result of human and believing experience that in 
 Adam, or our far-away forefather, all die ; and that in Christ, 
 exactly in the same way, all who will are made alive ? That 
 from the first Adam we get the will to live, and from the 
 Second Adam the will to love ? 
 
 What, then, in these circumstances, is meant, let us ask, 
 by imputation, by God's counting that to exist in the 
 believer which as yet is not? Why does St. Paul say that 
 Abraham's faith was reckoned to him for righteousness, and 
 most generally that "the righteousness of God is to all 
 and upon all them that believe " ? Does not the central 
 truth of our faith, brought out so clearly by the comparison 
 of the first and Second Adam, give us here again a clear 
 and satisfactory answer ? Abraham by faith came into that 
 great general synthesis of religion, into that union with God, 
 in which a man Hves by God's Spirit; and thus by his faith 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. I05 
 
 he gained the germ and potency of a righteousness not yet 
 perfectly realised in him. God then, in His mercy, counts 
 the beginning for the completion, the germ for the fruit 
 which lies wrapped up within it. Much more then is this 
 true of those who have entered into the new and richer 
 union which faith establishes between the soul and Christ. 
 
 Those who have entered into that union have gained the 
 spirit of Christ, and in that spirit the potency of all its fruits. 
 God then sees those fruits in their germ, and counts the 
 germ for the fruit, beholds, in a word, the completed 
 results of a righteous life in that which carries those re- 
 sults in its bosom. There is no fictitious and impossible 
 transfer here of the acts of one to another, but simply the 
 merciful judgment that a result exists which only exists in 
 potency. That is how mercy judges in us, when it forgives 
 an offender on his repentance. It sees in his change of 
 mind the power and promise of a future change of life, and 
 treats him as if that change were realized. This is the 
 imputation of God. God imputes the result, righteousness, 
 to that faith which, by uniting us to Christ, and making us 
 partakers of His Spirit, anticipates and secures that result. 
 
 Once more, however, it may be objected, if this be 
 the meaning of imputation, why does the death of Christ 
 occupy so prominent a position in connection with the 
 remission of sins ? Surely if remission depends upon union 
 with Christ, it would be more natural to connect this result 
 objectively with Christ's resurrection, that event by which 
 He passed into the spiritual world, where alone faith can 
 unite us with Him. That is a natural question, and it 
 demands and deserves a satisfactory answer. Nor is it 
 difficult again from the point of view of the great central 
 doctrine of our faith to give it such an answer. It was only 
 by His death that Christ proved His will to deliver us to be 
 
I06 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 the perfect loving will of His heavenly Father. Before death, 
 even the moment before, it was still possible that He 
 might come short of the perfect redeeming love of God. 
 By temptation or by oppression He might still have been 
 turned aside from His task, might still have been proved 
 less than the perfect redeemer of man. 
 
 Never say that a man is perfectly good till he dies is the 
 proverb of worldly wisdom. He may falter and fall even 
 on the brink of the grave. He is not thoroughly proved 
 till his whole course is run. , That is why the friends of 
 Gordon glory in his martyr's death. His course is vic- 
 toriously finished ; his glorious life of self-sacrifice is made 
 circular and complete. It can never be made less than 
 beautiful and great. So also, by our Saviour's death, with 
 a prayer for His murderers on His lips, He has fully proved 
 Himself the perfect reflection of God's love, the perfect 
 Deliverer of man. 
 
 Once more, by His death, Christ not only perfected the 
 past of redeeming effort, but also prepared the future of 
 redeeming victory. This view has special importance in 
 connection with the Pauline gospel. For this gospel had 
 little to do with what went before the death of the Redeemer. 
 The Christ whom St. Paul preached was the risen and 
 glorified Christ. The salvation which he proclaimed de- 
 pended on the new life of Him who had passed to His 
 glory. The Apostle declared that even if he had known 
 Christ after the flesh, henceforth he would know Him no 
 more. 
 
 To St. Paul, then, Christ's death was just as much the 
 necessary introduction to the ministry of the Spirit, as the 
 baptism in Jordan had been to the ministry of the flesh. 
 On the one hand, it finished and completed Christ's personal 
 work on earth. His work of preparation ; and, on the other, 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. 10/ 
 
 it introduced and made possible His work of intercession 
 before God, and of regeneration in the human soul. Here 
 was its advantage as a central fact over the Resurrection. 
 It combined the work of the past and the future. It 
 finished the former, while it introduced the latter ; and it is 
 for this reason that St. Paul could say to the Corinthians, 
 " I determined to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ, 
 and Him crucified." 
 
 It must not, however, be supposed that because the death 
 of Christ was of central therefore it was of sole significance 
 in respect to the remission of sins. We are warned most 
 impressively of the mistake of such a view by the variety of 
 the causes to which both justification and remission of sins 
 are attributed in the writings of St. Paul. We are said to be 
 justified " by God's grace ; " and again " by faith without 
 deeds of law ;" and again " by Christ's blood ;" and yet once 
 more by His resurrection. He was "raised again for our 
 justification." In like manner, if Christ's blood is said 
 " to be shed for the remission of sins," on the other hand 
 men are told to be " baptized for the remission of sins," and 
 again that " whosoever believeth in Him shall receive the 
 remission of sins." 
 
 Such expressions could never have resulted from the view 
 that justification or remission of sins came from Christ's 
 death alone. In order to give to them all their due place 
 and value, we must seek a more general point of view ; that, 
 in fact, which we have already recognised as of central 
 importance, that objectively we are justified and pardoned 
 through union with Christ. Looking around us from 
 thence, we see all subordinate truths falling into place 
 and grouping themselves harmoniously. Justification is by 
 Christ's death, because only through death could the new 
 humanity have been established. It is through Baptism 
 
IO<S DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 and faith ; for only by the one externally, and by the other in- 
 ternally, could we have been introduced into that humanity. 
 It is through Christ's resurrection, because only through 
 His resurrection could He pass into the state where faith 
 can find Him and dwell with Him. 
 
 The Lord's death was not enough for our salvation. " If 
 Christ be not raised," said St. Paul, " your faith is vain ; ye 
 are yet in your sins." "A dead Saviour is no saviour," 
 cries Dr. Vaughan ; *' the resurrection of Christ was 
 necessary to complete His Atonement." I trust that it 
 will be clear to you now that it is only from the vantage- 
 ground of the central truth of our faith that we can satis- 
 factorily explain all the various images, metaphors, and 
 arguments of St. Paul with respect to the Atonement ; 
 and equally that, if we stand firmly at this point of view, 
 we have no need of any of those arbitrary hypotheses which 
 are mainly responsible for making this doctrine a stumbling- 
 block to good and reasonable men. 
 
 I have nowhere in this lecture, you will perceive, either 
 questioned the truth of the Atonement or thrown doubt on 
 any of those ideas which naturally and necessarily grow out 
 of it. I believe in a real atonement, in a real reconciliation 
 of man to God in the body of Christ. I believe that this 
 atonem.ent was vicariously made, that we never could have 
 attained to it unless Christ had prepared for us that union 
 with God which I have called the new religious synthesis. 
 I believe, further, that in preparing this atonement Christ 
 offered satisfaction to God by presenting to Him a humanity 
 in which He could be well pleased ; and that, in fine. He 
 became a propitiation by giving the answer of a perfectly 
 approving and submissive will to that Divine indignation 
 which must ever be excited by the spectacle of defiant 
 wickedness, 
 
THE GALATIAN LAPSE. lOQ 
 
 But while thus I believe heartily in the doctrine of the 
 Atonement, I am sensible that with respect to the manner 
 in which that Atonement was made my faith departs widely 
 from that of many good and intelligent Christians. But 
 then remember that questions about the manner of the 
 Atonement are not de fide. Our own Church, while affirm- 
 ing decisively the fact, says not one word as to the manner 
 of it. Good men in all ages have differed on this latter 
 question. 
 
 Gregory Nazianzen numbers speculations upon the suffer- 
 ings of Christ "among those things on which it is useful 
 to have correct ideas, but not dangerous to be mistaken." 
 Let us be charitable, then, to those who differ from us on 
 such questions ; but also let us strive w^ith all our might to 
 clear this doctrine from untrue and unscriptural elements, 
 and so make it to ourselves and our brethren a comfort 
 and not a perplexity, a tower of strength and not an occasion 
 of falling. To have got rid of the suspicion that there was 
 something arbitrary and fictitious in the righteousness of 
 God, to have attained to the conviction that it is ethical 
 and spiritual through and through, has been to me an in- 
 expressible deliverance. Mystery does not trouble me. I 
 see mystery everywhere ; mystery in the being of the mean- 
 est thing that is. That God, therefore, should be a mystery, 
 and man a mystery, and their spiritual union in Christ a 
 mystery, is what I expect. But things which outrage my 
 reason and offend my conscience are not mysteries, they 
 are fallacies, impossibilities ; things not above my under- 
 standing, but repugnant to it. I cannot believe them. All 
 such, thank God, the study of the Holy Scripture has cleared 
 away from my belief in the Atonement. 
 
 And now that doctrine is to me a manifestation of the 
 Divine love which so inconceivably magnifies the glory of 
 
no DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 God as to make religion a joy and an inspiration ; and to 
 encircle all human life, whether here or hereafter, with that 
 bow of hope which the seer of Patmos saw engirdling the 
 throne of God, " in sight like unto an emerald." May the 
 unfolding of the course of my thought in these lectures 
 make some of you partakers of my joy, and injure no one 
 of the weakest of Christ's little ones. But whether you 
 adopt my explanation of the blessed truths which we have 
 been considering here, or some other, let us never forget 
 that those truths themselves are not dependent upon our 
 explanations of them. " They do not change even with 
 the greater revolutions of things. They are in eternity ; and 
 the image of them on earth is not the movement on the 
 surface of the waters, but the depths of the silent sea." 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 
 
I. 
 
 While St. Paul was in prison at Rome he received a visit 
 from Epaphras, who was, in all probability, the first evangelist 
 of the cities of the Lycus. Whether he had sought the 
 Apostle for the express purpose of making a report on the 
 state of the churches in his district does not appear, but 
 certainly he took occasion by his visit to do so. His report 
 was, on the whole, favourable, although on one point it pre- 
 sented matter for anxious thought. Certain teachers had 
 arisen in the Colossian Church, who were putting forth 
 doctrines which seemed to Epaphras strange and dangerous. 
 He made the Apostle acquainted with them, and asked for 
 his advice and assistance. Thereupon St. Paul wrote a 
 letter, that which we call the Epistle to the Colossians, and 
 sent it to Colossie, along with two others to different desti- 
 nations, by the hand of Epaphras. It is to the first of these 
 letters that we are mainly indebted for our knowledge of the 
 Colossian heresy ; and if I had spoken to you on this subject 
 a few years ago I should have thought it necessary to say 
 something in support of its genuineness. The advance of 
 criticism has, however, spared me that trouble. There can 
 be httle use in defending what few instructed critics would 
 be likely to deny ; but to anyone who cares to see the 
 reliableness of our Epistle established in a satisfactory way 
 I may recommend, among other works, the learned and 
 sober Introduction of Dr. Salmon, Regius Professor of 
 Divinity at Dublin. 
 
 8 
 
114 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 When, however, one has assumed the genuineness of the 
 Epistle to the Colossians, one has only gone a short way 
 in the task of explaining the Colossian heresy, and the 
 apostolic teaching to which it gave rise. Who were the 
 Colossians ? what was their history ? and how came they, 
 rather than others, to fall into the opinions which St. Paul 
 deprecates ? Such are some of the questions which present 
 themselves to the curious mind, and which I must try to 
 answer in this lecture. 
 
 If you take a good map of Asia Minor, as it was in the 
 first century, you will see that the little river Lycus, rising 
 in Mount Cadmus, flows through the south-western region 
 of Phrygia, and falls into the better-known river Mseander. 
 On the opposite sides of this stream, with the valley 
 between them, lay the two well-known cities Hierapolis 
 and Laodicsea; the former a rising and wealthy city and 
 a fashionable watering-place, the latter the capital of a 
 civil diocese, or small province, and already renowned for 
 its commerce, wealth, and distinguished citizens. Hierapolis 
 and Laodicaea were connected by a bridge which crossed 
 the Lycus. Beginning, then, from this bridge, and ascend- 
 ing the Lycus for about eight or ten miles, you would come 
 to Colossae, which lay on both sides of the stream. Its 
 situation was commanding. It stood at the mouth of a 
 pass in the range of Mount Cadmus, through which 
 went the great highway connecting Western with Eastern 
 Asia. Favoured by its situation, it was in early days a 
 place of considerable importance. Here the great host 
 of Xerxes halted on its march against Greece, and 
 Herodotus calls it " a great city of Phrygia." In the 
 Aposde's days, however, it had shrunk to very small pro- 
 portions, having suffered much from earthquakes, and from 
 the competidon of the neighbouring cities of Laodicaea and 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. I I 5 
 
 Hierapolis. Bishop Lightfoot observes that " without doubt 
 Colossce was the least important Church to which any Epistle 
 of St. Paul was addressed.'' 
 
 In the history of religion, however, the importance of 
 places is not to be measured by their size. Small villages 
 like Bethel, Bethlehem, and Nazareth are better known to 
 the whole civilized world than the greatest and wealthiest 
 cities of the past. The history of religion is mainly the 
 history of the rise and spread of opinions and influences ; 
 and if those places have, from this point of view, most 
 importance which have witnessed the rise and spread of 
 influential doctrines, then Colosste cannot be without its 
 interest for the modern Christian. For the opinions which 
 prevailed there, in the Christian Church of the first century, 
 not only spread and took portentous proportions in the 
 century following, but have also, as I hope to show you, a 
 special interest for ourselves. 
 
 It becomes, thus, a matter of some importance to deter- 
 mine, if we can, in the first place, what made Colossae and 
 the neighbouring towns and region a soil specially favourable 
 to the growth of Gnostical opinions. It will have specia 
 significance for the students of those erratic movements of 
 early Christian thought to learn that Colossae was situated 
 in ancient Phrygia and near to Hierapolis, a noted centre 
 of the passionate mystical devotion of that country. There 
 was to be found the Plutonium, a hot well or spring, from 
 which there issued a mephitic vapour, which was said to be 
 fatal to all except the Galli, the mutilated priests of Cybele, 
 the great mother of the Phrygian cult. If, then, we can 
 only get some trustworthy information as to the history of 
 old Phrygia and the nature of its peculiar faith, we shall 
 have gone far to understand the religious temper and procli- 
 vities of the lower classes of Coloss?e and its neighbourhood. 
 
Il6 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 No doubt we must make allowance for the several waves of 
 religious and secular influence which had passed succes- 
 sively over the land in times nearer to the apostolic age ; 
 but to those who know how long and tenaciously a deep 
 religious influence retains its hold upon the people it will 
 not be necessary to prove that the original religious faith of 
 a country is of the first importance in determining its pre- 
 vailing temper and susceptibilities. What, then, let us ask, 
 do we know of Phrygia and its religious cult ? 
 
 Twenty years ago, yea, even ten years ago, I could 
 have told you little more than that Phrygia had been 
 looked upon by the Greeks as the oldest country in the 
 world; that its speech was thought to be the original 
 language of mankind ; and that its kings appeared to the 
 Greeks of Ionia and the Troad to be something half divine. 
 The meaning of this, of course, is, that its civilization was so 
 advanced, and its religious culture so august and mysterious, 
 that to semi-barbarians it appeared to belong to a sphere 
 above that of their daily life. But the last ten years have 
 been fruitful of discoveries in Asia Minor, and we now 
 know why the Midases of Phrygia seemed to the rough 
 Greeks to have been associates of the gods. 
 
 It has been discovered that Asia Minor has an ancient 
 road-system which radiated from a centre in Cappadocia. 
 Thence went important highways to Sinope, the northern 
 port en the Black Sea, to the Cilician gates on the south- 
 east, and to Sardis in the far west. The significance of 
 this discovery wuU become apparent if you imagine some 
 one in modern days finding out, for the first time, that the 
 vast system of Roman highways diverged from the old 
 golden milestone in the Roman forum., That fact alone 
 would make it plain that Rome was once the centre of a 
 mighty empire, embracing \Yithiq its ample boun<^s all the 
 
THE COLOSSIAN IlERESV. I I 7 
 
 countries lying round the Mediterranean. This conclusion 
 would be further confirmed if, at the same time, our 
 imaginary modern antiquary had discovered at Rome the 
 ruins of a vast and wealthy capital. Now all this has 
 happened in Asia Minor. At Pteria in Cappadocia, the 
 centre of the old road-system of Asia Minor, great ruins 
 have been discovered, so vast in their circuit, and so 
 remarkable for their antique rock-sculptures, that they are 
 beyond doubt the most considerable in the whole country. 
 Again, the course of the ancient road from Pteria to Sardis 
 is marked throughout its whole extent by traces of the same 
 archaic art, and at one particular spot in Phrygia (a plateau 
 with perpendicular faces of rock), there lie the ruins of a 
 second city, less extensive, indeed, than the former, but still 
 most remarkable for its vast walls and strangely-inscribed 
 monuments. On comparing the ruins of these great cities 
 of the ante-historical period, it becomes evident that the 
 smaller of the two was the glorious capital of ancient 
 Phrygia, the central seat of that wise and great civilization 
 which so dazzled the imagination of the ancient Greeks. 
 This city is, however, modern by comparison with the 
 Cappadocian Pteria. There was the centre of a vaster, 
 mightier, and far more ancient dominion, which has left 
 the marks of its supremacy in archaic sculptures, and a 
 yet undeciphered script, in all parts of Asia Minor. What 
 was this vast, ancient, wealthy, and powerful empire, the 
 mother of the grand Phrygian civilization? How shall 
 we name it, and where shall we place it among the great 
 monarchies of the past ? How, for instance, was it related 
 to the ancient colossal empires of Egypt and Babylonia? 
 The classical historians know nothing of it ; and, if it were 
 not for the evidence of our eyes, we might refuse to believe 
 in its existence as resolutely as certain sceptical critics did 
 
I I 8 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 twenty years ago. But the spade has been at work since 
 then, and lo ! from the ruins of Egypt and Assyria we have 
 dug up the evidence that, at a period long anterior to the 
 days of Moses, the world-empires of the Nile and Euphrates 
 had waged desperate wars, and concluded important 
 treaties with a great northern people, whom the Egyptians 
 call Keta, the Assyrians Khatti, and the Bible Chittim or 
 Hittites. So long as the dominion of the Hittites was 
 supposed to be confined to Syria, their successful resist- 
 ance to such powers as Assyria and Egypt seemed to be 
 unaccountable. But when we find that Kadesh and 
 Carchemish were nothing more than frontier capitals, and 
 that the heart of the Hittite empire was upon the broad 
 plains and highlands of Asia Minor, we understand whence 
 they drew the vast wealth and great armies which enabled 
 them so long to contend upon equal terms with the strongest 
 empires of the ancient world. 
 
 It results, then, from these comparatively recent dis- 
 coveries, that the ancient Phrygian race owned the sway 
 and inherited the civilization, or perhaps we should rather 
 say contributed to mould the civilization, of the powerful 
 empire of the Hittites. It may be that, when we know 
 more of the antiquities of this great race, we shall be al:)le to 
 give some more adequate account than is now possible of 
 the religious beliefs and feelings of ancient Phrygia. Some- 
 thing, however, is already known, partly from the classical 
 historians, and partly from the monuments. And that some- 
 thing happens to be of great interest in connection with 
 the subject which we are considering. 
 
 Amongst the ruins of the ancient Phrygian capital are 
 some very interesting sepulchral monuments. One class of 
 them are called heraldic, because they usually consist of 
 lions rampant, separated by a pillar or some other device. 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. IIQ 
 
 It is an interesting fact that the oldest great monument on 
 Greek soil, the principal gateway at Mycence in Argolis, 
 is surmounted by a heraldic device, which is an exact re- 
 production of what may be found among the ruins of the 
 ^old Phrygian capital. This confirms the Greek tradition 
 that the Pelopida3 who erected that gateway were Phrygian 
 immigrants. Amongst the monuments, however, which 
 have a religious significance one of the most interesting is a 
 rock sepulchre, which has sculptured on the walls of its little 
 chamber a rude image of the mother-goddess Cybele, 
 "having on each side of her a lion, which rests its forepaws 
 upon her shoulder, and places its head against hers," just as 
 a domestic cat might do with an indulgent mistress. The 
 lion rubbing its head in loving confidence against the face 
 of the great goddess is as pregnant an expression of the 
 character ascribed by the Phrygians to their great mother 
 as it is possible to conceive. Cybele is thus seen to be an 
 impersonation of that great kind Nature which is loving to 
 all her children, to the fierce lion of the desert as to the 
 little child of the city or the tent. We must not, however, 
 suppose that these ancient Nature-worshippers were blind to 
 the darker aspect of the order in which they lived. Asia 
 Minor, and especially the Phrygian part of it, is a country 
 bare and almost treeless, whose agriculture, the main occu- 
 pation of the ancient inhabitants, is dependent upon a 
 capricious and often insufficient rainfall. This frequendy 
 produced dearth and widespread suffering both to men and 
 beasts. The life of Nature was often burnt up by the fierce 
 summer sun. This fact was mythically represented by the 
 legend of Sabazius, son of the great mother, and representing 
 as such the life of Nature. He was born and flourished in 
 the spring, he was slain by the hot summer sun, and he 
 revived again with the spring of a new year. Cybele was 
 
120 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 represented as wailing bitterly at his death and rejoicing at 
 his restoration. Accordingly, the principal religious cere- 
 mony of this old Nature cult was a wailing with Cybele at 
 the death of Sabazius. To celebrate this rite men and 
 women went forth into obscure places, led by their priests, 
 and, abandoning themselves to the most frantic grief, endea- 
 voured to give expression to their frenzy by orgiastic dances 
 and the music of the flute and cymbal. Such abandonment 
 to the most violent emotions in the obscurity of desert 
 places could never have been without the greatest danger to 
 the moral life. No doubt in the earliest period this ecstatic 
 Nature-worship might be comparatively pure. But when 
 war and commerce had brought the Phrygians into closer 
 communication with the Assyrians, having a Nature-religion 
 with features which strikingly resembled their own, they 
 took over ideas and influences from the hot South of a 
 terribly demoralizing character. 
 
 In his recent Hibbert Lectures Professor Sayce has given 
 us a sketch of the old Accadian worship of Istar, and of its 
 later developments in Babylonia and Phoenicia, which throws 
 great light on the subject we are considering. In the old 
 Accadian days, before Semitic influence had subordinated 
 the feminine god to the male Baal, Nature-worship in 
 Chaldaea would seem to have been almost as simple in form 
 as in Phrygia itself. The Accadian goddess, who after- 
 wards became in Semitic phrase Istar, was originally an 
 independent deity, and called " the lady of the deep." 
 Afterwards she was deemed the goddess of the evening star, 
 and had her place beside the moon and sun gods. In the 
 early Assyrian belief this astral deity stood even higher than 
 Tammuz the sun-god, who was mainly worshipped as her 
 bridegroom. There is a very early hymn which describes 
 her descent into Hades to obtain the water of life for the 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 121 
 
 revival of the slain Tammuz. Professor Tiele has shown 
 that this legend is but a thinly-veiled description of the 
 earth-goddess seeking below for those hidden waters of life 
 which shall cause the sun-god, and all Nature with him, to 
 rise again from their sleep of death. Here, then, we find 
 " the lady of the deep " and goddess of the evening star 
 absorbing into herself the character and offices of the great 
 earth-mother of the Phrygians. These ideas are certainly 
 as early as Sargon, the first Semitic monarch of Babylonia ; 
 and it almost takes one's breath away to learn that the son of 
 this Semitic successor of the old Accadian dynasties is shown 
 by the monuments to have lived and reigned in 3750 b.c, 
 or only 254 years after the supposed date of the Creation, 
 according to the chronology of Usher. In the long centuries 
 which followed, the myth of Istar travelled over many lands, 
 and underwent not a few transformations in the countries 
 to which it came. Istar became in Ionia the Artemis of 
 Ephesus, with her warrior-priestesses, the Amazons. In 
 Phoenicia she became Ashtoreth, in Hierapolis Semiramis; 
 but wherever she went she was always represented as weeping 
 for her slain bridegroom, the sun-god, under his different 
 names, Adonis, Attys, or Tammuz. The more her original 
 character was modified by Semitic influences the more sub- 
 ordinate did she become to the Baal or sun-god, and the 
 more licentious and extravagant became the rites of her 
 worship. *' From Syria," says Professor Sayce, " the cult, 
 with all its rites, made its way, like that of Attys-Adonis 
 to the populations beyond the Taurus. At Komana, in 
 Cappadocia, the goddess was ministered to by six thousand 
 eunuch priests ; and the Galli of Phrygia rivalled the priests 
 of Baal and Ashtoreth in cutting their arms with knives, in 
 scourging their backs, and in piercing their flesh with darts. 
 The worship of the fierce powers of Nature, at once life- 
 
122 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 giving and death-dealing, . . . produced alternate bursts of 
 frenzied torture and frenzied lust." 
 
