LIBRARY OF PRINCETON I JUL 2 7 2007 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY GOD IN HISTORY. v.iL. iir. lonhon: niTNTTin nr SVOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-S'riU;r.T BQITAKT! AND PAKLIAMENT STKl!!!! GOD IN HISTORY OR THE PROGRESS OF MAN'S FAITH IN THE MORAL ORDER OF THE WORLD. BY C. C. J. BARON BUNSEN, D.Ph. D.C.L. & D.D. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY SUSANNA WINKWOETH, AUTHOR OP 'NTEBCHR'S LIFE,' ' TAULER'S LIFE,' ETC. WITH A PREFACE BY ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D, DEAN OF WESTMINSTER. • LIBRARY OF PR NCETON N THREE VOLU] VOL. Ill lES. iRY LONDON : LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1870. ,,t.vv of Prin^_ e> *c MAR ,^A I'*"- ' a'c- CONTENTS OF THE THIRD VOLUME, BOOK V. THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHRISTIAN ARYANS. GENKKAL INTRODUCTION. AND SIXTH BOOKS CHAPTEE I. SUEVEY AND PLAN OF THE FIFTH PA(iK CHAPTER IL CHRIST ; OR, THE CONSCIOUSNESS EXPRESSED BY JESUS RESPECTING THE DIVINE AGENCY IN HISTORY. Characteristics of Christ's own teaching — 1. The Eternal, Jesus, Humanity — 2. The Eternal Life of Earthly Man — 3. The True Religion — 4. The Kingdom of God upon Earth — 5. Sin and Evil — 6. The Unity of the Kingdom of God upon Earth — 7. The Relation of Christ's Religion to that of the Jews — - 8. Christ's Attitude towards the Religious Consciousness of the Gentiles — 9. The Church is the Vessel of God among Mankind — 10. The Liberty and Judicial Function of the Ecclesia — 11. The Personal Nature of all True Faith — 12. The Perfect Accomplishment of the Kingdom of God — Clear Teaching of Christ respecting His own nature — Absence ol" Precepts respecting Forms ....... VI CONTENTS OF CHAPTER III. THE TRANSITION PERIOD. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD IN HISTORY POSSESSED BY CHRIST's APOSTLES AND BY THE EARLIEST SEMITIC CHURCHES. SD^ PAGE Founding of the Church by the Apostles through the power of the Holy Ghost — Peter and the organization of the Church — Paul and the development of the Cliristian Faith — John the Apostle of Love, with his Eevelation of the Future Destinies of the Church — Close of the first or Semitic age of the Church 42 CHAPTER IV. THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH OF THE ARYANS DURING THE EPOCH OF PERSECUTION. Position of the Church in the Roman Empire — Organization of the Chiu-ch— No hereditary Rulers — The Power of the Keys — Bishops constitutional not despotic Monarchs — Rite of Baptism — Form of Public Worship — The Holy Commimion — The Sacred or Ecclesiastical Year — The Series of Scripture Lessons based thereon ... .... 50 CHAPTER V. THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OP THE PROPHETS OF THE PERSECUTED CHURCH. 1. Ignatius: His Epistle to the Ephesians — 2. Basilides and Valentinus— 3. The Epistle to Diognetus probably written by Marcion — 4. The " Shepherd" of Hermas — 5. Clemens of Alexandria, and his Master, Pantrenus — Alexandrine Exe- gesis .......... 68 CHAPTER VI. RECAPITULATION AND ANTICIPATION. New Life in a moribund world — Sense of approaching judg- ment on the Avorld — Belief in the dissolution of all earthly things — Advent of Constantine — The Three Factors of Man's Religious Consciousness : God the Eternal, God in Christ, the Spirit in the Church — Dangers to Faith . . ,100 THE THIRD VOLUME. Vll CHAPTER VII. THE EELIGIOTJS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH REGNANT AND HIERARCHICAL, AS EXHIBITED IN HER CONSTITUTION. ^tr PACJli Rise of an Aristocratic Constitution — The Oecumenical Councils — The Church's constitution gradually changed into a Patri- archate — Division of the Eastern and Western Churches — Rise of the Papacy — Suppression of the Lay Element — Results of Hierarchy . . , . . . . . . .114 CHAPTER VIII. THE CHURCH S CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD EVINCED IN HER WORSHIP. Relation of Cultus to Dogma — The Presence of God m the Church — Conseqiiences of the AvithdraAval of the Bible — Growth of a prescribed Liturgy — The ordinances of Basil and Chrysos- tom — Effect of the Christology of the Councils — Rise of Saint-worship — It is no longer the Communion^ but the Con- secration that is the essence of the Rite — Controversy respect- ing the seat of the Real Presence in the Lord's Supper — Controversy between Paschasius and Rabanus — Ratramnus and Erigena — Doctrine of the Ninth Century — Controversy between Berengariusand Lanfranc in the Eleventh Century — Peter Lombard and Innocent III. — The Host declared a Sacrifice — The Council of Trent 1563 a.d. — Indulgences — Worship of the Virgin — Promulgation of the Dogma of the Immaciilate Conception — Social Influences of the Church . 123 CHAPTER IX. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD IN HISTORY POSSESSED BY THE PROPHETS OF THE CHURCH OF THE HIERARCHY UP TO THE TIME OF THE REFORMATION. Augustine and Salvianus — Desponding theory of the world pre- vailing during the decline of the Roman Empire — St. Bene- dict — Erigena — The Dark Ages — Devil-Worship — Gregoiy Vll. — Innocent III. — Joachim of Floris — Abelard — Dante — Petrarch — Savonarola . . . . . , . 1G4 VIU CONTENTS OF CHAPTER X. THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OF THE PERSECUTED WALDENSIAN CHURCH CONCERNING GOd's PRESENCE IN THE WORLD. 'o PAGE Peter Waldo— Doctrines of The Noble Sermon"— The Walden- sian Confession of Faith . . . . • . .183 CHAPTER XI. THE PROPHETS OF THE CHURCH OF THE HIERARCHY SINCE THE REFORMATION. Bo.«suet — Le Maistre — Lamennais — Wessenbero; . . . 189 CHAPTER XII. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHRISTIAN ARYANS AND THEIR PROPHETS OF god's PRESENCE IN HISTORY SINCE THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. Five Theses containing the fundamental principles of the Re- formation — The Translation of the Bible into the vulgar tongue — Momentous results of giving the Bible to the Laity — Rise of Hymnody — Improvement of Sacred Music — Import- ance of the Sermon — Learning sanctified — The constitution of the Reformed Churches — Social Reforms — Civil and Reli- gious Liberty — Rise of Constitutional Monarchy — Dawn of Federalism — Art since the Reformation — Music — Modern German painters — Modern epical and lyrical Poetry — The Modern Drama — Modern Historical Literature — Church His- tory — Rise of Philosophic History . . . . . . 199 CHAPTER XIII. THE PROPHETS OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY IN THE REFORMED CHURCH. Luther — Calvin — Terrible effects of the Thirty Years' AVar — Jacob Bohme — Gottfried Arnold, Oetinger and Bengel — Decline of Theology — Schleiermacher — Channing- — Leibnitz — Vico — ■ Montesquieu — Winckelmann — The Schlegels — The Humboldts — Kant — Fichte — Hegel and Schelling . . 239 THE THIRD VOLUME. ix BOOK VI. RESULTS OF THE FOREGOING ENQUIRIES, WITH THE PRACTICAL LESSONS WHICH THEY SUGGEST. CHAPTEK I. PAfJF, GENERAL REVIEW OF THE RESULT OF THE FOURTH AND FIFTH BOOKS 282 CHAPTER IL THE WORLD — HISTORICAL RESULT. Language tlie chief means of development — Its growth traced through the five chief families of mankind — The development exhibits an objective progress . . . . . .294 CHAPTER Iir. THE CONCLUSIONS PRESENTED IN THE FIELD OF THE SCIEN- TIFIC OR POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. The Religious Consciousness the efficient cause of Civilisation — The reality of Human Progress — Progress consists in the advance from Necessity to Freedom — Progress in a particular Race leads to empire — Ethnological amalgamation appa- rently designed by Providence — Contrast and analogy sub- sisting between morbid and healthy developments . . 304 CHAPTER IV. THE RELIGIOUS RESULT. Revelation an impartation of the knowledge of God — The Symbol valueless in itself — The place of the Individual in True Religion — The Bible the sole aiithoritative Standard of Christianity — The Christianity of the Bible not founded on Leo-ends — The Chiirch demands the Commonwealth — A Hier- archy necessarily antagonistic to the State — The signs of im- pending ruin in Church and State . , . . .317 APPENDIX. PAGE X CONTENTS OF CHAPTER V. THE RESULTS AS THEY BEAR UPON POLITY AND CIVILISATION. The Crises of the Religious Consciousness are also Political Crises — The Nature of True Civilisation .... 330 CHAPTER VI. THE PRACTICAL INFERENCES. The signs of the inward and outward crisis of the present — A Positive Philosophy of Mind possible — The practical inference bearing on Education — Harmonious development its aim — Language and History its most efficient instruments — Im- portance of familiarity with the Scriptures — Practical ability and head knowledge — Necessity of Athletic Exercises — Need of Ecclesiastical Reform — Conditions of a true Christian Church — Essential Elements in Public Worship — Political Inferences — Necessity of an inward moral renewal — Signs of an impending political Crisis — Dangers of Socialism and their remedy — The impending Crisis a Day of Judgment — The Victory of Good upon this earth, the final Goal of all History 336 Note A (p. 139). THE AUTHENTIC WORDS OF JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA RESPECTING THE SPIRITUAL MEANING OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN THE SACRAMENT 361 Note B (p. 143). BERENGARIUS AND LESSING ....... 362 Note C (p. 159). THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY VIRGIN: FOUR ROMISH PRAYERS OF THE YEAR 1S22 362 THE THIRD VOLUME. XI Note D (p. 168). PAttE THE ELEGY ON ROME WRITTEN IN THE NINTH CENTURV A PRODUC- TION OF ERIGENA 364 Note E (p. 179). THE THREE SONNETS OF PETRARCH . . . . . . 3G5 GOD IN HISTORY. BOOK V. THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHRISTIAN ARYANS. CHAPTER I. GENEEAL INTRODUCTION. SURVEY AND PLAN OF THE FIFTH AND SIXTH BOOKS. If we take a rapid survey of those leading features in the development of rehgious consciousness among the Chris- tian Aryans, which are universally recognized, and then combine with this a retrospective glance at the facts brought forward in our former volumes, one remarkable contrast will immediately challenge our notice. In the leading phenomena of this class, which the history of our world has as yet exhibited to our view, no higher unity has presented itself than that of nationality or ethnologi- cal idiosyncracy. On the Semitic domain, we do, indeed, encounter in Abraham a man of God who does not find his nationality ready-made, but founds it himself; and who, from a simple Chaldean, becomes in Canaan, through a divine inspiration, the author of a religion adapted for all mankind. But all the other men of God, including Moses himself, frame a national religion. Nor have we, as yet, among the Aryans found such a phenomenon. Zoroaster is an Iranian Bactrian, Buddha an Aryan VOL. III. B 2 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. Indian. As soon as the Aryan intellect grows powerful in Ionia and Hellas, everything beneath its influence wears or acquires a Hellenic shape. The Eoman empire, it is true, formed a mixed nationality, and gave birth to a Hellenico-Eoman religious consciousness. But the unity of the national element therein is but external, having superstition for its base, and scepticism for its superstruc- ture, while hypocrisy furnishes its buttresses and decora- tion. At most, what remains as Hellenic religion is a shallow, lifeless worship of Humanity, Imperial pagan- ism brings forth no new, world-historical offspring, that rises above the grandeur of the ancient national ele- ment, or even maintains that element in a condition of healthy development. Everything is national ; the sacred traditions no less than the rites. Hence, in exhibiting the development of Aryan religious consciousness, we have hitherto had to divide our subject according to the distinctions of the various nationalities. What is it then which noAv compels us to abandon this method, if we would understand the subsequent unfolding of the re- ligious sense ? What is the reason why the national ele- ment retires into the background ? It can only result from the pressure of some force commensurate with the whole range of Humanity, and some force that is truly inward and spiritual in its nature. That is to say, in other words, the motive force of the new confieruration assumed by the life of Humanity is only to be found, if found anywhere, in the personality of Jesus of Nazareth. The pure human consciousness of God must have found ex- pression in that Personality as it has done in no other. History, indeed, cannot treat of aught that transcends tlie limits of human nature and human personality, without ceasing to be history. Nevertheless, we shall be com- pelled to pronounce the shape Avhich that Personality as- sumed, — free from the bonds at once of self-interest, of nationality, and of the age, — in an absolutely unique de- gree something divine, in order to understand the effects Chap. I.] GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 8 it produced. Unless, indeed, we renounce the principle that a cause must be of like nature with its effect, and must, too, be something higher, since it is the fountain- head ! Thus the contemplation of this unique religious con- sciousness forms the sacred vestibule to the grand course of development which, receiving its primary impulse from Christ, has now been gradually unfolding itself before our eyes for nearly 2000 years. We must separate between the Apostles and Evangelists, and the Person of the Christ Whom they have proclaimed to the world, and the his- torical acquaintance with Whom has been preserved to us by their writings. They are rather to be considered as forming the Semitic rudiment of the Church's develop- ment, but a rudiment pregnant with the germs of the whole hfe of Humanity. In the history of man's religious consciousness, Christ is not the latest of the Jewish prophets, but the Father of the Christian prophets and nations — the Son of Man and the Son of God. The Apostles are His witnesses, the earliest of all Semitic Christians, and the primary founders of the Christian Churches. It is undisputed that from this date onwards, that development of the religious consciousness wdiich has taken place among the Christian Aryans, has been the depositary of the dominant religious consciousness of mankind at large. But this development is unintelligible apart from that unique Personality. It is only by a con- tinual comparison of the perfect Personality of Jesus, and of the lofty goal which He has set before us, with the de- velopment, national and individual, which has attached itself to Him, that we obtain a standard by which to measure the import of past Christian ages, a key to the understanding of ourselves and our own age, and a clue to guide our guesses at the future ; but this knowledge does confer " peace of heart, peace of conscience." Thus we shall not present the series of religious de- velopments ainoufz the Cliristian Aryans according to B I 4 GOD IN HISTOHV. [Eooic V. nationalities, but according to the two highest mental antitheses ; namely, the respective achievements of the Community on the one hand, and the Individual on the other. This dual division is based upon the nature of man and the duality of the divine idea of Humanity, as made up of individual personalities, and as one Whole. In our delineation of tlie Grseco-Eoman world also, this dualism formed the groundwork, but it was as yet subor- dinated to the distinctions of nationality. Here, as there, the consciousness of the Community exhibits itself as two-fold. On the one hand, as that of the religious, and on the other as that of the civil fellowship. And while the former, in its contemplation of God, presupposes the existence of the universe, so does the latter presuppose the existence of God while en2;aQ;ed in the consideration of the world and its human order. But in the Hellenic development, the sense of a religious fellowship very early fades into the background behind the overpowering sense of the grandeur of tke actual civil fellowship, and we have scarcely an}^ other proof of its presence than is furnished by what we know of the literature of the na- tion. In the Christian development, on the contrary, our knowledge of the religious common life, both in worship and in organization, rests upon authentic documents ; its history lies before us equally well attested with that of the civil community, and its healthy life is no less import- ant for our purposes than that of the latter. Thus the exhibition of this common consciousness will form our first division in the consideration of each period. Of these there will be three, — the Persecuted Church, the Hierarchical Church, the Eeformed Church. Under each of these heads, our second section will be devoted to the re- ligious consciousness of the prophets of the period. We had at first thought of dividing this whole account into our two concluding Books, but the importance of the results yielded by our enquiry, and of the consequences to be deduced therefrom, have' proved themselves so overpowering that Chap. L] GENKRAL INTRODUCTION. 5 we have felt it our duty to compress the historical survey into one Book. Moreover in such an account of the most recent past of the now-existing nations of the civilized world, completeness in our review of well-known individual facts is of less consequence than a clear apprehension of the world-wide historical import of the phenomena. Not that we desire arbitrarily to raise certain details into prominence while bridging over the chasms between them by authoritative dicta^ or the doctrines of any speculative system. On the contrary, the facts which are decisive in their bearing upon the particular point in question, will be presented fully and consecutively in their best authen- ticated form, upon the authority of critical examination, and of my own independent researches. But only those salient points will be presented wdiich bear upon universal history. Any details that are here taken for granted are such as have gradually been established on a secure footing by the honest and arduous critical investigation of the three last centuries. With regard to some of them the author may venture to refer his readers to the re- searches and critical observations made by himself in his former works. Of course, there is also a perfectly distinct scientific point of view from which we might contemplate the phe- nomena presented by universal history. We might, indeed, starting from the phenomena of the spiritual consciousness, attempt to reach universal formula3 of the laws of develop- ment, either upon the path of pure speculation or in methodical connection with v/ell-attested facts. We simply say that such is not the method pursued in the present work. We do not intend here to set up any system. The actual and regulative facts shall speak for them- selves to the minds of our cultivated and earnest contem- poraries. The grounds which have determined the author to begin with the historical delineation are various. In the first place, he believes that a considerable portion of tlie most 6 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. important facts of the world's history bearing upon this subject, have not as yet been even so much as examined in a satisfactory manner or with reference to their con- catenation in universal history. Far less, therefore, can he assume that they have already been brought under the focus of that universal religious consciousness and com- pared with each other as mutually connected facts relating to tlie most deeply implanted instinct of the human I'ace. In the second place, he thinks he shall be able to show that the reason why tbe attempts hitherto made to exhibit the laws regulating the development of man's conscious- ness of God in History by means of pure speculation have failed, is, that from the very nature of the laws of our in- telligence, as made known to us by experience, the method of pure speculation by itself is no more capable of landing us in true knowledge than that of mere empirical obser- vation. But, lastly, he is quite convinced that it is possible to discover a historico-speculative, therefore truly scientific method, and by it to attain to a positive knowledge of the motive principle of the spiritual Kosmos placed under the conditions of Time; a knowledge which shall not only possess equal validity with our knowledge of the principle of motion in the physical Kosmos, but shall yield a far deeper under- standinor of the nature of thing's. As soon as the author has brought the present work to completion, he will deem it his duty to lay before the world his contribution to the philosophical treatment of man's religious consciousness founded on this basis. Thus the Organon Eeale which we seek, will have to draw the outlines of a method which is capable of teaching us to find the principle of evolution in Humanity, and the laws of motion of the Finite Mind in the world's history. Let us now enter the holy vestibule of the last epoch in human development which we have to consider. CiiAr. ir.] CHRIST. CHAPTER II. CHRIST : OR, THE CONSCIOUSNESS EXPRESSED BY JESUS RESPECTING THE DIVINE AGENCY IN HUMAN HISTORY. Even were we destitute of that which we actually possess • — a veracious tradition respecting the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and the history of his three years of public teaching — a glance at the mental development of Humanity during the last eighteen centuries Avould compel us to assume the existence of some singularly exalted, holy Personality as the cause, and not simply the occasion, of that revolution in man's view of the universe. The mightiest of all mental revolutions (being no less than the introduction of a new formation of life) which the history of our world presents, points towards some corresponding, therefore still mightier, because originating. Personality ; and any sober and thoughtful philosophy of history must demand such a Personahty as a postulate. For the pro- gress of any historical development reveals the defects and errors of the founder of a religion at least as clearly as his greatness and his truths ; generally, indeed, far more clearly than the latter. It is one of the most alanning symptoms of this century that a philosophical study and theory of the universe should have been able to gain a foot- ing which entirely ignores this relation of the cause to the effect, and places the true originating personality in the background. For such a theory is based on a refusal to recognize the Divine power of personality, or, in other words, of cultured and matured moral individuality ; and this amounts to a denial of the supreme worth of morality above all mere intellectual thought. The God of such a 8 GOD IN IIISTOKY. [Book V. view is and remains for ever dead Thought, not Hving Will, making itself known by its activity within us. As we- have already remarked, in our Introductory Book, there is no living principle in the Community which has not- previously taken flesh and blood in some actual human, conscious personality. Now, the history of the Christian consciousness of God is precisely, by this instinctive postu- late of the uncorrupted popular consciousness, raised into an irrefragable truth. To nothing else than to the purity and universality of that consciousness of God which is re- flected in the person of Jesus of Xazareth, can we ascribe the fact that the Ideal of Humanity has emerged victorious from the ruins beneath which it seemed for ever entombed, at first in consequence of a civilization destitute of ideals, and afterwards of a barbarism groping about in blind ignorance. Nothing else than the harmony of His doctrine and His life, with the eternal laws of the moral order of the world, affords an adequate explanation of the great fact that the belief in the unity and future re-union of all mankind has never again been lost since His day, but, on the contrary, has struck deepest root in tlie life of the peoples, and is constantly tending to rule and mould the destinies of the nations in ever-widening circles. When Jesus, with that divine self-consciousness wliich is precisely the highest human abnegation of self, and with that martyr-resolve devoid of all egotistic reserves, shattered the lifeless and life-destroying shell of degenerate Mosaism, He not only set free the spirit of the great Jewish law- giver, imprisoned and petrified witliin that shell, but also unfettered the loftier spirit — loftier, because more widely human, and less encumbered with inconsistencies — which dwelt in Abraham, the founder of the religion of the free Spirit. Inasmuch as Jesus threw down the wall of parti- tion which separated Jews and Greeks, and thereby held the whole world of that age in a pernicious dualism. He opened to view the inward bond that connected the life of Semites and Japhetites, a knowledge of which was in- Chap. II.l CHRIST. 9 dispensable to the onward development of the race at large. Up to this time, the irreconcileable schism between these two races had formed the lever that had set the world's history in motion. A further consequence of which was that germs of life which organically belonged to each other w^ere torn apart and held in the attitude of mutual antagonism. According to the saying of Jesus, it was not Moses but Abraham who had seen " the day of the Lord and was glad." But it was precisely because Jesus could assert with truth and self-consciousness ; " Before Abraham was, I am" — because the Divine Nature, whicli is above all conditions of Time and discord and difference, dwelt immediately in Him — because the infinite factor in Him had absolutely sublimated into itself the finite factor — that He was able to conceive the idea of one un- divided Humanity, of the unity linking together its varied fortunes and ultimate destiny ; — to live for that Humanity, and to give Himself to death, conscious that He was thereby effecting the redemption of the Spirit. To the same cause must we ascribe it that the conception of Humanity which welled forth from Him has fertilized all nations containing within them the seeds of life, and given them power to regard themselves as the children of one race, as members of one kingdom of God, and in the strength imparted by this faith to trace the dark paths of the fortunes of tliis One Humanity. Needs must that Humanity should be baptised anew through suffering and death into the Divine, in order that it mio'ht attain to a full sense of its g-odlike vocation, its temporal fall, and its eternal destination. Needs must that through loving servitude it should rise to that sense of brotherhood which is the ground of all fellowship and all bonds of race or nation. But all this presupposes that men have been individually conducted to freedom by release from the burden of sin, that is, of their own selfish nature. Thus alone could that true moral individuality grow up which we call personality, and which is tlie only true root 10 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. of a fruitful development of the Divine in Humanity. Each individual human soul has sprung forth from the Eternal, and after traversing its span in Time will return into tlie bosom of the Eternal again, in so far as the living seed of the Eternal has shot up in it here on earth. But it is the destiny of Humanity at large to realize progressively the Eternal in the Temporal. Now, what is tlie faith which Christ demands in order to ftdfil this divine vocation of Humanity? It finds its simple yet most sublime expression in the three first peti- tions of the Lord's prayer ; " Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.'' For w^e cannot translate this into the lanornao-e of our intellectual conceptions otherwise than as contain- ing the petitions : " May all mankind put into act the will and the love of God. May the realities of history corre- spond to the eternal idea, despite all the defects and limitations incident to the finite ; so that the eternal or heavenly may consciously reflect itself in the temporal or earthly." Mankind is meant to become free and united. This it can only do by means of the liberation of the mind from selfishness. But, as soon as the isolating Self is seen to be the evil principle, and its dethronement the vocation of Humanity, do individuals and communities, races and nations, stretch forth to eacli other the hand of brother- hood. But the pathway to this goal lies through the dissolution of selfish empires, therefore, through bloodshed and death. Such was the conscious life and conscious death of Jesus. " I am come to send fire on the earth ; and what would I that it were already kindled.? '^ Now, these three petitions correspond to the three series of development in the Community founded by Jesus, — that of the free congregation or Church (Ecclesia) — that of the spiritual worship — that of the brotherly love which solves all discords. In the first series, we shall see how the free ' I^ulie xii. 40. Chap. II.] CHRIST. 11 cono-re^ation of believers, based on Christian family dis- cipline, are called upon to render all brotherly aids to each other, to obey their elders for God's sake, paying obedience to all civil laws — yet ready to suffer death for conscience' sake. In the second, we behold the working out of the principle that all which appertains to the province of re- ligion, i.e., to the acting out of man's consciousness of the Divine, must spring from the inward disposition of the heart ; hence, that no external act of devotion or brotherly service has any religious value pgr se, or even has in itself, as an act, a higher value than any other act. These two series of development are brought into connection with each other, and with the outer world, by the third, namely, the fulfilment of the supreme commandment given by Jesus, that every sentiment and every act should resolve itself into ministering love. As the result of these three courses of development, this actual world is to become the Kingdom of God. For the Kingdom of God spoken of in this prayer is unquestionably one wdiich is to take place on earth. The individual "has eternal life" when he comes to know God's eternal love manifested under the conditions of Time. Humanity is destined to be the re- presentative and realization of the Eternal on this earth. The perfect fulfilment of this ought to and wdll take place on this earth. Such is the postulate of the faith taught by Christ. That which is eternal in God, lived in Jesus of ISTazareth w^ithin the compass of one brief human life, but in personal entirety. After His death began the development of the Community or Church through the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of the Eternal Father. This process commenced first of all in the persons of the disciples, who were to be His witnesses. The respective personal endowments and characters of these leaders of the nascent development supplemented each other, and thus no lasting divisions arose, but there grew up a unity in multiplicity which became the type of the religious consciousness of the 12 CiOD IX HISTORY. [Book V. Christian communities. Thus was manifested, for the first time, the divine incarnation of Humanity in the Church,'^ as there had before been manifested in Christ the incar- nation of God in an individual hfe. But the manifestation of God in the Church is a perpetual coming-to-be, not a consummated fact. It was by slow degrees, in silent ob- scurity, and amidst persecution, that this spiritual Per- sonality entered the Grseco-Eoman world as the presence of God in Man. But from the moment that Christianity became the state-religion — a kingdom of this world, with laws enforced by the coercion of the civil power — the religious consciousness that had animated the early Church became entangled in manifold complications, and various anomalies arose, in which we are all consciously or uncon- sciously more or less involved. The aim of the present work is confined to exhibiting, in its broad general outlines, how the beliefs entertained by the Christian world respecting its own destinies and the ^ The word liere translated " Churcli " is the same translated in the pre- vious sentence " community," and in other places " congregation.'' It is " Gemeinde^^ equivalent to " community " or " society," and is used equally of the civil or ecclesiastical fellowship. Bunsen constantly employs this term in speaking of the Church in preference to the word " Kirche" because the latter term has come with the Germans to be almost restricted to the hierarchical or clerical authorities of the Church, while " Gemeinde " is the word most generally current among the German Protestants to denote the Church at large, and the term " Catholic Church " with them is exclusively applied to the Roman Catholic communion. Among ourselves, on the contrary, the definition of the Church in our nineteenth Article — " a congregation of faithful men, in which the pure word of God is preached, and the Sacra- ments duly administered," is so completely the accepted sense of the word " Church " no less among the various bodies of Nonconformists than in the Anglican communion, that we are in no danger of confounding '' the Church " with the clergy ; while, on the other hand, the term " congregation" is not used among us to denote the collective Ecclesia, but either the laity in contradistinction to the clergy, or else individual gatherings of Christians in contradistinction to the whole Christian society, and " Congregational- ists " is the title assumed by that sect, which negatives the idea of any visible universal Christian union, and insists on the absolute independence of single congregations. For these reasons I have translated the word " Gemeinde " in each instance according to what seemed to me to be the leading idea in the particular passage, by the terms " Church," " Church at large/' " congregation/' *' community/' " society," or '■ laity." — Te. Chai-. II.] CHRIST. 1.3 actual presence of God in the world, have developed tlicni- selves out of the religious consciousness of Jesus of JSTazareth. For the Christian belief is essentially the belief in Christ's personal Divine consciousness, that is to say, the belief that Jesus beheld, and has therefore proclaimed the truth as it lived in His own Divine consciousness ; and tliat we possess an adequate knowledge of what He did actually assert on the subject. And, in fact, it is hard to say whether the uniqueness and sublimity of that consciousness of God has been more signally manifested in that which Jesus has Himself said and taught respecting the development of God's Kingdom upon earth, or in that which He has left to the free un- folding of the Spirit in the communities founded by Him, and the consequent growth of the Divine element in Humanity. We have seen how all that was excellent in the persons and teachings of the earlier Founders of re- ligions, had forfeited its power of adaptation to mankind at large and become more or less one-sided, arbitrary, conventional (and in so far false and inefficient), because external prescriptions of merely accidental, or at all events, non-essential worth or suitability for mankind at large had been mixed up with the pure inward apprehension of God, and were conceived of and clung to as an essential part of religion ; whether these prescriptions related to sacrifices and rites, or to a certain form for the organization of the communities. According to the rules of ordinary human wisdom, nothing could be more unwise than what Jesus did, and evidently did consciously and designedly: — viz., to found a religious community Avithout positive enact- ments and definitions on these two points. And yet it is precisely this which is the ground of the indestructibility and universality of Christ's rehgion. Nay, might it not be susceptible of philosophic proof that this " folly of man " is the true wisdom ? May not the contrary so-called ra- tional view of the case prove to be, strictly speaking, the irrational, precisely because it is the unspiritual view? It 14 GOD IN HISTOKY. [Book V. proceeds upon the assumption that what is external has its ground of subsistence in itself, while, on the contrary, all that exists under the condition of Time, by the very terms of tlie case, has its cause external to itself. It has its existence only in virtue of its cause, and is intelligible only when recognized to be not self-existent but tempo- rary. But that assumption places the Temporary above the Permanent, which is a loaical contradiction. The outward religion is not the mother but the child of the inward ; nay, so soon as any independent importance and efficacy is ascribed to it, it inevitably becomes the death of the true consciousness of God. We must now endeavour to exhibit those points of the religion of Jesus which bear upon the presence and power of the Divine Element in human history, in the same man- ner in which we collected together the sayings of other prophets of Humanity, and placed them under the focus of their respective apprehensions of the presence of God. The method which we have chosen for this purpose is the foUowino; : — We shall restrict our attention to the main points which we have found occasion to consider in our history of man's religious consciousness. We shall then briefly state what appears to us the substantive idea of each several point, and illustrate our position by the as- sertions of Jesus bearing upon that point. The words of His disciples we shall only adduce, in the second place, as explanatory and illustrative. Finally, we shall, in each case, gather up the historical result from the point of view taken by our present enquiry. The order in which we have arranged our propositions has its ground in the design of bringing before our readers, in the first instance, Christ's own consciousness respecting Himself and His relations to the disciples ; and then, in the second place, Christ's own view of the results which would follow from the continuous working on and on of this belief in the Church and in mankind at large. By this method we ai'e conducted to the twelve following Chap. I r.] €IJRIST. 15 propositions, wliicli we shall now bring before our readers in the order above indicated. 1. The Eternal, Jesus, Humanity. God, in His own Essence, the Eternal, dwells in man, and ought to be discerned as the true Divine Principle of man's Beinsi; and his Hio-hest Good. In Jesus this union was absolutely perfect, so as to constitute a spiritual Nature. " No man can come to me except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him : and I will raise him up at the last day." ' " Then said Jesus unto them, When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself; but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things." ^ " Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me he will keep my words : and my Father wiU love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." ^ " Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the Word of God came, and the Scripture cannot be broken ; say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, thou blasphemest, because I said, I am the Son of God ? " * " Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us : that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one : I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in me, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me." ^ " All things are delivered to me of my Father, and no man knoweth who the Son is but the Father, and who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him." ^ " But Jesus answered them. My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. ' Jolin vi. 44. 2 John viii. 28. ^ joim xiv. 23. 4 John X. 34-36. ^ John xvii. 20-23. ^ L^j^g ^ 22. IG GOD IX HliSTORV. [Book V. " Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do : for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. For the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth, and he will shew him greater works than these, that ye may marvel." * " For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself, and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man." ^ " For Grod so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." ^ " Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father." * '• And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ ; and he shall reign for ever and ever." ^ " But I would have you know that the head of every man is Christ ; and the head of the woman is the man ; and the head of Christ is God." 6 " To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known, by the Church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he pur- posed in Christ Jesus our Lord." '' " Who is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of every creature. For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers : all things were created by him, and for him : And he is before all thinors and bv him all things consist." * " That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us : and truly our fellow- ship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." ^ ' Jolin V. 17, 19, 20. ^ John v. 26, 27. ^ John iii. 16. 4 John X. 17, 18. 5 Rev_ ^i. 15. « 1 Cor. xi. 3. 7 Eph. iii. 10, 11. 8 (joi_ i_ i5_i7_ 9 i j^]^^ i o^ Chap. II.] THE SPIRIT OF GOD WORKING IN MAN. 17 " For in him we live, and move, and have our being ; as cer- tain also of your own poets have said. For we also are his off- spring." ' The Spirit of God dwells in every man who has not closed his heart against the inward apprehension of God. This ap)prehension is of God's own producing within him. There is no true revelation except by means of the Spirit of God working in man. Hence all true revelation comes to us through the intervention of human persons ; at the head of whom stands One whose enhghtenment is direct and original. In so far as man surrenders himself to the Eternal God, and resolves to live in accordance with the eternal laws of the universe (i.e. with the will of God), he obeys the innermost impulse of his being ; and in so far as he feels himself impelled to act out in his own person the loving thought of the Eternal Father, by struggling against the evil within him, does he help to build up the Kingdom of God and consequently the true progress of Humanity. Jesus is called the Son of God, because in Him this consciousness had been made an actual Nature. But all men are the children of God, and will discern God's Spirit within themselves, if they follow in Christ's footsteps. Hence He is our Saviour — He through whom Humanity is consciously redeemed from the burden of its sins, and made at one, or reunited with, the Father. 2. The Eternal Life of Earthly Man. The pathway to the reunion with God lies through the renunciation of the selfish will, and the attestation of this deed of self-annihilation by active, self-sacrificing love. This (union with God) is eternal hfe. " And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only- true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." ^ " 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 ' Acts xvii. 28. * John xvii. 3. VOL. III. C 18 ' GOD IN HISTORY. [B OOK me, for I am meek and lowly in heart : and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." 1 " Jesus answered them and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of Grod, or whether I speak of my- self." '' " And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right : this do, and thou shalt live." ^ " Jesus answered. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit." "* " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it briugeth forth much fruit." ^ " And he said to the woman, Thy faith hath saved thee ; go in peace." ^ " Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith ; these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone."^ " Verily, verily, I say unto you. He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation ; but is passed from death unto life." * But whereas mankind, — those that are nnder the law, no less than the rest of the race, — have lost the true love of God, and are at variance with Him, Jesus, Who is at once the Son of Man and the Son of God in the only perfect sense, has fulfilled the will of the eternal Father by calling men into a spiritual fellowship, in which each individual human being stands, or ought to stand, in a personal relation to the Saviour. The reception of this message lifts ofl?*, for the first time, the burden which con- science lays upon the heart, and removes man's blindness to the wretchedness of sin and separation from God. ' Matt. xi. 28-30. « John vii. 16, 17. ^ j^^^j^g x. 28. ^ John iii. 5, 6. * John xii. 24. " Luke vii. 50. "• Matt, xxiii. 23. « John t. 24. Chap. II.] FAITH, JUSTIFICATION, AND SANCTIFICATION. 19 This act of acceptance is called faith, tlie union with God which is restored by it is called justifica- tion, the life that flows therefrom sanctification, which is the constantly progressive process of union with God. As sanctification presupposes justifying faith, so the end of faith is sanctification, which is at once the evidence and the fruit of faith. Only in this mode do we escape at once the dangers of a mere intellectual belief of the understanding, or of a righteousness consisting in works, both of which are delusions, or self-seeking under a new shape ; and indeed the most perilous of shapes, inasmuch as it darkens, nay, annihilates the relation of the indi- vidual's life to the Eternal Father, and to His " express image " in the Saviour. This is the doctrine insisted on in all the Apostohcal Epistles. 3. The True Religion. Christ's own Divine consciousness is identical with the true religion. The spirit of loving self-sacrifice which pours itself forth in active deeds of goodness for the sake of the brethren and the community, is the true worship. " Jesus saith unto her. Woman, believe me the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father." " But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth : for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit : and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth."' " And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it." ^ " A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one an- other; as, I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." ^ 1 John iv. 21, 23, 24. ^ Luke ix. 23, 24. ^ joi^n xiii. 84, 35. c 2 20 GOD IN HISTOEY. [Book V. " If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." ' "Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you, becavise the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occa- sion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes."^ '•' In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil ; whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother." ^ " And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue ; and to virtue knowledge ; and to knowledge temper- ance ; and to temperance patience ; and to patience godliness ; and to godliness brotherly kindness ; and to brotherly kindness charity." ■* Thus we see that in the surrender of man's selfish will to the will of God, as the alone good and true, we have found the fulfilment of all symbolical sacrifices. For the only true and effectual sacrifice is the surrender of the thankful soul to God, knowing itself to be beloved by the Father in Christ, Who has perfectly given up His own will to the Father for the redemption of mankind from sin, Avith all the disorder and misery that sin has brought about. Thus to live for the brethren is the continual sacrifice demanded of all in whose ears the glad tidings have resounded, and cannot be severed from that com- plete and perfect sacrifice of Christ once made in its own due time. All outward religious service must hencefor- ward be a worship of God in spirit and in truth, whether that worship take the shape of teaching the brethren, arousing them to repentance, or of the ever-renewed vows of self-surrender made by the believing heart. Every other cultus must cease ; but the true worship, wliich first began with Christ, shall never cease, but is 1 1 ,Iohn i. 6. 2 1 John ii. 8-]l. ^ j j^hn jii. lo. * 2 Pet. i. 5-7. Chap. II.] TRUE RELIGION. 21 the continuous pulse-beat of humanity — responsive to the Divine Agent within, Who is moulding it into progressive likeness to Himself. Thus the mode of worship may change, but not its essence^ w4iich is no other than the praise of the Eternal Father, of His manifestation of Himself in Jesus, and of the Holy Spirit proceeding from both, Who worketh ever more and more effectually in be- lieving mankind. Hence it will assuredly come to be more and more acknowledg;ed, that all external religious acts — therefore also even the holy vows or sacraments offered in public worship — occupy a subordinate place compared to the sacrifice of the life. But on the other hand, inasmuch as the efficacy of the sign depends upon the spiritual power of that which it signifies, the cultus will attain an elevation and dignity as yet scarcely imagined, so soon as it becomes the spontaneous out- pouring of the soul-felt confession of the individual and the congregation, that the whole life is a service of God, while prayer is felt to be the natural symbol and the cor- responding expression of the hfe-sacrifice. 4. The Kingdom of God upon Earth. Christ's Divine consciousness is destined to renew the individual human souls and bring them into a living com- munion with God. On this new-birth through the Spirit of Christ depend the redemption of the individual man and the future of God's kingdom on earth ; for the exten- sion of the kino-dom of God is to be effected throuojh the efforts of the reo^enerate. "I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." ^ " And yet if I judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me." ^ " For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, that all men should honour the Son even 1 John V. 30. ' John viii. 16. 22 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father which hath sent him." ' " And he lifted up his eyes on his disciples, and said, Blessed be ye poor : for yours is the kingdom of heaven." 2 " Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth." ^ " And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof : for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to Grod by thy blood, out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation ; and hast made us unto our Grod kings and priests : and we shall reign on the earth," * Through this rekindlino; of the Divine element in the Ufe of Humanity, this actual world around us will be made holy, or sanctified; as in the individual, so also in the social life ; that is to say, in marriage, the family, the Church, the State. In all these relationships, the religion of Clu'ist recognizes no form as moral except that of liberty, established under the sanction of law. For slavery, coercion, arbitrary power are alike incompatible with the Kingdom of God upon earth, and with the well-being of each individual soul. Thus all empires founded upon violence must perish, no less tlian all corporations of men, even though free, which are built up on the basis of selfishness ; whether this selfishness take tlie form of sensuality, or covetousness, or ambition. The nation which professes a belief in Christ, and yet is a slave to this selfish- ness, stands self-condemned to the exfent in which it is free. Christ, Who as a perfectly holy human being, proclaimed the will of God with overwhelming distinctness to the conscience and reason, will in His character of the Judge of the world alike annihilate such a nation or such an empire, and leave the individual sinner the victim of his own inward wretchedness. All who have done despite to the Spirit will perish through Christ, even as those two powers of this world which persecuted the Spirit when He was on earth perished througli Him ; — the Jewish » John V. 22, 23. Cf. Jcilin iii. 6. ^ j^^-^q ^^ 20. 3 .Matt. V. o. <• Rev. v. 0, 10. Chap. II.] CJIRIST AS JUDGE. 2-1 hierarchy and the Eomau empire. From this doctrine of the accomplisliment of God's kingdom upon earth, it follows also that this earthly life will decide the future state of the soul. For the tribunal which is to judge the whole world is seated in a human conscience, in the abso- lutely pure Eepresentative of human nature ; the highest earthly justice is identical with the eternal justice. Thus, when the Son of God speaks as the mouthpiece of the Eternal Eight, what He will condemn is that which is condemned by the conscience of mankind, and this is naught else than what the voice of conscience proclaims to each man with judicial authority, when he is brought face to face with eternity in the hour of death, or at any other critical moment in his life. 5. Sin and Evil. Sin is the only (real) evil. It is the consequence of the seliish misuse of man's free self-determination, but must perforce, like its parent selfishness, conduce to the further- inc? of the Kino-dom of God, because the moral order of the world is so constituted that sin is self-destructive. " Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a miu'derer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there was no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own : for he is a har, and the father of it." » " Woe unto the world because of offences ! for it must needs be that offences come ; but woe to that man by Avhom the offence corneth." ^ " If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand ? because ye say that I cast out devils through Beelzebub." ^ "And the seventy returned again with joy, saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through thy name." " Notwithstandiog, in this rejoice not, that the spirits are sub- ject unto yon ; but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven." "* "And behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when 1 John viii. 44. ' Matt, xviii. 7. ^ Luke xi. 18. " Luke x. 17, 20. 24 GOD m HISTORY. [Book V she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment." " Thou gavest me no kiss : but this woman, since the time I came in, hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint : but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much : but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said unto her. Thy sins are forgiven." * " But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. But when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." 2 " Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them who, through fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage." ^ " I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto you, little chil- dren, because ye have known the Father. I have written unto you, fathers, because ye have known him that is from the be- ginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have over- come the wicked one." * " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." ^ " For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments : and his commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world : and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." ^ Thus the evil that is in the world is the sum of the sins committed by individual human beings, and its natural consequence (only to be averted by the Divine power) is spiritual death. The sum of evil forms a power indepen- dent of the individual man, though in wliich he shares. 1 Luke vii. 37, 45-48. ^ James i. 14, 15. ^ Heb. ii. 14, 15. * 1 John ii. 13, 14. * 1 John i. 8. « 1 John v. 3, 4. Chap. II.] NATURE OF EVIL. 25 It is this power, having its roots in men's hearts and ex- hibiting itself in the world's history as the ruling principle, which Jesus, adopting the current language of his own countrymen, calls "Satan," or "the devil" (the adversary or accuser). The consequences of the sins of individuals are averted by the acknowledgment of sin as that wliicli separates man from God and from the sense of His eternal love. This acknowledgment, if it proceed, not from fear, but from faith in God's love and in the power of His Divine Spirit in the soul, removes the effects of sin within the heart and restores the communion with God. What is true of the Individual must also hold good of the Commu- nity, and, consequently, also of the race at large ; for every diminution of sin diminishes the collective force of sin in the world and therefore also of evil. The conscious voluntary surrender of the life even unto death, made for the express purpose of implanting this faith and enkindling the energy of the Divine in men's hearts, must therefore form the very act of redemption, and He who has accom- plished it is alone the Eedeemer of Mankind. From which it now further follows, that like as we are bound to regard all the evil and suffering that we experience ourselves or witness in the world around us, simply as means destined to the furtherance of good, so especially ought we to reo;ard the bitter sufferino:s of Jesus as at once the volun- tary and highest act of self-sacrifice and devotion to God, and the most signal proof of the eternal love of God to men. The theory that Christ's propitiatory sacrifice was made to appease the wrath of God is, when referred to the Eternal Father, a transference of the conception of Moloch to that God who is Love, a misunderstandino- of that which is true only of the sense of the curse laid by sin on man's spirit. The wrath of God, of which both the individual soul and Humanity at large are conscious, is an- nihilated on the first act of faith in the redemption, and this sense of God's wrath is the death which Jesus has destroyed. £6 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. 6. The Unity of the Kingdom of God on Earth. The whole history of the development of man's appre- hension of God prior to Christ tends towards one or other of the two aims, whose unity is the key to the understand- ino; of both the self-sacrificing; love of Christ towards man, and the Kingdom of God founded by Him. Hence the Scriptures testify of Jesus, and this outward testimony is confirmed by the inner witness. " Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day : and he saw it and was glad." ^ " And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be ful- filled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Pro- phets, and in the Psalms concerning me." ^ " And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me. Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word abiding in you : for whom he hath sent, him ye believe not. Search the Scrip- tures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life : and they are they which testify of me." ^ " I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me." ^ "But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things." * * * * " But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you : but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him." ^ " This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth." * * * * " For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood : and these three agree in one. If we re- ceive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son. lie ' JoliJi viii. 56. ^ Luke xxiv. 44. (Cf. vii.) 3 John V. 37-39. * Jolin vii. 18. * John ii. 20, 27. Chap. II.] TIIK IXWARD WITNESS. 27 that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself : he that believeth not, Grod hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that Grod gave of his Son." ^ According to God's eternal counsels of love, His divine Spirit has-been ever working in Humanity; but was so in a special manner in Abraham, the Friend of Grod, for this man already saw in spirit the advent of the Son of Man, Who should be at once conscious of His own dignity as Son of God and filled with love towards mankind. jN'ow, since Jesus assumes that the inward witness and the truth taught by historical testimony are alike certain and incontestable, and refers his disciples to this outward testimony (the Bible), the inward witness must also exist in the believer. He is to read, and so far as he has ability, search or investigate the Scriptures in order to his en- lightenment and sanctification, because they testify of the eternal counsels of redemption, and of the act accomplished by the Redeemer ; but the end and aim of all Bible-reading is tliat the believers should receive the inward witness (or ' anointing"). Now this highest witness again presupposes the historical witness, the preaching of the word respecting Jesus ; else the actual historical fact would convey no truth. But inasmuch as it is a truth, any obscuration of the testimony borne by historical documents — therefore, above all, to withdraw the Bible from the congregation, or relegate it to the background — must have the effect of converting that inward belief into something ftmtastic, ima- ginary, unreal, whether it be the belief of the Individual or of the Church ; therefore, in fact, of turning it into a superstition akin to, or even tantamount to unbelief. 1 1 John V. 6; 8, 9. 28 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. 7. The Relation of Chrisfs Religion to that of the Jeivs. Hence Christ does not break the chain of connection with the revelation vouchsafed to the Patriarchs, nor yet with tliat made through the Law and the Prophets, but on the contrary, renders both for tiie first time inteUigible. *' Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled."' "Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the Prophets concerning the Son of Man shall be accomplished." ^ " And he said unto them. These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet Mdth you, that all things must be ful- filled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the Pro- phets, and in the Psalms concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures. " ^ God's purpose to make a progressive revelation of Him- self upon the earth, forms the inward connecting- thread of history. Consequently, all that in the Law and the Pro- phets has been hinted at, guessed at, or openly proclaimed, must, in accordance with the foregoing words of Christ, receive its fulfilment, either in the Son of God or in that Kingdom of the Spirit which the Son has founded upon earth, and sealed with His voluntary surrender of Himself to death. Hence the tie which binds together the inward life of the Individual with that of the whole body of Humanity, is never to be severed ; behevers are not to repudiate the historical revelation, nor are their pastors to bar their free access to it. The authority of the ancient Scripture, con- sidered as the depositary of historical revelation up to the time of Christ, is permanent and regulative for all ages, according to the measure in which the universal re- » Matt. V. 17, 18. ■^ Luke xviii. .81. » Luke xxiv. 44, 45. Chap. II.] THE OLD AND NEW DISPENSATIONS. 29 lation of men to the Eternal has been expressed in its traditions. The existence of the Eternal Father is postu- lated by Christianity ; but His presence is made manifest to us through the medium of a perfect Personahty. Wher- ever we find a foreshadowing of a preparation for this Person and this Kingdom, there is prophecy.^ As Christ, — therefore the Kino-dom of God, — is the end and aim of the revelation of Jehovah in the Ancient Dispensation, so is the advent of the true Founder of that Kingdom for Hu- manity, the starting-point of the NewDispensation; in both, Christ remains the constant axis ; and it is by the working of His Spirit that the Kingdom of God advances in the Christian Church. Thus, through oujt the Scriptures, the degree of permanent and regulative (or canonical) au- thority to be assigned to them, must be determined by the extent to which they express this relation to the Eternal Father and to His Kingdom. 8. Christ" s Attitude towards the Religious Consciousness of the Gentiles. According to the testimony of Christ, a consciousness of God exists, though it may be dormant, in other nations and religions besides the Jewish. The reception of the Gospel constitutes the meeting-point for all Mankind. " I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold : them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd." ^ " Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Grentiles, until the times of the Gfentiles be fulfilled.^ (Cf. the passages quoted under Section 1, and the discourse of Jesus to the Samaritan woman. Section 3.) " " For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us ; having ' See p. 27, .John v. 37, .39. ' John X. U, lo, 16. 3 Luije ^xi. 24. 30 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of command- ments contained in ordinances ; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace ; and that he might reconcile both unto Grod in one body on the Cross, having slain the enmity thereby." "Now ye are therefore no more strangers nor foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of Grod ; and are built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner- stone : in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord. In whom we also are builded together for an habi- tation of God through the Spirit." ' The development of the liiiman race is designed to and will take place in virtue of that reunion with God, which was for the first time in Jesus consciously consummated and perfected in holiness. The partition-walls between Jews and Greeks, and between Greeks and Barbarians must alike be thrown down. But from this it further follows indefeasibly, that the outward must give place to the inward, and all men acknowledge each other as brethren, on the ground of their common son-sliip to God. There must be no new " law " set up under the Gospel. To do so would be to crucify Christ afresh. On the contrary, in order that Christianity may be able to fulfil its high vocation of becoming the religion of the whole world, the faith in God's presence in the individual man and in Humanity must grow ever mightier, more operative, more universal, therefore constantly more in- ward and living, by so much as that which is spiritual is that which is alone Essential. From which, lastly, it again follows, that progress must be measured by the standard of adherence to the spiritual view of Scripture ; therefore, according to the purity of our faith in the Eternal Father as the sole source of all beins!', in Christ as the sole Eedeemer, in the Holy Spirit as the sole source of enlightenment and sanctification. 1 Eph. ii. 14-16, 19-22. CH.r. II. THE CHURCH GOD S VESSEL. 31 9. The Church is the Vessel of God amonrj Mankind. jSTo new Son of God, in the highest sense, will ever appear again ; but immediately after Jesus has returned to the bosom of the Father, His Spirit, which is tlie Spirit of the Father and of the Son, will be poured forth upon His Church ; and the Church will become, from that time onwards, the depositary and channel of God's Spirit. This pouring out of the Spirit upon Mankind pre- supposes the glorification of God in Jesus. There is nothing in the Spirit which was not perfected in the Sou, and nothing in Humanity which has not pre-existed in the Son of Man— in the Perfect Personality. " Nevertheless, I tell you the truth ; it is expedient for you that I go away : for if I go not away the Comforter will not come imto you ; but if I depart I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteous- ness, and of judgment." " Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of Truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth : for he shall not speak of himself ; but what- soever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine : therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew it unto you." ^ " For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." ^ " Lo, I am with you alway, even i;nto the end of the world. Amen." ^ That Divine creative Spirit, implanted in believing mankind, will remain in or with the Church or " company of Christ's faithful followers." Thus the Church stands by a divine right, as the chosen vessel of God, to the end of the world ; and however protracted this series of de- velopment may be, the progress of God's kingdom, or the divine element pervading with unbroken continuity 1 Jolin xvi. 7, 8, 13, 14, 15. • Matt, xviii. 20. » ^i.^tt. xxviii. 20. 32 GOD IN HISTORY. [B OOK the successive strata of nationality, will, from the Chris- tian era onwards, constitute the great historical epochs. Our very use of this datum of chronology is the symbol of this world-wide historical import of that Divine King- dom which commences with Christ. Thus, considered from the highest point of view, the epochs of the gene- ral history of mankind coincide with those of its ecclesi- astical history. All the rest are but episodes, transitions, means to an end. Hence — it would further seem to follow — the promise of the constant presence of the Spirit of Christ wilh His Church would appear to belong to that communion which holds fast, with the greatest purity, the belief iu this relation of the Father to the Son, and of the Holy Spirit at once to the Church, and to the Scrip- tures as the historical witness. Such a communion alone will leave free scope to the inward free witness of the Spirit in the shape of science, and to the faith in the pro- gressive well-being and morality of families and nations resultinfT from the advance of knowledsje. 10. Tlte Liberty and Judicial Function of the Ecclesia. The Church, regarded as the vehicle of the Spirit of God in the highest sense, is free, and is the Supreme Judge in things spiritual. " Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell hiin his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church, but if he neglect the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you. Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." ' " For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." ^ 1 Matt, xviii. l-j-lS. ^ Matt, xviii. 20. Ch4P. II.] THE FUNCTION OF THE CHURCH. 33 " Thy kingdom come." " Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." ' *' Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee ; that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me." ^ " ^Yhen Jesus came into the coasts of Csesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am ? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist ; some, Elias ; and others, Jeremias, or one of the pro- phets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am ? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona : for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee. That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." ^ " But be not ye called Rabbi : for one is your Master, even Christ ; and all ye are brethren." * " And if I by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast them out ? therefore they shall be your judges. But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you. Or else how can one enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man ? and then he will spoil his house. He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scat- tereth abroad. Wherefore I say unto you. All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men ; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of JNIan it shall be forgiven him ; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come." ^ The Church, which judges righteous judgment, stands above any individual ; but she herself rests upon that 1 John xiv. 23. 2 joj^Q xvii. 20, 21. ^ ^x^tt. xvi. 1.3-18. * Matt, xxiii. 8. * Matt. xii. 27-32. VOL III. D 34 GOD IN HISTORY. [Hook V. personal faith which recognizes the Father in the Son, and strives after a union with both, through the Spirit. From which it fohows tliat the freedom of the Church in things spiritual is conditional upon the freedom of con- science possessed by its individual members, and that neither can be oppressed without disparagement to the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit, and the unity based thereon of the several factors of man's religious conscious- ness. It is essential to the liberty of the Church that she should freely exercise her judicial function in things spi- ritual in the name of Christ, as her King, and sole Lord and Master. The infringement of this would be the first step towards that fearfid sin which is not to be forgiven, namely, the blasphemy of asserting that the Spirit work- ing in the Church is the Spirit of Evil and not that Spirit of God which wars against the wicked one. 1 1 . The Personal Nature of all True Faith. - The Church stands upon personal faith, and hence it has its divinely-promised continuity of existence, solely in virtue of tlie moral perception of God residing in the individual believers or saints, the followers of Christ. " He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me ; and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him." 1 " And call no man your Father upon the earth : for one is your Father, which is in heaven." ^ " All that the Father giveth me shall come to me ; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." "No man can come to me except the Father, which hath sent me, draw him : and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man, therefore, that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me." ^ 1 John xiv. 21. « ]^jatt. xxiii. 9. » John vi. 37, 44, 45. Chap. II.] PERSONAL FAITH. 25 "And this is life eterDal,-that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." ' " Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life." ^ " For there is one Grod, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all, to he testified in due time." ^ Thus the believer is to enter into a personal relation to God, in the Son, his Lord and Master, without any intervening medium. No one is " Father " and " Lord " of our faith save God and Christ ; consequently, all true religion is a personal matter, and that Church only is the true one, which, on the one hand, places faith in the Eedeemer as the ground of our sanctification above all else, and in inseparable conjunction with the faith in the Father ; while, on the other hand, it makes this faith something personal, and regards it as only to be main- tained through the conscious acknowledgement of indi- vidual moral responsibility. Any contrary view is anti- Christian, and must and will pass away. 12. The Perfect Accomplishment of the Kingdom of God. The eternal life of the individual members of the Kingdom of God is made perfect through the death of their body, which forms their introduction into a com- plete union with God. Hence the full accomplishment of this Kingdom itself can be nothing else than the subli- mation of all things earthly into the divine. " And Jesus said unto him. Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." * " Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice because I said, I go unto the Father : for my Father is greater than I." ^ " Verily, verily, I say unto 3^ou, The hour is coming, and now 1 John xvii. 3. - John vi. 47. ^ 1 Tim. ii. o, G. * Luke xxiii. 43. ^ John xiv. 28. D 2 86 GOD IN HISTORY, [Book V. is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God ; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in him- self, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man. Marvel not at this : for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall come forth : they that have done good unto the resurrec- tion of life ; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. I can of my own self do nothing : as I hear I judge, and ray judgment is just, because 1 seek not mine own will, but the will of my Father which hath sent me." * " Nevertheless, I tell you the truth. It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I goto my Father, and ye see me no more ; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." ^ " Now is the judgment of this world : now shall the prince of this world be cast out." ^ "But they which shall be accounted worthy toobtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. Neither can they die any more, for they are equal unto the angels, and are the children of Grod, being the chil- dren of the resurrection." ^ "For he must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith, All things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all thincrs under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that Gfod may be all in all." ' " And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many: and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time, without sin, unto salvation." ^ > John V, 24-30. 2 jojjn ^vi. 7-11. ^ joh^ xii. 31. * Luke XX. 3o, 36. ^ i Cor. xv. 25-28. « Ileb. ix. 27, 28. Chap. II.] THE LAST DAY. 37 Fi'om which it follows, that all the figurative expres- sions of Jesus respecting the last day are to be under- stood in accordance with the unmistakeably spiritual import of the words here quoted from St. John ; and in particnlar, that those expressions of His, which are bor- rowed, not from the Old Testament, but from the current use of language in His own day, must have been meant merely as approximative indications of His thought, employed for the sake of the Jews around Him. So, for instance, w^e must regard the mention, in Luke xiv. 14, of " the resurrection of the just," which, according to the Jewish belief of that day, was to precede the general resurrection to judgment, and was therefore called " the first resurrection." The same may be said of the speech of our Lord to the malefactor, which we have placed at the head of the foregoing citations. The term " paradise " signified, when used in reference to the dead, the sub- terranean sojourning-place of the righteous. There Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dwelling. This is the place referred to in the parable of Dives and Lazarus. The reverse of this was Gehenna, the lower-world of the wicked. Were we to take expressions like these in their literal acceptation for divine revelation, we should be f-eekino; a revelation of the Eternal in statements that neither harmonize with the self-consciousness of Jesus, nor find any support in the Scriptures of the Jewish reve- lation. On the contrary, we should, in so doing, be placing the post-Biblical theology of the Pharisees and mere popular poetry above Jesus and the Bible. Thus, throughout the Gospels and other Christian scriptures, such expressions as the " resurrection of the body," " the first " and " second resurrection," &:c., are not to be understood as so literally expressing the inmost mind of Jesus Him- self as to override those absolutely original and perfectly clear utterances of His which we have quoted above, or even to be placed in the same rank with these. But neither, on the other hand, can such expressions have 38 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. stood in contradiction with Christ's own religious con- sciousness, or else He would not have made use of them to convey that consciousness under the vehicle of popu- lar imagery. But their underlying thought, and there- fore the key to their meaning, is unquestionably contained in the fifth and eighth chapters of St. John's Gospel. The righteous alone, he who believes with the heart, enjoys while on earth that peace of soul which all seek, and after death a divine life, which can no more be interrupted by death. For the expression, " He shall not come into condemnation (or judgment) " (John v. 24), is equivalent to that other — " He shall never see death " (viii. 51). The unrighteous man must undergo judgment and death, and shall not be admitted to the vision of God. The former are no longer subject to the body of death. Thus the eternity of future blessedness is taught by Jesus, but not eternal (therefore timeless) damnation. Lastly, it follows from Christ's theory of the world's order, that true progress in history consists in the gradual transformation of everything natural into the likeness of the Divine, and that the distinction between things spiritual and secular is merely transient ; for true Chris- tianity is destined to take up into itself in ever-widening circles all that is natural, and working after the pattern of the Creator, to sublimate that which bears its image into itself; just as in the physical creation, the whole of the visible Kosmos is gathered up into and glorified in Man. The Eternal Thought puts on a body, to the end that a Personal Spirit should spring forth therefrom and glorify the Eternal Father. Now, from these twelve propositions, it indisputably follows that it was no accidental circumstance that Christ bequeathed to the disciples no precepts respecting the organization of His Church or the mode of religious wor- ship ; i. e. respecting precisely those points which all previous religions had regarded as essentials. The omis- sion was intentional, and is to be explained by the absolute CuAP. II.] cueist's teaching respecting nmSELF. 39 clearness of His consciousness of Divine things ; according to the teachings of wliich, what is outward has no value and no place in the true religion, except in so far as it is a product of the mind of the Christian Community. Any prescri]3tion on such points would have nullified the working of the Spirit. But Jesus might not say less to the disciples than He did say ; He might not conceal the mystery of the inward bond of unity between God and the human Son of God, because therein alone consists the truth revealed by Him ; therein alone consist at once the deepest humiliation of the Divine, and the highest eleva- tion of Humanity. He well knew that this disclosure, even though couched in mere hints, would bring down upon Him the fanatical hatred of the priesthood and of the populace who were devoted to them ; for such an asser- tion could not fail to appear to them and to the multitude of their adherents, who "■ trusted in the Law," as blas- phemy ; probably to a much higher degree than Abra- ham's refusal to sacrifice his son to Moloch appeared to the men of his time. Finally, He was commissioned to reveal to His disciples as the future in store for God's kingdom, the progressive incarnation of God in the Church of redeemed Humanity. To the revelation of the unity of the Father — the Eternal or Jehovah of the Old Testament — with the Son (as the eternal Word made flesh) was now to be added the revela- tion and manifestation of the Spirit. The Spirit of God, who was to enter the human fellowship by means of the Spirit of Christ, is announced to them as the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. They are to recognize this Spirit in themselves, namely, in the congregation of the faithful, which is to be the Judge of the world unto the end of time. The whole manifestation and teachinn; of Christ is meaningless without this thought. It will be seen, too, hereafter, that this idea has always been the vivifying and energizing element in the development of Christendom. And such it certainly must be, if Christianity is to be an 40 GOD m HISTORY. [Book V. historical and eternal truth. For these three, the Eternal, the Son, and the Spirit, include all that is positive in Christianity, All else is conventional, derived, calculated only for particular times and circumstances, and therefore only conditionally possessed of the truth. Thus, if we once more glance back to that Personality of Jesus which is reflected in these His teachings, the utter dissimilarity between Him and all the founders of re- hgions who have preceded Him, becomes most con- spicuous, precisely when regarded from the point of view taken by our present enquiry. His teaching is unique and purely divine, by the very circumstance that it pro- fesses to be pure self-consciousness without any admixture. There is nothing in the sayings above quoted that relates to externals ; nothing is borrowed from extraneous sources, to eke out the knowledge derived from within, and serve as an auxiliary to the construction of the new religion. Thus the faith of Christians has two pivots ; one fixed, unconditionally regulative pivot, external to itself, viz. : the testimony of Jesus respecting His own Divine con- sciousness ; and one fixed pivot within itself, viz. : the consensus of Conscience and Season. Secondly : This religion founded by Jesus, must needs have its essential manifestation ; though, like that of the Son, it appears "in the form of a servant;" namely, its manifestation in the life of the Church, just as thought seeks and finds its necessary expression in language. ISTow, anyone whose mind is thoroughly penetrated with these fundamental verities respecting Christ's teaching on this subject, will readily perceive what an enormous power for good and for evil was introduced into the world by Christianity. The consciousness of the presence of God in man and in the Church was a divine Force ; but what a strife must it infallibly enkindle ! what hitherto unknown perils must any deviation from this harmony of the three factors of history necessarily entail ! Christianity is constructive and conservative only so long as it is the Chap. 11.] POWER OF CHRISTIANITY. 41 religion of the Ethical Mind. Unless we retain a firm grasp of those three great ideas of the eternity of the Fa her, Who constitutes the Infinite Factor,— of the only- begotten Son, the pure, perfect Personality of the Eedeemer, — and of the holiness of the Spirit, therefore of the Church which is His visible (and yet invisible) organ, Christianity can only obstruct and destroy. For if this harmojiy be in any way disturbed, the Church will fall back either into Judaism or into heathenism. But whereas, on the other hand, it is bound to acknowledge the Bible, more especially the Gospels, and to profess its belief in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, who are the Eternal made manifest ; it is inevitable that moral earth- quakes and convulsions should take place, and that an- tagonistic tendencies should be evolved which, carried to their extreme results, should exceed all that Judaism and heathenism have exhibited during their period of decadence. 42 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. CHAPTER III. THE TRANSITION PERIOD. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD IN HISTORY POSSESSED BY CHRIST's APOSTLES AND BY THE EARLIEST SEMITIC CHURCHES. The first Christian century belongs cliiefly, some portion of it exclusively, to Hebraism. The Apostles and their first envoys of the faith were Jews; and just as James, Peter, Paul, and John dominate this whole century, so did the Jewish Christians constitute, for the most part, the main body of the churches in Antioch no less than in Jerusalem. The Greek and Eoman Aryans held indeed an equal rank in the Christian community, but they everywhere engrafted themselves more or less upon tlie Jewish stem. The Sabbath was observed as well as the Sunday (" the first day of the week"). Up to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jewish Christians frequented the Temple, and took part in its services. In Jerusalem, and especially throughout Judasa, James, the brother of the Lord, seems to have exercised a sort of presidency over the other Apostles. Now, as regards the Apostles in general, their religious consciousness found its chief sphere in the founding of the Churches. They proved their unity of Spirit with their Divine Master, in the first place, by proclaiming the words that He had committed to their charge and imprint- ing them on the memory of those whom they sent forth to be Evangelists ; and, secondly, their own lives consti- tuted a witness and evidence for the truth of the Gospel faith. But, besides this, they were themselves enabled to found the Christian Churches, through the power of the Holy Ghost which had come upon them. Chai>. III.] THE CHURCH, FAITH, LOVE. 43 Of the twelve Apostles, two only can be said to belong to history — that is, to have exerted a personal guiding influence upon the world's history, that confers on them a typical or representative character — these are Peter and John ; midway between whom stands the great post- humous Apostle Paul. Peter is the embodiment of the first of these three great developments wdiich in Jesus alone find their perfect meeting-point : — The Church, Paith, Love. The formation of a society resting on human, not on Jewish, or Greek, or Eoraan, brotherhood, sprang out of the voluntary association and fraternization of the be- lievers, who recognize each other in a divine fellowship on the ground of faith in the Son of God ; a society governed by the Holy Spirit ; a society that, in this Spirit and bound together in this love, governs itself ; a society divided by the accidents of locality and race, yet one in faith over the whole earth. This society obeys willingly, because for God's sake, its elders and overseers. In the absence of the Supreme Judge, it exercises the judicial function for itself, while waiting in constant ex- pectation of His return. Such is the Apostolic ideal of the Church, the gathering together of believers into a select flock, destined to receive the Piedeemer on His speedy return to judge the world. To organize within this community those fundamental relationships of life which needed to be penetrated by the Holy Spirit, such as the mutual relations of husband and wife, parent and child, master and slave, the believer and the civil power — to do this in accordance with Jewish custom where that was feasible, but, at all events, in accordance with the Spirit of Christ — such was the task assigned to Peter, as we learn more especially from the lono'er of his two general Epistles. Peter died the death of a confessor in the metropohs of the world, before that era when the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple had given the Christians a clearer insight 44 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book V. into tlie meaning of Christ's words respecting the end of the world. But Peter's view of the world, and the predominant type Avhich he impressed on the Church as a legislative and judicial institution and unity, Avas the first which struck root in the earthly unfolding of Chris- tianity. In the second series of development — that of Faith — the root-idea was that the life whicli was destined to spring up on the soil of the Christian Churches must above all occupy itself with the culture of the inward, personal dispositions of the heart ; that the Christian life consists in this inward attitude of mind, not in any outward acts as such, whether they be acts of worship or deeds of love and mercy. Now, to implant this faith was the special vocation of Paul. This root-idea he worked out in its bearings on the circumstances and requirements of the infant Churches of his own day, in such a spirit of univer- sality, that in his writings the eternal Idea of Clirist stands revealed in clear and intelligible outlines, the model and exemplar to all mankind for all ages. In the eyes of this great Apostle of the Gentiles, the written and un- written Law were not only alike in worth compared to the Gospel ; but on his thorny path he came to perceive ever more and more clearly that the true soil on which the messao;e of eternal love was destined to brinsj forth fruit, was the Gentile tribes and nations ; not the Jewish people, fettered as they were by a ritual law, which drew a sharp line of demarcation between them and the rest of man- kind, and made fusion with other peoples repugnant to their feelings. The Gentiles were not hampered by any legal restrictions ; their moral enfranchisement was not impeded by any priesthood claiming a sway over their intellects, or obstructed by any ordinances claiming the authority of divine enactment ; their intuitive religion was uncorrupted by any national religious pride, but amounted to little more tlian a cosmopolitanized sense of the dignity of man. They cherished a craving for the emancipation Chap. III.] CllRlSTIAX DIGNITY OF WOMAX. 45 of tlie miiicl, and Lad faitli in human nature. The fore- most rank among them was held by the children of the intellect, the Hellenes, and next after them came the earnest-minded Eomans, with their devotion to practical aflairs ; but the barbarians, too, were not excluded from his view. All the more touching is the loyal affection which Paul bears towards the Jews to whom he belonged (though not a Palestinian, but a Cilician), and to whom he clung with passionate attachment. With the eyes of his love he beheld in spirit the future conversion of the Jews and the perfected union of the two separated flimilies of God's children into one household of faith. But this was only to take place after protracted conflicts, of which his prophetic mind discerned the approach in the days to come. With the present circumstances that lay around him, he dealt imder the giiidance of his governing' principle ; namely Faith — or the voluntary, inward turn- ing of the heart to the doctrine and practice of the Gospel. Prom within outwards must Christianity make its way through the world ; but in this mode, it was destined to bring about the abohtion of slavery and the singleness of wedlock. He foresaw that monogamy, and a stringent marriage-bond, dissoluble only by death (physical or spiritual), must of necessity evolve itself out of the doctrine of the Christian dignity of woman. Not until this had taken place, could Christ's doctrine of the equality of man and woman before God, and of the sacred oneness of the wedded pair, be understood in its spiritual meaning. But as yet, neither the Gentile nor even the Jewish wife had vindicated her claim to an equal and independent moral personality. Still, whoever desired to take upon himself the office of an elder, was bound to live in accordance with the spirit of Christ's teachings. In the same way, Paul likewise regarded the abolition of slavery as a conse- quence of the redemption effected by Clirist's death. Jesus liad called and consecrated all His brethren unto liberty. But it was needful that the slaves should first be 46 (iOD m HISTORY. [Book V. made inwardly free from sin. and set before themselves a higher goal tlian mere external freedom. Tlie grandest feature of all is that, to Paul, no less than to Peter, this progressive process of the sanctification of the whole human race was quite independent of their particular views respecting the nearness or remoteness of the end of the world. Christ will come, and will come as the Judge of the world ; that is enough. Wherefore sanctify your- selves, and transform all things (so sounds the admonition of St. Paul) that it stands within your power to change, after the pattern of the incarnation of God in Christ Jesus. Where he refers to the prevailing belief in the speedy end of the world, he simply expresses his own personal antici- pations ; this point was not one which lay very close either to his heart or his vocation. But, shortly after the death of Peter and Paul, the Apostle of Love dived very deeply into the contemplation of the future. In the midst of persecution, and on the eve of the fall of Jerusalem, the seer of the Apocalypse beheld in a vision how the kingdoms of this world, es- pecially the Eoman empire, from being an empire of violence and tyranny, of selfishness and injustice, of hatred and envy, should and would be transformed into a kingdom of God upon earth, of which love should be the foundation, and in love should be liberty. When, three centuries ago, the noblest minds and peoples of Europe were yearning after a more spiritual and inward Christianity, purified from priestly usurpation, and turning again to the free Gospel and personal con- verse with the Saviour, Paul became to them, in their efforts to reform the organization of the Church, the Apostle of Faith, and assumed the paramount place in their eyes as the expounder of Christ's Gospel and the guide of the Church. But now it is St. John who pro- claims himself to all hearts as the Apostle of our OAvn age, the Apostle of Love for the Church which stands steadfast in faith towards the Saviour. Whereas the Ee- CiiAP. HI.] THE BOOK OF liEVELATlONS. 47 formation proposed to itself no aim beyond that of the emancipation of the mind from priestly tyranny by means of faitli ; now-a-days it is the idea of the millennial era in which Christ shall reign supreme over political and social institutions that appeals to the heart of Humanity. A sober exposition of the Book of Eevelations, taken in connection with the Gospel and the First Epistle of St. John, will show us that the wide-spread persuasion that this kingdom has a direct concern with us and our children is in its essence based on no delusion. For what is the essence of this persuasion ? In world-historical language the Apocalypse places before us the command, and proclaims it to be the irrevocable law of the world's order, that the whole social and political life of the Christian community should transform itself into liberty on the basis of the freely-rendered service of brotherly love. To a certain extent this has been done ; that is to say, in the course of the last 300 years a mighty step has once again been made towards the initiation of such a change. But if we can perceive some partial fulfilment of this prophecy to be true of the past, there still remains a vast future concealed within this vision, a divine warn- ing for the one side, a heavenly consolation for the other. Those nations and States which confess the Gospel with their lips, but tread it under foot with their actions, will perish in a speedily-approaching overturning of the pre- sent order of things, a catastrophe as far surpassing that of the Roman empire in its awfulness as it does in its conscious guilt. This Book was the firstling of the Apostle's behef in the presence of God in history. But John survived the destruction of Jerusalem, which, according to the current belief of the Apostolic Churches, was to be the first judg- ment-day of Christ, and the sign of His second coming. The mother-Church in Jerusalem, composed almost exclu- sively of Jewish Christians, forfeited its influence through the conquest of that city ; under Hadrian it entirely 48 GOD IX iriSTOKY. [Rook V. ceased to exist. Antiocli witli its Cliurch from the first consisting to a large extent of Aryans, took the foremost place as the exponent of the Cliristian consciousness. Now, while in consequence of these events the Ar3^an mind was thus acquiring predominance in Asia Minor, Greece and Eome, the destruction of Jerusalem kindled up a belief in the protracted duration of that divine order of the world on this earth which the Seer of the Apo- calypse had beheld in his mysterious vision. This belief supplied an incentive to mould the new social order that was to arise on our earth, after the pattern of, and in harmony with, the spirit of the Eedeemer. It was with this aim, that shortly before his death, St. John undertook tlie task of supplementing and correcting tlie Gospels composed by the " Evangelists " or earliest apostolic mis- sionaries, winch had become by this time the common property of the Churches. For this object, he not only drew up an historical outline of the life of Jesus during the period of His public ministry, and delivered it to the custody of the elders of the Churches of Asia Minor, but also bequeatlied to them and to all churches and ages the more profound discourses of the Divine Teacher, whicli had not been contained in those earlier Gospels, intended as they were in the first place to form the text-book of instructions for the catechumens. When, soon after this date, about the end of the first century, John died at Ephesus, the Churches, especially the already predominant Aryan element in them, were completely left to the guidance of the Spirit w^orking in persons who had neither seen nor heard Jesus Himself. Thus it may be said that tlie independent life of the Churches begins with the opening of the second Christian century, as the independent life C)f the Apostles begins with tlie return of their Master to His Heavenly Father. The exclusively Jev/ish Churches of tlie Christians of Palestine died out, owing to their severing themselves, imder the title of Nazarenes, from the main stream of CuAP. III.] CLOSE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. ,49 liistorical Christianity. The Jewish-Christian Church of Jerusalem was replaced in the new city of ^lia Capito- lina by a Church of Gentile-Christians, with a Gentile Christian — Marcus — for its first bishop. The historian Sulpicius Severus (whom we have before had occasion to quote), when speaking of the edict by which Hadrian, after the insurrection of Barcochba, forbade all Jews to reside in Jerusalem, after saying that this prohibition was extended to the Church under St. James, utters these memorable words, pregnant with a truth of universal history * : — " This befel the Christian religion, because at that time nearly all (the Christians of Judtea) believed in Christ and in God in subordination to the observance of the Law. That is to say, events were so ordered, under Divine Providence, to the end that servitude under the Law should be superseded by the freedom of the faith and the Church." This profound saying is true of all the Jewish-Christian communities. Beyond those planters and nurses of the Christian consciousness who are mentioned in the JSFew Testament, we hear of no Jewish-Christian personage of any eminence eitlier in the first, second, or third cen- turies. The Aryan mind, fertilized by the Semitic knowledge of God as the Eternal, and the faith in His Eedeeming Manifestation in human nature, and gifted with the full sense of the sanctifying presence of God the Holy Ghost in His Church, enters on the arena of the world's history amid sanguinary struggles, yet concealing unsuspected energies. ^ Hist. Sacr. ii. 31. VOL. in. E 50 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book Y. CHAPTER IV. THE EELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OP THE CHUECH OP THE ARYANS DURING THE EPOCH OP PERSECUTION. For more than two full centuries was the Christian com- munity in the Eoman Empire a victim of persecution, and as such the Holy Sacrilicial Church of God. For it was the representative of those iniquitously scorned, yet inalienable rights of Humanity, — freedom of conscience and freedom openly to proclaim its verdicts, in opposition to the all-powei'ful foe of those rights — Ccesarism. After the overthrow of the Jewish hierarchy, the Eoman Imperialism — the universal heir of all other powers and all popular rights — had set itself up as God upon the Earth, and founded the first great European State rest- ing on the military and the police, while bearing on its forehead the lie of the legal sanction conferred by free forms of government, and in its hand the sword of violence. Wliy did the Christians refuse to bow the knee before the gods of this earthly sphere ? Why should they object to burn a few grains of incense before the image of the Emperor ? The blood of the confessors, the steadfast — nay, jo3'"ful — death of witnesses to the Holy Ghost, like Ignatius of Antioch and Polycarp of Smyrna, displayed to the churches and the world, the " victory that overcometh the world," even our faith. Humanity began once more to feel some self-respect. Women and slaves put to shame senators and judges. We shall now endeavour to show what was the his- torical import of that conception of God's agency in the world, which developed itself amidst these conflicts, and Chap. IV.] OEGAXIZATION OF THE CHURCH. 51 embodied itself in the internal organization of the life of the Church : arranofino; our remarks in the followins^ order : — In the first place, we shall have to contemplate the rudiments it evolved for the reconstruction of a morally free political society in a Christendom of legally established self-government. Next, the transformation of the conception of prayer, mth that of the true nature of worship resulting therefrom ; and, lastly, the dawning manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the written word, or the utterances of Christian prophecy during the second and third centuries. While the two former of these courses of development are predominantly Aryan, the latter is exclusively so. The sense of the Divine Order in the sphere of Go- vernment exhibited itself from the very outset in the re- jection of the idea of any Kalifate, or primacy in the Church which should be hereditaiy in the family of Jesus, with Jerusalem for its Holy City, Two of the brothers of Jesus — James and Jude — had succeeded each other in the Church of Jerusalem, and the successor of the latter likewise appears to have been another of his brethren. The total destruction of Jerusalem by Hadrian put an end to this Jewish line ; indeed it altogether set aside that narrow theory of the Christian religion which reojarded it as a reformed Judaism retainino; the old leo-al restrictions and burdensome ritual oblifjations. Had this theory been victorious, Christianity would have perished with Jerusalem, or have drasfo-ed on a miserable exist- " Co ence in the shape of a Jewish sect, admitting the rest of mankind only to the rank of " Proselytes of righteous- ness." That this repudiation of all unspiritual Semitic forms was not accidental, but flowed from the inmost life of the Divine society, is proved by the organization which developed itself, as by a Divine impulse, within the Christian Churches, and ere long expanded itself over the whole world. For, beyond the precincts of Palestine, notwithstanding E'2 52 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. outward diversities, the unity of religious feeling had from the very beginning everywhere embodied itself in one uniform type for the universal Christian society, starting originally from Antioch, the real capital of Asia ; a type derived, on the one side, from the organization of the synagogues, and on the other from that of the free Greek municipalities. A senate of " Elders " administered the aflairs of the Church, assisted by the deacons in the care of the poor and sick ; but no legislative enactment could be made without the assent of the " brethren." Just as we see to have been the case with the Apostolic Council held in Jerusalem, in which " the Holy Ghost " makes known His will by the vote of the entire assembly, " the whole Church." ^ The spirit of Christianity remained unwarped by the later intrigues of the retrograde Juda- izing Christians, or by the wavering of Peter and the tacit resistance of James. Already in the days of St. John, towards the close of the first century, the necessity had become apparent of having a responsible leader at the head of the Christian community in each city, to whom they gave the usual Greek appellation for an ad- ministrative functionary, Episcopus — equivalent to " Su- perintendent " or " Overseer." Thus, in the case of most of the Churches named in history, we find Bishops at their head during the first half of the second century ; but with the Elders by their side, and with a full recog- nition of the supremacy vested in the whole congregation of the brethren. This order was conformable to that saying of our Lord, which we have already had occasion to quote : — " But if he AviU not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it nnto the Church ; but if he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. Verily I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall 1 Acts XV. 22. CiiAP. IV.] THE POWER OE THE KEYS. 55 be bound in heaven : and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." ^ Hence the verdicts of acquittal or condemnation pro- nounced by the legally constituted Church in the name of God will be framed by the Spirit of God, and prove to be correct. It was in this sense that the Church understood and put in practice the real import of that saying about the power of the keys, and this expresses the religious consciousness of the apostolic age. Thus, the elements of the perfect State were identical with those which the greatest philosopher of antiquity had suggested for the improvement of the democratic or aristocratic republic, and for its defence against despotism, at the same time not concealing from himself that such a combination was something rather to be wished than hoped for. The Bishops of antiquity are the model and forerunners of the Teutonic ideal of monarchy, which in England has succeeded in establishing itself as one of the great empires of the world, viz. : — a kingly function free wdtliin its own sphere, but standing in the midst of a social corporation of which it is one member. On this view, the Church may be appropriately con- ceived of as a "mother ; " just as the chief city of a po- litical community is called among the Greeks a " metro- polis," or " mother-city." But by that word is meant the Spirit of God which resides in that community. In the Hebrew and Aramaic languages, the word for Spirit is feminine, and this is wdiy, in the Gospel for the Hebrews, which was composed in the vernacular tongue of Jesus and His disciples, Christ calls this Spirit His " mother." ^ By this term is denoted that Divine, eternal Force which binds the whole together, by building up the individual members and the individual churches into the unity of one Church of God. Tliis idea enables us to ex- plain one of the most didicidt passages of the Apo- calypse. ^ Wlio is the woman witli child clothed witli the J Matt, xviii. lG-18. '^ Matt. xii. 50. 3 j^^^ ^- f_Q 54 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book. V. sun, wearing the crown of the twelve stars that represent the twelve tribes, who flees into tlie wilderness ? And who is the child that is caught up by God out of the reach of persecution ? Evidently not Mary and Christ ; for Christ liad long ago gone home to His Father, and the fall of Jerusalem is close at hand. The mother is kept in a safe refuge during the most calamitous period. Thus, she would appear to be the Jewish community of Christians, the mother-Church for the scattered believers of the twelve tribes and those heathen converts who attached themselves to this Jewish Church. She is, in point of fact, the mother-Church of the Gentile Christians ; but it is this Church of the Gentiles only that is to over- come the world, Now, the latter is the child that is caught up into heaven, " who is to rule all nations with a rod of iron." As yet it is only a child, but in its bosom is borne the full, true Christ — the Eenewer of the Gen- tile Avorld, Who shall prevail over the kingdoms of this world, which have already in this vision destroyed Jeru- salem, and will ere long destroy it in reality. Thus in this sense the Church is a mother, like the divine spiritual Energy which reveals itself in her. But never is the Bishop, even of the most important Church, styled " Father " (Abbas, Papa). It was felt that this would stand in the most flao-rant contradiction to that express command of the Lord to His disciples to" call no man Father" upon earth. The very idea of a liberty reposing on the sanction of law, capable of organizing a government and a civilization, involves in itself a consciousness of the Divine ; for such a freedom is the goal set up by God Himself before Hu- manity as the only moral form of government for human societies. But this consciousness carries its divine seal yet more visibly upon its brow when the liberty striven after is directly that of the mind ; when its object is the main- tenance of that freedom of conscience and of worship without which Christianity, in any true sense of the Chap. IV^] HOLY BAPTISM. 55 word, is deprived of the very breath of life. That the Spirit of God had, according to the promise of Christ, directed the shape thus assumed by the Church, is evinced by the fact tliat this type of organization maintained itself after the death of Christ's immediate disciples, notwith- standing the modifying process of development. The early Christian Church has never been without its officers ; that is to say, for the purposes of government ; for speaking in the Cliurcli (therefore preaching) stood open to all the brethren, while all elders or presbyters were alike quali- fied to celebrate the Lord's Supper, assisted by the dea- cons. In like manner, tlie reception of members into the Church was the act of the whole congregation. The bap- tismal vow was uttered by the candidate in person in the presence of the congregation, under direction of the Elders, and accompanied by an appeal to those members of the congregation who had known and observed the catechu men during the period of his probation, which lasted several years. The seal of his reception was his admission to the Lord's Supper. At the baptism itself, he promised to hold the faith acknowledged by the Church. The most ancient formula for which we have documentary evidence, is that used in the Church of Alexandria at this date, which, word for word, is as follows : — " I believe in the only true Grod, the Father Almighty : " And in His only-begotten Son, Jesug Christ, our Lord and Saviour : « And in the Holy Ghost, the Giver of Life." ^ It was not until the lifth century, that the confession of faith used in public worship, entitled " the Apostles' Creed," grew out of the gradual expansion of this earher baptismal formula. This picture of the Church, regarded as the visible dwelling of the Holy Ghost, is reflected for history in the arrangements for public worsliip. The place used for that * See " Plippolytus and his Age," 2ad ed. vol. ii. p. 97. 56 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book. V. purpose was a hall ; of which the most beautiful historical example is found in the basilica, or court, used by the ancients for popular meetings and the administration of jus- tice, with a raised tribune for the judges at one end. Thus the type of the civil (or according to current phraseology, " the secular") community was what the spirit of the Chris- tian people selected, and not the form of the Jewish temple. The assembly-hall of the civil community acquires a new significance in being made the sanctuary for the religious assembly. But the actual " temple of God " is no other than the believers themselves, who constitute the habitation of the Holy Ghost, the true sanctuary. At the further end of the basilica, in the place occupied by the judges, were seated the Elders. For the Bishop, where there was one, a raised arm-chair (Cathedra) was placed in the centre of the apsis or tribune.^ From this apsis in which the seats stood, the preacher delivered his discourse, or, when the Lord's Supper was celebrated, from beside the communion table, a little further forward. From this station, the speaker had the whole congregation before him, and was easily seen and heard by all present. But the fact which has an abiding historical importance is, and remains, that from the temple had grown up, not simply a school (syn- agogue, assembly-room), existing subordinate to and beside the temple of Jerusalem, but an indej^endent sanctuary, the central portion of which was occupied by the congre- gation, not by the priests, and in the further end of which stood no image or symbol of the Deity, veiled from sight or separated by a partition, but simply the seats of those who were the spokesmen of the community, the pro- claimers of the glad tidings of God. When the sacred meal, was about to commence, the members of the minis- tering body joined the rest of the congregation. The table used ifor the Lord's Supper stood in the nave of the basilica, between the people and the presbyters, between 1 Cf. Bunsen, " Die Basilikoi." CiiAr. IV.] THE HOLY COMMUNION. 57 the congregation and those who ministered to it in holy things. Thus the present Deity of the worshipping assembly was the Spirit of God ; and His embodiment or vessel was the Church, visible indeed, yet which had no personal re- presentative. She was the Ash Ygddrasil of the Ger- mans, " World-bearer of the Fearful One,'' divested of its Nature-symbolism, just as she was also the essence of the Ark of the Covenant in the old Tabernacle, freed from its animal-symbolism. God, the conscious Spirit, had been made manifest in her Communion. This was the "Eeal Presence " of Christ, the true " Body of the Lord." The Spirit of the Father and of the Son rested on the com- pany of believers. Under this consciousness of the im- mediate presence of God in the Church, did those who had been instructed in the faith pronounce their vows. Under tins consciousness did they, in their own persons, renew the vow on partaking of the Communion, by which they renounced their own will, in thankful remem- brance of the redeeming freedom-conferring death of Jesus. From an evening meal, probably by the advice of Paul and through the power of the Holy Ghost, this feast had become a morning meal ; and being quite separated by degrees from the agapce or love-feasts, came to be a symbolical reception of l3read and of wine mixed with water. With the weekly celebration of this rite on Sun- days, there connected itself the spiritual sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, growing out of the prayer of praise and thanksgiving which the Jewish master of tlie house uttered on breakino; the bread, and again at the close of the meal, repeated on handing the wine around, a custom to which Christ simply imparted a more elevated and spiritual significance. But this act of thanksgiving cul- minated in the spiritual sacrifice, the surrender of our self-seeking, finite will, to the Divine Will. The expres- sion of this act was, even in later times (at least up to the fifth century), an extempore prayer, which was not per- 58 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book. V. mittecl to be read. If the officiating presbyter did not possess the gift of extempore prayer before the congrega- tion, after a pause for silent prayer, he pronounced the blessing, — i.e.^ the Lord's Prayer, as the benediction or consecration of the congregation desiring to sanctify or consecrate — that is to say, utterly devote — themselves to the Father. To this Lord's Prayer the congregation re- sponded with the Doxology or ascription of praise, which on this account, in the later MSS. of the Gospels, came to be added to the original text as the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer. In the three first petitions of this Prayer -all was summed up that in the moment of pronouncing the most solemn of vows filled the soul of every worshipper: '^ Hallowed be Thy name : " Thy kingdom come : " Thy will he done on earth as it is in heaven." In these words we have the very core of the whole Chris- tian consciousness of God's presence and working in his- tory ! Already, in the beginning of the second century, in this congregational service a Christian hymn was sung, which can be no other than that mentioned by Pliny in the second decade of this century, in his report to Trajan. It is the so-called Gloria of the Western Church. The MS. of the Greek Bible in the British Museum, the Apo- stolic Constitutions or Liturgies of the Greek Church, and those of the Latin Church (among which it was inserted by Hilary ni 380), give it in differing versions ; a compa- rative criticism of which yields the following as the most ancient authentic text : — Grlory be to God on high : And on Earth Peace, good Will among Men. (Or, perhaps more primitively — And on Earth Peace among the Men of good Will.) We praise Thee, we bless Thee, we worship Thee, We give thanks to Thee for Thy great Glory. Chaf. IV.] CHRISTIAN AVORSHir. 59 Lord Heavenly King, Clod the Father Almighty : Lord Grod ! Lord, the only-begotten Son : Jesus Christ, That takest away the Sins of the World : Have Mercy upon us. Thou that takest away the Sins of the World : Have Mercy upon us, receive our Prayer. Thou that sittest at the right hand of Grod the Father: Have Mercy iipon us. For Thou only art Holy : Thou only art the Lord, Jesus Christ: To the Glory of Grod the Father. Amen.^ " Early in tlie morning they sing a hymn of praise to Christ as to a God," are the words of Pliny. Li the most ancient Greek CJhnrcli this Hymn is entitled " The Morn- ing Hymn." The contents of this ascription of praise, here given in its original form, correspond er^tirely to the de- scription of Pliny. Christ is, in conjnnctionwith the Father, the object of invocation and praise. The mention of the Holy Ghost is demonstrably a later addition. He is in- deed the Deity who is speaking through the mouth of the cono-rcQ-ation, conscious of that communion of the Father and the Son. The first two verses — the angels' song of praise in the second chapter of Luke — are, as it were, the text for this more expansive Christian inspiration : the form is that of the Jewish psalmody. It is indeed a Semi- tic mmd that has dictated this psalm. Of equal antiquity, or at least very little younger, is the so-called Doxology, of which, up to the time of the Nicene Council, there were two versions in common use : — " Glory be to the Father in the Son, through the Holy Ghost." or " Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost." ^ See '■' Hippolytus," 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 50. (Third Book of the Church and House Book.) CO GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. In these documentfiry formulas of the worshipphig Churdi of the second and third centuries, there reveals itself a loyal adherence to the Unity declared in the Gospel, of the Eternal Father with the perfect finite Personality of Jesus, and with the company of the faithful which em- braces the whole of beheving mankind. Thus they express the most comprehensive sense of the actual guiding agency of the Divine in the human mind, according to that dualism of the Individual and the Community. The same pure creative Spirit reveals itself also in the shaping out and arranging of the several constituents of the new cultus for mankind. If we attempt to give any account to ourselves of that which appertains to a sober, Jiealthy, God-conscious mode of worship, based on the be- liefs taught by Jesus, we cannot but regard that vow of thankful love as its crowning-point. The essence of the Christian life is self-surrender to the Divine will ; the per- petual renewal of this thought, in grateful love, is what we need in view of the continual temptations presented by self-interest, sensuahty, and the world, and the daily re- newed demands which every human vocation makes upon the self-renunciation of each man who has given hhnself to God. But, to secure that nothing merely formal, there- fore external, may ever again spring out of this, the Church will require two things ; — spiritual instruction, and moral incitement. The former she will draw from the sacred history of Humanity, whose centre is the Person of Jesus, and therefore is contained in tJie Gospels. But, at the same time, she will not exclude the Law and the Prophets which make known to us the preparatory dispensation of God for man's salvation. Nor must there be wanting the explanation and aj^plication of the word thus handed down. Hence the expounder will also be a preacher. Like the ancient prophets, he will evoke tlie hidden Spirit out of the written letter, and commend it to the heart of the congregation. Lastly, the congregation will give voice to their assent and sympathy in measured, simple, rational. Chap. IV.] CHRISTIAN WOESIIIP. 61 and therefore beautiful forms. They have learnt from the Scriptures that God is a God of order, and that the spirits of the prophets are subject unto the prophets. Now we find as a matter of fact all these elements com- bined in the most ancient order of Divine worship, and moreover occurring in the most natural arrangement ; the reading of the Scriptures, the Sermon, the Vow. So long as the hymn of praise, and with it the solemn commemo- ration of the Lord's redeeming death, continue to be celebrated every Sunday, the sacrifice of praise and thanks- giving will most naturally associate itself therewith ; and so it was ! The prayer that accompanies each of these three parts of Avorship is sometimes silent and mental, sometimes uttered aloud. The latter, again, is sometimes a responsive antiphonal prayer, in the form of the psalms, sometimes only pronounced by the presiding Elder, or the Preacher, in the name of the conQ;refyation, which answers by an "Amen ! " expressive of its desires and its belief. Each of these forms has its respective place and design. All are actually found in the prayers of the persecuted Church, and with the full concurrence of the Christian consciousness, for they follow each other in the most ap- propriate order. Altogether prayer is by no means chiefly regarded in the light of a petition, but rather as a vow, (which is really the original signification of the Greek word) and therefore, above all, as the earnest confession of a heart filled with thankfulness, giving glory to God. We ask in vain after the name of the earliest orderer of this solemnity ; and the reason is, evidently, because the whole Church, tlie Collective Mind, had more to do with its construction than individuals. These were nothincc more than the Church's organs. The grandest creation in this sphere is the idea of the Sacred or Ecclesiastical Year. Already in the third cen- tury, we find this conception extant in its main features. Thus, the order of reading the Scriptures, which is based thereon, must also be referred to the very earliest epoch 62 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. of the Aryan Clmrches. Unfortunately in this case too, the original idea has been very imperfectly worked out by the Church of after ages ; for the whole scope of its spiri- tual import and depth had not as yet been apprehended by the Christian mind, when it proceeded to the work of construction. We shall restrict ourselves to the pure his- torical facts in attempting to delineate its development. The given centre, the core of this spiritual formation, was the festival of suffering, the Christian Feast of Passover, determined by the full moon of the first month after tlie vernal equinox ; in the celebration of which it was natu- rally sometimes the day of crucifixion (the Friday), some- times the day of resurrection (the Sunday), which the mind seized on as the chief event to be commemorated. This festival supplied a fixed point for Whitsuntide, the commemoration of that great event when, on the fiftieth day after Easter [Pentecost)^ the Church was founded and consecrated by the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. Thus we have here two fixed data, — the crowning moment in the life of Christ, and the starting-point of the Church's life. The grand historical fact, marking the commence- ment of the public life of Christ, prior to the events com- memorated at Easter, was His public consecration to the ofiice of a teacher by means of His baptism, which is called " Tlieophany" signifying " the Manifestation of God," or " Epijy/iany," simply " the Manifestation." But the Chris- tians knew very well from the evangelical records, that this event occurred in the beginning of our year, some months prior to the Passover season. JSTow, with the knowledge of these facts in the mind of the enquiring and devout community, what could be more natural than tliat they should devote the period preceding Easter, of about three months, chiefly to the contemplation of the sufferings of Jesus? Thus the main division of this period is tliat of the teachings, and that of the sufferings of Christ. For in the teachings of the earliest missionaries of the faith [Evangelists), the grand key-stone in the structure of their CiiAP. IV.] THE ECCLESIASTICAL YEAR. 63 catechetical narratives of the hfe of Jesus, is where the story begins of that last pilgrimage which Jesus makes from Gahlee to Jerusalem, in the full consciousness of the death which awaits Him there. As a fact, it is the period of the Passion which consti- tutes the key-stone in tliat organic structure. This gave rise to the circumstance, that the former part of those three mouths was more especially devoted to the contem- plation of the first part of the two and a half years occu- pied by Christ's pubhc ministry. Thus, if the solar year were adopted as a figure of that Eevelation which began with Christ's advent and life, about the first half of it naturally fell into the following four divisions : The season of Epiphany — the season of Passion — the season of Easter — the season of Whitsimtide. Again, with the growino; consciousness that the life of Jesus Avas perpetuated on this earth in the Christian society, Whitsuntide could not but come to be considered as the starting-point of a new period of the sacred history, ex- tending over the principal part of the remaining half of the solar year. And with this, the whole conception of that solar symbolism would assume more and more an historical and prospective aspect. What was more natural, than that the next idea that forcibly suggested itself, and pressed for outward embodiment, was the conspicuous contrast between the struggling and the perfected Church, — the attitude of expectation and that of fruition? Xay, are not the latest discourses of Jesus before His passion, as re- ported by the three catechetical evangehsts, filled with this topic ? And this in itself involved the consequence, that at the close of the ecclesiastical year, the consummation of all things, the Last Day, or, in other words, death and eternal life, the end of all tilings earthly and the transition into eternity, should become the object of the contemplation of the worsliipping community, regarded as the Church of the Kingdom of God among mankind. Following previous analogies, we might naturally have G4 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. conjectured tliat the close of the ecclesiastical year would have been made to synchronize with the close of the civil year. But, if we trace the leading idea of the former somewhat more narrowly, we shall soon perceive that this was not possible. Christ has not severed himself from the general development of the kingdom of God, but on the contrary, recognized Himself as the fulfilment of that course of revelation which began with the creation, and afterwards was carried on for the Jews in the several epochs of Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets. Now, the books of the Old Testament were the earliest sacred Scriptures of the Christians, which they were bidden to search, and did search, as containing the initial and in- dicative dispensations of God in man's behalf, which were designed to prepare the way for the proclama- tion of the Gospel. Moreover, from the very earliest times, the united worship of the Church began with instructions drawn from God's word, which was re- garded as a gift conferred on the congregation for its guidance and regulation. Hence it behoved that some season during the course of the solar year should be de- voted to the contemplation of this introductory revelation. Thus arose the season of Advent, forming the close of the civil year. From very early times, we find a period, some- times of ten, sometimes of seven, sometimes of four weeks, preceding the commencement of the New Year, with its contemplation of the life of Jesus (which originally started from the Theophany, or time of baptism), assigned to the contemplation of the preparatory dispensation of the Old Testament. And this gives us a distinct exj)ression of the threefold division of the world's history, when regarded from the central point of Christ's sacrificial redeeming death, which may most simply be represented thus : — Season of Prepaeation. Season of Christ. (Advent.) (Christmas to Ascension.) Season of the Church. (Whitsuntide to the conclusion of the ecclesiastical year.) Chap. IV.] THE ECCLESIASTICAL YEAR. (i5 This whole structural process is of abiding historical impor- tance, for it is the actual truth and reality of that which had floated before the Semitic and Aryan Nature-religions as the great secular year symbolized in the Divine con- flicts of the solar year. Surely it can be no other than the universal religion, the religion of God-conscious hu- manity, which can possess such a seal of world-historical consciousness ? And this institution is not the fruit of re- flection on the part of an individual, but has come into existence through a spontaneous act of the Spirit of Christ, as the Deity made manifest in the Cliurch. Nor has this institution ever died out again, notwithstanding the ex- tremely imperfect manner in which it has been worked out, and the many misunderstandings that have arisen in connection with it. Here we are in presence of a miracle, a direct exercise of creative etiergij on the part of the Divine Spirit; but no contradiction of natural laws. It is a history that is before us, no myth, but also no legend. We are now able to demonstrate that this whole pro- cess of Church development was in full course already, so early as in the first half of the second century ; and Avith this the living substructure was completed, which was to serve as the channel for the free streams of thought that were destined to flow from the religious consciousness of the individuals who have stood forth as leaders of the Church and as prophets of her rehgious faith. Thus are we now arrived at the second section of our account of the religious consciousness of the persecuted Church, the period immediately succeeding the age of the Apostles. But just as the A^DOstles were by no means the mere continuation of the life and teachings of Jesus, which are, on the contrary, a complete and finished whole in themselves, so, in like manner, the prophets of the primitive Aryan religious consciousness were by no VOL. Ill, * F 66 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. means the continiiatiou of that of the Apostles and Evan- gelists. They rather constitute the earliest organs of that apprehension of God which had sprung up on Apostolic^ therefore Hebraic, soil, and then afterwards developed itself in an Aryan atmosphere. With the Apostles, earthly realities retired into the background. Their vocation was to spread the knowledge of and bear witness to Christ — Christ the Prophet and Eedeemer — Christ the risen and glorified with God — and Christ the Judge of the World. Here we have the Alplia and Omega of their preaching. Now, on the contrary, the task to be ac- complished was to penetrate with this leaven the colossal mass of the Grjeco-Eoman world, to make the facts pro- claimed by the Apostles assume their proper place as the God-given basis of all mental development. The Holy Ghost gave the Church to perceive that the Gospel was a fact and a history, not a dogma, still less a law. But He needed prophets to proclaim this. And what hitherto unknown perils beset the glorious career which opened itself before the Aryan mind on the death of the last Apostle ? This Aryan mind had indeed been the prophet of the ancient world in philosophy and art. But will not the Jewish substratum of the Gospel — .the idea of the Eternal One, Jehovah — be subtilized in its hands till it evaporates altogether? Will not its unac- quaintance with the language of the Old Testament scrip- tures lead to an even worse overclouding and misconception of the contents of those books than the formalism of the Jewish Eabbis had done ? Will this Aryan speculative intellect hold fast in its purity the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit, without entangling itself either in mysticism or docjmatism ? And how shall it succeed in renderino- the manifestation of the Eternal One under the form of a crucified Barbarian pjiilosophically credible to Hellenes and Eomans, nay, or even historically so ? Up to this time, there had never existed among man- kind any historical truth on which a religious faith could he based, nor yet any philosophic faith founded on a per- Chap. IV.] PERILS OF THE CHUllCH. 67 sonal religious consciousness residing within man's own breast, and finding its credentials and interpretation there. "What is truth?" asks Pilate. "What can this barbarian teach us ? " exclaims the Athenian. Let us hear the answer given by the Aryan prophets of Christianity during the second and third centuries. r 2 68 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. CHAPTER V. THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PROPHETS OF THE PERSECUTED CHURCH. I. Ignatius. Already in the earliest Aryan leader and confessor of the Church, — Ignatius, Bishop of the Church in Antioch, the capital of Asia, the mother-Church of all extra-Palestinian Christendom, — we find an extremely remarkable germ of the Aryo-Christian conception of the history of God's dealings with mankind. His Epistle to the Ephesians, in which the prophet of Antioch soars to the greatest heights of his spiritual contemplation, concludes thus : — T^'y spirit howeth down before the cross, which is an offence to the unbelieving, but to us salvation and life eternal. There were hidden from the Prince of this world the virginity of Mary, and the birth and death of the Lord : three shouting mysteries ivere operated in God's quietness. From the ap- 'pearance of the star and the manifestation thereby of the Son, every magic power disappeared, and every bond was dissolved, and the old kingdom and the ignorance of wickedness perished. From that time everything was put in commotion, because the dissolution of death was purposed, and that began which with Grod was completed.' The fundamental thought of this passage may, therefore, be summed up somewhat after this fashion : — The vo- luntary sacrificial death of Jesus has conduced to tlie glorification of the mystery of the Divine order of the 1 See " Hippolytus/' i. 95. Chap. V.] IGNATIUS. 69 world which the liostile power of selfishness could never have discovered ; namely, that what was highest should emerge out of deepest degradation. The star which guided to Bethlehem the Magi, who were the first-born of the Gentiles, proclaims to the universe that which has been purposed and accomplished in God's eternal silence. Therewith be2;an a new manifestation of the Divine Spirit, a new vital energy was imparted to Hu- manity, What had been with God resolved and fulfilled from all eternity, now began to have its temporal un- rolling upon this earth. The Spirit, the moral and rational Will in unison with God, became the centre of man's consciousness of God in History. n. Basilides and Valentinus. A YOUNGER contemporary of Ignatius, Basilides, an Egyptian Hellene, with his younger friend and fellow- worker in the task of founding a school of Christian philosophy (Gnosis), Valentinus, a Syrian Hellene, called by St. Jerome, " the man of Godlike genius," attempted to rear such a philosophy on a theory of history, which must be allowed to have man's religious consciousness for its starting-point. And to afiirm that they were actually the founders of such a school would be in so far correct, that both of them started from the postulate that the universe is governed by one Law, to which all beings are subject, and that the supreme Law is Love, Basilides him- self, to whom a profound fetahsm is genei^ally ascribed, declared that love must embrace all things, because all things stand to all in a certain relation — all is related to aU.i But as soon as we proceed beyond this point, such an assertion would be by no means justified by the docu- ^ Clem. ''Strom," iv. 508, Neauder, "Kirchengescbichte," I. G99. 70 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book V. mentary knowledge we possess concerning the personal system of these two men, a knowledge which we derive more especially from the work of Hippolytus. In the first place, they neither of them see their way to getting rid of dualism, or the strife between the Good and Evil Principles. They did not attain (Basilides especially) to a consciousness of the moral freedom of self-determi- nation, or of the love of God displayed in the progres- sive unfolding of Humanity. It is in consequence of his unatoned sins in a previous state of existence, says Basilides, that sorrow and pain pursue man here on earth. So little did he understand the Divine root-idea of re- demption, that he felt himself compelled to regard even the sufferings and death of Christ in the light of a punish- ment, althouoh he held Him to be the Eedeemer of all mankind. Secondly, the philosophical method of the Gnostics is a compound of mythologizing and dialectic paradoxes (we refer to their doctrine of the ceons), while their method in exegesis is most arbitrary and violent. Lastly, their assumptions in the field of history betray no less ignorance and caprice than on that of physics. Their attitude towards the Bible may be defined by two simple statements. Their pure speculation on the nature of God is an attempt to systematize the Prologue to St. John's Gospel, and their application of it to man's apprehensions of God's agency in history is a similar attempt to systematize the isolated expressions in St. Paul's writings referring to this subject. But, just as in commenting on St. John's Gospel, Basilides is unable to rise above dualism, so, in dealing with St. Paul, does he make the antagonism between the Law and the Gospel an absolute one. No doubt, indeed, Basilides did regard the creation of man as a breakinsr forth of the eternal counsels of Divine love, and the history of mankind as the reflex of the gradual unfolding of the spiritual factors in the ideal Chap. V.] BASILIDES. 71 creation.' Moreover, both Basilides and Valentinus be- lieved in a Divine plan of progressive light and goodness in the nniverse, and Basilides applied to the development of mind his maxim that : — What exists perishes by attempt- ing to overstep) the hounds of its existence. Doubtless, Jesus is to him the Eedeemer, the manifestation in a truly human being of the Eternal Eeason, the Logos ; and with this manifestation does there begin a new era of the world ; but Christ, the Messias of the Old Testament, is the Son of quite a different God. The God of the Law is not the God of the Gospel. Christ is the Son of the Creator of the material universe (the Demiurge). This latter is altogether blind to the Spirit, and understands nothing about the end and aim of creation, viz., the free self-determining ethical mind. His Son is, indeed, in virtue of the universal principle of progress, not so far distant as he himself is from the Spirit. This Son, the conscious Spiritual Principle of the material world, or Xatural Principle, is the God who in person spoke to the Prophets, and therefore also to Moses, and equally to the Greek philosophers. Through his means his Father, the ideal of inflexible law, the Demiurge fast bound in the outward universe, is certainly taught, but not converted ; he fears what he ought to love, and in love to worship ; nay, in consequence of this fear, he fights against the Avorks of the supreme God now for the first time begin- ninsj to be revealed to him. Now, if we strip off what is in these doctrines the hull of the old Semitic Cosmogonies, there remains the pro- position : — Judaism and heathenism are both alike hostile opposites of Christianity. So again Basilides does not know what to do witli Abmham. Of his three eras of ^ On the points here succinctly stated, see "Hippolytus," 2nd edit. i. pp. 108-122, especially p. 120. In this second edition of " Hippolytus " I have proved how little Baur hns succeeded in refuting the assertion I had made, that in the extract given by Hippolytus we possess the sayings of Basilides himself, therefore a witness earlier than 130 A.n. [for the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John]. 72 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. the world, the first, that of sin, extends np to Moses, with whose Law the second era begins. Thus he over- looks one of the essential features of the Christian theory of the world, and absolutely forgets the saying of Christ above quoted, concerning Abraham and the Prophets. In support of his own views he has nothing to allege but that passage of the Apostle Paul which he severs from its context and abridges to suit his purpose : — For until the law, sin was in the world : but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression.* In handling which text he entirely loses sight of the doctrine, always prominently brought forward in St. Paul's writings, and notably so in this chapter of his Epistle to the Eomans, viz., that Abraham had received God's promises in recompense for his faith in God's love, and that the Mosaic ordinances were merely a temporary dispensation, occupying the place of a schoolmaster be- tween the giving of the promise to Abraham on the one hand, and its fulfilment in Christ's redemption on the other. ^ Thus with Basilides, Ethics, or the free moral order of the world, was pushed into the background compared with speculation, or Knowledge. Not, however, in his concep- tion of the primordial Principle ; for he says expressly : Providence, though it be, so to speak, set in motion by the Archon (the Prince of this world), yet has been implanted in the nature of things from the very origin by the Grod of the whole universe.^ In so far, we must certainly agree with Neander,^ that it 1 Rom. V. 13, 14. 2 Roni. ^ 20, 21. 3 Clem. " Strom." iv. 509. Neander, " Kirchengeschichte," T. s. 700. * See " Kircliengescliiclite," I. s. 702. The passage to which no doubt Neander refers, when he ascribes those noble words to Basilides, is to be found (iu substance) in the Stromata, v. 583, where it says that Moses in erecting one temple only, proclaimed thereby that the universe belonged to God, and moreover to His only Son (the Monogmes, Only-begotten). Chap. V.] VALENTINUS. 73 was the aim of Basilides to bring men to a consciousness of the unity of God's revelations in Nature and in History, so that, according to his own words, " we should regard the One Universe as the One Temple of God." But in actual life, Basihdes felt too keenly the pressure of the sway exercised by the Prince of this world, for his mind to admit an illuminating and warming ray from that light, at least as regards the hfe of the individual or the Church. This was the curse of that age, above which none but the simple-minded Christians, and a few elect spirits, were able to rise in hope ! Still, however, in reference to these difficulties, faith appeared to him the highest attitude of mind, and he did not hesitate to say : " The martyr's suf- ferings were so sweetened to him by this faith, that it was as though he did not suffer." Thus we see that Christ and Christianity were an histo- rical reality to him, although he was unable to rise above the view that regards the Divine and the Human as mutual exclusives. But that with the advent of the historical Jesus, the pure Son of Man, a Creative Personality, an en- tirely new, original, therefore Divine, Principle of Life was introduced into the history of this our world, we may affirm to be the second bright point in his system. All that we have said of Basilides holds good also of Valentinus, who fixed on yet deeper and firmer founda- tions the conception of the gradual redemption of the creature. To use Neander's fine expression : " redemption is to him an historical fact of world-wide import." ' In his writings, too, the fancies relating to the -3^]ons (the fan- tastic lucubrations about which we now know, on docu- mentary evidence, are to be ascribed to his school and not to himself) were simply a tjqie or reflex " of the drama of the human mind which is enacted in the world of spirits."'^ And further, the consolatory idea of a final victory of the Divine principle of Love in the world's history stands out quite clearly to his mind. The Demiurge himself at last 1 Neander, i. 738. "" See " Ilippolytus," i. 137. 74 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. comes to perceive that he has been, and is still, accom- plisliing the work of the Supreme God without knowing it, nay, without even suspecting it.^ In this respect, the teaching of Valentinus has undoubtedly for the evangelical theologian, no less than for the historian and philosopher, an incomparably higher worth than the doctrine taught by many ancient and modern divines, who treat the Devil as though he were a sort of divine police kept for the terror of evil-doers ; and, albeit miwittingly, seem to take for granted that it is not God, but the Devil, who really governs the world. The truly evangelical and philoso- phic thought of Valentinus is finely expressed in a passage preserved by Clemens,^ Valentinus in one of his sermons thus addresses the " spiritual " (in contradistinction to the " sensual " or " psychical ") men : Ye are immortal from the very beginning, children of eternal life; ye have resolved to taste death by the sacrifice of yourselves, in order that ye may swallow up and annihilate death. For whereas ye are preparing the dissolution of this world of matter, and yet are not subject yourselves to disso- lution, do ye become the lords of creation and of all things transitory. But the spiritual life consists in sanctification ; the Spirit's work m the hearts of the spiritually minded. And to this their mode of worship also is conformable, where- fore it bears the name of, and is, in truth, " the reasonable service." Until this sanctifying operation of the Spirit has begun, that holds good of a man which our author says in another place : ^ The heart is an uncleansed habitation of the evil spirits who deform the soul, until it is touched by Him Who has loved it. But when the Father, who alone is good, rules therein, then ^ See " Hippolytus," 2nd ed. pp. 138-162. [I cannot refrain from expressing my hope that my renders will, if able, peruse for themselves the interesting dissertation here referred to. — Tk.] ' Clem. " Strom." iv. 13 Tp. 218, Pott's edition). 3 Clem. " Strom." ii. 409. Chap. V.] THEODOTUS. 75 is it purified and radiant with inward light; and hence does our Lord say : "'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Thus the source of the purifying power is in the new personal moral communion with the Redeemer. Through this continuous work of the Eecleemer, does He who is alone good, the Father, reveal Himself. TheodotiLs, the most gifted scholar of Yalentinus, suc- ceeds in liberating his mind from the shackles of dualism. In my '"'■ Analecta Ante-Niccena " ^ I have proved that we possess in extracts given by Clemens of Alexandria, frag- ments of a work by this great thinker, written about 170 or 180 A.D. In one of these fragments he says : The man who is not redeemed and regenerate stands under the power of Fate {slfxap^ivr], Fatum), and therefore under the power of the conflicting forces of Nature, which, embodied in the stars, act upon us. From this strife and struggle the Lord delivers us and gives us peace. This was what was signified by the new Star which appeared at the birth of our Lord, and shining with a new splendour, dissolved the old influences of the heavenly bodies. He Himself, the Lord, is our pole-star ; He who descended upon earth that He might transfer those who believe in Christ from the realm of Destiny into that of His own Providence. Thus did the first attempt at a Christian philosophy of the Avorld's order, in the hands of the pupil of Valentinus issue in a return to historical, evangelicnl, apostolic Chris- tianity. The school perished through its errors and its deficiency in Church feeling. But Clemens devoted his efforts to rescue the golden seeds of knowledge which those men had scattered abroad. The deepest thoughts of both Clemens and Origen owe their original suggestion to this source. Still the school ended with Origen, and in the following century the bloom of this first Christian consciousness of God in History passed away altogether. But almost contemporary with Yalentinus, only about 1 Vol. i. pp. 203-287. See especially, §§ 69-85, pp. 268-277. 76 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. a decade later, we come npon two remarkable prophetic books of Christian speculation on the world's order be- longing to a very different class. These are the " Epistle to Diognetus," and " The Shepherd of Her mas." ni. The Epistle to Diognetus. This fragment — for the conclusion of the letter probably belongs to a later work — stands in certain aspects without a rival in the religious literature of the second century, by reason of its singular freshness, and the intensity, ris- ing almost to passion under the heat of controversy, of the Author's belief in the new, independent manifestation, given through Christianit}^ of God's eternal counsels of love, in the history, not of this or that people, not of this or that age, but of all mankind in all ages. Since the insurrection of the Jews and the war of Bar- chochba under Hadrian, form the horizon of this Epistle, we are led to refer its date to some year between 133 and 139 A.D. Already in those years, Diognetus, as we learn from the Emperor's own " Meditations" was conducting the general and philosophical education of Marcus Aure- lius, who was fourteen years of age at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in 135 a.d. The following pas- sages are those which more especially bear witness to the religious consciousness of the author, who was probably the youthful Marcion, whom we know to have been at that time residing in Eome.^ After showing that though the Jewish worship was indeed addressed to the true God, the Creator of heaven and earth, it was in other respects as external in its character as that of the Gentiles, he passes on, in the fifth and sixth chapters, to a description of the Christians : 1 See " Hippolytus," 2nd ed. i. p. 170, where the author gives his reason for assigning the authorship of this Epistle to Marcion. — Tr. Chap. V.] EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS. 77 They dwell in their own fatherland, but as strangers. They take part in everything as citizens, and they have to bear everything as if they were foreigners. Every foreign country is their father- land, and every fatherland is a foreign country to them. They are in the jlesh, hut they do not live after the flesh. They pass their time on earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the established laws, and by their own lives gain a victory over the laws. They love all, and yet are persecuted by all. They are taken no notice of, and they are condemned : they are put to death, and they come to life again : they are poor them- selves, and yet make many rich : they lack everything, and yet they abound in all things : they are put to shame, and yet they glory in their shame : they are evil spoken of, and yet they are justified: they are reviled, and they bless: they are insulted, and they show honour : they do good, and yet they are punished as evil-doers : they rejoice in punishment, as being thereby quickened : the Jews make war upon them as foreigners, and the Greeks persecute them : and yet they that hate them can give no reason for their enmity. Here Tacitus has his answer ; his doubts have received their solution from facts, and found it, moreover, precisely in the quarter where he did not seek it ! It is the self- respect of redeemed mankind, who feel themselves happy in the hardest times, and free under bloody tyranny, be- cause resolved to die as God's children in behalf of their own dignity, faith, and honour. Soon will those very States go over to their side wdiich now persecute them as aliens and bad patriots ! And then our author proceeds in Chapter VI. : In short, what the soul is in the body, that Christians are in the world. The soul is spread through all the members of the body, and so are Christians through all the cities of tlie world. Now the soul liveth in the body, yet is she not of the body : and so do Christians live in the world, yet are not of the world. The invisible soul is preserved in a visible body , and so Christians are known to be in the world, but their religion remaineth unseen. The flesh hatetli the soul, and warreth against her, without receiving any injury ; for the soul 78 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. preventeth her from indulging in pleasures ; so the world hateth Christians, yet is no way injured; for they are opposed to pleasures. The soul loveth the flesh and its members that hate her : and so do Christians love those who hate them. The soul is shut in by the body, yet she npholdeth the body : and so are Christians kept, as it were, in prison, by the world, yet they uphold the world. The undying soul dwelleth in a mortal tabernacle : and so do Christians dwell by the side of that which is perishable, while they wait for immortality in heaven. The soul is made better the more she is maltreated by the with- holding of food and drink : and Christians, the more they suffer punishment, the more do they from day to day increase in numbers. If we revert to the general ground of this belief, we find it to be the fruit of the higher life implanted in Humanity by Christ. The actual world around is still lying under the sway of tyrants, the oppressors of conscience ; but the Church is certain of her victory, for her children are alike prepared to live in every relationship for the confes- sion of the faith tliat niaketh free, or at any moment to die for it. Now, from the very nature of the religious consciousness, such as we have found it to be hitherto, this faith and this couraQ;e unto death cannot but rest on a sense of the direct contact of the Divine with human nature, on a belief in our sonship to the Father in heaven, the God of eternal love and true freedom And where is this sentiment more finely expressed than in the following passage ? For, as I said before, theirs is no earthly invention handed down to them, nor is that a mortal doctrine which they hold worthy of Him, so diligently preserved; nor is it a dispen- sation of human mysteries which is entrusted to them : but God, the Euler and Creator of all things, the Invisible, hath Himself from heaven planted in men tlie truth and the holy in- comprehensible Woi'd, and hath established Him in their hearts. He sent Him not (as one might suppose) as a servant, or as an angel, or as a ruler, or as one engaged in earthly affairs, or as one Chap. V.] EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS. 79 entrusted with the care of things in heaven; but God sent the very Artificer and Creator of the Universe — Him, The Word, by whom He made the heavens, bywhom He enclosed the sea within its due bounds — Him, whose mysterious laws are faithfully kept by all the starry signs — Him, from whom the sun hath received the measures of his daily course, duly to keep them — Him, at whose command the moon shineth in the night — Him, whom the stars obey. This is He whom Grod sent unto them. Was it, as some one among men might suppose, to tyrannize over and to terrify mankind ? No, indeed : but in mercy and gentleness, as a king would send his son, so He sent Him as a King: He sent Him as God : He sent Him as man to men : He sent Him to save, to persuade, not to force them : for violence is no attribute of God : He sent Him as wishing to call, not to persecute : He sent Him in love, not for judgment : for He will send Him to judge, and who will then be able to stand in the day of His coming ? Christ is the Eternal Word that in Him took upon itself human nature. But this Word is implanted in the human heart, and hence the doctrine of Christ is the rehgion of Humanity, destined to bless this earth, and raise it from an empire of selfishness into a Kingdom of God. Lastly, this Epistle expresses further a consciousness of the laws of such a progressive divinization, spiritualizing, enfran- chisement, redemption of the world, which raises it to the rank of permanent historical importance : — For God, the Lord and Euler of the Universe, who made all things, and set them in order, showed Himself not only loving to man, but also long-suffering. For He was ever such, and is, and will be: kind, and good, and passionless, and true: and He alone is good : and He conceived in His mind a great and un- speakable thought, which He communicated to His Son. Now, as long as He kept back His wise counsel, and preserved it as a mystery. He appeared not to think or care about us Now, when He had by Himself, together with His Son, set everything in order, He left us during the time past to be carried about, as we willed, by our unruly impulses, led away, as we were, by pleasures and desires: not in any way as if He took 80 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. delight in our sins, but as one who bore with them : nor as one who approved of that season of unrighteousness, but as one who was fashioning the time of righteousness : so that, having by our own work in former times proved ourselves unworthy of life, we might now, through the goodness of Grod, be made worthy of it : and as we had shown our inability to enter into the kingdom of Grod by our own strength, we might be enabled so to do by the power of Grod. But when the measure of our own unrighteousness was filled up, and it had been fully shown that punishment and death were entailed on it as its reward, and the time came which God had fore-ordained to show forth His own goodness and power (oh ! the exceeding love of Grod for man !), He did not hate us, or cast us off, or remember the evil against us, but He bore long with us and suffered us, and out of pity took our offences upon Him : He Himself gave up His own Son as a ransom for us, the Holy for transgressors — Him that was without evil for sinners — the Just for the unjust — the Imperishable for perishable men — the Immoi'tal for mortals. To Him should we raise our eyes, and throw off from us all our earthly cares. ^ In conclusion, the inspired Christian Hellene indulges in the hope that Diognetus may be led to long after this faith and to attain to the knowledge of God, who is the Eternal Love : — For (he adds) when thou lovest Him, thou wilt become a follower of His goodness. And marvel not at this, that man may become a follower of Grod. He can if he will. For happi- ness consisteth not in lording it over our neio-hbours, or in desiring to have more than the weaker brethren, or in being rich and oppressing the poor. Nor can man, in so doing, be a fol- lower of Grod ; for such things are entirely foreign to His majesty. But whosoever beareth the burden of his neighbour — whosoever is ready to do good with that wherein he aboundeth to another who is in want — whosoever, by distributing to the needy the things which he hath received from God, becometh a god to ' those who receive them — this man is a follower of God. Then shalt thou behold, though thou be living on earth, that God reigneth in Heaven ; then shalt thou begin to speak the ' Cap. viii. 0. Chap. V.] EPISTLE TO DIOGNETUS. 81 mysteries of Gfod ; then shalt thou both love and admire those who are suffering punishment because they will not deny God : then shalt thou condemn the impostures and errors of the world, when thou hast known how to live truly in Heaven— when thou canst despise that which appeareth to be death here — when thou dreadest that which really is death, a death which is kept in store for those who will be condemned to that eternal fire, which will torment them whom it receiveth until the end. Then shalt thou admire those who can bear patiently the [torments of] eartlily fire, and bless them when thou thyself hast tasted that fire. So thought, so believed, so wrote an enthusiastic, pro- bably still youthful. Christian, with the design of con- verting the Platonic Stoic, and of dissuading his pupil, Marcus Aurelius (who had been adopted as a son by Marcus Antoninus in 139 A.D., soon after the accession of the latter), from the unjust, impious, and fruitless course of persecuting the Christians. Who does not recognize in such a writing as this the unexampled flight which the religious consciousness of Humanity has taken from the cross at Golgotha ! Not only does our author soar far above Judaism and Hellen- ism, but also beyond the highest flights of Buddhism. God's kingdom shall come upon earth, because men are God's children. His Spirit dwells in them, a Spirit that will effect the gradual divinization of the world, through the implantation of Divine liberty and love. The seal and token of this liberty is self-renunciation ; devotion to the brethren, forasmuch as they are God's children, and vessels of the Holy Ghost. The only certain evidence of this love towards God is self-sacrificing love for the brethren. The proof of the contrary, the badge of enmity to God, is persecution, oppression of the conscience ; for all constraint is foreign to the very essence of God. Such a Spirit is even now living and working and brino;ino- forth its fruits in the hearts of men, from the Euxine to Eome, from Alexandria to Athens. Can this VOL. in. Gt «2 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book Y. be the result of chance ? Or can we account for it simply by the decay of the heathen religions ? Does it not manifestly presuppose an eternal causality, resting upon the laws of that Kosmos of which a perception is im- planted within our souls ? IV. Hermas and his Work, " The Shepherd." The inspired voice of the philosophic champion of the persecuted Christian community, to which we have been listening, died into silence without leaving a trace of its effects. While very inferior — nay, positively jejune — apo- logies are mentioned with commendation, Eusebius and the other Christian historians are totally silent about the " Epistle to Diognetus." And yet it had flowed from a pious heart, and was in thorough unison with the mind of the Church, as is proved by the whole history of that age. The only thing that can account for this would be some breach occurring at a later date between its author and the Church. Now, such a breach do we find in Marcion's going over to the school of Valentinus, which was not in communion with the body of the Church. On the first glance it may appear no less enigmatical how the earliest Christian work of fiction, " The Shep- herd " of Hermas (written by the brother of Pius, Bishop of Eome, about the year 139), should, on the contrary, have obtained so high a reputation in the Christian com- munities of the Greek and Eoman world that it was even read in the assemblies of the congregation as " Scripture," that it was called by Clement " a divinely inspired book," and that at the Council of Nicsea both parties appealed to its testimony in behalf of their doctrines. On a closer investigation, however, of the conflicting tendencies of that age, and of the contents of this work, this riddle becomes very easy of solution. This apparently insigni- ficant book came in answer to one of the deeply felt needs of the Christians at that date, viz., to receive some Chap. A^] HERMAS. 