 But however licentious the later forms of the Istar wor- 
 ship might have become, there clearly was a time in the 
 earlier Accadian history when, as Shamanism and Totemism 
 gave w^ay to the process of impersonation, the worship of 
 Istar in Babylonia was as simple and austere a Nature- 
 worship as that of Cybele among the Hittites and ancient 
 Phrygians. The cults, indeed, resemble one another so 
 closely that we cannot help suspecting a relation of depend- 
 ence ; and if one may venture to speculate, where history 
 is as yet silent, it would seem far from improbable that the 
 Hamitic inhabitants of old Chaldaea and the Hamitic tribes 
 of Cappadocia were originally one people, with one simple 
 conception of Nature and her life as their great goddess 
 and her son. If the one cult were indeed derived from 
 the other, we must look, I doubt not, for its origin to that 
 Eridu, or Edin, at the ancient junction of the Euphrates 
 and the Persian Gulf, w^hich was the main source of the 
 Chaldoean idolatry from which Abram fled, and of those 
 legends of the Flood which have so startling a resemblance 
 to some of the early chapters of Genesis. 
 
 But you may ask : What historical assurance can we have 
 that the ideas of this old Phrygian Nature-worship still 
 retained their hold on the mind and imagination of the 
 inhabitants of the Lycus Valley so many centuries after the 
 destruction of Phrygian greatness ? Conqueror after con- 
 queror had swept over the land, Cimmerian, Lydian, 
 Persian, and Gallic ; overthrowing cities, shattering monu- 
 ments, obliterating all traces of the ancient Phrygian wisdom 
 and grandeur, and reducing the people to a base and hope- 
 less slavery. How was it likely that the old religious ideas 
 and feelings would survive the wreck of everything else? 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. I 2 3 
 
 Religious ideas, I answer, have a more tenacious hold than 
 any which find place in the human mind ; and they have 
 proved themselves, a thousand times, to be stronger than 
 kingly thrones, and harder than the brass of which kings 
 construct their monuments. So was it in the present 
 instance. Not only do we find that wave after wave of 
 Phrygian religious influence swept over the Greek and 
 Roman world, in spite of the satire of poets and the de- 
 nunciation of philosophers, but that, as Mr. Ramsay remarks, 
 "in the first centuries after Christ, no rites but those of 
 Egypt and Phrygia retained much hold of the Grseco-Roman 
 world." The religions of Hellas had lost their soul. Men 
 could no longer see nymphs in every stream, dryads in every 
 oak, or oreads on every mountain. The tales of the gods 
 were full of things which were disgusting or incredible to 
 a secularized intellect. Men only pretended to believe in 
 such things; and their worship, when it was paid, was nothing 
 more than a concession to custom. But for all that, the 
 religious instinct was not dead. It was deathless, in fact, as 
 the human heart itself, and sought eagerly in every direction 
 for satisfaction. Is it, then, so wonderful that at least the 
 masses of mankind should have found what they sought in 
 the comparatively simple Nature-cult of Phrygia, a cult 
 already familiarized in the mysteries themselves ? Or is it 
 wonderful, again, that in an age weary of doubt, and tired of 
 the monotonous, uninteresting round of a mere life of sense, 
 men felt it a relief and a change to be caught up into the 
 whirl of religious excitement produced by the worship of 
 the Great Mother ? 
 
 But if this were the case in the Graeco-Roman world 
 generally, how much more must it have been so in that 
 particular part of it to which this worship was, so to speak, 
 native ; where its ideas and practices had been learnt from 
 
124 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 childhood; and where its prevaiHng feehng had been 
 stamped upon the very nature of the people by the here- 
 ditary influence of an immemorial past ? The very history 
 of Phrygia, therefore, would prepare us to find a people 
 there predisposed to naturalism in thought and enthusiasm 
 in feeling. And if the former tendency realized itself in 
 Gnosticism, and the latter in Montanism with its ecstasies 
 and asceticisms, that is nothing more than we should expect. 
 For no form of religious thought or feeling which has been 
 deeply fixed in mind and heart by custom and heredity, can 
 die out speedily. You may superimpose upon it other forms 
 of a different and even contradictory character —nobler, 
 perhaps, in conception, and purer in force of moral appeal : 
 but the old habitudes are not necessarily thereby eradicated. 
 They lie latent in the mind, silently working and ready to 
 start forth into violent activity on the application of the appro- 
 priate stimulus. It is the forgetfulness of this truth which has 
 brought such undeserved reproach upon Christianity in the 
 course of its historical realization. In the middle ages men 
 were called Christians because they had taken the Christian 
 name, and submitted to certain Christian rites ; and then 
 straightway whatever they did and said in their religious 
 character was attributed to the religion which they had 
 nominally embraced. Nothing could be more unfounded, 
 nor more unjust. The old pagan feelings and habits of 
 thought lurked behind the new beliefs, incessantly cor- 
 rupting them, and not seldom breaking forth through their 
 thin crust into utterly unchristian acts and expressions. So 
 was it in New Zealand in our own days. The New Zea- 
 landers were said to be converted to Christianity ; and so, 
 in a sense, they were. They had gained new convictions, 
 and lived, on the whole, under the impulse of a new spirit. 
 But men forget that behind these there lay, only half-sub- 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 12$ 
 
 dued, the old savage impulses and superstitions, which burst 
 forth at length into that horrible pagan reaction which 
 almost broke Bishop Selwyn's heart. In like manner men 
 are astonished to-day, but most unreasonably so, that the 
 Hindoo deceit, begotten of ages of servile subjection, breaks 
 out again and again, in spite of the restraints of Christian 
 truth and purity, in newly-made converts. It is always 
 dangerous and misleading to ignore facts ; and it is a fact 
 that, even under the powerful impulse of the Spirit of Christ, 
 inherited feelings and beliefs require time for their com- 
 plete eradication. Let us beware of this ourselves. Puritan 
 narrowness is not to be overcome by one, or by a hundred, 
 statements of broader and more salutary truth. Pagan 
 superstitions die hard, even to-day, in many of our country 
 villages. And there will be many an outbreak of Salva-. 
 tionism before the sweet reasonableness of the Gospel has 
 quite expelled the blind passionateness of that religion of 
 hysterical enthusiasm which brings so welcome a relief to 
 the brutish monotony of an ignorant life. We shall not 
 have studied in vain, then, the long course of the Nature- 
 worships of ancient Phrygia and Babylonia, if they have 
 pointed for us this salutary warning, and taught us to add 
 the Divine patience and considerateness of our Great 
 Master to His enthusiasm for purity and truth. 
 
II. 
 
 I SHALL endeavour to-night to explain to you, as far as I 
 may, the nature of the Colossian heresy. 
 
 St. Paul refers to it in such language as the following : 
 " Beware lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of you 
 through his philosophy and vain deceit, according to the 
 tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not 
 after Christ : . . . Let no one judge you in meat, or in drink, 
 or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a Sabbath 
 day : w^hich are a shadow of the things to come; but the body 
 is Christ's. Let no man therefore rob you of your prize by 
 a voluntary humility and worshipping of the angels, taking 
 his stand upon the things which he hath seen, vainly puffed 
 up in his fleshly mind. ... If ye died with Christ from the 
 rudiments of the world, why, as if you lived in the world, 
 have you rules laid down for you, ' Handle not, touch not, 
 taste not,' according to the precepts and doctrines of men? 
 which things indeed have a show of wisdom, in will-worship 
 and humility and severity to the body, but are not of any 
 value against the indulgence of the flesh." 
 
 In these expressions we find a reference to two elements 
 of false teaching, and to an unchristian spirit in which that 
 teaching is set forth. There is false theory, false practice, 
 and a false spirit. The false theory is a theosophic inculca- 
 tion of the worship of angels, an interposition of created 
 mediators between God and man. The false practice is an 
 effort to attain perfection by ascitic observances, by a frigid 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 27 
 
 formalism, and by seventy to the body. And here we 
 observe an element of Jewish influence. The formalism is 
 Jewish formalism. It has respect to meats and drinks, to 
 festivals and Sabbaths. Further, we perceive that these 
 two elements, the Gentile theory and the Jewish practice, 
 are inseparably blended. They evidently form part of the 
 same system, and are equally important, in the mind, of the 
 creators and defenders of that system. 
 
 Once again, the spirit which animates this teaching is 
 proudly exclusive. It has a show of wisdom, and its de- 
 fenders are " vainly puffed up in their fleshly mind." They 
 advance high claims to knowledge, they have a deposit of 
 esoteric truth which they only impart to the initiated ; look- 
 ing, it would seem, upon ordinary believers as ignorant and 
 unenlightened. The spirit of the system is that of an intel- 
 lectual aristocracy, with its characteristic self-satisfaction and 
 its disdain of everything which it thinks beneath it. 
 
 All this would seem to point to a semi-heathen system 
 of speculation, adopted by Jewish Christians, and largely 
 traversed with Jewish formalism and exclusiveness. 
 
 Now is it probable that there would be found in the 
 Jewish Church at Colossae, when our Epistle professes to 
 have been written, Jewish converts who had embraced, 
 and would be likely to propound, such a system of semi- 
 pagan theosophy ? There is little difficulty in giving a 
 definite answer to that question. We know that Antiochus 
 the Great transported two thousand Jewish families from 
 Babylonia into Lydia and Phrygia. Phrygia especially 
 seems to have possessed great attractions for Jewish 
 settlers. Drawn thither by the fertility of the country and 
 its thriving commerce, and not less perhaps by its life of 
 luxury, the Jewish colony of the district of Laodicaea had 
 Increased so greatly that, about sixty year§ before Christ, 
 
128 DANGERS OF THE ArOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 there were at the least (for this is a low estimate) eleven 
 thousand adult freemen there, besides women and children. 
 It follows very naturally that many of the wealthier and 
 more cultured members of this Jewish colony had imbibed 
 the philosophical and cosmological views of their heathen 
 neighbours. The age was cosmopolitan. As early as the 
 time of Alexander national barriers had been roughly 
 beaten down by the sword of the conqueror; and the 
 Macedonians, who had carried with them from Europe the 
 thoughts and beliefs of the West, had brought back, on their 
 return, not only the wares and luxuries, but also the strange 
 superstitions and mystical Nature-cults, of the East. In the 
 apostolic times, especially at such centres as Alexandria, 
 Antioch, Ephesus, and the great cities of Phrygia, this con- 
 fusing intermixture of heterogeneous religions, rites, and 
 riotions was at its height. Protected by the Roman peace, 
 and stimulated by the love of gain, men of all the races of 
 East and West met, traded, and argued in every noted mart 
 of the empire. Thoughts ran along the Roman roads, as 
 freely as merchants and couriers ; and instead of the 
 brooding originality of local thinkers the world had to be 
 satisfied with the glitter of a superficial eclecticism. 
 
 Amongst the agents and intermediaries of this selective 
 reconstruction, the most active, and not the least talented, 
 were the Jews. This, as Mr. LI. Davies remarks, was 
 "something of a paradox." For both by their faith and 
 civil policy the Jews were marked out as a separate and 
 peculiar people. But, as the same writer acutely observes, 
 "the Jewish intellect was more fertile than any other in 
 new theosophic combinations," because " the depth and 
 truth of this people's faith gave them an interest in what- 
 ever laid hold strongly of the convictions of other races." 
 If, then, we find that they were Jews who first introduced 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 29 
 
 Gnostic speculations to the Church of Colossae, this is no 
 more than we might have been led to expect from our 
 knowledge of the character of the Jewish mind, and of the 
 historical connection of the Jewish people with Coloss?e 
 and its neighbourhood. 
 
 But it may be urged we are concerned here, not with 
 Oriental mysticism in general, but with a fairly definite set 
 of opinions and practices. Is there any reliable evidence, 
 then, that the Jewish people of that age were likely to be 
 gnostical in thought and ascetic in practice? In answer 
 to this question Bishop Lightfoot has shown that the faith 
 of the Jewish Essenes of our Lord's days presented these 
 very peculiarities. While decrying generally the specula- 
 tions of philosophers, the Essenes excepted those which 
 treat of the existence of God and of the generation of the 
 universe. They made a great secret of " the names of the 
 angels," a phrase which points not obscurely to some such 
 angelolatry and doctrine of emanations as those prevailing 
 at Colossae. In some sense also, though strict monotheists, 
 they worshipped the sun, as a symbol, probably, of the 
 unseen power which gives light and life. Again, they 
 sought above all things to detach themselves from the 
 ordinary conditions of physical life by ascetic abstinences. 
 They avoided marriage, drank no wine, ate no animal 
 food, refused, though Jews, to offer sacrifices, and held a 
 doctrine of immortality which involved the final separation 
 of the soul from the malignant and polluting contact of 
 matter. 
 
 They had also, in addition to the peculiar doctrines and 
 practices of the later Gnostics, their distinguishing spirit ; 
 possessing an esoteric doctrine which they jealously kept 
 from the knowledge of all but the initiated, and avoiding 
 all contact with the " men of the earth " as unclean and 
 
 9 
 
130 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 defiling. It is not suggested that the gnostical innovators 
 at Colossae were actually Essenic missionaries from the 
 lodges by the Dead Sea. But it is obvious that, if the 
 Jews of Palestine had caught the infection of that spirit of 
 Oriental mysticism which was in the air, it becomes easy 
 to conceive that the members of the same race would be 
 likely to feel its influence in such a country as Phrygia. 
 
 I endeavoured to show you last Sunday that the native 
 faith of Colossae and its neighbourhood was a simple 
 Nature-worship. Nature was to the inhabitants of this 
 region the Great Mother who poured into their lap the 
 rich blessings of wealth and plenty. But she felt, it was 
 supposed, the sharp suffering arising from drought and 
 disease, pain and death. The prevalence of these natural 
 evils, and the dark cloud which they cast over an other- 
 wise bright existence, were dramatically represented in the 
 wailing of the Great Mother for her slain son Sabazius. 
 To bring themselves, then, into harmony with the sorrow 
 of their deity, the Phrygian people invented religious 
 ceremonies of which the principal features were a wild 
 wailing, a frenzied cutting of the body, and a dark and 
 austere asceticism. Their whole cult was, in truth, an 
 elaborate representation of the night-side of Nature. How 
 far, however, they had gone in the direction of duaHsm, in 
 the impersonation of the hostile powers, and in the con- 
 ception of antagonism between these and the Great Mother, 
 we have no means of accurately ascertaining. But, as I 
 tried to show you, there was a close relationship between 
 the religions of Phrygia and Babylonia, a relation, if not 
 of dependence, yet of such close affinity that, without much 
 risk of error, we may illustrate that which is the less by 
 that which is the better known of the two. Now Professor 
 Sayce tells us that the cuneiform records enable us to 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. I3I 
 
 distinguish a decided evolution of dualism in the Babylonian 
 religion. 
 
 "Nothing can show more plainly," he says, "the wide 
 gulf which lies between the religions of pre-Semitic and 
 of Semitic Chaldaea, than the contrast between the Zikum 
 of Eridu, the mother of gods and men, and the wicked 
 Tiamat of the legends, with her misshapen body and 
 malignant mind. In the watery abyss, in which the first 
 philosophers of Eridu saw the origin of all things, there was 
 nothing unholy, nothing abhorrent. On the contrary, it was 
 the home and mother of the great god Ea, the primal source 
 of his wisdom and of his benevolence towards men. But 
 the watery abyss personified by the Tiamat of the poems 
 belongs altogether to another category. It represents all 
 that is opposed to the present orderly course of the uni- 
 verse ; it stands outside of, and in opposition to, the gods 
 of heaven, and is thus essentially evil. Not only has the 
 problem of the origin of evil presented itself to the Baby- 
 lonian : he has found a solution of it in his dragon of 
 chaos. Elsewhere the same author says, in respect to this 
 Babylonian attempt to solve the problem of evil : " The 
 divine powers which he worshipped had once been alike 
 the creators of good and evil, like the powers of Nature 
 which they represented. They had at once been benefi- 
 cent and malevolent. By degrees these two aspects of their 
 character came to be separated. The higher gods came to 
 be looked upon as the hearers of prayer and givers of good 
 gifts, while the instruments of their vengeance and the 
 infiicters of suffering and misery upon man were the in- 
 ferior spirits of the lower sphere. But the old conception 
 which derived both good and evil from the same source 
 did not wholly pass away. Evil never came to be regarded 
 as the antagonist of good, it was rather its necessary com- 
 
132 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 plement and minister. In his combat with the dragon of 
 the chaos Merodach summons the evil wind itself to his 
 assistance ; and in the legend of the assault of the seven 
 wicked spirits upon the moon-god, they are still called the 
 messengers of Anu their king. The powers of darkness 
 are degraded from their ancient position of independence, 
 and either driven, like Tiamat, beyond the bounds of the 
 created world, or reduced to the condition of ministers of 
 the divine wrath." 
 
 You will easily perceive in the evolution of this idea of 
 evil three stages. First, the greater gods are the cause of 
 both good and evil ; secondly, the evil phenomena of the 
 world are assigned to distinct deities of a malignant nature ; 
 thirdly, those malignant deities are subordinated to the 
 good gods and become their ministers, occupying very 
 much the position of the Satan of the Book of Job. Nov^^ I 
 think that this discovery throws new and unexpected light 
 on the growth of the elementary Gnosticism of the Epistle to 
 the Colossians. When we remember the shape which the 
 Gnosticism of Asia Minor took in the hands of Cerinthus, 
 before the end of the first century, there can be little doubt 
 that the angels worshipped by the gnostical Christians at 
 Colossae were so many mediators, interposed between God 
 and matter, to make the creation of so evil a thing the more 
 tolerable in conception. The difficulty which they felt is 
 obvious. How could they conceive that matter, the vehicle 
 and instrument of all pain and lust, came directly from the 
 hand of God ? Some distance must be interposed between 
 things so different. Some intermediaries must be provided 
 to make such a descent conceivable. Accordingly there 
 came into men's minds the pecuHarly Gnostic idea of emana- 
 tion. As Bishop Lightfoot puts it, "the Divine Being 
 germinates as it were." And this first germination produces 
 
THE COLOSSI AN HERESY. I33 
 
 a second, which in its turn becomes the source of many 
 succeeding ones, the Divine element growing weaker in each 
 successive germination. At length contact with matter 
 becomes possible, and there ensues creation. In the 
 system of Cerinthus Christ was one of these emanations, 
 and the Demiurge, or world-Creator, another. .This Demi- 
 urge w^as utterly ignorant of the existence of the original 
 Deity, and therefore there can be little wonder if many of 
 the Mosaic laws proceeding, as the Gnostics held, from the 
 Demiurge are contrary to the Divine will. These imagin- 
 ary mediators between God and matter still retain the 
 Jewish name of angels in the system of Cerinthus, and so 
 point back to the ideas which stood behind the angel- 
 worship at Colossse. But how came those ideas to have 
 obtained a footing in that city at so early a period as the 
 middle of the first century ? This is the problem which 
 commentators upon this Epistle have hitherto found so 
 puzzling. 
 
 It has been usual to point to the influence of the faith 
 of ancient Persia, Zoroastrianism. I cannot doubt that 
 Zoroastrianism exercised a powerful influence both in 
 Babylonia and Asia Minor, for both these countries were 
 long under the Persian dominion. Still there is a funda- 
 mental difference between the later faith of Persia and that 
 of the Christian Gnostics. The Persian religion occupied a 
 position towards the problem of evil which was, so to speak, 
 the more logical. Though not in the Zend-Avesta, yet in 
 the Persian religion of the age of Darius, that which was 
 known to Asia Minor, the evil principle was absolutely 
 independent of the good one. Angro-Mainyus, the head of 
 the cosmical dominion of evil, fought on well-nigh equal 
 terms against Ahura-Mazda, the creator and ruler of the 
 dominion of truth. 
 
134 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 Now this position was never assumed by Gnosticism, 
 even in its most developed forms. Always in it the creator 
 of evil was an emanation, at whatever distance, from the 
 good God. He might be ignorant of his Divine Originator, 
 might even be antagonistic to Him, but still he was never 
 without something of His essence, nor ever entirely free 
 from His dominion. This was a conception radically dif- 
 ferent from the sharp and fundamental dualism of Persia. 
 The one could never have been derived from the other. 
 Whence, then, shall we say that the Colossian heresy derived 
 its characteristic form and contents? I believe that our 
 recently attained knowledge of the Babylonian religion 
 enables us to give a very probable answer to this question. 
 I showed you last Sunday evening that the ancient worship 
 of the Turanians of Asia Minor had a very close affinity to 
 that of the old Turanians of Chaldsea. Now in Asia Minor, 
 in the empire of the Hittites, this worship retained its 
 independence for thousands of years after it had been 
 profoundly modified in Chald^ea by the Semitic conquest 
 of that country. We ought not, then, to be astonished when 
 we find that the earth-mother of Phrygia in Roman days 
 is far nearer to the Zikum of ancient Eridu, or Edin, than 
 the Istar of Semitic Babylonia. Istar was Zikum reduced 
 to subordination by the Semitic feeling of the supremacy of 
 Baal, the sun-god. No doubt, after the Assyrian conquest 
 of the Hittites, the worship of the great mother of Phrygia 
 was modified to some extent by the Semitic cult of Istar. 
 But this modification, however far it went, would be in 
 the direction, not of the Persian independence, but of 
 the Semitic subordination of the ancient mother-goddess. 
 The same process had no doubt proceeded to some extent 
 also among the Jews, during and after their captivity 
 in Babylonia and Assyria. They had there been made 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 35 
 
 acquainted with the kindred Semitic ideas about the gene- 
 ration of evil in the later stage of their evolution. The 
 dragon and evil spirits of Babylonia have a distinct resem- 
 blance to the Satan and serpent of the Old Testament. 
 They are subordinate to the Supreme God, and though in 
 general hostile to Him, are made unwillingly the ministers 
 of His designs. When, therefore, the Jewish converts of 
 St. Paul's days introduced into the Colossian Church the 
 idea of angelic mediators, as intermediaries between the 
 good God and the evil phenomena of the world, they 
 introduced ideas which were far from being strange or 
 unfamiliar either to the Jewish or Gentile members of the 
 Church at Colossse. We thus obtain, I think, a very 
 probable account of the genesis at once of these ideas, and 
 of the influences which gave them their ready acceptance. 
 
 It may sound strange, perhaps, to say that the Christian 
 religion itself was likely to have under such circumstances 
 a very powerful part in stimulating such speculations. But 
 a moment's consideration will suffice, I think, to show the 
 reasonableness of such a supposition. For the more the 
 idea of God was cleared of obscuring and degrading Pagan 
 suggestions, the more ethical that idea became, the more 
 righteousness took in it the place of power, and paternal 
 love of natural capriciousness, the more intolerable must 
 the thought have seemed, to those who looked upon matter 
 as the source of lust and suffering, that God had been the 
 direct Creator of matter. How could the God and Father 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ have created that which was 
 believed to be the universal basis of sin and pain ? Such 
 was the question which, in the atmosphere of old Phrygian 
 thought, would inevitably be suggested to Jews who had 
 imbibed the modified dualism of Assyria. 
 
 I fear, too, that amongst these Jewish speculators there 
 
136 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 was another and a less worthy motive. Six or seven years 
 before the date of the Epistle to the Colossians St. Paul, as 
 we have seen, had fought a great battle with the Judaizing 
 Christians of the Church of Galatia, who had required Gentiles 
 to be circumcised and to keep the Law of Moses. It was, 
 perhaps, the fiercest and most momentous battle which was 
 ever fought in the world in defence of Christian liberty. On 
 its issue it depended whether men should be saved by law 
 or by grace : whether the Christian Church should dwindle 
 into a Jewish sect, or should become the religious home 
 of the world. St. Paul triumphed ; but at such a cost of 
 labour and anxiety as was never paralleled even in his 
 ministry of continued toil and care. Can we suppose, then, 
 that Jewish bitterness and exclusiveness would suffer them- 
 selves to be extinguished by a single defeat, however 
 decisive ? Nay, may it not seem at first sight not a little 
 unnatural that, so soon after that first fierce conflict, we 
 should hear so little as we do, in an Epistle directed 
 against Jewish errors, of the claims of circumcision, or of 
 the necessity of the law to salvation ? So it might seem, 
 until we give the matter a little careful consideration. But 
 do we not see every day how soon public interest subsides 
 in a question which has been irreversibly decided ? Who 
 cares anything now about the contention so hotly debated 
 a few years ago, in respect to the Oath or Declaration of 
 Members of Parliament? The question of Electoral Reform, 
 again, once excited the whole country to a pitch of passion 
 almost unprecedented ; but who cared to speak of it a few 
 years after its final settlement ? So was it with the question of 
 the equality of Jews and Gentiles in the Church, when once 
 that question had been finally settled by the enormous 
 increase in the number of Gentile Churches, and by the 
 authority of the Apostles. At the same time the acute 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESV. 137 
 
 remark of Professor Salmon is worthy of notice, that in the 
 twin Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians there are 
 plain indications that this dispute had not been long 
 decided. We take it as a matter of course that we have 
 as much right to every Christian privilege as the children 
 of Abraham. But to St. Paul when he wrote these Epistles, 
 "this truth is no mere matter of course, but an amazing 
 paradox. He is still astonished beyond measure, as he 
 contemplates the mystery of Christ, that the Gentiles should 
 be fellow-heirs and of the same body, and partakers of His 
 promise in Christ by the Gospel." In other words, the 
 great controversy about the claims of the law and of the 
 Jew had only just been decided. 
 
 But the Epistle to the Colossians shows us that the spirit 
 of Jewish exclusiveness which had aroused that former con- 
 troversy was neither dead nor disposed to confess itself 
 finally defeated. If it could not attain its ends by asserting 
 the claims of an exclusive law, it would endeavour to reach 
 the same goal by claiming the possession of a superior 
 wisdom. The Jew would be satisfied if only by some 
 means he could set himself above the Gentile, if either by 
 means of law, or of gnosis, he could vindicate his claim to 
 superior privilege, and so break down the universality of 
 the Gospel. Accordingly we find that in the Epistle to the 
 Colossians St. Paul has to change his Hne of defence. " It 
 is no longer," as Bishop Lightfoot well points out, " against 
 national, but against intellectual, exclusiveness that he con- 
 tends. It is not against the Jew as such, but against the 
 Jew become Gnostic, that he fights the battle of rehgious 
 liberty." The signs of it are evident in every page of our 
 Epistle, in the strenuousness with which he claims to " warn 
 every man, and teach every man in every wisdom, that he 
 may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus." There is 
 
138 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 no intellectual aristocracy in the Church, sharply distin- 
 guished from the common herd of believers by the possession 
 of special knowledge. Every kind of knowledge is the pro- 
 perty of every man, and perfection is to be attained not by 
 the favoured few, but by the believing many. It is in Christ 
 that are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, 
 and to them every man may obtain access who outwardly 
 in baptism, and inw^ardly by faith, comes into Christ, lives 
 in Christ, and follows Christ. Christianity is not an order, 
 with its inner circle of mystagogues and its outer circle of 
 devotees ; but a brotherhood of spiritual equals, all finding 
 one another in Christ, all teaching and helping one another 
 by the power of the same Spirit. No matter what difficulties 
 may be presented by the evil which is in the world, or by 
 the sin which is in the heart of man, we are not to seek the 
 solution of these difficulties by denying the common Head- 
 ship of Christ or the universal brotherhood of believers. 
 These are great positive facts, and we are not to relax our 
 hold upon them because it may be hard to reconcile them 
 with certain phenomena in the world and in the Church. 
 
 What is the real relation between these phenomena and 
 those truths it will be my endeavour to point out in my 
 remaining lectures ; but meantime let us not fail to learn, 
 from the example of the Colossian Christians, how dangerous 
 a thing it may be to endeavour to explain the difficulties of 
 life from the resources of our own reason alone. Our being 
 is more than our thought. The contents of our knowledge 
 begin in sensations which we experience, but cannot explain. 
 The processes of our reasoning begin with axioms which 
 we are obliged to affirm, but cannot prove. How we have 
 become such as we are, with just such a natural constitution 
 and such capacities of thought, will, and emotion as we 
 possess, is a mystery entirely hidden from us. We must be 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 39 
 
 satisfied to know the facts. Much more is our intellect at 
 fault when, passing beyond the contents of consciousness, 
 it endeavours to comprehend the real things from which 
 we derive our impressions. "Who can tell what those real 
 elements of being are at which we throw out the names 
 Matter and Force ? Who can prove the objective existence 
 of time and space, of an eternal world and of God? If, 
 indeed, our intuitions are to be trusted, we have a firm 
 conviction that such things exist. But such proof of their 
 existence as will satisfy the understanding we have none to 
 give. In a word, being is vaster than our finite intelligence, 
 and is not to be embraced within its categories. If, there, 
 fore, the world and man's life should present to us some 
 mysteries of which we can give no rational solution, this is 
 no more than we ought to expect. No doubt we are bound 
 to do our utmost to reach a reasonable explanation of every 
 object of our thought. It is to this effort that the gift of 
 reason was intended to stimulate us. It is to this effort, 
 never ending, always renewed after every failure, that we 
 owe much of our use and happiness. But let us beware of 
 rashness and arrogance ; let us beware of the folly of reject- 
 ing the deepest truths of revelation and spiritual experience 
 because we cannot readily range them in the ranks of our 
 logical conclusions. They may be truths of so vast a scope 
 that the limits of our thought are too narrow to entertain 
 them. They may only seem to us to be imperfect because 
 the curve which marks the limits of their domain is too vast 
 to be discerned by us in its determining elements. They 
 may seem to be out of harmony with our conclusions at 
 certain points, because that ultimate harmony involves 
 elements of thought too intricate and multitudinous to be 
 brought by us within a single field of vision. The problem 
 of evil, whether in the world or in man's life, may well 
 
140 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 require for its solution the application of some of those 
 transcendent truths. God may, for instance, be Omnipotent 
 Love, and evil a necessary incident of our finite existence ; 
 while yet we cannot so connect these facts by links of 
 reason as to make their co-existence comprehensible. We 
 are not, however, on that account to be impatient, or to 
 deny rashly either of the facts because we cannot discern 
 the link of their rational connection. Let us remember 
 humbly the limitation of our powers ; and, where they plainly 
 fail us, learn to wait and be patient. 
 
 Is it not enough for us to know, on the testimony of Him 
 who is more to us than reason, that God is a loving Father; 
 that He has revealed His heart and mind to us in the 
 Incarnation of His Son ; that in Christ we have life, and 
 that He is the sole and sufficient Mediator between us and 
 Heaven ? Is it reasonable to deny these most certain facts 
 of our spiritual experience because they seem to be incon- 
 sistent with some other facts not more certain than them- 
 selves ? Remember the solemn words of St. Paul : " Let no 
 man rob you of your prize, taking his stand upon the things 
 which he hath seen, vainly puffed up in his fleshly mind, and 
 not holding the Head." Let us hold fast to Christ whom we 
 know, who lives within our soul, who reveals Himself to us as 
 Son of God and Mediator ; and let us be sure that, whatever 
 disclosures await us in this world or the next, nothing will 
 ever shame us for this constant faith. What is doubt, so long 
 as Christ is mine ? What is earthly darkness, so long as I 
 am filled with the heavenly light ? Yea, what even is evil, so 
 long as the Spirit of Jesus dwells within me, with regenerating 
 power ? This narrow scene of battling light and shade is 
 not the whole of life. A brighter sun shall rise, a larger day 
 shall dawn, and then with widening powers and prospects the 
 mists and shadows of the time-life shall haply flee away. 
 
III. 
 
 We saw last Sunday evening that the Colossian heresy was 
 a system of modified duahsm, having its inspiration in the 
 difficulty felt by Christian men in attributing to a God of 
 Love the creation of sin and pain. Evil they saw was 
 twofold, it was moral and natural : the evil which springs 
 from a selfish will, and that which springs from the consti- 
 tution of the universe. These difficulties are by no means 
 the same, and thus it will be convenient for us to enquire, 
 in the two lectures which remain, how St. Paul treated 
 the Gnostical teaching on each of them. 
 
 To-night our question is : How did St. Paul treat that part 
 of the teaching of the Gnostical Christians of Colossae which 
 was inspired by their perception of natural evil ? They 
 taught that matter was the seat and source of this evil ; and 
 to account for the creation of a thing so unblest as matter 
 they imagined a series of emanations from God, which they 
 called angels or messengers, each of these in succession 
 losing something of the Divinity of his Source, until at length 
 a Demiurge, or world-Creator, was developed who was 
 sufficiently undivine to bring matter into existence. 
 
 In this way they certainly diminished the difficulty of 
 conceiving that a God of love created natural evil, but at 
 the same time (probably without intending it) they challenged 
 the claim of Christ to be the sole Mediator between God 
 and man ; and they adopted an idea of the nature and source 
 of evil which led them to misconceive its remedy. If 
 
142 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 matter were its source, then, clearly, an ascetic separation 
 from everything material must be its cure. And thus the 
 redemption of mankind from evil was made to depend, not 
 on the communication of Christ's new life, but on mere 
 bodily abstinence, on a thoroughgoing asceticism which 
 combined the celibacy of the monk with modern vegetari- 
 anism and total abstinence. 
 
 Now how did the Apostle deal with these new opinions ? 
 Not as we do, by considering their possible reasonableness, 
 or the nature of the objections which they were intended 
 to obviate, but by confronting them with those truths of 
 the Christian faith with which they came into collision. 
 His argument is shortly this : " I know that the Gospel of 
 Christ is true. I know it historically, experimentally, and 
 by the special teaching of the Holy Ghost. What, then, 
 contradicts its fundamental verities must be false. But 
 your system of angelic emanations and bodily austerities 
 does contradict those fundamental verities. Therefore it is 
 false, and to be rejected by all true believers. There is no 
 such evolved Demiurge as you imagine : for He ' who is 
 the image of the invisible God ' is also the Firstborn of all 
 creation ; for in Him were all things created, in the heavens 
 and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible (things 
 material as well as things spiritual), whether, to adopt your 
 language, they be thrones or dominions or principalities 
 or powers — all things (matter included) have been created 
 through Him and unto Him (through His power and unto the 
 furtherance of His designs), and ' in Him all things hold 
 together,' continuing in Him even as they originated from 
 Him." St. Paul will have no duaUsm. He will tolerate no 
 rival to his Master on the mediatorial throne. Christ is all, 
 and in all ; matter is His not less than spirit ; and redemp- 
 tion is to be had, not in separation from matter, but in 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 43 
 
 communion with Him. Thus the whole Gnostical heresy 
 is torn up by the roots, duaHsm is discarded, and the unity 
 of the Godhead is affirmed in scorn of all consequences. 
 I think one may say without fear that this theology of 
 St. Paul is the only theology which can be consistent with 
 the discoveries of modern science. Vv^ith such truths before 
 us as the constancy of the quantity of matter, the conservation 
 of energy, the identity of the material in sun and earth 
 and stars, the vast scope and range of cosmical laws, and 
 the transference even of forms of life from planet to planet, 
 we see that the universe is a unity, and that if it had an 
 Author it could have no more than one. As Mr. Cox has 
 truly said : " There may be one God, that to science is an 
 open question ; but more than one there cannot be ; that 
 question is closed, and science herself stands to guard the 
 way to it, with a drawn sword in her hand." 
 
 But now, do you see what you have done ? some may be 
 ready to answer. Do you not see that, by agreeing with 
 what you call the common conclusion of St. Paul and science, 
 you have brought back the whole terrible problem of 
 natural evil upon us, with all its tormenting and unresolved 
 contradictions ? Yes, I know that I have, but what then ? 
 Is it not better to face a difficulty than to accept a false 
 solution of it ? Nay, even on the lower ground of utility, 
 is it not better to have a Living, Omnipotent Saviour, the 
 Lord of earth and heaven, of good and evil, than battling 
 gods in the heaven above and on the earth beneath, with 
 some false alleviation of a difficulty ? 
 
 Yes, but I may be asked, "How are you going to deal with 
 that difficulty which, like a horrible monster, stands with 
 threatening roar before the gates of the moral Paradise ? " I 
 acknowledge that the difficulty is a formidable one, and that 
 it has lost none of its terrors for the strongest thinkers of 
 
144 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 modern days. One of the latest and one of the most 
 popular works of German philosophy, Von Hartmann's 
 " Philosophy of the Unconscious," is little else than a long 
 exhibition of the proofs of natural evil. As, however, our 
 own great thinker, J. S. Mill, must be better known to you, 
 and as he states the revulsion of a keen moral sense against 
 the manifold evils of the world as strongly as possible, it 
 may be convenient to present our difficulty in his own vivid 
 words. He sees Nature as the Poet Laureate did, " red 
 everywhere in tooth and claw." " If," says he, " there be 
 any marks at all of special design in creation, one of the 
 things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of 
 all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and 
 devouring other animals. They have been lavishly fitted 
 out with the instruments necessary for that purpose, their 
 strongest instincts impel them to it, and many of them seem 
 to have been constructed incapable of supporting themselves 
 by any other food." Such is the impression received in the 
 world of life. If now we turn to the inorganic forces of 
 Nature, do we find the prospect more inviting ? No, says 
 Mr. Mill ; there matters are, if possible, worse. " A single 
 hurricane destroys the hopes of a season ; a flight of locusts, 
 or an inundation, desolates a district ; a trifling chemical 
 change in an edible root starves a million of people. Every- 
 thing, in short, which the worst men commit, either against 
 life or property, is perpetrated on a larger scale by natural 
 agents." It would hardly be possible to draw a stronger 
 indictment against the actual order of Nature, or to feel and 
 express a deeper horror at the spectacle which that order 
 presents. In ruder days, when, as hunters, men slew their 
 own food, and even worshipped by means of animal sacri- 
 fices, the spectacle of death was so common that it scarcely 
 attracted notice. And even if floods and storms, famines or 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 45 
 
 earthquakes, shook men's souls and desolated their homes, 
 it was so easy for them to conceive the existence of male- 
 ficent gods, that a plausible explanation of such calamities 
 was found without difficulty. But now, when the idea of 
 many gods has become impossible, and almost equally so 
 the conception of any God but one of love ; when a wor- 
 ship devoid of sacrifices, and a horror of causing misery and 
 death have created the habit, almost the instinct, of merciful 
 feeling ; we cannot listen to such an enumeration of horrors 
 as Mr. Mill sets before us, without an inward shrinking and 
 moral revulsion. We, too, ask, as the Colossian heretics 
 asked of old. Can the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ do all this ? And if not, by w^hom or by what is it 
 done ? By accident it cannot be ; for w^hatever else it may 
 be, this universe is at least a universe of order, and the days 
 do but multiply as they pass the proofs of the existence of a 
 Presiding Mind. But is that Mind Omnipotent ? Is it able 
 to impose' its will upon all its creatures ? or may we suppose 
 some limitations to God's power imposed by hostile will or 
 intractable materials ? We cannot laugh this ancient idea 
 of the Christian Gnostics out of court, for it has actually 
 seemed possible to one of the foremost of our thinkers. 
 
 Hume, in his " Dialogues concerning Natural Religion," 
 makes the representative of orthodoxy concede that the 
 Divine beneficence, though it be guided by wisdom, is yet 
 limited by necessity. Whereupon the sceptic retorts that, 
 " if we take the world as it is, we should rather regard it as 
 the first attempt of a God who is a novice, or as the weak 
 production of a God who had grown old ; indeed, even the 
 idea of a plurality of makers, who had been counterworking 
 each other, might have something to say for itself." Mr. 
 Mill, speaking, however, with far more reverence, thinks 
 that dualism, at least, may have a good deal to say for 
 
 10 
 
146 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 itself. Three essays of his on Rehgion were published after 
 his death. In the two former of these he only suggests 
 dualism as a possible hypothesis. In the first he says : " It 
 may be possible to believe with Plato that perfect goodness, 
 limited and thwarted in every direction by the intractable- 
 ness of the material, has done this because it could do no 
 better." In the second essay he says : " It is possible to 
 hold a belief which regards Nature and Life, not as the 
 expression throughout of the character and purpose of the 
 Deity, but as the product of a struggle between contriving 
 goodness and an intractable material, as was believed by 
 Plato, or a principle of evil, as was the doctrine of the 
 Manichceans." In the third essay, however, written more 
 than ten years later, and containing his own mature ideas 
 upon this subject, Mr. Mill rejects the idea of a principle 
 of evil, and adopts that of the limitation of God's power by 
 an intractable material ; with the alternative that perhaps 
 the evil consequences arose less from the hindrance of the 
 material than from defect in the skill of the Creator. Thus 
 we are left with a decided dualism, having on the one side 
 a God of great but not unbounded power and wisdom, and 
 on the other an intractable matter which He did not create, 
 and cannot wholly adapt to His purposes. 
 
 A very remarkable work, entitled " The Gospel of a Poor 
 Soul," which was published about fifteen years ago at Leipsic, 
 approaches the problem of evil in another way. It makes 
 God and the world absolutely independent of one another, 
 God not even striving, as in the hypothesis of Mr. Mill, to 
 subordinate the world to His purposes. It may be said to 
 be a form of Gnosticism, such as naturally develops itself 
 in the mind of a Christian of the present day who holds a 
 materialistic theory about the nature of the world. In it, 
 God is represented as the Personal Love who gives Himself 
 
THE COLOSSI AN HERESY. 1 47 
 
 to the pious heart for its help and comfort. But though 
 rehgion knows this God as her God, she does not recognise 
 in Him the Creator of the world. With the world, indeed, 
 either in its origin or its order, He has nothing to do. The 
 world is nothing but a mechanism of blindly-concurring 
 forces. By accident, but by accident alone, the movements 
 of this mechanism are favourable to those who love and 
 follow God. God foresaw that this would be so, and He 
 reveals the fact to those who love Him ; though it was not 
 brought about by His pre-arrangement. The world is inde- 
 pendent of God, and God of the world. No doubt this 
 theory removes from the Creator the reproach of all that 
 natural evil over which pessimists make their moan ; but 
 then, on the other hand, how can we ever reasonably co- 
 ordinate the ideas which it puts before us ? How can we 
 think of a God who is infinite activity remaining an idle 
 spectator of the immeasurable activities of the universe ? 
 Or even if we could think this unthinkable thing, how could 
 we ever thus find satisfaction for the wants of our heart ? 
 We need a God who can restrain our will in the midst of 
 sensuous allurements, and who can restore the force which 
 we have lost by selfish indulgence. And how can such 
 restraint be exercised, or such redemption accomplished, by 
 a God who has no contact with the world and no control 
 of its forces ? 
 
 Weisse and Rothe, two modern German philosophers,' 
 have so far modified this idea as to make God the Creator 
 of matter, without becoming its Omnipotent Ruler and 
 Orderer. " Matter," says Weisse, " as the externalized will 
 of God, has come to be in conflict with His personal will ; " 
 and God cannot terminate this conflict at once by a mere 
 exercise of volition, but can only transform the hostile 
 element gradually, in the course of history. Matter is called 
 
148 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 by Rothe the non-Ego of God. It is the source of all that 
 is felt in the world as evil. But in a sense its existence is 
 a necessity. Its removal, and with it the evil which it 
 carries, can only be effected by God's introducing into it 
 the spirituality of His Ego. This, however, will be a long 
 and tedious, nay unending, process ; for after all Divine 
 efforts there will always remain over a kind of slag of 
 untransformed matter, a residuum not disposed of, which 
 necessitates an endless series of new world-creations. Here, 
 again, we have the vicious dualism of the early Gnostics, 
 refined, indeed, in form, but by no means abolished ; 
 for God is conceived in both systems to have evolved 
 from Himself, by the process of emanation, an element 
 which is outside Him and beyond His control. There 
 is something in this world of speculation which limits 
 God, which defies Him, and which is not subordinated to 
 that Divine Word by whom and unto whom all things were 
 created. 
 
 Drobisch, another German philosopher, tries to bring this 
 intractable matter into closer relation to God, by conceiving 
 it to consist of a number of what he calls " independent 
 reals," originally contained in God, but gaining a certain 
 independence by going forth from Him. It is in this their 
 independence that they have developed what we call natural 
 evil. Still, they remain connected with God by means of 
 certain mediating existences (as the Gnostics thought), 
 whether those existences be conceived as analogous to 
 nerves or angels, or something else. But here again the 
 unity of God is sacrificed in an effort to explain the existence 
 of evil ; and, in point of fact, more difficulties are created 
 than are removed. For if these imaginary reals be indepen- 
 dent of God's control, how are we to explain the order which 
 we see in the world ? or how, again, is the world to be deli- 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 49 
 
 vered from evil if the sources of evil have escaped partially 
 or wholly from the direct sway of Divine Love ? 
 
 I have laid all these attempted solutions of the problem 
 of evil before you that you may the better understand its 
 difficulties, and apprehend at once the importance of the 
 Colossian heresy, and of St. Paul's decided rejection of 
 the apparently easy escape of dualism. Still, it is not to be 
 forgotten that the more decidedly we reject dualism the 
 more irrevocably we pledge ourselves to give some tolerable 
 account of the difficulty which is thus aggravated. If God 
 be the sole Creator, if matter even be the work of His 
 hand, how are we to reconcile the creative activity of 
 love with the creaturely development of evil ? I will endea- 
 vour, so far as I can, to give some answer to this inevitable 
 question. 
 
 Natural evil exhibits itself, as we know, in two separate 
 provinces of creation, that of organic instinct and that of 
 inorganic matter ; and it will thus be necessary to consider 
 the peculiar difficulties presented by each. 
 