83 prophetic word of interpretation respecting the future of the Church and the world, which should give adequate expression to the sentiment of the laity among the Hel- lenic Christians. Hermas forsakes the Apocalyptic style adopted by previous writers in imitation of St. John's Eevelation, and selects in preference the free style of fiction, althoii2:h retainino; the form of a vision. It is very remarkable that the author has performed his task with the same religious respect for the historical individuality of his personages that Dante exhibits nearly twelve centuries later ; and, moreover, we do not scruple to say, reveals not only an equal intensity of religious belief, but a far greater hopefulness for the future ; there- fore really a much stronger faith in the victory of the true world-transforming Christianity than was possessed by the great mediasval Florentine. Both present us with a picture of the inward history of the soul — of its awaken- ing from selfishness and the mad pursuit of sensual plea- sure to faith in the Divine redeeming love, and of the passage through a purifying state of suffering to the blessedness of peace ; both depict these changes as taking place after the close of the earthly life. But while the prophet of the Middle Ages nowhere expresses any hope for the earthly hfe of Christendom, for the existing ec- clesiastical form of God's kingdom, but, on the contrary, transfers all blessedness and all just retribution to the future world, Hermas, in the very midst of persecution — nay, on the very eve of a new persecution, which he sees to be impending — -with the eye of his spirit gazes with rapture on the magnificent expansion of the kingdom of God that was destined to replace the moribund vitality of the Greek and Eoman world. This is the main feature to which we must here limit our remarks.^ Hermas is not the name of the author, but of the hero of the tale. He is supposed to be the Eoman friend mentioned by St. Paul, and the scene of the story is laid 1 " Hipp." 2nd ed. i. pp. 181-215. g2 84 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. in Eome under Bishop Clemens ; therefore, in the age when a pnpil of the Apostle of the Gentiles would be still living. This Hernias, by whom the book professes to be written (indeed, it was regarded by many as the work of a contemporary and friend of the Apostles), is in the stoiy a merchant, a highly respected elder of the Eoman Church, unhappily married to an unbelieving wife, and in the dealings of ordinary life not much more conscientious than his ungodly sons. In sheer despair he neglects his family. One day, when he is taking a walk by the Tiber, he sees a maiden fall from the bathing- house into the river. He saves her from drowning ; but how great is his astonishment to discover in her a play- fellow of his youth, a household slave belonging to his father. She is as pious as she is beautiful ; he cultivates her acquaintance, and his admiration of her person and of her Christian gentleness is at certain moments nigh to becoming a love of concupiscence. One day, walking in a lonely place, he falls asleep meditating on her charms, when, lo ! he finds himself transported in spirit to a rocky, desolate spot, surrounded by precipices (like the place described in the opening of Dante's poem). From thence he comes to a plain, and his thoughts ascend to God in prayer. All at once there appears unto him the spirit of that beautiful maiden, who has meanwhile been called home to the Father. She tells him how she has been summoned thither to lay his sinful thoughts before the Lord, and proceeds to open his eyes to the inward impurity he had been guilty of, notwithstanding his entire abstinence from any outward expression of it. Hardly has she left him, when there appears unto him a vene- rable matron, who admonishes him, but also administers encouragement. Hennas treasures up all these things in his heart. Some time after, the matron appears to him again, and gives him a little book, couched in precepts and parables, to read for his consolation and confirmation in the faith. CHAr. V.J THE SHEPHERD. 85 When she disappears, an angelic youth explains to him that — " She was not, as lie had supposed, the Sibyl, but the Church ; that is to say, the Spirit of the Communion of Grod's elect from the beginning of the world. That she had appeared in the shape of an aged matron, because she is the first of God's creatures, and on her account the world was created." . Thus we see that she is the Divine Spirit of Humanity. Afterwards she shows him a great tower which is being erected upon a rock, that rises out of the waters, towering high above the earth. Tliis tower is composed of shining stones cut four-square. The six first-born of the angels are presiding over its construction. This tower signifies the company of all the faithful, and the completion of the buildincf is the future of the world. Now, after he has thoroughly mastered the '"'• PrecefW" contained in the little book before mentioned (twelve new commands of Christian love), and come to under- stand the '■^Similitudes'' (parables of the inward life), he is carried by an angel to the top of a high mountain in Arcadia. Here the interpretation of his visions is vouch- safed to him, beojinnino; thus : — "I will now show and explain unto thee fully what that Spirit showed thee who appeared to thee under the figure of the Church. That Spirit is the Son of God. Thou couldst not at that time bear His sight. Now I will announce to thee His own explanation. Thou hast been well shown the building of the tower, but as by a virgin. Now thou shalt see all." Hermas now beholds how tliat tower upon the rock rises out of a plain surrounded by twelve hills, representing the twelve known peoples and States of the world. The rock itself is of immense antiquity, but a new door has been hewn out in it on its front side. Twelve virgins, representing the virtues, guard the door and corners of the tower. Meanwhile he watches the progress of the building. Those six angels cause great square blocks of stone, without a flaw, to be brought up out of the deep, 86 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. and the virgins receive these and hand them through the door to the builders. After the ten corner-stones, repre- senting the ten patriarchs, come a hundred stones, of which the first twenty-five represent the righteous men mentioned in the Bible between Noah and Moses ; the next thirty-five correspond to the books of the Old Testa- ment, and after these, forty, a number which, curiously enough, almost exactly corresponds to the number of pious and holy men who are named besides the twelve Apostles in the books of the New Testament. Thus the first ten and these hundred stones would appear to represent : first, the primitive world — the Abrahamitic era of the world previous to the Law — next, the epoch of the Law and the prophets ; and lastly, the elect souls of the Church founded by Christ and His Apostles. The last forty imprint upon the souls of their predecessors the seal of Christ, without which they cannot be saved. Now, when the Son of God, the Lord Hmiself, appears to survey and examine the work so far as it has yet pro- ceeded, behold, at the touch of His rod, there discover themselves dark, nay, black, spots in several of the stones ; and it appears that there are many among them which have not been brought into the building by those virgins. After a process of purification the spots disappear in some ; but all which remain black are taken out of the wall again, and the Lord issues orders no longer to fetch the stones out of the surrounding hills, that is to say, out of the then nations of the Grteco-Eoman empire, to which the Gospel has hitherto been preached, but out of the immeasurable flat plain from the centre of which those twelve hills arose. And, behold ! the very fairest and noblest stones are brought out of this unpromising soil, and the building advances rapidly towards its com- pletion. By the interpretation given of the twelve mountains, it is clearly enough hinted that the plain signifies the peoples which are still entirely heathen, therefore more especially the Celts and Germans, whose CuAi'. v.] THE SHEPHERD. 87 conversion did, in fact, begin sliortly after ; nay, even at that date, there might probably be some preparatory steps towards it already in progress. The good Shepherd himself, who gives all these ex- planations, is the Angel of Eepentance. He parts from Hermas with the warning that concludes the book, which Hernias is ordered to write down : — " Mind therefore your salvation in the time that the building of the tower is going on. The Lord dwells in men who love peace, for true peace is dear to Him, and far removed from the quarrelsome and wicked. Eender to Him your spirit in the soundness in which you received it. Whoever now repents truly will receive pardon for his former sins." The Spirit leaves him in the house of the twelve virgins — the Christian virtues. Then He comes and seats Himself beside Hermas, with the Angel of Penitence on the other side, and after delivering to him his com- mission to announce to all the words of this book, sends him home to his own house, that he may take the proper means for the conversion of his own family. Thus was the parable of Christ concerning the King's supper, to which all were at last invited, even from the highways and hedges, applied in the spirit of St. Paul to the whole human race of the second centmy. JSl^ot indeed without some traces of an incipient trust in the efficacy of good works, still in the main in accordance with the spirit of St. Paul's sublime teachings, and instinct with the faith in a progressive kingdom of God upon the earth. Certainly the end of the world may soon arrive ; but there are still wanting many nations in whose bosom elect souls are slumbering. Thus this book, written for popular spiritual edification in the earliest period of Christianity, keeps entirely to the ground of Scripture and revelation, within the domain of that great conception of the presence of the Spirit of God in man. Each Christian is a " Servant of the Lord ; " and so was also even the perfect man Jesus, in Whom the 88 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book. V. Spirit of God, " the First-born," dwelt, and who by his holy life and death was made a perfect partaker of the Divine nature. But hence Jesus is at once called the " Son of God," and regarded as equivalent to the "Spirit of God," ^ a Christology which is in substance based on the later letters of St. Paul and the Gospel of St. John. But to our author the Chinxh is the highest thing; on earth, for it is the visible Body of the Lord. The Bishop and the Elders who form the governing board are, equally with the teachers who instruct and the deacons wdio serve, ministers of the Church. It is only on occasion of her first apparition, while Hermas is yet imperfect, that the Spirit of the Church appears as a matron sitting upon the episcopal chair, for as the Book says : " Every infirm man sits upon a chair on account of his infirmity, which makes him need a support." When the conscience of Hermas has already been awakened, she assumes a milder form, and appears " softly smiling ; " and when his heart has been renewed, she beams forth in radiant beauty, but scorns the chair (the seat of the Bishop), and seats herself iTjDon the bench (subsellium, the lower seat occupied by the Elders). Thus the "Spirit of the Earth" (the hier- archy) sits upon the Cathedra, the Elders upon low chairs or benches. God's people stand below in the nave of the Church ; and on this fashion do they worship. This worship consists in prayer and in the word of the Spirit. Baptism is that of adults, and is the seal of a previous confession of faith. Hence it is called " The Seal," but only in so far as the mind and heart are renewed ; it is therefore the public seal put upon the vow made by the believer. The Apostles descend with the catechumen into the water, and he rises renewed with them out of it (that is, in their spirit). All this, as well as the mention of the " Only-begotten," betrays such clear allusion to St. John's Gospel,^ that the 1 See 2 Cor. iii. 17 ; Phil. i. 19 j Rom. viii. 9. ^ See Ch. i. and iii. Chap. V.] PANT^NUS. 89 original hypothesis of tlie late origin of this gospel would seem as untenable from this work as it does from the " Epistle to Diognetus " and the writings of Basilides and Valentinus. On the contrary, they are all witnesses for an organic development of the consciousness of God in Humanity, based upon the ground of doctrines pro- claimed in that Gospel, which are treated as those of the Apostle himself, and admit of no explanation, except by a reference to that work and to its application to the cir- cumstances of the aoe. This thoroughly apostolic consciousness of the inse- parability of the divine and the human, of Jesus and the believers, of the Spirit and the Church, meets us again at the beginning of the third century as the Divine germ of all sound and consolatory thought in Clemens of Alex- andria, and in Origen, in the second half of that century. The former of these writers claims from us a more special consideration because he is the purest exponent we possess of the mind of the Hellenic Church of that age. V. Clemens of Alexandria. Clemens, born at Athens, was a pupil of Pant^nus, a celebrated philosopher, who, converted from Platonic Stoicism to Christianity, sought to unite the sober dia- lectic and critical tendency of the Hellenic intellect with the religion of Jesus. This universally respected Christian philosopher had already applied the dialectic philosophy to the great question of the moral order of the world, and, moreover, apprehended that question in its deepest ground. For this seems to be proved by one of his sayings that has been preserved to us.^ To the question ^ In the '^ Scholia " of Maxinnis, which again have been preserved to us by Erigena's translation of " Dionysius Areopagita." See Routh's " Reliquiae Sacrae," 'i. p. 379, where, however, some trifling corrections are needed. 90 GOD m HISTORY. [Book V. propounded by some Greek dialectician — How the God of the Christians was supposed to apprehend objects (the Finite world), whether sensible objects by the senses, and spiritual objects by the mind? — Pant^enus is reported to have replied as follows : — Neither by the senses [does He apprehend] sensible objects, nor by the mind the things of the mind. For it is impossible that He who is exalted above the Finite world should apprehend aught after the fashion of the Finite. We (the Christians) say rather, that Grod perceives the Finite as the result of the counsels of His own will, and for this assertion we can assign a good ground. For if God have made the All by the decree of His counsels (Will) — and no one will contradict this assumption, ■ — and if it be always pious and correct to say that Grod knows His own will, and if, in fact, He has made all that has come into existence by the exercise of His volition, it is proved that God apprehends the Finite as the counsels of His own will, inas- much as He has made the Finite as one exercising His will. Now, since the answer must be commensurate with the question — but the latter includes the Spiritual, therefore Humanity — we have here involved this great philoso- phical postulate : — There is a moral order of the universe grounded in the Eternal, and the religious intuitions of mankind have an objective truth. Now this teacher was succeeded by Clemens in the chair of the earliest theological school of Christendom, that of Alexandria, about the year 190, and the greater part of his writings must be assigned to the period be- tween the death of Commodus (192 a.d.) and the begin- ning of the third century. Already in the year 202 a.d. he was driven from his professorial chair by persecution. Now, regarded from the centre-point of our survey of the unfolding of the Christian consciousness of God in history, the religious philosophy of Clemens appears to us to present the highest example of the combination of a Christian behever's theory of the world with that of the noblest Hellenic conceptions. The union of faith and Chap, v.] CLEMENS OF ALEXANDRIA. 91 knowledge, of theology and philosophy, was from tlie first the aim of his conscious effort. The errors of the Gnostics he escaped by keeping close to Christ and the Gospel. This is particularly evident in regard to the three main points which were the most important questions of that day. He cared more for the Church than for the Schools ; he ranked faith above know- ledge ; the Christian life was ever to him the touchstone of both. In this faith he formed the bold resolution to pursue the path that had been opened up by Valentinus and his School, in the philosophical investigation of St. John's Gospel, more especially its Prologue. The great question which agitated the Catholic Church at that date was that of the connection of the Eternal Logos with the Person of Jesus, or, in other words, of the Idea with its historical embodiment. Photius, the famous Byzantine patriarch of the ninth century, accuses Clemens of heresy on this subject. The passage which he adduces in proof of his accusations has not been preserved to us in the works of Clemens himself; it must have been taken from the " Hypotyposes^''' of which we have only fragments ; but these are sufficient to show that the religious beliefs of Clemens were quite in unison with those of the Apostles. He was far removed on the one hand from merging tlie Deity into the idea of the universe or the process of human evolution, and on the other, from placing that impassable chasm between God and the universe which Judaism involved. He was content (adopting the views expressed in the quotation we have given from Pantsenus) to find the distinction between the two in the antithesis between the Eternal Being and the transitory Becoming — the Infi- nite, and that which is subject to the conditions of Time and Space. The Word of God (the Logos), in the highest sense, is, according to him, God's self-consciousness ; but in the finite world, in its relation to men, since Jesus re- turned to His Father, this Word speaks to us through the 92 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. medium of our own consciousness of God, and dwells as a Spirit (Nous) in the hearts of men. Now, this is really the sense of the incriminated words : — " The Son (Christ) is also called Logos (the Word), there- fore beavs the same name which is borne by the Logos of the Father (the Eternal Word, having no beginning). But it is not this Logos tJtat was made fiesh,^ nor yet the Logos of the Father, but rather [there was Tnade 'man) an energy of Grod, as it were an overflow of the Logos Himself which, having be- come Spirit, penetrates the hearts of men." ^ The comments made by Clemens on the system of Theodotus leave us in no doubt as to the main point — that Clemens sought to arrive at the pure historical manifesta- tion from the transcendental, ontological starting-point, while avoiding the imaginative and unscriptural vagaries to which the Gnostics were addicted. Tlie thinker needs some bridge by which to pass from the contemplation of God in Himself to the explanation of the human person- ality. Now, the Church divines had encumbered this pathway with unnecessary difficulties, in the first place, by failing duly to distinguish the transcendental point of view from that of the creation of the universe, notwith- standing the fact that the opening words of St. John's Pro- logue lay a marked stress upon this distinction ; and in the second place, by not duly discriminating between this Logos, who is the Creator of the universe, and the personal Son, who is the human reflex of the Divine Volition directed upon Finite objects. Many of those who recognized this distinction correctly in the Gospel, and understood it in its philosophic and historical concreteness, seem to have feared to carry it out into its consequences, lest they should lend a handle to those who assume that the nature of Christ differed in essence from that of the Father. By the age of Photius, any clear conception of this distinction between the Logos and the Son had long since been lost, ' Jolan i. 14. 2 u Analecta," vol. i. p. 305. Chap. V.] CLEMENS OF ALEXANDEIA. 93 because the formulas of the Councils had interposed them- selves between free philosophic thought and the words of the Bible. Thus the sense of the concluding words of the passage we have quoted (which for the rest betrays manifest tokens of abridgement) can be no other than that Clemens, taking his stand on the discourses contained in St. John's Gospel, from the 14th to the 17tli chapters, placed the incarnation of God in Christ side by side v/ith the working of the Spirit of God in the hearts of believers. This idea of Clemens and its misconception by the Church are facts of abiding historical importance, at once for the philosopher, the Biblical expositor, and the his- torian. What is really the Byzantine doctrine that assumes to itself the title of orthodoxy ? Although theo- logians of all ages seem to have found a special delight in giving out whatever is most absurd and illogical for the highest truth, in which we are bound to believe precisely because it is inconceivable; yet assuredly this doctrine (which is really a mere declaration of intellectual bank- ruptcy) has long since ceased to satisfy earnest and conscientious minds. On the contrary, such a crude conception of Divine things can only find its excuse, or at least explanation, in the fact of religion being regarded as something external, and God's revelation of Himself as an arbitrary act on His part, having no connection witli reason. Now, certainly, the example of Clemens shows us that the mere speculative philosopher has no more chance when matched against those untrained or sophistical intellects than the mere collector of facts. Happily, however, the same example also points us onward to the fact attested by the whole subsequent history of Christianity, that neither superstition nor scepticism are able to maintain their ground successfully on this domain against those united weapons of the intellect, reasoning and research, save when they have recourse to the aid of fire and sword. By reasoning and research we mean the organic combination of dialectic thought with philosophic 94 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. and historical investigation of facts. A philosophy which is well versed in the letter of Scripture, and qualified to expound that letter correctly, is well able to demonstrate the groundlessness of the doctrines thus taken for granted ; and the philological conscience of an age, which, in ad- dition to this, is conversant with the dialectic method, cannot be stifled, even by torrents of bloodshed, save for a brief space. Clemens' whole conception of God's presence and agency in the world is in unison with the spirit of the Gospel. It is based upon that recognition already referred to, of the distinction and yet connection subsisting between God and the Universe, — Thought and its Manifestation. This supplies the key to that bold language of Clemens in his ^^Exhortation to the Hellenes."'^ " The Logos put on the mask of humanity, and clothed Himself with flesh ; and in this guise did He enact the drama of man's redemption upon the theatre of the universe ; " with which we ought to compare his language respecting the life of the intelligent believer,^ in which he says of the " Gnostic" (the intelli- gent rational beUever), that " he performs without a slip the drama of life which God has set him to enact." We see by these illustrations that the incarnation of the Logos in Christ is not a mere semblance, as the Docetic Gnostics maintained, but a substantial and actual embodi- ment ; a view which involves two consequences, one of which is expressly drawn by our author. In his view, the life of Christ's followers is essentially a Divine as well as human life ; consequently, therefore (but this inference he does not draw), the life of Humanity seeking after God, and above all of Christendom, regarded as a collective Whole in Time, must necessarily be so likewise ; for the divinity of human nature in our whole race is the root- idea of our author. It must be admitted, however, that if we come to ex- amine more in detail the philological and historical argu- ments which Clemens adduces in support of these views 1 I. 10 cf. 1, 3 " Strom." xii. 11. Chat. V.] ALEXANDRINE EXEGESIS. 95 of liis, we shall certainly find much that will seem start- ling, nay, scarcely conceivable, to us. Thus we might be inclined to smile when the ingenious Alexandrine, in com- menting on the current traditions respecting the life of Christ subsequent to the Eesurrection, seriously expresses the opinion that the only reason why Christ ate and drank was that his disciples might not doubt of the reality of his body.^ But in so judging of him, we ought to remember that the unvarying and systematic contempt expressed by many modern, nay, most recent, theologians, for the Divine laws of Nature, and the actual material universe, especially as regards the human organism, is no less arbitrary, and must present quite as formidable a stumbling-block to any unprejudiced and thoughtful- minded Christian. This need not, however, prevent our recognizino;, either in their case or in that of the ancient theologians, the many true sayings to be found in the writings of at any rate the more profound of these authors. They are right, not because of, but in spite of, their exegesis of Scripture. Thus Pantsenus in com- menting on the fourth verse of the nineteenth Psalm : " In them (the ends of the world) hath he set a tabernacle for the sun," which the Alexandrines had falsely trans- lated : " And he placed in the sun his tabernacles," says : — " According to Hermogenes, we are to understand ' the tabernacles ' to mean either the physical body of our Lord, or the believers who are His spiritual body ; but we ought rather to understand it of both ; for the Scripture, speaking pro- phetically, is wont to use the present tense in the stead of the future or the past." Clemens expressly assents to this interpretation, and carries out the thought still fiu'ther.^ For, according to him, these words, in relation to the past, refer to the First- born of creation, the highest angels ; in relation to the future, the collective body of believers, for do not all believers constitute the one Body of Christ? Thus, at 1 "Strom." vi. 9. ^ "Aualecta," vol. i. p. 311, sq. § 56. 96 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V, the end of all things they are destined to be transported to the sun. What can be more utterly baseless and futile than such an exposition ; for in no sense is there any re- ference whatever to the body of the Lord ? But for all this it is perfectly true that the body of Christ must be taken to signify the sum-total of believing mankind, when that term is used with reference to universal history and the work of the Holy Spirit. And this is what Clemens believed himself entitled to maintain, and reasons out very sensibly. Thus, he is right as to his thought, though he is wrong as to his exegesis. So likewise with Clemens, that profound and distinct apprehension of the meaning of the world's history which so marvellously distinguishes him above his forerunners and successors among the Fathers of the Grseco-Eoman Church, evolved itself quite organically out of his fundamental conception of the actual agency of God in man's heart and destinies, unliindered by his fallacious allegorical interpretations of Scripture. We might, perhaps, translate his thought into our present philosophical language by calling it : — The recognition of an order of the world in history, in the shape of a divine education of our race into the know- ledge of the Good ; an order constituting the true meaning of that lohich we call Providence {providentia^ pronoia). Neander has brought together the most important pas- sages of Clemens bearing on this point, and presented them in a very clear and appreciative manner.^ One might almost say that this thought explains the form and the successive order of all the works of Clemens, from his ^''Exhortation'' and his ^^ Pcedagogue" to the '-^ Stromata " and the hitherto too much neglected, because not under- stood, " Hypotyposes." " God," says Clemens, " has chosen two modes by which to prepare the way for the redemption through Christ and his gospel — viz., the law of the Jews and the philosophy of the Hellenes. This philosophy was not 1 See his " Kirchengescliidite/' i, 8. 921-935. CuAp. v.] CLEMENS OF ALEXANDRIA. 97 (as the superstitious book of Enoch asserts, and many- then, as now, endeavour to persuade themselves and others) an emanation from the evil spirits, but a noble gift of God and a legitimate pendant to the law — re- garded as a preparatory dispensation. It is part of the divine plan for the education of the human race. It was that unspiritual view contained in the book of Enoch which called forth the stern antagonism of the Gnostics. Clemens rose above this view, and discerned in the older dispensation the anticipatory mercy and truth of God. The law, he says, is, equally with philosophy, incompetent to clothe us in a perfect righteousness. Under both alike it was needful for man's justification that the redemption should come, which is God's act to save man, wrought through Christ. But what the prophets were for the Jews, that the elect souls among the Hellenes were for their nation — their sasres who " accustomed the ear of the people to the great joyful tidings." Christianity is the fulfilment alike of the law and of the prophets. The luxuriant wild olive tree is converted into the noble fruit-bearing tree by the infusion of the divine nutriment. The light which philosophy has artificially borrowed from the sun with her burninw-o-lass now shines direct from the sun himself on all mankind, imparting to them hfe and warmth. Perhaps the finest way in which he ever put this thought is that magnificent passage of the Stromata (i. 13), where he says: — " The barbaric (Jewish) and the Hellenic philosophy have in some sort rent the eternal truth into fragments, a dismem- berment not like that mythic one of Dionysos : but a sever- ance of the Divine wisdom (theology) from the Word of the eternally-existing One. Now, he who shall join together again the severed portions, and make the Word once more whole and at one, such an one shall assuredly gaze on the truth without peril." The Alexandrines wlio followed in the footsteps of Clemens were, hke him, enabled by these exalted views VOL. III. II 98 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. to recognize the truths which lay at the root of many of the heresies ; for these writers did succeed in distinguish- ing between swerving aside in non-essentials and con- tradiction in the main points, and in so doing tliey laid the foundation of a proper presentment of universal history, of a pure objective science of history ; or, at least, they made such a science possible for succeeding ages. That in this attempt Clemens often committed mis- takes, was partly owing to his deficiency in philosophical method, but still more to his ignorance of tlie original language of the Old Testament, That he did not follow out those fundamental ideas of his further had, however, another reason in the melancholy — nay, apparently hope- less — condition of society in general at that date, which made it inconceivably difficult even for the finest minds to recognize the hand of God in the visible realities that surrounded them, or to cherish any reasonable hopes for the future as regarded this world. So much the more cheering is it on this very account, to see that in virtue of his faith in the triumph of God's kingdom on this earth, and consequently in the progress of mankind along the pathway pointed out by Christ towards that goal, Clemens held that evil was not eternal. For the be- lief in the eternity of evil, whether regarded from a philosophical or a scriptural point of view, really amounts to placing the seat of evil in God Himself, Who is the Eternal. That which Origen endeavoured to estabhsh on metaphysical grounds is distinctly asserted by Clemens — namely, that at the end of all things evil sliall be van- quished on this earth ; even the Devil is at length to be brouo-ht to the acknowledgement of the love of God. Thus, we may affirm in conclusion that the leading- minds of the Alexandrine Church were the spiritual organs of Christendom in that age, who, basing their teaching on the inculcation and application of the Apo- stolic writings, especially those of Paul and John, worked Chap. V.] CLEMENS OF ALEXANDRIA. 99 out the religion of Jesus into its results botli for faith and philosophy with wonderful unanimity. Both the cultus and the mode of Church government exhibit a thorough harmony of spirit with those earliest efforts of the Aryan intellect. The spirit and the letter, reason and conscience, science and practical life, were not severed from each other ; no barrier stood between God and man. It now still remains for us to consider the whole mighty phenomenon presented by this scriptural Christian con- ception of God's presence with man, under the aspect of a great event in the development of the spiritual Kosmos, and so to fathom more deeply what might be its historical import for all succeeding ages. Not until we have done tliis can we duly estimate the contrasts presented by the religious consciousness of the Church persecuted and the Church regnant. H 2 100 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. CHAPTER VI. RECAPITULATION AND ANTICIPATION. It is impossible not to recognize that that quickened sense of the presence of God among men, wliicli had grown up in the Greeco-Eoman world, as a result of the life of the Church and the utterances of her projihets, and which preserved its vitality unimpaired during the first three centuries, betokened the germ of a new epoch in tlie development of that blessed consciousness. The external position of affairs presented only an aggravation of misery and ominousness since the days of Tacitus, the Eoman prophet of death ; and yet in the inmost heart of the expiring world there throbbed a new life of moral enthu- siasm that was rich in hope ; namely, in the Christian societies wdiich kept themselves pure in the midst of defile- ment, cherished love in the midst of hatred, maintained a steadfast faith in God's presence in the midst of general anguish. Now the heroes of Greek Christian literature brought this life into contact with all that was highest and noblest in the culture and genius of the ancient world ; and then did Christianity feel itself to be the religion of the intellect, and indeed of our whole nature. Through Christianity, human nature had once more recovered its self-respect, and it had done so through the power of a moral Personality in absolute union with God, and by faith in that Personality. On the other hand, we may not ignore that even with this consciousness of God's presence in Humanity was mingled a sense of approaching dissolution, so far as the actual realities around were concerned. The kingdoms Chap. VL] EXPECTATION OF JUDGMEXT. 101 of this world must needs perish, for were they not enemies of Christ ? Christ had not indeed reappeared visibly at the fall of Jerusalem, but doubtless He will so reappear to make an end of all things at the destruction of Eome, whose senate and aristocracy represented the very core of the heathen element of enmity to Christianity. Such was the belief current among the Christians of that age. True, indeed, a new starting-point of progress had been divinely bestowed in the coming of Jesus to be the founder of the Kingdom of God upon earth ; and one sole blessed aim of aspiration set up before all eyes, in the sure hope that the eternal life in God, begun here on earth, should be per- fected hereafter. But as regarded the individual, the pathway to this life lay through the death of the body ; as regarded Humanity, through the destruction of this world, i.e. the dissolution of this earthly globe. The existing world of that age lay too deeply buried beneath the shadow of the curse for the heavenly ray of a bright future to pierce its gloom. In some respects, the sense of richly merited death, of unavertable ruin, pressed still more heavily on the hearts of believers than on those of the pagans. Certain it is, at all events, that the adherents of the old religion closed their hearts against the sense of the retributive divine justice, whether this arose from disbelief in that justice or from Eoman national pride. How should it be possible for Eome to perish? This was the last prop of the sceptics, that if Eome fell, the world which she governed must fall with her. And on this point pagans and Christians thought pretty much alike. We, of this day, looking back from tlie vantage-ground of nearly two millenniiuns, can easily discern that there was a needs-be that Eome should perish, inasmuch as she was the very focus of the corruption which had overflooded the whole earth with tyranny and selfishness ; nay, the selfish element had incarnated itself in her with an almost super- human energy of evil. We also know now as a matter of fact that it was precisely from the date of Eome's over- 102 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. throw, that a new morning dawned upon the earth. But no heathen beUeved this, and with very few Christians did their faith in the comino; kingdom of God assume this shape. Thus both Christians and heathens coincided in the apprehension of a general breaking-up, and the sense that society was constantly sinking deeper and deeper into a slough of complications and wretchedness. The Jews alone had already suffered the worst that could befall them, and had been for centuries steeping their souls in hatred against all existing institutions. The Christians were not without hope, like the heathens, but their hope was not for this life; it was directed to a future state of being. Yet there were not wanting a few who had 3'ightly interpreted the hint vouchsafed by divine Provi- dence in the fall of Jerusalem ; who discerned, that is to say, that no personal reappearance of Christ was to be expected on the overtlirow of Eome. Now these latter planted their faith on the visions and obscure prophecies of the seer of the Apocalypse. But in this quarter, too, all was dark except the three great predictions, — that of tlie escape of the Christians at the destruction of the Temple, that of the inevitable overthrow of the Eoman empire, and that of the appearing of the new Jerusalem. Thus upon all classes there weighed more or less heavily the overwhelming persuasion of impending death. The corpses of the three great nationalities of the ancient world lay, as it were, outstretched ior jjost-mortem examination before the spectator, though it was only the Jews who had entirely forfeited their political existence. But all three were alike doomed to destruction, each through its own besetting sin. The Greek desired nothing but to enjoy himself and to contemplate himself complacently in the mirror of his own philosophy and art. The Eoman desired to govern all mankind in order to minister ever more and more to his own selfishness ; the Jew desired to shut up his nation in a hostile seclusion as the people of God, but the CiiAP. VI.] CONSTANTINE. 103 avaricious rich men among them oppressed their poorer brethren more and more. To all three did the Christian announce the approaching end of the world, when he de- manded of the Greek, abstinence and rigid purity ; of the Eoman, loving luuiible service of his fellows ; of the Jew, the renunciation of that repelling exclusiveness on the score of mere externalities, and of his inordinate striving after the acquisition of wealth. Nor in such a condition of the world was it possible, even among the Christians, for a full and healthy sense of the agency of God in the world to grow up. The noblest feature in the view of the world, taken by the most intellectual and progressive of the leading minds among them — viz., the Alexandrine Fathers — was their firm grasp of the behef in the eternal love of God that had revealed itself in Jesus ; the belief that God guides the destinies of mankind, not only with omnipotence and justice, but also with eternal love. It is this belief with which Origen encounters the sceptical and despairing Celsus, and it is this in which his strength lies. During this period, the persecutions of the Eoman Emperors grew more and more systematic and relentless, precisely because the Christians were fast becoming " a power." " The end of the world draweth nigh " was a current saying under the persecutions of Diocletian and Maxen- tins. Then came Constantiue's triumphal entry into Eome in 312, after his victory at the Milvian bridge, and in 325 A.D. his accession to the sole imperial power. But Christianity became a State religion. After a brief struggle under Julian, the Catholic Church stood forth triumphant under the great Theodosius as a ruling corpo- ration. Was this event the end of the world or the end of congregational apostolic Christianity? Such a ques- tion we are now fain to put after the lapse of 1,500 years. The world is still standing ; the pagan world-empire has long since been replaced by Christian nations ; but do they constitute the new earth, or is Hiniianity still 104 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. struggling in the thick of the conflict ? and what is she st'rugghng for ? and whose fault is it that she has to struggle ? It is evidently important that, ere entering on the con- templation of the great 1,500-years drama of Aryan Hu- manity, with the tragic history of its belief in tlie real presence of God, we should endeavour to represent clearly to ourselves, in all their depth, what were the permanent eternal acquisitions to our religious concep- tions that have been conquered for us by those first three Christian centuries. The three great Factors or efficient forces of that re- ligious consciousness which, during the earlier millen- niums, have presented tliemselves to our view, either apart from each other or else in conflict and contradic- tion, had now, for the first time, been made manifest in all their purity — God, Man, the Community. God as the Eternal Father ; the Individual Human Soul, as the finite mind, which dimly forebodes or clearly beholds in tlie Eternal the cause of the universe and of itself; lastly, the Community, which recognizes itself as Humanity — the One, divinely bound up together ; that is to say, recognizes itself to be a wliole^ not merely in the co- existence of the members of a single generation, but also in their succession and perpetuity. Of these three Factors, the first — God — was the postu- late of Christianity derived from Judaism. In fact, tlie unity of the Eternal Godhead had been so simply and clearly held up before mankind in the religion derived from Abraham and Moses, that no other starting-point was possible for the universal religion of the Spirit. The Fount and continuous causal Principle of all visible and transitory objects cannot itself be visible, finite, transitory — a being which we may comprehend under any form or shape, or even reduce within the limits of the universe itself. This Eternal Causality, however, is a moral, and rational, and good Principle — nay, the Chap. VI.] THE THREE FACTORS. 105 Eternal Goodness itself — and hence it lias its finite reflex in the heart of man. But the Grgeco-Roman rehgion was not in a position to supply the second Factor — a divino-human Personality. The distinctive characteristic of the Hellenic religion does indeed, no doubt, rest upon the assumption of a human incarnation of God ; but the only realization of this idea which that religion supplied, consisted in fictitious heroes — sons of the gods — of very question- able morality, and in whose divine parentage even the pious no longer believed, because the realities around them were in too glaring a contradiction to such a faith. Nor did even the philosopher know what to do with such a religion, since the multiplicity of the ffods had overclouded the first Factor, and therefore nar- rowed the import of the second, even in its very ideal. But noAV this second Factor had been supplied by the teachings, life, and death of Jesus ; and hence the ideal of a divine yet human Personality, forming a realized manifestation of God, had entered the consciousness of a society which believed in tlie Eternal Father without being fettered by the Jewish Law, or compelled to seek the presence of God elsewhere than in the human breast and in collective Humanity. Not only does the belief in the Eternal Jehovah continue to be the starting-point of the Christian conception of God's presence among men, but we may even say, that only now, for the first time, does that belief shine out in all its brightness. Jesus knew himself to be the immediate product and operation of the Eternal — of absolutely like nature with the Father, but of course within the bounds, and therefore subject to the limitations, of the Finite; "the Father— the Eternal — is greater " than the Son ; but the Son is the same in kind, and doetli upon earth, in the spirits of men, the works which he seeth the Father do in the universe at large. Thus he is the manifested Godliead ; that Pre- sence of the Eternal, dimly foreboded by all nations and 106 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book V. sages, but never seen with their eyes and recognized as a reality. In the sayings of Jesus, and the ordinary lan- guage of the apostolic writings, the Eternal only is called God ; or, to put it differently, God in His own essence is alone called the Eternal or Jehovah. This view, this thouofht founds itself on the unniistakeable lancruage of Jesus. Neither the Church nor its prophets recognized any other phraseology as allowable. But it is equally certain that they recognized them- selves to constitute the realization in time of the second of the two visible Factors of our consciousness of God's most indwelling presence in the universe, viz. the Church ; that is to say, mankind regarding itself as the collec- tivity of the redeemed. Now this realization was at once visible and not visible : it was visible in the in- dividual persons who accepted Jesus as their Saviour ; it was invisible in their bond of union — the Spirit Who constituted them from many into one. So for from annihilating their individuality, this Spirit, on the con- trary, elevated them into the perfection of their i)er- sonality, raised them into free agents, who understand themselves and enjoy inward peace. This Spirit was not something created — not something simply appertaining to Humanity, or in other words finite ; but the Spirit of the Eternal, who poured Himself out into Humanity through the medium of the first morally perfect, self-conscious Personality, moulding that Humanity into the true body of the elect, i.e. into a limitless unity, and a progressive perfection, transcending the narrow bounds of the brief personal life of individuals. Thus the manifestation itself is with the Church, as with Jesus, temporal, finite, transi- tory ; but inasmuch as it perpetuates itself in an unending series, it becomes a Whole when beheld in the Spirit ; and the essence of that which is manifested in it is Conscious Mind, not any created force of Nature, not even the col- lective visible universe with its forces, but the Eternal God Himself, and without a medium. In explaining these Chap. VI.] GOD IN THE CHURCH. 107 two Eactors — Man and Humanity — we are authorized bj' history to adopt the more simple phraseology : — God^ the Eternal^ has become Man in Jesus, and since the ascension of Jesus to the Father, God is being made man to the end of the world, in the successive generations of mankind, that is to say, in believing Humanity. The former actual realization of God in Christ stands an accomplished work in all its glory before us, the latter realization of Him in the Church is a work proceeding before our eyes ; and every individual among us is called upon to form part of this progressive embodying of God, and in so doing to receive afresh as a divine personality that Self which he has freely offered up for the sake of the brethren out of grateful love. This consciousness of the divine actuality of the third Factor is also clearly evident in those first centuries, whether we look for it in the intentional phraseology used by their prophets, or in that sphere which is higher than the sphere of logical thought, because it is thought turned into act, viz., the religious and secular life of the com- munity. In this life, the Christian society appears with a threefold consecration. In the first instance, this sancti- fication had assumed a visible shape in their holy assem- blies. The body of believers filled the house of God, and the place of their liohest common act or communion was the " Holy of Holies " in the temple. The congre- gation itself is called, and is, the temple of God. Secondly, now, for the first time, was the profound, unfathomable significance of sacrifice made visible in the act of worship. The worshippers themselves constituted at once their own priest and their own sacrifice ; their vow of self-surrender was the truth underlying all Jewish, and no less all heathen, antitypes. Tlie Church is the true body of our Lord, and is continually offered up in daily renewed sacrifice. Thirdly, for the first time did a community feel itself to be such in virtue of its participation in the common human nature, not in virtue of the national or political bond. 108 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book Y. The Church is God's kingdom upon earth. And this great work has not been acconiphshed by means of phi- losophical wisdom, but has proceeded as by a divine necessity, spontaneously from the consciousness of the community of believers scattered over the face of the earth. Consequently it must have been the work of the eternal Logos Himself, Who is the eternal law of all effi- ciency. But if this be so, then the third of these Factors must in a quite special sense have exerted a moulding influence upon the shape assumed by the collective con- sciousness of Christian mankind. For therein does the Eternal, as the conscious mind of the Godhead, unite Him- self with the finite. Let us now reflect what a prodigious energy for life and for death dwells latent in this first pure presentment of the harmony of the three necessary Factors of man's religious consciousness. The like had never been actually existent before, although in all ages longed for and striven after. It was such an absolute reversal of all existing institutions that it could not fail either to succumb in the conflict with the latter, or else to revolutionize the whole world. It is needless at this time of day to say which of the two alternatives took place. But in the process of that divinization of the world — a process continually becoming more and more compli- cated as it extended and developed itself — it was indis- pensable that it should, ever more and more strenuous^, and therefore consciously, adhere to the eternal conditions of that process ; and here lay one of the greatest of tliose dano;ers to which we called our readers' attention at the conclusion of our first chapter. What are these dangers, seen from the standing-point of universal history ? The Christian belief in the Eternal has for its postulate the Unity of the All, not simply as the idea of the eternal self-consciousness of the Deity, and not merely in the phenomenal universe, but also in the human similitude of the Deity. It is not only need- Chap. VI.] GOD IX CHRIST. 109 fill that the dogma, or doctrine, i.e. the system of intel- lectual thought, should conform to this condition, but also the life of the Church ; therefore its organization and mode of worship. From each of the three must con- tinuously be eliminated that selfish element, which, in virtue of the law of all finite development, adheres to it, eitlier in the shape of Judaism or heathenism. Tlie latter denies practically the unity, which it nevertheless acknowledges in words, and loses the Eternal amidst the multiplicity of His manifestations. The former denies the fact of the substantial presence of God in Jesus and the Church, therefore in Personality and Humanity, although it assumes that substantial presence as a postulate in the Scriptures and in thought. Thus the Eternal, the Being who is All in All, becomes to the Judaiser, against his will, a mere "Ancient of Days" — in the sense of a " Supreme Being ;" and the Omnipresent becomes no longer anywhere actually existent in the real world. The course of both these maladies we have watched in heathenism and in Judaism. Can that malady have conformed itself to other laws in Christianity? Or shall we not more ])robably find that, in this case too, the intellectual dogma and the practical life exert a reciprocal influence on each other ? According to the testimony of the Scriptures and of the three first centuries, the Christian belief in the Divine Son assumes for its divine condition the uniqueness of the Redeemer, and for its human condition the universal need of a redemption. So likewise the Christian behef in the Holy Ghost demands on the one hand that we should regard the Spirit as God Himself, Who is bearing witness of Himself in the collective body of belie^dng hearts, and on the other, that the revelation and manifestation which He has given Himself should be acknowledged in the assembly of believers. Each of these postulates has drawn after it momentous and far-reaching consequences for the after development of the constitution of the 110 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. Christian Church, and still more momentous and mourn- ful effects on its worship. As regards the constitution, it follows from these premisses that Christ alone is King and Lord of the Church, which can call no man on earth " Father " without blasphemy. As regards the mode of worship, it follows that none born of a woman ought to be invoked as an object of jirayer and adoration, save the Divine Son and the Holy Ghost ; the Son as the perfect substance of the Manifested Eternal, therefore according to His Eternal nature in God, but not as a finite teacher and prophet, or as the Eepresentative of the Church : the Spirit as God in the believers. Now this was so strongly the sentiment of Christendom in those early centuries that we even find that which had been established and consecrated by ancient custom as a fixed rule and law, cited in a tolerably late decree of the Councils, viz. that in the celebration of the Lord's Siqjper none hut the Father shall be invoked by the Church in the common prayers. But how difficult will it become in future ages to hold fast these two principles ! " Die gewaltigen und die gnddigen Herren' (to follow Luther's translation of Luke xxii. 25), i. e. Bishops and Episcopal Synods, Princes and Emperors, will rise to the head of the Church which is the religion of the Empire. And even though the mind of the Church should set itself in opposition to the am- bition of Kings, will it equally withstand the ambition of its own Sj)iritual Lords? And will not the whole cor- porate body of believers who constitute in the highest sense the channel whereby man apprehends God, be affected by that ambition ? Will not its inmost import be assailed, shaken, and at last subverted.^ And this even without the advent of exceptionally violent or ambitious characters, simply in virtue of the gradual retreat of the mass of believers into the background, till at length it totally disappears ? And will not the " Elder " (Presby- ter) by this very fact be transformed from a teacher and Chap. VI.] DANGERS TO FAITH. Ill servant of the congregation into a " priest," a mediator, therefore an intermediary — the spiritual sacrifice of the consresation his act, his sacrifice, therefore somethings external, having no significance, except it be performed by a priest ? The belief that God and Christ are actually present in our heart and conscience, and felt to be exerting there a saving and redeeming influence, is absolutely in- compatible with the belief that they are present in a creature, still less in a handiwork of man. Hence will not the latter notion imperil the sense of our need of redemp- tion, our justifying faith, our personal moral religion, and render it at length impossible to retain the sole mediatorship of Christ? Will not the "saints" or, to use the language of Scripture, those who are separate from the world, therefore all believers, be converted into re- ligious " patrons," to be invoked as helpers, and so prac- tically made the objects of the Church's worship? And, lastly, will not the organizing authorities come to regard the root-idea thus transformed as the received conception divinely handed down, nay, confound it with the Eternal Himself, and treat it as such, and then upon this miscon- ception rear a theory and construct a system that shall set up an error as the very distinguishing test of faith ? And will not this error consequently at last assume the guise of a sacred law, nay, the most sacred of all laws, which the State is bound to enforce by external coercion ? For how else should it maintain itself in spite of Scripture and the intuitions of conscience ? And if it be not absolute, eternal truth, what is it then ? And will it not then grow Avorse than before ? It is a wise old proverb which says that " the worst of all things is the corruption of the good " (corruptio optimi pessima). We have seen how the historical element of religion, if left without trustworthy records, necessarily loses its ob- jective support and its distinctive type, and moreover know that the Bible is not merely the best and the holiest, but also the only truly historical record drawn from the 112 GOD IN HISTOEY. [Book V. very well-head of universal innate religious consciousness. The faith in the Bible, regarded as the record of divine dealings with mankind, is co-ordinate with the internal religious consciousness of the individual, not restraining but guiding and consoling the latter, and raising it above the fluctuations which necessarily manifest themselves in the great historical development. But the Bible does not comport with such a system, for the premisses on which that system is built up are not to be found in the Gospel, and are demonstrably later perversions of that which really is there. Hence, whenever such a system comes to be reduced to scholastic formulse, its contradictions to the Bible become glaring ; only one of the two can reign and exercise regulative authority, and therefore in such a case will not the word of God, which all Christendom in theory acknowledges to be contained in the Bible, be made subject to the ordinances of man, and the later Judaic system again oppress mankind with reinforced streng;th ? And when freedom and the Bible are taken away, when the One Eternal God retires behind any sort of plurality or manifestation, when the Eedeemer is no longer sole, when the conscience of the Church is oppressed, and therefore she herself set at nought, how, in such a state of things, can saving faith remain in the communion of the Church ; — nay, except by the overruling providence of God, how can it survive at all amongst mankind ? And will not infidelity prove to be the fruit of this corruption no less than superstition, civil bondage no less than spiritual ? Will not Christ be crucified afresh through long cen- turies, during which the souls of the slain cry out, " How long, Lord, how long ? " (Eev. v. 10.) Will not the Holy Spirit of God be blasphemed by that denial of the divine as tlie Good, which is not forgiven, that is to say, which conducts inevitably to the downfall of peoples and States ? Chap. VI.] DANGERS OF THE CHURCH. US We are compelled to put these questions to ourselves, for we are about to enter on the consideration of a de- velopment almost superhuman in its grave and tragical character ; a development which is indeed an insoluble knot, or at all events a knot which has not yet been disentangled. VOL III. 114 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. CHAPTER VII. THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCH REGNANT AND HIERARCHICAL, AS EXHIBITED IN HER CONSTITUTION. The Church, which in the second decade of the fourth century, became under Constantine an imperial institu- tion — the dominant and jDrivileged rehgion — which sixty years later, under Theodosius, had already become the sole established faith and persecuted others, had from the close of the fourth century gradually developed into an Episcopal Church, governed by the clergy. The sense of brotherhood had given place to the sense of member- ship in a corporation ; the elders of the Church had come to be celebrants of a ritual, their presidents ruling bishops. The partition-wall between laics and clerics, that is to say, between the Christian people and its in- structors, was constantly rising higher. Yet there still remained the old foundation-lines of constitution and worship. No barrier interposed between God and tlie soul who sought Him, between the creed of the Church and the Word of God contained in the Gospels and Apo- stolic writings. That we may not be compelled to adduce on this point what is notorious to all, we will simply con- tent ourselves with directing our readers' attention to the distinctive characteristics which divide the principal phases of the pathological development from each other, during the more than fifteen centuries which have elapsed since that date. For morbid and pathological we cannot but confess this development to have been, if we are to regard the Chap. VII.] THE CIIUECH REGiS^AXT. 115 relisfious consciousness of Jesus as the infellible standard, and that of the Apostles and the Churches they founded as that which we are to take for our pattern in essentials. But in that case our review of a course of history extend- ing over more than a millennium and a half will force upon us the grave question, whether in a development which, looking at the facts that lie before us, has evidently on the face of it been a logical one, its onward course has been a progress towards life or towards death ? Thus, speaking in a broad way, no one probably will dispute the fact that the Church of the period between Constantine and Justinian 11.(312 a.d. to 692 A.D.)must be termed an Episcopal Church ruled by the hierarchy. But we may perhaps, for the sake of a more distinctive designation, term it the Church of Bishops and Councils. For simultaneously with the revolution in the position held by Christianity towards the Eoman Empire, there was a general Council, composed exclusively of clerics and almost entirely of Bishops, held at Nic^a, in order to lay down a theological definition of the belief of the Church respecting the Father, Son, and Spirit — a syste- matic formula of doctrine, which was to be made the rule of faith. This first Council was followed by four other General or OEcumenical Synods (up to 685 a.d.), whose decrees were acknowledged alike by the Eastern and Western Churches ; while the decrees of the Council of Constantinople (692 a.d.) respecting canon law and ecclesiastical discipline possessed no authority whatever in the Western Church. The schism was purely one re- lating to ecclesiastical law ; the Popes did not find that the ancient laws or canons of the Church collected by that Council fully supported the claims they put forth. Still it remained an established principle that the Councils were above the Pope. During the course of the fifth and sixth centuries, the Episcopal Church of the Councils had graduall}^ grown into a patriarchate, in which at last old and new Eome 1 2 116 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book. V. came to stand in opposition to each other. In the Eastern Church, Byzantium was at first content to claim an equal rank with Alexandria and Antioch, and all these three Metropolitan Churches endeavoured to convert the in- fluence they naturally exerted over those portions of the empire of which they were the respective capitals into a right to exercise a ruling power, and to force into the background the independent bishoprics and arch- bishoprics of the other more considerable Churches. It is very intelligible that, owing to the influence of the Impe- rial Court, the see of Constantinople should constantly more and more exalt itself above the older Metropohtan Churches of the East. While the choice of the Bishops by the laity and the clergy, as prescribed by the ancient laws of the Church, had already come to lie exclusively or pre- dominantly in the hands of the clergy ; — in regard to the higher posts the influence of the Emperor and his Court prevailed, and that of the monks, too, had come to be a very appreciable power. The so-called orthodox Eastern Church is in fact the Church of the imperial city, which oppressed the national Churches, such as those of Syria and Armenia, and then branded them with the stigma of heresy. This usurpation has perpetuated itself even in the use of languaoje. In the West, a similar course of development had re- sulted in the acquirement of supremacy by Eome since the downfall of the empire in the fifth century. Never- theless, Gregory the Great comports himself towards the sees of Milan and Aquileia as his equals, while he treats the Bishops belonging to his own province of the empire (Cisal- pme Italy, Sicily, and Africa) as his subjects. It was the connection of Eome with the Carlovingian dynasty of the Catholic Franks that first turned the Western Church into a Papal Church. This Church could not fail to become a rising power, for in the West, notwithstanding all the desolation, a fresh young life was stirring, thanks to the infusion of Teutonic blood, while Eastern Christendom, Chap. VII.] THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD. 117 convulsed by Mahomet, was crumbling to pieces more and more, and assuming Asiatic conditions. In Western Europe, on the contrary, the ancient imperial power en- tirely collapsed and disappeared, even in Italy, during the course of the eighth century. The turning-point in the fortunes of the world is marked by the coronation of the Prankish monarch Charlemagne, at St. Peter's, at Eome, at the Christmas festival of the year 800 a.d. With that event begins the Teutonic mediasval period, with its Church, the creature of Popes and Councils. Instead of those earlier (Ecumenical Councils, we now find Provincial Councils, presided over by the Popes. The formulating of the Christology was completed, and the various nationalities constructed their own ecclesiastical organization under the guidance of the Popes, with a co-operation on the part of their respective Princes that was rather tolerated than recognized, rather was carried on co-ordinately with that of the Pope as a matter of fact than was admitted to be an organic element. jN'ow if under the episcopal system even the great Christian communities of the Greeks and Romans had well-nigh vanished before the hierarchy, how much more must this be the case under the Papal system ! The isolated Synods could not maintain themselves in opposi- tion to the papal power, which was in every respect an overmatch for them ; nay, ofttimes could not sustain them- selves without the help of the latter. Already under Charlemagne the Prankish people had no more voice in the decrees of the Council than in the drawing up of the Capitularies. And more especially among the Teutonic tribes, the mass of the Christian laity were from various causes driven into the background. Engaged as they were in the act of transition to Roman civilization, they were quite defenceless against their Roman instructors. They had embraced Christianity when it was already a hierarchical system, with a worship conducted in a foreign 118 GOD LV HISTORY. [Book V. language and with a Latin Bible, from which Franks and Saxons no longer, like the Goths of old, framed a German Bible, but only compiled or invented Gospel harmonies in the mother tongue. When, in the tAvelfth century, the civil community had become powerful through the rise of the great cities, and the people began to acquire a culture for themselves, there arose the contest between the Parliamentary Coun- cils and the Popes, who, since Innocent III., at the com- mencement of the thirteenth century, had proclaimed themselves unlimited sovereigns over Christendom, su- perior to nations, kings, and emperors. But neither the Councils of Constance nor Basle succeeded in breaking the papal autocracy, because the Councils admitted the hierarchical first principle without acknowledging its final consequence. On the contrary, it became ever plainer how impossible it was to conquer any reform in the or- ganization of the Church without the co-operation of the laity. And at last the Tridentine Council, convened and swayed by those very dynasties which liad been compelled by motives of ambition to place themselves in opposition to the principle of Congregationalism, set the seal upon the doctrine of the Pope's absolute supremacy over the Church. Whether from this it followed that the Pope possessed legislative authority in matters of faith remained an open question up to our own days. But Pius IX. has practically decided that question by proclaiming on his sole authority a scholastic opinion, which ever since the eleventh century had been disputed by many of the greatest and most pious Fathers of the Latin Church — the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary — to be an essential dogma of the faith ! The revolution thus effected in religious consciousness is not simply an important one, but constitutes a revo- lution to the positive opposite, even regarded only from the standing-point of the outward historical development, and quite apart from the corresponding results of the Chap. VII.] REPRESSION OF THE LAITY. 119 otlier more strictly spiritual course of development which we shall have to contemplate hereafter. The chief reasons of this are the two following : First, the active co-operation and the possession of a decisive voice on the part of the whole body of the Church in its various spheres is indispensably necessary to the accom- plishment of the divine plan laid down in the Gospel. To prove this it suffices to point to every page of the Gospels, and more particularly those passages which we have quoted in our opening chapter. It is to the whole body of the Christian people that the Spirit of God has been given, and the supreme power of the keys committed. How, then, can the very opposite of this, the complete abrogation of that on which it is based, be a step in the right direction, a development tending to hfe ? We see every fundamental axiom upset, nay, replaced by its con- trary, first in practice and afterw^ards in theory. We find instead of the Christian people a priestly corpora- tion ; instead of God's word, contained in the Bible and in the conscience of intelligent men, the spiritual com- mandments of a sacerdotal guild ; instead of a free de- liberation of the laity, represented by their delegates, with the ministers and officers of the Church, the most abso- lute of all despotisms ; that which makes itself master of the conscience, and decides upon matters of fact with divine infallibility. And which does this, forsooth, by legitimate right, nay, in virtue of the most sacred of all laws! And this while at the same time incontestable facts bear witness that some of the decrees issued by this absolute authority rest upon fictitious, or, at all events, surreptitiously interpolated ordinances, while many others are based upon a misunderstanding of the documents. In the present state of historical learning there is nothing to adduce for its historical justification but the sentimental phrases of the Eomanticists, or sophisms almost as bad set up by some so-called Protestants, who at this time of day have abjured reason and deny the authority 120 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book. V. of conscience, without remarking that in so doing they proclaim themselves irrational and unconscientious. Yet at the same time, even by that priesthood which has practically put itself in the place both of the word of God and of the congregation, the Bible, and especially the Gospel, is acknowledged in theory to be the rule of faith, although the right which the priests claim to be its exclusive interpreters cancels and mocks in effect this admission. Thus, if according to the testimony of history, i. e. according to what we take for our regidative point of departure, the unconditional opposite has been continually developing itself with increasing energy and logical con- sistency, we are compelled at the point which our inquiry has now reached to ask ourselves the question : — Is not the Christian world even now standing on the edge of a tremendous dilemma, viz., this? — Either the moral order of the world is a delusion, the gospel a lie, and religion itself one of the " childish things " which we have outgrown ; or the development which has logically conducted us to such a point is not a Christian development, not that of the spiritual Kosmos, not that of God, not the path of life, but a wrong path, the way that leadeth unto death. Thus we see that it is not the Gospel and the Apostles who have planted our feet on the path that leads to a hierarchy. But further, the facts already adduced suffice to prove. Secondly, that neither does the constitution of the Church as it was before the era of Constant! ne land us in a hierarchical system. Yet this early, justly styled Apostolic Church is nevertheless regarded by all com- munions as a model, at least in so far that no one will lightly admit that there is any essential antagonism be- tween the condition of his own religious body and the whole manner of life revealed in that Apostolic Church. Least of all will the episcopal communion, which is ex- ternally the heir of the ancient Church, be able to make such an admission. And yet in spite of the most strenuous efforts it has been found quite impracticable, nay, with every Chap. VII.] RESULTS OF HIERAECHT. 121 step in the progress of enquiry it has become more im- possible to demonstrate, or even to render credible and conceivable, that the constitution of sacerdotal absolutism stands in harmony and not in flagrant discord with the development that had taken place during the three cen- tui'ies prior to Constantine. The chain of proof which was at first rather negative has risen to be an overwhelm- ing mass of positive evidence. Ought we, then, in our days to hear from a Protestant professor of canon law the doctrine of " the reversal of science " proclaimed with great unction and assurance, coupled with warnings equally directed against historical investigation and philosophical lucubrations, whether the aim intended be to induce us to throw ourselves into the arms of a Protestant Supreme Consistory or of the Papal Church ? Is it not, on the contrary, our bounden duty to stimulate the ardour with which we prosecute in- vestigation by the earnestness of our purpose, and to apply the results at which we arrive to practical life ? In any case, it appears to us that two facts are established upon incontestable testimony : first, that the development of the constitution of the Church during the last 1,500 years must be admitted to be a logical carrying out of the hierarchical first principle ; but then, secondly, that we have in our days arrived at the uttermost consequences of such a system. One result of our study is the discovery that the halo of sanctity surrounding a close, self-perpetuating hierarchy, endowed with infallibility by the Spirit of God, does not produce an attitude of hostility towards barbarism, or even towards the impiety of iufidehty, or the license of despair and vice ; but, on the other hand, throughout history we find it setting itself in opposition to a truly divine light, whose purest and brightest rays shine to us from the Gospel itself. We confess that the robe in which the hierarchy has arrayed herself is divine ; but does it belong to her ? Has it not 122 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. rather been stolen from the Church or whole company of believers, to whom the Eedeemer committed it with the most exalted promises, and from whom it has been wrested, partly by force, partly by fraud ? " God will not give His glory to another," says the Scripture. Nor, as we have seen, has anyone hitherto presumed to take to himself that glory without being overtaken by the divine judgments. Now, what under this development and under this con- stitution has become of the second root-idea of the typical regulative rehgious consciousness — viz., the cultus — we must now proceed to consider, but as briefly as is com- patible with documentary evidence. Eor it is in this point that we discover the spiritual centre of the tragedy of European society. CiiAr. VIII ] THE MODE OF WORSIIir. 123 CHAPTEE VIII. THE church's CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD EVINCED IN HER WORSHIP. In proceeding to the consideration of the second main element of the rehgious hfe of the Christian community, we enter the very sanctuary of the mind absorbed in God, the soul seeking the fount of her being, the shrine of com- munion for universal mankind. All that concerns the cultus, or, to use a better expression, the public worship of God, is wont to inspure even the really worldly and unbelieving with a trembling sentiment of awe. During the celebration of public worship, the Deity is regarded as present in a quite peculiar sense, and the consideration of what constitutes this presence necessarily forms the very centre-point in the sphere of our investigations. Hence we mil preface our remarks with a few words of explanation respecting the ecclesiastical formulas which have been used to express men's convictions on this point, which cannot, however, be done without some discussion of those formulas. We entreat all to remember the following points : — First, it would be no less contrary to history than to psychology to deny that practical religion andthe mode of worship are far less the offspring of the dogmatic system than its parents. Christian piety and devotion, with the forms in which it has clothed itself, are prior to any dogmas. Those forms are the fruit of inward states of mind, which by no means invariably correspond to the efforts of the dogmatic intellect. He who abides already 124 : GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. within the house of God troubles himself less about the steps that lead thither than tliose do who have erected the steps in order to try and climb into the house. The impulse to adore is native to man, and its earliest stirrings are more ancient than any historical ordinances. But, secondly, it is very important to distinguish in Christianity between what is universal and what is special. The mystery of the soul's connection with the sufferings of Christ is a mighty motive force for worshipping mankind, and the sense of its efficacy is quite independent of dog- matic definitions respecting the mode of its operation. Lastly, the belief that that sense of its divine power is based on a truth, may be retained in the heart in spite of, just as firmly as in consequence of, anything that dogma may affirm concerning what lies beyond the sphere of sentiment. It is, however, certainly a different matter when it is sought to impose the definitions of this external part as the supreme ecclesiastical truth, and to exalt them into a criterion of communion with Christ and God. For in that case the cause is carried before the tribunal of philosophy and research, while the piety of the heart can never be injuriously affected by a free enquiry into truth. Every theological doctrine (dogma) consists of two elements, which require to be distinguished from each other — namely, on the one side certain theologico-philo- sophical premisses and assumptions, and on the other some fact lield to be revealed which forms their ground- work. When these two are mixed up together it not unfrequently happens that a misconception of the histori- cal fact arises in consequence of some flaw in the purity and clearness of the stream of development ; nay, after a given period, the original element of fact is perhaps either no lono'er known or no longer intellio:ible in its true shape. But the worst of it is that ofttimes the words remain, while their import is reversed. We will illustrate our meaning by an example. It can be demonstrated, as Chap. VIIT.J THE REAL PRP^SENCE. 125 we have seen, that all through tJie earlier centuries the meaning attached to the words — - Presbyter — Ecclesia — Sacrijiciuin — Sacramentum is that of (Eucharist) Elder — Whole body of the faithful — Thank-oferwg — Votu and equally certain that the sense attached to those words in the mediasval church is — A sacrificing j^ ^y,;^,,a giM ^IPmntiatory j^ ^.^i ^^^ jprtest *^ sacrijice "^ It would be equally over-hasty to deny the possibility of such a change, or to affirm that such a transmutation is without significance. But it would be no less unfair to maintain that such a transmutation could only have taken place in consequence of a fraud perpetrated in the interest of hierarchical aims, than it would be to maintain the a priori impossibility of such a change, in the face of the historical proof that it has actually taken place. Certainly, in the whole course of history, there is no more complete transmutation recorded than that of the belief in the real presence of God in the hearts of the communicants into the belief in the corporeal presence of God in the host. But both retain the fact of a miracle, and in both that miracle consists in a change of essence. The point at issue is whether that essence is the heart or the host. Alike to the logical thinker and the rehgious apprehensions of the believino; multitude, there is but one dilemma. The truth and reality of God's presence is either in the soul or in the bread and wine. Now, supposing the former con- ception to be obscured by the materialising of the funda- mental notions concerned in the subject, how can the belief be grasped at all, except at its reverse end, by a community who seem, as it were, doomed by their passion for logical consistency to seize on the external side of things? This may appear to many a strange way of 126 GOD IN HISTOKY. [Book V. putting things, but it is none the less historically and philosophically true. The pledge and sign of God's actual presence must reside somewhere. If they do not so reside in the believers themselves and their domestic and public life, where else should they be manifested than in the " outward and visible sign " of their fellowship ? And what should these signs become but the flesh and blood of Christ ? Every intermediate conception is an arbitrary one, equally unsatisfactory to the understanding and to the intuitive religious sentiment. JSTow, if a trans- position [Metastasis) of those fundamental ideas did take place, while tlie belief in the reality of communion with God, and of the transforming eflicacy of that communion in the hearts of the believers in it, remained intact — what other result could ensue but that on the suppression of the congregation with its liberties and life, just the dia- metrically opposite pole should be the more tenaciously grasped out of fear to make shipwreck of faith altogether, and to lose the God whom the soul craves in order to obtain peace ? Nay, that which, seen from another point of view, we are compelled to term an abandonment of the faith in Christ, when looked at as a portion of this inevitable progress, may appear to be simply a bounden and honest confession of the belief in an acknowledged divine truth. In a positive philosophy of the religious consciousness, it may, perhaps, prove to be susceptible of demonstration, that this tragical sequence has come to pass in virtue of some divine law of nature, which is just as certain as the law by which bodies advance to decom- position and dissolution, but much clearer, because to be accounted for by the nature of mind. Certainly, to judge by the result to which all our enquiries hitherto have conducted us, we should expect to find that such a trans- position and reversal of tlie meaning attached to funda- mental ideas would sooner or later issue in the necessity of a similar diametrical reversal of the proper object and original foundations of the Church's belief. And, in such Chap. VIII.] THE BIBLE WITHDRAWN. 127 a case, Christ would be no longer the object, the Bible no longer the foundation of the Christian faith, even though Christians should desire and intend to make them such. If we are called on to believe in an eternal order of the universe, in Christ as the Eedeemer, and in the Holy Ghost as the Life of the company of believers, then the loss of the essential meaning of the terms Father, Son, and Spirit, and of the belief that the Bible constitutes the historical source whereby this Godhead has been revealed to us, cannot but involve the most portentous conse- quences. For must not tlie direct personal relation of the individual believer to God (therefore, also, the inward connection between rites and the spirit animating them, between religion and morality) necessarily cease, when, instead of all these divine agencies, a corporation presents itself as the organ through which God speaks to man ? Nay, granting that this corporation, or its head, is the sole recipient of the truth, there is scarcely any other course open to it than that of withdrawing the word of God from the Christian people, and imparting to them only so much of it as may seem adapted to their capacities, and in the form prescribed by their superiors. Now with those whose conscience does not leave them free to engage in a serious historical enquiry, or to main- tain their rights as Christians and men to abide by the re- sults of such an enquiry, no rational man will attempt to argue. But the readers for whom we write are those to whom the truth of history is a sacred thing ; the history of God's divine dealings with mankind tlie most sacred of all things ; and an acquaintance with these the most important of all objects for their souls' peace. When this is the case, it comes to the same thing whether we start from a belief in a body of men infalhbly inspired by the Holy Ghost, or from the belief in the letter of the Bible and its history. In a question of history, what we have to discover is facts, the connection these facts can be shown to have with each other, and their bearing upon 128 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. conscience and reason. Our respective starting-points may differ entirely, and are often accidental, but from all of us may be demanded a sincere striving after our common aims, for these are no other than truth and salvation. After these preliminary observations we shall, therefore, fearlessly proceed to the characterization of the epochs in tlie transmutation to which we have adverted, referring to documentary evidence in behalf of the decisive facts. With regard to many details we must be allowed to refer to the fuller accounts given in " Hippolytus and his Age," vols. i. and ii. In that work, too, will be found the litur- gical monuments of the Eastern and Western Churches up to the eighth century, which are there for the first time critically set forth according to their historical order. ^ We have seen dining the preceding age of the Church how the commemorative meal gradually came to be a por- tion of the public worship, and was brought into connection wdth the tlianksgiving and ascription of praise which formed the consecration of the worshippers in the morning service. The conception of the Christian sacrifice was and remained altogether distinct from the celebration of the Lord's Supper as such. The prayer of consecration that had taken its rise from the ancient Jewish " grace before meat," on which Christ had conferred a new and exalted significance, was left to the free utterance of the minister, but always ended with the Lord's Prayer, and the latter sufficed by itself for the benediction. The hal- lowed custom still continued of singing a hymn of praise after partaking of the elements. Tliis also was an ancient Jewish usage. The remaining prayers, whether before or after the rite, formed part of the ordinary divine service. This was notably the case with the intercessory prayer commanded by the Apostle for the whole " people of God scattered over the earth," and for all men. As in such a prayer much that Avas local and special would naturally occur to the mind of the speaker, this is one of the first ^ " Analecta Ante-Nicsena." Chai'. VIII. J BASIL AND CHRYSOSTOM. 129 respecting which we find standing formularies. Tiiis is the case in the Churcli of Alexandria, as we see from Origen's references to it. When, once for all, the most fitting mode of expression has been found for things of this kind, it is very advisable to use it as a set form, although with a certain degree of license in practice, for by this means the sense of the bond by which the Chris- tians of all (^fenerations and all ages are linked together in the Church is brought home to the hearts of the worshippers. Now the character of the common public worship re- mained externally such as we have described it during the fourth century, or the period extending from the beginning of Constantine's reign to the death of Theodosius the Great — the age of two great liturgical authorities, Basil and Chrysostom. The liturgical ordinances which bear the names of these two Fathers, and which, with very consider- able additions made during the eighth and ninth centuries, form the ground-work of the ritual of the Byzantine Churches, did not really come into existence till the fifth century. In the genuine writings of these two great theolo- gians we have the most irrefragable proof for the assertion, that in their time the Prayer of Consecration before par- taking of the elements still continued to be a perfectly free prayer of the officiating minister, in which the only essential was to invoke the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the wor- shippers and upon the elements destined for the sacred meal. The blessing pronounced upon the congregation, however, has reference to the renewed vow of the as- sembled believers to consecrate their life to the service of God and the brethren. Here, then, we have the primitive religious consciousness of the Church. That no celebration took place without a communion of the congregation was a matter of course. But Chrysostom complains in one of his sermons that the assembled people did not, as formerly, invariably partake of the Lord's Supper, but sometimes only looked on to see how the clergy collected round the VOL. III. K 130 GOD m HISTORY. [Boox V. Lord's Table communicated with each other. Thus, to- wards the end of the fourth century, tlie curse which attends the deadening of the sense of Church membership is already perceptible in the very central point of the common worship. On this crucial question the course stood open to the Church to have separated the perpetual thank-offering of the Christians — which must form the solemn act of the redeemed to the end of the world — from a rite which has no meaning when there are no participants in it. But the contrary course was adopted. The elements of both rites, the sacrifice of praise, and the Lord's Supper were so intimately bound up together in the now crystal- lized and prescribed liturgy, the guild of the clergy already had so completely usurped the place of the congregation, that, in obedience to the fatal tendency urging on the de- velopment, the commimion of the clergy came to be cele- brated without the participation of the laity. Still this was done with express lamentations over the change, and no doubt with scarcely any perception of the consequences that would follow almost of necessity. During the jifih century the obscuration of the funda- mental ideas of Christian worship was intensified by the multiplication of liturgical formulas and read prayers ; while step by step with the decline in the intellect of the age the conception of sacrifice grew more and more materialistic. And how should it be otherwise, when the Church at large, which was consecrated by Christ the sole depositary of man's consciousness of the most intimate and most exalted presence of God in Humanity and in the universe, was more and more driven into the back- ground in every respect, and especially in regard to its participation at the Lord's table ? The outward act re- mained, but from being an act of the whole Church, it became an act of the clergy — thus to the congregation in general, a representative transaction, a sacred drama. This very naturally led to a decoration of the outward cere- mony by mysticism ; that is to say, by a fanatical and Chap. VIII.] THEORY OF AUGUSTIXE. 131 therefore arbitrary treatment of it. When the true mys- tery of the reahty — the soul's consciousness of God — ■ is obscured, a false mystery must needs take its place ; for a mystery Mind ever is to Nature, and hence man seeks that mystery, either witliin or outside himself, be- cause in the very depths of his being he is conscious of the distinctness of Mind from Nature, of the Eternal from the Transitory. All the more remarkable is a classical passage in St. Augustine's " City of God " (x. 6.), which we have given in " Hippolytus " in the original, with explanations.^ A true sacrifice is every work which is done in order that we may be united with Grod in holy communion, since it is per- formed with a reference to that benefit through which we may become truly blessed. . . But, moreover, we are recommended by the Apostle to perform such works in this spirit,^ ' I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto Grod, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." How much more, then, is the soul a sacrifice when she surrenders herself wholly to Grod, that she may be inflamed by the Divine love, and so lose the form of earthly desires, being transformed by her subjection to Him, who is Himself, as it were, the unchangeable form, and become pleasing to Him by reason of that which she has received of His beauty. . . . From this it undoubtedly follows that the luhole redeemed Church (civitas), i. e. the whole company and communion of the saints (or believers), is offered to God as a whole-offering, by the High Priest, who in His suf- ferings offered Himself for us under the form of a servant, that we might constitute a fit body for such a head. Because it is this servant's form that He sacrificed, therefore is He also offered under this form, because he is thus the Mediator, therefore is He in that sacrifice at once the priest and the victim. Thus Augustine knows only one actual sacrifice, viz. the free surrender of our own will and life ; that is to 1 "Analecta Ante-Nic£Bua." ' Rom. xii. 1. K 2 132 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. say, he assumes that to be the true sacrifice which is the only sacrifice recognized by the Gospel and our own re- ligious consciousness. The prototype of this self-surrender is the sacrifice offered by Christ in his life and in his death. Hence, as every man is a priest, so is Christ the High Priest ; and as every man offers himself, and thus may be called at the same time priest and victim, Christ is the eternal victim, being the head of the body, whose members are the believers, that is to say, redeemed man- kind. In the human " servants' form " ^ are both sacrifices offered, therefore, by human beings. All this is said in reference to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, and the consequent high-priestly function sustained by Him towards the Church, without any allusion whatever to the Lord's Supper. It is only after he has set forth this connection between om^ sacrifice of gratefid love and the sufferings of Jesus, of which it forms the completion (or " filling up "), that Augustine adds in conclusion : — This is the sacrifice of the Christians who are all one body in Christ. And this the Church celebrates continually in the Sacrament of the Altar, which the believers know. They learn at this feast that they, the Church, are themselves offered in that ivh ich they offer. That is to say, the act which the Church performs when, in the rite of the Lord's Supper, she offers up the bread and wine (in conformity with the then still uni- versal custom of oblation), is an outward sign and symbol of the proper inward act ; namely, that those present offer up themselves in the renewal of their vow of thank- ful self-surrender. The sacrifice of bread and wine God willeth not, but the offering of a thankful, submissive, pious heart, with its vow ; and the mere symbol thereof is nothing in itself or only evil. We find, also, similar forms and the same leading idea in the order prescribed 1 See Phil. ii. 6-9. Chap. VIII.] CHRISTOLOGY OF THE COUXCILS. 133 for this rite belonging to the middle of the fifth century, a product of the age of Leo the Great, which we are able to distinguish within the Gregorian Canon, which dates from the close of the sixth century.' But by that time, the Prayer of Consecration has already become a prescribed form much more ritualistic than spiritual in its character, and the reference to the external act of the oblation and to the elements themselves is brought out in strong relief, while the worshipping assembly and their vow, with its effect on the heart, are thrown as much into the shade. The oblation was beginning to be turned into a symbolical act of the priest, and, like the elements themselves, to have a mystical sense attached to it in proportion as the living idea that animated the rite be- came obscured. Nor must we on this point overlook the influence of two other circumstances. We refer to the dogmatic elaboration of the doctrine respecting the person of Christ effected by the six great Councils, and the introduction of the worship of the saints, especially the Virgin Mary, which already in the eighth century comes out very markedly. That dogmatic definition of the notion of the Father, Son, and Spirit which on the one side had resulted from the fading vitality of the Church and the dimming of its true conception, could not fail on the other to exert an effect on the relative position of the cultus and the life. The confounding of the Eternal with the Finite, which already in early times betrayed itself in the faihu'e to dis- tinguish between the conception of the Eternal Word as an antithesis of Being and Tliought, seated in the Eternal Himself, and that of the manifestation of this power " by which the worlds were made " in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, — and the confounding of both these conceptions with the historical tradition respecting the Jewish Messias (Christ), has an intimate connection with that practical 1 See " Analecta," vol. iii., Liturgica. 134 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. tendency to place tlie inward life of the spirit on a level with the mere utterance of the vow in the outward wor- ship. And again, the forcible imposition of the paradoxes necessarily resulting from this unskilful handling of meta- physical notions as holy mysteries of faith, could not fail to overcloud the clear perception of the Divine Presence in the hearts of the worshipping community, and more and more to interpose a lifeless formulary between the Soul and the Gospel. A lifeless Christology, with no cor- responding anthropology, was paralysing the vitality of the most sacred of all rites, namely, the idea of sacrifice, — the root-idea of all worship. Still more patent to view is the influence which the adoration of the saints must inevitably exert in weakening the sense of the need of personal redemption through Christ alone, and none beside. And this again tended to enthrone in the place of the eternal mystery, the conven- tional traditional mystery, the " sacrament," to use the phraseology of the Western Church. In like manner that first postulate of Christianity, the belief in the Eternal, could not but be enfeebled by the worship paid to the saints. We may perhaps sum up the argument of this first act of the great Christian tragedy by saying : — The rite of communion remains^ as heretofore, the central idea of the celebration of the Lord's Supper ; hut this latter is now iiiseparably hound up with the Church's sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, and takes place even when there are no communicants heside the clergy. The liturgy has become a fixed form: free prayer has vanished from Divine service. Already in the beginning of the ninth century, the rite of the Lord's Supper had, to the religious consciousness of the Church at large, assumed the aspect of a purely representative act performed by the clergy, insomuch that Alcuin (or some contemporary of this friend of Charle- magne) propounds the question : " Wherefore, then, is the Chap. VITL] THE PRAYER OF CONSECRATION. 135 presence of one or more clerics beside the officiating priest essential to the celebration?" We can perceive from his attempt to answer this question that the funda- mental idea was still retained in men's minds. They were still aware that this rite had originally been one in which the whole congregation participated, and that this was what was meant by the presence of communicating clerics. But the clear perception of this dies out in proportion as the conception of the congregation dies out, whose liighest function was here to be performed. Thus the practices that had resulted from the obscura- tion of the religious consciousness gradually paved the way for the introduction of the " private mass " as the private act of the officiating priest. And whereas a philosophic comprehension of the rite was rendered impossible by the transposition of its fundamental ideas, the new practice next gives birth to a still less defensible theory, viz. the doctrine that it is not the communion, — i. e. the common partaking of the meal, — but the consecration, which is the essential part of the rite. Pregnant with fatal conse- quences was it, moreover, that the particular form which the Eoman " order of the mass " — the use of which was becoming daily more and more universal — assumed in the Gregorian Canon, facilitated the addition of a second mis- conception of no less magnitude. In the ancient Church, and also in the Western, " consecration " is the title given to the prayer supplicating the descent of the Spirit upon the worshippers and the elements. In consequence of the great alDbreviation of the formulary for this prayer, and the externalization of its subject-matter, the whole emphasis of the transaction came to be placed, not only on this point, which was rendered still more conspicuous by the visible elevation of the elements about to receive the benediction, but precisely upon that which was pro- perly nothing more than the customary passage of Scrip- ture employed to introduce the prayer of consecration ; namely, the words reciting tlie institution of the Lord's 136 GOD IX PIISTORY. [Boon V. Supper. This completed the transition to a magical rite. The consummation of the transaction consisted in tiie pro- nouncing of these words, not even in the prayer itself, still less in that for which the prayer was merely the pre- face and preparation, like the grace before meat for the family repast. Here too, however, the change took place in the first instance simply in virtue of the influence exerted by the form of the ceremony ; thus was the fruit of the practice, not of the thought, — the dogma. But the next step was that about the middle of the ninth century a learned controversy broke out respecting the seat of the Eeal Presence of the Divine Spirit in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which displays the whole scope of the transformation that had gradually come to pass in the fundamental conception of that rite, together with tiie confusions, paradoxes, and contradictions that had sprun^T up in consequence. We will, according to our usual custom, lay before our readers a few decisive passages on this point from the writings of the principal combatants, two learned priests — the monk Paschasius Eadbertus, Abbot of Corveaux, and Eabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mayence. The former, to whom the natural birth of Jesus from Mary did not seem sufficiently divine and mu^aculous, and who w^ished to set up instead an unnatu- ral delivery of the child from the w^omb, says as follows : We are bound to believe that after consecration the bread and wine are nothing else than the flesh and blood of Christ. The flesh is no other than that which was born of Mary, which suf- fered on the cross, and which rose again from the grave. Now as it is not permissible to devour Christ by the teeth He was minded that in this mystery bread and wine should, by the consecration of the Holy Ghost, be potentially created into His flesh and blood, and in virtue of this creation should be daily- offered for the life of the world after a mystical fashion, to the end that, just as by the influence of the Holy Ghost true flesh was generated in the womb of the Virgin without the aid of man, so by the same Holy Ghost that same body and that same blood should be consecrated in mystical wise out of the substance of Chap. VIII.] PASCIIASIUS AND RABANUS. 137 the bread and wine. And of this flesh and blood has He said : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." We see from this that the doctrine of transubstantiation has not as yet assumed its full proportions in the hands of Paschasius. The central point of his view is the Real Presence in the consecrated elements, as had been shown by Lessing's researches, which were afterwards confirmed by the discovery of the original text. Now, against this view, which they regard in the light of an innovation, Rabanus Maurus and Eatramnus, a learned monk of Cor- veaux, enter the lists. Eabanus, who more especially relies for support on the literal and distinct declarations of Ambrose and Augustine, says, for instance : — The Lord designed that through a visible work an invisible effect should be produced. For as the corporeal food nourishes the body outwardly, and makes it grow, so does the Word of God nourish and strengthen the soul inwardly. The sacrament is one thing, the efficacy of the sacrament another. For the sacrament is eaten by the mouth ; but by the efficacy of the sacrament is the inward man fed. The sacrament is made use of to the nourishment of the body ; but by the virtue of the sacrament do we attain to eternal life. . . . The two visible signs, sanctified by the Holy Gfhost, are transmuted into the sacrament of the Divine Body. In expounding the words of Jesus in the sixth chapter of St. John, Eabanus borrows the words of Augustine, who savs : ^ — In these words Christ seems to be commanding a horrible and criminal act. Thus his language is to be taken figuratively, and commands us that we should participate in the sufferings of the Lord, and should, by a bodily act, cherish to our edification the remembrance that for us his flesh was crucified and given. Eatramnus, his contemporary, defends this view with yet greater philosophical acumen, and in a truly evan- gelical spirit, in a report which Charles the Bald had 1 Dc JDoct. Christ, iii. 16. 138 GOD m HISTORY. [Book V. required him to draw up, and which for a long time was generally attributed to Scotus Erigena. And finally this subject was treated by the latter great Irish scholar from the standing- point of a yet deeper religious consciousness, though we must indeed confess that the religious thought of this writer, who was by far the greatest speculative mind of his age, had forfeited to some extent its intellec- tual clearness, owing partly to the influence of a mystical hierarchical work, really composed in the fifth century, but attributed to Paul's convert, Dionysius tlie Areopagite ; partly also to a tendency that Erigena displays towards that pantheistic conception of the Deity which regards Him as the eternally creative, uncreated logical Nought; and more than all to the absence of any living familiarity with the conditions of the Church prior to Constantine. It was incorrect to attribute that work of Katramnus to the share taken by Erigena's pen in the controversy, but it was still more incorrect to deny, as has been done in recent times, that Erigena did take part in this contest, and on the side of Katramnus. Eavaisson's most welcome publication of the deplorably scanty fragments which are all that remains to us of the Commentary of Erigena,^ leaves no doubt that although it was an entire mistake to suppose him the author of Eatramnus' work, yet it was a mistake resting on very plausible grounds.^ Unhappily in the only (almost contemporary) MS. we possess, the Pro- logue to St. John's Gospel and all that follows Chapter vi. verse 14, in w^hich the principal text on which the con- troversy turns must have been discussed, is missing ; and it can hardly have been so by accident. But in the part which remains we find the following passage in commenting on John i. verse 35 : " Behold the Lamb of God," &c. : — ^ These fragments have heen incorporated by Floss in the excellent edition of the writings of Erigena which he has contributed to the great patristic collection of Migne. 2 See Floss, S. 311. Chap. VIIL] RATRAMNUS AND ERIGENA. 139 This is the altogether unique Lamb, the mystical one, in type of which the Israelitish people offered yearly a lamb in every house at the Feast of Passover. And we, too, who have be- lieved on him since his incarnation, sufferings, and resurrection, and, so far as is permitted to us, understand his mysteries, do offer him up spiritually, and eat him spiritually, in our hearts. Every true believer in Christ is also crucified with him in proportion to the nature and degree of his spiritual virtue, and crucifies Christ for himself, namely, as a fellow-sufferer. For each will have a belief in Christ through the growth of his understanding of Christ, in proportion to the degree of inward virtue to which he attains, and will be led up thereby from a lower view of Christ to a higher vision of the Godhead. On this w^ise does Christ die in them and with them daily. We can form some idea from this of the mode in wliicli Erigena will have explained the sixth chapter of this Gospel ; namely, in the spirit of the Alexandrine Fathers, of whom he may be said to be the intellectual successor, though with some diminution of the spiritual enlightenment of that pre-Constantinian period, owing to the ignorance that darkened, and the burden of spurious writings and interpolations that weighed upon, the age in which he lived. Moreover, this passage scarcely leaves us a doubt that in the fragments of a treatise on the Eucharist, discovered by Eavaisson at Avranches in 1840, we really possess a leaf of the clissertation which Erigena composed for Charles the Bald, that had been torn off and thus saved before the time when Berengarius was compelled to commit the work publicly to the flames as a production of the Evil Spirit. The handwriting of this leaf is that of the eleventh century, and Taillandier has decided quite rightly, when, in his talented work on Scotus Erigena (1843), he gives in his adhesion to the opinion of Eavaisson.^ ^ Scotus Erighne, p. 71 sq. The text is to be found in Appendix ii. p. 325 sq. Cf. Ravaisson's " Rapport au Ministre" 1841, p. 372. See Appendix A. 140 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. This fragment, which is omitted by Floss, is as fol- lows : — It should be remembered that in that bread it is not only the body of Christ, but also the body of His believing people (the Church) that is symbolized to our senses. For this reason is it prepared out of many grains of wheat, forasmuch as the body of the believing Church is multiplied for tlie believers through the word of Christ. Now as that bread is called, not corporeally but spiritually, the body of the believers, so also must the ex- pression "the body of Christ" be understood not corporeally but spiritually. So again water is mixed with the wine, and the one may not be offered without the other, because the Church can no more be conceived without Christ, nor Christ without the Church, than the head without the body or the body without the head. In that sacrament the water is an emblem of the Church. Now^ if the wine consecrated by the ministers {ministri) is changed (co)iver^iiur) corporeally into the blood of Christ, then must the water likewise present equally be changed corporeally into the blood of the believing Church. For where there is one consecration there must also be one effect, and where there is the same act performed the same mystery must follow. Now we see, however, that, with regard to the water, no corporeal change takes place. The water, which is the sensible emblem of the Church, is taken in a spiritual sense, and therefore also that which is signified by the wine regarding the blood of Christ ought to be spiritually understood. Further, that which is distinguished from something else is not the same thing. The body of Christ which died and rose again is immortal, and not subject to pain. That which is reverenced in the sacrament of the Church is temporal, not eternal — corruptible, not incorruptible ; it is on the way towards its home, not in its home. Therefore the two things are dif- ferent, consequently not the same. Now if they are not the same thing, how can [those symbols] be the true body and the true blood of Christ ? For we have seen that that which claims to be the true body of Christ must be incorruptible and eternal. Moreover, it cannot be denied that the bread which is broken in order to be eaten, after it has been crushed by the teeth is assimilated into the body. But that which takes place outwardly is one thing, that which is conceived by faith another. The former is corruptible, the Chap. VIII. ] DOCTRINE OF THE NINTH CENTURY. 141 latter incorruptible. What is visible outwardly is not the thing itself, but an image of the thing. Hence St. Augustine, too, says in his commentary on that passage in St. John's Gospel,' concerning the flesh and blood of Christ, " Whoso there spiritually desired and ate the manna was spiritually created anew, and is not dead. So also do we in like manner now-a- days receive [in the Lord's Supper] a visible food, but the sacrament [the bread and wine] is one thing, the efficacy of the sacrament another." And further on he says again, "Those things (the manna, the cloud, &c.) were sacraments (like ours), differing in the signs, similar in the thing which by them is signified [signijicatur]." Hear what the Apostle says, " I would not have you ignorant, brethren, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and were all baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and did all eat the same spiritual meat, and did all drink the same spiritual drink, for they all drank of that Spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ." ^ 111 this extract it is not alone the style and the attitude towards Aug;ustine which resemble what we find in the other writings of Erigena, but the conception of the sacrament is the same wliich we have found in St. Augus- tine's Commentary on St. John. It is the horizon of the ninth century, in the aspect which it presented to the mind of the wonderful Erigena. Poor Eabanus ! Wliat will the testimony of the great African saint of the fifth century avail thee ? For since his time the very semblance of the worshipping Christian people, the Church, which is the depositary of the Eeal Presence, has disappeared, with the oblation of the bread and wine on the part of the congregation ; the last shadow of the great act of the believing mind, which that con- gregation is bound to perform in worship as in hfe, — the thankful self-oblation of believing mankind ! Nay, will not thy opponents be able to produce other passages from Auo-ustine in which even he seems to substitute the false mysticism of materiaUstic conceptions for the eternal » Ch. vi. * I Cor. x. 1. 142 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. mysticism of the believing heart? For in his day the ascendency of the outward, symbohcal, aUusive element in public worship was already too powerful for him, so that even his profound intellect suffered from the fact that the Church at laro-e had retired into the background be- hind the domineering eiDiscopate, with its despotic Synods. And what will thy fine-spun logic avail thee, poor Erigena? Eadbertus will not be silenced ; the majority of both Laity and Bishops have decided in his favour, and in that of the most extreme materialistic view. And with perfect logical consistency. The tragedy in which thou art entangled, and the whole Christian world with thee is doomed to remain entangled for centuries, if not for a millennium, has a much deeper ground than the dullness or malice of thy adversaries, or the ambiguous declarations of the great Bishop of Hippo ! All religion, — therefore above all the true religion — has for its corner-stone the belief in the reality of the presence of the Deity in human affairs. ISTo image, no semblance, does the spirit crave when seeking God. What the human heart demands is a real sacrifice — a real, perpetual, living transaction, — a Divine centre for the presence of God. Nothing but that which is either the most inward or the most outward of all things can satisfy this craving. But in the age we are considering, the former had long since lost its depositary, its organ. And when this organ, which is the true subject of the religious consciousness, disappears from view, men lose wiih it the key to any comprehension of the Eeal Presence itself. Nor until t]iat organ has been recovered, and recognized by the popular heart in all its Divine truth and power, not as a mere fantasy or vague feeling, but as the most substantial of all truths, will the worshipping mind be able to find a resting-place for its foot when it once steps beyond the sanctuary of the inward speechless chamber of the heart into the fields of contemplative thought. Where, for the Church at large, is the true seat of the Deity, if not in its symbol — therefore here in the bread, in the Host ? Chap. VIII.] BERENGARIUS AND LANFRANC. 143 We shall next see how the theological controversy which broke out two centuries later between Berengarius, the head of the theological school of Tours, and Lanfranc, the head of the Norman school at Bee (afterwards Primate of England), assumed the shape of a dispute re- specting the Eeal Presence in the Host. Berengarius was defeated by his wily, fanatical adversary, who supported his fanatical view with cunning sophistries, in three Synods held between 1050 and 1079 A.D., ^nd at last submitted to sign an ambiguous formulary, in order to escape being torn to pieces by the infuriated populace. At the second Lateran Council more especially, he was on the very point of being condemned to a violent death, notwithstanding the fact that he had the most powerful man and ener- getic character of the age for his friend and steadfast defender, in the monk Hildebrand, then Cardinal-priest, afterwards Pope Gregory VII. All that Lessing had divined from the original documents respecting the real conditions of this controversy has been confirmed since by the stiU more important records which have come to light. ^ Here are the confessions and explanations of Berengarius. When, in the first instance, called upon to state his opinions by several of the French bishops, he appeased them, at any rate apparently, by his oral and written confession (1054) that, " After the consecration the bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ." On the first Council held in Eome, in 1059 A.D., where Cardinal Humbert guided all the deliberations and drew up the report, Berengarius was induced, as he himself confesses, by the fear of death to give a tacit consent to the following confession of faith drawn up by his opponent and laid before him : — I, Berengarius, agree with the holy Roman Church in hold- ing that the bread and wine which are placed on the Altar are, after the consecration has been performed, not only a ' See Appendix B. 144 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. sacrament, but also the true body and the true blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that [this body] is after a sensible [sen- snaliter], and not merely after a sacramental fashion, but in truth is touched and broken by the hands of the priest, and crushed by the teeth of the faithful : and to this I swear by the most holy Trinity ! Every one knew how much such a declaration was worth, and so the theological contest raged afresh. In his epistle to Adelmann, Berengarius declares, referring to St. Au- gustine's words in the tenth Book of his " Civitas Dei :" — It stands fast that the true body of Christ is on the altar placed before the inner man on a spiritual wise [sjpiritualiter'], in order that here the true body of Christ, which is neither sub- ject to perish, nor yet to be touched or crushed, should be spiritually eaten ; but only by those who are members of Christ. This the Fathers openly preach. They do not conceal that flesh and blood are one thing, and the sacrament of the Body and Blood another. Both, they say, the believing receive; the sacraments visibly, but the essence of the sacrament [revi sacrameyiti] invisibly, whereas the ungodly receive only the sacraments. That, however, the sacrament is nevertheless in a certain sense the thing or essence itself, of which the sacra- ments are signs, we are commanded to think by the general consent and general authority of the Church [universa ratio et universa auctoHtas']. The meaning of this he tells us more plainly in another passage, as follows : — It is figuratively that the bread placed upon the Altar is called after the consecration His body and the wine His blood, just as when we say, " Jesus Christ is the great corner-stone." In relating the transactions we have referred to, he says : — My cause, or rather the cause of holy Scripture, stood thus : The bread and wine at the Lord's table are not to be taken after a sensual, but after a spiritual fashion [intellectualiter'] ; not as though a subtraction [of matter] took place, but an addition [of Divine power]. They are not converted into a little morsel of flesh, but into the sum total of the body and blood of Christ. Chap. VIII. ] BEREXGARIUS. 145 Wlien Hildebrand became Pope, in 1073 a.d., lie at- tempted to save Berengarius by a more moderate state- ment of faith. He believed firmly in the orthodoxy of Berengarius, and was confirmed in this belief by the vision granted to a pious monk with whom he was inti- mate, who had been assured by the Blessed Virgin that Berengarius' opinion was orthodox. The formula pro- posed by Hildebrand was as follows : — I confess that the bread upon the Altar is, after the consecra- tion, that true body of Christ which was born of the Virgin Mary, which suffered on the cross, which sits on the right hand of Grod, and that the consecrated wine of the Altar is the true blood which flowed from the side of Christ. But Gregory VH. yielded to the prevaihng opinion of the Council, according to which Berengarius was com- pelled to swear : — The bread and wine of the Altar become, by the repeating of the sacred prayer and the words of our Eedeemer, substantially \suhstantialiter'\ converted into the true, proper, and life-giving flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, and are, after the consecration, that true body of Christ which was born of the Virgin Mary, which hung on the cross for the salvation of the world, and which sitteth on the riglit hand of the Father, and the true blood of Christ which flowed out of his side. And moreover they are so not in virtue of the symbols and efficacy of the sacrament, but in the properties of their nature and the truth of their substance. • Berengarius afterwards declared that he had accepted the '■^ Substantialitei\''' understanding it thus: without pre- judice to its substance [salva sua substantia), that the bread in itself did not lose what it was, but gained some- what that it was not. But, dissatisfied liimself with this explanation, he afterwards retracted his confession entirely, and died in silent retirement on an island near Tours. A false assumption, be it concerning historical facts or concerning the mode in which they are related to thought, is equally capable with its opposite, a true assumption, of VOL. III. L 146 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. being logically pursued into its last extreme results. Both reach their goal ; only that the logical working out of the latter conducts along the path of natural develop- ment to self-consistent truth, the former along the path of pathological development to the opposite conclusion ; the one issues in life, the other in death. Thus in the course of the twelfth century, that theory, according to which the highest presence of God is concealed in the host, and acts there as the present deity [pra-sens 7iumen\ obtained so general an acceptance in the scholastic theo- logy that the triumph of the opposite theory in the development of the following centuries could not be doubtful. The Eastern Church, however, did not share in the subsequent pathological development, though it remained little more than the mummy of the Christology of the eighth century. And even in the twelfth century there were still many of -the most learned and pious teachers of the Western Church who sustained their inward sense of divine things against the scholastic passion for drawing all possible inferences, and against the formu- las to which this passion gave birth. To these belongs the great and holy Bernard of Clairvaur, who says in his sermon for Maundy Thursday : — Sacrament is the name given to a holy symbol, a holy mys- tery. A ring may be given as a ring, and signify nothing more ; but as conveying an inheritance it is a symbol. The ring thus given has no value whatever ; its value lies in the iaheritance which I sought for. So has our Lord in his mercy the night before he suffered taken care for the recompensing of his own, that the invisible grace might be imparted through the medium of a visible sign. To this end have all the sacraments been or- dained, such as the partaking of the Eucharist, the washing of the feet, and lastly Baptism, the beginning of all the sacra- ments. Eeflections of this kind were very pious and beautiful, but to what could they lead in the face of the historical, exegetical, and ecclesiastical postulates, from which all Chap. VIII. ] PETER LOMBARD. U7 arorviment started, or the rank which was accorded to the rite of the mass ? The pious heart of the people could not but seek the present Deity in that which appeared to be the crowning point of the common worship, and around which its devoutest emotions clustered. We may, perhaps, thus formulate the conception of the Divine Presence held by the Cliurch during this second period : The Real Presence enters into the Host in virtue of the recital of the ivorcls of consecration, and it is in the ele- ments in such a fashion that it must he conceived as in- dwelling and inseparable from those elements. But as to HOW this takes place no clear idea has as yet been formed. It was not until the middle of the twelfth century that the scholastic theology, in logical pursuance of the gene- rally received assumptions, began to raise the question, In what mode do the words of consecration operate that change by which the presence of God is brought about ? Peter Lombard., " the Master of Sentences," enumerates the various philosophical opinions on this point. According to some, the substance remains ; bread and flesh are both present. But in that case it is evidently no complete conversion, no real transubstantiation. The only alterna- tive, therefore, left open to us is to say that the old substance is done away with, and nothing but its outward properties (or accidents) remain, which moreover do not adhere in the new substance. Where bread was before, there is now the body of Clmst. Here, certainly, we encounter the thorny question : What, then, becomes of the former substance ? To this Peter Lombard gives two answers : either the old substance is dissolved into the four ele- ments or it is absolutely annihilated. Thus this school- man evidently rejects the theory mentioned above. He was supported by Pope Innocent HI. in his book : " On the Mysteries of the Mass;" and in 1215, the fourth Lateran Council, held shortly before the death of Innocent HI., exalted the theory there promulgated to the rank of a dogma of the Church, without, however, committing itself X.2 148 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. to his various scliolasdc definitions. Tlie decree passed by this Council may be thus summed up : — In virtue of the power conferred on the Church hy Christ, bread and wine are transubstantiated into flesh and blood by means of the formula of consecration pronounced by a priest. We receive thereby that of His, which He received of ours (in the incarnation). Thus the priest makes the Sacrament {sacer- II. pp. 184-292. Cf. pp. 402-517. Chap. IX.] DANThl. 177 properly nothing but an apology for the dogmatic system of the Church, interspersed with many doubts. According to Abelard, the Spirit of God has revealed Himself in Plato, as well as in the men of God in the Old Testament. But where does He reveal Himself now ? In the contem- plation of divine things, in particular of the Trinity, for even here does the divine power of reason assert itself ; secondly, in the good intent inspired by God, which alone confeis any worth upon an action or a work (therefore also upon works of piety or observances prescribed by the Church) ; lastly, in love to God, the highest principle of ethics. Mere observances prescribed by the Church fall quite into the background with Abelard, as good works do with Joachim. But so also does actual daily life. God is present in the sacrament, but He is not to be traced in the universe. Even Dmite, who sits in jurlgment on the world of the past, who beholds in a vision the life of the blessed, reveals in his Divina Commedia that he cherishes no hope for this world. When we have once obtained a clear appre- hension of the general design of that immortal allegory, representing the three inward states of the soul in this life (a conception with which the author of the Shepherd had already charmed the Christians of the second century), we shall see that behind the glorification of the divine justice and love in a future life, whether it be that of condenma- tion, purification, or bliss, lies a background of the blackest despair, as regards any realization of the divine order of the world upon this actual earth, of any hopes connected with this present life. This assertion will doubtless excite a great outcry among the Eomanticists and their hierarchical disciples, who discern, or at least extol, in Dante the highest apotheosis of the Christian faith. But it is true, nevertheless. Not a word of consolation regarding the future can any of his blessed spirits give him, so soon as it is a question of this present earthly stage of existence ; that is to say, of that great kingdom of God which Christ VOL. III. N 178 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. proclaimed to mankind, and to believe in the triumph of which is more essential to the victory of Christianity over Judaism and paganism than the belief in any past event. The highest flight of Dante's prophetic hopes does not soar beyond the expectation, destined to be deceived, of the liberation of Italy and the reform of the Church by some mighty prince, whether it be Can Grande della Scala, or Henry VII. Dante is constrained to regard the end of the world as immediately impending, because, in truth, he sees no way of salvation left for it. Indeed, this is his openly avowed view, to which the words of Beatrice to Dante bear testimony, when, in the " Paradiso," she shows him the countless host arrayed in white garments, who draw nigh to the Saviour and the holy city of God. The words run thus : — " Behold," she said, *' This fair assemblage ! stoles of snowy white. How numberless. The city, where we dwell, Behold how vast ; and these our seats so throng'd. Few now are wanting here. In that proud stall On which the crown, already o'er its state Suspended, holds thine eyes — or e'er thyself Mayst at the wedding sup, — shall rest the soul Of the great Harry, he who, by the world Augustus hailed, to Italy must come Before her day be ripe." ^ Only for a few elect souls is there still room left. There is stiU a throne reserved for the soul of Henry YIL, who forsakes this earth too soon to be able to save Italy, in her contest with her then Pope, Clement V.,^ of whom Dante says, at the conclusion of the Canto, alluding to Pope Boniface VIII. at Anagni : " Whom Grod will not endure I' the holy office long ; but thrust him down To Simon Magus, where Alagna's priest Will sink beneath him : Such will be his meed." 1 Gary's Dante, 'Paradise,'' xxx. 127-146. " Who died in 1314. Cf. I)ife7mo, xix. 66-91. Chap. IX.] PETRARCH. 179 All the more is it to Dante's praise that he places in his "Paradiso," the one sohtary prophet of the mediaeval Church, the much-maligned Abbot Joachim, and, more- over, in the higher circle of saints. He makes Beatrice say of him : ^ " Eaban is here ; and at my side there shines Calabria's Abbot, Joachim, endow'd With soul prophetic." Whether or no the story is true that King Eichard Coeur- de-Lion and the Empress Constantia, attracted by his repute for apocal}^3tic wisdom and their own curiosity, repaired to Joachim to enquire concerning the future, it is certain that his own country, Calabria, revered him as a saint, and that Dante recognized in him the foretokens of a blessed life in the Spirit. That the age of the greatest bloom of national litera- ture in the free cities, particularly among the intellectual and creative Italians, should have given birth to no philo- sophy of the history of mankind, still less to any pro- phetic seer of the future, will not raise our astonishment, if we reflect that we have never yet found these pheno- mena, save where civil liberty went hand in hand with the freedom of the religious consciousness, and recognized that it had its roots in the latter. But that long-standing despair of the actual world gained still greater ascendency when those free cities fell, to be replaced by tyrants or oligarchies, while the Church grew ever more and more worldly. In this age, the only hopeful sign we encounter is the inspired voice of one of the greatest poets at the end of the fourteenth century — Petrarch. The lines to which w^e more particularly refer are his three celebrated Sonnets on the Papal Chair, which at that time was so- journing at Avignon.^ We give the text of these in the Appendix. Here it suffices to quote the two former, * Paradise, xii. 129. '^ See Appendix E, Petrarch's three Sonnets, cv, Fiamma dal del, cvi. i' Avara Bahilonia, cvii. Fontana di Dolore, K 2 180 GOD IN HISTOEV. [Book V. wherein he expresses the hope that a better future is about to dawn, in consequence of the inward uprising of the human mind, and of the struggles of the peoples : Petrarch's Sonnet, cvi. {xv. in LeoparcWs edition). Lo ! Babylon the covetous, with vices Impious and dark hath filled till it o'erflows The cup of wrath ; Bacchus the god she chose And Venus ; — Jove and Pallas she despises. Longing for Eight and Truth, I strive and pine : But though I may not see it with these eyes. Yet I foresee a Sovereign will arise, Make one sole Chair, and purify God's shrine. Cast to the ground thy idols meet their doom. And thy proud towers, of heaven itself the foes. And all who reign there, shall the flames consume. Fair souls in whom the love of virtue glows Shall rale the earth, and we once more behold The ancient deeds adorn an age of gold.^ PetrardCs Sonnet, evil. {xvi. in LeoparcWs edition). Fountain of sorrows, Home of wrath and strife. Temple of heresies and Error's School, What tears and sighs hath cost thy bitter rule ! Thou Forge of lies, Dungeon with horrors rife, Where all ills flourish, and all good must die, Hell to the living ; sure the Christ on high Must end in wrath at last thy sinful life. Founded in chaste and humble poverty, Against thy founders thou thy head dost raise, shameless harlot ; and in what dost trust ? Thy adulteries, thy ill-gotten wealth ? For thee No Constantine returns in these last days ; The saddened world shall crush thee to the dust.' The golden age of antique virtue, whose return one day Petrarch hopes for, and whose anticipated coming con- soles him in the deepest anguish of his soul, is in the poet's eyes that classical antiquity from which the illustrious images of the Greek sages, especially Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and the patriotic deeds of free ' Translated by 0. Winkworth. Chap. tX.] SAVOXAKOLA. 181 citizens, sliine down to liim through the dark clouds of the present. But already in Boccaccio's '■'■ Decamerone'''' we see from the Tale of tJie Three Eings, and in that of the Venetian Jew who had been converted in Eome, that the religious obedience of the peoples was based simply on indifference and despair. The great minds among the Italian scholars of the fifteenth century, did indeed cherish more lofty aspira- tions and some sublime conceptions of the universe. Especially was tliis tlie case with Laurentius Valla, who already before the middle of that century had begun to investigate the Greek classics in the original, and to introduce tlie use of classical Latin in place of the monks' Latin. But, unhappily, in this instance, as in so many others, the evil effects of an intellectual activity, unaccom- panied by a moral renovation, and a soaring of the reason undirected by conscience, were but too soon apparent. The religious feeling wliich had animated classical pliilo- logy was soon dissipated in unbridled licentiousness, and even so late as the end of the sixteenth century, the great Scaliger complains that the learned class in Italy are universally atheists, who scoff at the Protestant philo- logers alike on account of their faith and of their moral austerity. It was against this immorality and licentiousness that, towards the close of the fifteenth century, Savonarola, a Dominican monk, held in high esteem by the noblest men of his age, arose in arms ; a martyr, like those so- called heretics of the thirteenth century, and many of the " Friends of God " in the fourteenth. Savonarola's whole mind is set on the furtherance of goodness and truth ; he demands a pure heart and moral earnestness in the life. But he lacks the impregnable ground of faith ; — the Bible, with its clear Gospel for its keystone, and its free Christian Church. Hence he places his trust in outward things, nay, even in his wonder-working powers ; he 182 GOD IN HISTOKY, [Book V. inveighs against art ; he thinks to confute his opponents by prodigies rather than by the Bible and a good Hfe. The end of it all was that he went to the stake under Alexander VI., in profound sorrow of soul, yet not in despair. If we now contemplate the whole series of phenomena presented by the successive developments of religious consciousness in the prophets of the Western Mediseval Church (for the Eastern has no prophets to display, but only emperors, empresses, and imperial courtiers, court theologians, and monks of the palace), we shall perceive, from the time of St. Augustine down to the finest minds under Julius II. and Leo X., a fatal descending progress ; from the oppressive sense that present realities were doomed to perdition, down to an unmeasured despondency concerning the whole course of human affairs. CuAF. X.] PETER WALDO. 183 CHAPTER X. THE RELIGIOUS BELIEFS OP THE PERSECUTED WALDEXSIAN" CHURCH CONCERNING GOD's PRESENCE IN THE WORLD. When the cities of Southern France, — Toulouse, Grenoble, and Lyons, — were in the flower of their prosperity, about the year 1170, Peter Waldo, a citizen of Lyons, felt him- self impelled by an ardent and holy longing to make himself acquainted with the sacred Scriptures, especially the Gospels. He caused a translation of the New Tes- tament to be prepared for his use, and committed it to memory. Thus equipped, he began to preach to the poorer classes (those who wore wooden shoes, or sabots, whence their nickname of " Sabotiers " or " Xabatati ") the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount, in order to kindle a spark of true Christianity in their hearts, and persuade them to lead a hfe becoming followers of Christ and the Apostles. Persecuted by the Archbishop of that diocese, he took refuge in Dauphiny, and from Dauphiny fled to the Alps of Savoy. In the account which JSTeander and Giseler ^ have given of his career and doctrines, they have adhered very closely to the historical truth on either side. It is certain that Peter Waldo had some acquaint- ance with earlier teachers and Christians who had held evangelical views, " even since Pope Sylvester has caused a different doctrine to prevail " (the age of Constantine), but it is equally certain that he remained within the bosom of the Eomish Church until he was expelled from it, and that he ordained preachers of the Gospel and the 1 See his KirchengescMchte, B. ii. 1, Kap. 7, § 86, and his review of Herzog's excellent work in the Gottinger geJehrte Anzeiger, Nos. 47-60. 184 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. Spirit when the priests would have no more to do with him. He appealed for his justification to those words of the Apostle Peter, Acts v. 29 and 32 : — " Then Peter and the other Apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men. . . . And we are his witnesses of these things ; and so is also the Holy Grhost, whom Grod hath given to them that obey him." An appeal which has appeared to a highly learned Lutheran Professor, Dr. Wiekhof, of Gottingen, equally inconceivable and reprehensible, while, on the other hand, he pronounces a panegyric on the Preaching Orders of the Eomish Church ! It was not long before the Waldenses were overtaken by a storm of bloody persecution. Yet it is precisely from this quarter, and from this alone, that our ears are greeted by hymns of praise, breathing bright hopes for the Christian world ; accents of trust, based on the Bible, in that Divine Providence which conducts mankind, though- by dark paths, up to a final victory upon this earth ! Here, among these persecuted Waldenses, we seem to catch once more the echoes of the martyr-Church of the second and third centuries. The most ancient and authentic monument of this Church is : " The noble Ser- mon " {La Nobla Leyczon), composed about the end of the twelfth century. We will present its substance to our readers. After describing the signs of the evil days and of the approaching subversion of that society, " In which the evil ever grows, and goodness minishes," the poet stirs up his hearers to the zealous fulfilment of the divine will, which Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have made known to us for our salvation ; to which salvation we shall attain if we love God and our neighbour with a pure heart, and are mindful of the divine law, which, alas ! mankind have continually broken from Adam onwards. Thus did Abel, who placed his trust in God and not in Chap. X.] THE NOBLE SERMON. ]85 the creature, like those who worship idols ; and then the poet proceeds : — " That which was quite against the Law, that was from the beoinnine: — the Law of nature, as it is called : it is common to all our race, implanted by the Father's hand in the heart of His first offspring, forbidding to him the path of sin, commanding him to walk in goodness' wa3\s. ... In the mirror of this natural Law let us behold ourselves, and see how boundless is the sum of our evil doings and transgressions against our Maker and ag-ainst the creatures of His hand. A noble Law it was, in truth, that God bestowed on us, and on the tablets of each heart hath He inscribed it plain : that we should love the Lord our Grod with all our heart and mind, and that no creature share the love and reverence due to Him. Moreover, this Law teacheth us to keep the noble bond of wedlock pure and unde- filed, to live in peace and love with all our brethren of man- kind, to abhor pride and cherish a lowly spirit, and ever do to others as we would that they should do to us." Next follows the history of the kingdom of God from the flood up to Abraham and Moses, the giver of the second Law, and then up to Christ, the founder of the third Law. In this latter portion, special emphasis is laid on the discourses of Christ reported in the Gospels, and on his act of redemption. " The Noble Sermon " next proceeds to treat of the Apostles and the early Churches, with their confessors, who are steadfast even unto death : " Who have endured great torments, as it is written, for nothing but because they have shown to others the way of Jesus Christ. Such iniquities were the oppressors not ashamed to commit, for that they lacked all faith in Jesus Christ, just like those who now accuse and persecute the saints — who, indeed, bear the name of Christians, but give evil witness thereunto. Such oppressors shall receive rebuke, but the saints consolation. For neither does Scripture command nor reason teach that they should thus persecute and imprison holy men. Moreover, since the Apostles' days, also, there have been some teachers who have taught the way of Jesus Christ our Saviour, and there are yet some such to be found in these our days, though only known to a few people. Very earnestly do they desire to show 186 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. the way of Jesus Christ, yet they are scarce able to do so because of persecutions ; so greatly hath error blinded the eyes of the most part, and above all of those who call themselves shepherds of the people, though they persecute and slay the best of their flock, while they leave liars and deceivers in peace. . . For if there be one who will not revile, or curse, or lie, or com- mit adultery, or kill, or take his neighbour's goods, or avenge himself of his own enemies, then they say, ' He is a Walden- sian, and worthy of punishment,' and bring up lying and deceitful accusations against him. But strong consolation doth he obtain who suffereth for the honour of his Lord, for after death the kingdom of heaven is prepared for him." The poet then turns to display the opposite picture. He who is guilty of breaking all the commandments is called a prudent and righteous man, if, when his end ap- proaches, he makes confession of his sins, and, instead of restoring his ill-gotten gains, bestows them all or in part on the priest, that he may grant him absolution and say a mass for his soul ; the more the sinner gives the more is he commended. It is a very different Christianity which is preached by a true shepherd of the Church. Such an one will admonish and rebuke with the words of Christ and with his own example of spiritual poverty of heart and unfeigned humihty. Now those who keep that third Law, which is now in force, will obtain thereby the victory over their enemies. So runs tliis joyful prophecy : — *' This is the way in which we must walk, and to which we must keep, if we would love and follow Jesus Christ; we must practise spiritual poverty of heart, lead a chaste life, love God in humbleness of mind. For then we shall be followers in the steps of Jesus Christ, and obtain the victory over our enemies." So here again we have Three Ages of the world. The reign of evil begins with the hierarchical Church of Constantine, in which, however, there has always remained a remnant of pious preachers. But now the time has come to set to work in earnest to build up the kingdom Chap. X.] WALDENSIAN CONFESSION OF FxUTlI. 187 of God. It was clearly the same conception and purpose witli that which had fired the soul of the visionary hermit of Calabria ; but with these Christians all is to be accom- plished for and in the Church at large, not for monks and not by monks. The preaching is founded on the clear moral precepts of the Gospel, not on the mysteries con- cealed in numbers, nor on revelations vouchsafed in visions and dreams. The innate apprehension of God implanted in our conscience, on the one hand, and the outward history of God's kingdom contained in the Bible on the other — these are our divinely given guides to a life of blessedness. This is the faith which Christians are now-a-days, as of old, called to bear witness to, to live for, and, if need be, to die for. But if they do so, victory is certain to be theirs ; first here on earth, and then to every individual soul in the world to come, at the Judg- ment-day. The poem concludes thus : — " The Eedeemer shall say to them, ' Come, ye blessed of my Father, enter into the kingdom that hath been prepared for you from the beginning of the world, where joy and heavenly treasures are awaiting you.' May the Lord who hath formed us count us among the number of those who are chosen to enter this kingdom of God ! " A like spirit and confidence are expressed in the Walden- sian Confession of Faith, the chief propositions of which are undoubtedly ancient, although the date of 1220, arbi- trarily assigned to it at a late period, is certainly not tenable. This Confession declares : — " We believe in one God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. " The books of the Old and New Testament teach us that there is one God, who is almighty, all-wise, all-good, who has made all things of His goodness. For He formed Adam after His own image ; but through the envy of the Devil and Adam's own disobedience sin came into the world, and we are sinners in and through Adam. " Christ is our life and peace, our righteousness, our shepherd and advocate, our sacrifice, and our high priest. He died for 188 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. the salvation of all who believe on Him, and was raised from the dead for our justification. " We believe that the sacraments are symbols, or the visible form given to holy things, and we believe that Christians are bound from time to time to avail themselves of these forms when it is possible. But we believe also that the believer may be saved without these signs if the opportunity for them is wanting. " We are subject in reverence and obedience to the secular power, to which we are bound to render service and taxes." This faith in the ultimate triumph of God upon this earth is well expressed in an old morning hymn of the Bohemian Brethren, who are very nearly allied to the Waidenses : " Ah, Lord God ! hear us, we implore ! Be Thou our guardian evermore, Our mighty champion and our shield, Who goeth with us to the field. " We offer up ourselves to Thee, — That heart and word and deed may be In all things guided by Thy mind, And in Thine eyes acceptance find. " Thus, Lord, we bring through Christ Thy Son Our morning offering to Thy throne ; Now be Thy precious gift outpour'd, And help us for Thine honour, Lord ! " ^ ^ See Lyra Germanica, Second Series, p. 69. Chap. XL] BOSSUET. 189 CHAPTER XI. THE PROPHETS OF THE CHURCH OF THE HIERARCHY SINCE THE REFORMATION. If we now turn our attention to the prophets of man's sense of God's presence that have arisen in the Western Hierarchical Church during the last great epoch that has elapsed since the Eeformation, we are at once struck by the circumstance that very few such present themselves at all on the domain of the religious consciousness. Every- where we behold an eager activity directed to intellectual and rehgious subjects, in philosophy, philology, history, literature ; but the Church of the hierarchy either holds itself aloof from these movements, or takes them up only in order to be able to hold them in check. As regards our own special topic, up to the present century, there has appeared but one writer deserving of mention — the intel- lectual and ingenious Bishop of Meaux, under Louis XIV., Bossuet, the father of the Galilean Church, which, alas ! is now numbered with the things that were ; and of his writings, the only one which (with the exception of a few occasional expressions elsewhere) concerns our present purpose is the celebrated " Lectures on Universal His- tory up to the age of Charlemagne" which he composed for the use of the then heir to the French throne. This work ought, in all strictness, to be regarded as a theo- logical one ; for most of its illustrations and all the proofs it adduces of the existence of a divine order of the world are borrowed from the Bible and from tlieology. No doubt the work does indeed assume the position of a learned treatise based on critical research, and, moreover, 100 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. of a philosophical argument designed to convince the reason ; but it can by no means maintain this position in the eyes of any impartial criticism. Of the three sections of which it consists, the " Epoques " are, as to all matters making pretension to research, no better than child's play and fable ; the " Developpement de la Religion " is a sermon in which the text of Scripture is either wanting or perverted ; and, lastly, " Les Empires " is a treatise on politics for the benefit of the Dauphin, Until theology comes into play, Bossuet is free-thinking. The Egyptians are lauded for a wisdom that they did not possess, and the Eomans for a humanity that was utterly alien to their minds. The preaching up of absolutism only begins with Constantine, and the recommendation of religious perse- cution is a triumph reserved for " Louis the Great," with a retrospective allusion, not much in unison with the spirit of the Gospel, to the divine commands to extermi- nate the Canaanites, given in Exodus, and to the energetic proceedings of Samuel. Of any Divine Order of the world we discern no prophetic intimations in all this ; the much-admired flights of " the Eagle of Meaux " are in this direction only visible in abortive attempts to un- ravel the meaning of prophecy. No doubt we do find in the concluding pages of the whole work a very rational essay on the moral order of the world. But even this does not pass the limits of the Theodicy to be found in the Book of Job and the Psalms ; and possesses moreover none of the depth of ethical reflection that we find in those writings. God sets up empires, and casts them down again. He suffers nations to fall into folly, but He raises them up out of it again, and causes their oppressors to be ruined by means of their own successes. His power is unchangeable ; the greatest conquerors subserve Him and His counsels unknown to themselves. Brutus overthrew the tyrants, and by the degeneration of liberty into licence prepared his nation for a yet worse tyranny. The Caesars flattered their soldiers, and so trained them to become Chap. XL] BOSSUET's UxVIVERSAL HISTORY. 191 their masters. Thus is all human might compelled to subserve a higher power, and God's counsels alone can march forward according to any orderly sequence. Now this is all very fair ; but what is this counsel of God ? In several earher passages, but more particularly in his concluding sentence, Bossuet gives the prince a hint where to find the key to it. It is the power of religion ; therefore, since the date of Christ's return to the bosom of his Father, the power of the Church, by which Bossuet means the bishops and their priests, who are under the guidance of the successors of St. Peter. These are his words : — " Whereas you have seen nearly all those empires fall by their own hand, while, on the contrary, religion has been able to maintain itself erect by its own power, you will easily be able to determine what greatness is that which alone is destined to endure, and that on which a reasonable man will build his hopes." Of the many commentaries which the prophet of the Galilean and Eoman Church of the seventeenth century supplies in the course of his work to this oft-repeated and well-understood motto of the Bourbons, we will only quote his exhortation to the young prince at the conclu- sion of the second part of the book. After having forged the chain which, passing down from God through Abra- ham, Moses, and Christ in an unbroken succession of links, in virtue of the same laws passes then over to the Papal Church, and on which all communion of man with God depends, the Bishop adjures his pupil to hold in abhor- rence all that could tend to break this chain, and then adds : — " Employ all your strength to bring back into this unity all who have departed from it, and to cause men to listen to that Church by which the Holy Ghost has pronounced His oracles. " It is the glory of your ancestors not only never to have abandoned that Church, but also always to have upheld it; and hence to have earned for themselves the title of her eldest sons, which is, without doubt, the most glorious of all their titles. J 92 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V " I have no need to speak to jow of Clovis, of Charlemagne, of St. Louis. Consider only the times in which you live, and from what a father God has caused you to descend. A king- so great in all things is distinguished even more by his faith than by all his other admirable qualities. He protects religion both within and outside of his kingdom, nay, even to the extremities of the world. His laws are one of the firmest ramparts of the Church. His authority, revered no less for the merit of his person than for the majesty of his sceptre, never displays itself more gloriously than when it is defending the cause of God. The voice of blasphemy is silenced ; impiety trembles before him ; it is the king described by Solomon, who dissipates evil with the glance of his eye. If he attacks heresy by so many methods, and eveii more energetically than his predecessors have ever done, it is not that he fears for his throne ; all is tranquil at his feet, and his arms are dreaded throughout the earth. But it is that he loves his subjects, and that, seeing himself elevated by the hand of God to a power that has no equal in the universe, he deems that there is no nobler use to which he can put it than to heal the wounds of the Church. " Imitate, Sir, so noble an example, and transmit it to your descendants. Eecommend to their care the Church, even be- fore this great empire which your ancestors have governed for so many ages. May your august house, the first in dignity on the face of the globe, be the first to defend the rights of God, and to extend over the whole universe the reign of Christ, who has caused them to reign with such illustrious glory ! " Truly " Louis the Great " did do all that Liy in his power to do credit to such a prophet, difficult as it might be to come up to his teacher's requirements, and thus surpass the glories of Charles IX. and the massacre of St. Bartholomew ! To this the dragotmades bear witness, and the ruins of the castle in sight of which these lines are written. What sort of piety reigned within his heart was revealed to all tlie world after the death of this I'e- ligious monarch, and under the Kegent and his successor. And then the harvest was reaped which this religion and pious zeal had sown, and that Eevohition, which we now call the first, supplied the answer to such doctrines and Chap. XL] LE MAISTRE AND LAMEN.VAIS. 193 to the motto, " I am the State." The last of his race plunged himself and his posterity from the throne by taking in earnest the counsel which Bossuet had given the royal house for all ages. And it will fare no better with any other princes who tread under foot justice and the laws in order to demonstrate after this fashion their zeal for the kingdom of God. How completely this whole tendency runs counter to the all-powerful current of tlie world's history might easily be shown by two works written at the beginning of this century, both of which take up the prophetic mantle dropped by Bossuet. We rehr to Le 3Iaistre's hook'- Die Pape,'' and Lamennais work entitled " Sur V Indifference en matiere de Religion" Both these acute and ingenious writers have falsified history even more flagrantly than Bossuet, which indeed it was much easier for them to do, amidst the general absence of any critical acquaintance with the Bible and history prevailing in their day. Both have propounded even yet more startling formulas than he, and availed themselves of far more impudent sophisms. Both again have ventured on prediction. And how have their predictions turned out ? It must indeed be con- fessed that since their day the hierarchy has acquired a great accession of influence ; but how does it stand with the fruits of that influence ? What have been the effects on the moral, political, and social conditions of the coun- tries and empires over which the priesthood has exercised a spiritual domination for the last fom^ hundred years ? And how fares it on these points with the model polity, the States of the Church ? " The world's history is the world's judgment," and that judgment-day is as yet only at its beginning. We refrain here ft'om entering into de- tails with regard to these and similar modern works, be- cause we have already passed our verdict upon them in " Hippolytus and his Times," and have nothing fresh to add to what we have there said. But one point we can- not omit to notice with respect to all the more recent VOL. in. o 194 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. writings of this school, especially to those two works of its leaders, who were both very distinguished men — namely, that behind the most unscrupulous sophistry in behoof of ultramontane doctrines (sophistry that would not be unworthy of Adam Muller) there lurks a despair as to the truth of Christianity, and therefore as to the theory of the world enounced by Christ. With both, the ultimate principle is authority ; — the right of the " office " instituted by God (to use the phraseology of the " new Lutheran party ") to create the truth. Le Maistre under- takes an elaborate proof of the thesis that in every polity there must be a deciding authority ; that the doctrine of the infallibility of whoever is Pope for the time being, means precisely this ; and that it is a duty of faith to hold fast this doctrine. Why ? Because otherwise everybody who repairs for guidance to conscience and reason, the Bible and history, would be liable to encounter contra- dictions ! The more profound intellect of Lamennais, that re- markable priest, who in the last twenty years of his life diverg-ed from his Church and at last renounced it, could not content itself with such a shallow argument. He therefore called in reason to his help ; and this bold enter- prise landed him in the assertion that all truth, even ma- thematical, rests in the last resort simply upon authority; — the authority of the reason in the domain which is assigned to her, the authoiity of the Cliurch (therefore of the Pope) in all matters of faith. This, when we look closely into it, is in truth the profoundest scepticism, re- vealing a state of inward despair. It is the last tragical attempt of a powerfid intellect to show that God is pre- sent in history, while banishing Him from the conscience and reason ; and to prop up man's wavering faith in the truth revealed by the Church, by exalting the Pope into the place of God and of His highest prophets. His first prophet — the External Universe — they have at last, after fighting against facts for nearly three hundred years, given Chap. XL] WESSENBERG. 