 First, it is objected that animals are subjected to pain, 
 fear, torture, and death ; nay, that many of them are so con- 
 stituted that they cannot live without inflicting these evils 
 on one another. I observe, first, on such representations as 
 these (especially when made by thoroughgoing pessimists), 
 that they mislead by suppression. All the light and joy of 
 Nature are left out ; and the effect is just the same as if 
 you were to obliterate all the lights of a picture and leave 
 nothing on the canvas but its shadows. The pessimist 
 refuses to see all the lively gestures of animal delight. He 
 will not hear the gay carolling of the birds, nor feel their 
 natural joy in the bright air and the balmy sunlight. He 
 will not, again, perceive the chief cause of their happiness, 
 that it is not in any rational aim and purpose which they 
 
150 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 have, but simply in their work and movement, in the con- 
 genial exercise of their natural faculties. Man's forecast 
 of fear and danger never troubles them. They enjoy the 
 present as if the world held no foe and the morrow no 
 threatening. In one passage of his last essay Mr. Mill 
 remarks this, observing that " the mere play of the faculties 
 is a never-ending source of pleasure," and that " this pleasure 
 when experienced seems to result from the normal work- 
 ing of the machinery, while pain usually arises from some 
 external interference with it." Still, he is not satisfied that 
 any such interference should take place, and asks why 
 Omnipotence could not prevent it ? We must beware here, 
 I reply, of the ambiguity which lurks in the word Omnipo- 
 tence. Omnipotence in God does not mean power to do 
 anything, but only to do anything which does not involve a 
 contradiction in reason. God cannot lie, nor can He make 
 contradictions agree. Bearing this in mind, then, I would 
 ask you if the law of progress is on the whole a good law ? 
 Is it likely to produce the richest variety of finite life ? 
 Does it offer to such life a better hope of enjoyment than 
 the monotonous sameness of unvarying form? Does it 
 furnish the best conceivable stimulus to that effort which 
 is joy ? If these and the like questions be answered in the 
 affirmative, then surely it is not only conceivable, but pro- 
 bable, that God should make this the law of His Creation. 
 But then if He did so He must Himself comply with its 
 condition. The law limits the work. To progress, succes- 
 sively improving generations of creatures are a necessary 
 postulate ; and it follows hence that there must be death. 
 But if there must be death, in what form, let us ask, could 
 it best come ? By the slow decay of sickness, which to a 
 beast means the slow agony of starvation; or like a flash in 
 the stroke of the hawk or the tiger ? To the victim surely 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 151 
 
 the latter is the more merciful method ; while to the slayer, 
 which is without man's sensitive sympathy with pain, no 
 moral deterioration is involved in the act of slaughter. That 
 men should love to kill, that men should deliberately deaden 
 their minds to the sufferings of the panting and frightened 
 creatures which they hunt, is quite a different matter. Man 
 has no business to be Hke the tiger ; and if, by blunting his 
 moral sensibility, he reduces himself to the level of a beast 
 of prey, beyond all doubt he becomes the author of his own 
 moral deterioration. In the case of the beasts, however, 
 it must be obvious to everyone that the natural method 
 of inflicting death is the most merciful which we can 
 conceive. 
 
 Yes, but we are reminded that there is another depart- 
 ment of natural evil in which our recoil from the spectacle 
 of pain is reinforced by a sense of moral unfitness. We see 
 that Nature inflicts pain and death upon moral beings with 
 an absolutely brutal disregard of their moral quality. And 
 it is simply for this reason that Mr. Mill has spoken of her 
 as if she were immoral. " Nature," he urges, " kills. She 
 does this once to every being that lives. She burns, crushes, 
 starves, poisons, tortures by slow agony ; and she does 
 all this with the most supercilious disregard both of mercy 
 and of justice, emptying her shafts upon the best and 
 noblest indifferently with the meanest and worst. In sober 
 truth," he adds, " nearly all the things which men are hanged 
 or imprisoned for doing to each other are Nature's everyday 
 performances." Now, all this simply means that, as before 
 man came into existence, natural changes take place, not with 
 a view to our moral condition, but with a view to the general 
 stability of natural order. So far, then, as man is corporeal, 
 and therefore a part of Nature, he comes under the laws 
 of their occurrence. Would those, we may well ask, who 
 
152 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 object to the occasional consequences of this regularity 
 desire its discontinuance? Do they think that a world 
 where these physical changes accommodated themselves 
 accurately to the millionfold caprices of man's moral states 
 would be a better world for us than that in which we live ? 
 In such a world there would be no law, no regularity ; we 
 could not predict to-day what would happen to-morrow. 
 The forces of Nature, following the caprices of man, would 
 elude our intelligence and escape from our control; and 
 man would become once more as much the slave of Nature 
 as he was in the days of his barbarian ignorance. Was it 
 well, I ask again, for God to give to Nature that unvarying 
 order which should enable us to use and master her ? Then 
 is it absurdly unreasonable in us to ask God to make 
 Nature at once regular and irregular, absolutely uniform in 
 her changes, and at the same time sensitively responsive to 
 every moral change in ourselves. Does not the grotesque 
 absurdity of such a demand make itself obvious at once, as 
 soon as we descend to details ? When the stones of that 
 tower in Siloam fell, is it soberly demanded that they should 
 have had given to them a miraculous power of discrimi- 
 nating the moral qualities of those who happened to be 
 beneath them, so as to spare the good and crush the bad ? 
 Or, when a man treads upon a snake, is it a reasonable 
 requirement that the snake should have given to it a 
 miraculous power of discerning whether the foot which 
 hurts it is that of a good or evil man, so that it may bite 
 the evil and spare the good ? Does not the very form of 
 such questions demonstrate their folly ? It is for the good 
 of all God's creatures (men included) that the course of 
 Nature should be uniform. And if in some circumstances 
 that uniformity should threaten us with pain and death, 
 what is the lesson which that fact should teach us? To 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 53 
 
 murmur at God and blaspheme Nature ? Nay, rather so to 
 act upon our knowledge of that uniformity as to avoid such 
 danger in time to come. An earthquake or a volcano may 
 no doubt destroy a city. But what then ? Shall we demand 
 the abolition of those subterranean forces, which, as we now 
 know, have their salutary ends to serve ? Or shall we not 
 rather take care in the future not to build our cities in the 
 paths of volcanic vibrations ? These natural accidents, as 
 they are called, are comparatively rare, and will become 
 still rarer as the labour of human thought and observation 
 goes on. 
 
 Can you not see, then, how foolish it is to use the lan- 
 guage of moral intention in respect to that which can have 
 no such intention ? Nature cannot be im-moral because 
 she is un-moral. Man's law is an " ought to be ; " and if 
 knowing what ought to be he does the opposite he is 
 clearly guilty. Nature's law, on the contrary, is a must be ; 
 and therefore she can do neither right nor wrong in follow- 
 ing it. If, then. Nature's proceedings can form no rule for 
 man, must it not be equally true that to apply language to 
 her proceedings which implies moral intent can only be 
 misleading ? 
 
 Nor can such language be fitly transferred to the Great 
 Author of Nature. If He bound Nature fast in the iron 
 links of law, this was not only for the sake of securing her 
 stability, but also for our advantage. And to ask God to 
 continue that advantage while He abolishes it, to subject 
 Nature to an unvarying order while He makes it follow the 
 arbitrary variations of man's free will, is to ask God to re- 
 concile contradictions, to do a thing impossible in its own 
 nature, and therefore as impossible to God as to man. 
 
 What men forget in most of their speculations about evil 
 is this patent truth, that since finite things have their limits, 
 
154 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 which, by excluding other finite things, give them pecuhar 
 qualities and constitutions, God cannot deal with them as 
 if they had no such special qualities. All which we can 
 reasonably expect is, that in determining their relations to 
 each other He shall minimize the inconveniences and dis- 
 harmonies resulting from such relations. And that God 
 does this, making the lights of life overpower its shadows, 
 and the happiness of life preponderate over its pain, I 
 think we may see written plainly across the whole vast 
 record of creation. 
 
 It follows, of course, that most of the difficulties in regard 
 to natural evil which are conjured up and paraded by 
 pessimistic writers are manufactured difficulties. They 
 arise partly from the limitation of our powers, partly from 
 the lack of close and sustained thought, and pardy, I fear 
 I must add, from the inveterate prejudices of those who 
 either through their fault or their misfortune have become 
 habituated to a sceptical cast of thought. 
 
 Let me not, however, be thought either to undervalue 
 these difficulties or to blame unduly those who have set 
 them forth. Their persistent emergence in so many sys- 
 tems of religion, whether among Aryan or Semitic races ; 
 their reappearance, especially amongst Christians, in the 
 Gnosticism of the second century, the Manichseanism of the 
 fourth century, and the rationahsm of mediaeval Provence, 
 all this shows that they have deep root in the very constitu- 
 tion of the human mind, and that they deserve and demand 
 our very serious consideration. But still I think you will 
 agree with me that a close and careful scrutiny tends rather 
 to dispel than to confirm them ; and that at any rate our 
 modern Gnostics go beyond their right when they demand 
 that we shall create for the solution of such difficulties a 
 dualistic theory of the universe. Whatever befalls we must 
 
THE COLOSSI AN HERESY. I 55 
 
 stiil hold fast those fundamental truths with which such 
 theorists were confronted by St. Paul in his Epistle to the 
 Colossians. There is but one God, and one Mediator 
 between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus. He is the 
 Head of all principalities and powers, the Image of the 
 Invisible God, the Firstborn of all creation. All things 
 were made through Him and unto Him, and in Him are 
 all things held together. If there be evil in the world, 
 natural or moral, it is not without His knowledge and 
 permission ; and not also, as I shall try to show you in my 
 next lecture, without His gracious interference for its aboli- 
 tion. Daring as it may sound, we must still say with Isaiah, 
 in God's name : "I am Jehovah, and there is none else. 
 I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and 
 create evil. I am Jehovah that doeth all these things." 
 Easy as it seems to clear God of all responsibility for sin 
 and pain, by affirming the existence of an independent 
 Author of Evil, we must resist the temptation to do so, and 
 at any cost of mental labour or moral pain affirm again and 
 again Jehovah is El-Shaddai, God Almighty; and "what- 
 ever is done upon earth He doeth it Himself." Only thus 
 can our God become our Saviour: " a very present Help 
 in time of trouble." 
 
IV. 
 
 Last Sunday evening we considered the objections to the 
 Divine government of the world which arise out of the 
 existence of natural evil. To-night we are to pursue a 
 similar line of investigation in respect to the existence of 
 moral evil. 
 
 We have found that the Colossian heretics went astray 
 mainly because they misconceived the source and seat of 
 evil. They made evil physical, finding its origin and im- 
 pulse in a matter which, if not independent of God, was 
 directly under the control of beings far removed from Him 
 in will and wisdom. If, then, evil was to be banished by 
 human effort, it must be by withdrawing as far as possible 
 from all contact with matter, by fleshly abstinence, and 
 severities to the body. These practices we found were 
 ethically valueless, because they were based on a doctrine 
 which was speculatively untrue. True evil, namely moral 
 evil, is neither physical nor metaphysical. We are not 
 evil because we have a material body liable to sickness, 
 passionate disturbance, pain and death. Neither, again, 
 are we evil, as some metaphysicians have taught, because 
 we are finite. Finiteness may be defect as compared with 
 infinity, but defect is something different in kind from 
 wickedness. A creature may be of limited powers, and 
 still morally good within his limitations. To call him evil 
 because he is material or finite is to apply the language of 
 moral intention to that which is, in its nature, non-moral. 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 157 
 
 It is to abuse language, and manufacture difficulties. INIoral 
 evil can only arise in a will which is free to choose be- 
 tween two courses, the one opposed to the law of the 
 creaturely constitution, and the other in accordance there- 
 with. We have such a will, and it requires but little 
 reflection to convince ourselves that it is the ordinance of 
 our Creator that we should act under the impulse and 
 direction of love in all our relations to God and man. If, 
 then, knowing and feeling this, we deliberately choose to 
 be selfish rather than loving, we become evil, and fall 
 under the dominion of guilt and sinful desire. 
 
 But now, if we agree to this definition of moral evil, it 
 becomes necessary to acknowledge that the whole world 
 lies in wickedness. All human wills choose to do wrong 
 in greater or less degree ; the whole human race, in other 
 words, has rebelled against the law of its Creator, and has 
 incurred all the terrible consequences of such disobedience, 
 as remorse, pain, aversion from God, and continually in- 
 creasing moral depravation. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, if God be the Omnipotent 
 Ruler and Creator of mankind, did He permit this ? 
 Suppose that we acquit Him, as in reason w^e must, of all 
 active participation in this rebellion against His own laws, 
 why yet, it is asked, did God create man free when He 
 must have foreseen all the terrible consequences of free- 
 dom ? This is really the question which lurks at the heart 
 of all that loudly expressed dissatisfaction with the present 
 constitution of the world of which I gave you specimens 
 last week. 
 
 Let us then endeavour, as best we may, to see what real 
 weight and meaning there are in this question. It contains 
 in effect two accusations against the Almighty Maker of 
 man, first, that He gave to His creature a free will ; and 
 
158 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 secondly, that by establishing the law of heredity, or of 
 transmission of qualities, He made it certain that evil 
 having once obtained a place in our volitional habits, would 
 be indefinitely spread and perpetuated. 
 
 Our first question is : Why did God make moral evil a 
 possibility ? Because, I reply. He could not create a being 
 free from the constraint of instinct, without leaving that 
 possibility open. Either, then, God must have restrained 
 the ascent of being upon the earth within the low limits of 
 instinct ; either He must have prevented it from rising to the 
 lofty level of moral consciousness ; or He must have left the 
 choice of evil a possibility. Had it been better, then, if God 
 had refrained from impressing on men the image of His 
 own Divine Freedom ? AVe will suffer Rousseau to answer 
 that question. " To murmur," he says, " because God does 
 not hinder man from doing evil, is to murmur because He 
 made him of an excellent nature, and attached to his actions 
 the moral character which ennobles them. . . . What ! in 
 order to prevent man from being wicked must he needs be 
 confined to instinct and made a brute ? No, God of my 
 soul, never will I reproach Thee for having made it in Thine 
 own image, that I might be free, good, and happy like Thy- 
 self." Let it be admitted, if you will, that freedom means a 
 possible fall, nay, that freedom is in itself in some sort a 
 temptation, seeing that he who feels the stirring of selfish- 
 ness within him must needs be tempted to prove the 
 reality of his liberty, by doing what the law forbids, still, 
 while recognizing this, and with a full historical knowledge, 
 moreover, of all the ills with which the abuse of freedom 
 has afflicted humanity, I say deliberately that if God offered 
 me instinct with security, or freedom with danger, I would 
 choose freedom. 
 
 But then, it may be urged, What have you to say about 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 59 
 
 the laws of heredity and solidarity ? Had it not been better 
 to dispense, at least, with these ? I unhesitatingly answer, 
 No. I am of the mind of that heathen forefather of mine, 
 who, when told that baptism, while giving him heaven, 
 would separate him from his dearest, deliberately refused 
 it. And at the prompting of what motive ? Of that which 
 made St. Paul exclaim, "I could wish myself accursed 
 from Christ for my brethren," of that which struck out 
 from the travailing soul of Moses the glorious words, 
 " Spare these," these foolish straying sheep " or blot me, 
 I pray Thee, out of the book which Thou hast written." It 
 is in sympathy with such words as these that we feel and 
 know the law of solidarity to be the prime condition of 
 human blessedness, because it is no other than the law 
 of love. 
 
 And now let us not forget, as men are so apt to do, that 
 this law operates in both directions, to facilitate the trans- 
 mission of good as well as of evil influences. For solidarity 
 means that humanity is a sensitive organism, the seat of a 
 single life, feeling the impulse, responding to the influence, 
 and thrilling to the pain or pleasure of each of its members. 
 If, therefore, every evil influence can propagate itself through- 
 out the whole ocean of human feeling, just as every vibration 
 of the light-aether can to the utmost confines of that world- 
 embracing medium, so also can every impulse for good. If 
 the spring of love be in me, this law secures to it free 
 course, and illimitable influence. Then I know that for 
 every loving choice of mine, the whole world of humanity 
 is waiting ! What a dignifying, what an intensifying, 
 what an enlarging, of my moral life is here ! How it 
 elevates the motive of every action ; how it opens all the 
 floodgates of that glorious enthusiasm of humanity, which 
 every heroic soul has felt ! How it justifies what some 
 
l6o DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 have called the quixotic Christian impulse of fraternity ! 
 Let the worst come, I say, let the heavens fall, life is still 
 worth living if it have such splendid issues as this ! When 
 a true thought, which is also a deep and great one, gets 
 once breathed upon the air, this law secures to it an 
 indestructible vitality ; for there is something in the heart 
 of man which rises up to greet it, to welcome it, and to 
 rejoice in it; just as the plants do when they throw out 
 their triumphant garlands of flowers to hail the coming 
 of the vernal sun. Not only -physiology, but much more 
 comparative philology, and in these last days comparative 
 religion also, have been combining to force this conception 
 upon the understanding and heart of the world. We would 
 not part with it if we could. We would not break ourselves 
 off from the great life of our toiling and suffering kind, 
 even if by so doing we could escape the thousand ills 
 w^hich a community of nature and interest brings along 
 with it. 
 
 Yes, but I may be asked here. Could not a wise 
 Omnipotence have given us this high prerogative of 
 freedom, and this quick participation in the sensitive life 
 of humanity, and yet have lightened for us the load of moral 
 evil, or opened to us at least a brighter pathway to moral 
 restoration ? If the high gift of freedom must become the 
 fatal spring of that torrent of evil which, like a dark river 
 of death, has filled the whole course of man's history, 
 might not the Divine love have erected somewhere a 
 barrier against its destructiveness ? It may, I answer, have 
 been just and necessary for God to make man innocent, 
 and to leave him to win perfection for himself through fall 
 and struggle. When once, indeed, the will to live, as 
 Schopenhauer calls it, had mastered the will to love, the 
 only way of salvation was obviously the way of self-denial, 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. l6l 
 
 True as beautiful is the address of Goethe to the sinful 
 soul — 
 
 •' Till this truth thou knowest, 
 Die to live again ; 
 Stranger-like thou goest, 
 In a world of pain." 
 
 And perhaps to the first transgressors there may have ap- 
 peared as much hope as beauty in such words. Death unto 
 a sin recently indulged may to them have seemed not wholly 
 impossible. But how is it with us, who came into the 
 world, as we too well know, with the yoke of evil passions 
 bound on us by the law of heredity, with a will fatally 
 weakened, and with selfish lusts raging for satisfaction with 
 the accumulated force of ages of indulgence ? What is liberty 
 to us, in such circumstances, but liberty to do wrong ? What 
 is fraternity to us, but fraternity in a common impulse and 
 sentiment of inordinate selfishness ? Can it be just, then, 
 for God, who made us what we are, and set us in the 
 concourse of all these tyrannous impulses, to require us to 
 master our inherited vices by the effort of an enfeebled 
 will ? Having given us a nature, weak at the first, and so 
 plastic to evil impressions that these once made must 
 needs pass into forces of habit, is it just in Him to require 
 us to struggle up by our own strength alone, and with 
 palsied hands to defeat His enemies and ours ? How are 
 those going to answer this question who deny the possibility 
 of Divine revelation and the reality of Divine succour ? No 
 revelation is there, no inspiration, no inbreathing of a 
 spiritual might which may potentialize our feebleness, 
 nothing but what man can win for himself, in the nightmare 
 of that dim futility to which heredity has reduced us ? 
 How can you wonder, then, that men like Mill, who believe 
 this, cry out in shrieking exasperation against the injustice 
 
1 62 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 of God ? They dwell in the horror of a great darkness 
 because with their own hands they have blotted out the 
 sun of God's redeeming love from the heaven of their 
 thoughts and hopes. 
 
 Oh, my brethren, groaning and struggling among the 
 distracted confusions of our time, Hfe is tolerable to me 
 because I believe that, while God foresaw and permitted all 
 which has happened. He at the same time determined, or 
 ever the world was, to make man's sin the occasion of such 
 a display of His love as should dazzle the eyes of the bright 
 sons of the morning, and fill all heaven with praise. I am 
 not afraid to say wath Krause that God felt the pain of His 
 poor children who had wilfully cast themselves into selfish 
 misery ; and that this sympathy with sinners only failed to 
 produce unblessedness in the heart of our tender Father, 
 because along with the pain, and stimulated by it, came 
 the resolve, by an act of infinite and ineffable sacrifice, to 
 rescue them from misery and restore them to life. Down 
 all the long ages of the past this redeeming purpose was 
 silently working towards its end ; the Divine Word lighting 
 with the beams of His truth, and sustaining by the force of 
 His sympathy, the generations which only knew Him as an 
 inward voice. And then, in the fulness of the times, when 
 the world's teachers were able to receive the truth, and the 
 world's multitudes had been taught the need for it, God 
 sent forth His Only Begotten Son, clothed with visible 
 flesh and speaking with man's voice, to take up for us the 
 great battle against evil, and to bring it to a triumphant 
 issue. Further, He did it in such a way as to glorify all the 
 laws which He had established. His Son should come 
 under the great law of solidarity. Man amongst men. He 
 should feel the full force and horror of evil. No favour 
 should be shown Him. Down into the depths where the 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 63 
 
 lowest lie should He come, down into the very focus of all 
 evil forces, there to fight His awful battle, to be tempted, 
 to be grieved, to be oppressed as never a Job or a Paul was, 
 and to win to the shore of victory, if He won thither at all, 
 against the full stress of all the stormy tides of evil. How 
 He fought that battle ; how He fainted in the stress and 
 darkness of it ; how, beaten to His knee by hosts of mighty 
 foes, He yet struggled up again, and with the flaming sword 
 of love smote unto death him that had the power of death ; 
 all this is written in the story of His life. 
 
 But what most it concerns us to notice is this, that 
 whatever was done by Him, was done for mankind as a 
 whole. Christ, we are told, was a new Adam, the Father 
 of a new race, the Head and Source of a new Creation, 
 which should derive from Him, in the second birth of 
 faith, a Diviner nature, a pure opulent life potentialized by 
 the spirit of His love. But just because this life is moral 
 in its impulse and its nature, it cannot be taken physically 
 like the life of the body, but must be received voluntarily 
 in each case through the illimitable trust and self-surrender 
 of faith. Nevertheless it is a life for all, seeing that self- 
 surrender to Christ is possible for all. Not because a man 
 is a Jew, or a prince, or a philosopher, but because he 
 is a man, having the nature which Jesus assumed and 
 enlarged and ennobled and bore triumphantly through 
 death to the throne of the Eternal, we, the humble servants 
 of the Lord, are bidden to offer to him a full and free 
 redemption, on the sole condition that by trustful self- 
 surrender he becomes one spirit with Christ. This law of 
 solidarity within the Church seems never to have been 
 absent from St. Paul's thought. He cannot too frequently 
 repeat that all our highest blessings are gained and kept 
 in Christ. "I live," he said of himself, "and yet not 
 
164 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 I, but Christ liveth in me." And what was true of 
 himself was no less true of his Colossian brethren. " Ye 
 died," he cries, died to the old selfish evil, " and your hfe 
 is hid with Christ in God." If it were the good pleasure of 
 the Father " that in Christ should all the pleroma," all the 
 fulness of the Divine perfections, dwell, it was not less true 
 that " in Him ye are made full," full of the very life of 
 God, of that grace which is " Christ in you, the hope 
 of glory." Nor may we confine the operation of this law 
 to the limits of the Church. It has an effect, both retro- 
 spective and universal. Christ is " the light .which lighteth 
 every man coming into the world." If there were any true 
 religious thought, or any deep religious feeling, in the ages 
 of preparation, to that Divine Word which spake as a still 
 small voice in the heart's depths was it due. It was this 
 Voice of God which spoke, in Creation and Providence, 
 those words of wisdom and love in which men (had they 
 but listened with attentive ear) might have caught the 
 declaration " of His eternal power and Godhead." It was 
 this Divine Word, anointed of God to be man's Redeemer, 
 who as truly came near to the Gentile in signs of natural 
 beauty and order, in testimonies of conscience, and mutual 
 moral questionings, as to the Jew in types and shadows and 
 prophetic pre-intimations. 
 
 Are we disposed perchance to murmur because it seems 
 to us that the full declaration of God's redeeming will was 
 too long delayed? How can we tell, I answer, what men 
 were ready to receive ? Might it not rather seem, from the 
 after fortunes of the Gospel, as if Christ had anticipated 
 " the fulness of the time " ? What says the Apostle ? 
 " He came unto His own," to His own whom He had 
 been specially training for ages, " and His own received 
 Him not." His Gospel, as we know to our sorrow, has 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 65 
 
 been preached for more than eighteen centuries to an 
 ungrateful world. And still, either through the coldness 
 of the teachers or the perversity of the hearers, to the 
 majority it is preached in vain. 
 