195 up the attempt to master, — tliough indeed the Eomish Primate of Ireland will not permit the earth to go round the sun ! But His second prophet — the Human Mind — remains still bound in fetters ; God may not reveal Him- self through Humanity. Natural science may move freely within certain limits ; — but not the enquiring, reflective human intellect, craving after inward truth ! " What is truth ? " is the last word of Lamennais' religious philo- sophy. We now turn our attention to a very dissimilar phe- nomenon. Ignatius, Baron von Wessenberg^ who was in the early part of this century already distinguished by his labours when Vicar-General of the Abbey of Constance, in the establishment of religious and moral institutions, has in the past year (1857) added to the many admirable fruits of his researches and reflection, a spiritual bequest to after ages, which fairly entitles him to be called a pro- phet of man's consciousness of God in the universe and in history. This book, a worthy result of its author's life- long walk with God, is entitled " God and the Worlds or the relation of all things to each other and to God!' ^ It bases itself on the ground of the faith that is common to all Christians, and also of a sober and thoroughly elaborated philosophy. The passages which we shall now quote from it, are a' sufficient testimony to the spirit which breathes through this really admirable work. The preface con- cludes with the pious wish and confession : — " May the true temper of Christianity come to prevail so universally as to penetrate nobles and peasants, learned and unlearned, clergy and laity, everywhere with the firm conviction that a life which acts out the doctrine of our Divine Redeemer, is the only means wherein we may seek and find a true and complete remedy for the ills of afflicted humanity! Notwith- standing the many specious will-o'-the-wisps and brilliant meteors of unbelief, which dazzle us in this age, we may not * " Gott und die Welt, odor das Verhdltniss aller Dintje zti einnnder und zu Gottr -2 Bde. o 2 196 GUD IN lllSTUKY. [Book V. doubt that the constraining force of events and circumstances will contribute to render Christianity, in spirit and in truth, ever more and more victorious over all the insidious attempts of human vanity or selfishness to overcloud it, or to outshine it b}' the lightning flashes of human inventions, and will con- duct us evermore, in all stages of human society, to new and happier epochs of progress towards a higher life." After surveying the proofs of God's presence in crea- tion, he turns to consider historical conditions, of which he says : ^ — "In the social conditions of this world, Grod has set before us a problem, the solution or deciphering of which ought un- ceasingly to occupy the thinking mind, and cause it to rise up to its Author in reverent admiration. Althouo;h nothing finite can possess absolute perfection, yet for every finite being a relative perfection of its oivn hind is conceivable ; and the capacity of attaining this in every step of the whole great ascending ladder of beings, testifies to their common origin from the One Infinitely Perfect Being. Not only do all things stand in an ordered relation to each other, but it is only its connection with all the rest that gives to each thing its subsistence and continuance. When this connection is dissolved, it ceases to be that which it is, and becomes something else ; and then a new set of relations springs up. Every member of the whole subserves every other, and all subserve the whole. Just as each object in the universe has its determinate immediate cause, so has it also its determinate immediate purpose. From which we may infer that no less has the universe itself its proi^er purpose, which is assigned to it by its Author. But in reference to the designs or purposes of Grod, either as touching the whole or individuals, man must seek to expand the range of his conceptions to the utmost, in order that he may not transfer his own limitations to the Infinite One. All beings are the instruments employed by God, in the guidance of His imiverse. But to man is the pre-eminent jjrivilege accorded of being a voluntary instrument, and of ren- dering a voluntary obedience to the voice of his conscience as the voice of God." ' I. s. 54^ etc. Chap. XL] WESSENBERG OX THE CHURCH. 197 And ao-ain at the end of the first volume^ our' author ex- presses similar sentiments in the following passage : — " Individual men and entire nations are alike, whether they intend it or no, constrained to pursue through many turnings and windings the path of conflict and trials, covered with mist and darkened by clouds, which God has appointed them to traverse. Those who recognize His finger here, He will not suffer to come to an evil end. There are brilliant, and appa- rently fortunate successes which are really the severest punish- ments, inasmuch as they dazzle and blind ; while defeat may become the greatest benefit, and be turned into triumph, when those who have suffered it discern therein a summons to more arduous effort. The wisest man becomes a fool, the mightiest a bauble, so soon as he forgets that wisdom and power reside in One alone, with Whom it rests to impart them to the children of men. He alone can survey at a glance the long chain of causes whose successive links have led up, unperceived by mortal eye, to the actual issues of events, which generally turn out quite otherwise than even the most sagacious observers have antici- pated. The wisest and mightiest upon earth have contributed, and must ever in their undertakings contribute, to the accom- plishment of that world-plan known only to Him Who has traced it. Wondrous, too, are God's ways in this, that they even educe salutary consequences out of errors and follies. ' Perhaps God has ofttimes designed to show,' writes the aged Comenius, ' what men cannot do without Him, in order to display in future ages what He can do without men, or through them, when He has once brought them into conformity to His will.' " In his reflections on tlie progressive development of the Divine upon earth, Wessenberg includes the State equally with the Church — art and science equally with social relations.^ Speaking of the Church, he says : — " The Church cannot give her authority and efficiency any other solid and impregnable basis tJuin a pure ami living re- Uc/tous belief, attested by a virtuous life and a charity tJuit is active in every direction. It is only that which .-he has built upon these rocks — which include the whole substance of Chris- tianity — that will withstand all storms and assaults. Any union of Christians to which these foundations are wanting is as good 1 T. s. 465. 2 II. 337. 198 GOD m HISTORY. [Book V. as none. The source of faith as well as of love is God. It is only from faith that Christian love can draw its vital energy. Without that, love would have no roots, and must fade away like flowers when severed from their root ; while, on the other hand, faith must be dead unless it bring forth love. The Chris- tian faith itself has no other object but that blessing-bringing love which has its perfection in God. The doctrine must ap- prove itself by the life. Hence it is the business of the Church and all her institutions to promote the practice of the com- mandment of love by the purity and ai'dour of faith ; and again to sustain and bear witness to the faith by these deeds of love. To this end did Christ vouchsafe to His disciples and their Union — the Church — the promise that He would send the Holy Ghost who should carry on His work throughout all ages by the power of truth and love." After a lieart-reuding survey of the distracted state and multiform evils of the present age which reveal themselves in all our social conditions, our author concludes with the following address to his readers : — " If I ought to conclude the foregoing reflections by giving some answer to the great question. What is the most infallible remedy for all the evil and misery that is under the siui ? my answer must simply be this : Let us all be or become Chris- tians — Christians in the full sense of the word, — and with all the energies we possess ! Let us, therefore, renouncing all mere show, strive diligently that the spirit of loving brotherhood may become the foundation and soul of human society ! The more this is brought to pass, the more will society be delivered from the woes of penury and wretchedness, in so far as the imperfec- tion of our nature permit, and the golden age of humanity will become no more a dream." Posterity will accord the greater admiration to the Christian and philosopliical equanimity, and the unshaken faith of the venerable saint, when they learn that he has had to endure heavy trials from the arrest or reversal of all the reforms that he endeavoured, and in some instances with signal blessing, to introduce into the Eoman Catholic Church of Germany. But in his native land his memory will be held in everlasting honour. Chap. XIT.] RESULTS OF THE REFORMATION. I90r CHAPTEE XII. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE CHRISTIAN ARYANS AND THEIR PROPHETS OF god's PRESENCE IN HISTORY SINCE THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION. If we compare the objects of the consciousness of God's presence m history possessed by mankhid, but especially by the Christian portion of it, with the fundamental and governing thoughts and beliefs of the Eeformation, the most characteristic of these may perhaps be summed up in the five following propositions, in the substance of which all the Eeformers of the sixteenth century agree, and on the belief of which all the Churches and peoples of renovated Christendom have built up their institutions, although it was but by slow degrees that they arrived at a full recognition of the nature and extent of the spiritual liberty of the Gospel. First Proposition. The congregation in the full sense of the word^ the " whole comjmny of faithful people^'' arid not the clergy alone, con- stitute the Church. Thus religion, in an active and not merely a passive sense, is the business of the nation, as the people of God, and hence nothing can form an essential part of religion which concerns only the clergy. That which is common to all, — the Moral Element, — is the organ of communica- tion with God, and the Eeason is its exponent. 2 JO GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. Second Proposition. The whole Church as thus defined is the depositary of man's consciousness of God in the public worship of Him. Consequently the public worship must be intelligible to all, because otherwise it is unprofitable, and scriptural, because otherwise it would be arbitrary. And hence, again, it must consist partly in instruction, because other- wise it would not be " a reasonable service ;" and lastly, it must be a worship of God alotie, — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Third Proposition. The Collective Community, in its national capacity, ought to represent a People of God. From which it follows that it must possess a consti- tution conformable to the principles of Christianity, there- fore to morality, both in Church and State. Everything lawless, — therefore a sovereignty unlimited bylaw, whether it take the shape of absolutism or of anarchy, of hierarchy or of mdividuahsm, — is incompatible with the acknowledg- ment of the Gospel, because it is a practical denial of that Kingdom of God which is proclaimed in the Gospel. Fourth Proposition. There is no difference between spiritual or religious acts {so-called ^^ good works ") and secular acts. Thus marriage and family discipline are holy, but neither celibacy nor auricular confession is so ; thus art and poetry are holy, and involve a recognition of God, whether they belong to the class termed sacred or pro- fane. The acting out of the principle of the Preformation consists in the progressive divinization of what relates to this world. Chap. XII.] PRINCIPLES OF THE REFORMATION. 201 Fifth Proposition. A Personal Faith is the condition of inward peace in God. But this personal faith necessarily involves free conviction, therefore free enquiry and free sjyeculation on the results thereof though carried on imder a sense of responsibility to God ; — and this again presupposes free- dom of conscience and of thought. But if so, the range of contemplation is instantly ex- panded, as though we were stepping out of a cloister into the wide world. Yet at the same moment a sanctity is conferred upon all the actual details of life. For language, art, and science, equally with the popular life and the State, become imbued with a new life, if the Gospel be accepted as their principle of existence. The whole history of mankind can present nothing comparable to the transformation already wrought by this principle, though it has been in operation as yet barely three hundred years. It is only since the Eeformation, and only in consequence of the Eeformation, that there have existed nations who carry their conscience within them, and States which derive their legitimization from that conscience and the loyal hearts of their citizens. The groundwork is laid for a new development of Humanity, worthy to rank beside that of the ancient world, and the wall of partition between Semite and Aryan, between intention and act, between faith and knowledge, has been broken down, at least potentially. In this portion of our work, as hitherto, we shall first consider the leading facts which seem to embody the consciousness of the Community, and afterwards that of the Individuals who have been its prophets ; beginning with those who have occupied themselves with theology, and afterwards passing to tliose who have selected the philosophical point of view. 202 GOD IN HISTORY. , [Book V. It was a very deplorable but very explicable error •which Luther committed when he made the question of the " real presence " of Christ, — therefore of God, — in the Sacrament the starting-point, nay, to some extent, the crucial proof, of theological beUef, and so constituted it the test of Christian community of faith. For, as we have seen, this question was not even one suggested by the Scriptures, but had, in fact, originated in a theological error, and the whole subsequent process of its develop- ment was nothing but the course of a malady. But this should not cause the historian and philosopher to forget that no one has insisted more strenuously than Luther on the nullity of the Lord's Supper apart from the Com- munion. From the first, Luther taught and preached that whatever might take place in regard to the symbols of Christ's body, the grace of which they were the chan- nels, was conditional on their reception by believers, and not something indwelling in the elements themselves. Calvin and Zwingle both disentangled their minds from that original theological error, which, according to sound rules of exegesis, really finds no support in the sixth chapter of St. John's Gospel, except by an arbitrary inter- pretation of that chapter. But even Calvin took the same point of departure with Luther in the arguments he ad- duced in behalf of his more spiritual view. One might almost say that he arbitrarily took up his stand on the ground adopted by the fifth century, or, in some respects, that of the ninth century ; whereas Luther overstepped the limits reached by the conceptions of Berengarius, and went forward to those of the thirteenth century. JSTeither Calvin nor Zwingle ever carried their reasonings far enough distinctly to entertain the idea of restoring the ancient conception of the Christian Sacrifice ; — that idea according to which the solemn commemorative meal is conjoined with the vow of the congregation as an act of grateful love on the part of the whole body, and of every living member thereof Possibly they shrank from ex- Chap. XIL] THE BIBLE GIVEN TO ALL. 203 pressing this thought, under the fear lest the communion with God should be sought in the external utterance of the vow rather than in the piety of the life itself. For to interpenetrate all tlie details of actual daily life witli the sense of God's presence was the great underlying thought and aim of the Eeformation. At that time the two things most urgently needed by the Christian peoples for their pubhc worship of God were : — First, a faithful and popularly intelligible translation and exposition of the Bible ; secondly, a worthy mode of expression for spiritual thought and emotion in Sacred Song and in Prayer, no less than in the Sermon. And, in effect, the translation of the Bible, and the composition of spiritual songs, whether hymns or psalms, were, as we all know, the earliest pro- ducts of the Eeformation. Both are the offspring of in- spiration in the same sense as art and mental culture. The various translations of the Bible consecrated the respective languages into which they were rendered ; they expanded and elevated the intellect of tlie Aryan peoples by bringing them into immediate contact with the actual ideas and modes of expression that had swayed the heart of Humanity from Abraham up to the Maccabees. The prodigious importance of this achievement is not to be expressed. It is the consummation of the inward fellow- ship, nay, as it were, the marriage, of the two great families of nations who have up to this time shaped the destinies of Humanity. No less momentous is the second achievement — the creation of spiritual poesy adapted for the use of the common people in their public and domestic worship. The most perfect vehicle of expression which the Chris- tian spirit has shaped for itself is the Hymn for public worship created by Luther. It is the form peculiar to the Aryans of the New Covenant ; and the psalmody of the French and English Protestant Churches, though it touches our German hearts less closely, has also its good and sufficient claims to recognition. On this domain, the 204 . GOD IX HISTORY. [Book V. German popular mind lias far surpassed the achievements of the Latin Church ; while in the Greek Church, the hymn and chorale, which are the creation of St. Ambrose, are entirely unknown. What the German mind has accomplished in this field has not as yet been equalled, much less surpassed, anywhere else. If this is true of the individual hymns, much more is it so of the magnificent whole, which presents itself in the general arrangement of the hymn-books for public and private devotion. For if, as has already been done with more or less distinct design from very early times, we arrange these hymns according to the history of the revelation made to us of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and thus, as it were, place each single leaf of that prophecy vouchsafed to the worshipping mind in its joroper organic position, from the Creation onwards, up to the strug;gle and final victory of the life of the Spirit in the Church, we shall have before us an Epos in lyric songs, whose subject is the most sublime possible, nay, unique in its sublimity because truly divine, and of which the execution is not, on the whole, unworthy of its exalted conception. There is nothing in the collective literature of mankind which so nearly approaches the Holy Scriptures, and so completely reproduces their spirit unfettered by dogmatic systems and formulas, as that mass of spiritual songs, to whose composition kings and artisans, men and women, clergy and laity, to the number of above three hundred (taking only the more important names), have alike contributed, and which constitutes the only continuous and connected series of literature which those three centuries possess. The next offspring and, so to speak, transcript of the Bible was the collection oi Prayers for public and domes- tic worship. For these there already existed in the primitive liturgies many beautiful monuments of true devout piety, especially in the short morning and evening prayers of the Greek Church, composed in the fifth and sixth centuries, and in the Collects of the Latin Church. CuAP. Xll.J RISK OF IIYMNODY. 205 Luther availed himself of nearly the whole of the latter, and the Anglican Church in particular followed his foot- steps in this path. Many, too, of those Greek prayers have here and abroad found their Avay out of the formu- laries originally designed exclusively for the use of the clergy, into the books of common prayer used by millions. It was only by carrying out the principle that all Chris- tians ahke are priests unto God, that the practice of family and private worship could become an established usage and element of daily life for the common people. But it was not long before the Holy Spirit poured down to this end, into huts and palaces by turns, that gift of free utterance which He is wont to bestow in all seasons of extraordinary religious awakening. Yet at the same time the need was felt of some authorized collection of the already existing hymns and prayers, in which the believers of all ages had reflected their thoughts and experiences. The object aimed at was the production of a spiritual popular manual that should be The Book of the Church. Hence, if we duly consider the requirements of the case, we may affirm with justice that since the Canon of Scrip- ture was closed for all time, Humanity has produced nothing which for the solid worth of its contents in re- lation to the religious apprehension, whether of the individual human heart or of the Church at large, can be compared either with the Hymn-book of the German Church, including the prayers for special occasions, or the Common Prayer-book of the Englisli Church. Both are the joyful "Amen " of Humanity to the glad message of the Bible ; both are the work of the Spirit of God operating through the Church. We must remark here too that the improvement and sanctification of sacred Music naturally followed upon the birth of these spiritual hymns ; and so in like manner, the worship of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost formed the new livino- groundwork oi Ecclesiastical Architecture. So soon as the congregation stood forth as the only true temple 20G . GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. of God, and great eternal mystery, it became possible to conceive the idea of restoring the ancient Christian basi- lica, and out of the cathedrals, minsters, and saints' shrines of the perplexed Mediaeval Period, to create a style of edifice that on the one hand should possess an historical character free from the overweening influence of the antique, and, on the other, should be adapted for popular use, and rich in germs of future development. And fur- ther, the faith thus renovated next created in addition new structures, unlike any hitherto known, of so-called secular architecture, adapted to the requirements of the community. The turning of the Sermon into the central point of the service has likewise its living, not rhetorical roots in the Eeformation, in so far, that is to say, as the preaching is not simply an argumentative and critical exposition of the word of God, but itself a word from God — the message of the Spirit to the Church and from the Church. Nor is any fact clearer than that this preaching was the parent of a noble learned language, which was the permanent groundwork of our prose, and by means of which the Church, i. e. the Christian people, men and women from their youth up, were brought into contact with the highest mental culture of their nation, while the culture itself was sanctified from its birth, and preserved from all antago- nism to the religious element. We shall have occasion hereafter to advert more in detail to the influence exerted by this circumstance on the whole tone of modern litera- ture. Now this preaching, no less than education in general, must be based essentially on the proper understanding of the Bible ; and this involved a study of the original lan- guages and history of the books of Scripture. But with this, the wall of partition was at once thrown down that had been interposed to bar the study of that classical antiquity which had conducted numbers of the priesthood to ungodliness and immoraUty, or to intellectual hostility Chap. XII.] LEARNING SANCTIFIED. 2C7 to Christianity. Philology, forming, in combination with history and philosophy, the tliree pillars on wliich is reared the whole edifice of modern culture, was sanctified and dedicated to be an organ of the Divine. But at the same time, philology was expanded into tlie investigation and study of the history of the whole human race. It was soon discovered that the Hebrew terms and concep- tions employed in the Bible could not be explained witliout an acquaintance with Syrian and Arabic words and ideas. Tims there grew up what is called an Oriental philology, which only needed to be pushed forward a few steps further to place Aryan philology in its wliole extra- European expanse side by side with the Semitic family of languages, and bring the two into a connection fruitful in results of the highest importance for the whole history of our race. Even Goethe in his day already remarked that all these consequences had sprung from tl^e study of the Bible. But there is another circumstance to be taken into account Avhich goes yet deeper. Tlie whole intrinsic relation of those three main pillars of European culture towards the intellectual and ethical beliefs of the nation was essentially determined by the question whether or no mental culture was to be regarded as a portion of religion —of man's apprehension of the Divine taken in the widest sense. It is only wdien culture is through and through pervaded by that sense of the Divine that it can ever attain its full bloom ; nay, without that, it cannot even strike firm root. Now it is, however, an indubitable historical fact, that the countries of the Eeformation are those in which the study of Mind in those three directions has been carried on with the greatest zeal, perseverance, and success. And itis an equally certain matter of fact that the first impulse to this mighty intellectual movement — the central mainspring of this entire new creation — has been the resuscitation of man's sense of a true, real, unique, operative presence of God in the ecclesiastical communit}^ and consequently 208 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. ill the fellowship of the household, and of the individual Churches founded tliereon. Worship became no longer an adoration of the elements, nor yet a mere group of symbolical and allegorical observances, — no longer a merely representative and mediatorial act, the counterfeit of actual life, — but the sacred vestibule of the life itself. A Church commensurate with Humanity stood forth, called to confess, to receive, and to proclaim the Spirit of Christ from day to day. Devoutness was no longer spell- bound to tliis or that locality; but the Spirit of God hallowed house and home — nay, if need be, field or forest — into a temple of worship. Prayer was no longer an external, prescribed, meritorious act ; but was, like daily life, an outflow from the heart. The priest was the father of the family, or whoever might take his place. Such a spectacle the world liad never seen as yet, save in the assemblies of the Waldenses and tlie Bohemian Brethren. But now whole nations sprang to life under the quickening touch of this consciousness, and rose to be world-wide empires, and yet free. This leads us to our next topic of consideration — the religious consciousness evinced in the Constitution of the Eeformed Churches. The first and third of the proposi- tions with which we introduced this chapter, according to which the presence of God is conceived to reside in the whole body of tlie congregation, could not fail in the nature of things to lead to two practical results on the constitution of this body. The constitution is, or ought to be, the expression of the life of the Church in, but as distinguished from, the world. Hence, we mean, of her members at once in their ecclesiastical and no less in their political relationships — the Christian people, re- garded on the one hand as the collective body of wor- shippers bound together by solemn vows ; and, on the other hand, this same Christian people as the body wliich feels itself under a solemn obhgation to apply the religious belief thus professed and consecrated to the practical Chap. XII.] SOCIAL REFORMS EFFECTED. 209 realities of life. But these practical realities include, not only the family which is to be regenerated by a pure morality; they include also the highest representative of the ethical principle — the State — and thus the world becomes the seedfield of the Church. Free was the persecuted Christian community when it entered the Eoman Empire, but very much the reverse of free do we find it at the close of the Middle Aq-cs : and what slight germs or remnants it still possesses of a free constitution, visibly shrivel up as the new era advances. If Christianity were a truth, and if the Eeformation intended honestly to proclaim and vigorously to restore the sway of that truth, it must needs begin with the ecclesiastical community, but it could not fail to end with a political reform. What sort of a Christianity is that which feels no constraining impulse to make reason and conscience supreme in the realm of legislation? What sort of a faith is that which reveals no power to kindle a new life, when it is a question of manifesting God's presence in the relations between the authorities and the people ? As a matter of fact, the Eeformation began, like Christianity itself, with the sanctification of the very groundwork of civil society — the marriage bond, and family discipline. It recognized no enforced celibacy of the clergy, but it recognized a spiritual union between wedded couples, a co-operation of man and wife in the training up of a Christian household in the fear of God. But even to accomplish this, they required not only freedom of conscience — that is to say, the free, legalized exercise of their religion — but also civil liberty, that they might be protected against oppression ; therefore against any ungodly proceedings in the Church. Neither re- ligious nor civil liberty is conceivable in the modern world without freedom of thought and of the press. How all-important, then, that all these blessings should be striven after — all these requirements satisfied, in accord- VOL. III. p •210 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book V. ance with the aims and spirit of a God-fearing individual and nation ; not with that spirit which takes account of nothing beyond this world, but only recognizes the rights of natural self-interest ; in other words, the spirit that tends to enmity and disintegration. In the first case, mutual understanding and reform are the aims striven after ; in the latter, insurrection and revolution are at our doors. In the former case, respect is challenged for that Humanity which is the image of God ; in the latter, is demanded the abolition of the restrictions placed upon the exercise of human rights by the individual. In the one case, there is a direct, immediate sense of God's presence that speaks at once to the huuost heart of the people ; in the latter, everything depends upon the very uncertain dictates of intelligence separated from God in the individual and in the nation ; and the only safeguard against caprice or violence on the part of the Government is the sentiment of respect for Law, as something higher than the actual possession of power. In the former case, love forms the starting-point ; in the latter, hatred. In the former, the goal of effort is the promotion of the common weal by self-abnegation, of the common liberty by a generous, unselfish administration of the common revenues ; in the latter, the endeavour to abrogate the restraints imposed upon the free action of the individual ; and the equality of all before the law, with no higher theory of the State than that which regards it as a species of insurance company. Now, if we look at the history of the modern world with an unprejudiced eye, what does it display to us ? In the countries where the Eeformation has taken root, civil liberty has been the fruit of ecclesiastical liberty and of the faith in God, in Christ, and in the Holy Ghost that proceedeth from the Father and the Son. A liberty which, originally the daughter of the Gospel, has after- wards become the protector and defence of her parent against aggressions from without. In the countries that have adhered to the Eomish Church, the open warfare waged by the authorities against mental liberty has issued Chap. XII.] CIVIL AND EELIGIOUS LIBERTY COA'CEDED. 211 in the degradation of the noblest nations from a position of freedom and power to servitude and impotence, na}^ in some cases extinguished nationahty altogether. 13ut we have not yet said all, when we have acknow- ledged that civil liberty owes both its origin and main- tenance to the sense of religion ; there is anotlier point which has had a most important bearing upon the world's history, and that we ought not to overlook ; namely, the marvellous capability for progress exhibited by the poli- ties thus founded during the last three hundred and fifty years, whether as regards the scope of their liberties or the susceptibility to further improvement possessed by the forms which that freedom has engendered. Its first beginnings were glorious, but very limited in extent. Even in those coimtries where the nation was retained in a protracted political nonage by reason of the imperfect development of the conception of the Christian Church, either in respect of its cultus or constitution, a very considerable amelioration was soon perceptible in the spirit of the administration ; and in the towns more particularly, intelligence and good intention went hand in hand. But the mother-country of the Eeformation was not strong enough to uphold the unity and freedom of the fatherland ao;ainst the united forces of the most powerfid princely house and the Eomish hierarchy (which was itself a princely power in the empire) ; all that could be accomplished was petty and piecemeal, and it was only by dint of superhuman exertions that everything did not go to ruin. All power for action lay in the hands of the Protestant Princes, who were sovereign masters within their own dominions ; and these were, with the exception of the House of Brandenburg, simply intent upon the aggrandisement of their respective dynasties. But all of them willingly allowed themselves by degrees to be per- suaded by their servile-minded jurisconsults that they were not simply the protectors but also the lords over, and supreme bishops of the Church. The free cities had r -2 212 «0D IN HISTORY. [Book V. for the most part fallen into the hands of close corpora- tions, which cherished the same Inst of power. Even the Calvinistic Churches in Germany did not succeed in establishing any complete synodal constitution with a free government. The decline of Germany from her leading rank among the nations must indeed be ascribed in the first place to the refusal of the House of Hapsburg to associate itself with the Eeform of the Church ; but the responsibility for it must also to no small extent rest with the incomplete solution which tlie problem of the Eefor- mation received in the countries where it was accepted. The development of religious consciousness on ecclesias- tical questions did not advance beyond the first rudi- mentary stage. The national mind carried the Church along witii it, not the Church the mind of the nation. The results were very different where the sense of the presence of God received an application also to political questions. The loose bonds which held together the Hel- vetic Cantons were not dissolved by the breaking out of their religious dissensions, and at the close of the contest, the element of Gospel liberty emerged triumphant, not- withstanding the incomplete constitution of the Confede- racy. But how much more powerful was the influence exercised by this element on Europe at large through the heroic struggle carried on by the United Provinces of the Netherlands against Spanisli tyranny ! The con- test began with the defence of liberty of conscience ; it was continued and carried out by faith in the Gospel. A new nation, with a new country, rose as it were from the waves, which, after struggling through inward as well as outward conflicts, stood forth as the champion of free- dom of belief, long before England enjoyed that privilege. All the public documents relating to the revolt, from its outset to its close, take their stand upon the defence of a liberty to believe in the Gospel ; and the internal history of Holland up to the present day, even with all its defects and blots, still exhibits a hitherto unexampled develop- Chap. XII.] RISE OF COxXSTITUTlOXAL ilOXARCHY. 213 ment of power springing from freedom ; while that free- dom again is based on the rehgious sentiment of the nation. When at last England, in consequence of her revolt against the twofold tyranny of James II., carried out with tlie help of the great Dutch Prince of Orange, received a free Constitution, with secure guarantees, and honestly acknowledged the principle of religious freedom in her treatment of Dissenters, the world beheld the highest development of a free single State ; — namely, a Constitutional Monarchy. And this was the fruit of the return of the Churcli to the principles of the Gospel, with the consequences that ensued thereupon. How great was the inward strength that accrued thereby to both the people and the State, the last forty years have displayed still more visibly than the hundred and thirty that had gone before. But the history of our own days shows us also that the religious belief which was the soul of this movement is far from being forgotten, still less forsaken. On the contrary, that religious sentiment has grown more powerful in the same proportion as the prin- ciple of Gospel liberty has been consistently carried out, and therefore applied to Ireland also. Constitutional Monarchy is the perfect form of a free individual State, because it unites in the happiest manner the three principles of Monarchy, Aristocmcy, and Demo- cracy. The reconciliation of antagonistic elements tluis effected is a triumph of Christian religious consciousness. To the nations of antiquity it was an unattainable object of aspiration. It rests partly upon a trust which has its roots in the fundamental relationsliips of life — in the family and the individual congregation; partly upon a yet higher power — that power which sanctifies all rela- tionships — which nothing but a deeply grounded personal faith in the presence of the Eternal can give or has ever given. The surmounting of a still greater antagonism is, how- 214 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. ever, conceivable, — namely, the union of several inde- pendent, but in their nature essentially homogeneous. States into one extensive and yet free Empire. Hitherto the union of freedom with great empires, such as the Eoman Empire was and the Eussian Empire is, has proved impracticable. Yet forasmuch as a great Em- pire of this kind has actually grown up in Europe, and two equally pow^erful, though not territorially co-extensive, military States occupy, together with Eussia, the major part of Europe, it is of most urgent importance that the Christian spirit should also show itself able to deal with this antagonism. Such an attempt has been made eighty years since in the British settlements, out of which the vast Empire of the United States has grown up. For the first time in history has the world beheld a strong organic federal State, resting on such simple principles respecting the relation of the Union to the several States, that this new form of polity is even capable of being applied to a monarchy. Just as the rural commune of the Teutons has taken the place of the free city of antiquity, without thereby assuming a hostile attitude towards the free cities ; and at a later period the free monarchical single State has gradually grown up in consequence of the Eeformation, and risen to the rank of one of the great powers of the world, so may every great single State in like manner, should its circumstances and conformation naturally lead to such a result, take the shape of a federal State, without changing its form of government, or else associate itself with such a State. Only here, too, in virtue of the law which w^e have found to prevail universally throughout the whole course of history, the work must take its rise from some root of religious consciousness. Now this has been most signally the case in the formation of the United States, The Pilgrim Fathers wandered forth that their consciences might suffer no constraint, and that, as they declare in the ever-memorable document put forth on their embarkation from Holland, they might be able to Chap. XII.] DAWX OF FEDERALISM. 215 disseminate and foster the kingdom of God in new lands, and so present to God a Cliurcli that should be well- pleasing in His sight. Thus arose Xew England. Not long after tlie founding of that State, a similar refuge from oppression, and scene of laboiu^ wherein to plant the faith, was sought by William Penn, who, in our own days, has been most unjustly calumniated and maligned ; and thus was there formed in Pennsylvania a second germinal point from which a new Christian social life was to spring up. And to-day the birth of a no less important Federal Empire is announced to be at hand : the English Govern- ment has itself proposed this form of constitution for the British Possessions in North America. So, too, in various quarters of the continent at our antipodes — Australia — we behold States, in which, though as yet only in the lirst stage of germination, the tendency towards this formation is already apparent. In those States, it is not bayonets and brandy that have been the pioneers, as in the dis- graceful attack of the French on Tahiti, of which nothing lout mischief has come as yet ; no, the pioneers have been missionaries and Christian families, with the Bible in their hands. And wliere has new life budded forth in ancient Asia save by the agency of evangelical ambassadors of the faith, who do not address tliemselves to the priesthood, but to the peoples of noble and once highly civilized races, to whom nothing but the Gospel can impart a new political life ? For to exchange one human lord in God's place for another, is what the peoples of Asia will not consent to do ; but they are willing enough to receive regeneration and liberty at the hands of the Gospel. Thus the progress of durable and truly legalized free- dom — that is to say, of self-sacriiicing self-government — is identical with the progress of religious consciousness, and the progress of this consciousness is equivalent to that of the kingdom of God. The advance was made step by step from town to rural commune, from connnime to province, from province to empire ; from a simple 216 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book V. municipai, Avhetlier democratic or aristocratic, Republic to a free monarchical State ; from the isolated to the federative State. And this is a progress which has changed the face of the world ; and has done so, more- over, in more or less accordance with the spirit of the Gospel announced by Christ. Beneath the influence of that spirit, in the first place, marriage has been hallowed, because declared to be not incompatible with a spiritual life, but, on the contrary, conducive to it. The next step was to enfranchise all the members of the household and abolish the African slave trade — the last curse which Spain left behind her in America. What still remains of slavery in that land is an anomaly, the removal of which involves a great problem for humanity — namely, the creation of black and Creole States in those countries where the Anglo-Saxon can no longer live and govern, becauriC he can no longer work. Side by side with all these blessings freedom of conscience and of thought flourish in their true sense because th<3y are recognized to be organs of the kingdom of God. From what has been said, it follows as a matter of course that with such a revolution of the religious con- sciousness in the cultus and constitution of the Church, new priests should be called of God to serve in the newly opened sanctuary, and new prophets awakened to form the personal organ of the Spirit, and thus to con- stitute the creative force in Humanity. For we have always found it hither! o, without exception, to be a law of development, that that which takes the shape of Nature in the community is preceded and accompanied by the sustaining creative energy of some conscious Per- sona] Mind. What, then, are the facts with regard to art and poetry, to works of history and philosophy, which meet us in the period we are now considering ? Relifflous consciousness in Aet has a twofold basis. First, in the divine, because creative, nature of art itself; for it is only Spirit that can create a work of art. Mere Chap. XII,] ART SINCE THE REFORMATION. 217 Nature, nay, even the life-giving sunlight, can give us no more than a reprint ; it is a work of art alone that is a second creation, because it Hows straight out of the Idea, out of Thought itself. The second element of the reli<:jious consciousness in art does, indeed, reside in its subject, in so far as some subjects are more adapted than others to call forth the religious sentiment. But even here, too, the predominating influence is the mode in which such a sub- ject is artistically conceived, and the extent to which its execution harmonizes with human nature. It is possible to build cathedrals without artistic relifjious consciousness, and a common dwelling-house under such a consciousness. So, too, while it is possible for a popular national song to reveal an elevated relio-ious consciousness, throush its apprehension of the original source of the national life, it is equally possible for a hymn used in public worship to take a very irreligious shape, or for Church music to assume a secular character, nay, even to sink to the level of frivolous and wanton dance music. The progress of religious consciousness in art will therefore consist, first, in the more elevated character of the subjects which it selects, and, secondly, in the growmg tendency of the aesthetic consciousness to extend itself over the whole domain of human life, under the sense that every part of our life is susceptible of being made religious. When, in the age of the Eeformation, Christendom, and consequently Humanity, was divided and torn asunder, both sides in common carried with them the goodly heri- tage of a creative artistic culture which had blossomed forth since the rise of the towns and of civil liberty, during the period from the middle of the twelfth to the middle of the sixteenth century, and in some departments had been carried to the highest pitch of perfection. Thus we have now simply to consider what sort of religious sentiment it is that has sought an expression for itself in art since that schism, therefore since the middle of the sixteenth century, or the date of the Council of Trent. ?18 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book V. But there is a third circurastaiice which must also be taken into account. The ever-increasing communion of life and culture between the leading States of Europe has given rise also to a community of literature, and this literature is the mightiest organ of the Spirit and the special fruit of the conquests of the last three hundred years. Since that date, next to the national Confessions of Faith, with the popular education that takes its charac- ter from these Confessions, the most distinctive feature of the epoch is the degree of influence which literature has exerted upon art. Many of the more recent pro- ductions of relig;iou3 art owe their orio-inal suofo-estion far less to clerical inikiences than even in the later Middle Ages. Lastly, too, we mu it not overlook that while art m general is an ever-abiding glory of humanity, any parti- cular branch of art may be, more in one age than in another, the natural and appointed organ of the Spirit, and field whereon the religious sentiment may display its activitv. Bearing these four points in mind, we may perhaps thus characterize the results of a comparative survey. Up to the date of the Eeformation, Architecture was chiefly applied either to ecclesiastical edifices or else palaces, or in the free cities to the erection of town-halls and senate-houses. The artistic resources employed in the erection of so-called secular buildings have remained pretty nearly equal. As in the exclusively Eoman Ca- tholic countries of Spain and France, the Escurial and the Tuileries, the Caserta and Versailles have been con- structed, so in Protestant countries, or in those belonging to mixed persuasions, but where a Protestant literature predominates, we have the castles of the German princes, the town-halls and Houses of Parliament of the Nether- lands and England, the Capitol of Washington, and now the Palace of the Helvetic Diet at Berne. As in the former, the Vatican was desicned for a museum, so in the Chap. XTI.] SECULAR AECIIITECTURE, 219 latter, have the various museums for art been erected in Germany. The public libraries of Eome and Paris are to be matched by those of London, Berlin, or Munich. The predominating idea of the buildings of this descrip- tion which have been erected under the influence of the hierarchical Church is magnilicence combined with ex- clusiveness ; while among the nations and States not at all, or only slightly, under the influence of this Church, the idea governing their construction has been that of render- ing what is public property accessible and useful to all. But the predominance of the idea of the general utility confessedly betokens a sense of God's presence, which is more or less distinct in proportion to the closeness with which its object is connected with the mind, and there- fore with mental freedom. Now this is the case in the highest degree with struc- tures designed for education, such as school-houses, uni- versities, &c., with those designed for the care of the sick, such as hospitals ; and with prisons, in so far as they are made industrial and reformatory institutions rather than schools of crime. That the most numerous, finest, and best-arranged buildings of this description are to be found among the nations of Protestant or mixed creeds, and this, moreover, in proportion to the absence of the hierarchical element, no one really acquainted with the subject will deny or seriously dispute. What is peculiar to them has arisen precisely out of this very anxiety for the general Aveal. Who would attempt to draw the faintest compa- rison between the penitentiaries and gaols of Germany, England, Holland, Switzerland, and those of Italy and Spain, wdiether in regard to art or to utility ? In Eng- land the decayed mariners occupy the splendid halls, chambers, and courtyards of what was once a royal palace. In Berlin, after a heavy national calamity, the University was established by its kingly founder in one of the finest royal palaces. Where does the new religious creed exliibit any de- 220 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book. V. structive or repressive tendencies? On the contrary, is there a quarter where its quickening power is hot in- creasingly visible ? Does not the reverse, however, seem to many demon- strable in regard to ecclesiastical architecture ? The facts will scarcely bear out this impression. If we keep to the date we have adopted as the basis of comparison (namely, the Eeformation, the buildings prior to which we take as common to both parties), we have on the one side churches reared for the most part by the Jesuits, on the other, the attempt which, whether more or less successful for the present, is certain of the future, to erect once more, after the lapse of a thousand years, a church adapted for the use of the Christian people ; and to solve this problem after nearly two thousand years' inter- regnum in conscious harmony with human feeling for art and beauty. The limits of oiu^ present work do not allow of our enlarging further on this topic, but we would refer the reader who may be interested in it for fuller details to our work on the Christian Basilicas, and meanwhile entreat him to weigh the following considerations : — A church which is not arranged with a view to the convenience of the congregation who are to use it for their devout meditations, is in itself scarcely to be called a Christian edifice. Thus it must be, though not exclu- sively, still essentially, a church which can be preached ill, — not a mere ecclesiastical hall destitute of pulpit or seats, or with only some casual and provisional arrange- ment for the intelligible proclaiming of the Gospel or for the undisturbed devotions of the congregation. Secondly, in its whole ground-plan, arrangement, and ornamentation, it must typify the exclusive worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. It must not be a temple dedicated to the Virgin, nor a basilica defaced by pro- jecting chapels of the saints and the insertion of side altars. The true, genuine, uncorrupted basilicas of the first five centuries belong to the new religious conscious- Chap. XII.] ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE. 221 ness. The chiircli of the Hierarchy has but spoilt them, while the Jesuits have driven all poetry out of them, and consciously and methodically adopted everything in the mediseval churches that was connected with the miscon- ceptions and abuses of that age into the conceptions, by turns prosaic and theatrical, of the structures they have erected. Who can deny that there is something of tliis kind even in tljat most marvellous edifice of the last three centuries, the modern St. Peter's ? Only let anyone com- pare its extravagant ground-plan with the antique ground- plan of the ancient Constantinian Basilica, on whose site it is built ; nay, or even with Justinian's St. Sophia at Con- stantinople. But how completely all art rises and sinks together Avith the relio-ious consciousness it embodies is most conspicuously displayed in its architectural propor- tions, which, with the exception of the cupola, — that exalted idea of Michael Angelo's, the towering genius of the period preceding the schism, — are confessedly so heavy that one might be tempted to call St. Peter's a petty architectural idea carried out on a colossal scale, — a dwarfish fignre mai^nified to the dimensions of a giant. On the other hand, no one certainly can deny the taste- lessness of many of the recent Protestant churches of the Continent. But only let us enquire how they have come into existence, and we shall find that those which are the uo-liest, the least adapted to their requirements, and which most repel us by their intrinsic falsity and shams, are almost without exception the offspring of a prince's fancy, or of the caprice and vanity of some favourite court architect. The popular taste has had no voice in their construction. Congregations, whenever they have had it m their poAver to think of anything beyond rearing for themselves a tabernacle in the wilderness, have always at least built with an adaptation of means to ends ; and that alone suffices to secure the possibility of beauty. But we would especially ask our reader to compare the some two thousand Protestant churches which have sprung up 222 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. as though by the touch of magic during the last thirty years in Engkncl, Avithout any governmental aid or super- intendence, out of the heart and energies of the Christian people (outnumbering all that the whole Continent has built during the last two hundred years), and we shall see what fruits in this field of art also, the Evangelical re- ligion has alreatdy borne, even m the climate least favour- able to art. And it will bear far nobler fruits than it has yet done, whenever the people at large shall be able to raise themselves out of poverty and misery, and when all is not done for them from above. But it is essential that the masses should be able once more to rejoice in their own existence, and be allowed to manage their own affairs ; on no other conditions can a blessing be looked for. Of Music, the second art consisting in proportion, we need to say still less. The main fact lies patent before our eyes. To begin with church music in its stricter sense — that which is employed in public worship^since the congregation is in a peculiar sense the depositary of the religious consciousness in all that relates to the cultus, the essence of which consists in "edification;" — that is to say, the building up of the true temple of God by means of the individual worshipping souls who are its Hving stones ; — we must lay it down as a first principle, that this religious consciousness, with the art to which it has given rise, must, more than any other consciousness, or any other art, rise and sink together with that congregation. When the Semitic was superseded by the Aryan form of the hymn, hymnody, in tlie shape of the chorale, took the place of psalmody. And the first instance in which it did so was in the Basilica of Milan, in the year 389, when the con- gregation shut up within it with their Bishop St. Ambrose refreshed themselves by singing spiritual songs. When afterwards the congregation retired into the background and no longer understood the words sung in divine service, all hving hymnody ceased, and only came to life again Chap. XII.] SACRED ilUSIC. 22.3 with the Eeforinatioii, which began with spiritual song3 for the people. The most beautiful of the ancient hymns were translated and their melodies adapted. Many new ones, some of Avhicli were yet finer than the old ones while breathing the same spirit, were composed in unin- terrupted succession, more especially in Germany, but in France also up to the time of the Massacre of St. Bartho- lomew. Next to the Bible, those simj)le yet sublime melodies have, in combination with the hymns, contributed more than any other single agency to nourish devotion and to guide the development of musical art. Both Handel and Sebastian Bach grew up as organists, that is to say, accompanists in the congregational chorales on the organ and directors and masters of choral music. The chorale is the basis of lyrical music ; and the pure lyrical choral song, without any instrumental accompani- ment, is the highest flower of the chorale. The composi- tions of Josquin, which were so greatly beloved by Luther, were afterwards elaborated and simplified by Goudimel, who was burnt for his leanings to Protestantism ; all whose music, together with the moteits of his great pupil Pales- trina, who was also his successor at the Sistine Chapel, were based upon the chorale. This style of art began to decline soon after Palestrina. There are only a few classical compositions of this kind, such as the Misereres of Bai and Allegri, which can be named in the same day with those of that Eafaelle of the higher species of music. In Germany there lacked the living materials for the highest development of this style of art — namely, choirs formed out of the town schools with a few masters to lead them. But all that could be done without these, flourished with great vigour, and as of yore in Athens the lyric songs of Pindar and his j^redecessors gave birth to that marvel of poetic art — the Greek drama — so did the chorale., fertilized by the genius of Handel, with his suc- cessors. Bach, Mendelssohn, and others, give birth to the Oratorio, which is nothing else but a veiled spiritual drama 224 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book V. couched in music. And the oratorio, though born in Germany, was first produced on a scale that constituted it an historical event in England, In the church of the hierarchy, the old Ambrosian congregational chorale died out ; and when at the close of the last century an attempt to revive it was made in Eoman Cath'^lic Germany, the nation did indeed receive from Haydn and Mozart lovely popular melodies, but no chorales. In the churches of the hierarchy at the present day, either the congregation do not sing at all, or they sing popular airs entirely destitute of a religious character. The so-called classical church music is throughout domi- nated by the instrumental music ; it is dramatic not lyric, and after the march has been for a considerable time its unacknowledged type, the dance has now come to be so ; nay, in point of fact, the most God-forsaken operatic ]nusic has come to be the quarry from which musical themes are selected for the public worship of God !■ That operatic music has not sunk to so low an ebb in Germany is partly owing to the independent genius of Mozart and Beethoven, partly to the higher tone of spiritual life in the whole nation, especially as displayed in its literature ; but assuredly it is no thanks to the hierarchy and their church. The music of the Jesuits is as bad as their architecture, and, we must add, as the sculpture and painting in their churches. Michael Angelo and Eaphael, with their compeers in their own age, were the last great masters of the art springing from a direct sense of the divine presence. So early as the latter half of the sixteenth century we have to search long before we discover a picture or statue really fit to place in a church ; a Christ, or a Holy Virgin, an Angel or Apostle, Avhose lineaments bespeak any religious sentiment or awaken any such sentiment in the beholder. In statuary, and still more conspicuously in painting, the sway of the Jesuits is distinguished by the theatrical and sentimental character that pervades their hollow culture ; nay, by the Chap. XII.] MODEKN GERMAN PAINTERS. 225 most repulsive representations, now of bodily anguish, now of morbid transports and ecstasies. When, forty years since, there arose in the great Ger- man masters, Overbeck, Cornelius, and Veit, a new and higher style of historical art, that once more began to direct itself towards the centre of all religious conscious- ness, a style which has since spread through'Ylie whole of Europe under diversified vestures, it was not this Jesuit art which historically formed their model, but the great masters who dated from before the division of the church. And how would this greatest uprising of modern painting have been possible but through the spiritual impulse given by German Protestant literature ? It is the heroes of Protestant literature and not the Eomish theologians who have kindled the sacred fire of the higher art in those men. It is also worthy of note, and no accidental cir- cumstance, that all the works of Cornehus and all the more considerable ones of Overbeck and Veit in this domain are representations of purely Biblical, as distin- guished from ecclesiastical subjects. And as Albert Diirer and Lucas Cranach followed in the tracks of the old » masters, so did the younger Protestant artists, Schnorr and Kaulbach, walk in the footsteps of the new German school along with their genial comrade Lessing, who has struck out a path of his own. In their hands, the historical root-idea has worthily and successfully expanded itself from the scenes described in the Bible to events in the general history of the world, not unfaithful to the common rehgious consciousness, but, on the contrary, seeking to discern its embodiment more and more in God's universe and in actual human affairs, and thus to j^roclaim His presence in the vicissitudes of nations and the life of Humanity. Thus, the result of our survey of the highly remarkable development of art that has taken place during the last three hundred years, taken on a broad historical scale, presents us with a similar contrast to that which we VOL. in, Q 226 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. found in the development of ecclesiastical and political institutions. While amono^ the nations belono-incf to the o DO old hierarchical Church, the free creative national art finds itself, even where it is undesignedly so, in contrast if not in contradiction to ecclesiastical art, nay, often to the very spirit of Christianity itself ; — among Protestants, on the contrary, the development of art has welled up fi'om the most hallowed depths of our nature, under the in- fluence of faith and aspiration ; and working from the centre outwards, now by thoughts, now by deeds, has diffused the sense of God's presence around in ever- widening circles. This is still more conspicuously manifest in the highest of all the arts, that of Poetry. During the constructive period of the Middle Ages, which only in Germany and England begins so early as the ninth century, while in Italy and elsewhere it does not commence until the latter half of the eleventli, we find two Epic poems of enduring historical importance. The first is the ^' Heliand,'' or Epos of the life of our Saviour, put together out of the narratives related in the Gospels. This dates from shortly after the time of Charlemagne. The second is our German poem of the " Nibelungen Not/i," dating from the end of the eleventh century. The two taken together, are representative at once of the two stocks whence sprang the Teutonic tribes, and of the two opposite poles of their epic reli- gious consciousness. The " Heliand " is of Saxon or Low German origin, and is our most ancient religious Epos ; the " Nibelungen Noth " belongs to the Frankish or High German stock. The precursor of the '''Heliand " was the translation of the Bible by Ulphilas ; — the pre- cursor of the '"'■Nibelungen'" the heathen traditions under- lying those Scandinavian poems whose reduction into the " Edda " must be fixed at about the sixth or seventh century, so that the Eddaic must be considered as the more strictly proper form of those traditions. The Chap. XII.] THE EPOS OF SACRED SOXG. 227 spiritual tones of the former of these two poems are re- echoed, pregnant with inspiration and constructive energy, from the very dawn of the Eeformation, in the German " Kirchenlied," which gradually rises out of detached hymns into an Epos which is the most magnificent of its kind that the world can show. These multifarious hymns, all proceeding as they do from one and the same concept tion of God's kingdom on this earth, and His increasingly manifested presence therein, have, — as we have already remarked in speaking of their primary author, the Church — gradually grouped themselves undesignedly, yet not accidentally, into an epic structure. The subject of this Epos is the history of God — of the Father in the Son and in the Spirit^presented, not in the form of didactic in- struction, nor yet in that of historical narrative, but glori- fying His acts by a poetical embodiment in forms of immortal beauty. Hence this may be said to form the earliest religious Epos of the modern epoch; a complete whole in its totality, yet not finally closed ; the work of many hundred holy singers, extending over three cen- turies, but yet eijtirely comprehended in the unity of the German national heart in its search after or its actual vision of God. This Epos, the joint production of all ranks of society, belongs alike to all races speaking the German tongue* Its language, however, is that of Luther and his Bible, the dialect of Central Germany, or High German, which is most iutellioible to the Saxon race. The second Epos is secular in its character, and couched in a dramatic form ; we mean Shakespeare's Histories. The Cantos into which this Epos is divided take their colour from the personal characters and fortunes of the successive monarchs of England, from John Lackland to Henry VHI. — from the king who forfeits his lands and honour by tamely succumbing to the yoke of Papal aggression, up to the king who, in concert with the noblest and best of his subjects, and spurred on by the national a 2 228 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. aspirations and efforts, avenged and delivered his State and people by shaking off that yoke. If (alike contrary to their titles and design) we take the single divisions as independent dramas, they lack that solution which Shake- speare, equally with the great tragic poets of antiquity, never lost sight of. But if we look at these as Cantos of one national Epos they are faultless, and become perfectly intelligible. Their solution is contained in the close of the Epos. But the form that Epos assumes is the dra- matic, which corresponded most closely to the sentiment of the world in that age. Like Homer, Shakespeare was no philosopher in the scientific sense of the word ; but his works, like those of Homer, contain a most elevated philosophy of the uni- verse, because they combine with the most wonderful knowledge of the human heart, that full and direct con- sciousness of the eternal laws of the world's order which is so rare among the moderns. The two next epical productions which meet us are again of Saxon origin and religious nature — Milton's '-'■ Paradise Lost"" and Klopstock's '■'■ Messias." Both, especially Milton's Epos, are true poetic creations ; and neither of them has been equalled, still less surpassed, by any modern writer ; lastly, both are replete with a pure religious consciousness, and an unclouded faith in the presence of God in man ; both represent the ultimate destinies of moral beings as flowing from the eternal counsels of Eedemption, and testifying to the power of man's ethical freedom within the limits assigned to him by the moral order of the world. Both, nevertheless, betray the fact that the age of the Epos is over, and that of the religious Epos most conspicuously so, but at the same time show that the Epos of the world's history con- tained in the Bible, above all in the life of Christ, is truth which stands far above the range of any poetical art. The Eomanic nations have given birth to no religious Epos whatever, and what they have produced in the way Chap. XIL] MODERN EPICAL AND LYRICAL POETRY. 229^ of secular Epos, — Ariosto's " Orlando Furioso" Tasso's " Gerusalemina Liberata," and Voltaire's " Henriade" are rather to be called narrative or fictitious poems, than tlie embodiment of grand popular traditions ; thus par- taking more of the novel than the Epos. The Frencli poem we have named really has no claims whatever to rank as an Epic ; while its prosaic pompousness borders by turns on parody or comedy. Tasso's " Gerusjleinma " might fairly claim to be reckoned an Epos, were it not that such a disproportionate amount of its charming story is taken up with the loves of its personages and all the complications thence arising. The dominant form of the modern era, so far as that has yet unfolded itself, would undoubtedly seem to be the second or Lyrical stage of the Aryan development. It began, as we have seen, in the form of Sonnets and Canzonets with Dante and Petrarch ; and we have already noticed all that is necessary for our purpose in speaking of the prophets of the hierarchical Church. The later lyric poets of those nations have no pretensions to any influence upon tlie general history of our race, up to that rare and noble-minded Italian genius of the pre- sent century — Leopardi, the bright point of whose re- ligious consciousness consists in his firm hold of the moral free-will of man in the midst of his deadly struggle with the apparently hopeless destinies of his own life and of his nation. His faith in our power to trace through the course of history the moral order of the world had indeed become overclouded, owing to the forlorn condition of his native land, with her long centuries of anguish ; yet, perhaps, still more by the comfortless philosophy of some of his Italian comrades who sought to ^draw him do^vn from his lofty Platonism to their sceptical theory of the world. Tliat all the stories which have been printed and circulated by a Jesuit respecting the last months and hours of tliis noble-hearted youug man when in Naples, are not mere exaggerations but pure inventions and false- 230 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. hoods, has been proved by Gioberti in his " Gesuita Moderno," and repeated by Gladstone in his Essay on Leopardi in the " Quarterly Review" And as one of this great poet's oldest and most intimate friends, the author must add his testimony to the same effect on the authority of personal knowledge. Peace be with thy memory, thou lofty genius, who, with suffering body and amidst the overwhelming pressure of domestic and public calamity, hast soared above this dark earth ! Eternal honour to thy name for the streams of Divine inspiration and love which thou hast poured out in thy lovely swan- songs on thy dreary pilgrimage ! Thou hast lived faith- ful to thy " Sovereign Mistress " [Italy], and thou hast died faithful to thy genius, leaving an imperishable heri- tage of love and regret to thy friends ! Among the Teutonic nations, the palm of lyrical reli- gious consciousness so far belongs as indisputably to the German heroes — Schiller and Goethe — as that of the dra- matic does to the unrivalled Shakes]) ear e. But of those Dioscuri we must still adjudge the crown to Goethe, though for a reader whose reflections have not already travelled beyond the domain of the understanding, and who has not yet risen above the demand for rhetoric, Schiller's influence will be the more considerable. The ethical element, too, comes out in greater purity with him. In Goethe there is presented a sense of the Divine agency in human affairs which far transcends all didactic or orato- rical design, and is so comprehensive and at the same time so all-pervading that we must refer the reader for the illustrations of it to the author himself, and to the influence which he has exerted, and is increasingly exerting, on his own and succeeding generations. Similar in kind to these two, though not standing so high in point of art, we may name among our older writers, Klopstoch in his Odes, and Herder in his Songs, whether original compositions or simply re-castings of popular lays. Among the moderns the most conspicuous Chap. XIL] GOETHE AND SCHILLER. 231 names are those of RilcJcert, Uhland^ and Geihel. All these are pervaded by an unmistakable German family likeness ill their theory of the universe, which testifies to the spirituality and moral elevation of that sense of the Divine presence which is with justice ascribed to our nation, and has never forsaken her either in poetry or in life, nor will forsake her, so long as a German heart beats here or in tlie Western hemisphere, and is free to sing out of its own fulness. That we are still living in the period where Lyric com- position is the true prophet of poetic art is proved by the rarity of successful dramatic creations, although what there are bear witness to the future vocation of our people in this sphere. We are certainly justified in as- serting as positively that since Shakespeare no tragedies have been written, combining the highest poetic inspira- tion and accordance with the rules of art, except by our own nation, as that the plays of Goethe and Schiller are no more to be compared with those of Shakespeare than wdtli those of ^schylus and Sophocles. In " Faust" we possess a tragedy, the outline of whose plot reveals a most exalted sense of the Divine agency in directing human destinies ; but as we have already re- marked in speaking of the antique Drama, the execution is for the most part sketchy, and no better calculated for the stage than the Oratorio of the Messiah is for the Opera-house, although both might perhaps be susceptible of effective dramatic representation. But the solution of " Faust " is fantastic, though not destitute of grand and genuinely tragic points. These latter are all that should be admitted into any representation of the Second Part, while even in the First Part, only that which bears directly upon the tragic unfolding of the human soul in Faust ought to be retained. As regards the plan alone, there is nothing even in Shakespeare comparable to tliis immortal poem, and nothing in the whole range of antique tragedy, except the Prometheus of ^schylus. 232 GOD IN niSTORT. [Book V. Nor can it be disputed that we also find in Goethe's ^^ Egmonf and " Gotz von Berlichingen" a correct appre- hension of the rehgious demands of tragedy in reference to moral guilt, with the complications it brings about and their issues. But yet it is in such a manner that, as is the case with all imperfect works of art, we must ever keep in mind not only what is actually represented before us, but also that which we may or must imagine to take place in addition. Egmont's death is rendered endurable, not only by the fatal rashness that has brought his doom upon him, but also by the image of the national freedom sealed by his blood, that hovers behind the scaffold in the bright vision and in actual history. In " Gotz von Berlichingen" we have the violence and lawlessness of the Middle Ages once more resuscitated for us under their noblest aspect, in order to vanish for ever, before the nobler future that is dawning upon the fatherland and mankind at large. Of Schiller's works, " Wilhelm Tell " is an irreproach- able, grand, and elevating drama, conceived rather in the epic than dramatic style ; the " Maid of Orleans,'' on the other hand, is a genuine tragedy, in whicli the womanly nature and human love are raised on a far higher pedestal than even in the " Antigone^ But the remaining tra- gedies of this master are less happy in their choice of subject, outline, or execution, notwithstanding the perhaps only too vivid consciousness possessed by this philosophic poet of the nature of tragic destiny. But notwithstanding all these drawbacks, in any general survey of man's history, we cannot fail to discern in all these works the visible progress in his religious appre- hension, or the consequently higher level from which our poetry starts. It is in the works of Shakespeare that we meet for the first time a real individuality of personal character exhibited in aU the relations of life. The attempt, which in the hands of Euripides was a failure and instrument of corruption, is now presented to us in Chap. XII.] CALDEROX AND RACINE. 233 its healthy divme form. The mask has fallen from the face of the hero as well as the actor. The sphere of rehgious apprehension is expanded in every direction, while at the same time the tragic element is not rendered less deep, but the reverse ; the seriousness of hfe is not varnished over, but laid bare in all its intensity to the utmost limit allowable in tragedy. The modern Tragic Muse descends into our ver}^ hearts, penetrates the soul of our soul, and it is no longer amorous passion, but love, the heavenly child of God, that is now the central, altliough in the highest productions not the sole main- spring. The Church of the hierarchy can produce no name worthy to rank beside these but that of Calderon, the canon of Seville, and the favourite author of the older romantic school. Now, though we most willingly ac- knowledge the poetic genius of this highly-gifted man, we are forced to deny him the possession of any healthy tragic relisfious sentiment. He knows nothins^ hio-her than the pains of martyrdom, nothing more inward than symbol. For him the marvels of legend supersede the miracles of reahty. Lastly, as regards French tragedy, we certainly cannot refuse to it the praise of great art in the construction and perfect rhetorical finish, nor, in most cases, of a liighly noble tone of sentiment ; but if we except the magni- ficent " Athalie " of Eacine, we cannot, in any account of the historical manifestation of the religious consciousness through the drama, assign to the productions of this school (now, moreover, to be numbered with the things of the past), a place beside the grand creations of which w^e have been speaking. But we must rank side by side with Eacine's " Athalie " the heroic operas of Gluck, especially his ^^ Alcestis" and ^^ Iphigenia in Taims" the best part of which, however — namely, the music — is the fruit of German genius. 234 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. If we now tarn to the modern writers of History, and attempt to determine in a few words the place which rehgioLis consciousness occupies in their ranks — so far as they exhibit any progress in those apprehensions, the historical development of which we wish to render visible — we must beforehand, notwithstanding the many proud assertions recently uttered respecting the supe- riority of the moderns in this field, decline to institute any comparison between them and tlie Greek and Eoman historians, especially the two heroes of Greek historical literature, Our task is an infinitely higher one than theirs ; but it may probably appear that we have much yet to learn in order to its worthy performance, even in the lower spheres, and nearly everything in the highest. As regards a truthful and conscientious portraiture of contemporary times, or the recent past, we are un- doubtedly able to point to proofs of that sense of religion which is manifested in the fact of arduous and thoughtful research, with a befitting presentation of its results. This excellence, which was first attained by the Hellenic Aryans and afterwards by some among the Eomans, has not been lost by the Christian Aryans. But even this is, with few exceptions, directly the offspring of the Eeformation, or at least of the more lofty fiight which that mighty impulse has imparted to the European in- tellect. Machiavelli before, and Guicciai'dini, Nardil and Sarpi since that great schism, are immortal heroes in the history of the religious consciousness ; but one really cannot assert of them with truth that they stand on the side of the hierarcliical Church. On the contrary, the first and third of those noble sons of the two greatest republics of Italy take up an attitude of direct hostility to that Church. Nay, the political despondency of Ma- chiavelli, like the poetical despair of Leopardi, springs from the conviction of the irretrievable entanglement of the destinies of mankind wrought by the sins of the dominant clergy. Now, these writers have not been sur- Chap. XII.] MODERN HISTORICAL LITERATURE. 235 passed in later times by any other nation or any prophet of its history. The simphcity and cahnness of their nar- ration equal the impartiality of their investigations and their verdicts, while they have a masterly command over their materials, and write with the conciseness yet vivid- ness of the Ancients. Perhaps the writer who approaches nearest to them in the character and in the perfection of the historical style is the one who is also nearest to them in age — Peter Uooft — the great historian of the superhuman struggles and glorious deliverance of his fatherland. This writer, who is also the author of the best translation of Tacitus^ has given an admirable account of the War of Indepen- dence waged by the Netherlands, up to the recall of the profligate Leicester, which he witnessed, and in which he took an honest and courageous part as a statesman. From the seventeenth century onwards, we have a con- tinuous succession of great English and French historians. The former are all Protestants, the latter mostly Eoman Catholics, but none of the latter wrote under the influence of the Papal Church, or were indebted to it for their culture. It was only towards the close of the last cen- tury, that German historical research began to rise to a similar literary level, in the hands of Mdsei\ Spit'lei\ and Johannes Milller. Schiller s two historical works may be cited as the first example of an artistic and dramatic arrangement of historical materials, combined with a lively style, and animated by popular sympathies. Their masterly delineation and exalted views of the Avorld will secure a place to those works for ever in the national literature. On the other hand, from very early times, tlie direct religious consciousness of the Germans took a loftier flight in their investigation into and reflection upon the monuments of Christian Church Historv. In the great work of the Magdeburg Centuriatores^ written soon alter the commencement of the Keformation, a light was for 236' GOD IN IIISTOEY. [Book V. the first time thrown upon the wilderness of mediasval legends, misconceptions, and falsifications, which Lau- rentius Valla had in the preceding century begun to investigate. In addition to the love of truth that cha- racterizes the authors just named. Valla also displays a noble-minded breadth of intellect and sympathy with the more elevated phenomena of history. But we find all these excellences united to a degree not as yet surpassed up to our own day, in the ecclesiastical history written in Latin, by the elder Basnage, who had sought and found an asylum in the free country of Holland. His History of the Ancient Church up to the time of Gregory the Great not only unites the greatest research with the most extensive learning;, but deserves to be called a classical work, for its delineation of and critical insight into the tangled web of Christian affairs and events. That which was still lacking, namely, an account of the internal course of development in Christianity, has been under- taken and carried out up to the fifteenth century, with the most profound religious apprehension, by Neander, one of the most pious and learned men of our own times. The history of the Christian, contradistinguished from the mere ecclesiastical, development may be said to begin, properly speaking, with his work. Fleury is not to be compared with either of these two writers. Nor should we overlook the erudite disquisitions that have been written on the history of the Old Testament from Herder up to Ewald : historico-philosophic treatises which contrast equally with the mocking scepticism of Bayle and the sophistical special pleading by which Bossuet has earned for himself so high a renown on this field among Fi'ench writers. The religious consciousness revealed by that course of development shines out much more clearly from the historical truth than from legends and theological formulas. It will be sufiicient to refer our readers to the works of Creuzer and Welcker, Schlosser and Niebuhr, to show how true a sense of God's agency Ch4p. XII.] KISE OF PHILOSOPHIC HISTORY. 237 in human affairs has been manifested among the priests of learning, especially those of Germany. This reveals itself not only in their conscientious investigation of our historical records concerning the faiths of the ancient heathen world, but also in their attempts to trace the foot- prints of God's Spirit in those faiths. Differing from each other as these authors do in their subject-matter, methods, and views, they and their disciples agree in the earnestness of their moral and religious sentiment. It now only remains for us to say a few words on the progress which has been made in the systematic connec- tion of scientific research with philosophic thought in the j)resentment of universal history. But we may compress what remarks we have to offer within the briefer com- pass, as we shall have to treat of this subject more at length in our " Organon Eeale." The attempt to take a survey from the pinnacle of uni- versal history of the vicissitudes of man's earthly des- tinies, and discern the moral order of the world revealed therein, began already with the prime movers of the Eeformation. That work was in itself, both directly and indirectly, positively and negatively, a mighty stir- ring; of the rehg;ious consciousness in man. Each of the propositions which we have placed at the head of this chapter expresses this in its own particular mode. The presence of God within man came to be strenu- ously insisted on, and moreover discerned first in the rebukes of conscience, but no less also in the efficacy ascribed to faith in God's redeeming power ; — faith, there- fore, in the moral order of the world taken in its highest, that is to say, most spiritual aspect. In the next place, the prison walls of observances and conventional tradi- tions were thrown down, which had gradually transformed the history of the world and the history of God in it into a legend, and darkened or destroyed the belief in historical truth by the undue prominence assigned to the miraculous element. Lastly, the Bible was restored to 238 GOD IN HISTOKY. [Book V. the people, and therewith a due given to the understand- ing of that order as God's purpose of redemption. And thus the wall of partition that had separated the study of Scripture from the study of the great bygone world of antiquity fell away of itself, however much the theology of the day might strive to keep up the distinction between sacred and profane history, theological and secular philo- sophj^, as specifically different things. We have already seen how wide a sweep was taken by this new movement over all the relations of the public and all the depart- ments of the intellectual life of society at large. Not the least important effect of the reformation of religion was that which it exerted on what we may call the literature of contemplation ; and which, taken in its purest sense, is often called philosophy. In attempting to mark the prin- cipal phases assumed by this literature, we shall confine ourselves to that which concerns itself with the contem- plation of Mind in contradistinction to Nature ; taking up first the facts belonging to the strictly theological domain, and then those relating to philosophy in general, distin- guishing the realistic from the idealistic tendencies. The former class of facts will include the writings and utter- ances which base themselves upon faith, therefore predo- minantly upon the Bible ; the second, the realistic and idealistic philosophers of the world's history. CiiAr. XIII.] THE PROPHETS OF THEOLOGY. 239 CHAPTER XIIL THE PROPHETS OF THEOLOGY IN THE REFORMED CHURCH. The presence of God throughout the human world, not alone m the breast and conscience of the individual man, but also in a wise and merciful yet retributive guidance of human destinies, is with Luther a fundamental article of faith, the object of his innermost conviction. Two elements are united in Luther ; he is at once a theologian resting his faith upon the Bible, and at the same time a German patriot, sharing to the intensest degree in the weal and woe of his nation, and hence in that of the entire human family, needing redemption and destined to obtain that redemption. Now, inasmuch as Luther refers everything back to God and His eternal counsel of re- demption, confesses that this redemption is in the Son of God our Saviour, and firmly believes that it is to be made effectual to the human race through the Spirit of the Father and the Son working in the Church, we find in him all those three factors present, from whose mutual harmonious inter-action the Divine drama of the world's history has sprung, and from which a Divine life is poured down upon tlie earth in ever new and fresh streams. In scaling these heights of contemplation, Luther was protected from the danger of losing himself, like Tauler and the author of the '■'• Theologia Germanica,'' in the con- templative reveries of mysticism, by the strong and healthy sense of reahty which he always possessed. At the same time, these spiritual guides of his preserved him from falling into the abysses opened out by the doctrmes of election and reprobation when he dived into the depths 240 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. of the eternal decrees of God. Strongly, nay passion- ately, Augustinian and Anti-Pelagian as were his views, yet those two elements, that lay at the very root of his being, kept him from losing his way amidst the inferences that, to say the least of it, lay very close beside his Ancfustinian theories, and thus following Calvin into the bottomless gulf of assumptions, which, quite contrary to the intention of their author, fling the soul into a sullen despair or a deceptive self-security. In illustration of what we have said, we will present a few out of the many scattered utterances of the great Eeformer, premising that his chief claim to a pre-eminent place in the history of religious consciousness consists quite as much in the great practical work that he undertook in faith, as in the inner spirit of his theories of the world or his general religious beliefs. The Poem and Drama of the Divine Order of the World.^ " Joseph enacted a mighty cunning play with his brethren, for with a very friendly mien he brings them into despair, death and hell; then, when all is lost and they are thoroughly affrighted, he introduces the reconciliation into the play (as is wont to be done in the comedies too), dispels all the dangers, makes all things straight again. . . . From this we should mark that not only may we discover therein a similitude of the divine government, and see how God is wont to lead his saints ; but also how it may minister to our consolation : That is to say, that when things are so utterly evil and corrupt that we see no hope left of remedy or help ; then are we to know that now we have come to the crisis of the plot, that there will soon be a change, and things will be brought to a joyful issue. For it is with "the divine poem as St. Paul wittily says in Eph. ii. v. 10 : 'For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which Grod hath before ordained that we should walk in them.' He is the poet, we are the verses and cantos that He composes. Wherefore may we not doubt, that our works and all our doings are acceptable in the sight of Grod for the sake of the singular power and grace of faith." 1 See "Auslegung der Genesis," Kap. xliv. v. 17. Walch ii. 2411. Chap. XTII.] LUTHER ON THE WORLD'S MORAL ORDER. 241 Oocfs Presence in the Creation and in Man. " Grod is not confined to any place, nor is He excluded from any. He is in all places, nay even in the meanest creatures, such as a leaf or a blade of grass, and yet He is nowhere. Nowhere ? Understand me, nowhere palpably or within limits. But He is in all places, for He creates, moves and upholds all things. But how is He in all creatures? In His own essence? Or in virtue of His almighty power? He is on both wise in every creature ; for, as we have said. He creates, moves, and upholds all things. The others, the creatures, act according to their properties, but Grod in His own presence and essence. . . . If God was in the womb of the virgin, in presence and essence, then so is He also in every creature, for the two are spoken of after the same fashion. Then said one of those present: Then is He in the devil ? Yea, said Dr. Luther, in hell too, in His essence, as St. Paul testifies, 2 Thess. i. 9 : ' Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power;' and Ps. cxxxix. v. 8 : * If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.' "' The Mysteries of the Moral Order of the World. *' If one ask thee: Why does God decree that men's hearts should be hardened and they should fall into eternal perdition? Then ask thou: Why has not God spared His own Son, but given Him up for us all to the most shameful death upon the cross, which surely is a more certain sign of love towards us poor miserable men, than of wrath and hatred against us. . . . Wherefore we ought to discern, to lay to heart, and ever to remember that the goodness and mercy of the Father towards this wicked, godless world is immeasureably great. . . . Where- fore we ought not to fix our thoughts so continually on the fact how dreadfully human natui^e has been corrupted and blinded by Adam's fall. ... but rather on this, that the loving God has Avilled that all should take place as it has done. Wherefore be thou content with His good pleasure.^ It is our Lord God's use and wont to let His power and might be made perfect and stronsr in and throucfh weakness. . . . He did not create man the first or early in creation, but He made the earth beforehand. 1 " Tischreden," ed. Gerlach, xxiv. S. 47 fg. 2 Ibid. S. 48. VOL. in. R 242 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. Even so doth He at first deposit and conceal within the earth the shoot that is not intended to be a tree just yet." ^ " One asked Dr. Martin whether the word ' harden ' is to be understood literally, just as it stands, or after a figurative and metaphorical fashion ? Then he answered and said : We must understand it literally but not actually, for God works and does nothing evil, but through His almighty power He works all things in all, and as He finds a man, so does He work in him. Thus with Pharaoh, who was evil of nature, it was not God's fault but his own that he always continued to be evil and to work evil. But he was hardened in this sense, that God did not hinder his impious undertaking by His Spirit and grace, but let him go on and take his own way. But why God did not hinder or prevent him, it is not meet for us to ask, for that little word * why ? ' has led many souls away to their perdition. It is too high for us to explore." "^ " When God is minded to punish or utterly destroy a kingdom, land or nation. He begins by taking away pious. God-fearing teachers and preachers. In the same way He takes away wise God-fearing rulers and counsellors, understanding and experi- enced warriors, and other honourable people. See Is. iii. 2. Then do the multitude grow secure and light of heart; they follow their own fancies, they no longer crave after pure godly doctrine, nay, they despise it and fall into blindness; they regard neither punishment, discipline, nor honour, but practise all manner of sin and vice, and this brings about a lawless, pro- fligate, devilish state of things (as we now, alas ! see and experi- ence), that cannot long endure. Wherefore I fear lest the axe be already laid to the root of the tree, to the end that it may shortly be hewn down. May our gracious God remove it in His mercy, that we may not live to see and witness such a calamity." ^ Atnarantli and Christianity. " The Amaranth grows in the month of August, and is rather a stalk than a flower, suffers itself to be easily plucked, and grows quickly and luxuriantly again. And then, when all the flowers are over, if this stalk be sprinkled with water and made damp, it turns green and beautiful again, so that we can weave chaplets thereof in the winter time. Hence is it named amar- anth, because it neither fades nor withers. I know no better ^ " Tischreden," S. 67. ^ j^ia. S. 58. ^ i^id. S. 56. Chap. XIII.] LUTHER ON THE CHURCH. 24$ similitude for the Church than this amaranth, the flower which we call ' Thousand-Beauties.' For although the Church washes her robes in the blood of the Lamb, as it is written in the first book of Moses and in the Revelation of St. John, and is coloured with red, yet is she more beautiful than any Estate or Assembly on earth. And she alone loves the Son of God, forasmuch as she is his loving bride, in whom alone He taketh pleasure and joy, on whom alone hangs His heart, while He rejects and feels nought but displeasm-e and loathing towards those who despise or corrupt the gospel. Moreover, the Church readily suffers itself to be broken off and plucked, i. e. she is gladly submissive and obedient to God under the cross ; is patient, and grows again speedily and flourishes ; that is to sa}-, she draws great profit therefrom, inasmuch as she learns thereby to know God pro- perly, to call upon Him, to confess true doctrine openly, and brings forth many lovely, noble virtues. Lastly, her substance and stock remains whole and cannot be uprooted, however man may rage and storm against certain of her branches, and tear them off. For just as amaranth or ' thousand-beauties ' neither fades nor withers, so can man never succeed in extirpating and destroying the Church. What can be more marvellous than the amaranth ? When it is sprinkled with water, and laid therein, it becomes fresh and green again just as though it arose from the dead. Thus we ought to harbour no doubt that the Church will come forth to life again, when she is awakened by God out of the grave, and live eternally to laud, praise, and glorify the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His Son, our Saviour and Eedeemer, together with the Holy Ghost. For albeit other empires, kingdoms, principalities, and dominions have their vicissitudes, and soon like the flowers fade away and fall ; yet this kingdom which is rooted so deep and rises so high, cannot be uprooted or overthrown by any might or violence, but en- dures eternally." ' We must now turn to Calvin. That the creation is the glory of God, and the redemption of man fi'om sin is the eternal decree of God ; these are the two root-ideas of the great French Eeformer, from which is to be de- duced, and by which we are to interpret, his whole con- sciousness respecting the Divine dealings. A few w^ords 1 "Tischreden," S. 153. B 2 244 GOD IN HISTOKY. [Book V. taken from his immortal work, " The Christian Insti- tutes,'" may serve to illustrate our thought. In the second chapter of the First Book, in giving the reasons for be- lieving in God as our Creator and Eedeemer, he com- mences his argument thus : — " Although our mind cannot perceive God without wor- shipping Him in some sort, yet it will not be enough to acknowledge Him as the sole object that ought to be adored and invoked of all, unless we are at the same time persuaded that He is the Source of all Grood, so that we seek for no good otherwise than in Him. My meaning is this, that we ought to adore Him, not only because He sustains this universe which He has created by His infinite power, governs it by His wisdom, preserves it by His goodness, while He more especially watches over the human race with righteousness and judgment, sustains it with mercy, protects it with His mighty defence, but because outside of Him no drop either of wisdom and light, or of righteousness or power, or integrity, uprightness and truth will be found that has not flowed out from Him and of which He is not the source ; so that we may learn to expect and to pray for all things from Him, and to receive them with thankfulness as coming from Him. For this sense of the goodness of Grod is for us the true teacher of that piety from which religion takes its birth. Now what I call piety is a love united with reve- rence, produced in us by the recognition of His benefits. For from such recognition of Grod as the sole Good, follows the voluntary surrender of our whole soul. ... It is all the more important to keep fast hold of this, because all without distinc- tion adore God, bat very few pay Him this inward reverence ; for everywhere there is a great parade of outward observances, but the integrity of the heart is very rare." This was written at Basle in 1536, in a work which is dedicated to Francis I. " The most Christian King and his own Prince." In the propositions just quoted lies the deepest ground of the intuitiveness of our religious consciousness as a sense of the presence of God in tlie creation and in humanity ; namely, the recognition and acknowledgment of God as the highest Good, and the Eternal Love ; and Chap, XIII.] CALVIN OX THE DIVINE LOVE. 245 at the same time also the faith that these truths reveal and attest themselves not only in the creation, but also more especially in humanity. For what else could be the meaning of the language held by Calvin respecting that decree of God and the right mode of understanding it ? It is from this starting-point that Calvin arrives at his ideal of the kingdom of God, or the realization of the gracious will and eternal decree of God. This second thought he unfolds in his third Book. After explaining the Lord's Prayer as two tables, each containing twice three petitions, and teaching that in both we beg for that which it is God's will to do, he shows the concord of the two, and then proceeds to expound the first table, treating of the second petition — " Thy kingdom come " — in the following terms : — " After it has thus been bidden to us to entreat Grod that He will put down and at last wholly destroy whatever dishonours and pollutes His holy name, this petition is here added, which says the same thing in other words. Grod's kingdom is there where men deny themselves and despise the world and a worldly life, cleaviiig only to Grod's righteousness, that they may strive to attain to a heavenly conversation. Hence no one can rightly- put up this prayer who does not begin with himself, and make it his endeavour that he may be purged from all the stains which hinder the tranquil growth of the kingdom of God within him, and mar its purity. Now, since the Word of Grod is like a royal sceptre, we are by these words commanded to svipplicate that God through His Holy Spirit will incline all hearts and minds to a willing obedience. The second object of the prayer is, that God will humble the wicked, restrain their crimes, and break their pride. Daily should we pray that God will gather to Himself Churches out of the ends of the earth, that He will go on to plant and multiply them ; that He will enrich them with His gifts, that He will establish lawful order in them, but that He will on the contrary cast down the enemies of true piety, bring their counsels to nought, and confound their devices. From this it is abundantly clear that it is not in vain we are bidden to strive after a daily progress ; for it never stands so with human doings that they need no further purification aud sanctitication to shine forth in perfect glory. The fulness of 246 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. tiiis glory is reserved for the coming again of our Lord. Then, as St. Paul says, will ' Gfod be all iu all.' " ' Thus it is God's will that the reign of goodness should ever increase ; but the growth of this kingdom depends on the honest strivings of those who are truly pious, to make progress themselves on personal piety, and on the belief that God will destroy evil, till at last all things shall be in harmony with the Divine will. This. passage alone suffices to supply us with two re- flections bearing on our purpose. Fii'st, that the French Eeformation too, — a spiiitual movement which, having ex- tended from Geneva to Holland and England, has proved itself the most fruitful of all those movements, and become the parent of political liberty over all the earth, — was originally founded on the belief in the actual agency of God in human affairs. For it seeks the unity and progress of the human development in the eternal counsels of God, as a counsel of eternal goodness. Secondly, that Calvin recognized redemption to be the inmost kernel of the decree of God, and made it and its realization dependent on free-will, — the voluntary offering up of Self. Thus, if in Calvin's doctrine of Election we find some conditional expressions of St. Paul relating to the history of the Jewish kingdom of God pursued into their extremest logical consequences in such a manner as to make the reprobation of individuals form a part of the Divine decree, we can but say that in this instance Calvin, like Augustine, has made shipwreck in the attempt to connect his exegesis with his speculative philosophy ; and that Calvin, more especially, has in so doing been unfaithful to his highest inspirations. It is as perfectly possible to assert this without thereby admitting one's self to be a Pelagian or semi-Pelaa^ian as it is to de- nominate the so-called Athanasian Creed a declaration of intellectual bankruptcy, without being on that account in any sense an Arian. Pelagius and Arius ignored alto- » " Christian Institutes," vol. iii. p. 20, § 42. Chap. XIII.] CALVIN'S DOCTRIXE OF ELECTION. 247 gether those facts which occasioned perplexity to Augus- tine and Athanasius. Further, it is possible, though not without incurring the certain risk of being termed an unbeliever by fanatics, and an unphilosophical mind by theologians, to maintain and express the view we have done without being compelled to admit that on this point the teachings of Paul need to be corrected by those of Christ (though indeed that they should be so corrected was always the Apostle's own wish and intention.) For we deny that St. Paul's language justifies those unconditional inferences, if it be taken in connexion with its context, which is indeed an essential requisite in all exposition. Were it otherwise, we should be forced to declare plainly that, judging his doctrine from the standing-point of uni- versal history, ^schylus and Sophocles, with the Greeks who believed in their teachings, possessed a far higher ap- prehension of God's ways than the Apostle of Jesus Christ. JSTot one of their heroes perishes without having incurred his doom by his own moral guilt. But a decree of reprobation passed from all eternity is really, notwith- standino; all ingenious devices and distinctions to dissfuise it, not essentially different ft'om tliat blind Fate which hurls men down to inevitable ruin. In other words, it does not differ essentially from that doctrine which it was the highest glory of the Hellenic tragic poets to have risen above. But what says the Scripture ? That God chose Moses, and that He blinded and hardened Pharaoh's heart, in order that he might plunge himself into perdi- tion,^ just as He chose Jacob and not Esau. Now does not this very comparison show us that we must understand the assertion respecting Pharaoh in the same sense as the otlier instances brouQ-ht forward ? Was not Pharaoh's heart hardened precisely in the same way that the poet repre- sents Creon's to have been, when he refuses to be moved by the counsel of the nation, the warning of Tiresias, or the heroic declaration of Antigone ? Why should we not ^ Cf. Rom. ix. with Exod. tu., viii., and ix. 248 GOD IN HISTORY, [Book V. tinderstand God's decree of reprobation as the persistence of tlie sinner in the resolve lie has once uttered ? An objector might indeed urge: " Perhaps Creon and Pha- raoh might have come to a better mind upon reflection, if God had left them time to do so." Nevertheless, their condemnation is just, for the crime has been already com- mitted which called down that judgment. It was an unlooked-for act of mercy on God's part that the temper of mind which issued in that crime had not already re- ceived its meet reward. God has elected Moses for the same reason that He elected Jacob — because they did not choke the divine seed implanted in their souls by self- seeking, but cherished it as a divine pledge, and lived a life of faith in the Spirit. But we do not hesitate to say that Christ has expressed that thought much more clearly and nobly and ir- respectively of all controversy with the Jewish cavillers, than His Apostle has done. We feel ourselves lifted into a higher region when we read His words to Nicodemus in the third chapter of St. John, or that discourse in the sixth chapter, where, under the image of eating His body. He enforces the doctrine of the new birth and the assimi- lation of the eternal divine will, which is a renunciation of the selfish free-will, and by that very fact constitutes the true freedom. These passages were the asylum in which Luther, by the help of Tauler and the " Theologia Gerinanica,'' took refuge from the extreme consequences of a doctrine which he, no less than Calvin, accepted. Thus we certainly agree with Schleiermacher when, in his acute Essay on the doctrine of Election,^ he attributes that doctrine to Luther also, and says, in conclusion : " If God have not foreseen all things, then He cannot have foreseen anything." But we do not find in that Essay (judging it by the standards of the United Evangelical Prussian Church, which is the ground Schleiermacher professed to take 1 Werhe, ed. 1819. " Theologie;' A. ii. s. 393-484. Chap. XIII.] HISTORY OF LUTIIERAXISM. 249 up) an adequate recognition of that other line of thought which in Luther's mind ran parallel to his doctrine of election. J^^ay, we are fain to confess that we also fail to find tliere an adequate recognition of the unambiguous verdict pronounced by the conscience of mankind. None of the more important Eeformed Churches have adopted Calvin's doctrine of eternal reprobation into their Con- fessions of Faith as an essential part of the doctrine of election ; while the German Churches, together with their most eminent representative thinkers, have most distinctly repudiated it. The bugbear of Pelagianism may be held up like a Gorgon's head to shield us from the rationalistic self-rigliteousness preached by the Jesuits ; but we ought to refrain from employing any such unworthy stratagem in a grave philosophic discussion carried on under a sense of responsibility to God and the cause of Christianity, and with a due appreciation of the present condition of exegesis and religious philosophy. After the death of Luther and Calvin, the Protestant world, and more especially the Lutheran portion of it, fell under the sway of scholastic dogmatists, who, even after the lessons taught by the experience of two hun- dred years, failed to perceive that Lutheranism was a system which had torn Germany to pieces, and which, under their hands, had become a lifeless petrifaction in a portion of the unhappy fatherland of the Eeformatiou, v/hile in Scandinavia, the ecclesiastical domination of the princes and the degenerate state of the laity liad led to similar results. It had escaped these theologians that all the Christian life which was yet giving any public tokens of its existence was to be found within the pale of the Calvinistic communion or in the little Lutheran body of the Moravians, who had accomplished a peaceful union with the Calvinistic or Eeformed Church.^ Meanwhile * In Germany the Cliurches of the Calvinistic Communion are termed " Reformed/' in contradistinction to the Lutheran Churches; but as this title ■would give rise to misconception in England, where we apply the term 250 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. these ultra-Lutlieran " watchmen of Zion " kept a most jealous eye upon all the deeper thinkers and more spi- ritually-minded Christians, who, like Johann Christian Arndt (1580), and, in later times, Speuer and Johann Gottfried Arnold, endeavoured, despite all the arts of persecution and calumny, to infuse the divine breath of spiritual religion into this formalistic Lutheranism with its intolerable clerical tyranny, and to revivify the formulas of scholastic theology with the spirit of the Gospel. In the midst of this dreadful period (which has not as yet received its due meed of reprobation) falls the tragedy of one of the deepest minds in the world's history, and one of the most pious hearts in Christendom. Jacob BoHME, the shoemaker of Gorlitz (born in 1575, died 1624), was a mystic, but at the same time a prophet for his own and future times, of the Divine Spirit in Humanity. In these qualities, singly and combined, the theosophist of Gorlitz far outshines all the other mystics before and after him. In liis conceptions of the world's order, he is far in advance of the spiritual mystics of the fourteenth century — Eccard, Tauler and their school — for he, unlike them, had witnessed the formation of churches which based themselves upon the inward disposition of the heart, and upon faith in the one sole Eedeemer. It was only during the last five years of his life (1619- 1624), that his writings flowed from his pen (his " Aurora " only had been composed somewhat earlier), but for many years, the worthy shoemaker, who stood in high esteem among his feUow-citizens, had been endeavouring to dis- cern the interpretation of the flashes of inspiration that came to him respecting God and the universe, through the study of the Bible and of certain authors, one of whom unfortunately was Theophrastus Paracelsus, regarded in that age as a high authority. Still Holy Scripture " Reformed " indiscriminately to all Protestant Communions, I always translate the German " Reformirte Gemeinderi " by the term " Calvinistic Churches."— Tk. Chap. XIII.] JACOB BOHME. 251 was all in all to Bohme, while the Person and work of Christ constituted its central point, and the Spirit of Christ was its interpreter. Thus the date of his writings coin- cides with the first years of that desolating Thirty Years' War against the Gospel which had just burst upon his then flourishing native land, while at the same date the spirit of the narrowest and most relentless Lutheran bigotry had incarnated itself in the person of the chief pastor of his city, Gregorovius Eichter, who, with his asso- ciates, condemned the humble Christian artisan to banish- ment. For all these rulers in Zion had, in the exercise of their official authority, excommunicated from the pulpit, and relentlessly cast out from human society, the man whom they could neither confute by argument nor move from his Christian calmness of temper.^ In the midst of all these afflictions, Bohme never lost his faith in the pro- gress of God's kingdom upon earth, and the ultimate triumph of the God of eternal love over the Devil and Antichrist. In his view, both these evil principles are identical with the selfisli or egotistic principle which desires to make itself the master of the world ; and their organs are all those authorities, secular and spiritual, which usurp the place of God ; in other words, usurp an arbitrary power superior to the laws, in order to persecute, after their own will, the children of God and to repress the workings of God's Spirit. His confession of this faith for life and death we may find in that marvellously pro- phetic prayer with which he concludes the tenth chapter of his treatise " On Electio?!.'' This book, which was written in the year before his death, is one of the clearest and most intelligible of his writings, and that which he himself seems to have designated as his princi23al work. The Sighs, the Wish, and Prophecy of the Author. " profound mercy of God, awake once more in us thy poor, perplexed, blind children, and overthrow the throne of Anti- * For a picture of his times, see " Christian Singers of Germany," p. 147. 252 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. Christ and the Devil, which he has reared upon hypocrisy, and let us behold once more thy countenance. Grod ! the time of thy visitation is indeed here, but who is there that discerns thy outstretched arm by reason of the boastful vanity of Antichrist, in the kingdom which he has made so strong for himself? Do Thou, Lord, destroy him and cast down his power, that thy child Jesus may be made manifest to all tongues and peoples, and that we may be delivered from the dominion, arrogance, and avarice of Antichrist. Hallelujah ! From the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof, does the Lord send forth the lightnings of His power and might, and who shall withstand Him ? Hallelujah ! Thine eye of love pierceth into every corner of the earth, and thy truth endureth for ever and ever. Halle- lujah! We are delivered from the yoke of the spoiler, and his power none shall ever build up again, for the Lord hath decreed it by His wonderful works ! Hallelujah ! " Bohme was enabled to rise above the doctrine of God's eternal decree of reprobation, because (following in the footsteps of Tauler and the author of the " Theologia Germanica "), he penetrated deeper than Luther and Calvin had done into the distinction between the Eternal and the Temporal, nor did he regard God as something foreign, external, subject to the conditions of Time, and separated by an impassable chasm from the human spirit. A fellow-feeling for universal humanity had thoroughly saturated and strongly coloured his theosophic specula- tion, his exegesis, ■ and his applications of Semitic modes of speech. He believed that the Eternal Word, who speaks directly in the human heart, showed His presence likewise in those enlightened heathens who strove to attain holiness of life and a knowledge of the Deity. According to him, the heathens had a perception of God, because they had brought with them into the natural life into which they had sunk, a powerful faith, and like the Jews, they were to become through the sacrifices which they offered in token of the surrender of their own self-will, partakers in the Spirit of the promised Eedeemer who was to come. Any deliverance from present evils, Bohme believes can Chap. XIII.] BOHME'S RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY. 253 proceed from nothing save a truly Christian self-devoted life, which should drive out the Devil and Antichrist, and should be combined with that true spiritual enlightenment which is destined one day to put an end to the continual wranojlino^ of the theolog-ians about the letter. This is his solution for the Babel-like confusion of language, through which the unspiritual letter has come to get the upper hand and given birth to a new Papal and Judaic tyranny. For illustrations of these statements we would more especially refer our readers to those of his writings which treat exclusively of spiritual topics and are not essentially defaced and obscured by the mystic and fanciful termino- logy of Paracelsus and of a necessarily unreal physical science. Among these I reckon more particularly (be- sides his " Treatise on Election "), his essays " On the New Birth,'' ^ and " The Testaments of Christ,'' ^ also the " Dialogue between an Enlightened and an Unenlightened Soul,"'^ the '■'• Essay on the Lord's Prayer," and lastly his '■' Theosophic Epistle." ^ Here we must content ourselves with a few extracts which immediately bear on the sub- ject under consideration, and seem best calculated to mark out the course of this rare luminary in the religious firmament of our Humanity, referring our readers, for a fuller exposition of our author's views, to Hamberger's excellent compilation entitled " The Doctrine of the Ger- man Philosopher, Jacob Bohme, presented in a systematic Abstract of his Writings."^ Time and Eternity are One. " He to whom Time is as Eternity, and Eternity as Time, he is freed from all strife." These words are not to be found in his published 1 See Werke, s. 1705-1736. « Ibid. s. 2G09-2712. 3 Ibid. s. 35.30-3546. " Ibid. s. 3709-3927. ^ " Die Lehre des deutschen Philosojj/ien Jacob Bohme, in einem systema- tischen Au! Luke xiv. 26. ^ Matt, xviii. 3. 3 John iii. 3, Chap. XIII.j BOIIME OX THE LATTER DAYS. 257 God and the Rulers upon Earth. *' Lordship doth indeed take its rise in the realm of nature, hut it may also very rightly have a place in Grod's kingdom, so long as the lord exercises his authority as a service in the king- dom of nature and not as though he were an independent deity, who doeth what he will." ^ " A prince or lord has no authority to shed blood except in obedience to the law of God, and if he so doth he is by Grod's law adjudged worthy of death. Kings and princes are simply officers set to uphold the ordinances of Grod's laws, and have no right to go beyond them without a divine command.^ . . . The oppressions of spiritual and secular lords are not founded on the law of nature, but of hell, where each being plagues, terrifies, tortures, and torments every other." ^ "A godless prince or nobleman may indeed of right remain in his office, but he serveth therein, not the love, but the wrath, of God." ' " Lucifer also was a sovereign and king in God's service. But when he turned his office to his own behoof he was cast out. Not but that he remained still a prince in his office, but it was in God's wrath, not in His love, that he was henceforth destined to serve Him." ^ In the Last Days God shall Reign upon the Earth. " There is still a wondrous age to come, when all things shall be changed. Many great mountains and hills shall then be cast down, and a fountain shall spring forth out of Zion, at which the poor and needy shall drink and be refreshed. Then shall the nations be led forth to pasture with a shepherd's stafif, and the shepherd shall rejoice with his flock in the great mercies of God. Silver and gold shall then be as common to all as in the days of Solomon ; and God's wisdom will govern the whole earth." ^ The Latter Days shall be full of Peace, Unity, and Knouiedge, " When the angel shall one day call the Turks to return again, they shall come in the lowly spirit of the lost son return- > Myst. xxxix. 32. ^ Tbid. xxxiii. IG. ^ Dreifaches Leben xv. 8. * Myst. Ixvi. 26. ^ Ibid. 24. ^ Vierz. Frag, xxxix. 5, 6. VOL. in. S 258 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. ing to his father, and then shall there be great rejoicing among Christ and his angels, because the dead are brought to life again and the lost are found. And althouwh the elder brother who hath abode in the letter, is angry because of the difference of form, yet that shall not matter to them, they shall rejoice with their father." ^ " The Jews have not been torn up by the root, but they must needs be blinded that their light may shine upon the heathen, until the time when these also shall become blind in the light of Abraham, as indeed is truly the case now. And then shall the light of Abraham arise again out of its own root, and lighten all the Gfentiles. Then shall Japhet dwell in the tents of Shem, and Israel shall be brought to the fount of mercy that is opened to all peoples." ^ " The power of the Highest has given to every object, to each according to its own nature, an indwelling perfection, and this is as yet latent in all things, but may in truth be laid open again by means of understanding and art, so that this primal virtue may overcome the evil that hath been kindled since. If Grod hath given us power to become His children, and to overcome this world, why not also to overcome the curse pro- nounced upon this earth ? Let no one deem that to be impos- sible ; nothing is needed for it but godly understanding and knowledge, and this shall blossom in the season of the lilies, bvit not indeed in Babylon."^ " Man does possess the power in so far as he works in obedi- ence to God as His instrument, to bring the earth, which is now under the curse, under the blessing, and out of the anguish of death to create a kingdom of the highest joy. Yet he can- not do this of himself, but his will doth co-operate with the Divine intelligence to this end, bringing together that which belongeth together, and so reducing all things to unity." * Had we space to enter into a more detailed account of the prophetic glimpses vouchsafed to man of God's pre- sence in History, we ought to add to these passages from the great theosophist, a few extracts from the wiitings of Gottfried Arnold, (Etinger, and Bengel, in order to present ^ Myst. xl. 90, 9] . ^ Ibid, xxxvii. 60. 3 Signat. xiii. 59-61. * Ibid, xi, 85. Cbap. XIII.] results OP THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 259 an adequate view of the succession of ideas in this scliool of tliinkers during the course of the eighteenth century. But this intellectual movement falls into insignificance compared to those which preceded and followed it. We have already, in our first Book, had occasion to refer to the profound hymn in which Arnold's poetry takes its loftiest flio'ht : — "How blest to all Thy followers. Lord, the road," ^ as presenting a sublime practical conception of the recon- ciliation of the apparent contradictions in the divine lead- ings of the individual soul, and of the race ; nay, as furnishing too, a solution of those complications which woidd seem to us to be retrograde steps in the history of the world. And in regard to this domain of thought also, it is very apparent that the miseries of the period in the midst of which Jacob Bohme was removed, had to a striking extent overclouded men's belief in the reality of God's agency in the present. What results there still remained to the German peoples of the mighty outburst of life that had taken place during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was gradually being drained away with the life-blood of the nation in that most horrible of all the religious wars that history records — the Thirty Years' War. When, after the peace of 1648, Germany, which had been rent asunder, devastated, trampled underfoot by Spain, France, and Austria, once more awoke to life, it was a barbarized, well-nigh desperate generation that had grown up. More- over, the population consisted mainly of httle scattered handfuls of people, who with difhcidty reared themselves up amidst the universal wreck, with views inevitably nar- rowed by the necessity of concentrating their minds upon the supply of their daily wants. Still they were not desti- tute of a hard- won erudition, but theology continually degenerated more and more into mere scholastic dogma- 1 See ^' Lyra Gtrmanica,''' vol, i, p. 175. s 2 260 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V, tism. Philology took refuge in free Holland, where Bayle too was allowed to carry on his critical researches, and the great Spinoza to utter his thoughts openly, despite of Synagogue and Synod. In the rest of Europe, under the influence of the French tongue and the French political and literary ascendancy, a conventional philosophy began to spring up, which at first presented itself timorously under a Semitic garb, and using the formulas of that hierarchy of which Bossuet was the prophet and Louis XIV. the idol. No one dared boldly to come out with free speculations on the actual conditions of the present. Eabelais had ven- tured to satirise them, but Descartes shrank back appalled by the terrors of excommunication and imprisonment, when, in unfolding his philosophical system of thought, he approached too near their verge. Thus it was no wonder that, even from the theological side, no prophetic glance was cast upon social realities. It belongs to another province of our enquiry to dis- cuss that gigantic movement wdiich after the Seven Years' War arose on the domain of mental activity, alike in the fields of critical, historical, and philosophical research, and no less on that of ethical speculation carried on with closer or more remote reference to the Bible ; and which continually tended more and more to assume the shape of a European School of thought. But very soon after the commencement of the nineteenth century, the divergent tendencies of the Rationalistic and Romantic Schools began to display themselves with their respective one- sidedness ; while, at a subsequent period, the compact between mysticism and hierarchism proceeded from the bosom of the Romantic School. The two great Masters of the Ideal Philosophy of Mind did indeed incidentally, from the speculative side, touch upon the problem lying before us, but without possessing the ability to satisfy the requirements of a positive theology even in the depart- ment of actual scholarship. It was in such a horizon that Schleiermacher appeared. Chap. XIIIJ SCHLEIERMACIIER. 261 Born in 1787, lie became a teacher of theology in 1804, and published the first edition of his great work " On Dogmatic Theology " {'■'•Die Christliche Glaubenslehre")^ in 1822. We find him in possession of a scientific philo- soj^hic system, and a critical acquaintance with philologic and dogmatic philosophy. It was not, however, in the contemplation of universal history, which always remained a foreign region to him, that he found the connecting link and reconciliation between the two, but in the rehgious experiences of the individual soul. In the pious atmo- sphere of the Moravian community, in which he had been educated, his mind had already opened to the perception of the directness of man's apprehension of God, under the form of man's innate sense of dependence. I^ow since in Christ is truth, and through His Spirit a personal rela- tionship between God and the individual believer sub- sists and is sustained, no system of doctrine can, in our author's view, be a truly Christian one which is not in harmony with the Gospel, and with that intuitive appre- hension of God, and whose essential agreement therewith cannot be demonstrated. But then Schleiermacher pro- ceeds to show that such a harmony does really subsist in the case of the Confessions of Faith put fortli by the various Protestant Communions, if we look to the points wherein they all agree, and not to those wherein they differ from each other. These latter, however, are pre- cisely points with respect to which Scripture and reason afibrd us no certain teaching, and which form no essential part of our intuitive religious consciousness. Now, while the other masters of philosophy restricted their walks within the sterile fields of speculation or lost themselves in the trackless wilds of mythology and alle- gory, Schleiermacher set himself to work upon the ex- position of the Gospels and other books of the New Testament, and laid down afresh the argumentative bases of a Christian and Scriptural theolog}% by applying his dialectic method to several of the most knotty points of 262 GOD IN HISTORY. [Boob. Y, philological and historical criticism which had been the perplexity of his theological predecessors. But it is in his '^Dogmatic Theology'' that we must seek the central point of his views respecting the relation of our religious consciousness to historical fact. On this point we can easily understand that it would be impossible for Schleier- macher to admire that coarse, equally unhistorical and unphilosophical fabric of thought in which divines had interwoven detached texts taken from the prophecies, or other typical Jewish allusions occurring in the Gospels and Epistles, into the very texture of the intellectual system of Christianity. But, on the other hand, we cannot but regret tliat instead of accepting the Judaic element in its typical character and relative significance, as one consti- tuent element in universal history, and thus rendering it susceptible of philosophical treatment, Schleiermacher, as though out of impatience, cuts off Christ and the essen- tials of His doctrine from the Old Testament altogether. In so doing, he did not reflect that without this root, neither Christ nor Christian doctrine could assume their proper place in the development of the world's history. The root-idea of the Ancient Covenant — that of the Eternal, or Jehovah — runs through all that Jesus terms " the Scriptures." So, too, the congregational life of the Church demands the belief in such a connection between the Old and New Testament ; and requires, moreover, that its members should have a direct, and not a merely second-hand acquaintance with the former ; for Jesus ex- pressly refers them to those Scriptures. Hence our verdict on one of the principal passages in Schleiermacher's Intro- duction cannot be doubtful, where he says : ^ — " The promise made to Abraham, in so far as it did receive a fulfilment in Christ, is yet only represented as containing a reference to Christ in the counsels of the Divine Mind alone, not in any pious apprehensions possessed by Abraham and his posterity." 1 See^Glatibenslehre:' Eiuleitung, §§ 12, 3. Chap. XIIL] SCHLEIERMACIIER ON THE PROPHETS. 263 Now in this passage, Sclileiermaclier has certainly had that stupendous saying of Jesus present to his mind, re- ported to us by St. John : " Abraham desired to see my day, and he saw it and was gkd," No doubt these words are to be taken in a spiritual sense, and only so become intelligible. For it was in the Spirit that Abraham beheld the future of God's kingdom ; and, consequently, the perfect personal Founder of that kingdom, and the de- velopment of His humanity — of His "Body" — among all nations of mankind. Now Schleiermacher did quite right to refrain from hanging upon this a chain of dogmatic propositions. But the assumption of an essential inward connection, consequently of an actual historical develop- ment is, nevertheless, involved in the admission that we cannot but ascribe to Abraham an inward apprehension of God's counsels of redemption. And that he had such an apprehension, the philosophy of the world's history would compel us to assume, even though these words of Jesus had not been transmitted to us. •Again (in paragraph 14, note to 3) our author proceeds to say, in reference to prophetic inspiration : — " As regards the Old Testament, the Prophecies cannot be understood alone, apart from the Law and the historical books ; while this whole, taken together, is so thoroughly theocratic that we are able to distinguish in it two poles, one of which attracts and the other repels the New Testament. Even supposing, however, that apart from the New Testament, it were possible to bring any one to a belief in tjie inspiration of the prophets (which, moreover, there would be no other means of effecting but by the prophet's own testimony that God's word had come to him), yet no faith in Christ as the ' end of the Law for right- eousness ' could be developed out of such a belief. On the contrary, we shall come nearer to expressing the whole truth if we say that we believe in the inspiration of the prophets solely en the ground of the use which Christ and the Apostles make of their prophecies." Now this we must dispute altogether. We only do. 264 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book Y. properly speaking, believe in tlie inspiration of the pro- phets, when we recognize that it really existed ; and, that it did so, we hold to be a simple historical fact. Hence, in respect to the development of man's religious consciousness, Schleiermacher holds the personality of Christ to be an absolutely originaP phenomenon (in which we agree with him so far as the infinite factor is opera- tive), but regards the epoch anterior to this revelation of Christ, as containing, on the Jewish side, two periods, viz. the Abrahamic and the Mosaic ; parallel with which Jewish revelation, he places the spiritual development of the heathens who were enlightened by God's Spirit.^ Evil, or the sin that is in the world, Schleiermacher conceives to be a necessary condition of the good. On this point he says:^ — " There is in the last resort no course open to i;s, but either on the one hand to assume the divine co-operation in all that happens alike, or on the other to maintain that evil is not in and for itself ordained of Grod at all, but is so onl}^ as a neces- sary condition of the good, and subsidiary to that." As the result of his profound analysis of the idea of redemption, Schleiermacher, at the close of his work, is brought to the assertion of two great theses :^ — " The Divine Wisdom is the First Principle which ordered this worlds and designed it to he the recipient of that Divine Self-impartation ivhich is effected in the Re- deinption.'" " The Divine Wisdom is the cause in virtue of which that worlds which is the theatre of Redemption, is also the absolute revelatio7i of the highest Being, and consequently good.'' In the commentary on these propositions he says : — " The immediate consequence of our thus regarding the Divine Love also under the aspect of Wisdom, is that we cannot possibly consider the totality of finite existence in its relation to 1 (I Xlrspriinglich,^' xm-derived — having no causal antecedents. — Tr. 8 See § 156, of. § 12, 2. » gee § 48, 2. * See § 168, 169. Chap. XIII.] SCnLEIERMACIIER'S VIEW OF EEDEMPTION. 265 our religious consciousness, except — and this connotation is always present to our minds when we use the expression ' world ' — as the absolutely self-consistent Divine Work of Art. For, as even in the domain of man, the correct and perfect outline of the idea of a work of art is the spontaneous product of wisdom, so that even the actual transactions can only be held to have their origin in wisdom in so far as they, both in their relative position in the whole life, and also in themselves, are capable of being regarded at once as works of art in themselves, and as parts of such a work of art, while the most perfect man would be one whose collective projects for works and deeds would form a complete Whole of communicated self-repre- sentation ; so is the Divine Wisdom also nothing else than the Divine Essence conceived in this absolute, not complex, but simple and originally complete, self-representation and self- impartation. . . . From this we can readily foresee that we shall by no means falsify our idea if we constantly im- port into it the contrast between ends and means. For the groundwork of this prevision is already laid in what has been just said. For even every human work of art approaches the nearer to perfection in proportion as it fulfils the idea of containing within itself no opposition of means to ends, but each portion simply sustains the relation of a part to the whole, and the means by which this is obtained are external to itself. And when this is seen in application to the whole of a human life, we discern a still higher example of perfection. How much more, then, should not the Divine wisdom so exclude this oppo- sition, that, since there is nothing external to the universe that could be employed as means, everything within its range should be so ordered that, considered in its connection with all the rest, it should simply sustain the relation of a part to the whole, while at the same time each, taken simply by itself, should be so completely at once means and end, that this mode of concep- tion should in each instance cease to be applicable and be mero-ed in the other ! " His concluding commentary on the Second Thesis runs thus : — " Here the Divine wisdom, regarded as an unfolding of Love, introduces us to the domain of Christian Ethics, inasmuch as the problem arises for us, how to further continually the recog- 266 GOD IN HISTORY. [B OOK nition of the universe as good, and gradually to bring all things to become the organ of the Divine Spirit, in conformity ■with the original underlying Divine Idea of the world's order, and thus place them in connection with the system of redemp- tion, so that we may attain to a perfect communion of life with Christ, both in so far as the Father hath put all things into His hand, and also in so far as He is ever shovvincr Him greater works than those which He has already beheld. Hence the universe can only be regarded as a perfect revelation of the Divine Wisdom in so far as the Holy Ghost, working through the Christian Church, manifests Himself as the ultimate energy in the moulding of the world." Thus in Sclileiermaclier we cannot but recognize the prophet who was the first to propound and carry into application the idea of the originality ^ of the religious con- sciousness in all its scope. And he has, moreover, appre- hended this consciousness as a sense of dependence organic- ally implanted in the soul and grounded on the order of the universe. JSTow this idea he has developed out of the self- consciousness of Jesus and the representation thereof given us by the Apostles, in such a manner as to escape contra- dictions and to demonstrate the contradictions into which previous theologians had fallen. The Eedemptiou is the fundamental thought of the world's order ; and in Christ, the Eedeemer has appeared. Thus the atonement has been given thi'ough One partaking of human nature. Now upon this basis Schleiermacher has proceeded to link his system of Ethics on to the results of his dogmatic theology, such as we liave described them. Both must be regarded as a permanent world-historical boon to man- kind. He has built upon a -firm foundation, and has not completed his superstructure, but rather challenged attention to the necessity of carrying on that superstruc- ture. This is particularly the case with his final words respecting the Divine Trinity. We pass on now to consider the Prophet of man's reli- gious consciousness to the United States. — Channing, a 1 " Ursp)-unffKchkeit" the iin-derived or annate nature. — Tr. Chap. XIII.] C'HANNING'S VIEW OF CHRISTIANITY. 267 citizen of New England, bom in 1780, and the pastor of a church in Boston up to the time of his death, in 1842. He entered public life as the minister of a Unitarian con- gregation, and concurred with Locke and the great Newton in rejecting the Athanasian version of the teach- ings of the Bible concerning Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, deeming it at once unscriptural and repugnant to reason. But he was far from setting up an Arian formu- lary of belief in the place of that adopted by the Cliurch. In his view all dogmas whatsoever are but an imperfect mode of expressing scriptural truths, and constitute but an inadequate representation of the revelation vouchsafed to us in the Bible. Indeed, according to Channing, Chris- tianity consists in a divine life and a spiritual energy, which are designed for the whole family of man. In his view, the Christian fellowship is grounded on that filial relation- ship to God which is the root of the true brotherhood of men, and on a living and active faith manifesting its pure effects in love to the brethren, and a life of self-sacrifice for mankind. This doctrine he found running through the whole Bible, but pre-eminently conspicuous in the writ- ings of the New Testament, and above all in the Gospels. The Bible was to him the written word of divine revela- tion ; not a doctrinal system, but on the contrary assuming the facts of religious and moral consciousness. In the argumentative workinar out of these views, we must not indeed expect from our author any profound metaphysical thoughts, or wide range of speculation. Neither shall we find any special acumen displayed in the historical criticism of the sacred books. But we do find an almost invariably sound common sense, guided by the most pure and earnest morality, quickened by a burning zeal for the promotion of godhness in his fatherland and among mankind at large, and inspired by a self-sacrificing love for his neighbour ; while with all tliis is combined a sober historical faith in God's word contained in the Bible. Hence his chief excellence in the exposition of the Bible 268 GOD IN HISTOKY. [Book V. lay in two points. The first is, that while he upholds to the fullest extent the principles of rational interpretation, he does find in Scripture that essential and authoritative subject-matter of religion, which the rationalistic school of Unitarians are only wilUng to recognize as accidentally and casually contained therein, and to acknowledge only in so far as it does not transcend the limits of ordinary practical morality. The second is, that in his view the great Church of Humanity, with her reason and conscience, stands towards the Bible in the position of the judge to- wards the code which he has to expound. But with him this Church includes the whole family of man, with its lawfully ordered division into kindreds, races, and polities. Now, since Channing spent his life in indefatigably and fearlessly inculcating these principles by speech and writing upon his fellow-countrymen, the influence of his personality upon all Christians speaking the Enghsh tongue can hardly be estimated too highly. And hence we can discern how it has come to pass that the man whom the older Unitarians of America and England re- garded with mistrust, and Calvinists and Methodists with abhorrence, while the friends and defenders of slavery at once feared and hated him, no less on account of his moderation and calmness than on account of his classic eloquence, which reminds us of the most admirable models of antiquity, has already, within a few years after his death, come to be revered in every quarter of his vast fatherland, as a grand Christian saint and Man of God, nay also, as a prophet of the Christian conscious- ness regarding the future. And, without doubt, he is destined to exert a still increasing; influence throushout the United States, on the spiritual conception of Chris- tianity, and the practical application of its principles. Channing is an antique hero, with a Christian heart. He is a man like a Hellene, a citizen like a Eoman, a Christian like an Apostle. People take him for what he is not, when they treat him as a learned and speculative Chap. XIII.] THE MEANS OF PRO^IOTIXG CHRISTIANITY. 2G9 theologian. Had he been such, he would have attempted to reconcile the two ideas of redemption and of atonement, and would have succeeded in conceiving of and repre- senting Christ as the Eedeemer in his Divine majesty and unique nature, — a desideratum not yet supplied in the Unitarian Churches of England and America, and which is probably the cause of their declining condition. From what has been said, it will be seen that we are not to expect of this prophet any scientific solution of the problem of God's presence in Humanity. But the consciousness of that Divine Presence radiates from him so soon as he touches any practical question, and not only reveals itself in his incorruptible love of truth and his moral courage, but also in his treating every subject from a thoroughly religious point of view. This is most con- spicuously evident in his constantly viewing religion as an individual concern, and his making the sense of personal moral responsibility the groundwork of all culture. His conviction of the necessity of a progressive reforma- tion, to be effected by throwing down all distinctions be- tween the clergy and the laity in regard to the claims of religion upon the whole man, and thus at once enlarging the scope of its moral requirements and enhancing their stringency, is thus eloquently expressed in an Essay on '-''The Means of promoting Christianity:'' — " The truth is, Christian nations want a genuine reformation, one worthy of the name. They need to have their zeal directed, not so much to the spreading of the Grospel abroad, as to the apphcation of its plain precepts to their daily business, to the education of their children, to the treatment of their domestics and dependants, and to their social and religious intercourse. They need to understand, that a man's piety is to be estimated, not so much by his professions or direct religious exercises, as by a conscientious surrender of his will, passions, worldly interests and prejudices, to the acknov>'ledged duties of Chris- tianity, and especially by a philanthropy resembling in its great features of mildness, activity, and endurance, that of Jesus 270 GOD m HISTORY. [Book V. Christ. They need to give up their severe inquisition into their neighbours' opinions, and to begin in earnest to seek for themselves, and to communicate to others, a nobler standard of temper and practice than they have yet derived from the Scrip- tures. In a word, they need to learn the real value and design of Christianity, by the only thorough and effectual process; that is, by drinking deeply into its spirit of love to God and man." In behoof of such a true, progressive mortal Eeforma- tion, he demands liberty — liberty, civil and political — but springing from the spiritual freedom of Christianity. Thus, in his " Sermon on Spiritual Freedom,'' he says : — *' Such is the spiritual freedom which Christ came to give. It consists in moral force, in self-control, in the enlargement of thought and affection, and in the unrestrained action of our best powers. This is the great good of Christianity, nor can we conceive a greater within the gift of God. I know that to many this will seem too refined a good to be proposed as the great end of society and government. But our scepticism can- not change the nature of things. I know how little this free- dom is understood or enjoyed, how enslaved men are to sense, and passion, and the world ; and I know, too, that through this slavery they are wretched, and that while it lasts no social in- stitution can give them happiness. " I now proceed, as I proposed, to show, that civil or poli- tical liberty is little worth, but as it springs from, expresses, and invigorates this spiritual freedom. I account civil liberty as the chief good of states, because it accords with, and minis- ters to energy and elevation of mind." In his " BemiarliS on the Life and Character of Napo- leon Buonaparte," he says : — '* Now the great truth on which the cause of virtue rests, is, that rectitude is an eternal, unalterable, and universal law, binding at once heaven and earth, the perfection of God's character, and the harmony and happiness of the rational creation ; and in proportion as political institutions unsettle this great conviction — in proportion as they teach that truth, Chap. XIII.] CHANNING ON POLITICS. 271 justice, and philanthropy are local, partial obligations, claiming homage from the weak, but shrinking before the powerful — in proportion as they thus insult the awful and inviolable majesty of the Eternal Law — in the same proportion they undermine the very foundation of a people's virtue." And in yet stronger language does he seek to enforce tlie same principles on his fellow-citizens as a divine com- mand of Christianit}^, in his Essay " On the Duty of the Free States of North America" in which he says : — " The nation is not the fountain of right. Our first duties are not to our countiy. Our first allegiance is not due to its laws. We belong first to Grod, and next to our race. We were indeed made for partial, domestic, and national ties and affec- tions, and these are essential means of our education and hap- piness, in this first stage of our being ; but all these are to be kept in subjection to the laws of universal justice and humanity. They are intended to train us up to these. In these consists our likeness to the Divinity." . . . " Man is not the mere creature of the State ; Man is older than nations, and he is to survive nations. There is a law of humanity more primitive and divine than the law of the land. He has higher claims than those of a citizen. He has rights which date before all charters and communities ; not conven- tional, not repealable, but as eternal as the powers and laws of his being." . " This annihilation of the individual, by merging him in the State, lies at the foundation of despotism. The nation is too often the grave of the man. This is the more monstrous, be- cause the very end of the State, of the organisation of the nation, is to secure the individual in all his rights, and espe- cially to secure the rights of the whole. Here is the funda- mental idea of political association. In an unorganised society, with no legislation, no tribunal, no umpire, rights have no security. Force predominates over right. This is the grand evil of what is called the state of nature. To repress this, to give right the ascendancy over force, this is the grand idea and end of government, of country, of political constitution. And yet we are taught that it depends on the law of a man's coun- try, whether he shall have rights, and whether other States shall regard him as a man I The right of the individual lies at 272 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V. the ver}'' foundation of civil society, and society, when it is properly constituted, confirms those rights instead of confiscat- ing them." This appeal to his nation concludes with the following words : — *' I honour the passion for power and rule, as little in the people as in the king. It is a vicious principle, exist where it may. If by democracy be meant the exercise of sovereignty by the people, under all those provisions and self-imposed re- straints which tend most to secui-e equal laws, and the rights of each and all, then I shall be proud to share its name. But the unfettered multitude is not dearer to me than the unfettered king. And yet, at the present moment, there is a tendency to remove the restraints on which the wise and righteous exertion of the people's power depends." If such a man, whose Avhole hfe and conversation, in the sisht of all his fellow-citizens, stand in absolute corre- spondence with the earnestness of his Christian language, and are without a spot, be not a prophet of God's pre- sence in humanity, I know of none such. But, in the sphere of theology, his distinguishing prophetic idea is this, that the Christian fellowship has no other ground than the self-consciousness of Jesus and the Gospel He brouo-ht, and that the intellectual systematizing of meta- physical points is neither the only nor the highest symbol of this fellowship. On the contrary, in his view, Chris- tianity is intended to sanctify all the relations of actual daily life, and all civil and ecclesiastical ordinances ought to be directed to that end as their divinely given aim, while preserving equal respect to tlie rights of the Indi- vidual and of the Community. Such, as it appears to me, is Channing's significance in the w^orld's history. We must now, lastly, say a few words respecting the prophets of the Philosophy of History. This last-born impulse of the human spirit striving to search out the deep things of God, is the loftiest and noblest effort of reason among the Christian Aryans, and is their special Chai'. XIII.] THE rillLOSOrHY OF HISTORY. 273 prerogative, since even the Hellenes, the Masters of phi- losophy, were not in a position to raise their contem- ])lations to this height. Properly speaking, this sublime development of thought can only be said to begin witli the early part of the eighteenth centiny ; for Bacon^ who wrote in the beginning of the seventeenth, had not advanced beyond a presentiment of tlie right method of conducting researches into universal history, and thus did but point out the true road to a connection of the historical with the speculative element. It was Leibnitz who first conceived the idea of a philosophy of humanity, and laid down several of its most important bases, speculative and historical. After him, the two paths diverge and lie apart. Vico, of Naples, the author of the '■'- Scienza Nuova" (1724 and 1742), who occupies an entirely independent position, is decidedly reahstic. The Introduction to that work pre- sents us with the groundwork of his system after a some- what bizarre fashion, in the shape of an explanation of an allegoric hieroglyphical engraving, which faces the Title- page. But we can easily see through this slight veil, and discern tliat Vico was in possession of a thoroughly ela- borated theory of the internal correlation of the world's history, although, from insufficient knowledge of tlie facts, he clothed this theory in a fantastic garb, and filled up its gaps with conjectures ; winch latter process in the language of modern philosophy would be termed " con- struction of the world's history." One of his fundamental views is, that language is the primeval title-deed of the unity of the human race, and the voucher for its progress in civilization ; another is his observation of the points of contact between the Mosaic and the Eoman legislation. In treating this latter subject, he takes occasion to display more particularly the various fundamental forms which both political and civil legislation have assumed, and recog- nizes in their progress at once a divine order and a process of evolution intelligible to our reason. In the details, with VOL. III. T . 274 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book V, the exception of what is connected with Eoman jurispru- dence, our author, as we have hinted, often runs into fantastic vagaries, owing to his deficiency in erudition and critical ability. Yet the circumstance that so peculiar a mind, to whom the achievements and aspirations of Leibnitz were utterly unknown, should be so powerfully impressed by these considerations, is a very significant testimony to the demand proclaiming itself from the most opposite quarters, that the sense of God's agency in history possessed by the Christian world should be made the subject of intelhgent study, in the hope of thereby discovering a connecting link between a pliilosophy of the human spirit, and a history of the world. While quite unacquainted with Vico, the great Montes- quieu gives utterance to similar ideas, and with him like- wise, they are entirely the outgrowth of his own mind. In the Introduction to his " Esprit des Lois " (published in 1748), the following theses are enunciated by the renowned President, so profoundly versed in the world and in juris- prudence, who is yet at the same time a master of pictur- esque French prose, a witty delineator and critic of the hollow social conditions of his nation in that day, and an unsurpassable analyst of the internal history of Athens and Eome : — " The laws, in the most comprehensive acceptation of that word, are the necessary relations which flow out of the very nature of things. In this sense all existences have their laws ; the Grodhead has its laws, the visible universe, superior beings, animals, man — all have their respective laws. Thus there is an original Eeason, and the laws are the relations which that Eeason bears towards the various existences, and also the relations of these existences to each other. Intelligent beings may have laws which they have made for themselves, but they have also laws which they have not made. Their relations with the laws implanted within them subsisted before these self-made laws. . . . Man is liable to fall into error through the limited range of his mental vision and by a thousand passions. Eeligion is designed to remind him of his Creator, Philosophy of him- self, while the laws are intended to remind him of his duties." Chap. XIII.] VICO AND MOXTESQUIEU. 275 The unequal and one-sided manner in wliich Montes- quieu works out this thesis is well known ; especially his neglect of the inward, truly etliical element in the State, and his representation of constitutional liberty rather as the balance of three co-ordinate powers, than as a system of free self-government. Still the religious consciousness implied in those great theorems is not entirely absent in any part of his work. It was not his fault, that in 1789, those avIio professed to walk in his footsteps failed to insist upon the duties, while they insisted on the rights of man; or that, in 1815, they founded a constitutional monarchy destitute of free self-government. That the German Eomanticists generally think so slightingly of Montesquieu, is partly the fruit of ignorance, partly, as in the case of Adam Muller, of dishonesty. His animad- versions, and those of preceding and quite recent juris- consults, spring from enmity to freedom, whether political or that of tlie mind, on which the former depends ; hence, w^e may say in the best case, spring from a base servility of mind. From our point of view, the fact is of most decisive significance that while the Eomanic propliets, Vico and Montesquieu, in laying the foundations of their theories of the universe, do indeed acknowledge God and Chris- tianity, yet, in raising their superstructure, they take their stand exclusively upon law, and not upon religion. They stand on the defensive against the claims of tlieir Church and Theology. This is the universal and neces- sary attitude of Eomanic philosophers towards tlie popu- lar religion. As laymen, they have no riglit to know much about it, still less to enquire for themselves into anything affecting it ; and, at all events, must not attempt to discuss it from their philosophical point of view. Hence, they come to find themselves out of harmony with the Semitic element and with dogmatic theology; both which, nevertheless, form tiie sources of a considerable proportion of the jurisprudence of Christian Europe. T 2 276 , GOD IN HISTORV. [Book V. As regards the younger Eealists^ of the French school, the present writer has already, in 1852, presented the results of his acquaintance with them, up to our own times, and has very little now to add to what he has there said. It behoves him, however, to mention the most important work of research on this topic, the " Etudes sur la philosojyhie de Vliistoire de rhumanite," by M. Brasseur, Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Ghent ; a work replete with most instructive researches, and particularly noteworthy on account of the promi- nence which it assio;ns to the relictions element in the development of Humanity. The courageous stand which its author has made against the attacks of his bishop are well known. The philosopher Lamennais (whom we have discussed more at large in " Hi2:)polytus and his Age ") has left his great philosophical work unfinished — we may well con- jecture not unintentionally ; for its conclusion was incon- sistent with its outset, and the socialistic and industrial elements had acquired a disproportionate preponderance in it. But we think we can scarcely err in supposing that a most admirably and originally expressed passage in the autobiography of the Countess Dudevant (George Sand)^ is a swan-song, which has dropped from the lips of this singular and earnest-minded man : nor that it contains his true and final confession of faith with respect to the Divine agency in history : — " According to the theory of progress, Gfod is one, as PIu- manity is one. There is but one religion, one truth, older than Man. But this is as eternal as Gfod, and its various revelations in ]Man and through Man constitute relative and progressive truth, corresponding with the varying phases of history. No- thing can be simpler, grander, nor more logical than this con- ception. Holding this for our guiding clue in one hand — the ^ The term '^ Realists " is here used in opposition to the " Idealists/' not to the " Nominalists."— Tr. ^ See -^ Ilistoirc dc ma Vie" torn. iv. p. 195. Leipsic edition. CiiAr. XIII.] THE GERMAN REALISTIC SCHOOL. 