 Men will not understand that God cannot force truth 
 and life on the unwilling without robbing them of their 
 moral freedom; without depriving them of that very nature 
 which He sent His Son to renew. Men must take the 
 Gospel freely, or they cannot have its blessing. They must 
 submit to Christ willingly, or they cannot enter into His 
 spirit of absolute submission to the Father. It was 
 " because of the hardness of the people's hearts " that 
 Moses had to permit things which were less than absolutely 
 good, and that our Lord had to tell His disciples what 
 I fear He has still to tell us, "I have many things to say 
 unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." When we think 
 of the stubborn moral hindrances which the Gospel has 
 to overcome, let us strive to be humble and patient. Is 
 it not enough for us to know that in the purpose and 
 counsel of the Omnipotent, redemption is to be absolutely 
 universal in its scope.? "God was in Christ reconciling 
 the world unto Himself," yea, not this world only, but 
 whatever other intelligent worlds are to be found within the 
 bounds of His infinite sway. " It was the good pleasure 
 of the Father, through Him, to reconcile all things unto 
 Himself; through Him I say, whether things upon the 
 earth, or things in the heavens." God created all things, 
 " to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers 
 in the heavenlies might be made known, through the 
 Church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the 
 eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our 
 Lord." How vast is the scope, how illimitable the range, 
 of this Christian solidarity, as it is set forth in these twin 
 
1 66 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 Epistles to Ephesus and Colossae ! Do we owe those 
 ancient heretics nothing then who, by their earnest specu- 
 lations upon evil, struck out for us such glorious and far- 
 reaching revelations as these ? Was it not well for us, and 
 for all generations of believers, that, by their stubborn battle 
 for a clearer truth and a stronger light, they called out, 
 it may be into more distinct perception, at any rate into 
 larger and fuller expression, the great thought of St. Paul, 
 that not only Jews and Gentiles, but absolutely all things 
 in the heaven above and in the earth beneath should be 
 " summed up in Christ " ? 
 
 Grant me only this, and all is plain to me. What are sin 
 and pain, yea, what are whole lives and generations full of 
 sin and pain, if God Himself, coming forth from the calm 
 of His unchanging bliss, take on Himself the whole burden 
 of His creature's woe, break with His own arm the bonds of 
 His creature's curse, and pass Himself into His creature's 
 soul as its strength and life ? 
 
 I know that we cannot escape the possibility that free 
 creatures by their obstinate selfishness may conceivably 
 defeat all the efforts of Omnipotent Love. We are not, 
 indeed, driven to this conclusion by any words of Scripture, 
 however some may have misunderstood those words, but 
 rather by the nature of the case. Physical science with its 
 laws of heredity and continuity, and much more mental 
 science with its laws of association and of the persistence 
 of habits, push us onward to the dread suggestion, that the 
 will of man, opposing itself to a Divine goodness seen and 
 hated, might harden itself into immovable moral obduracy. 
 When I survey these possibilities as they stand out in the 
 necessities of thought and the lurid light of abandoned 
 lives, they shake my soul with a great terror, and may well 
 make the impious tremble. 
 
THE COLOSSIAN HERESY. 1 67 
 
 What is your hope then, I may be asked, in the face of 
 this tremendous possibihty ? Must God surrender vast 
 multitudes to the hopeless misery of eternal selfishness? 
 Shall evil in their case triumph after all ? I have no clear 
 assurance, I acknowledge, on the answer to this terrible 
 question ; but I have at least a hope, deep based on Scripture, 
 that the Love which is God will conquer some time, at 
 long last, the evil which is selfishness. When straining my 
 eyes, with eager, tremulous longing, to pierce the depths of 
 that thunder-cloud w^hich hangs threatening over the end of 
 the impenitent, it is not the angry flash of wrath, it is the 
 dawning light of love, which I see illuminating its darkness. 
 I listen in the awful silence, and a voice seems to whisper, 
 " Child, it is I. Behind the cloud which affrights thee 
 there lurks neither a dark necessity nor any invincible 
 element of resistance intractable to My will and purpose, 
 Whatever is done, I am the Doer of it, and My heart is 
 Love. Doubtest thou ? Then look into the face of My 
 Beloved, behold the manger-cradle and the uplifted cross. 
 Can anything be too hard for the Almighty Love which 
 shines from these ? Can any mystery be too dark for this 
 light to illumine? Can any task be too tremendous for 
 this power to achieve ? Looking at these, canst thou not 
 trust Me in ways too devious for thy feet, too dark for thy 
 vision, when * clouds and darkness are the habitation of 
 My throne'?" Yes, our Father, we can and we do trust 
 Thee, not only in our own doubts and sins and misgivings, 
 but also in the darkest bereavements which time can bring 
 us. We trust Thee with our dear ones, who were evil, and 
 who went to Thee with their evil unsubdued in their hearts- 
 We mourned and wept over them, we pleaded vainly with 
 them, while they were with us, and now, now when they 
 are out of reach, we would fain stretch across to them hands 
 
1 68 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 of help, would fain draw them penitent and purified to our 
 bosom. So we feel to them. But Thy love is to ours as 
 the ocean to the water-drop. It has a patience which we 
 know not, a power which we know not, an infinity of means 
 and resources, a depth and efficiency of tenderness, which 
 neither eternity can exhaust nor resistance diminish. Thou 
 canst not cease to love, for then Thou wouldst cease to be. 
 Thou canst not cease to woo, to chastise and teach, for 
 then Thou wouldst cease to love ; and knowing this, we 
 believe that, even in the case of the hardest and the 
 worst. Thou wilt make good in Thine own time, and in 
 ways past our finding out, that largest, grandest promise of 
 Thy Word : " When all things shall have been subjected to 
 Him, then shall the Son Himself be subjected to Him that 
 did put all things under Him, that God may be all things 
 in all creatures." 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 
 
I. 
 
 The practice of sacrifice has occupied a central and decisive 
 position in almost every known form of religion. Whatever 
 else has varied this has always found a place, in all times 
 and among all races, whether Aryan, Semitic, or Turanian. 
 Under all diversities of form the fact is constant ; and it 
 becomes, therefore, a question of the first importance, What 
 is the meaning of this fact ? To what deep common need 
 does it point ? Of what universal belief is it the witness ? 
 As Christian men we naturally look to revelation for the 
 final answer to that question. 
 
 Among Semitic peoples, and especially among that 
 Semitic people which was the chosen organ of revelation, 
 the keen sense of sin, and of the estrangement which it 
 causes between man and God, has given to sacrifice special 
 prominence and meaning. Above all, then, in the vast and 
 complicated system of sacrifice (with its chosen ministers 
 and its diversity of offerings and ceremonial), which forms, 
 one may say, the heart of Jewish worship and belief, we 
 naturally seek the clearest expression of true ideas upon 
 this subject. At once, however, we are met by a great 
 difficulty. The Jewish system is not one of final obligation 
 and authority. It was not itself the substance, but only 
 the shadow, of eternal truth. Its precepts were not for all 
 time, but only for a period and economy which have already 
 passed away. If, then, its sacrificial system is to be a trust- 
 worthy guide to us, in our inquiry, we must discover, if 
 
172 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 possible, a Christian explanation of its main features and 
 ordinances. Can we find such an explanation ? If I 
 answer that we can only discover it in a single book of the 
 New Testament, I shall be thought, perhaps, to speak 
 rashly. And yet I believe this to be the fact. 
 
 The question of the place and meaning of the sacrificial 
 system of the Old Testament is never once directly considered 
 by St. Paul. The difficulty which he had to encounter was 
 of a larojer kind. It was connected with the ordinance of 
 circumcision, the initial rite of the Old Covenant ; and it, 
 therefore, shaped itself thus : Is the Law of Moses as a whole 
 obligatory on the Christian ? Can it deliver him from sin ? 
 Can it even help towards his deliverance ? Is it, in such 
 wise, a necessary element in God's eternal purpose of re- 
 demption that every believer in Christ must first become a 
 son of the law before he can become a Christian ? You 
 know that the Apostle's answer to this question was a 
 sweeping and uncompromismg negative. The law could 
 only make a demand for righteousness, but could in no 
 wise enable anyone to answer that demand. A man could 
 be justified before God, not by works of a law, but only by 
 faith in Christ. The righteousness of the law could be ful- 
 filled, not by knowledge of what the requirements of that 
 righteousness were, but only by the power of the Holy 
 Spirit. The law might, indeed, produce a conviction of sin, 
 but it could neither give the sense of forgiveness, nor the 
 power to become holy. The law, then, argued the Apostle, 
 could be of no final nor perpetual validity. To the Christian 
 especially the law was dead, and he to it ; as much dead to 
 it as a widow to the authority of a deceased husband. So, 
 then, he concludes, " We are delivered from the law, that 
 being dead wherein we were held, that we should serve in 
 newness of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter." 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 173 
 
 If we were to accept this conclusion, without condition 
 or explanation, it would seem to reduce our question about 
 the Jewish law of sacrifice to insignificance. What have 
 we to do with Jewish sacrifices, it might be urged, when 
 the whole law, of which they were part, is dead and gone? 
 What remains but that we bury it, as quickly as possible, in 
 oblivion ? 
 
 But that St. Paul never meant us to do any such 
 thing is manifest, as from other parts of his writings, so 
 especially from his well-known statement to the Romans, 
 that "the things which were written aforetime were written 
 for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of 
 the Scriptures might have hope." "The law was our 
 schoolmaster to bring us to Christ," and the office of the 
 schoolmaster is by no means ended. He may not, indeed, 
 have either authority to command or power to deliver, but 
 he certainly still has a commission to teach, to exhort, 
 and to comfort. It remains true, however, that in no part 
 of his writings has the Apostle Paul formally drawn out for 
 us the lessons contained in the Jewish system of sacrifice. 
 For though at times he uses sacrificial metaphors and 
 references, he was not required by the needs of those whom 
 he addressed to draw out explicitly the precise meaning of 
 such metaphors and references. 
 
 Nor again can we find any formal exposition of the great 
 lessons of the Jewish sacrificial system in what is reported 
 to us by the Evangelists of the teaching of our Lord. 
 Implicitly, it is true, He is more than once brought into 
 comparison with the sacrificial victims. He is called by 
 John the Baptist, as by the author of the Apocalypse, " The 
 Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world," and 
 more than once, as in chap. xxii. of St. Luke's Gospel, our 
 Lord identifies Himself with the suffering servant of the 
 
174 DANGERS OF THE ArOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 prophet Isaiah. But these are all perfectly general ex- 
 pressions, and contain nothing explicit on the precise con- 
 nection between the Jewish sacrifices and their Eternal 
 Ideal. Our Lord's general attitude, indeed, towards the 
 sacrificial worship of the Mosaic law is very much that 
 of the Hebrew prophets. He generally ignores it, to fix 
 attention upon that ethical reality of self-sacrifice to which 
 it points. In one passage, however. He does seem to indi- 
 cate, not obscurely, its true connection with the kingdom 
 of God. He says of the law in general, and therefore of 
 course of this part of it, that not one jot or tittle shall 
 pass away till all be fulfilled. It follows, then, that if the 
 sacrificial worship of the law have indeed passed away, this 
 can only be because of its fulfilment. 
 
 But if so, then the question becomes even more urgent, 
 how has it been fulfilled? And to that question a clear 
 and precise answer is given in the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 alone. There, then, I propose to seek it, that upon the great 
 subject of the Christian sacrifice, the discussion of which has 
 so powerfully agitated, and is still agitating, the Church, we 
 may obtain the guidance and direction of the Word of God. 
 
 But here again we are met by a formidable difficulty. 
 Are we sure, it is asked, that the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 has a legitimate claim to be called the Word of God ? Do 
 we know who wrote it ? and if so, can we say that its author 
 was an inspired man ? I am afraid that around this question 
 there still hangs some of the doubt expressed by the great 
 Origen when he said that, in spite of the uncertain echoes 
 of the tradition of the end of the second century, "God 
 only knew who was the author." 
 
 It seems to me absolutely certain that St. Paul was not 
 its author. The most reliable tradition leads us to this 
 conclusion. The Epistle to the Hebrews is employed so 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 175 
 
 largely by no primitive author as by Clement of Rome. 
 And it is precisely at Rome, in Italy, and in the Western 
 Church, that the Pauline authorship is denied. No such 
 result would seem to be possible, if Clement, Bishop of 
 Rome in the first century, had known St. Paul to be the 
 author of our Epistle. The style of the Epistle, again, even 
 more than the tradition of the Western Church, excludes 
 the possibility that St. Paul was its author. From the days 
 of Origen to the very last year, in which Bishop Westcott 
 published his Commentary, the greatest scholars have held 
 this evidence to be decisive. Its general tenour has been 
 well and briefly stated by Archdeacon Farrar, as follows : 
 " The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews cites differently 
 from St. Paul, he writes differently, he argues differently, he 
 quotes from a different edition of the Pentateuch, he con- 
 structs and connects his sentences differently, he builds up 
 his paragraphs on a wholly different model. His Greek is 
 different, his style different, many of his phrases different, 
 his line of reasoning wholly different. ... St. Paul is rugged 
 and impetuous, while this writer is elaborately and fault- 
 lessly rhetorical. He never abandons his calm and sonorous 
 euphony, and he delights in amplitude and rotundity of 
 expression." 
 
 But if in deference to such considerations we surrender 
 the Pauline authorship, to whom shall we attribute its 
 composition? Its probable date, before the destruction of 
 Jerusalem, and an expression in the letter itself, narrow 
 considerably the area of our inquiry. In the third verse 
 of the second chapter we read of the great salvation as 
 follows : " Which having been spoken at the first, through 
 the Lord, was confirmed unto us by them that heard it." 
 The author then, though not an Apostle, was a hearer and 
 contemporary of the Apostles. Again, there can be no 
 
176 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 doubt that he was of the school of St. Paul. " The thoughts 
 of the Epistle," as Origen said, "are St. Paul's." If St. 
 Paul had been obliged to deal with the subject of this 
 Epistle, we can be sure that he would have said upon it 
 substantially what our author says. 
 
 Again, it is absolutely certain that the writer of this 
 Epistle was well acquainted with many of the works of Philo 
 of Alexandria. His method is that of Philo. " The book is 
 based," as Reuss remarks, " on the allegorico-typical inter- 
 pretation of the Old Testament." All the sacrificial figures 
 and ordinances of the Levitical ritual are treated as temporal 
 expressions of an Eternal Ideal. The tabernacle is made 
 after a typical pattern shown to Moses on the Mount. The 
 priests and sacrifices are but typical shadows of a spiritual 
 Archetype. In the very facts of the Old Testament history, 
 and not in its facts alone, but also in its reticences, as in 
 the case of Melchizedek, the author sees suggestions of 
 reaUties in the super-sensual world. His language again 
 betrays an acquaintance, even a familiarity, with the 
 characteristic phrases of Philo and his school. In many 
 passages of the Epistle where Greek words occur, which are 
 used nowhere else in the New Testament, they are found to 
 be words which are used by Philo. 
 
 Once more, the Epistle was written to some particular 
 Church, with the special circumstances and individuals of 
 which the author is well acquainted, to whom he can speak 
 with authority, from whom he has been separated for a 
 season, and for whose prayers he asks "that he may be 
 restored to them the sooner." He is, further, a Hellenistic 
 Jew, and a friend of Timothy, with whom he hopes shortly 
 to visit the Church which he addresses. With all these 
 facts before us, it ought not to be impossible to suggest at 
 least, if not to specify, the probable author. 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. I 77 
 
 Since he was a companion of St. Paul, of well-known 
 name and recognised authority, he must be included in 
 the following list : Barnabas, Luke, Clement, Mark, Titus, 
 Silvanus, Aquila, and Apollos. Of these Titus was not a 
 Jew by birth, Mark was not a Hellenistic Jew, and of Silas, 
 beyond the fact that he was St. Paul's companion, we know 
 absolutely nothing. Clement, by his large quotation of the 
 Epistle, proclaims that some other was the author. A man 
 does not usually quote himself; and besides, his whole 
 style and mode of thought, as we know them from his 
 extant Epistle, are rather practical than speculative. If, 
 again, he had been the author, the Church of Rome must 
 have known and proclaimed the fact. The character of 
 Barnabas is little suited to the style and contents of our 
 Epistle. He was more an actor than an orator, more a 
 saint than a philosopher ; and, as a Levite, he would not 
 have been likely to refer, as does the author of our Epistle, 
 to the ritual of the Book of Exodus where it differs from 
 that of the Temple at Jerusalem, with which Barnabas was 
 necessarily familiar. Aquila, again, though a good man, 
 was so little original and independent that even in the 
 ministry of teaching he is only named along with his wife 
 Priscilla. There remain, then, of our list only St. Luke 
 and Apollos, and to one of these, as it seems to me, the 
 authorship of our Epistle may, with a very high degree of 
 probability, be assigned. 
 
 There are many coincidences of language and idiom 
 between our Epistle and the known writings of St. Luke ; 
 and it was the tradition at Alexandria that he had translated 
 the Epistle into Greek. A careful comparison, however, 
 speedily breaks down this appearance of agreement. St. 
 Luke's Greek style is correct, and occasionally elegant, but 
 it wholly lacks the fervour and rhetorical power of our 
 
178 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 Epistle. The contrast between the two is that between 
 the style of Lord Selborne and that of the late lamented 
 Canon Liddon, and certainly any one well acquainted with 
 the writings of these two authors would not be likely to 
 attribute the works of either to the pen of the other. 
 Again, it would appear from the fourteenth verse of the 
 fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians, taken with 
 the context, that St. Luke was by birth a Gentile, while it 
 is almost certain that the author of the Epistle was a 
 Jew. 
 
 There remains, then, of all our list of possible authors 
 only Apollos. Luther first suggested his name, and this 
 suggestion has received the powerful support in modern 
 times of Bleek, Tholuck, Reuss, Alford, and Farrar. To 
 me, I confess, it seems wonderful that this supposition has 
 not received more general acceptance. Bear in mind the 
 several conditions of authorship which I have already enu- 
 merated, and then call to remembrance what we know of 
 Apollos from the New Testament. He was " a Jew, an 
 Alexandrian by race, a learned or eloquent man, and mighty 
 in the Scriptures." And when he had been perfectly in- 
 structed in the way of God, we are told that " he powerfully 
 confuted the Jews (at Ephesus), and that publicly, showing 
 by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ." Again, with 
 respect to his position and influence in the Church, we 
 have the references in the First Epistle to the Corinthians. 
 So great was his reputation *at Corinth, that a party was 
 formed in his name, which held its place beside those who 
 had chosen as their leaders St. Paul and St. Peter, the 
 very first of the Apostles. So great, again, was the confidence 
 which St. Paul reposed in him, and so entire the harmony 
 between these two in teaching, that the Apostle can say 
 that " he had planted, and Apollos had watered," and that 
 
THE HEBREW ArOSTASY. I 79 
 
 both were " God's fellow-workers " in the husbandry of 
 grace. Every one of the necessary conditions of authorship 
 seems to me to be satisfied in these Scriptural notices of 
 Apollos ; and thus I feel disposed to say, not only, with 
 Archdeacon Farrar, "The Epistle was either written by 
 Apollos, or else the name of the author is unknown to us ; " 
 but also, with Dr. Kendrick, in Lange's Commentary, "The 
 only name on which we can, as it seems to me, fasten, and 
 make a vigorous and solid argument, is that of Apollos." 
 
 But if Apollos be the author of this Epistle, then I 
 conceive that all difficulty in receiving it as the Word of 
 God is at an end. He who was the trusted companion 
 and co-worker of St. Paul, the leader who stands in the 
 Corinthian Church beside the very chiefest Apostles, the 
 powerful orator and mighty Scriptural scholar, who, at 
 Ephesus, was the great champion of the truth against 
 Jewish gainsayers, is a teacher manifestly chosen and sent 
 by the Spirit of God, and one who can speak in the name 
 of Christ with power and authority. If even the Church of 
 Christ throughout the world had not received this Epistle 
 as God's Word, the acknowledgment of the authorship of 
 Apollos would alone have been sufficient to secure for it 
 the weight of an inspired authority. 
 
 But now, in the next place, it will greatly help us to 
 understand the scope and intent of this inspired argument, 
 if we can determine approximately what needs it was in- 
 tended to meet, and to what persons it was originally 
 addressed. If the conclusion to which I have come as to the 
 authorship of the Epistle be received as one of high proba- 
 bility, this will greatly help us in our present inquiry. 
 
 It is admitted, with an all but universal consent, that 
 our Epistle was addressed to a Church consisting wholly 
 or chiefly of Christians of Hebrew birth. The Epistle is in 
 
l8o DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 the main a Christian interpretation of the sacrificial system 
 of the Old Testament. It assumes throughout, as Hebrew 
 Christians would assume, that the ancient ordinance of 
 sacrifice could still render a didactic service to the Christian 
 Church. Sacrifices are never spoken of, with Pauline harsh- 
 ness, as "weak and beggarly elements," but, with all tenderness 
 to inevitable Jewish prejudices, as the appointed figures and 
 shadows of the true. They may no longer perhaps be of prac- 
 tical obligation, but at least they retain a high value as signs 
 and explications of the things which they represent. 
 
 At the same time it is taught very firmly that they form 
 no longer any necessary part of Christian worship. No 
 man will be the worse for being without them. Any man 
 who shall abandon Christ in order to retain them will be 
 nothing less than an apostate. The strain alike of teaching 
 and warning in this Episde proves thus conclusively that it 
 was written to a Church consisting wholly, or nearly so, of 
 Christians who were Hebrew by birth. 
 
 But where could such a Church be found in the Apostolic 
 age ? Nowhere, I believe, but in Jerusalem or Alexandria ; 
 not certainly in such Gentile cities as Corinth or Rome. 
 
 Can the Epistle, then, have been addressed to the Chris- 
 tians of Jerusalem? There are many reasons for with- 
 holding assent to such a suggestion. The quotations from 
 the Septuagint prove that the Epistle was written in Greek, 
 which could hardly have been possible had it been intended 
 for Jerusalem. Again, the persons to whom it was ad- 
 dressed are praised for their assiduity "in ministering to 
 the saints," and it is well known that in the Apostolic age 
 this meant " ministering to the poor saints in Jerusalem." 
 Jerusalem received alms, it did not give them. Once more, 
 it is apparent, from the third verse of the second chapter, 
 that the Church to which the Episde was addressed included 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. l8l 
 
 none who had been direct disciples of the Lord Jesus, a 
 state of things ahiiost impossible at Jerusalem in the period 
 before its destruction, while Timothy was yet living. 
 
 But if we exclude Jerusalem, then the only place left 
 where we might look for a purely Hebrew Christian Church 
 is Alexandria. Now Alexandria, with its magnificent library 
 and museum, with its noble Exchange, its extensive quays, 
 its vast commerce inherited from Tyre and Carthage, and its 
 motley concourse of all the races of the world, was acknow- 
 ledged by the Romans to be the second city in the empire. 
 It had at least six hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom 
 a large proportion were Jews, forming one of the three 
 original constituents of the population. Nor were these 
 mingled promiscuously with the Greek and Egyptian ele- 
 ments. On the contrary, they inhabited a separate quarter 
 known as the Regio Judaeorum, and shut off, by walls 
 and gates of its own, from the rest of the city. Jewish 
 Alexandria was, in fact, a kind of second Jerusalem, whose 
 people were governed by their own Ethnarch and their 
 own national laws, and who frequently entered into fierce 
 conflicts with their Greek neighbours. Here, then, was an 
 exclusive Jewish community, in the midst of which an 
 exclusively Hebrew Christian Church might easily have 
 been founded. 
 