277 eternally 'progressive Humanity ; and in the other, for our torch — God eternally self-revealing and to he revealed hy Man; it is no longer possible to stumble and lose one's way amid the history of mankind, for that is the history of God Himself in His relations to us." Lamennais' posthumous work on Dante gives him occasion to present some profoimd reflections on the relation of the Middle Ages, and of the politico-religious philosophy of Dante, to the conditions essential to the development of Christian Humanity, But the deepest and truest outpouring of his heart on the highest topics of reflection would seem, according to what we learn, on reliable authority, to be contained in his correspondence, which is announced to be nearly ready for publication. The Second Realistic School is throughout Teutonic, and for the most part German, and this has sprung up and maintained itself by the side of the great speculative School of the critical Idealists — Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. In this School the brightest luminary is Herder, whose not yet surpassed essay, entitled " Ideas towards the Philosophy of the History of Mankind" has not been Avithout influence over the Eomanic nations likewise. By his side stands Lessing, who, however, occupies an altogether independent position, and com- bines in a manner peculiar to himself an idealism like that of Leibnitz, with a realism based on research. With these, too, we must class the Apostle of religious conscious- ness in art — the immortal Winckelmann. The German Eomanticists, with the two Schtegels and Gorres at their head, display a similar intellectual tendency, but co- loured by their leanings towards hierarchism. With all these writers, and no less in William von- Humboldt'' s disquisitions on universal history, and especially on lan- guage, the predominating conception is that of universal history, with the sense of a divine order therein, regards I as a Kosmos. And, lastly, the great hero of the Kosmos of Nature, Alexander von Humboldt, has in nearly all 278 GOD IN HISTORY. * [Book V. those portions of his world-embracing researches which have any relation to the human race, expressed in elo- quent and exalted terms the same faith in the existence of a spiritual Kosmos, and a consciousness of the eternal and iutellio'ible laws Avhich govern its motions. All the men whom we have named, and all who have a right to be classed together with tliem as prophets, agree in pos- sessing this faith and this consciousness. The Idealistic School had already in Kant attempted a comprehension of the facts of history within the domain of mental philosophy. Such an effort is visible not only in Kant's early written " Thoughts on a Philosophy of the History of Mankind regarded from a cosmopolitan point of view'' (1758), but also in his '■'• Religion luithin the limits of Pure Reason" written in 1793. From the extracts already published of his recently recovered pos- thumous papers, it would appear that he cherished the intention, though certainly this was when his mental powers were already somewhat enfeebled, of proceeding to a positive philosophy [realphilosophie'] ^ of Mind, after he should have completed the circuit of his speculative philosophy. That Ficlite, in his system, assigned so prominent a place to the moral personality would have carried tliis philosophy onwards towards its goal, but that he treated history, with her facts, after too Titanic a fashion. Still no author, perhaps, has uttered nobler or more inspiring thoughts respecting some of its fundamental ideas than Fichte. ^ I have here translated " Realphilosophie " " positive pliilosopliy," because Bunsen uses the terms liealphilosophie or jjositiv Philosoplde interchangeably (see pp. 289, 290 note), but he is far from employing the phrase " positive philosophy " in the narrower sense in which it is now frequently employed^ as the designation of the Comtist school of philosophy. On the contrary, Bunsen seems to mean by his Positiv or RealphUosophie '' a positive philo- sophy," in the sense of a philosophy which ascertains the facts of its subject, and so co-ordinates them as to arrive at the laws which they exhibit, fully believing that there are spiritual laws behind the facts to be discovered. See pp. 6, 126, 286, 280, 290, &c.— Tr, Chap. XIII.] THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL. 279 It would be presumptuous to discuss what are the origi- nal and permanent contributions in the spheres of religion, art, and science furnished by the two real founders of the Idealistic Philosophy of the history of Mind, — Hegel and Schelling, — when we cannot present an adequate and de- tailed analysis of their systems. Thus, we must refer our readers for what we have to say on this topic to the Introduction to oiu' Organon Eeale, and content ourselves here with stating what will seem self-evident from our point of view to any one who is not wholly unacquainted with the subject and with modern philosophy. I:^ow, perhaps, this may be summed up in the assertion that those men were indeed the lirst to recognize that a harmonious blending of the Idea with History taken in its whole extent and depth, was the thing needed and the final aim of science ; but that nevertheless, according to the general verdict, they are allowed not to have succeeded in throwing the bridge across the stream of Time from the one shore to the other. Schel- ling had proposed to himself, in the second development of his system, to set up a Positive in contrast to the Negative or merely Logical Philosophy of Mind. Now, such a philosophy, speaking in general terms, can scarcely have been any other than that which seeks to discover in the facts of the w^orld's history the revelation of the Eternal under the conditions of Time. In such an en- quiry, mythology and revelation (both of which topics Schelling has handled speculatively in their bearing on this subject) must have held an important rank. Still, the other modes of manifestation could not have been left unnoticed, while that of language must have chal- lenged the foremost place. But, secondly, it would have been needful to establish a method by which to investi- gate the limits of speculation on this domain. It has to be enquired, whether the Absolute is actually drawn into the Development or only the Finite Spirit alone. Thirdly, no less necessary will it have been to institute a pre- 280 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book Y. liminary investigation as to the reliability of the materials at our disposal, with a view to our obtaining a know- ledge both of the Principle of the particular existence and that of its Evolution. Meanwhile we may unhesitatingly affirm that by com- bining the results of philological, historical, and philoso- phical observation and reflection. Science is on her way to seek and to find the laws of Being, and those of the development of Mind in the whole history of our race. Such a knowleds^e will confirm the faith of the nations in a moral order of the world, demonstrate that the world-historical development has its objectivity in the Eternal, and more especially bring into evidence the eternal truth of Christianity as the religion designed for the whole world. It must be reserved to our concluding Book to state the results to which our long pilgrimage has conducted us. We conclude the present portion of our work Avith a Table, presenting first the non-personal and then the personal history of the Eehgious Consciousness. Chap. Xllf.] HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 281 SINISM. THE UNIVERSE AND THE FAMILY. K HAM ISM. ttjkanism:. The Sun and Earth \ the Souls of men and animals. The Spirits and their manifestations to man under a state of excitement. PEOPHETS. SEMITIC. A.C. 3000 Abraham 1.320 Moses 1250 The older Prophets 950] to \ The younger Prophets 400 J ARYAN, Zoroaster. Brahmanic Philosophers. The free cities of the Achreans in Asia Minor. Homer Ilesiod, Buddha. Lyrical Poetry. The lioman Kepuhlie. ^?^^1 Sacred writin-s of ,i'i I Contemplation. The Drama. Philosophy. Teutonic Rural Communee. CHEIST. ~\ The Apostles. The Martyrs and Fathers of the persecuted Church. The Romanic The Teutonic development in the Church of the Cotmcils (the Byzantine Church), in the Papal Church (that of the Mediaeval period). Political movements, Literature. Ecclesiastical movements Contemplation. 282 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. BOOK VI. EESULTS OF THE FOREGOING ENQUIRIES, WITH THE PRACTICAL LESSONS WHICH THEY SUGGEST. CHAPTER I. GENERAL REVIEW OF THE RESULTS OF THE FOURTH AND FIFTH EOOKS. In the two preceding Books, we have beheld man's con- sciousness of the Divine Presence emerge from the sphere of the Semites and pass into the richer life of the Aryans ; in the first instance, quite independently of Semitic influences, and then at a later stage, completely inter- penetrated by them. We have beheld the greatest and most momentous transformation taking place in the suc- cessive stages of that consciousness that have thus passed in review before our eyes, and watched how it gradually rose out of the theocratico-prophetic stage which it occu- pied among the Hebrews, into a politico-poetic stage, which was the phase it assumed among the Hellenes. But in the succeeding epoch, both these phases are super- seded by a higher stage common to both famihes, through the agency of the Person of Christ, and the originality of the Teutonic mind, in such a manner that the antagonistic elements are fused into a glorious unity by the power of a life-giving Force. Out of this fusion we have seen in particular the rise of two grand phenomena, both evincing the higher level which Humanity has now attained. For, in the first place, the new religious consciousness gave birth to a new worship of the Deity suitable for universal adoption. This cultus had indeed a connection with the Mosaic, but it was not the continuation of that ; rather Chap. I.] EESULTS OF OUR ENQUIRIES. 283 was it the newly enfranchized spirit that had formerly been imprisoned within the now shattered forms of the Jewish rehgion. Thus the connection was in effect a liberation, and issued in the historical abrogation of the Ezraitic Mosaism. And, in the next place, the new cultus was delivered at once from the moral impotence of the material and ritualistic element and from the limitations of an insulated nationality. But a closer consideration revealed to us that this change implied an onward step of yet more comprehensive, nay of eternal import. Up to this era, the Eternal, the Jehovah of the Old Covenant, seemed to stand, as it were, apart from the Eternal inliabiting the human heart, acting in history, indwelhng in the Eace. Now, however, that likeness to God in which man was created, and of which we are told in the very opening of the Old Testament, was for the first time become a visible fact, and henceforward God was beheld and adored as the eternal, life-oivino- Prin- ciple of the development taking place in Time. Thus did there emanate from the Spirit an entirely new cultus, and together with that an internal organization of the Church in its relations to the world. Again, when through the degeneration of the Church's fundamental ideas — the metamorphosis of the priestly office of all believers into a sacred caste, of the vow of self-oblation into the sacramental symbol, of a moral into a material miracle ^ — this new cultus was in its turn continually forfeiting more and more its moral efficacy, and consequently its rank in the world's history, once again there sprang forth from the same Christian and Teutonic soil a twofold scion of new life, whose vigour blossomed into restoration and development ; we mean civil and religious liberty. This scion engrafted itself directly and organically on the Gospel of the Saviour of the world, and on the Teutonic Christian Church, using all else only as building-materials, or as a historical mirror for self- 1 " Des Wunders ins MiraheV See note, p, 324. ^84 GOD m HISTOEY. [Book. VI. contemplation and incitement to emulation or repro- bation. In this manner, from within outwards, was Humanity renewed in both her spheres ; in her religious and ecclesiastical, no less than in her civil and political life. From this inward source alone, has flowed that legalized liberty in Church and State which the dim forebodings of the nobler minds had discerned and proclaimed as in visions, which the yearning hearts of the people through long centuries had in vain hungered and entreated for ; and of which medieeval mankind was on the point of despairing, from unbelief in God's presence in earthly things. Thus, from the middle of the sixteenth century on- wards, a new germinal point had been formed, which was at once the fulfilment of the cravings and efforts of pre- vious millenniums, and also the kindling of a new life possessing an energy transcending all previous imagina- tion, which life it radiated in ever-widening circles over the whole surface of the earth. In the more considerable towns, especially of Italy and Germany, Civil Liberty with her two divine children in the individual development — plastic art, and a literature couched in the language of the popular consciousness — had gradually supplanted serfdom and priestly tyranny ; and, moreover, this had taken place under the influence of distinct religious feeling. For all these products had sprung up on the domain and under the forms of religion. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was solely by these free cities, with their civilization and art, that Teutonic humanity was maintained erect, and Christianity held its ground. In literature, as much as in art, the scholastic learning of the clergy takes but a secondary rank. If Christianity was the true religion, it could not but train free, law-abiding citizens ; in other words, could not but produce the only moral form of civil society; and this, again, could not fail to yield fresh sustenance to the free creative mind of the artist or poet. And both Chap. I.] THE NEW ERA. 285 actually came to pass even from the very outset of the new order of things. Municipal freedom, art, popular literature, flourished in fiir communion. The invention of printing, the comprehension of past ages and their glories in classical antiquity, effected by the revival of Greek philology ; and, finally, that last and noblest fruit of these efforts, the deliverance of the Christian Clnu'ch from the yoke of human ordinances, and of science from the sway of baseless hypotheses, lent wings to tliat flight of the human mind, and rendered a true, healthy, ener- getic religious consciousness first possible and then actual. It was clearly evident that the opening of the Bible to the laity, its wide-spread diffusal, together with the ac- knowledgment of the claims of the individual conscience, with the inalienable duties based thereon of moral self- responsibility, had thrown a new divine Force into Hu- manity, which not all the streams of bloodshed nor arts of organized tyranny w^ere able to extinguish. Thus the historical groundwork for the constructive elaboration of the Aryan Christian consciousness had already been laid, when, towards the end of the seventeenth century, a mighty intellect discerned for himself and announced to his contemporaries what was the highest problem for the future — namely, a Positive Philosophy of the History of Mankind. Leibnitz perceived that it was to the thinker and investigator that the sacred func- tion of high-priesthood was henceforth to be assigned in the new order of things, and that it was a higlily important matter to vindicate the claims of this function amidst the general exhaustion and imvard' barbarism of that age. Those who were the channels and organs of the religious consciousness were called to be the priests of science, of thought, and of research into the facts touch- ing the development of mind, — in short, the teachers of mankind — and the faitii in discerned truth ought to super- sede the faith in the clergy and their traditions. Thus alone could that faith of mankind in a universal moral 286 GOD m HISTORY. [Book VI. order ^ which, during the stagnant era of medicevalism, had been shal^en to its centre — nay, among the upper ranks, too often uprooted altogether by the general god- lessness and misery — be once more revivified, and society be rescued alike from fanaticism, or despair of God and this world. The preaching of the Gospel should go hand in hand with the free reflection of the Mind upon itself, that Mind which is the latest prophet of God's divine order. Philosophy and research were bound to teach, preach, and difllise the truth of this consohug thought. And these combined influences should all co-operate harmoniously to make the realities of domestic life, of the Church, of the State, Christian, therefore at once legal and free. This was the final stage on which we have seen the religious consciousness about to enter. That conscious- ness of the Presence of the living God in Humanity, which lived in the heart of the peoples and had been proclaimed by many prophets of the Eomano-Teutonic races, was now to become a science, a knowledge of the truth of this consciousness derived from the study of actual facts. ^ We will here once more recall the main facts of the Christian Aryan life which made this phenomenon pos- sible, and could not fail to render it increasingly fertile for the future of the human race. The art and literature of the Christian Aryans had arrived as near to the solu- tion of that problem in their respective spheres as at any previous period of the world's history. From Giotto to Eaphael and Michael Angelo, in art ; from Dante to Shakespeare and Milton, in epic and drama ; from Luther to Paul Gerhardt and Scheffler, in spiritual song ; from Johann Arndt to Gottfried Arnold, in outpourings of the devout spirit in prayer, — a glorious stream of hght had beamed upon mankind, by the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. The ecclesi- * '' Eine Wissem^chaft, eine reale Erkenntnisz der Wahrhcit dieses Gottes- bewxszfseinsJ^ Chap. I.] SOCIAL RESULTS. 287 astical reformatiou wrought by Luther and Calvin, the general study of classical antiquity, and the basing of education thereon which was closely allied with the Ee- formation, had imparted to those aspirations the popular character which till then they lacked. Lastly, the practical embodiment of the new religious consciousness in daily life was not wanting. Spiritual freedom had in some quarters, as in Switzerland, strength- ened and purified the freedom of public life, in others created it anew, as in Holland and subsequently in Eng- land. Li this latter country, thanks to the virtue and intrepidity of the middle classes, with a portion of the nobility, and at last through the rising of almost the whole nation aided by the energy of a princely hero and champion of liberty, a groundwork had been laid for the historical development of the Aryan mind that Avas pregnant with incalculable consequences. Li all these movements it was the free community of the Gospel which founded and supplied the type of the free civil and political community, from its very birth onwards. More and more was it felt, that the Protestant religious consciousness must make good its ground by striving to render itself popular and political. God was minded to he made man under the form of a Christian nation and a Christian State. Now, in order to the erection of a more extended kingdom of God upon earth, than antiquity, or the free Cities of the Middle Ages could display, the Teutonic mind had from the first car- ried within itself the Idea of a free Country, and clung to and elaborated this idea as it had opportunity. It was not a city or a ruhng municipal corporation that ought to be or could be the basis of that hberty, which the Teu- tonic mind was now striving after. It was endeavouring, in the plenitude of its sense of God's presence in the world, to rise to the presentation of a legally free national community, that should be based on municipal liberties and the ancient communal constitutions ; in fact, a system 288 GOD m HISTORY. [Book VI. that would amount to local self-government qualifying for a living energetic participation in general affairs and the highest functions of pubUc life by means of a represen- tative body for the whole country. It was no longer the city with its adjacent territory, it was the whole countr}'- that was to be the depositary of freedom and of the full popular self-consciousness ; and, moreover, this principle was to go on expanding in wider and wider circles. Germany was the birthplace of the Eeformation, but she had not become the home of the life thereby awakened. The scholastic controversies of her theologians, and the conspiracy of the Popes with the Eoman Catholic dynas- ties, had enkindled at the beginning of the seventeenth century a murderous war, which, after ravaging and de- solating the whole of Germany for thirty years, had left one half of that country, and notably the Netlierlands, bowed down in double servitude. But about the middle of the century, a great Prince, Frederick William of Brandenburg, had, however, laid the foundations of freedom there by an honest dictatorship ; one generation before Leibnitz lifted the German intellect to the heights of reflective religious consciousness by the philosophy which he founded, and the analysis he instituted of the spiritual phenomena presenting themselves in history. Spinoza had not succeeded in effecting an entrance into this domain, and. Lord Bacon had left the philosophy of history even more completely unexplored than the field of critical research, although he had pointed out the prepara- tory paths which must inevitably lead up to those regions. Such was the position of affairs in Europe, when, to- wards the beginning of the eighteenth century, the genius of Leibnitz charged itself with the great problem of estab- lishing by philosophical arguments the self-determination of the personal mind, and the presence of a divine element in the actual facts of human development ; and moreover worked up to this result equally by the two pathways of speculation and of the observation of facts. Such ai* Chap. I.] LEIBNITZ. 289 attempt was in harnioiiy with the tendencies of European thought and with Christianity, and it found a response throughout the whole intellectual world of Europe, but most of all among the Protestant nations, for among the Eomanic, free learning found itself at issue with existing institutions. And above all in the depths of the German intellect did it find its natural soil and congenial atmo- sphere, insomuch that up to the present day most of the leaders on this path have been German philosophers and scholars. The given impulse has struck deep roots in the German culture through the fertilizing influence of specu- lative ideas ; these latter again assume a popular shape, so that the products of the schools have come to make up a very considerable portion of the German literature. But already now we see that even the French mind, which at first took up an attitude of negation towards the German ideas, and the English, which occupied that of a mere spectator, are being caught up and carried away by this current of the world's thought. Nay, Ger- many will now need to strain her energies afresh, if she is to keep pace with what is at present preparing for contri- bution not only in England but also in the Komanic coun- tries, especially France and Italy, towards that positive or real philosophy of Mind which is the universal goal of aspiration.^ This development of the religious consciousness under the form of a science of universal history, not only con- stitutes an internally correlated and inseverable sequence ; it also betokens a distinct onward step in the concrete development^ of the Divine in the world itself. It reveals the onward march of the Divine Spirit subjected to the con- ditions of phenomenal evolution. It is evidently implied in the very essence, the primary idea of the Divine deve- loping itself in the Finite, that it attains the consciousness ^ The original here is : — " der allgemeinen angestrebten positive?! oder Heal- philosophie des Geistes.''^ — Tr. ^ " reale Entivickelung." VOL. III. U 290 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. of its truth through the concept of itself. This, even Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle have not only believed, but as regards that in which they are agreed — the moral, spiritual, fundamental thought of Socrates — have proved for all time. But even the most successful purely dia- lectic development does not constitute the highest or ultimate aim. One of our greatest thinkers has even termed it in comparison with tliat former revelation of the Spirit, negative philosophy, while he demands, if he has not himself already supplied, its opposite, a positive phi- losophy of the Spirit. Speculation and research are the two requisite prehminary steps that must precede any representation on a world-wide scale of the development itself, or exhibition of its laws as those of the Divine Kosmos of Mind in the Finite. History and philosophy must co-operate towards this representation, not in order to lose their separate and independent character, but in order to yield their highest results in common efficiency. From this point two series of contemplation open be- fore us. The one will have for its termination the scien- tific problem now lying before us of the construction of a real or positive philosophy of universal history ; ^ the other that of stating the results and inferences which we are already in a position to deduce from the historical facts relating to the development of the religious consciousness that have here been brouo;ht to our knowledg-e. As regards the former topic, we can only say this much here. For the construction of a positive philo- sophy of Mind whose apex should be the consciousness of God, the first thing that is requisite is a documentary and, as far as may be, autoptical survey of the attempts hitherto made at a philosophical treatment of the sub- ject, i.e. of all the phenomena having reference to man's sense of God's agency in history. But this could hardly be achieved without a methodical discussion of the most characteristic utterances of those authors ; for nothing short 1 " einer realen oder 2)ositiven Philosophie der W dtgeschichte.^^ Chap. I.] THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. 291 of this would qualify the reader to form his own judg- ment. Unfortunately, however, many of their writings are now forgotten, and many others not so well known and familiar to scholars as they deserve. Moreover, to such a general survey ought to be added passages scat- tered up and down various authors bearing on the philo- sophy of history, which are not only models for the classic presentment of sublime ideas, but also of abiding philosophic interest. Such passages often elucidate the purely speculative fundamental thoughts, just as much as they certainly on the other hand often require an acquaint- ance with the latter in order to be properly understood themselves. Such a succinct documentary survey would need, however, to be accompanied by a historical and philoso- phical critique, in order to determine to what extent the great problem itself has been apprehended or solved by those thinkers. JSTow it appears to us that such a procedure would confirm the correctness of three theses which we have had occasion more than once to put forth in the course of this work. We mean, first, the view that the speculative construction of the science (and to a certain degree the historical delineation) of that moral order of the world does form the common centre of the various speculative systems. Secondly, that the method by which to discover the laws governing the development of Humanity, and moreover from the standing-point of the religious con- sciousness, has been the aim, though pursued sometimes consciously sometimes unconsciously, of the great critical school of the philosophy of Mind. Thirdly, that these various efforts on the part of the Leibnitzian and Kantian schools do present an organic development, on which it is possible to erect a superstructure with the auxiliary of a philosophical treatment of the historical element. Thus it is only through the colligation of these two elements that it is possible to lay any secure speculative basis for a u 2 292 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. Positive Philosophy of History. But by such an organic combination, we may hope to be placed in a position fully to apprehend the problems of the present and to prepare the way for their further solution. Thus it is the second series of contemplations that will form the exclusive subject of this our concluding Book. In treating it we shall have to fix our eye on two points. First, the immediate universal Results of the facts pre- sented in the former parts of this work ; and then, secondly, the Inferences to be drawn from those results in reference to the existing conditions of things. Both sets of considerations, but especially the latter, will lead us back to the fundamental postulates and starting-point of our First Book ; and, we may hope, will afford a satis- factory confirmation of what has been there affirmed or hinted at. The Eesults will start from the domain traversed by the course of development regarded as a chronological series. We put the questions : Has the development taking place in Time an internal interdependence, and if so, what is it ? We shall then further ask : Does the his- torical series of development constitute an inward unity? Does it reveal a progress ? Lastly, on the principles of analogy and induction, would it appear that any laws, governing the growth or decadence of any given nation or epoch, do reveal themselves ? And what is the final verdict delivered by these results as regards the develop- ment of Humanity ? This proceeding will conduct us as it seems to me to five great Theses, which we shall present in the next chapter. If our Eesults are substantially true, upon the testimony given by Humanity herself in the records we have placed before our readers, they cannot but give rise to Inferences of no less importance for the present and the whole future of our race. It is not initil we have reached this point that we are in a position to reply to the queries we have Chap. I.] THE CONDITIONS OF THE PRESENT. 293 started in the Introduction to this work. But since we are as firmly convinced of the substantial truth of the documentarily-attested facts we have been considering, as we are of our own existence, we certainly cannot evade the duty of looking in the face the conditions of the present, in so far as they are immediately concerned with the topic of our enquiries. Since, however, our work is no more intended to subserve a particular practi- cal aim than a speculative theory, we shall in this con- cluding chapter restrict ourselves rigidly within the nar- rowest limits of a general historico-philosophical survey. 294 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. CHAPTER II. THE WORLD-HISTORICAL RESULT. The development of mail's religious consciousness in Time takes place by means of Races and Persons, and rests on a historical connection, carried on by means of language. A COURSE of development in man's consciousness of the Divine, extending over nearly five thousand years, has now passed in review before us. Doubtless many lan- guages and peoples, many heroes and their deeds have perished in the stream of the world's history, but that which has proved itself to be the constructive element of society is also that which has survived as the noblest. The questions now arise, whether in this sequence any recognizable chain of connection reveals itself, and if so, what that chain is? whether any unity of progress is discernible ? and if so, whether, or to what extent, this unity coincides with the ethnological development of mankind made known to us by language ? All history of the religious consciousness must repose upon language, not only because it is the historical record, but also because it is the primordial work of the human intellect. Comparative philology enables us (as we iiave shown in our English work, " Outlines of the Philoso'phy of His- tory and Religion") to exhibit the course of ethnological development in the following scheme : — Chap. II.] STAGES OF L.iNGUAGE AND RELIGION. 295 SINISM. THE LANGUAGE OF PURE SUBSTANCE. KHA3IISM, TTJEANISM. or the rudimentsof organic inflectional The lano-uage of agglutination or language : carried on through the particles ; in many progressive Egyptian branch of that stock stages, emigrating from Western Asia. SEMITISM, ARYANISM. or the advance of the inflectional The perfect inflectional language, language to the triliteral (dissyl- labic) formation of roots, and to the conjugation of the idea of the predicate. From the primeval language that has grown up and fixed itself in the remotest eastern corner of Southern Asia — the northern portion of the Chinese Empire — human language advances onwards in Central Asia along two routes. The easternmost of these taking up its first sojourn around the Altai mountains and the countries adjacent to the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes, after- wards presses forward from tliose regions towards the south and west. The second or western division, starting from the lands adjacent to the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris, passes on in a southerly direction to Arabia, and thence to Palestine and Egypt. Thus we may venture to assert that the Aryan stock has evolved itself out of the most advanced of the Tura- nian tribes, by assuming a new type, but the Semites have been evolved by a progressive culture from the Asiatic Khamites. Lastly, however, it can be clearly sliown and proved by facts, that the most ancient Turauic deposits in Tliibet employ Chinese words as the raw material which they re-coin, and that the Aryan roots, which are found in Semitic speech, have sprung from the same primitive stock. Now, if we cast our eye over the series of development 296 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. in the religious consciousness that lies before us in reli- gion, in social life, in art and in science, the following parallelism presents itself : — I. Man's sense of the presence of God in the objects around him reveals itself in the first instance in the shape of a perception of the Divine in the starry heavens above the earth, and the family circle on the earth. The former presupposes the apprehension of a vast ordered Whole in the outward creation — the physical Kosmos or Heaven. Such an apprehension meets us not only as the basis of religious consciousness in the oldest records of that nation which has existed in a state of culture and exercised a formative agency from the very earliest in- fancy of our race, viz. the Chinese ; but it is most deeply rooted in their very language. This language is in itself the oldest conceivable form of the intellectual (begrifflich) denotation of things, because it bears a thoroughly sub- stantive character. It presupposes no other prior lin- guistic formation, while it is itself presupposed in all other such formations. But both apprehensions — the religious and the linguistic — are fettered to the purely formal conception of that Whole, because the human mind is at this stage still too much overpowered by the outward universe. It is at work, but has not yet attained to self-consciousness. It is like a child who always speaks of himself in the third person. Thus, just as a single monosyllable stands with him for everything — is at once noun and verb, and is also in both cases a very in- telligible sign of quality — so does the word " Tien " or Heaven convey to the Chinese at the same time the ideas of Order and Thought, Idea and Will. It may, at first sight, appear strange that in the cultus such a conception as we have been describing should stand in close juxtaposition with the worship of the souls of de- ceased ancestors without any mediating link between the two. And yet this is quite analogical, and in character with the earliest stage. The one pole of human consciousness is the Kosmos in its undividedness ; therefore the earliest Chap. II.] SINISM AND TURANIS^f. 297 stage of the religious consciousness in its aspect on Nature. The other pole is the primary relationship of Humanity ; the binding together of the successive generations of mankind by the faith in some connecting tie above and beyond the life of the individual, subsisting between souls, and by a faith in the meaning of this earthly life. In all the higher spheres of social hfe, the agency of God in history is assumed as a matter of fact, but this history is simply a sequence, a succession, destitute of causal con- nection. There stand the two ideas of Heaven and the Family ; but there lies no consciousness of the Divine between them. Thus here the order of Time and the internal attitude of the mind coincide. The stage of language and that of Religion are 'parallel. II. The next stage in the development of the religious consciousness has its representative in Turanism^ the oldest form of which is transmitted to us in some of the Thibetan languages. As Khamism is the Mediasval epoch of the West, so is Turanism that of the East. Only here those incipient rudiments of an inflectional language are preserved to us, which in Western Asia have perished. But Turanism soon rises above the stage in which the mind works its way forth out of the inelastic shell of radical language to formations which fully take rank beside Khamism. Yet even in the highest efforts of the Turanian impulse to speech, the individualizing stamp is lacking which we find in the two higher Semitic and Aryan formations of inflectional language. It is the stamp of personality which is wanting. And it is pre- cisely the absence of the sober intellect which constitutes the distinctive characteristic of the Turanian sense of the Divine presence. The human mind has already advanced considerably along the Divine pathway of consciousness ; it sometimes feels itself face to face with the visible universe as a being endowed with free-will ; as the Lord and ruler of what it beholds. This, however, is not its normal con- dition, but is dependent upon some intense stimulus, some 298 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. influence carrying it beyond itself. Hence the religious consciousness appears to the Turanian only under the shape of the highest stimulation of the Mind by Nature ; it resembles the ecstatic state of clairvoyants. Thus the human being is in a passive and passionate orgiastic con- dition ; and, in consequence, the mode of worship can be nothing more than a striving after ecstasy. The objective element of this consciousness disappears. We are now well acquainted with the characteristics of this stage through the researches of Castren, and still more through the records contained in the national work on the abori- ginal inhabitants of North America, which the United States have set on foot. When such a purely subjective mental excitement sinks to its lowest ebb, we can well imagine the springing up of fetishism ; as when for instance the consciousness at- taches itself to a tree, conceiving that object to be the chosen seat of the Deity. It is by a similar mental pro- cess that in Khamism, the serpent-worship and the adora- tion of living animals has sprung up, which we find existing side by side with that fetishism in many parts of Africa. Both are distinguished from the liethylion- worship of the earliest Semites, by the circumstance that in the latter case, it is a symbol of the Kosmos revealed to us in the starry vault, of Uranus, or of Bel, which is adored. Thus we may perhaps express the formula of Turanism, regarded from its central point, where it runs parallel with Khamism, by saying that it is a striving outwards of the spiritual and psychical elements of our nature, but under a passionate form ; a seeking for the presence of the Divine Spirit on the pathway of unconsciousness, and of His agency under the form of magic. Sucli a religious consciousness is incapable of giving birth either to art, science, or polity in any sort of order conforming to fixed rules, for everything is dependent upon the excite- ment of the moment. A crowning-point and apex is wanting here even more than on the side of Khamism : Chap. II.] KHAMISM. 299 for instead of the stationariness of a mummified system, a decline into brutishness and barbarism are what is to be feared, for divine pi^opo7'tion is wanting. The seers of such a people do not become prophets, nor their great leaders sovereigns, but there are the rudimentary begin- nings of both. III. The parallel Western stage of religious conscious- ness is the K/iamitic, of which Western Asia is the cradle, and in historic times, Egypt. But the phenomena which we behold in the Nile valley necessitate the assumption of an earlier development of Khamism in Asia which has perished. Here, too, our most reliable materials for observation are supplied by language. This, from the stage it has reached, presupposes an advance beyond a mere inorganic substance. Out of the radical words, the human mind has framed for itself complete parts of speech without remaining fettered by the inorganic addition of mere particles. It has sought out and contrived for itself some mode of expression for the mutual relations of things in a proposition, and for its own relation as that which predicates to that which is predicated. Thus this stage can still less than that of the older Turanism be considered as a primary one, even in that earliest defunct Asiatic form. But this must have had its origin in Asia and moreover in Western Asia ; for there stand the two un- disputed facts ; first, that the pronouns and other primi- tive grammatical forms are identical in the Egyptian and Semitic ; and secondly, that most of the Egyptian roots with which we are acquainted can be shown to be Semitic, and moreover the simplest form thereof. Now to the religious consciousness also of the Egyptians the result of our researches compels us to assign an analo- gous relative position. It is no longer the visible Kosmos, nor yet simply the soids of the departed ancestors, which are the governing ideas of the Egyptian mode of conceiv- ing the Divine presence : an organic distribution has been already introduced into the theory of the universe, of which the Sun with his vearlv course forms the central 300 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. point. Lastly, the human mind is conscious of its own direct relationship to that same Principle which makes the universe into an ordered Whole, and the destiny of the soul in the universe is the spiritual centre-point of this consciousness. So likewise out of the Family has grown the Province and the State, with a distinct religious sense of personal freedom, notwithstanding the shackles of caste. Lastly, there displays itself a classical architec- ture and a noble plastic art, which portrays animal forms in a life-like manner, and the wonderful human form in. conformity with certain artistic canons. Thus again in two more series of development do the stage of language and that of the religious consciousness run parallel. IV. A peculiar soberness of mind forms the distinguish- ing characteristic in all the branches of the next, or Semitic formation ; but this reaches its crowning-point in the religious consciousness of the Chaldean tribe settled in Canaan of whom Abraham and Moses are the types. Among this people, religion and language alike reveal an astonishing; amount of calm sober intellio;ence. Else- where among the Semites, the preponderance of the secular element superinduces an inordinate striving after wealth and worldly honour, and the religious conscious- ness sinks into the orgiastic type, while the inward instinct of sacrifice degenerates into a Moloch-worship. But in that favoured tribe, the religious consciousness soars to a recognition of the Eternal as the converse of all that has come, or is coming, into existence [all in fact that has had a beginning]. Still this faith in the Eternal is so far from excluding the faith in His presence among men, that the aspect under which He is regarded is pre- eminently that of the guide of men's destinies, revealing Himself in their hearts. Yet at the same time, the con- trast between the Infinite and the Finite, even in reference to the human spirit, is grasped with such tenacity that at a later period, the oneness of essence between the Eternal and the Finite Spirit is well nigh lost sight of. That recognition of unity of essence, which is the needful counter- Chap. II.] SEMITISM AND ARYANISM. 301 poise to the assertion of the contrast, is wanting, and this want makes itself painfully felt from the age of Ezra onwards. For since the Divine Personality finds no em- bodiment in the ideal of Humanity, the notion of insnla- tion comes to be associated with the idea of the Eternal, and there springs up an estrangement of God from man, as though the Deity were but a certain portion of the Universal Whole ; and tliis is accompanied by a rigidity in the outward forms of religion which are yet nothing in themselves. The religion of Mahomet shows to what an extreme of fatalism this sharp line of demarcation between God and man is capable of leading the Semitic mind. Now to this highest type of Semitic religious conscious- ness, the Semitic linguistic phenomena only partially cor- respond. The triliteralism in the formation of the roots does indeed introduce a complete superseding of mono- syllabism ; and agglutination is rendered impossible by the presence of auxiliary parts of speech. Nouns and verbs meet us as the kernel of the language, and sub- ordinate themselves to the terms expressing relation. Still, compared to the Aryan branches of language, the Semitic seem very limited in their powers of forming words into sentences. Nor does the mind as yet assert its own predicative action by using as a copula the sub- stantive abstract verb expressing existence, but only indi- cates that activity by means of the pronoun in the third person. Tlius here we have a true miracle : a miracle wrought by the divine energy of the ethical Mind in the sphere of the religious consciousness. V. The leading characteristic of the Aryan religious consciousness we have already cm^sorily indicated in the introduction to tliis Book, and shown how the magnifi- cence of its linguistic formations is a type and presage of the magnificent corresponding outgrowth m art and knowledge in all the stages of the Aryan development. The Asiatic Aryan did not succeed in freeing himself entirely from the trammels of Turanism with which he has had almost unceasingly to contend, inwardly no less 302 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. than ontwarclly ; it was only here and there at most that he succeeded in estabhshing a free state of society. It was first in the Hellenes of Asia Minor and Europe that the sense of God in the free civil fellowship became powerful and gave birth to a free polity. But even the Aryan did not reach the highest stage of the sense of the Divine presence in the soul, till after he had been introduced into the Jewish faith as glorified and consum- mated by Jesus. Here again we have two miracles of the mind^ ; the inward force of personality, and the reaction of that mental personality upon mankind. These are perhaps the most succinct formulaa in which we are able to summarize the historical development under the aspect of the religious consciousness. Before proceeding to the reflections suggested by the details, let us first distinctly state the great fact we have won : That the religious consciousness regarded as a sense of the jpresence of the Divine in the universe and among mankind, is found in all stages of human history, and constitutes a 'primary efUciency in religion, in social life, and in ciii- lization. Does not this fact point us towards the intuitive nature of this sense ? But secondly we find : That language and religion are primary products and acts of the human mind, and that it is only in virtue of a miracle of the mind ^ that the religion has risen to a higher stage than that occupied by the language. This fact is demonstrable in most systems of religion, but we are able to trace it most authentically in the formation of any given language. Everything leads us to the assumption that, by the internal organization of his nature, man feels himself impelled to construct his religion as he constructs his language — viz. as the expression and outward embodiment of his indwelhng 1 a jyiin^ey ^gg Qeistes" See note on p. 324. Chap. II.] RELIGION NOT ARTIFICIALLY CONSTRUCTED. 303 spiritual life, taking place in virtue of an innate plastic and artistic impulse co-ordinate with the apprehension of the external world which lie possesses in virtue of his intelHgence. But if so, the idea of any sort of intentional construction of a religion in the interest of any set pur- pose whatsoever, whether tliat of ambition, or deceit, or the maintenance of civil order, is excluded by the mere positive evidence of the history of religion. Every- thing oi^o;anic is self-actins; in virtue of its own inward vital energy, and involves an inward necessity for out- ward embodiment, which it needs undisturbed freedom to conduct to its proper glory. Language and religion are indispensable to civil order, and may be employed to subserve all good or all evil ends, but they have not sprung from any calculation in behoof of those ends. Mighty and significant as are these facts testifying to the spontaneity and the chronological sequence of these products of the religious consciousness, we are but stand- ing as yet on the outer threshold of this temple of mys- teries. Let us draw nearer to the shrine ! If our con- sciousness of God be something innate, the question suD-g-ests itself, to what extent do its later formations stand related to its earlier? Did there, perchance, exist an original tradition in some miraculously gifted primaeval people, from whom liglit diffused itself among other nations under the shape of language and religion ? Or has this enlightenment come meclianically through some sort of magic ? In the former case, religion would be, like language (which philosopliers have even maintained), only " the tradition handed down from superior beings," or, " the heritage of a privileged race." Or is it again, as the latter hypothesis would imply, simply something me- chanically poured in from without ? Is-not this idea when elaborated into a particular shape often inculcated on us as a doctrine of the Bible ? On this point, too, let us look at the results of the facts we have discovered and presented. 304 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VT. CHAPTER III. THE CONCLUSIONS PRESENTED IN THE FIELD OF THE SCIENTIFIC OR POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY OP RELIGION,^ The Religious Consciousness is the effi^cient cause of all civili- zation ; and in its ivorkings is exhibited, not a historical influence of earlier grades and elder races, hut the unity of one Divine, progressive Force ivorking in Humanity, and the influence of higher spiritual Personalities. On this point we have above all to guard against the delu- sive supposition of the existence of a secret or lost tradition of religious ideas from one or other of the nations of the great world-moulding empires. The whole course of our investigations has proved to us the contrary at every step. It is equally impossible to assume such a tradition as consti- tuting the outer courts of the self-conscious Spirit, at the epoch of some three thousand years before Christ, as it would be to assume that Abraham derived his inspiration from Zoroaster, or vice versa. The roots of Abraham lie in Chaldti3a, the roots of Zoroaster in central or Northern and Upper Asia. We have both the one and the other laid bare before us, the former in the Babylonian and Phoenician cosmogonies, the latter in the earhest hymns of the Veda and in the Gathas of Zoroaster. We are indeed compelled by the infallible record of language to assume an original common stock for the roots of Western and Eastern Asia which have now been divided for thousands of years. But it is only language which tells us this. Even the very earliest religious monuments of the primceval world ^ " Das realphilosophhche Erffebniss." See note on p. 278. Chap. III.] ORIGINALITY OF RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS. 305 already reveal the respective idiosyncracies of tlie two stocks. It is true that the Biblical traditions of the pre- Abrahamitic age, or that of the patriarchs, present to us much purer conceptions than we find in the heathen Se- mitism of historical times. Still the primitive Iranian consciousness cannot be explained by them. The struc- ture of thought revealed by its deposits in language precedes all other coinage of the universal human intelli- gence, even that of mythology. The bond of connection must be sought uuich higher up the stream of time, but it is purely one of the essential nature of man, and pre- supposes nothing beyond a common original impulse to the construction of language and a common mode of setting about it. Still less is any historical community of life conceivable in the Mosaic stage. The idle fancies of the influence exerted on the religious conceptions of Moses by Egyp- tian ideas, are as baseless as that of the influence of Mosaism on the Aryan peoples. Physically and ethno- logically, Moses had his roots in the Canaanitish religious consciousness, just as Abraham had his in ancient Chal- dsea. What confers on Abrahamism and Mosaism their rank in the serial development of the religious conscious- ness is precisely the engrafting on those roots of that Divine Spirit indwelling in Abraliam and Moses. We are indeed justified in inferring a community of life between the Aryans of Asia and those of Asia Minor extending from the formation of their respective lan- guages up to the incipient rudiments of the mythopoeic epoch immediately consequent thereon, but no farther. But from that epoch onwards, the community of life be- came continually greater through the Hellenes. And wherefore? Because the Hellenes shattered the sym- bohc forms, and replaced them by ideas and investiga- tions. It is Ideas alone that enkindle and generate fresh life ; hieroglyphs or symbols can propagate nothing but usages. It is only the Idea that binds together minds ; VOL. III. X 306 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. symbols divide even more than originally they have linked together. Thus Hellenes and Italioti, Greeks and Eomans come into infinitely closer contact with each other than Baktrians and Indians, while Modes and Per- sians stand in the mutual relationship of. being provinces of one empire and speakers of one language. Lastly the relations of the Chidstian Aryans among each other, those of the Eomans and Teutons, for instance, are in a far higher degree intimate in religion, in art, and in science ; while the Eeformation, with the literature it gave birth to, has expanded the guilds of the clergy, the artists, and the scholars, into fellowships among the various peoples, in so far as the priesthood has not interfered to prevent. Hence it would seem that the progress indisputably observable cannot be explained by the hypothesis of a received tradition handed down from earlier races or imaginary superior beings, but is to be attributed to God's Spirit working in Man. The universal historical results we may sum up in the following theses : First Thesis. The Development taken as a Whole and in its widest scope does exhibit an Objective Progress. In our historical review we ha^e already called attention to the circumstance that the constructive force of the self- conscious Spirit in human society presents itself to us as the history of the religious consciousness of the two great Aryan and Semitic stocks, who in their roots are blood- relations. All that preceded them was Nature-religion, the mere vestibule of that of the Spirit, But in this vestibule of the temple we were compelled to observe au indubitable progress from the formal consciousness of a Whole or Kosmos, and from the arts which rest on the secret magic of proportion, upwards to the individualizing of the heavenly bodies and elements and to the plastic Chap. III.] A mOGRESS VISIBLE. 307 arts. Hence Egypt holds the position of the mediaeval period in the primceval world w^itli regard to religion also. The Egyptian religion is only to be explained as a mummy of that self-conscious Spirit that had awakened in the East, as the hieroglyph of upward-striving thought. But the conscious religious life has its seat in the nations who, though in differing modes, make Spirit the channel of the religious consciousness. The Abrahamites are the priests^ the Bactrians the heroes of the new temple-worship. The former distinguish God who is the Eternal, from tran- sitory Nature ; the latter recognize and carry on flis work in Humanity, and show forth man's creation in His image by their godlike productions, constituting as it were a secondary creation. The higher rank thus assigned to the Aryans by no means derogates from the incomparable superiority of the Hebrew faith in the Eternal Jehovah, to the Bactrian Spirit-worship or the Hellenic polytheism. We have no right to attribute the faith in the Eternal possessed by Abraham, to the Abrahamitic religion of his immediate descendants, which remained entangled among the natural- istic roots of Semitism, nor yet to the Mosaism that was chained by legal restrictions to a ritualistic symbolism, nor least of all to the Ezraism of the Second Temple. In all these systems, faith in Jehovah is a tacit assumption to which its legitimate realization is wanting. The most an- cient Mosaism expressly claims to be a new revelation, and places itself in contradistinction to the Abrahamic know- ledge of God as the Almighty ; but in its cultus, the Eternal is veiled from sight, and Man is not His only symbol, but is ranged under the form of a cherub side by side with the highest types of the animal creation, while the prescribed sacrifices are all of an outward descrip- tion. Nevertheless, as all the prophets tell us, the Eternal God desireth no other sacrifice than the only one befit- ting His glory — the sacrifice of man's own will ; and no vow save that of grateful self -surrender. The finite X 2 308 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. Spirit placed with its free power of choice on the confines of two worlds, can offer nothing but what is spiritual to the Eternal One, and all its sacrifices are based upon the fact that God has given Himself out in the Finite ; visibly and symbolically in Nature, substantially and really in Hu- manity. Man is the primary end and aim of the creation. Mosaism practically denies this human incarnation of God, for it worships God as though he were a Nature-deity. Hellenism, on the contrary, manifestly strives after a realization of God among men. No doubt this aspiration is perplexed and impeded by the inherited Nature-poly- theism which still adheres to Hellenism, but its true worship is to be sought where lies tlie central point of its peculiar religious consciousness ; — in a free polity, in art, in learning. If Judaism must be called the mother's womb of Christianity, Hellenism must be called its foster-mother. The vigorous wild olive grew on Aryan soil, and the en- grafted tree was the one that bore fruit. Now, if it may thus be regarded as established that man's religious consciousness during the last five thousand years forms one connected Church, and, moreover, one that advances step by step under the influence of Kaces and Persons, it will be important to consider these two forms of development somewhat more closely. Second Thesis. This Progress must be sought in the advance from the iinself- conscious to the self-conscious Mind; — fro'tn Organic Neces- sity to Moral Freedom through the Medium of Personality. The most primseval and spontaneous revelations and monuments of the human mind presuppose the existence of Mind, for they are its own work. But the very same records prove also that it was only by slow degrees that that consciousness of secondary creative power which we call history became vivid enough in man to demand an expression. Now tliis expression we can watch rising Chap. III.] THE LEADERS OF CIVILIZATION. 309 liiglier and higlier in the manner above indicated, not only in the language, but also in the religions of mankind. Out of Xature-religion — the worship of the Physical Forces — there emerges in this manner an ethical religion ; till at length the godlike faculty of the self-consciousness of moral personality springs forth. But this leads on to the perception that all human relationships and institutions ought to be transformed and purified into absolute har- mony therewith. Thus the formula of progress which results from the facts of universal history may be thus stated : — All civi- lization springs from the religious consciousness, but that consciousness itself reveals the progress from the un-self- conscious to the self-conscious Mind ; and, consequently, the historical development in Time runs parallel to that development which takes place in Nature, from Inorganic up to Organic Nature, culminating in Humanity. The Nature-development, which now we are only able to behold in Space, has in like manner evolved itself also in Time ; but according to measureless epochs. Third Thesis. A Progress of the Religious consciousness in 'particular Races confers upon such Races sooner or later the leadershi'p in the civilization of Mankind, and this issues ultimately in Universal etnpire. The founding of Babylon and the empire of the Chal- dseans introduces into the world's history the primeval Semitic religious consciousness, of which we see the purer form in the oldest traditions of Abraham respecting the primeval epoch. From that era, the great Turanic empires disappear, and Khamism remains restricted to Egypt and Africa, while Semitism and Aryanism divide between them in Asia the leadership of the world. The great Chaldean emigrates and his posterity are set apart for a far distant future. 310 GOD m HISTORY. [Book VL It is with the founding of the Persian Empire by Cyrus, that the rehgious consciousness of Eastern Asia, which had been elevated by Zoroaster into a spiritual religion, for the first time extends its sway to Western Asia, and reigns up to the confines of Asia Minor. From the time of Cyrus, there has nevei* been a great Semitic empire. The Phoenicians have acted as a counterpoise to the lonians and European Greeks in Asia and the adjacent islands of the Mediterranean, the Carthaginians and Jews to the Eomans, the Mahometans to the Greek and Eomanic Christians. They have even forced their way into the Continent of Europe ; the Phoenicians, by their settle- ments on the islands of the JEgean Sea and on the coasts of Spain, the Carthaginians in Sicily, the Mahometans in Spain itself. But, as in earlier epochs, the Turanians, under the title of children of Nimrod, Mongols, Tartars, Turks, were the representatives of episodes and transitory antitheses, so do the Semites now occupy such a position. This would seem to conduct us to three facts of universal history. First, that a unity of ethnological stock appears to involve a unity in the conception of the universe, and, so to speak, in the direction taken by the impulse to social construction. Secondly, that the development of each ethnological stock corresponds to some idea which forms one step in the inward unfolding of the religious con- sciousness. From both taken together, we seem justified in inferring that both the religious consciousness and the godhke impulse to social construction have, equally with the natural impulse in animals which we call instinct, some reality that corresponds to them ; but a divine reality, which presupposes a unity of essence between the Finite and the Infinite Spirit. Thirdly, that the motive impulse to development is imparted by means of Illustrious Per- sonalities. Chai'. III.] ETHXO LOGICAL AMALGAMATION DESIGNED. 811 Fourth Thesis. Ike Union and grachial Arnialgamation of the various ethno- logical StocJ^s would seem to he the Aim designed by the Wo7^ld''s Order. We know that every linguistic formation since the first, rests upon the wrecks of some earher hnguistic conscious- ness ; which, consequently, presupposes the decadence or the subjugation of the population that w^as the depositary of that linguistic system. Thus, in this case, the amalga- mation, or, at all events, the intercourse of different peoples, would appear to supply the impulse to a new formation so often as a new and progressive life germi- nates from the existino- formation. On the other hand, we see that those peoples which are the most susceptible of culture, the most energetic, and have contributed the most to mould human society, have sprung fi'om a union or fusion of different tribes which are more or less homogeneous. The Greek cul- ture, and notably the Attic, is the product of the fusion of the Ionic, Doric, and ^olic elements. The world- subduing qualities that distinguish the Eomans are a pro- duct of the mixture of the Latin, Samnite, and Etruscan elements. In the same way, the Teutonic civilization is the result, partly of intercourse with Greeks and Eomans, Celts and Sclaves ; partly of the interfusion of the va- rious Teutonic tribes. The English character has been formed by the action and reaction of the Anglo-Saxon on the Cymric and Gaelic elements, strengthened by the Romanized Norman element ; the French, by a dif- ferent compound of the Germanic and Celtic witli the predominating Latin element. What gave rise to the greatness of Spain, was the interpenetration of the Eoman and Teutonic elements with Celts, Arabs, and Turanic Basques. The so-called absolutely unmixed peoples never take a high place in the world's history, altliough they 312 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. may continue for a long time to occupy a very respec- table station as regards their internal condition. Does not this compel us to suppose that the crossing, and ultimately the amalgamation of the various races, is the end designed by the constitution of the world ? May not that fusion which has already extended itself to nearly all the Aryan races, nay, wliich has already begun to take up into itself Semitic and Turanic elements, expand into much wider circles ? Have we not witnessed in our own days, notwithstanding all the falsehoods and fables pro- pagated to the contrary (which indeed have generally been invented and diffused for a purpose), that the pro- geny of mixed marriages has formed races of permanent fertility ; such, for instance, as the Creoles and Mulattoes, or the children of English men by New Zealand women ? And do we not find tliat in these instances, the prin- ciple enunciated by Herder holds good, that the more harmonious, therefore beautiful, form gradually tends to supplant the lower, because more partial, and to elevate it into its own higher type ? Now, if we may assume this to be a universal law, it would appear to result from it that Humanity has still a protracted course of development before it. For this intermixture of races has only just begun to take place on any large scale. Fifth Thesis. In philosophical language, every such Intermixture signifies more or less the surmounting of antagonisms in the develop- ment of the Idea, and such a process is constantly the Formula of Progress. Every ethnological stock corresponds, though under the living, free form of individuality, to some component fraction of the whole Idea [of Humanity] ; and therefore forasmuch as the collective Idea only advances by means of antitheses — to some antithesis. Now, moreover, there are three antitheses which do actually present themselves Chap. III.] THE FORMULA OF TROGRESS. 313 as the contrast between the national and the universal human elements, and also as antitheses in the several branches of human culture. To these are to be added those primary antitheses of human nature, which we have discussed in our Introductory Book and shown to be complementary ideas or correlates, and on whose action and reaction the continuance of the human race de- pends : — The Individual and the Community; Conscience and Eeason ; Material and Form ; Idea and Symbol ; Intellectual Concept and Fact. As regards the three former of these antitheses, they find their solution collectively only in maintaining the harmonious efficiency of the three eternal Factors, which are : — The Eternal^ The pure Personalitij ^ The Community^ God ; Man ; Humanity ; or, as we found them expressed in the Divine conscious- ness of Christ : — The Father, The Son, The Holy Ghost. The collective, no less than the individual Self, is of its own nature purely self-seeking ; hence this holds good of the national Self also. But in like manner as those bonds of self-seeking are loosed by the love of the family which is the Self re-born in love ; so is the selfishness of the Com- munity purified by those Factors, and exalted into love for Humanity. And by a similar process do we, on the testimony of universal history, find that the opposition between the Idea and the Symbol, the Intellectual Con- cept and the Tradition, Philosophy and Pliilology, Eeligion and the Church, is only to be reconciled and surmounted from the very centre of the harmonious religious con- sciousness. 314 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. We shall consider the nature of these antitheses in the several branches of the religious consciousness, after we have first delivered in succinct terms the verdict of universal history on the inward antagonism and the apparent analogy of the healthy (or physiological) and the morbid (or pathological) development. Sixth Thesis. The onorbid or pathological conditions have, equally with the normal, their proper Law of Development. The Contrast and the Analogy subsisting between these two courses of development. This axiom holds good equally of all courses of develop- ment, whether religious or political, aesthetic, scientific or ethical. In all these spheres alike, there is no such thing as a stand-still, but always a progress in one direction or the other ; towards growth and life, or towards decay and death. Have we not constantly seen how every single object of our contemplation has been modified, segregated, elaborated, intensified, enfeebled, decomposed ? The great world-historical question in any great crisis is only, whether the movement is one tending to life or to death? There is nothing more similar externally, and more dis- similar in its inmost essence, than these two tendencies. Thus the disease, too, discloses an organic structure, but a corrupt one, inimical to the collective life. What does history tell us about this ? Here, too, the standing-point of the religious consciousness supplies the decisive answer. The true religious consciousness is essenti- ally an inward and spiritual apprehension. Now, wherever in religion, or polity, in manners, in art or in learning, the inward element displays its energy most powerfully in its outward productions, wherever what is spiritual is the chief aim to which effort is directed, whether accom- panied with more considerable or slighter modifications of existing institutions, — there progress must exist ; for it Chap. III.] SIGNS OF HEALTHY OE MORBID DEVELOPMENT. 315 is from within that life issues forth into the outer world, from the centre to the circumference. This therefore is the pathway that leads to life, tliat on wliich there are ever opening new outlets for the Spirit, and Genius can unfurl liis pinions with 'godlike self-reliance. If this be true, a contrary result must take place in all cases where the outward or material element is con- tinually being brought into greater prominence, — where the symbol is coming to be more and more made to stand for the substance, a form of words or an outward work for a mental act or for conscience, where a symmetrical form is accepted instead of its inner con- tents, an outward uniformity is taken for a vital unity, a semblance for the truth. In every such case, a heavy doom must be impending, whatever appearances may say to the contrary. For all Life, — the selfish equally witli the divine," — possesses the irresistible instinct of self-pre- servation in accordance with the nature of its essence. Thus, where there is a striving after the Outward element, tlie necessity soon makes itself apparent of trying to con- ceal the weak points, and therefore of exaggerating their importance. The want which is making itself felt, then comes to seem as though it were simply owing to this Aveak point not being sufficiently insisted on, not being carried out to its extreme consequences. But those ex- treme consequences constitute precisely the diametrical opposite, the Negative converted into the Positive. Now, when such a path is once entered upon, the necessity becomes very soon apparent of treating the dictates of the common conscience as apostacy, of putting down con- scientious objections as insubordination, and suppressing personal freedom as sedition. And then tyranny, eitlier ecclesiastical or political, becomes a necessity. Now, since in our modern world, both the civil and secular powers are striving after absolutism, there springs out of both combined such a monstrous incubus of constraint and hypocrisy, with their appropriate conconiitants, as was 316 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book VT. unknown to antiquity. Hence it is that we behold in the spheres of art and learning, a conventionality, a mannerism, a tyranny of fashion — nay, a moral and intellectual hollo w- ness and barbarism, which as far exceeds the phenomena of this kind presented by the Greek and Eoman world during their period of decadence, as our ideal and the trust committed to us, transcend the task appointed by God to the ancient world. To understand, while it is yet time, the crisis of this pathological condition, leads to reform, and may, with the aid of a spiritual religion, issue in a rejuvenescence. But if once the germ of life is crushed, then destiny must take its course, and revolution alternate with counter-revolu- tion, till events take upon themselves the burial of the corpse. But the saving instinct does not reside in the under- standing. The most intellectual and sharp-witted nations often appear to be the most infatuated. It lies simply and solely in the earnestness of moral purpose. Hence salvation is impossible with any other religion than that of the heart, the rehgion of the life ; therefore the Christi- anity of the Gospel in its unchecked unfolding. Chap. IV.] THE EELIGIOUS RESULTS. 317 CHAPTER IV. THE RELIGIOUS RESULTS. First Thesis. The sole essential part of all Religion is the consciousness of God. Revelation is the impartation of this consciousness of God to the Moral Personality. We cannot doubt tliat on the long route we have tra- versed we have clearly found the Spirit of God to be originally implanted in man ; — indigenous in every eth- nological stock that has contributed to mould human society; in every fellowship which directs men's thoughts to the Eternal. We have found that all religions rest upon the belief in an over-ruling moral order of the world ; that is to say, in an order which is based upon Conscience and Eeason, and which our conscience and reason are able to feel and to perceive. The revelation of God as the Spirit is given in a human being, and passes through this human being to other human beings and to mankind at large. From this we seem compelled to infer that all religions have their well-spring in some human heart ; that they are wrought by man into the shape they assume in the same sense that language is so ; i.e. not designedly or arbi- trarily, but because they are organic products of the artistic impulse, or in other words, of the instinct which impels him to embody in action that intuitive conscious- ness which resides indeed in the individual man, but re- sides in him as a necessarily social being. We have further seen that all the religions which we 318. GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. have been considering, set before themselves the same end ; namely, a restoration of that union of the soul with the Deity, which reason and conscience demand. And yet we find essential differences subsisting even between those religions which rest on a revelation (some Person who reveals the Divine). Many of them lose their inner basis in the heart, and therewith fail of their purpose ; and eventually by a fatal inversion of the consciousness arrive at precisely the opposite idea ; inasmuch as they are impelled by a perverted morbid condition constantly to exaggerate more and more the mistake once made, and raise what is most external into the principal thing. All religions strive towards some objective embodi- ment beside the cultus, which is the primary product of that divine instinct. The most universal mode of its embodiment in action consists in the instituting and regu- lating of marriage, society, polity, art, learning, on the basis of that consciousness. In addition to this, many of the religions further possess a documentary tradition of that which has actually been revealed. Thus the first question to be put will be : " According to this, what is Religion ? What is Revelation f " Religion signifies two different things : an inward state of mind, or an outwardly visible fellowship and institu- tion. In the former case, according to the terminology of the present work, it means the inward feeling and the impulse inseparable from it to act out that feeling. Ee- garded as an institution, it is the reahzation of the con- sciousness of the presence of God in man as a personal reflex of the divine order of the world in human things, showing that order to be one conformable to Morality and Eeason. Eehgion, considered as a fellowship, has its root in some usage which has gradually grown up out of the co-opera- tion of Individuals and the Community ; and which subse- quently has come to be ascribed to a superior being who reveals himself to some privileged nioital and his posterity. Chap. IV.] REVELATION AND TRADITION. 319 Or again it may notoriously and upon the evidence of documents have proceeded from an exalted Personage, who has given voice to the consciousness imparted to him by the Deity, and dehvered or bequeathed to his disciples and the community, institutions or ordinances founded thereon. Such a personal communication v^ith its accep- tance and maintenance constitutes a Revelation. The particular shape which such a revelation may assume, will considerably depend upon the mode of its transmission. Some kind of tradition is indispensable for any revelation. But the only trustworthy kind will be a written one, therefore a sacred record ; for the w^hole course of history teaches us that when oral tradition is not based upon such a record, it very soon alters its character with the altered religious consciousness of those who are its depositaries. Thus the true religion will rest upon the pure revelation of the self-consciousness of some exalted moral Personality, and its preservation will depend upon a documentary tradition. But the appropriation of this true religion will have to be effected by means of faith ; or in other words, the personal acceptance of the revelation as true and answering to the recipient's own hisjliest self-consciousness residing in his conscience. Finally, the object of such a faith can be nothing else than the Divine. But this Divine may be apprehended after a threefold fashion : first, in God the Eternal ; se- condly, in the finite manifestation of the Essence of the Godhead, in the Personality revealing God ; thirdly, in the Community which, building itself upon this faith, lives in communion with God. Since the Divine can be but One^ the true religion and the true revelation must be that of Monotheism^ but only in so far as the faith in the one sole Deity is recognized to be identical with the faith in the essential indwelling of the Eternal (or the Father) in Man — that is to say, in the pure Personality (the Son) and in the illuminated Community (the Spirit, of the Father and the Son), 320 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. But the completeness and tlie liarmonioiis co-efficiency of these three Factors will be indispensable for the main- tenance and beneficent effects of the belief in the reve- lation and in the ordinances and ethical code grounded thereon. This brings us at once to the consideration of the anti- thesis between the Essence and the Symbol or Sign. Second Thesis. The Symbol is of no value whatever in itself, but only as an image of the Idea, and in so far as it may produce an efect upon the moral and intellectual religious conscious- ness. The Symbol is the language — the word or image — of the Eeligion, i.e. of the belief and inner act of the re- ligious consciousness. It speaks to the worshipping, as the word does to the meditating Assembly. It is just as much a sign, proper to Humanity, as language is an act of the Spirit of God in man. Hence, in its outward aspect it is a work of man, — the fitting expression of his religious consciousness. And it is the inward impulse given by that religious consciousness which has caused both the one and the other to spring forth. But for that veiy reason does its worth depend upon its intrinsic import, and upon the power which that is able to exert upon the believing spirit. Now with respect to this, we find two opposite corruptions or defects. On the one hand, the Symbol is liable to become unintelligible. It was originally the spontaneous, self-interpreting ex- pression of the religious Idea ; for how else should it have sprung up, and sprung up everywhere, and in. every age afresh ? But it does not remain such for ever. Or per- chance the meaning of the Idea itself has vanished and become as unintelligible as its sign. JSTow, when from this or that cause, in either of these modes the Symbol comes to be no longer understood, it is very apt to obtain such Chap. IV.] THE SYMBOL AND THE IDEA.. 321 an ascendancy as to usurp the place of the Idea, and of the inward rehgious mental attitude with its correspond- ing acts. Now on the evidence of universal history, from Zoroaster and Abraham onwards, this latter danger is by far the greater. To the self-seeking man, every sort of (Hitward act, nay, even every sort of mortification of the body, or the most toilsome pilgrimage, is easier than the surrender of the self-seeking principle — easier than the inward resolve to do the will of God, and thus to know Him more and more. Some religions have become entirely ritualistic ; they demand nothing beyond the observance of certain ex- ternal acts and practices. Now on these the sentence of doom has already gone forth^ and 07ily awaits the advent of a more inward religion to be carried into open execu- tion. And this holds good not only of the various systems of Nature-worship, but also of the worn-out ethical religions. Otlier rehgions retain in addition to this ritualistic element, doctrines, moral precepts, and inspired decla- rations touching the nature of God and the life of tlie soul in God, her dependence on Him, her separation from Him, and her re-union with Him as the Highest Good, sensible that this re-union is that which gives happiness and peace to the soul. But with these reli- gions, too, if they turn their attention from their inward to their outward side, from faith and the dispositions of the mind to so-called good works (such as the turning of the Buddhist praying-machine) ; they, too, according to the testimony of the world's history — therefore Ave may surely say, in virtue of a universal, unalterable law of the world's moral order — fall under the same sentence of condemnation, suffer the same spiritual death, and henceforward work nothing but injury. With them, as in the case of Nature-worship, magic takes the place of that spiritual Force which operates on the will by means of conscience and reason. Every YOL. III. T 322 GOD IN IIISTOKY. [Book VI. Symbol to ivhich a self-acting efficacy for moral amelio- ration is attributed, is of the nature of magic. That is to say, this ascription rests upon the impious supposition that external Nature is capable of determining the moral will of Man. And when such a conception is also a backsliding (from a spiritual truth), it is an apostacy from God the Spirit. Third Thesis. Individual Personality finds its proper relative Place only in the true Religion. In our First Book, we have considered the profound significance of the apparent antithesis between the influence exerted by the Individual Personality, and that exerted by the Community, in determining the shape taken by the Eeligious Consciousness, and main- tained that under normal conditions, this antithesis resolves itself into the life-engendering play of two divine Factors. Now, has not the development of the rehgious consciousness, as beheld in the whole history of the world, confirmed this assertion of ours, and illustrated it by conspicuous examples ? The only proper and fertile soil for the seed of the Spirit is the Community, and the fruit that grows thereon is true civilization ; while, again, the proper and highest goal of this civilization is the progressive reign of the Divine among men, the coming of the kingdom of God upon the earth. But it is also equally certain that the Spirit which resides and reveals itself in the Community is really and truly the Divine element which holds it together — that same Divine ele- ment the fulness of whose essence had been given out in the Personality. Hence, so long as the three Factors, God, Man, Humanity, remain in hving and harmonious co- operation, this Spirit is the only rightful interpreter of the mystery of personality in general. It is this harmony, with the clear self-consciousness Chap. IV.] THE BIBLE THE SOLE AUTHOfilTY. 