 Once again, as I have already intimated, if Apollos wrote 
 our Epistle it is highly probable that he would stand to 
 such a community in the very relations implied therein. 
 He was himself an Alexandrian of great eloquence and 
 popularity, and of that power and authority in the Primitive 
 Church which would enable him to assume unchallenged, 
 as he does in this Epistle, the position and tone of an 
 authoritative teacher. Again the author, as we have seen, 
 writes to those with whom he is at home, in whose history 
 
1 82 DANGERS OF THE APQSTOLIC AGE. • 
 
 and trials he has previously mingled, whom he has left fo 
 a season, and to whom, in company with Timothy, he hopes 
 soon to return. If, then, we assume, as is but natural, that, 
 after assisting St. Paul in Asia Minor and Greece, Apollos 
 returned to a somewhat settled ministry among his own 
 people, these local references are just such as we should 
 expect to find. I conclude, therefore, that it is highly 
 probable that Apollos wrote this Epistle to the Hebrew 
 Christians of Alexandria, during a temporary absence, 
 possibly on a missionary journey, in Italy.* 
 
 If these conclusions appear probable, then it will not be 
 impossible to determine from the Epistle itself what were 
 the needs and dangers which it was written to meet and 
 to supply. In its early days we are told that the Hebrew 
 Church of Alexandria had been conspicuous for good works. 
 It had endured a great fight of afflictions, though not yet 
 called upon to resist unto blood. Nor was its love in those 
 gracious times less than its fortitude. For, looking to the 
 better inheritance, its members not only took joyfully the 
 spoiling of their goods, but also had compassion on them 
 that were in bonds. As time went on, however, and their 
 eager hopes of Messiah's speedy return were disappointed, 
 
 * The only possible objection to this conclusion arises out of the fact 
 that, at the end of the first century, this Epistle was known at Rome and 
 largely quoted by Clement, while the first references to it in Alexandria 
 are much later, and in a tone of great uncertainty. Is it not probable, 
 then, it has been asked, that an Epistle so early and familiarly known at 
 Rome was first addressed to Rome ? I think that the facts point in an 
 utterly opposite direction. For if the Epistle had been addressed to 
 Rome the Roman Church would certainly have known its author, and 
 would not have had time to forget his name before the close of the 
 first century ; while, on the other hand, if it were first addressed to 
 Alexandria, it is easy to understand how the author's name might have 
 been forgotten before the birth of the Christian literature of Alexandria^ 
 at the close of the second century 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 1 83 
 
 they lost the fervour of their first love. The public assem- 
 blies of the Church were deserted. Many sank into a state 
 of mental and spiritual torpor, becoming dull of hearing, 
 losing not only interest in what they had once prized, but 
 also capacity to grasp and understand the more advanced 
 teaching which the times required. Further, as might have 
 been expected, this dulness of feeling and understanding 
 was accompanied by grave signs of moral declension. Their 
 early boldness, enthusiasm, and patient endurance had 
 given place to a weary sluggishness and hopelessness ; so 
 that they needed to be bidden to " lift up the hands that hang 
 down, and the feeble knees." Like the Church of Laodicaea, 
 they had sunk into a miserable lukewarmness of feeling 
 and childishness of intellect, and were dragging on a feeble 
 existence, without either profit or happiness. 
 
 And while they stood in this terribly perilous spiritual 
 condition they were about to be smitten by the thunder- 
 stroke of a great trial and temptation. Already, as Apollos 
 tells them, " they saw the day drawing nigh." The trumpet 
 of fanatical patriotism had already sounded its fateful 
 summons from the height of Mount Sion. It had been 
 answered by the eager swordsmen of Galilee, and had 
 already shaken the hearts of the turbulent crowds of 
 Alexandria. Judea was preparing for a death-struggle with 
 Rome, and every Jew, of whatever sect or faith, was being 
 summoned to take his side. In the dark narrow lanes of 
 the Regio Jud^orum it was as though men heard again the 
 dread cry of Carmel, " If the Lord be God, follow Him : but 
 if Baal, then follow him." In the year 66 a.d. this challenge 
 must have come to every Christian Jew as a personal 
 summons. Was he to suffer the Roman to trample on the 
 holy city because he was a Christian ? Was he to turn a 
 deaf ear to the death-cry of his nation, struggling in the 
 
184 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 desperate grasp of the heathen oppressor, because he 
 beheved that a Jew was his Lord and his God ? Nay, 
 should he not rather throw himself unreservedly into the 
 ranks of the sacred people, should he not sink in this dark 
 crisis of their fate all which separated him from the children 
 of Abraham ? Was not blood more than opinion ? Were 
 not two thousand years of a glorious history more than the 
 loose spiritual ties of yesterday — ties of opinion, preference, 
 and belief, which had already been slackened by the wear 
 and tear of ordinary life ? Such feelings shook and swayed 
 the Jewish Christian at the very centre of his deepest affec- 
 tions, and would have been of almost irresistible strength 
 if even his Christian faith had kept its first freshness. But 
 what was likely to be their effect in his present circumstances, 
 when already his love was chilled, his hopes were dimmed, 
 and the practical paralysis of fear and doubt had led him 
 to abandon Christian worship, and to look upon the dim 
 figure of the Christ as a fading and vanishing dream? 
 Here were present all the predisposing causes of estrange- 
 ment and apostasy, and unless something were done, and 
 that speedily, to revive the energy of a drooping faith, it 
 was all too likely that the light of the Alexandrian Church 
 might be quenched, and its candlestick removed from its 
 place. 
 
 It was at this critical moment, when everything betokened 
 defeat and disaster, that the little company of Alexandrian 
 Christians were summoned to their obscure meeting-place 
 to hear a letter which had been sent to them by their 
 famous leader and teacher. Many came, I doubt not, 
 slackly and reluctantly. But if their faith in Jesus Christ- 
 had not utterly ebbed away, they must have listened, one 
 thinks, in the hush of the upper chamber, with starded 
 interest and kindling hearts to this noble apology for their 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 185 
 
 faith. Solemnly it warned them of their deadly danger, 
 that they stood on the very brink of a hopeless apostasy, of 
 an abandonment of the only hope of salvation, which in the 
 case of such as they must needs be final and irremediable. 
 For how could it be possible to renew again to repentance 
 those who, " having tasted of the heavenly gift, and been 
 made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and having tasted the 
 good Word of God and the powers of the world to come," 
 had " trodden underfoot the Son of God, and had counted 
 the blood of the covenant wherewith they were sanctified an 
 unholy thing, and had done despite to the Spirit of grace " ? 
 For them to fall back into Judaism, to abandon the 
 substance for the shadow, the spirit for the flesh, redeeming 
 grace for empty rites which, having been fulfilled and 
 superseded, hadjost all their efficacy; was to. fall back into 
 a formalism which they had found to be useless, and in 
 which, therefore, it was impossible for them to believe. 
 They could not even be good Jews. For them the alter- 
 native was Christianity or unbelief— either Christ, the one 
 heavenly High Priest, and only sufficient sacrifice, or a 
 world without God, and a life without heavenly communion. 
 Such was the appeal of this Epistle to those whom it 
 originally addressed. And to us, too, standing as we do at 
 a like point of decision, driven, whether we will or not, to 
 make the like final choice between faith in Christ and a 
 blank disbelief in everything Eternal and Divine, it has a 
 word of warning not less solemn, a word of instruction not 
 less momentous and significant. To us the question is 
 addressed, not less urgently than it was to them : Is there 
 any true sacrifice for sin ? Has God provided any way of 
 approach to His spotless holiness which may be traversed 
 by those who are held back by the sense of their own 
 unworthiness, and who are too often tempted to cry like 
 
1 86 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 St. Peter in the unveiled brightness of the Divine power 
 and purity, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 
 O Lord." If there be such a sacrifice, in what does it 
 consist ? If there be such a way of reconciliation, how can 
 it be traversed ? Such were the questions which perplexed 
 the little company of tempted people who first listened to 
 this letter in the Alexandrian Jewry. Such are the questions 
 which press imperiously for consideration to-day, when at 
 the intenser moments of life the souls of men are startled 
 into the condemnation of self-knowledge ; and such are the 
 questions to which I propose to seek an answer in my two 
 remaining lectures. 
 
11. 
 
 Si'. Paul, in his great controversy with those Jewish 
 Christians who strove to make the ordinances of the 
 Jewish Church a condition of Christian discipleship, en- 
 deavoured to show, not only that the covenant of grace 
 had superseded the law, but also that it had preceded it. 
 Considered historically, grace overlapped law, faith over- 
 lapped works, at both ends of the historical scale. And' 
 this was a plain proof to the Aposde, that not the method 
 of law and obedience, but that of grace and trust, was in 
 accordance with the eternal purpose of God. The law was 
 a concession to human imperfection. It was a stepping 
 down from the high pathway of grace to the low platform 
 of dwarfed human capacity, in order that in due time men 
 might be raised again, through the discipline of obedience, 
 to the height from which they had fallen. The figure in 
 Nature of this historical process is that of a road traversing 
 a high mountain plateau, which has to descend into a 
 valley in order to regain its original level on the opposite 
 mountain range. The Apostle finds the proof of this 
 position in the records of God's dealings with Abraham. 
 Abraham was justified before God, not by obedience to 
 a multitude of ceremonial precepts, but by faith in the 
 presence and power of Him that called him. And thus 
 the historical origin of the Gospel, and its true level and 
 direction, are not to be sought in the valley-path of the 
 law, true historical continuation as this might be of the 
 
1 88 DANGERS OF THE ArOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 earlier road ; but rather on the free and breezy heights of 
 patriarchal life. 
 
 And as St. Paul goes back to Abraham in order to 
 vindicate the larger scope and greater freedom of the 
 Gospel, so in dealing with the institution of sacrifice, and 
 with a like purpose, the author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews goes back to the ethnic period before Abraham. 
 He finds it asserted of Messiah in Psalm ex., that "he is 
 a Priest for ever after the manner or order of Melchizedek." 
 It was no doubt the intention of the author of that psalm 
 to claim for Messiah the double office of Priest and King ; 
 and in order to find a true historical type of such a union, 
 he has to go back to that primitive age in which the office 
 of the Priesthood was not yet restricted by tribal or family 
 distinctions, when still the royal head of the state might 
 represent it before God, in religious service. 
 
 Now it is very important that we should not misunder- 
 stand the manner in which this historical and prophetic 
 material is treated by our author. He conceives himself 
 justified in instituting a comparison between Jesus and 
 Melchizedek, because already such a comparison had been 
 suggested by the spirit of prophecy. And so far, I imagine, 
 he does no more than a sober modern expositor might have 
 done. Messiah was to combine in His own Person the 
 offices of King and Priest, just as they had been combined 
 in the person of Melchizedek. But now, having got this 
 firm foothold in history and prophecy, he proceeds, in the 
 1 well-known Philonic and Alexandrian method, to draw out 
 jthis comparison into the minutest details. The works of 
 Philo enable us thoroughly to understand this. Philo held 
 firmly the abstract theories of the Platonic philosophy. 
 To him these theories represented absolute truth. But 
 if the Platonic theories were true, they must, he thought, 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 1 89 
 
 be either stated or symbolically represented in that Word 
 of God which was also absolutely true. He had not learnt, 
 as we have, that the Holy Scriptures which reveal to us the 
 nature of God and His relation to men might possibly 
 neglect altogether, as outside the scope of its teaching, 
 philosophical and scientific speculations. Philo believed 
 that it must contain all truth, and therefore it was for him 
 to read mto revelation all the speculative truths of the 
 Platonic philosophy. His method was misleading, and 
 therefore we need not wonder that the results of its 
 application are unsatisfactory. 
 
 Now, to a certain extent, the author of our Epistle adopts 
 the method of Philo. Of two things he is assured : firstly, 
 of the true nature and work of Jesus Christ ; and, secondly, 
 of the real correspondence between Christ and Melchizedek. 
 What remains, then (and in this inference we detect the 
 influence of Philo), but to seek in the short historical 
 account of Melchizedek as many points of resemblance as 
 possible to the nature and work of Christ ? This comparison 
 is very valuable to us, because it shows us what the author 
 believed about Jesus Christ. It is valuable to us, even 
 when we most dissent from some of its results considered 
 as valid historical correspondences. Take one point by 
 way of illustration. Nothing is said in the Old Testament 
 of the natural descent of Melchizedek. This circumstance 
 may mean nothing more to us than that in so brief a record 
 it was not necessary to the writer's purpose to notice such 
 a matter. To our author, however, it furnishes the occasion 
 for a remarkable comparison. Melchizedek in the sacred 
 record is " without father, mother, or genealogy," and this 
 suggests to him that not merely in the Word of God, but 
 also in fact, the Priesthood of the Lord Jesus was not 
 dependent on descent, or limited by conditions of time. 
 
I go DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 The comparison is only glanced at as contributing an 
 element to the great conclusion that He who is after the 
 order of Melchizedek " abideth a priest continually ; " still 
 it is eminently Philonic. In the same manner Philo finds 
 in the fact that the sacred record does not mention Sarah's 
 mother, an indication of the truth that the mind which loves 
 wisdom is not born "of the material perceptible to the 
 senses," which may be regarded as the maternal origin of 
 knowledge. To us such correspondences are only valuable 
 as showing what the inspired author believed about Jesus 
 Christ ; but to his contemporaries at Alexandria they were 
 weighty and significant. We may regard them, therefore, 
 as means of establishing conclusions, certain in themselves, 
 by considerations which would have weight among those to 
 whom they were addressed. 
 
 If, however, some of the minor details of this comparison 
 have only an indirect value for us, the fact that it was made, 
 that the one author of the New Testament who treats 
 specifically upon the sacrificial system of the Jews compares 
 it in some points, to its disadvantage, with the universal 
 system of ethnic sacrifice which preceded it, is of the very 
 gravest meaning and importance. It reminds us that the 
 practice of sacrifice did not originate in any recorded Divine 
 command ; that, existing before the establishment of the 
 Mosaic law, it was taken on and adopted, as to its outward 
 framework and main significance ; and that, therefore, it 
 will greatly help us to discover the central thought which it 
 was intended to express, if we can learn something about 
 those ethnic sacrifices, especially of the Semitic races, 
 which were taken up into the worship of the covenant 
 people, to be used, improved, and spiritualized. 
 
 The chosen people were an offshoot of the Semitic race. 
 Since, therefore, any religious customs and traditions which 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. I9I 
 
 they may have inherited from the past would certainly be 
 Semitic, it becomes of great importance in any inquiry 
 about the meaning of the Biblical sacrifices, to ascertain, 
 if we can, what was the ruling idea of their sacrificial 
 institutions, among the Semitic tribes, before they passed 
 them on into the covenant family. This inquiry has the 
 more importance because the sacrificial worship of the 
 Hebrews, as it is described to us in the Pentateuch, includes 
 within it many elements which were added at a comparatively 
 late period. A people's worship follows, though it may be 
 slowly, its social and religious development. When a nation 
 passes out of the pastoral into the agricultural state of life, 
 its offerings increase in number and diversity ; when the 
 acquisition of private property becomes general, sacrifices 
 have a tendency to assume the character of a tribute, paid 
 by the tribe to its Divine over-Lord. And, again, when 
 the conception of God's nature and character is refined, 
 enlarged, and spiritualized, on the one side the sense of sin 
 is deepened, and on the other that feeling is expressed by 
 a corresponding development and moralizing of sacrificia. 
 offerings. In a system of sacrifice which has thus em- 
 bodied a great diversity of social and religious changes, it 
 is extremely difficult to detect the master-thought of the 
 whole institution, and it will help us greatly to do this if we 
 can study it at an early stage of its development, when it 
 has a comparatively simple form. 
 
 Can we do this, it may be asked, in the case of the 
 Hebrew sacrifices ? Before last year, in the course of which 
 Professor Robertson Smith published his " Religion of the 
 Semites," I should have hesitated to make the attempt. 
 For although we possessed a great mass of miscellaneous 
 information upon the subject of ethnic sacrifice, it had not 
 been carefully sifted, so as to separate the Semitic traditions 
 
192 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 from the rest, and to resolve these latter into their con- 
 stituent elements. Now, however, it is not impossible, I 
 believe, to give an approximately definite answer to the 
 important question which I have started. 
 
 The trustworthiness of the answer depends, not so much 
 on the antiquity of the records to be examined, as on the 
 geographical relations of the Semitic peoples. Their most 
 ancient records are to be found amongst the cuneiform 
 inscriptions of Chaldaea. But then the most ancient 
 civilization of that interesting country was not of Semitic 
 origin. It was due to the genius of a probably Cushite 
 people. The Semites came into the land as conquerors, 
 and just as in the case of the Roman conquerors of Greece, 
 and of the barbarian conquerors of Rome, they adopted 
 the civihzation and institutions of the vanquished people. 
 How much, then, is Cushite and how much Semitic in the 
 earliest accounts of Semitic life in Mesopotamia it would 
 be difficult to determine. We must look for reliable infor- 
 mation from some other quarter. In seeking it, we are 
 greatly helped by the geographical relations of the Semitic 
 races, and by the unchangeableness of the nomad life of 
 Arabia. 
 
 Arabia has been in all ages the home and central fortress 
 of the Semites. From it, as from a centre, they spread out 
 as conquerors, during the ages before Christ, into a limited 
 and well-defined region of the world. If we neglect some 
 possible early incursions into Ethiopia, it may be said that 
 the wave of their conquests broke against the barriers of 
 the mountains of Elam on the east and of those of the 
 Taurus on the north ; and never passed far beyond those 
 barriers. This fact gives to Arabia its special character as 
 the native hearth and home of Semitic life. If then we 
 can ascertain what was the ruling idea of Semitic sacrifice, 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 1 93 
 
 as represented to us in the unchanging pastoral hfe of 
 Arabia, we shall be able to approach the study of the 
 complicated system of Hebrew sacrifice with great advantage. 
 We shall possess a valuable key to the meaning of that 
 sacrificial system which the ancestors of the Beni-Israel 
 took with them from their motherland, and which furnished 
 a formal framework to that Hebrew system which was 
 developed out of it, under the guidance of the Spirit of 
 God. 
 
 I can do no more of course at present than give you the 
 merest outline of the results of the wide and very careful 
 study of the subject which has been made by Professor 
 Robertson Smith. 
 
 First, then, there is clear evidence that there was a time 
 very long ago, when men believed that they shared a 
 common life with their god and their domestic animals. 
 The bond of that life, as conceived by them, was a purely 
 physical bond. So long as that bond remained unbroken, 
 their tribal god was bound to help and defend them ; to 
 help them by the gift of those simple physical necessaries 
 which belonged to their pastoral existence, and to defend 
 them from those enemies, human and ghostly, with whom 
 their tribal quarrels brought them into conflict. In pros- 
 perous times, when food was plentiful and there was peace 
 in his borders, the ancient Semite concluded that the 
 tribe and its god were in harmony. He was thus religious, 
 in the sense that he had full trust and confidence in his 
 God ; but as the tie which bound them was rather physical 
 than moral, his religion had probably but little effect on 
 his conduct to his neighbour. When, however, the peaceful 
 and happy routine of his life was broken by calamity, when 
 the threatening clouds of drought, famine, or war began 
 to gather in the bright sky of his careless life, then he 
 
 13 
 
194 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 concluded that the god of his tribe was displeased, and 
 was punishing him and his neighbours for some witting or 
 unwitting offence. The strong bond of the common life, 
 which secured the help and protection of the god, was 
 broken or loosened, and must be renewed and re-tied. 
 But how could this be done ? Only, as it seemed to him, 
 in one way. The god and his people must partake anew 
 of the sacred life which bound them together, by means of 
 a public religious ceremony. But where were they to obtain 
 the materials for such a solemn participation ? How could 
 they lay their hands on that sacred life which they possessed 
 in common with their god ? Their firm belief that this 
 life was shared by their domestic animals, or by animals in 
 their very nature of divine kinship, indicated a way to their 
 end. The life of the tribe they believed to be carried in 
 its blood, and since certain animals were of kin to them 
 and their god, if they could only share with their god the 
 blood of such animals they believed that the broken com- 
 munion would be restored. To obtain the blood they slew 
 the animal. Then they gave to the god his share of the 
 blood, by pouring it upon his pillar or rough altar ; while 
 in the earliest and rudest ages the tribe drank the remainder. 
 With the advance of civilization, this blood-draught became 
 more and more repugnant to them, and then for drinking 
 they substituted the sprinkling of the worshippers, or a 
 feast upon the flesh of the victim. 
 
 Once again, as time went on, and ideas grew more 
 refined, it became difficult to believe that animals really 
 shared the life which was common to the god and his 
 worshippers. As men consciously rose in the scale of moral 
 and intellectual life their conception of the nature of God 
 became spiritualized, and the gulf between such a God 
 and the beasts of the stall widened until it became un- 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASV. tgS 
 
 bridgable. Grave doubts must then have arisen whether 
 the sacred Hfe were in truth carried by the blood of an 
 animal, and whether, therefore, the customary sacrifices had 
 power to re-tie that vital bond which transgression of some 
 kind had broken. What in this terrible perplexity were 
 they to do? Re-establish the broken link in some way 
 they must ; and how could that be possible, they reasoned, 
 except by a common Divine and human participation in the 
 sacred life ? From the obvious answer to this question 
 they must have shrunk at first in horror and dismay. If 
 they killed a man they would certainly get possession of the 
 sacred blood, and so might as certainly restore the lost 
 peace and prosperity. But might they, could they, do this 
 awful thing ? Was not the shrinking of feeling which they 
 experienced when they thought of it the very voice of God 
 within, and could they disobey God in order to please 
 God ? So, perhaps, at first they thought. But in some 
 terrible time, when wives and children were perishing in the 
 drought or pestilence, or when tribesmen were being slain 
 by hundreds in some disastrous war, the horror of the pre- 
 sent suffering overbore the horror of natural repugnance, 
 and they offered a human sacrifice. Only, it would seem, 
 in great straits, or for great purposes, were these sacrifices 
 yielded throughout the greater part of the heathen world ; 
 but when we see how the habit of doing the direst deeds 
 (as of burning religious enemies) can rob such deeds of 
 their horror, we shall be prepared to expect, as we find, 
 that among some especially superstitious nations, human 
 sacrifices became terribly common. 
 
 Again, the advance of larger views and milder manners 
 made human sacrifices appear intolerably barbarous, and 
 inspired the doubt whether God could be really pleased 
 with them. And then came the humanizing thought, 
 
196 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 revealed by God to Abraham, that the ram caught in the 
 thicket by his horns might be offered instead of the son. 
 
 Professor Robertson Smith has shown that this was the 
 real succession of events, and that the common idea that 
 human sacrifice was the most ancient is not borne out by 
 facts. 
 
 And now let us ask, What is the central ruhng idea of ancient 
 Semitic sacrifice, as revealed by this careful examination ? 
 Plainly it is this : that communion between a god and his 
 worshippers can only be kept up, or renewed when broken, 
 by the solemn participation of God and man in a common 
 sacred life. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance 
 of this discovery as a directive fact in the study of the 
 sacred Scriptures, whether they refer to the ethnic or the 
 covenant state of life. If the ancestors of Israel thought 
 thus of sacrifice, it is certain that the conception would 
 never be wholly lost while sacrifice continued to be offered : 
 and thus the inquiry becomes not less ' interesting than 
 important, can we detect the influence of this ruling idea 
 in the sacrificial system of the chosen people ? 
 
 The ethnic practice which we 1 have reviewed belongs to 
 a period in Semitic history long anterior to the days of 
 Abraham. We might, therefore, naturally expect that some 
 of its main features would appear in the earliest account of 
 patriarchal sacrifices. In this expectation, however, we are 
 disappointed. At the same time, it is to be remarked that 
 this disappointment arises, not from the actual presence of 
 alien or strange elements, but from the extreme brevity of 
 the account. For the most part nothing is recorded of the 
 patriarchal practice but the erection of an altar or pillar of 
 sacrifice. The three exceptions are, the sacrifice of Noah, 
 the offering of Isaac, and the erection by Jacob of a pillar 
 at Bethel; and nothing is said in the account of any of 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 197 
 
 these offerings of the blood of the victims or of its applica- 
 tion. The offering of Noah is said to have been a burnt- 
 offering, a form of sacrifice of comparatively late introduction. 
 The archaic form of expression shows, however, that the 
 record of this offering belongs to an early period of the 
 epoch of burnt sacrifices. " He offered burnt-offerings," it 
 is said, "and the Lord smelled the sweet savour." This 
 shows us that men had then so far spiritualized their idea 
 of God that they thought it fitter to send up to Him their 
 sacrifice in the etherealized form of altar-smoke than in the 
 grosser form of blood. In the offering of Isaac, nothing 
 is said about the application of the blood, because in this 
 case the blood of the human victim was not shed ; and of 
 the manner in which Abraham dealt with the blood of the 
 ram we have no description. Jacob is said to have poured 
 oil on the pillar at Bethel. But obviously a homeless fugi- 
 tive would have no animal to offer, and the oil which he 
 used is the later representative of the fat of a victim, in 
 which, as in the blood, the life was supposed to have 
 its seat. 
 
 Baffled in this direction, we naturally turn next to that 
 primary covenant sacrifice which was offered during the 
 period which intervened between the patriarchal age and 
 the formal publication of the Levitical law of sacrifice. 
 Of this we have fortunately a pretty full account, and we 
 detect in it at once a remarkable survival of primitive 
 practice. The sacrifice is offered, not by Aaron, or by 
 priests of the tribe of Levi, but by "twelve young men 
 of the children of Israel," manifestly selected to represent 
 the twelve tribes in the vigour and freshness of their life. 
 We have before us here the record of the most ancient 
 covenant sacrifice of which Holy Scripture gives us any 
 detailed description. And now, what does it tell us of 
 
IQO DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 the manner in which Moses dealt with the blood of the 
 burnt- and peace-offerings ? With half of it, we are told, 
 he sprinkled the altar, assigning it thus to God, as His 
 share of the common sacred life ; taking afterwards the 
 other half, which he had put into basons, and sprinkling 
 it on the people, as a sign that they partook with God in 
 the virtue of the sacrifice. The spiritual effect of this 
 ceremony can hardly be better stated than in the following 
 words of Bishop Westcott : " So the human desire was 
 fulfilled and justified. The blood of the covenant, the 
 power of a new life, made available for the people of God, 
 enabled them to hold communion with Him." It is a 
 refined form of the ancient belief that God and man were 
 brought into amicable and grace-bringing communion, by 
 sharing anew and together the life which was common to 
 both. 
 
 " The teaching thus broadly given in the consecration of 
 the people to God, found a more detailed exposition in the 
 consecration of the priests, the representatives of the people 
 in the Divine service." The very appointment of the priests 
 to come between man and Crod indicated a deepening 
 sense of sin, and of its power to separate man from God, 
 and to make him unfit for Divine service. We are not sur- 
 prised, then, to find that in the consecration of the priests 
 this new consciousness receives clear and emphatic ex- 
 pression. First, the altar at which the priests officiated is 
 felt to have been defiled by the touch of sinful ministers. 
 It, therefore, is first purified by having the blood of the 
 sacrifice applied to it, and poured out at its base ; and by 
 having the other special seats of life, the fat of the inwards, 
 the caul of the liver, and the kidneys with their fat, burnt 
 upon it. The sacred life touches it, and it is clean. Then 
 a ram is slain as a burnt-offering, for a sweet savour. After- 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 1 99 
 
 wards a second ram is slain, called expressly "the ram of 
 consecration," to purify the ministers, as well as the place 
 of their service. And now, again, we find a repetition of 
 the most ancient Semitic custom. Part of the blood of this 
 victim is sprinkled on the altar, and thus given to God ; 
 while part of it is put upon the ear, thumb, and foot of the 
 priests, that, in the virtue of the life which it represents, 
 and which is thus applied to them, they may hear, and 
 work, and walk as God would have them to do. 
 
 The deep sense of sin which is here expressed had 
 manifestly arisen from Israel's peculiar view of the character 
 of God. He was no longer for them mainly the God of ^ 
 the tribe, sharing their life, and bound to help and defend 
 them so long as they offered to Him the customary gifts 
 and services. He was, above all, the God of righteous- 
 ness ; so righteous in His very essence that He could 
 not bless the wicked, even among those who worshipped 
 Him. The lofty prophetic conception of God changed 
 everything. It inspired all thought, controlled all action, 
 and determined the form and spirit of all sacrifice and 
 service. It lifted the religion of Israel into a loftier plane, 
 and made it fit to become the religion of the whole earth. 
 Above all, it necessarily deepened the awful apprehension 
 of the power of sin to separate man from God ; and so led 
 to that remarkable development of sin-offerings of which 
 we have just seen a specimen. 
 
 Nowhere, however, does this soul-subduing sense of sin 
 find such solemn expression as in the offerings of the Great 
 Day of Atonement. How shuddering a sense of the horror 
 of sin must the worshippers have felt when they saw the 
 goat for Azazel, on the head of which Aaron had laid 
 the guilt and curse of Israel's offences, sent alone into the 
 burning waste, into eternal separation ! And how deep a 
 
200 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 conviction must they not have gained of the pervasive 
 contagiousness of sin, of its power to defile and contaminate 
 everything which it touched, when they waited without in 
 their silent fast, while the High Priest cleansed, with the 
 blood of sacrifice, not only the great brazen altar and the 
 holy place of the priests' ordinary ministry, but even that 
 Holy of Holies, with its mystic symbols, the very seat and 
 throne of the Most High, into which only one might go, 
 once a year, to represent a sinful people ! All this wonder- 
 ful development and moralizing of sacrifice was peculiar to 
 Israel. It was the outward sign that there dwelt in the 
 heart of it a Divine spirit of holiness, not only sanctifying 
 and uplifting souls, but so bending, changing, and moulding 
 the very framework of its archaic customs as to make these 
 signs and types of new spiritual thoughts about God. 
 
 Still throughout these sacrifices, and throughout that 
 whole complicated system of sin-offerings, burnt-offerings, 
 and peace-offerings, by means of which the various elements 
 of the great idea of sacrifice were spread out and applied 
 to the whole range of man's commerce with heaven, we 
 observe, almost with wonder, the maintenance of the 
 primitive ruling thought, that sacrifice is a means whereby 
 God and man may be drawn into or kept in communion, 
 by mutual participation in a common sacred life. Ideas 
 of tribute, furnished by the later institution of fixed 
 property, may, it is true, find their representation in some 
 of the minor details of the system, but even in the peace- 
 offerings designed to represent more fully man's feasting 
 upon the sacred life, the original ruling idea comes out, as 
 well in the sprinkling of the blood as in the burning of the 
 fat, that God still partakes with man, and that it is the 
 life-carrying blood which is the means of their communion. 
 And, lest there should be any mistake upon this point. 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. .. 20I 
 
 the children of Israel are stringently commanded to abstain 
 from eating blood, because of its excellent nature and office. 
 " Whatsoever man there be . . . that eateth any manner of 
 blood, I will set My face against that soul. . . . For the life 
 of the flesh is in the blood : and I have given it to you upon 
 the altar to make atonement for your souls : for it is the 
 blood that maketh atonement, by reason of the life." It 
 is not, as some have imagined and taught, the death of the 
 animal which gives value to its blood. On the contrary, 
 its whole value depends on the life which it carries. Death 
 is a mere collateral accident in the process of sacrifice. It 
 is simply the means of liberating that sacred stream which 
 carries the life. And the blood maketh atonement, not by 
 reason of the death, but by reason of the life. 
 
 As if further to emphasize this significant fact, it is again 
 commanded in the law : " Ye shall eat no fat of ox, or 
 sheep, or goat. For whosoever eateth the fat of the beast 
 of which men offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord, 
 even the soul that eateth it shall be cut off from his 
 people." No fat of a sacrificial beast is to be eaten, lest 
 in eating it men should partake of that sacred portion of 
 the fat which is sent up in the altar-smoke as a sweet 
 savour to God. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, was the fat of the kidneys and 
 inwards devoted to this specially sacred purpose ? Because 
 among all primitive peoples, as among the aborigines of 
 Australia to-day, those inward organs are deemed the special 
 seats of life. It was the life which they represented to the 
 ancient Semites, and it is the life which they symbolize in 
 the offerings of Israel : that sacred life which men share 
 with God, in the maintenance of which they are good and 
 happy ; by the restoration of which (if it have been lost), 
 they are delivered from the misery and defilement of sin. 
 
202 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 I have compared to-day the ethnic and Jewish sacrifices, 
 and surely if the comparison were carried no farther we 
 could not fail to have igathered most precious and soul- 
 inspiring lessons. We find that the Jewish system of 
 sacrifice held fast, while developing and purifying, the ruling 
 conception of the old Semitic world : that of a good and 
 prosperous human existence, a life held in conscious com- 
 munion with God was a necessary condition. And such, 
 too, is the witness of the deepest and truest philosophy of 
 our own time. The great word of modern philosophy is 
 not thought but life. Everything depends ultimately, not 
 upon our use of the discursive intellect, but upon the 
 normal intuitions and faculties with w^hich we were born, 
 and which we can only hold from moment to moment in 
 conscious union with God. Of the instincts of animals 
 this is the only possible explanation. Living creatures, so 
 low down in the vital scale that they are little more than 
 lumps of protoplasm without brain or nervous system, 
 perform actions which have a purpose; and a purpose, 
 moreover, so rational that to discern it requires the effort 
 of the highest human intelligence. What is it, then, which 
 conceives that purpose, and aims at its attainment ? Shall 
 we say that a brainless lump of protoplasm understands the 
 conditions of vital propagation, or the laws of hydrostatics, 
 and orders its actions in conformity therewith ? Something 
 does. Some mind conceives and orders the rational aims 
 in conformity with which the creature acts. What mind, 
 then? Surely the mind of that Great Being w^ho is the 
 basis and support of this life, and of all life ! No other 
 conclusion is possible to a modern thinker, adequately 
 acquainted with the facts, than that of one of our most 
 famous living philosophers, that God is the mind of the 
 instinctive world. And so far as man is the creature of 
 
THE HEBREW ArOSTASY. 2O3 
 
 instinct and intuition this conclusion holds good of him 
 also. And it reaches mucii farther than many imagine. 
 For in what direction of our living activity are we indepen- 
 dent of instinct and intuition ? The passions which drive 
 us are instinctive. The conscience which directs us is 
 intuitive. The axioms and postulates upon which we build 
 the whole mighty structure of our science and philosophy 
 are intuitive. We are born with these endowments, and we 
 cannot enlarge or alter them. They determine the direction 
 and limits of all our thoughts and activity. We gain them 
 from God : we keep them in God. We see and feel and 
 do that w^hich, through them, God determines that we 
 shall see and feel and do. 
 
 But beyond these faculties there is another, full of Divine 
 might and mystery, in which we discern especially the 
 Divine image, and through which, to a certain Kmited 
 degree, we share the prerogative of the Divine freedom in 
 action. We have a will which is miraculously, superna- 
 turally free. The Divine thought and will which absolutely 
 determine instinctive life so far limit their interference in 
 the human soul as to leave a really directive originating 
 activity to our will. We can absolutely choose whether we 
 will be the master of passion or its slave ; whether we will 
 walk in the light of reason or in the darkness of ignorance ; 
 whether we will follow the bidding of conscience or rebel 
 against its authority. We can submit to the urgency of the 
 Divine will of love which speaks to us through reason and 
 conscience, or we can resist it and turn all our natural 
 powers into mere instruments of selfishness. The will to 
 love, and the will to live : between these two we have to 
 choose, and we can choose. And thus in a true sense we 
 are the creators of our own character and surroundings. It 
 is blasphemy against the divinest property in man to say 
 
204 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 that he is the mere creature of his environment. No doubt 
 he has his passions and desires, and the environment of his 
 hfe gives stimulus to these. But he is the ruler and master 
 of both : not their creature and slave. If his environment 
 be unfitting and pernicious, if reason pronounce it foolish 
 and conscience condemn it as unjust, no matter how potent 
 it be, though it have been gathering strength through long 
 ages, and respect through immemorial prescription, and 
 attachment to life at a myriad points of action, yet if it be 
 inequitable, if it be condemned at the august assize of con- 
 science, man can break it to pieces, he ought to break it to 
 pieces, as a hundred times he has done, at great crises 
 of his historical past. Man is no mere fly upon the wheel 
 of fate, to be crushed by its inevitable revolution ; he is a 
 Maker and also a Destroyer, a true lord in God's universe, 
 who, in his own small domain, can and must exercise 
 something of the Divine prerogative of freedom. 
 
 Here, then, is the deep meaning, the decisive trial of his 
 life. Will he direct its course along the path which reason 
 shows to be wise and conscience declares to be right, or will 
 he use his Divine prerogative of automatic determination to 
 force the powers of his life into the service of selfish passion 
 and greed? This is the great problem which men, churches, 
 and societies are working out on the w^orldwide stage of 
 human life to-day. In this effort sacrifice is the word of 
 their salvation : the sacrifice of their own selfish will to live 
 to God's holy will to love ; the sacrifice of desire when it is 
 inordinate, of the confidence of intellect when it is over- 
 weening, of the ambition of rule when it is excessive, at the 
 mandate of conscience, which is God's witness within. 
 
 Too often seduced by the allurements of sense and the 
 splendid shows of the world, or by the pride of a false 
 independence, we refuse to make this sacrifice. We will be 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 205 
 
 our own god : we will shape our own course : we will 
 mould our own life : we will live, not to serve, but to enjoy. 
 And then, in conformity to the eternal law of our being, 
 comes failure and depravation of all our powers, ebbing of 
 emotion, darkening of intellect, hardening of conscience, 
 and paralysis of will. The failure is not of one power, but 
 of all the powers of our life. And, therefore, if we are to 
 be saved from this shrinking, narrowing, darkening, and 
 contamination of our being, it must be, not by this or that 
 gleam of insight, not by this or that check of remorse or 
 spasm of endeavour, but by the regeneration of our whole 
 nature. We must be born anew. We must be re-united 
 to that Divine source of loving will from which there may 
 flow into us, filling all the shrunken channels of action and 
 capacity, the regenerating waters of an eternal life. 
 
 That is what we need to-day : what men need in all days. 
 And because the ancient ordinances declared it so plainly, 
 because the act of sacrifice spoke the very word of our 
 salvation, because the blood shared between God and man 
 spoke so eloquently of life as our supreme need, of God 
 as the source of its supply, and of union with God as 
 the condition of its maintenance, therefore it was carried 
 by Moses into the Church of the Covenant, that being there 
 separated from all misleading superstitions (as of divination 
 from the entrails of the victims), it might be so shaped, 
 moulded, and moralized as to point forward to that one 
 efficacious Sacrifice which was to be the life of the world. 
 Of the nature and meaning of that Sacrifice I must speak 
 at large in my next lecture. Now I will only remind you 
 that it brought us precisely that which we needed, a new 
 life of higher and holier powers, to be gained and kept by 
 union with Him who was Himself divinely and eternally 
 united to God. 
 
206 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. ; 
 
 Oh, loving wisdom of our God ! i 
 
 When all was sin and shame, J 
 
 A second Adam to the fight, j 
 
 And to the rescue came. i 
 
 J 
 
 Oh, wisest love ! that flesh and blood. \ 
 
 Which did in Adam fail, - , 
 
 Should strive afresh against the foe — ' 
 
 Should strive and should prevail ! I 
 
 And that a higher gift than grace .! 
 
 Should flesh and blood refine : ] 
 
 God's Presence, and His very Self, J 
 
 And Essence all-Divine. : 
 
 Praise to the Holiest in the height, . ; 
 
 And in the depth be praise ; , 
 
 In all His works most wonderful, ' ' 
 
III. 
 
 I ENDEAVOURED to trace, in my last lecture, the historical 
 relation between the ethnic and covenant sacrifices, and 
 the comparison revealed to us two important facts : firstly, 
 that there were carried over into the covenant sacrifices 
 precisely those primitive rites which denoted the belief that 
 through sacrifice God and man partook of a common sacred 
 nature ; and secondly, that the idea thus denoted was so 
 developed and moralized in the complicated system of 
 Jewish sacrifices, as to give expression to the growing 
 belief in the spirituality of God and the sinfulness of man. 
 
 To-night we are to compare those spiritualized ordinances 
 of the Old Dispensation with that One Sufiicient Sacrifice 
 of which they were the di\anely-appointed types and fore- 
 shadowings. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, were those sacrifices of beasts, 
 with all their materialistic and superstitious suggestions, 
 retained in a religion of which the great aim was to 
 spiritualize men's conceptions of God ? That is a question 
 more easily asked than answered, for how can anyone 
 pretend to comprehend the deep designs of the Eternal ? 
 The best and most we can do is to throw the light of the 
 divinely-accomplished result upon the several stages of 
 the process which led to it. 
 
 First, then, in reference to the imperfections of the Mosaic 
 law, to the rudeness of its forms, and the tentativeness of 
 its moral advances, our Saviour has told us that these things 
 
208 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 were suffered because of the hardness of men's hearts. 
 Such truths were set before the rude tribes of the Beni- 
 Israel as were within the reach of their understanding, and 
 such rites of their Semitic past were retained as would on 
 the one hand keep up the continuity of their thought and 
 Hfe, and on the other be capable, with the necessary 
 adaptations, of representing, not altogether unworthily, the 
 deepest truths of spiritual religion. If I am now asked 
 what truths the particular practice of sacrifice was able to 
 express, I answer : firstly, the truth that our natural life 
 could only be raised to its highest and holiest power 
 when it was lived in conscious communion with God ; and 
 secondly, that it could be only so lived in virtue of a 
 continual sacrifice and self-surrender of the finite to the 
 Infinite will. These truths were represented with more or 
 less clearness by every form of the practice. At the same 
 time it is obvious that the moral and spiritual v*alue of this 
 teaching would depend very largely, if not wholly, upon 
 the conception which was formed in any particular age of 
 the nature of the life which was offered in sacrifice. So 
 long as it was possible to believe that this life could be 
 shared by domestic animals, it must have been thought of 
 rather as something physical than as anything spiritual. In 
 proportion, however, as the sons of Israel were taught by 
 God's Spirit the secret and meaning of their human per- 
 sonality, that it only attained its true ideal in the perfection 
 of its moral qualities, in its piety, purity, courage, pity, and 
 free self-surrender to the will of God, the offering of the 
 sacrifice of sheep and oxen would be seen more clearly 
 to have a representative rather than a substantial value. 
 The blood of the slain beast did not carry, it only represented, 
 that life of moral self-surrender which the worshipper shared 
 with the Deity. The sacrifice still meant, indeed, the offer- 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 2O9 
 
 ing to God, and gaining for self of a common life, but 
 the worshipper's view of the nature of that hfe would be 
 changed. It was seen to be a self-conscious, self-deter- 
 mining, self-surrendering life, a Hfe which it was possible 
 for the Divine Love to share, and which it was elevation 
 and redemption for human piety to offer. The practice of 
 sacrifice could only become a morally purifying and ele- 
 vating worship when it was accompanied by the conscious- 
 ness of ail this. It became a hindrance and a degradation 
 if it remained nothing more than the primitive Semite 
 thought that it was. Of what nature could the God or the 
 worshipper be whose life was really shared by an animal ? 
 To think such a communion possible was to linger still 
 among the savage thoughts and feelings of earlier and 
 animal-like men. 
 
 Unless, therefore, the original idea of sacrifice took 
 up and absorbed the advancing prophetic consciousness 
 that God was a Spirit, and man a creature whose aims 
 should correspond to his destiny, whose ceaseless endeavour 
 it should be to rise out of the animal into the spiritual life, 
 the offering of sacrifice might have a positively injurious 
 effect. And such, in fact, in the prophetic age, was the 
 actual result. 
 
 The connection of the prophetic schools with the practice 
 of sacrifice is a very interesting subject of inquiry, and one 
 which has been too much neglected. The first indication 
 which we obtain of the prophetic disapproval, or, at least, 
 depreciation, of sacrifice is in connection with the history 
 of Samuel, the great founder of the prophetic schools of 
 Israel. King Saul was pre-eminently a man of the people. 
 He had all their excellences and defects. A capable and 
 courageous soldier, simple in his tastes, and full of the 
 energy of a primitive faith, he was yet narrow in thought, 
 
 14 
 
2IO DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 superstitious in feeling, and largely tainted with the religious 
 rudeness of the age of the Judges. With respect to sacrifice, 
 especially, he seems to have had a trust in it as superstitious 
 as that which Micah reposed in his domestic Levite. The 
 mere offering of it would be of use. The want of it might 
 bring disaster and the displeasure of Jehovah. In itself it 
 was to Saul of so magic a quality that, rather than be without 
 it, he would take the office of priest upon himself It was 
 on an occasion when, in his ritualistic enthusiasm, he had 
 suffered the people to offer sacrifices to God of the beasts 
 which he had been directed to destroy, that Samuel pro- 
 nounced the fundamental prophetic oracle, support and 
 inspiration of so many daring utterances in the future, 
 " Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings, ... as in 
 obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better 
 than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." David 
 was brought up in the school of Samuel, and imbibed no 
 little of his spirit. Often, at the critical moments of his 
 life, we catch sayings which utter the pure, bold, spiritual 
 insight of his master. Especially, if we are to attribute to 
 him the authorship of Psalm li., and there seems no reason 
 to do otherwise, he makes his deep repentance the occasion 
 for repeating Samuel's estimate of the comparative value of 
 material and spiritual offerings : " Thou delightest not in 
 sacrifice, else would I give it ; Thou hast no pleasure in 
 burnt-offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit : 
 a broken and contrite heart, O God, wilt Thou not despise." 
 Words like these are as clearly the voices of a spiritual 
 faith as were Wesley's hymns in our fathers' time, or Keble's 
 in our own. But that age of faith passed away too soon. 
 The extending commerce and increasing luxury of the age 
 of Solomon drew closer the ties of interest and influence 
 which bound the Israelites to their Phoenician neighbours. 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 211 
 
 If Hiram, on the one side, gave cedars and craftsmen for the 
 Temple, and ships and sailors for the fleet of Ezion-geber, 
 Solomon, on the other, set the fatal example of imitating the 
 idolatry and sensuality of Phoenicia. This example was 
 eagerly followed by the succeeding kings of Israel and 
 Judah, and by a people who repeated only too willingly the 
 pleasant vices of their monarchs. 
 
 The rude and simple peasantry of Israel were not altogether 
 without excuse ; for the splendid vices of the Canaanites had 
 the same attraction for them as had those of degenerate Rome 
 for our barbarian forefathers. They had, we know, adopted 
 the language of the people whom they had conquered ; for 
 Hebrew, instead of being, as some of our forefathers thought, 
 the original language of man, was in truth the language of 
 the vanquished Canaanites. Was it strange, then, that the 
 simple-minded Jews should have been strongly attracted by 
 the superior civilization of the people whose language they 
 had learnt to speak ? Phoenicia was the England of the 
 pre-classical ages. Its people had all that largeness of mind 
 which comes from acquaintance as well with many lands 
 and races as with various modes of life and forms of faith. 
 While Athens was yet a little collection of fishing huts, the 
 leaders of Tyrian thought had developed a form of Pan- 
 theistic philosophy, and the wealthy merchants of the 
 queen of the sea had filled her with luxuries and crowned 
 her with palaces. To the Tyrian thinker the religion of 
 his simple Semitic neighbours would appear gloomy, 
 morose, and fanatical, even as their form of life was rude 
 and unrefined. No doubt he looked down upon them with 
 the same kind of good-natured contempt with which the 
 Salvation Army is regarded to-day by our leaders of scientific 
 opinion. And the Israelite who carried his honey and 
 corn to Phoenician markets, an4 saw the beauty and grandeur 
 
212 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 of the mighty city, would feel small in his own eyes and 
 turn away abashed when he heard the utterance of a wisdom 
 which seemed to be above him, or the report of countries 
 as wonderful for the strangeness of their habits as for the 
 value of their productions. Must not the owners of this 
 vast wealth, of these great palaces, of this profound culture, 
 know more about the gods than he did ? Could he believe 
 that the religion of such a people was nothing better than a 
 base and childish superstition ? Were not such a conclusion 
 as arrogant and uncharitable as it was palpably foolish? 
 And if so, might he not with advantage learn from those 
 who were so much wiser than himself, and combine some- 
 thing of their stately worship with his own simpler faith 
 and sterner morality? Inclination powerfully supported 
 these suggestions of a timid inexperience. The first 
 Israelite settlers in Palestine had largely married with the 
 women of the Canaanites, and the warm Phoenician blood 
 which ran in the veins of their descendants took kindly to 
 the splendid spectacles, and even to the boisterous revelry 
 and sensual licence, of the Phoenician worship. 
 