323 thereof in Jesus, which renders the religion of the Gospel alone capable of being the religion of all mankind. For nowhere else do we find that harmony ; though we are now acquainted with all the records of those religions which have contributed to mould Humanity and guided the current of History. If this harmony has its prototype in Jesus, its reflex in us, nothing more is lacking to its perfectness, or to our guarantee for its preservation, but the Authentic Docu- mentary Tradition concerning His Personality, and its connection with that historical development from the bosom of which it has sprung, and to which it relates and appeals for witness. It is impossible to replace such an Authentic Document by any authority or any system whatsoever. For in that alone lies the guarantee for mankind, that the God-con- scious but variously assaulted intellect of this age shall not lose sight of the objective historical truth, of the divine origines of our race, and with these of the past and the future of Humanity. Fourth Thesis. There exists no objective Norin for Christianity beside the Bible, regarded as the history of God and of Humanity^ ivith Christ for its central-jooint. Eevelation is essentially the history, first of Personality, then of its influence upon the Community. Under this aspect does the Judaico-Christian revelation present itself to our view, from Abraham onwards through Moses and the Men of God under the Law, up to Jesus of Nazareth. What in that revelation is anterior to Abraham consists of the traditions concerning the primaeval world which have been collected, preserved, and placed under the focus of the religious consciousness by this great Chaldgean. From these traditions we derive instruction concerning the epochs and fortunes of the noblest races ; and, moreover, their Y 2 324 GOD IN HISTORY. [Boor VI. teacliings are pervaded by a full consciousness of the parent-fount of all human development — the reign of God, therefore of the eternal love and goodness. Into this unique record of Humanity are interwoven precious remi- niscences of primeeval history ; and the whole texture is held together by the sense of the unity of the Human Eace, with its divine destiny, and by the proclamation of the eternal goodness and love of the Deity, Fifth Thesis. The Christianity of the Bible is not founded mi the Anti- natural or Legendary} A legend ^ is the childlike, but when misunderstood, at the same time the misleading reflex of the real miracle or wonder^ [or immediate manifestation of divine power], and springs up by a law of human nature either out of the poetic investiture assumed by some fact revealing divine power, or else out of the transmutation of an idea into a fact. But the underlying ground of such a poetic embodiment is man's faith in the two great miracles or wonders wrought by God — the Universe and History : in other words, man's faith in the power of the Spirit. Thus the true historian will recognize this underlying ground, although there may be cases where he finds him- ^ " Das Ckristenthum der Bihel ist nicM aiif Mirakel gegribukty This ■passage, in common with some others (see pp. 65, 148, 233, 283), presents con- siderable difficulty to the translator, in consequence of Bunsen's using the ■words " Wuncler " and " Mirakel " in contrast to each other. The former — " Wimder " — is the word which in German answers to our term ''miracle " in all the varied acceptations which we may give to that word ; the latter — • " Mirakel " — is, so far as I am aware, a word of Bunsen's own coining, and, at all events, not in ordinary use. It by no means answers to our word '' miracle " in the sense of an immediate manifestation of the Divine power, for which Bunsen always employs the word " Wtinder," but is applied by him to anti-natural occurrences of a legendary or fantastic character, such as the pseudo-miracles so common in mediaeval times, or in the more super- stitious Roman Catholic countries at the present day. — Tk. » " Mirakel." » " Wtinder. ' Chap. IV.] CIIRISTIAXITY NO LEGEND. 325 self compelled to resolve into one or the other of the two forms mentioned above, those legendary incidents which, after a conscientious criticism of the oldest records of the Bible, may still remain to us as believed to be facts by their reporters ; and though he may be unable to do other- wise than regard the behef in the literal facts in the shape reported, as an imperfect form or as a delusion. In the Gospels, however, sufficient means of verifying the his- torical concatenation of the life of Jesus have been pre- served to us, to enable us to utiderstand the popular style in which the reports are couched, and to sustain our faith in the truth of the facts themselves. The eye-witnesses report actual facts as they occurred— but in the garb and language of their own time. This garb, however, is so transparent in its guileless simplicity, and so radiant w^ith faith in the essential truths beneath it, that it may, to a certain extent, be termed unimportant how far they have or have not thrown a legendary colouring over the miracles "wrought by Jesus. The accounts of the witnesses who report at second-hand (and further than these the Gospel narra- tive does not come down), are already less transparent, but the historical truth is no more obscured by this than is the spiritual fact which lies at the bottom of its legend- ary rendering. All beyond this is either the product of the play of mysticism, or of a hazy theosoph}^, or of a dogmatic theology, in whose eyes the fundamental con- ception has been obscured and lost. But so, likewise, on the other hand, is the historian compelled to regard all criticism that transgresses the limits of candid sober re- search simply as so much misconception, springing from a reaction against the extravagances of mysticism, or against the mere dicta and despotism of the dogmatists. Thus there no more exists any opposition between faith and knowledo;e than between a fact and its intellectual conception. The object of faith is the true, well-sifted fact, in so far as it can strike root in the human mind. The object of knowledge is the intellectual conception 326 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. of that fact. It is impossible for either to contradict the other ; but the fact will remain imtranslucent without the intellectual conception, while the latter will remain life- less without the historical embodiment. The combination of the two is the true Positive Philosophy of the Mind. Sixth Thesis. The 'presentation of an Ecclesiastical Community constituted on the 'principles of the Gospel cannot he permanently main- tained 'without the formation of a Civil Commoni/jealth organized on the same type as the ecclesiastical. Forasmuch as the religious consciousness is sole, and the human being, like Humanity at large, represents an indivisible unity, no religious confession of faith can be an honest one, which does not make it the object of its endeavours so to mould the religious life of its professors in their relations to the actual realities of the world around them, as to place the Church in harmony with the demands of reason and conscience, with the precepts of the Gospel, and with the possibilities disclosed by faith in that Gospel. A Christian may submit to tyranny without losing his faith or his dignity ; nay, the unavoidable con- flict thus brought upon him may but intensify his sense of the divine power of the Gospel. But he can never approve of or acquiesce in tyranny, deeds of violence, or arbitrary government ; still less declare them pleasing to God ; he cannot but condemn them in God's sight, and acknowledge that he does so, when he is called upon to confess his opinion. When once it has come to be pro- claimed and believed that the Gospel is divine truth, and the Bible the sole guarantee of that truth, holding co- ordinate rank with reason and conscience in their respec- tive domains, then is all lawlessness or arbitrary SAvay, all deification of human absolutism seen to be nothino; short of idolatry and unbelief. So likewise, objectively con- sidered, it is impossible for the Gospel to be understood Chap. IV.] ANTAGOXISM BETWEEN HIEKARCHY AND STATE. 327 and believed in its full truth, if it do not transform the face of things around it. Thus every religion of the Spirit, — therefore, above all Christianity, — apparently tends to destroy existing institutions, but, in fact, tends rather to sustain and restore them. For all that exists has within it a mortal factor, which craves rejuvenes- cence, and on which, in all ages, defects and injustice engraft themselves. It would seem as though the sins of the individuals so continually entrenched themselves behind society and its circumstances, that the permanent maintenance of existing institutions is altogether impos- sible without reform and restoration. Incapability of change is incapability of improvement ; and incapability of change in externals, with whatever fair names it may glorify itself, is nothing else than an involuntary testimony to the dying out of the inward life, a deceptive veiling- over of death. Seventh Thesis. The antagonism between the Hierarchy and the State is insol- uble. An antagonism between the spiritual and the civil Community does not subsist a^t all, but the tivo are the miutual complements of each other. The medi£eval Church, like the ancient priestly ordi- nances, places the unlimited power of a Spiritual Corpora- tion, without any mediating and restraining bond of con- nection, side by side with (therefore practically above) the self-government of a people or State. That Corporation usurps to itself the Divine rights, sequestrates, as it were, the rights common to all, and claims the supreme sove- reignty, (which amounts to tyranny,) in the name of God, inasmuch as it limits the jurisdiction of the State to so- called secular, i.e. human, therefore subordinate, rights. The Gospel begins only where this claim is repudiated and cancelled in the name of God, justice, and law. And then do both the civil and ecclesiastical communities enter 328 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. alike into the possession of their natural rights. The reign of law is triumphant when the Gospel is placed upon the throne. In this transformation the particular form assumed by the constitution is indifferent, provided that the freedom of conscience and the supremacy of law are acknow- ledged ; for these two constitute the vital Force of all things spiritual and human. Eighth Thesis. In all Critical Epochs of the ivoiid's history there is an infal- lible Sign of impending speedy Ruin — viz., the overiveening prevalence of falsehood and crime. In the sphere of Religion such a sign might he descHed in the exalting of a Formulated Lie into a Sacred Truth, or the insisting on an unlimited tyranny over the Mind as a condition of the continued sub- sistence of Religion. Without entering into metaphysical investigations for the support of this thesis, the witness which has been borne to us by universal history suffices to show us that priestly religions are near their end, when they seek their prop in that which is hollow and nugatory in them, as though it were the truth, and demand credence for that which neither is true historically, nor philosophically can be so. When the Babylonian monarch suffered himself to be worshipped, the Persian stood before his gates. When Alexander played the god, his life and empire were forfeited. When Domitian abused the name of God, the axe was laid to the root of the mightiest world-empire of modern history. And all this must hold good yet more on the territory of religion. For there the question is not one of rights, but of truths ; it affects not only the body, but the soul. Moreover, the conditions on which a spiritual tyranny protracts its existence are much harsher and more incisive than those necessary to a political tyranny. For, whereas such a religion contradicts the ineradicable Chap. IV.] FORETOKENS OF RUIN. 329 religious consciousness implanted in humanity — the un- reasonable pretensions wliich it prefers inevitably render it necessary that the people should be silenced, that the mind should be mutilated and broken in conscience, that science, especially in the branches relating to the mind and its history, should be persecuted and repressed. Where this is insufficient to attain the end sousrht, there is no resource left but to exalt the lie itself to the throne, and to ascribe to a human being the divine attribute of unlimited authority. Hence, in such a position of affairs, the universal divine order of the world will most pre-eminently vindicate it- self. For the day of triumph itself will be the day of ruin, because it is that of insurrection against God. Were it not so, there would be no God, nor divine order of the world, and the whole history of man's sense of God's presence in his affairs would be a delusion and a lie. The Devil would govern the world, and the Evil One would be God. In other words, the opposite theory to that which we have propounded cannot but lead to utter un- belief ; — and so it does ! But that this theory is a miserable delusion, the world's history will assuredly prove in each one of its great crises. The Divine Order can still less deny itself in such darkness than the sun can refuse his light when the morning red is flushing. If a State which pursues none but egotistic aims has no divine right to continued existence, still more does the self-seeking intolerance of the hierarchy and all religious persecution contravene the supreme law of the universe ; for the highest fellowship has the duty of the highest love ! 330 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. CHAPTER V. THE RESULTS AS THEY BEAR UPON POLITICS AND CIVILIZA- TION. THE CRISES OF THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS ARE POLITICAL CRISES. We have everywhere seen pohtical life flourish where it has grown up as a product of the rehgious consciousness, whether this latter manifested itself directly under the form of rehgion, or as a sense of justice and right, or displayed its activity in both directions. Already in the primseval world, we have seen how vast empires and mighty events have sprung from man's belief in a moral order of the world, and in his own obhgation to subserve that order. We have seen this behef, under the guidance of Zoroaster, taking the form of conquest and proselytism, under that of Abraham, producing isolation from the surrounding peoples, holiness of life, preparation for the Law and the Gospel. Not less clearly have we seen the same principle hold good in the origin and progress of the Hellenic and Italic tribes in Asia Minor and Europe. And, finally, the history of the religious consciousness of the Christian Aryans, especially that of the Teutonic nations, yielded us abundant evidence to the same effect. N"o less convincing, however, was the testimony of all history to the converse fact, that the continuance of dominion and power was conditional on the continuance of the religious consciousness, and that the decline of the empire foretokened itself by ungodliness and selfishness. By the term ungodliness, however, we do not understand indifference towards the State religion, any more than we should reckon outward adherence to that religion equiva- Chap. V.] THE SPHERE OF POLITICS. 331 lent to piety. The actual relation in which a man stands to a particular State religion is something that does not depend upon his own free choice, for it is contingent on his faith in the teachings of that religion and conviction of their truth. The essence of ungodliness is perfectly compatible with an external respect for religion, but not with the godliness of pure morals, or with a personal operative faith in the moral order of the world as God's work and will. The dying out of this consciousness is just as necessarily a cause of the decline and fall of a State as it is true that only through the energy imparted by this consciousness can a proper, healthy political life be created and sustained. God is not less glorified by such a fall than by the prosperity of a law-loving and God-fearino; nation. For where else can we find the incentive needed to conquer the natural self-seeking of the individual, and stir him up to self-surrender for the common weal, but in that consciousness that God is living and present now in this common weal, and that we are fulfilling His will in promoting its good ? If what we have said be true, then the signs of an imminent crisis in the political sphere must reveal them- selves on the one hand in the undue inflation of the power of the ruler, and on the other, in the deadening of public spirit, and the increase of selfishness on the part of individuals. For in ordinarv times both are held in check by " well-understood self-interest." The rulers govern after an endurable fashion; the people worship self-interest with moderation and decorum, not because their rehgious consciousness impels them thereto, but because there still subsists a respect for honour, and, above all, a calculation — if but a shortsighted one — of advantages. In this sphere, the formulated lie of ungodliness is, on the part of the ruler, the deification of unlimited power (i.e., absolutism) by the assertion of divine right. As though everything divine were not by its very nature 332 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book VI. common to all, self-communicating, loving ! And as though the idea of any unlimited human authority were not madness, and its apotheosis blasphemy ! Through this madness we have seen all the Asiatic empires and sovereigns sink into irretrievable perdition, not by chance, but in virtue of the divine order of the world wliich does not tolerate an overweening mass of crime. And can the deification of aristocratic or popular power be less impious, if it exalt itself above the divine limits set to man, and above the eternal laws of the divine order of the world ? Certainly not ! And here, too, we can discover the same premonitory symptoms of death. In this case, the inward contradiction is yet more flagrant. In the absolutism of the autocrat, the existence of free- dom and rights is indeed recognized ; but exclusively for the one. With an aristocracy, they are so already for a collectivity — for this is presupposed by any recognition of the rights of a community ; but with a democracy, equal rights are proclaimed as a fundamental axiom, and then power is abused to subserve the vilest aims of sel- fishness ! In degenerate democracies, for this very reason, do we find the most horrible examples of political guilt, and of the retribution it brings down. In a democracy, the boldest and rarest step is taken of exalting equality of individual rights into a supreme principle, and demanding from all alike self-surrender for the public good. But when the freedom hence arising is misused to subserve unbridled selfishness, — when the sovereign people, drunk with power, exercise violence and oppression on feeble races and States, because their mightier neighbour desires their lands to extend his teiTitory ; — then are the most signal judgments of God standing at their gate, unless the better spirit of the people awakes in time and rouses itself to action. But that it will never do without a return to the regions of the Eternal, — without a religious upheaving, — without a personal ethical belief. Chap. V.] THE KESULTS FOR CIVILISATION. 333 Now to Slim up what we have here maintained, we may say that in the pohtical spliere, the deification of sel- fish enjoyment is what appears as the presage of destruc- tion ; whether it be power or money, for its own sake, or for the sake of the enjoyment it brings, tliat is striven after by vile arts to the loss of honour. Eights perverted to the commission of injustice, the power of creating good abused to demoralization, freedom itself converted into an instrument for making slaves — these are the signs of the last times ! The Result ox Civilization. True Civilization of Culture is Religious Consciousness that has become flesh and blood in a People. Culture displays itself under the shapes of art, poetry, science, and national literature. The history of the Greek culture is the most signal example of the extent to which religious consciousness can reveal itself in these modes. But more recent history also has trophies enough to show on this field. All of which are united attestations to the fact that nothing in this culture is really great, but what is common to Humanity ; and that culture dies with the religious consciousness out of which it sprung. Culture without religious consciousness^ is nothing but civilized barbarism^ and disguised animalism. It is in vain that people attempt to conceal the falsehood and death. In art, the sense of form and proportion dies out with the spirit from which it proceeded. Learning sinks to a mere knowledge of trivialities, while all that is great and true becomes unintelligible. Literature remains for a time polished and smooth, though destitute of true intellect and taste ; exaggeration is mistaken for force, bombast for inspiration. And then it only needs some outward mischance or public calamity to lay bare the hollowness of the whole social state in aU its horrors. 334 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. Still tlie godlessness of a false culture is displayed in the strongest colours in those universal relationships which come under the jurisdiction of morals ; in marriage, in domestic life, in social intercourse, in all spheres where loyalty and trust were originally synonymous with good manners or culture, while now a complete contradiction between them is ever making itself clearer and clearer to man's consciousness. Thus nations, strictly speaking, perish through the cor- ruptness of social circumstances ; that is to say, of the primary conditions of common life, and the primary crea- tions of the ethical mind. But this very corruptness again has its ground in the corruptness of the individual, and displays itself most conspicuously in the dying out and loss of faith in -pev- sonal moral responsibility. Therefore in this sense we are justified in saying that the corruption of religion is the corruption of the nations, and that this corruption has its deepest ground in the degeneration of the original religious consciousness. But that is the very curse of immoral governments, that they evoke a large proportion of the vices of individuals, therefore of the general mass of evil on the earth. And this is the heavy responsibility resting on the up^Dcr classes, that through the corruptness and despair of the working classes they prepare a poison for themselves, and pave the way for the ultimate perdition of the State. None of the arts of civilized tyranny can prevail to avert this. They always take one or other of two equally ruinous courses. Either they attempt to stifle all the higher and nobler sentiments by facilitating and favour- ing the sensual enjoyment of the masses and of the upper classes. Lavish magnificence is styled befitting splen- dour, fashion takes the place of refinement, moral laxity and indifference are dignified with the title of humanity, shameless vice of amiable frailty, degrading servility of devoted loyalty, while the setting loose of the brutal ten- Chap. V.] THE END OF FALSE CULTURE, £35 dencies iu man under the supervision of the police is denominated true freedom. This was the course adopted in the despotic empires of Asia, and things can hardly have fared much better in Tyre and Sidon. Still the most hideous example, and that in which history has preserved to us the most striking instance at once of sin and its punishment, is Imperial Eome. Can similar proceedings in Christian countries be followed by dissimilar consequences ? Yes, for they will be far more terrible ones ! The other course is that of hypocrisy. It is proved by calculation that piety is a great blessing for the nations in which it is found, and religion the best instrument for restoring discipline and good manners, and ensuring the obedience of subjects. But instead of directing every effort to the production of an inward moral renewal, and leading the way to it by setting a good example, the rulers set to work to restore outward usages, flatter the priests, entrust to them the spiritual guidance of the people, and nevertheless plunge into the abyss just when they dream that they have secured the strongest props for their power. Instances of this kind we find in several of the Eoman emperors, from Augustus onwards. Sooner or later comes the world's crisis ; judgment is held, and the people and their rulers alike are doomed to destruc- tion — the latter irretrievably so ; the former are to be saved only by renewed spiritual religious consciousness, and the reception of that word of God's revelation that is ever echoing afresh in the heart of man, eternally young and eternally renewing youth. 336 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. CHAPTER VL THE PKACTICAL INFERENCES. I. The signs of the inward and ouhuard cfisls of the present. If we may assume that our researclies into, and reflec- tions upon, the world-historical unfolding of man's reli- gious consciousness, and the operation of the eternal laws of the world's moral order, have not been altogether des- titute of truth,-^ — the foregoing results flow so naturally and necessarily out of the facts which we have found to constitute the distinctive and correlated phenomena pre- sented by the religious consciousness of mankind during the last five thousand years, that we are surely justified in inferring; the existence of some Eternal Law un- derlying these phenomena. Even without constructing a speculative demonstration that such laws can be shown to be necessary in thought, induction and analogy justify us in assuming that a universal experience must hold good for us and our circumstances also. Thus, our own re- ligious consciousness, too, whether in its bearing on creed, pohty or civilization, forms one portion of the general development. And consequently the question presses home to us all ; — what practical inferences follow from the phenomena and results we have been considering, for each one of us personally, for the present condition of society in general, and for the future of Humanity ? Among thoughtful persons there will probably be but few, if any, who, in the face of those facts and coupling with them more or less distinctly the reflections which suggested themselves at the close of our results, will not Chap. VI.] IS NOT THE PRESENT A CRISIS? 337 state this question somewliat after the following fashion : — Are we not even now living in the midst of one of those great crises^ and perhaps on the very eve of a catastrophe of the whole of European society ? We cannot, as it seems to me, put aside this question "without culpable cowardice and criminal indifference ; nay, nor without incurring the reproaches of conscience for inward untruthfulness. But we may not conceal from ourselves that in start- ing such a question we enter on new and very delicate ground. Hitherto we have had accomplished historical facts before us, and our results have been drawn from conditions which have ceased to exist. Now we find ourselves midway in the current of onward-flowing cir- cumstances in which we all bear our part, and by which, therefore, from the very constitution of our nature, we are all more or less borne along. Is that current setting up or down stream ? Wliat, in our circumstances, constitutes its upward or downward course .^ Are all things tending towards destruction, or towards re-construction, or are our circumstances of a mixed character tending in both these directions ? Does the crisis betray symptoms of a total dissolution, or of a new and better life upon this earth ? We will begin by bringing these questions touching our present state to the bar of the science of Mind, with its practical applications to national education and higher culture. Eor in so doing we assure ourselves, if not against multiform objections, yet at least of a calm hear- ing. And this is more than we can promise ourselves with regard to the three succeeding topics on which we shall have to touch — the practical conclusions to be drawn with regard to our ecclesiastical, political, and social con- ditions — for in discussing these, it is easy to foresee that it is not, as in the former case, with scholars, sober-minded thinkers, investigators and reasoners — experts, in short — that we have to deal, and with whom the final verdict rests. On the contrary, on all those points which affect VOL III. z 338 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. men's closest personal interests, it is their passions, and lurking behind these, their self-interest and worldly advan- tage that are wont to dictate the side they espouse. Nay, so far from taking conscience and reason for the supreme arbiters, the numerous class who do not believe in those sovereign powers, or who fear to appear before their tribunal, are apt to call in the aid of very different autho- rities and arguments. This is more especially true of all matters relating to churches and creeds ; for behind the screen of these, it is easiest of all to conceal motives and interests of a very different kind. To avoid unnecessary offence and irritation in speaking on this topic, we shall refrain altogether from discussing the present state or future prospects of the Eomish and Greek Churches. Their defenders at least agree with us in asserting Chris- tendom to be in the throes of a crisis. To their assertion, reiterated now for the last three hundred years, that this crisis is the fault of the Eeformation, which is conducting the nations to their ruin, we answer with the apology of the facts demonstrating that this crisis has proved itself a convalescent struggle towards life, after a thousand years of death, or at least of a protracted course of cor- ruption and error, the existence of which our opponents will not deny. The next dangerous field is that of politics. On this too, in a work dedicated to calm and historical reflection, we shall commit the special application of our facts to the conscience of the reader. That of which we seek to discover the distinctive tokens for his benefit, has no personal or isolated bearing. On these two topics we shall restrict ourselves to the formulating of brief propositions. Our work is a historical one. On all that goes beyond history and trenches on the domain of the present, we shall do no more than suggest hints, which may enable our reader to discover whether our inferences do or do not flow from the historical survey. Chap. VI.] THE PKACTICAL SCIENTIFIC INFERENCE. 339 Oiir last section will touch upon what we include under the general title of civilization or culture. To those who are of opinion that in delineating the critical symptoms disclosing themselves in the present state of our culture, art, literature, and general social conditions, we have drawn too gloomy or harsh a picture, we will only re- peat, that our theory of the world on the whole is by no means a gloomy one, and that if we have to call attention to grave and ominous circumstances, we suffer from them ourselves at least as much as any others can do, although we are not without consolation, nay, are full of hope. But we beg all who sit in j udgment on us not to forget that we are but drawing rough outlines with a retro- spective glance on what has gone before, though there is much to tempt us to enter into details. Let lis first consider the practical inference to be drawn respecting science, whose problem in regard to our pre- sent enquiry it is to discover the true method by which to arrive at a Philosophy of the History of Mankind. First Thesis. The combination of Philology, History, and Speculation ivill conduct us to a Positive Philosophy of Mind. These three points of departure have been more fully considered in our First Book — the philological, for the investigation and sifting of the given facts as facts ; the historical, for the discovery and exhibition of the causal connection and the evolution of these facts; the specula- tive, for the induction of the laws governing the develop- ment of the collective body of facts thus sifted and presented in their historical connection. ISTow, if at every step we have need of all these three starting-points for our reflections, less than ever at the present moment can there be any question of that "• reversal of science," which has z2 340 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. been declared necessary by those who blaspheme, or, at least, mistrust, reason and conscience.^ Much rather are we constrained by the results of our enquiry to draw the inference that, on the contrary, our most pressing need is a deejDer and more living study of the Science of Mind or Spirit. That Science ought no longer to remain discon- nected fi"om man's actual life, but to be brought into more intimate conjunction with it. The human mind aspiring after knowledge ought not to be directed to mathematical studies, and told to limit itself to them ; by far the most important matter for it is to bring it into a closer contact with present, and a more fruitful study of past, human realities. The only objects of our direct knowledge are Man and Humanity, and, in contemplating these, we soon arrive at the perception that they both have their first Cause neither in physical Nature, nor in themselves, but in an Eternal Thought and Will, which Humanity in its collective development represents without exhausting. Now, more than ever before, are we called to make an earnest use of the knowledge thus earned by such strenuous and toilsome effort, and through the con- templation of God, Man, and Humanity, — constituting as they do the eternal and only Substantial Being, — to build up our own religious consciousness, and through that, our whole spiritual life, to the end that we may emerge from the chaotic confusion of prior ages into the clear light of divine knowledge, and rise out of the slavery beneath absolute rulers into the freedom of the kingdom of God. In trumpet tones do the pressing evils of the age and the voice of all history summon us to take up this work. And the whole of European Humanity of all creeds and in all quarters of the globe is called upon to engage in it likewise. ^ Seevol. I. p. 12.-TK. ciiap. vl] positive philosophy possible. 341 Second Thesis. It is most especially needful at the present moment that the Science of the Religious Consciousness should commence its work luith the sifting and historical arrangement of the Facts. After it lias been almost universally acknowledged that the speculative criticism of the phenomena of Mind has in the reasonings of Kant and his successors up to Hegel completed its course along the pathway of pure thought, and has not (even in Schelling's system) suc- ceeded in arri\dng at a real Positive Philosophy, while the inadequacy of an aphoristic empiricism to such a result is even more apparent — there is no course left open to us but to study the phenomena presented by the Human Mind in Time precisely in the same manner as we do those presented by physical Nature in Space. To treat them, for example, in the same mode as the phenomena of astronomy have been treated for centuries past. Thus we shall regard those phenomena in reference to their truth, as products of the Reason ; in reference to their essence, as answering to the Moral Law in man, and no less endeavour to imderstand their nature as isolated, completed phenomena, than to discover and state the laws of their development. Now, supposing that the historical materials were already completely sifted — therefore arranged in their proper order and historical connection, according to the Categories, or abstract fundamental forms, of Finite Being, and therefore also according to the Categories of their consecutive existence or Development — then certainly our wisest coiu-se might be to engage without further delay in the speculative portion of the enquiry, and seek by the pathway of Thought, first to apprehend those laws govern- ing the development of Humanity, and then to exhibit them in order to the strengthening and purifying of the creative religious consciousness. But to so small an extent has 342 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. this work been accomplisliecl, that probably the major part of it yet remains to be done. Thus we must not shrink from the toilsome path of philological and historical investigation, but, in pursuing it, we must ever keep our eye fixed upon the lofty aim before us — the understanding of God, Man, and Humanity — that we may not lose our- selves in trivial questions on unfruitful fields, or, at least, fields which it is not our present business to explore. At the same time, how-ever, abstract thought will also claim and receive its rights ; for only now for the first time will it, properly speaking, obtain its highest object — Reality — the eternal Being recognised in its Finite Development. Next we must consider the practical inference for Education ; the 2jrobIem of which consists in the harmo- nious development of the religious consciousness. The human mind is trained, and led up to self-know- ledge best of all by mind. For this reason, language and history — presenting as they do the monuments of the human mind, and the exemplars of moral power and purity — ai'e much more effective instruments than mathe- matics and the physical sciences for training up a nation into the full attributes of Humanity. Thus the first things for a child to learn are his mother-tongue. Scripture his- tory, and that of his own country. But the higher edu- cation has, as we have seen, a twofold human root — that of Hebrew and that of classical antiquity. Hence, the higher national education likewise should repose on this twofold basis. The Bible and Antiquity are the two eyes of our religious consciousness, of our cosmopolitan and national culture. It is only when beheld through these eyes that the actual circumstances of our own age be- come for the first time intelligible to us in their divine and human significance. Thus, in the general popular education of the masses, the biblical element ought to predominate — that is to Chap. VI.] THE TOOBLEM OF EDUCATION. 343 say, the world's history ought to be studied under the aspect which it presents to tlie immediate rehgious con- sciousness, with Christ for its centre-point. On the contrary, in the higher, more scientific education, the classical element ought to assume greater prominence, while the biblical sliould be left to a greater extent de- pendent upon the requirements of the individual. According to this, the Bible should be the most widely employed educational instrument, forasmuch as it is the history of God. But it is only among the peoples of Pro- testant or mixed confessions that this is the case. Among the Eoman Catholic nations, the Bible is prohibited — the teaching of history, in any critical sense, very restricted. Consequently, among these nations, popular instruction has, properly speaking, no sacred groundwork commen- surate with the whole scope of human nature, but is obliged to restrict itself, for the most part, to the acqui- sition of outward proprieties and of those branches of knowledge which hold a neutral position towards the Church. This circumstance involves a quite incalculable difference between the religious consciousness of the Pro- testant and Eoman Catholic populations. Among the former, that earliest and most sacred record of the human race, — the First Book of the Law, — forms the mental nu- triment of the youth of all classes ; and so too does the narrative of the life of Jesus, with all that hangs on both. By this, history in general and human character are pre- sented to the popular mind (no less to the future motliers than to the men of the nation), from the central point of the rehgious consciousness. From the mother's lap up to the national school, the history of God, presented directly in its own records, forms the subject-matter of the in- struction and study of the youthful mind of all classes, as the investigation of and reflection upon those records, does of the first men and noblest intellects of the nation. How, on the other hand, should a living religious conscious- ness spring up among an intellectual people possessing a 344 GOD IN HISTOET. [Book VI. culture of long standing (whicli is pre-eminently the case with all the Eomanic peoples), wlien the Bible is of all works least known, its diffusion a most strictly prohibited act, nay, even placed under the ban of impiety ? Only to drive God's history into the background of educational subjects, is a worse act — forasmuch as the Spirit is more sacred than Nature — than it would be to veil the face of His sun from the earth ! The consequences of so doing lie patent to view. We may see the contrast thus produced by comparing Holland with Belgium (Belgium of the present day, not that of 1560), or the Protestant with the Eoman Catholic Cantons of Switzerland. The statements put forth to a contrary effect (for example, those in Eendu's Eeport on the German Schools) are based partly on ignorance, partly on a narrow-hearted clerical mode of lookino; at things. But even the Protestant educational institutions have as yet by no means attained their full growth. This, in England, is owing to the absence of all pliilosophical method in teaching languages, or imparting religious in- struction ; in Germany, to the substitution of mere head knowledge for practical ability. The former without the latter is of a very slight value as a means of training, and, least of all, in the education of the masses and the uni- versal national culture. In both cases, the mere knowledge may vanish without a trace, but the practical ability does not vanish at all, or at least not w^ithout leaving perma- nent traces and effects. It is clear that one is only capa- ble of putting to a practical use far less than what one hioics ; i.e. has simply grasped Avith the understanding. But it is only what we can bring into use that exer- cises our spontaneous activity ; mere knowledge exercises nothing but our susceptibility to impressions. The former produces active resolute characters, the latter is apt to produce only bookworms, dreamers, or idle talkers. The rehgious consciousness is life, and life is strength ; but strength is only acquired through independent activity, Chap. VI.] DEFECTS OF THE GERMAN SYSTEM. 345 actual exercise. Hence the over amount of lessons given in our Gymnasia is not simply the result of the introduc- tion of the so-called Bealia, or non-classical subjects ; — that is to say, of positive and technical branches of study, — but also of the decline of that religious consciousness on which the earlier Prussian curriculum was founded. It has been forgotten that our places of learning ought not to train merely scholars and professors, but human beings, statesmen, leaders of the people. It is only by the choice of wdiat is best in antiquity, and by bringing into prominence the wide human element therein, that enthusiasm for classical learning can be awakened and sustained in our people. What has to be taught of higher mathematics, and other so-called Bealia, must be taught in the Progymnasia, as far as the upper third form [Ober-Tertia, for boys of the age of 14]. Everything else should be taught in the so-called Real-schulen, running parallel with the two highest forms of the Gymnasia. Por strictly technical studies, technical universities are wanted ; and, in one of our so-called Polytechnic Institutes (that at Carlsruhe) the idea has been nearly realized. In this way there may be left to the young men study- ing at our universities, time and strength for a many-sided human culture of the whole man. Now for this there can scarcely be any subject less adapted to form future practi- cal administrative functionaries than a learned juristic train- incr; and yet the lectures on jurisprudence at present occupy by for the larger proportion of the time and strength of the future leaders and administrators of the State, while the branches of study connected with political economy wdiich in the course of this century have been raised to the rank oi positive sciences, have remained almost wholly unknown to oiu' statesmen up to the most recent times. Now what connection, it will be asked, has all this with the rehgious consciousness ? A most immediate and inti- & mate one ! The reliejious consciousness is the conscious- '& ness of an inward human meaning and connection which D 346 GOD IN HISTOKY. [Book VI. constitutes the harmony of the individual branches of knowledge wliich go to form a complete man, both in their relation to each other and to actual social realities. This is the basis of the consciousness of God in the sphere of Education. No less grave, it appears to us, are the lessons which the history of religious consciousness yields in the pro- vince of schools for the lower classes, especially in regard to religious teaching. The instruction given in these is intended to have pre-eminently the character of general training. If so, it would be most desirable to endeavour to re-introduce the reading of the Bible itself in the place of jejeune and dry or perverted " Bible-histories," in the schools, and add it to the often endless, if not unintelh- gent sermons in the churches. But the efforts of the schoolmasters and clerical authorities who have taken this matter in hand during the last twenty years, seem rather inspired by a zeal for the quantity and letter of the Scrip- ture read, than for its subject-matter and spirit. Such a system will not attain the end sought either in the schools, the congregations, or the training-colleges for school- masters ; but, on the contrary, excite only hypocrisy or distaste. Here, too, it may not improbably prove to be a deplorable circumstance that the men of science have for the last forty years troubled themselves very little about the revival of attachment to religion or the Church, still less occupied themselves personally with the Church and its needs. The scientific problems of how to satisfy those needs remain yet unsolved, and will scarcely receive their solution at the hands of our pastors. Lastly, the Gymnastic branch of education, that is to say, the developing of a liealthy and beautiful physical frame, is also essential to the harmonious acting out of the religious consciousness in the individual and the nation. Atliletic exercises ought never to have been dis- continued even had there been better grounds for such a proceeding than those which instigated it in the days of Chap. VI.] BirORTANCE OF GYMNASTICS. 347 Kampz. But the revival of athletic and aquatic sports is not all that is needed in this direction. With the regula- tions now prevailing in most of our German schools, the physical vitality is no less stunted than the intellectual and moral, by the inordinate multitude of subjects taught. A boy or growing youth has, especially in the higher classes of the schools, almost double as many lessons on double as many subjects as he can really properly prepare for. Many evils are to be attributed to this cause ; and in private boarding-schools also, to the want of sufficient, and suffi- ciently nourishing food, or again to the unconscientious shortening of the holidays both for teachers and scliolars, and their still further abridgment practically by the mass of vacation-tasks. The healthy vitahty of the nation has been lowered in every respect by these circumstances, and no less" by the imintelligent pedantry with which the classical studies are pm-sued in many of the higher private schools. That drilling for the conscription should have been dis- joined from the practice of athletic exercises in our public schools is likewise a token of the decline of that spirit which from 1808 onwards revivified the whole national life, but which, ever since 1820, has been more or less systemati- cally repressed. There can be no culture and no religion without a living sense of God's presence ! no proper education except by means of languages, the Bible, and antiquity, in their whole humane significance ! But neither can there be any healthy national education without a healthy and beautiful physique, and a hearty sense of enjoyment in existence ! With regard to Church matters, the practical infer- ence which we are compelled to draw from our foregoing historical survey is, that neither in doctrine nor cultus do the formulas now in use correspond to the religious con- sciousness of the present age. 348 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book VI. The fact that none of the now existing more consider- able communions fulfil the ecclesiastical requirements which we have seen to result from our course of enquiry, is too patent to need proof. And so also is the inference that all those bodies must either reform themselves or perish. For the distinctive mark of a critical epoch is precisely this, that certain morbid conditions which have perhaps dragged on an existence for hundreds of years, are all at once summoned by the voices of the world's history, or in other words, by the exigencies of the case, to reconstitute themselves from within outwards, on pain of finding themselves swept away altogether by a new Deluge, Of course there is no lack of unanswerable objections and counter arguments which may be brought forward to the contrary on the field of theology and on that of politics ; there are also coercive means by which to refute inconvenient reflections of this kind. But the historian of the rehgious consciousness derives his authorization from the exalted subject which the theologians claim for their especial province. It is his duty to investigate and to declare the truth of the facts ; for that is the function of the priesthood of Humanity. JSTo Christian ought to stand in awe of inquisition, persecution, or obloquy. Moreover, thank God ! those terrors are only known to the readers of this book through the attempts of sophistical lawyers and theologians and their short- sighted aiders and abettors. After tliis declaration of our sentiments we will commend the following propositions to the reflection and consciences of our readers. FiEST Thesis. The Church of the Future must be recognized and represented in cdl its extent as the depositary of the Root-idea of all Worship — namely, Sacrifice. The " company of the faithful " is the visible repre- sentative of the presence of God among men — His Temple Chap. VI.] THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. .349 and Sanctuary. Their worsliip is the solemn vow to live and think agreeably to this sense of God's presence, in sanctity and self-devoting love. That is the true and original sacrifice of the Churcli. The Gospel demands this sacrifice and only this. The Eeformation recognizes this in principle, but her formularies are only provisional and do not correspond to this demand. But do our bishops. Church councillors, and members of Church con- ferences, know and consider this ? Second Thesis. The Subject-matter of Public Worship must he at once Scriptural and Spiritual. . As the form of the cultus has its living centre in the idea of sacrifice, so has its substance in the Bible, which is world historical revelation. Hence the latter im- plicitly involves an intelligent public reading of the Bible, of which the Gospel histories ought to form the centre ; and from this centre outwards, a rational and scriptural presentment of the history of God's revelations to man- kind should shape itself so as to occupy the ecclesiastical year. Have our Consistories and Church authorities done this ? Third Thesis. The Public Worship must possess the elements both of Freedom and Fixity, but must never overstrain the significance of a figure of speech, and hence the Churches services should include Preaching, in addition to P)'ayer. The sermon is the word of God reproduced afresh from the mind of the preacher. Without the spoken word. Christian worship is incomplete, and stands in continual danger of degenerating into an act performed to serve an end, or a work that has no extrinsic validity; in other words, is in danger of falhng buck into Judaism or heathenism. Do the framers of our Liturgies know and consider this ? 350 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. Fourth Thesis. Prayer cannot form the subject of a command. But it arises and issues spontaneously frovi the religious consciousness of the assembled Congregation, tvhen elevated by the read- ing or preaching of the Word of God ; the consciousness of the Church of the Faithful, ivhich knows Christ to be her King, cmd placing her confidence in her Elders and Synods, becomes through them aware of her own freedom. How shall the worshipping assembly edify itself with joy, if it is for ever kept under strict tutorship and rules, and never suffered to enjoy the sense of its own existence ? Our chief inference in the sphere of Politics, is that those States alone in which liberty has been conse- crated by law, will be able to survive the present crisis. Here, too, the practical inferences from the history of five thousand years' evolution of the religious consciousness, stands so clearly \vritten in every page of the world's history, for each man who believes in a divine order of the world, — therefore in a God,— and who knows the necessities of his own spirit, and of the present, and is wilhne to live and die for them, that it seems needless to do more than indicate those inferences in the briefest pos- sible manner. According to the Christianity of the Gos- pels, liberty under the sanction of law is the only political condition well-pleasing to God, because it is the only moral condition. Nay, civil liberty constitutes the gua- rantee of the sincerity with which the Gospel is confessed, and is essential to the building up of sound Churches, and the restoration of the harmony of man's life. Further, civil liberty is necessary to conformity to the divine order of the world, because the Kingdom of God advances by means of Nations and States. Now, however, in every quarter there manifests itself a stirring of the spirit of religion which takes the shape of a national cause. The Chap. VL] THE POLITICAL WANT A MORAL WANT. 351 two great antagonisms of the spiritual current of the last three hundred years have disappeared — Eomanicism, which desires to conduct the nations to political liberty without a Eeformation ; and Teutonism, which strives before all things after reliojious freedom and moral reform. First Thesis. The political has become a religious and ecclesiastical crisis, and the ecclesiastical a politiccd crisis. But ivhat the Peo- ples and the States really need is an inward moral renewal. Second Thesis. The Peoples are demanding from their Governments greater liberty ; the Governments are demanding from the Peoples greater sacrifices. Butfeiv draw the right conclusion from this fact ; namely, the existence of an intrinsic contradic- tion ivhich cannot fail to issue in ct World-Crisis. In these two theses much more is asserted and demanded than most people would gather from the words. Liberty means self-government and the admi- nistration of your own affairs. But these two things presuppose on the part of individuals the strength to determine their will by ethical considerations, therefore the presence of self-control. Popular freedom without a revolution presupposes a mutual trust between all classes, founded on trust in God, and belief in the moral order of the world. Hence, any people can indeed proclaim liberty, but it is only a nation standing on a moral and religious basis that is practically competent to exercise and main- tain liberty. So, again, any government may at last be brought to yield to the necessity of conceding liberty. But if, after all, that inward moral religious conscious- ness is wanting in the people, which is the only fount of all renewal, how is it possible to steer clear of a revohi- tion in the long run ? 352 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. Our last inference is that no less do our Social Condi- tions reveal the portents of a great world-crisis on which hangs the future fortunes of Humanity. First Thesis. The antagonism that noiv exists betiveen the national literature and culture on the one hand, and religion and piety on the other, must be removed, and no less necessary is the recon- ciliation of the "present opposition between Science and Reli- gion, Free Enquiry and Theology, the liberties of the Civil and those of the Ecclesiastical Community. The whole life of modern Europe has been dwarfed and darkened by the severance and mutual hostility of these elements. And yet there is no true science or art conceivable without a religious consciousness, nor can the latter advance or exert a creative agency without the former. The antagonisms we have enumerated, taken in their widest and most collective sense, may be called the contrasts presented by Eomanic and Teutonic culture, and the end to be desired is so to comprelieud and reinforce both tendencies that they shall mutually supplement each other. Still the distinctive cliaracteristic will for ever reveal itself, that the one portion of civilized Europe will chiefly direct its efforts to the working out of the one tendency, and the otlier portion to the working out of its opposite. But in the perfected culture of the individual this difference will in effect present itself as nothing more than a difference in the starting-point. Thus for instance, since the great Schism, the religion of the Teutons has been destitute of art, while that of the Eomans, on the contrary, has incessantly striven after ornamentation. But with a widening of their respective cultures, Teutonic art no less than its national literature becomes rehgious, while the art and literature of the Eomanic peoples, on the contraiy, struggle for an enfranchisement to secular ends. All these antagonisms have disappeared or are CHAr. VI.] TRUE AND FALSE SOCIALlS,\r. 353 ill the process of disappearing ; and when that is accom- pUshed, a harmonious, truly humane hfe may shape itself out, in which there shall be an interfusion of classes and of nationalities. But on the other hand, it is still possible that everything may sink into inextricable con- fusion. Second Thesis. The revolutionary intrigues of the Socialists cannot be suC' cessfully counteracted save by the true Social Sentiment, rvith the regeneration of social conditions to ivhich that gives birth. lu this sphere, too, the way of escape is nowhere to be found but in a deepening and expanding, taking place from within outwards, of the religious consciousness, with its concomitant realization. No one will dispute that the great political revolution in Eoraanic Europe, begun seventy years ago, bore within it fearful sociahstic germs, and that these have been developing themselves more and more, not only there, but in the bosom of manv Teutonic nations. This is Death stealing onward, and it will do so everywhere save where men discern in this phenomenon the warning finger-point of the eternal order of the world, and profit by it to set to work after a more thorough fashion upon the ameliora- tion of political and social circumstances. The evil is no longer a local malady in the political organism, but a general one. But where the internal health is sound, sickness is accompanied, and may be conquered, by the healthy energy of an ever self-renewing vitahty. And in effect, have not those very socialistic disturbances evoked a new outburst of moral and religious energy ? And this not alone amoni:!: the hifrher classes who are threatened by them, but also in the souls of many who have been captivated by their doctrines? But nothing except the Gospel has power to work this miracle in the masses. VOL. III. A A 354 GOD IX HISTORY. [Book VI. Third Thesis. The belief that the end of the world is at hand is to be regarded as a growing sense that we are now living in the epoch of a World-Crisis, and of an impending social, political, and religious Catastrophe in Europe. The two forms which the presentiment of a dreadful, yet in some quarters inevitable, overturn of European society takes, are the anticipation of a speedy approach of the Millennium, ^vhich is to be the restitution of all things, and that of an unconditional upsetting of all things ; whether this convulsion is conceived to be the end of the world, the annihilation of the human race, or only as the overthrow of all existing relations. Of these two con- ceptions, the former chiliastic theory, or expectation of a Millennium, is evidently the one whicli answers to the demands of the human spirit — nay, when rightly, there- fore spiritually, conceived, must be termed that of the Evangelists and Apostles. According to the Gospels, the apostolic Epistles and the Eevelation of St. John, the design and the ultimate effect of the second coming of Christ to judgment is to l)e the founding of a universal kingdom of God. But if this second coming of Christ is to be the sign of conflict and judgment (and this is clearly asserted in the Gospels), and therefore of the over- throw of those existing institutions in Church or State which are contrary to God, has not Christ already returned ? Are we not even now living in His presence as the Judge who was to come ? On the testimony of the Gospel and the world's history, without a doubt it is so. Which deceive themselves the most, the Jews who are still waiting for their Messiah, or the Christians — princes as much as people — who fail to discern that the Messiah in whom they beUeve, the Spirit of Judgment of the Father and the Son, has verily returned to sit in judgment on this unthankful and rebellious world, and for the consolation of those who look for salvation alone CuAP. VI.] MILLENIAL EXPECTATIONS. 355 from Him? We believe that the propliecies of the Apocalypse include a vast fiitm^e yet to come, but we do not need to believe this in order to find a justification for this thesis. Fourth Thesis. The great Catastrophe noiu iitipending will, like all preceding catastrophes, he a Day of Judgment for the World, but ivill he followed hy a greater and more glorious unfolding of the Kingdom of God. This has hitherto been the case in every great world- crisis, and tlie divine work thus forwarded has still in every branch a problem of further development before it, stretching beyond the utmost scope of our vision. In the first place, the diffusion of the Christian belief has as yet ta,ken place only within a comparatively narrow circle (if we do not take into account the jugglery by which children and nations are supposed to be converted by the sprinkling of water upon them). In the second place, because so soon as we look into practical realities, we see that this belief has not as yet penetrated beyond the outer rind of secular life. The theoretic religious con- sciousness has still to solve the most difficult problems of science ; the practical, those of social life. Lastly, even the faith of individuals in Christ is with most, as yet, very far from pure or spiritual. A belief upon authority, and a clinging to externals, do not constitute the faith that Christ demands. Either Christianity is a lie, and the history of religious consciousness the recital of a dream, or a time will come when every religiousl}- disposed person, woman equally with man, will be " taught of God " Himself — that is to say, will recognize the truths of Christianity on the evidence of direct personal experience, and this alone Avill be called religion. Not till this takes place, is it possible for religion to interpenetrate our social conditions. A A 2 S56 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. Equally certain is it that a time will come, when an abso- lute government in the State will be held on religious and moral grounds to be a regime no less monstrous than a system of slavery, and it will be acknowledged by both parties that absolute sway, like slavery, is an even greater misfortune for those who exercise, than for those who are subject to it. Under such a system, the latter may equally be conducted by it to faith or driven to despair, but with the rulers themselves it can lead to nothing but evil, falsehood, madness. Lastly, if a divine order of the world subsists, and is reflected in the consciousness of Jesus, there must also further come a time when the levying of war will be regarded as a relic of barbarism, no less unreasonable than immoral, and consequently any incitement thereto will be held a common crime committed against all. What rational man can believe that our statesmen are on their way towards such a consummation, though many assert this, and some enthusiastic spirits believe it ? Why, up to the present time, not one government has seriously endeavoured even to take the first honest step towards such a state of things, by forming a Peace League between all moral and pious nations and upright governments, combined with a tribunal for arbitration, whose assessors would constitute the Amphictyons of modern Humanity ! But the very fact that such a project has been mooted, and that the idea has been employed as a means of diplomatic deception, and of making political capital, proves that it has acquired an empire over men's minds. What fools and knaves they are who believe that by such arts they can stave off the coming day of retribution ! Chap. VI.] THE GREAT LESSOX OF HISTORY. 357 Fifth Thesis. The Restitution of all things, therefore the Victory of Good upon this Earth, is the Final Goal of all History. The Spirit is immortal under the embodiment of Moral Personality., and its Progress is infinite ; for it is in its origin one with the eternal conscious ThougJit of the Universe, and is designed to realize that Thought upon the Earth through Boundless Time. Simply from the standing-point of historical research, this last inference can only be proved conditionally ; that is, only if that be granted which is not susceptible of historical, but only of speculative demonstration. The Reason has proved, and can at any time prove in new formulas, that we are able to apply inferences from the Finite to the Infinite, in so far as what is distinctive to each is not in question, but only that which must be treated as the infinite, because eternal, element in the Finite. But further, the Conscience also takes that as- sumption for a postulate. What we call " conscience " is that which is treated of by Kant under the title of the " Practical Eeason." This last thesis brings us to the extreme limit of the field assigned to our enquiries ; the line where the histo- rical passes over into poetry or speculation, — the argu- ment from analogy and induction into the demonstration by pure thought. Meanwhile, we are surely justified iu assuming that in that thesis the consciousness of God im- planted in man speaks with infallible truth. As philoso- phers, we require for this assmnption nothing beyond the same confidence in Eeason in virtue of which mankind believe in their own existence and their apprehension of visible realities. Now the reflective student of history finds his faith in this divine instinct mightily confirmed by the experience that the noblest races of mankind have in all ages held fast to this belief ; and, moreover, have done so in proportion as they have been enlightened, vir- 358 GOD IN HISTORY. [Book VI. tuous, and liappy. Lastly, the Christian finds this behef present in the inmost recesses of the rehgioiis conscious- ness of that unique Personahty, Who is not alone the author, but also the object, of our deepest religious con- sciousness. l!^ow if the development of the human spirit must be regarded as an unfolding of the Eternal and Infinite in Time, it must be assumed to be not only a progressive unfolding, but also, according to the measure of human things, an infinite progress. That is to say, a progress whose end is not definable by any human admeasurement of Time. What, then, can this development be other than an ever-increasing oneness of knowledge and morality, an ever closer interpenetration of the True and the Good, and therefore of the most perfect Beauty ? For are not the two. Being and Knowledge, the True and the Good, one in God ? Nay, they are one also in Humanity, albeit with the imperfections attached to man. A correct observation of history shows them to us going hand in hand, although under the form of a servant, and veiled from ordinary eyes in the beggarly raiment of human imperfection, save where they make their presence irresistibly manifest before the world, throudi their effects. Those who teach that this union is the true wisdom, are the true disciples of philo- sophy. But those who, by their lives and actions, attest this true wisdom — women equally with men — are the true disciples of the Christ who is about to descend in the Spirit to judge the world, and such will judge the world with Him. Wherefore, thou torn Humanity, thou down-trodden people of God, be of good courage, and rejoice in God as thou marchest through the ages ! Thou shalt yet be a nobler glorification of the Eternal, than are all the suns and stars' ; for from thee — and so far as our ken reaches from thee alone, radiates that conscious Spirit for which all nature groans; and, in thee alone does that Divine Chap. YI.] THE FINAL VICTORY OF GOOD. 359 Love reveal itself which has conceived the thouoht of crea- tion, and plunged itself down into this actual life ! And ye, believing generations of the imminent or more distant future, do not fear or tremble if the day of judg- ment should burst in upon this old Europe. What is over- thrown, Y'ill fall struck by the vengeful lightnings of heaven ; and what is shattered into ruins, will but make place for the new life, which during the lapse of centuries has been silently germinating below the soil unobserved, and therefore undisturbed. But thou, solitary Spirit, who art travellini^ \vith us throuo;h the Y^aste Y^lderness of the present, live the Eternal life in Time, delight thine eye with the contemplation of a glorious, happier age, and contemplate thyself and thine age in the vast world-mirror of Humanity, of the Bible, and of the inexhaustible trea- sures of God's word contained therein. Then Y^lt thou fully understand that proverb of the wise and pious man which we have once before held up to thee :— " He to whom Time is as Eternity, and Eternity as Time, He is freed from all strife ! " APPENDIX. Note A. (p. 139). THE AUTIIEXTIC WORDS OF JOHX SCOTUS ERIGENA RESPECT- ING THE SPIRITUAL MEANING OF THE PRESENCE OF GOD IN THE SACRAMENT. Hofler in his " Deutsche Pdpste,'^ bd. ii. s. 80 fg., has been the first to give this text, and has done so on the authority of a communication received from Professor Grreith of St. Gall. The corrected text is to be found in Floss's complete edition of Erigena's " Commentary on the Heavenly Hierarchy of Diony- sius Areopaglta," and runs as follows : On the words of Dionysius : — " Et Jesu participationis ipsam divinissims eiicharistise assump- tionem . . . .'' ' Intuere quam pulchre, qiiam expresse asserit, visibilem hanc eucha- ristiam, quam quotidie sacerdotes Ecclesiae in altare conficiunt ex sensi- bili materia panis et vini, quamque confectam et sanctificatam corpora- liter accipiunt, typicam esse similitudinein spirituahs j^articipationis Jesu, quern fideliter solo intellectxi gustamiis, hoc est, intelligimus, iuque nostrte nature interiora viscera sumimus, ad nostram sahitem, et spiri- tuale incrementiim, et inefFabilem deificationem. Oportet ergo, inquit, humaiuim animum, ex sensibilibus rebus in ca^lestium A'irtutum simi- litudinem et asqualitatem ascendentem arbitrari, divinis?imam eucha- ristiam visibilem, in Ecclesia conformatam, maxime typum esse participationis ipsius, qua et nunc participamus Jesum per fidem, et in futuro participabimus per speciem, eique admiabimur per caritatera. ^ In Older to understand these disconnected words, compare with them the whole extract, which is to be found in the works of Hugo de St. Victor (O/j;). ed. Mogunt. 1617), p. 343. 362 APPENDIX. Qiiid ergo ad banc magni theologi Dionysii prseclarissimam tubam re- spondent, qui visibilem eucharistiam nil aliud significare prteter se ipsani volunt asserere, dum clarissime prseflxta tuba clamat, non ilia sacramenta visibilia colenda, neque pro veritate amplexanda, quia signi- ficatio veritatis sunt, neque propter se ipsa inventa, quoniam in ipsis intelligentiaj finis non est, sed propter incompreliensibileni veritatis virtutem, qua Christus est in unitate humana; divinajque suse substan- tias ultra omne, quod sensu sensitur corporeo, super omne quod virtute percipitur intelligentiae, Deus invisibilis, in utraque sua natura. Note B (p. 143). BERENGAKIUS AND LESSING. The chief passage is to be found in Giseler, ii. § 29, cf. Mil- man, " Latin Christianity,'' vol. iii. pp. 23-26, 51 et seq. Dr. Weill, in the number just published of his " Anfdnge der Wiederherstellung der Kirche im llten Jahrliundert,'' appears to wish to disembarrass himself of Lessing's criticisms by as- serting that they are now quite exploded. But that is not the view of the modern critics who bave hitherto written on this subject. The statements of Berengarius with regard to matters which came under his personal knowledge, and with respect to which he appeals to public sources of information, are not to be set aside because Lanfranc asserts the precise contrary. Nevertheless, in reading the records of the transactions, we cannot refrain from exclaiming with Lessing, " Holy Lanfranc ! do not pray for us I " Note C (p. 159). THE TRINITY AND THE HOLY VIRGIN. FOUR ROMISH PRAYERS OF THE YEAR 1822. Orazioiie da recitarsi da chi desidera acquistarsi la protezione delta SSMA. VERGINE di ottenere qualche grazia jmrche sia espediente per Veterna salute. In Eoma : 1825. Pel Bourlie. Con Licenza de' Superior!. lo vi adoro, Eterno Padre, con tutta la Corte celestiale per mio Dio, e Signore, ed infinitamente vi ringrazio da parte della beata Vergme, vostra diletdssinia Figlia, d' ogni grazia e favore, specialmente di quella potenza, della quale la siibliniaste assunta in Cielo. PRAYERS TO THE VIRGIX. 363 lo vi adoro, Eterno Figlio, cou tutta la Corte celestiale per mio Dio, Signore, e Eedentore, ed infinitamente vi ringrazio da parte della Beatissima Vergine vostra dilettissima Madre, d' ogni grazia e favore, specialmeiate di quella somma sapienza, di die 1' illustraste assunta iu Cielo. lo vi adoro, Santissimo Spirito, Paracleto, per mio Dio, e Signore, ed infinitamente vi ringrazio con tutta la Corte celestiale a nome della Beatissima Vergine, vostra amatissima Sposa, d' ogni grazia e favore, specialmente di quella perfettissima e diviua carita, colla quale accen- deste il suo santissimo e purissimo cuore nell' atto della sua gloriosis- sima Assunzione in Cielo, ed umilmente vi supplico, a nome della vostra stimatissima Sposa, a farrai grazia della remissione de' miei gravissimi peccati, dal primo istante clie potei peccare, fino a quest' ora presente, dolendemene infinitamente, con proponimento di ricevere piu tosto la morte, clie mai piu offendere la vostra Divina Maesta : e per gli altis- simi meriti, ed efEcacissima protezione della vostra amatissima S^DOsa, vi supplico a concedere a me, ed a N., il preziosissimo done della grazia vostra, e divino amore, col concedermi que' lumi, e particolari ajuti, per li quali 1' eterna Providenza vostra ha predeterminato di volermi salvare, e a se condurre. Alia Beatissima Vei'gine. Id vi adoro, Vergine Santissima, Regina de' Cieli, Signora, e Padrona deir universe, come Figlia dell' Eterno Padre, INIadre del suo dilet- tissimo Figliuolo, e Sposa graziosissima dello Spirito Santo ; e pro- strate a' piedi della vostra gran Maesta, con ogni maggiore umilta vi supplico per quella divina carita, della quale foste sommamente accu- mulata assunta in Cielo, a farmi tanta grazia e misericordia di ricevermi sotto la vostra sicurissima e fedelissima protezione, ricevenni nel numero di qiiei felicissimi ed avventurati servi, clie portate scolpiti nel vostro verginal petto. Degnatevi, Madre e Signora mia clementissima, di ricevere questo misero ed impure cuore : pigliate la memeria, la volonta, e tutte le altre potenze, e sensi interni, ed esterni ; accettate gli occlij, le oreccliie, la bocca, le mani, e i piedi, reggeteli conforme al beneplacito del vostro Figliuolo, intendende ad ogni movimento di essi di darvi gloria infinita. E per quella sapienza, di che v' illustro il vestro dilettissimo Figliiiolo, vi prege e supplico ad ettenermi lume e cliiarezza per conoscere bene me stesse, i miei peccati, il mio niente, e singolarmente Torigine di essi, che sono gli alFetti dell' anima, e le concupiscenze della carne, per poterle ediare e scacciare da me, e, di piu, lume per conoscere le insidie del nemice infernale, e i suoi abbat- timenti occulti e manifesti. Specialmente, pietissima Madre, vi sup- plico della grazia N. 364 APPENDIX. Note D (p. 168). THE ELEGY OX ROME WRITTEN IN THE NINTH CENTURY A PRODUCTION OFERIGENA. The genuine text, given for the first time by Floss from the MS. of the work of Scotus Erigena entitled, " De divisione Naturce,'" runs thus : — ^ Nobilibiis quondam fueras constriicta patronis, Subdita nunc servis heu ! male, Roma, ruis. Deseruere tui tanto te tempore reges, Cessit et ad Grsecos nomen lionosque tuus. Constantinopolis florens nova Eoma vocatur, Moribus et muris, Roma vetusta, cadis. Transiit imperium, mansitque superbia tecum, Cultus avaritite te nimium superat. Vulgus ab extremis distractus partibus orbis, Servorum servi nunc tibi sunt domini. In te nobilium, rectorum nemo remansit, Ingenuique tui rura Pelasga cohint. Truncasti vivos crudeli vulnere sanctos, Vendere nunc horum mortua membra soles. Jam ni te meritum Petri Paulique foveret, Tempore jam lougo, Eoma misella, fores. Floss thinks that the " servorum servi " indisputably refers to the Saracens. But they were never masters of Eome; and just shortly before the composition of that book, Leo IV. had defeated them in the decisive battle near Ostia (846 a.d.) and fortified the Borgo (Civitas Leonina). Thus we can but refer them to the monks who had streamed thither out of all quarters of the globe, and were at that time extremely numerous in Rome. The poet calls them " servorum servi " because the Popes themselves were in a very dependent position. ^ Floss, s. xxiii. C'f. " Beschreibimg Horns," von Bimsen und Platner, vol. i. p. 242 fg. THE THREE SONNETS OF PETRARCH. 3G5 Note E (p. 179). THE THREE SONNETS OF PETRARCH. A. SONETTO CV. Fiamma dal ciel su le tue treccie piova, Malvagia ; che dal fiume e dalle ghiande Per r altru' impoverir se' ricca e grande ; Poi clie di mal oprar tanto ti giova : Nido di tradimenti ; in cui si cova Quanto mal per lo mondo oggi si spande ; Di vin serva, di letti e di vivande, In cui lussuria fa 1' ultima prova. Per le camera tue fanciulle e vecchi Vanno trescando, e Belzebub in mezzo, Co' mantici, e col foco, e con gli specchi. Gia non fostu nudrita in piume al rezzo, Ma nuda al vento, e scalza fra li stecclii ; Or vivi si, ch' a Dio ne venga il lezzo. B. SOXETTO CVI. L' avara Babilonia lia colmo '1 sacco D' ira di Dio, e di vizii empi e rei, Tanto che scoppia ; ed lia fatti suoi Dei, Non Giove e Palla, ma Venere e Bacco. Aspettando ragion mi struggo e fiacco : Ma pur novo Soldan veggio per lei, Lo qual fara, non gia quand' io vorrei, Sol una sede ; e quella fia in Baldacco. Gl' idoli suoi saranno in terra sparsi, E le torri superbe, al Ciel nemiche ; E suoi torrier di for, come dentr' arsi. Anime belle e di virtute amiclie Terranno '1 mondo ; e poi vedrem lui far si Aureo tutto, e pien delF opre antiche. 366 - APPENDIX. C. SONETTO CVII. Fontana di dolore, albergo d' ira, Scola d' eiTori, e tempio d' eresia ; Gia Roma, or Babilonia falsa e ria, Per cui tanto si piagne e si sospira : O fucina d' inganni, o priglon dira, Ove '1 ben more, e '1 mai si nutre e cria ; Di vivi inferno ; un gran miracol fia Se Cristo teco al fine non s' adira. 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