 And so, as commercial and political relations drew 
 Israelite and Phoenician into closer and more frequent inter- 
 course, the insidious idolatry, the splendid rites, and the 
 demoralizing vices of the latter, crept into the social and 
 religious life of the former ; until at length, in the reign of 
 Ahab, and under the impulse of Jezebel, herself a Phoenician 
 princess, the worship of Baal became the state religion, 
 and all but supplanted the ancient faith of the land. Nor 
 did the Israelites ever shake off this demoralizing Phoenician 
 influence. For in spite of the mighty struggle of Elijah 
 and the remorseless massacre of Jehu, we learn equally 
 from the records of the Israelite kings and the writings 
 gf the prophets of the eighth century before Christ, that 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 213 
 
 Phoenician idolatry, sensuality, and oppression degraded 
 the lives of the rich and embittered those of the poor. 
 
 At length, however, in the reigns of Ahaz and Hezekiah, 
 there came a decided turn of the tide. The eighth century 
 before Christ was religiously the greatest century in post- 
 Mosaic history. It is the century of the great prophetic 
 reformation, of the mightiest prophetic effort, and of the 
 grandest prophetic utterances with which the Bible makes 
 us acquainted. Here it is (in the prophecies of Amos, 
 Hpsea, Isaiah, and Micah) that the modern critic finds his 
 first certain standing-ground. And hence it is that he can 
 throw the light of scientific truth backward and forward, 
 through all the centuries which preceded and followed. It 
 is upon this century, and its glorious outburst of religious 
 light, that attention will be more and more concentrated in 
 the time to come. And it is precisely in this century that 
 we find, as we should expect, the loftiest spiritual utterances 
 on the meaning and place of sacrifice. 
 
 We learn from the historical and prophetic books, that 
 not only were obelisks erected to Baal, the sun-god, and 
 asherim or phallic poles to Ashtoreth, but also that altars 
 were everywhere raised to Baal upon the high places. On 
 these altars the Israelites offered incense and burnt-sacrifices, 
 many of these latter consisting of human victims. The 
 offering of human sacrifices seems, indeed, to have been 
 specially identified with Canaanite worship. We are told 
 that when Carthage was besieged by Agathocles the citizens 
 offered as burnt-sacrifices two hundred boys of the highest 
 aristocracy; and subsequently, when they had obtained a 
 victory, sacrificed the most beautiful of their captives in like 
 manner. From the Phoenicians the Israelites learnt the same 
 barbarous practice. When Manasseh had stamped out the 
 great prophetic reformation in blood, he reared up altars. 
 
214 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 we are told, for Baal, and made an Asherah in the house of 
 God, and made his son to pass through the fire. In the 
 general summary, again, which is given of past abominations 
 in the accounts of Josiah's reform, it is said that the king 
 defiled Tophet, " that no man might make his son or his 
 daughter to pass through the fire to Moloch." And, referring 
 to the same evil days, Jeremiah declares that the people of 
 Jerusalem *' built high places to Baal, to burn their sons 
 with fire, for burnt-offerings to Baal." 
 
 Now, as we saw in the last lecture, the offering of human 
 sacrifices marks a special stage in the development of the 
 sacrificial idea. It marks the crisis when, being no longer 
 able to believe that animals could share the common life of 
 the god and his worshipper, men felt themselves constrained 
 to obtain the blood which carried that life by the sacrifice 
 of a human being. But however the preciousness of the 
 offered hfe was thus enhanced, the thought still was that the 
 blood really carried the life ; that the communion between 
 the god and his worshipper was merely a physical communion. 
 It was this thought accordingly which prevailed in Israel 
 when the great prophetic movement commenced. The 
 half-paganized masses of the people, especially in the country 
 districts, looked upon sacrifice, whether human or animal, 
 as a kind of magic spiritual prophylactic, which in some 
 unknown way purified the soul by its mere offering and 
 outward application. When the rite was duly performed 
 the result followed : sins were covered, the god was pro- 
 pitiated, heaven and earth were brought into amicable 
 fellowship. That men lived in impurity, that there were 
 Sodomites, and women weaving hangings for the shameless 
 Asherah in the very house of God ; that they feasted to 
 gluttony, filled Jerusalem with the blood of the innocent, 
 and ground the faces of the poor, all this was nothing ; 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 215 
 
 or, at least, nothing but what could be covered and atoned 
 for by due observance of the sacrificial requirements. 
 
 But when night is darkest morn is nearest ; and so the 
 Church of the eighth century before Christ found it. For, 
 suddenly, into the darkness of this vicious and idolatrous 
 century there broke the sunrise of the brightest day 
 with which the Jewish Church was ever blessed. With 
 Isaiah for its voice and Hezekiah for its arm, this great 
 religious revival and advance changed for the time the 
 whole aspect of Jewish life. In the Book of Deuteronomy 
 it simplified and spiritualized the law, forbidding those local 
 sacrifices and village festivals which had been so deeply 
 corrupted by Phoenician influence, and concentrating the 
 whole ceremonial service of the country at Jerusalem, 
 where it could be watched and directed by spiritually- 
 minded men. And not only was the practice of sacrifice 
 thus alteied and purified, but its idea also was elevated and 
 ennobled in the prophetic oracles. In itself the mere act 
 of sacrifice, the mere slaughter of beasts and sprinkling of 
 their blood, was declared to be useless, and even, when 
 unaccompanied by the proper moral dispositions, unpleasing 
 to God. Bolder words, more startling words, were never 
 uttered upon earth than those of Isaiah to the decent rite- 
 loving sinners of his own generation. " To what purpose 
 is the multitude of your sacrifices to Me ? saith the Lord : 
 I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed 
 beasts ; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, 
 or of he-goats. . . . Wash you, make you clean ; put away 
 the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes ; cease to do 
 evil ; learn to do well ; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, 
 judge the fiitherless, plead for the widow." Nor were such 
 words of fire the utterance of a solitary voice in that glorious 
 century. It is from Hosea, the elder contemporary of 
 
2l6 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 Isaiah, that our Lord quotes the memorable oracle which He 
 commended to the attention of the hypocritical Pharisees : 
 " I will have mercy and not sacrifice." Micah, again, the 
 younger contemporary of the same great prophet, presents 
 God's demand, in the form of question and answer between 
 Balaam and Balak : " Wherewith shall I come before the 
 Lord ? " runs the question of the king of Moab. " Shall I 
 come before Him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a 
 year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of 
 rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? shall I give my 
 firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the 
 sin of my soul ? " Can I win the Divine help or favour by 
 any number, or any preciousness, of animal or human 
 victims ? No, is the reply put into the mouth of Balaam : 
 " He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good ; and what doth 
 the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love 
 mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ? " 
 
 You will see that the effect of this w^onderful teaching 
 was to set the whole value of sacrifice in the spiritual dis 
 position with which it was ofi'ered. Sacrifice represented 
 spiritual self-surrender to God : the abandonment of all 
 selfish desires, and a willing submission to God's will of 
 love. If the offerer came in this temper, then would 
 sacrifice become the actual vehicle of the Divine blessing ; 
 but if it were presented by those who had love for neither 
 God nor man, who in fact desired God to condone the 
 absence of such a feeling for the sake of the sacrifice, then 
 the offering became hateful, and a mere instrument of sin. 
 
 If only Israel could have stood fast on this lofty height 
 of religious truth, how different had been its after develop- 
 ment, and its ultimate reception of the Lord of the prophets ! 
 But, alas ! those mighty servants of God were before their 
 time, and, as soon as Hezekiah died, the mass of the people. 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 21 7 
 
 led by Manasseh, and disgusted with the loss of their merry 
 and licentious festivals, broke out into open revolt against 
 the moral severity of the Reformers. So violent, indeed, 
 was the reaction and so furious were the passions which a 
 premature reform had excited, that not only were the great 
 leaders put to death (Isaiah, according to Jewish tradition, 
 being sawn asunder), but we read that " Manasseh shed 
 innocent blood very much, until he had filled Jerusalem 
 from one end to another." All the hopes of good men for 
 the renewal of the national life were thus quenched in a 
 bloody persecution. For, in spite of the ineffectual effort 
 of Josiah, the old heathenish habits and feelings had been 
 so deeply rooted in Israel during the long reign of Manasseh 
 that no permanent change was effected until the people had 
 passed through the fierce furnace of captivity. 
 
 Even after the Restoration, the great days of Isaiah were 
 never to return. For so great a horror did the returned 
 exiles feel of every form of Gentile culture, that for the 
 protection, as they thought, of the covenant life, they deter- 
 mined to know no study but that of the sacred books, and 
 no life but that which was literally prescribed therein. The 
 large spirit of prophecy, the eagle vision of the free son of 
 God, was known in Israel no more. Instead of the prophet 
 these timid children of the exile took for their teacher the 
 scribe, the slavish and laborious student of the letter of 
 the law, the man whose delight it was to multiply ritual 
 distinctions, and to bind fast the life of God's people in the 
 fetters of a frivolous ceremonialism. 
 
 What enlightened views of sacrifice were to be expected 
 from teachers like these, to whom the letter was everything, 
 and whose sole anxiety was, not that the soul should fill its 
 act with meaning, but that the act itself should be accurately 
 performed? So things continued till the days of our 
 
2l8 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 Lord, and we have, in the works of His contemporary Philo, 
 a singular and very interesting illustration of the difficulty 
 which was felt, even by the freest and largest minds, in 
 liberating themselves from popular ritualistic prejudices. 
 
 " Since a soul," he says, " is spoken of in two senses, the 
 whole soul, and the ruling part of it, which, to speak truly, 
 is the soul of the soul, it seemed to the legislator (Moses) 
 that the essence of the soul is double ; blood of the whole, 
 and the Divine spirit of the ruling part." How could a 
 student of Plato, we are tempted to ask, describe the blood 
 as the essence of the whole soul ? Because, I answer, he 
 was trying to combine the Jewish literalism of his own time 
 with Platonic spiritualism ; and so, as he had not courage 
 to break utterly with the formalism of his own people, and 
 to proclaim boldly that the blood only represented the life 
 which it could not contain, he was obliged to tie the Jewish 
 and Platonic conceptions together by the external bond of 
 a dual theory. Blood was, with him, the essence of the 
 whole soul, because the law seemed to say so; but no 
 doubt there was a soul of the soul, an inner spiritual thing 
 which, as the Platonic system suggested, might have the 
 Divine Spirit for its essence. 
 
 This difficulty of Philo, and the clumsy and wholly arti- 
 ficial way in which he tries to extricate himself from it, is 
 a good measure of the difficulty which his less enlightened 
 countrymen and fellow-citizens must have felt when called 
 upon, by the necessities of their position as excommunicated 
 Jews, to surrender the right of partaking in the sacrificial 
 worship of the Temple. They could not shake off the 
 feeling that the sacrifice of a beast had some real mysterious 
 efficacy ; that when God had received the blood sprinkled 
 on His altar, or before His mercy-throne. His mind was 
 altered towards the worshipper. And how, then, could 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 219 
 
 believing in Christ alter that fact, if it were a fact? If 
 blood covered sin, and made God propitious, made it safe 
 for man to approach God, and possible for God to pardon 
 man, was not that equally true for Christian and Jew ; and 
 was it not certain that if a Christian had to give up offering 
 sacrifice he lost an advantage which the Jew retained ? 
 
 It is very difficult for us to believe now-a-days that any 
 calling themselves Christians could have so felt and'thought ; 
 and yet it seems to me that a careful perusal of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews will show that it was written to those who 
 were thoroughly possessed and terrified by such fears. That 
 is why the author of the Epistle has to seek his arguments 
 (not always to us convincing ones) in the pages of the Old 
 Testament. This was the only revealed authority which 
 was likely to be accepted by the Christian Jews to whom 
 he wrote. If, then, he is to prove to their satisfaction that 
 Jesus was superior to the angels, to Moses, to Aaron, and 
 to the High Priests who succeeded Aaron ; if he is to 
 convince his readers that Jesus has offered a better sacrifice 
 than any prescribed by the law, a sacrifice which has no 
 need to be supplemented by the blood of goats and calves, 
 and no need to be repeated, he must do this on the authority 
 of that very Word of God which had defined the offices 
 and prescribed the sacrifices. It was undoubtedly a very 
 difficult task. 
 
 How much easier it had been, we think, to say at once. 
 Matter is nothing, spirit is everything : sacrifice means self- 
 surrender, the blood means the life given up to God ; the 
 Priesthood standing between God and man simply represents 
 the fact that since, in the broken and perverted condition of 
 the human will, none of us can comply with God's demands, 
 it was necessary that such compliance should be offered for 
 us by the Son of God, that so, by spiritual union with Him, 
 
2 20 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 we might gain the power to offer an acceptable obedience. 
 Seen in the Hght of our Lord's teaching these seem to us 
 self-evident truths, and they are certainly not made more 
 credible to us because they were more or less clearly fore- 
 shadowed in the sacrificial system of the law. It was far 
 otherwise, however, with those for whom ApoUos wrote. To 
 them the law was a Divine revelation, and if they were to 
 be persuaded to abandon the Levitical sacrifices, in must be 
 on the authority of the law itself. 
 
 It is interesting, therefore, to notice how, in the author's 
 summary respecting sacrifice, he supports himself on those 
 very oracles of the Old Testament which speak the language 
 of Isaiah. We might, perhaps, have expected the quotation 
 here of some of those passages from the prophets which 
 we have reviewed. But for some reason (it might be with 
 reference to the knowledge of his readers), twenty-three 
 out of the twenty-nine passages quoted in this EpistlQ are 
 from the Pentateuch or the Psalms, the fundamental law 
 and the book of common devotion. More striking still is 
 it that every primary passage which is cited to illustrate the 
 work of Christ is taken from the Psalms. We find, there- 
 fore, as we might expect, that when our author proceeds to 
 declare the true nature of the sacrifice of Christ, he bases 
 his exposition upon the words of a psalm. 
 
 What may be the age, or who may be the author, of 
 Psalm xl. it is impossible to say. Ewald thinks that the 
 reference to the roll of the book points to the time of 
 Josiah's reformation, and Cheyne agrees with him. But it 
 is impossible, as Perowne says, to be certain. One thing, 
 however, seems to me to be pretty evident, that its author 
 belonged either to the school of Samuel or to that of 
 Isaiah; that he is to be sought either among the sacred 
 poets of whom David was the central figure, or in the 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 221 
 
 circle of those prophets who felt the mighty impulse of the 
 reformation of Hezekiah. 
 
 There seems to be no other period of Israelitish history 
 from which such words could have come. The quotation 
 from the Psalmist is introduced by the positive statement, 
 " It is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should 
 take away sin." What can blood, a material substance, 
 have to do v/ith sins, the acts of a spirit? Blood may, 
 indeed, avail as the ceremonial means of removing a cere- 
 monial defilement, but how can any blood, and much 
 less that of a creature which can have neither will nor 
 purpose in its death, cleanse the conscience from dead 
 works ? A sacrifice which can avail for us must be the 
 sacrifice of a will like our own, and yet capable of a sub- 
 mission to God more perfect than any which we can offer. 
 "Wherefore," says our author, adopting that Messianic 
 interpretation of Psalm xl., which his readers would 
 readily admit, "when he cometh into the world, He 
 saith. Sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest not, but a body 
 didst Thou prepare Me [or, as it is in the Hebrew, ' open 
 ears didst Thou make Me ']. In whole burnt-offerings and 
 sacrifices for sin Thou hadst no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, 
 I come, in the roll of the book it is written of Me, to do 
 Thy will, O God." 
 
 Here there is a direct comparison between the sacrifices 
 of the law and Christ's spiritual sacrifice of perfect obedience; 
 and our author concludes, " He taketh away the first (sacri- 
 fice), that he may establish the second (obedience)." The 
 first was a legal shadow, the second is its spiritual substance; 
 the first was the typical prediction, the second is the eternal 
 fulfilment. The common element in the two representa- 
 tions is manifestly the surrender of a sacred life to God. 
 Of this the legal sacrifice was but the figure and fore 
 
222 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 shadowing, while the voluntary and complete self-surrender 
 of the Son of God, in life and in death, to His Father's 
 will, was the perfect realization. Thus Jesus Christ was 
 made a High Priest, " not after the law of a carnal com- 
 mandment, but after the power of an endless life." And He 
 offered His life to God, not merely in obedience to a positive 
 ceremonial precept, "but through an eternal spirit," through 
 the free loving choice of a will whose determination has 
 eternal validity and value, because on the one hand it is that 
 of a Divine-human Person, and on the other has been fixed 
 and stamped for ever with the seal of a redeeming death. 
 
 Here, then, according to the author of the Epistle to 
 the Hebrews, is the eternal reality, of which all the legal 
 sacrifices were but types. Here we are to discover the 
 spiritual efficacy of that sacrifice which at once opened for 
 us free access to God and made us fit to avail ourselves of 
 that access. And standing at this lofty point of view we 
 are to look abroad upon all the sacrificial language of 
 prophets and apostles, and find its true interpretation. 
 
 Are we told that Christ "made peace by the blood of 
 His Cross," we know that this means, by the final sur- 
 render of His perfect life in obedience to the will of the 
 Father. Do we read, again, that " He died for our sins," 
 we learn hence that this is because His death had a twofold 
 office in preparing our deliverance : firstly, it completed and 
 crowned His perfect self-surrender to the will of the Father; 
 and secondly, it liberated the spirit over which it seemed 
 to triumph, opening the way into that glorified state in 
 which it should gain higher powers, and, above all, greater 
 viability, greater communicableness, according to His own 
 great word : " It is expedient for you that I go away, for if 
 I go not away the Comforter will not come to you ; " and 
 again: " I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you;'* 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 223 
 
 and yet again : " Lo, I am with you all the days, even to the 
 end of the age." Do we read, once more, " We are justified 
 by faith," we know, as in former cases, that this teaches us 
 the spiritual means by w^hich we can enter into communion 
 with the life of Christ, sharing its will of love, and gaining 
 in germ and potency that righteousness which is imputed 
 to us, because in Christ we have that which in its due 
 unfolding shall realize before men what it already is before 
 God. Stand, in a word, at the right point of view; recognise 
 clearly the fact that it was a new and perfect human life 
 which in His sacrifice of Himself Christ offered to God, 
 which He bestows upon us by His Spirit, which we can take 
 and share by faith in Him ; and then everything arbitrary 
 and unethical falls away of itself from our conception of 
 Christian truth. Then it is impossible to think of God as a 
 vengeful enemy longing for blood, as a hard trader counting 
 up the tale of human offences and requiring from Christ their 
 equivalent in suffering, or even as a satiated creditor willing 
 to account to men actions which are not their own and a 
 character which in no real sense belongs to them. Then 
 all is natural, all is ethical, all is, if not comprehensible, at 
 least accordant with those canons of conscience which are 
 our only measure and test of eternal righteousness. 
 
 To find, then, that Christ made a real atonement or re- 
 conciliation, by perfecting in His own Person a life which 
 God could accept and man could share ; to call this atone- 
 ment vicarious because it was made, not for Christ's own 
 sake, but for the sake of His helpless and alienated brethren; 
 to call it a propitiation because it was made by such a life 
 as was in all respects well-pleasing to the Infinite Love; 
 to hope from it, again, redemption and regeneration 
 because the life which made it carried within itself power 
 to deliver man from sin and to fill him with its own holy 
 
2 24 DANGERS OF THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 
 
 impulses, all this is not only credible, but inspiring and 
 uplifting. It fills the heart with joy and peace unspeakable. 
 It explains all the past and illuminates all the future. In 
 the light of it I understand the form and meaning of those 
 two great Sacraments which Christ has set before the eyes 
 of His disciples as the two visible parables of Christian 
 truth and vehicles of Christian grace. If salvation is to be 
 found only in sharing the life of Christ, how necessary was 
 it to embody in striking ordinances, which none could 
 overlook or misunderstand, firstly, the truth that each must 
 be born anew into this life ; and secondly, that he must be 
 continually nourished thereby, through all the days of his 
 mortal pilgrimage ! How necessary, further, that the ordi- 
 nances which taught the truth should convey the gift, and 
 offer continually to our need what they exhibited to our faith ! 
 For who amongst us is there, my brethren, who does not 
 consciously need, for his daily work and conflict, " the 
 power of Christ's indissoluble life " ? We can all, indeed, 
 approve and even admire that life of absolute self-surrender 
 to God ; but who of us in his own strength is able to attain 
 to it ? The assumption that we can do this, that we have 
 only to will and to be, lies at the foundation of all those 
 man -glorifying schemes which ignore or deny the necessity 
 of Christ's sacrifice. To us, however, the Incarnation of 
 the Eternal Son of the Blessed is the abiding witness that 
 our natural will is not only broken, but impotent ; that out of 
 its own natural resources it is utterly unable to return the 
 answer of a perfect obedience to the righteous demands of 
 God. We need more life, more vital resource and energy 
 throughout the whole breadth of our being, reinforcement 
 of our will, augmentation of the springs of feeling, new 
 clearness and emphasis of moral judgment, oblivion of the 
 guilty past,^and above all power to break bad habits and 
 
THE HEBREW APOSTASY. 22 5 
 
 Stubborn prejudices. We need all this, and can only gain 
 it, as we know full well, by participation in a life larger, 
 richer, holier, and more self-sacrificing than our own. 
 
 I have endeavoured to show you in these lectures that 
 it was the sense of this need which showed itself of old in 
 the rudest forms of the early Semitic sacrifices ; that, as the 
 days went by, clearer and more adequate expression was 
 given to this craving of man's awakened conscience by 
 such a change in the materials, the form, and the ceremonial 
 of sacrifice as should arouse more powerfully the sense of 
 sin, while it awakened the hope of a better, because a more 
 ethical, atonement. And now at last, when the fulness of 
 the time had come, we have seen the Son of the Blessed 
 taking our flesh, feeling our weakness, bearing our sins, 
 fighting our battles; and through all this, through all the 
 conflict and suff"ering, even to death, surrendering utterly 
 His own will to that of His Heavenly Father ; so creating in 
 our nature a humanity well-pleasing to God. Into that new 
 humanity we have all been brought by baptism ; of its love 
 and purity and potency we may all partake day by day in 
 Holy Communion, in solemn meditation, and the awful 
 approaches of prayer. May God, then, give us grace, in this 
 age of transition, when minds are so unsettled and hearts 
 are so deeply troubled, and even the most venerable insti- 
 tutions of society seem trembling to their base, to lay hold 
 on this Divine Hfe of sacrifice, each for himself, that, losing 
 ourselves in Christ, and our selfish will in that perfect will 
 of love which He came to reveal and fulfil, we may gain a 
 sure and eternal abiding-place, "in that city which hath 
 foundations, whose Maker and Builder is God." 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, &' Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury 
 
 15